Looking for a Good Cause?

The problem for (not with) the younger generations is that all the good social causes have been taken and substantially addressed. (Of course, nothing can be perfect.) But hold on: one good cause is left: political-economic individualism. Looking for a good cause to enlist in? There you go.

Palestine and Israel: What's It All About?

Current events aside, the fundamental reason to favor the Palestinian cause over the Zionist project is not that the Israelis are Western and the Palestinians are not. That's knee-jerk woke "decolonial" claptrap, which does the Palestinians no favors. There's nothing inherently wrong with being Western, just as there's nothing inherently right with being Eastern, Southern, or whatever. Regions are neither virtuous nor vicious. From time immemorial, non-Westerners have been as brutal, domineering, and interested in slave-holding/trading as Westerners. Slavery was the uncontroversial norm for millennia everywhere -- including in the pre-Columbian West. It still exists in Asia. So the non-West gets no points on that count. On the other hand, the ultimately successful antislavery campaign arose in the West in the 19th century, not somewhere else. You don't hear much about that. Kudos to the British and the founders of the North American antislavery societies. 

No, the fundamental reason to side with the Palestinian cause is that the right to private property in land is legitimate. Sorry, socialists. For the most part, Palestinians had their land taken by force, as Zionist leader and first Israeli president David Ben-Gurion acknowledged. Today's troubles flow from that.

TGIF: Without the State, Who'd Drag Us into Other People's Wars?

This article was posted shortly before the International Court of Justice ruled provisionally that Israel's Gaza military operation can plausibly be described as acts outlawed by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The ICJ ordered Israel to take all actions possible to prevent the acts forbidden by the convention. But the court did not order a ceasefire. A full ruling will come later. The complaint against Israel had been filed by the Republic of South Africa.

What’s more off-putting than seeing U.S. government officials and their spokesmen trying to wriggle out of embarrassing questions about American support for Israel’s continuing atrocities against the people of the Gaza Strip? That's the location of just the latest conflict into which we Americans have been dragged by our caring rulers without our consent. The previous one, in Ukraine, is still going on, though largely forgotten. Isn't the state a wonderful thing? 

Theoretically, it's illegal for the U.S. government to give weapons to governments that will use them to violate people's rights. But that is exactly what the U.S. government has done for Israel over many decades. Hence the U.S. government's bobbing and weaving over Israel's unambiguous war crimes. Our "public servants" have to evade. What else can they do? They can’t acknowledge that Israel's policy is to systematically kill, maim, and starve large numbers of innocent noncombatants and to destroy their homes and society. Still, those officials can’t deny it outright either because, given what we mere citizens can easily learn from a variety of credible sources online, they would look like the know-nothing damn fools they are. So they subtly acknowledge the crimes by politely suggesting that Israel try not to kill so many noncombatants, even as they insist Israel's army remains the most moral army in the world. (Here is a video summary of the horrors that the U.S. government is abetting in Gaza.)

Why should Americans be forced to underwrite this nightmare for Gazans or other foreign conflicts? It certainly doesn't protect Americans -- on the contrary. (See 9/11.)  What makes it worse is that the forced assistance is crucial to the aggression. Israel could not continue to destroy Gaza if the U.S. government stopped sending ammunition, population-annihilating bombs, and spare parts. We Americans make the massive war crimes possible.

And it could get worse by bringing more direct U.S. intervention. The U.S. government is bombing Yemen -- without a congressional declaration of war. (Not that it would make the bombing better.) The U.S. military is also striking Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq because they have hit U.S. forces. But why are U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq? Why is Iran a player in Iraq? Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. 

Even though we haven't consented to any of this -- individually, I mean, not by majority vote -- it's a shameful mark on the country. No doubt, some aggrieved people, who perhaps have lost children and parents in the onslaught, want vengeance. Like Osama bin Laden, they think the American people control U.S. foreign policy. Who can blame them for thinking that? American rulers, by bragging about democracy, say that all the time. It's absurd, but that fallacy is not confined to jihadists. American and Israeli politicians annihilate people for acts they did not commit or consent to.

This all adds up to a strong indictment against government per se. What other organization can steal our money and use it to help destroy other societies in our name without consent? Embroiling us in foreign conflicts is one of the government's tools, with many benefits to the political class and its clients. Although people with bad intentions will be attracted to that power, interventionism will be tragically misguided even when well-intended, as perhaps it often is. The interventionists can never really know what they are doing. Unintended consequences will abound, and optimistic predictions will quickly turn sour. No constitution could permanently curb, much less abolish that power because every constitution will have to be interpreted. Who do you think will do the interpreting?

What can conscientious objectors do? Stopping traffic at rush hour doesn’t work. Closing down railway terminals and sitting in at government offices are no better. Your meager one vote is impotent. In the short term, I see no way out. Over the long term? Try to convince enough people that we can't afford government either monetarily or morally.

TGIF: Milei at Davos

\Javier Milei, the newly elected president of Argentina, spoke the other day at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF is essentially a group of people who want world affairs centrally planned by political authorities. They are hardly advocates of laissez-faire free enterprise and individual liberty. Milei, on the other hand, is. He describes himself as a libertarian, an unabashed advocate of the free market, and even a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist. Milei's speech has to be unlike any speech given at a WEF meeting. It would shine bright even if today's political landscape were not as bleak as it is. As a public service, I present it below. (You can watch here.)

Good afternoon, thank you very much: today I am here to tell you that The West is in danger, it is in danger because those, who are supposed to defend the values of the West, find themselves co-opted by a vision of the world which – inexorably – leads to socialism, consequently to poverty.

TGIF: Smells Like Genocide

If it looks like genocide, sounds like genocide, and smells like genocide, chances are it's genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will rule provisionally on whether that is what Israel is committing against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The Republic of South Africa filed the complaint, which is ironic because Israel was a staunch ally of South Africa's former apartheid regime.

The official complaint is welcome, but thanks to social media, each of us already has ample evidence from a large variety of sources showing Israel's assault on the Gazans. Just watch the abundant video evidence that has accumulated since October 7, when Hamas fighters and perhaps other Gazans committed unspeakable atrocities against Israeli civilians after breaking through the fence that has kept them in an open-air prison for many years.

Since that horrible day, the Israeli Defense Force has brutally and indiscriminately pounded the 2.3 million people, about half of whom are children, who live in that 25x5-mile, densely populated strip. The conservatively estimated death toll -- there must be many victims under the rubble -- now stands at over 23,000, about half of whom are kids. Hundreds of thousands of residences have been destroyed or damaged. People have been displaced. Infrastructure and medical facilities have been rendered inoperable. Gaza resembles nearly Hiroshima after the U.S. government dropped the atomic bomb.

Moreover, one need not advocate strictly limited government (or no government at all) to be appalled at the U.S. government's complicity in that genocide, a word I do not use casually and have, I think, never written before.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted after the Nazi nightmare, formally defines as genocide several "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." (My emphasis.) Those acts are:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Israel argues that it is not killing Gazans indiscriminately because they are members of a particular ethnic or religious group; rather it tries to minimize collateral damage while rooting out lethal Hamas and its infrastructure. But is that credible? So many babies, toddlers, elderly, and seriously ill have been killed or maimed, so many homes, hospitals, and sanitation facilities destroyed.

South Africa's 84-page application to the ICJ is a well-documented comprehensive paper and bill of indictment against the state of Israel's conduct. In great detail and with much background, it enumerates both the Israeli government's genocidal actions and the many public statements made by Israeli civilian and military officials that declare in no uncertain terms their intention to do what is defined as genocide under the international convention.  Israel is a signatory to that convention, as is the United States.

At this stage, South Africa is requesting an immediate provisional order for a cessation of Israel's onslaught while the merits of its case are considered.

South Africa's application states:

South Africa unequivocally condemns all violations of international law by all parties, including the direct targeting of Israeli civilians and other nationals and hostage-taking by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. No armed attack on a State’s territory no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can, however, provide any possible justification for, or defence to, breaches of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ..., whether as a matter of law or morality. [My emphasis.]

Note the condemnation of Hamas for its atrocities. It goes on:

The acts and omissions by Israel complained of by South Africa are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group, that being the part of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.... The acts in question include killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.

This threat to the Palestinians has not passed, says the application, so a provisional cease-and-desist order is imperative right now:

...Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Those acts include killing them, causing them serious mental and bodily harm and deliberately inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group. Repeated statements by Israeli State representatives, including at the highest levels, by the Israeli President, Prime Minister, and Minister of Defence, express genocidal intent. That intent is also properly to be inferred from the nature and conduct of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, having regard inter alia to Israel’s failure to provide or ensure essential food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and other humanitarian assistance for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian people, which has pushed them to the brink of famine. It is also clear from the nature, scope and extent of Israel’s military attacks on Gaza, which have involved the sustained bombardment over more than 11 weeks of one of the most densely populated places in the world, forcing the evacuation of 1.9 million people or 85% of the population of Gaza from their homes and herding them into ever smaller areas, without adequate shelter, in which they continue to be attacked, killed and harmed.

As of the filing in late December,

Israel has now killed in excess of 21,110 named Palestinians, including over 7,729 children — with over 7,780 others missing, presumed dead under the rubble — and has injured over 55,243 other Palestinians, causing them severe bodily and mental harm. Israel has also laid waste to vast areas of Gaza, including entire neighbourhoods, and has damaged or destroyed in excess of 355,000 Palestinian homes, alongside extensive tracts of agricultural land, bakeries, schools, universities, businesses, places of worship, cemeteries, cultural and archaeological sites, municipal and court buildings, and critical infrastructure, including water and sanitation facilities and electricity networks, while pursuing a relentless assault on the Palestinian medical and healthcare system. Israel has reduced and is continuing to reduce Gaza to rubble, killing, harming and destroying its people, and creating conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group.

And no end is in sight. The Israeli government has said the attack will go on for months, even a year. The Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, said on television that "every school, every mosque, and every second house has an access to a tunnel...and of course ammunition." When asked if that meant all of Gaza should be destroyed, she responded, "Do you have another solution how to destroy the underground tunnel city?"

That was just the latest in the many official Israeli statements -- from the prime minister and president on down -- indicating that the target of the onslaught is the entire population of Gaza, whether by bombing or by systematic deprivation of food, water, fuel, and medical supplies. (Even ambulances have been attacked.) Those statements are documented in the South African application because they demonstrate the Israeli government's genocidal intention. As a South African representative told the ICJ on Thursday, "The evidence of genocidal intent is not only chilling, it is also overwhelming and incontrovertible."

This death, injury, starvation, dehydration, and utter destruction of homes and infrastructure is perpetrated by a nation whose most devout supporters worldwide believe it has a holy mission to be a "light to nations." (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6, and 60:3) Yet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rallied his troops by invoking the biblical story of the divinely commanded Israeli destruction of the Amalekite men, women, and children. Before the ICJ, Israel tried to explain that invocation by fully quoting Netanyahu, who told the troops, "The IDF is the most moral army in the world, and IDF does everything to avoid harming the uninvolved...." But the Israeli leaders have indicated repeatedly that no Gazans are uninvolved.

While the application was filed against Israel, the U.S. government -- for obvious reasons -- should not regard itself as off the hook: the genocide convention also prohibits "complicity in genocide." Moreover, a complaint has been filed in another court, the International Criminal Court, against President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for their role in helping Israel. Moreover, the prohibitions in the genocide convention have counterparts in U.S. law.

The Biden administration opposes South Africa's application, though it admits it has not investigated the matter. Revealingly perhaps, an Israeli government spokesman dismissed South Africa as an "advocate for the devil."

Discussing Gaza on Kibbe on Liberty

Matt Kibbe and I talked about the emergency in Gaza on his podcast. Watch here.

Conversation on Israeli Genocide

I discussed matters related to Israel's genocidal attack on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip with Saifedean Ammous. The podcast is here.

TGIF: The Right to Move

If people individually own themselves and have a right to be free of aggressive force, then they have a right to change their location in ways consistent with other people's rights. Whether you call this moving around relocating, emigrating, or immigrating, doesn't much matter. The default position is that each individual may rightfully move to somewhere else permanently or temporarily.

Inside the United States, nobody questions this. People freely move from state to state, etc., sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. They need no one's permission.

Why should things be different when we talk about countries rather than smaller jurisdictions and when the individuals who do the moving are not recognized as citizens of the destination country? An opponent of the freedom to move might begin by rejecting self-ownership and nonaggression, so the argument with him would take place at that basic level. But what if the opponent of the freedom to move espouses support for self-ownership and nonaggression? That's a different kettle of fish.

Remarkably, both kinds of opponents make a similar case for why government control of the borders is necessary. Starting from a different basis, they agree on the alleged need for coercive social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats, who might be pursuing agendas that most people would want no part of.

We often hear it said that just as no one has a right to enter your home without your permission, so no one has a right to enter the country without the permission of the purported equivalent of the owner. That owner is said to be "the people," in whose name the government claims to act. The truth of the matter is different.

I can see a collectivist taking this shaky position, but an individualist advocate of self-ownership? A country isn't a home. It's not a country club either. Homes and country clubs are rooted in private property and voluntary contract. But a country is not. The view that a country is owned at all has been the basis of collectivism and tyranny.

A property owner may decide he doesn't want someone or some group to enter his property. Fine. But by what right does he impose his rule on other property owners? It does not matter if a majority of property owners and others likes his rules. The dissenting minority -- individuals with rights -- might welcome newcomers as potential employees, employers, tenants, landlords, customers, sellers, friends, romantic partners, or what have you. Majorities shouldn't be able to nullify the rights of dissenters or those of aspiring migrants.

Relocation in itself violates no rights. If a rights violation occurs, that should be dealt with, not the relocation. We can always imagine dire emergencies  -- "Let justice be done though the heavens fall" is a dubious principle -- but this does not justify routine militarized border control, walls and fences, internal checkpoints, employment databases, etc. By definition, dire emergencies are the exception. The words "Show me your papers" should make Americans (and everyone else) cringe.

People today, like in the past, imagine that they see signs of cultural decline and threats to democracy from foreign-born newcomers. When I hear the latter fear expressed, I want to reply sardonically, "We're capable of growing our own anti-freedom voters, thank you. We need no help from foreigners." Seriously, though, who can be sure how immigrants will vote in the future, especially if their alternatives include a strong freedom party that welcomes newcomers? Meanwhile, let's work on shifting the public's business from the flawed democratic arena to the realm of private property, contract, and social cooperation in the free market.

As for the wish to protect the culture from change, nothing so surely spells tyranny. Imagine what would have to be done to carry out such a plan. Who would you want to run the cultural ministry? It wouldn't work, of course, but trying would be a road to hell. Besides, do you want to live in a place without a constant flow of new restaurants? And why stop at the change that originates outside the country? What about the sometimes radical change that occurs from domestic sources?

The logic of immigration control ought to worry every freedom advocate -- for we can ask, as noted, why stop at national borders? Why not control movement between states, counties, cities, towns, and neighborhoods? (Maybe I shouldn't given anyone ideas.) If you can't accomplish a goal through voluntary exchange, then leave it alone.

That control mentality blinds people. As Bryan Caplan points out, when poor people move to rich places, their productivity skyrockets, so they make not only themselves better off, but also the people around them. Yes, some unskilled high-school dropouts would see some decline in income because of competition from new workers who speak little English. Change --  progress -- always has a relatively small short-term downside for a few people. But even they, and most certainly their children and grandchildren, will be better off: more goods, lower prices, more employees, more employers, and a larger variety of offerings, not to mention fresh energy and cultural stimulation.

Remember the ever-present potential for gains from trade! Despite the impression given by demagogues, we have nothing resembling open borders, and the problems at the U.S.-Mexican line are the homemade product of U.S. anti-immigration policy.

As Oscar W. Cooley and Paul L. Poirot wrote in a 1951 Foundation for Economic Education pamphlet, "The Freedom to Move":

Can we hope to explain the blessings of freedom to foreign people while we deny them the freedom to cross our boundaries? To advertise America as the “land of the free,” and to pose as the world champion of freedom in the contest with communism, is hypocritical, if at the same time we deny the freedom of immigration as well as the freedom of trade. And we may be sure that our neighbors overseas are not blind to this hypocrisy.

A community operating on the competitive basis of the free market will welcome any willing newcomer for his potential productivity, whether he brings capital goods or merely a willingness to work. Capital and labor then attract each other, in a kind of growth that spells healthy progress and prosperity in that community. That principle seems to be well recognized and accepted by those who support the activities of a local chamber of commerce. Why do we not dare risk the same attitude as applied to national immigration policy?

TGIF: Beware Elitists in Populist Clothing

We're led to believe that today's political struggles are largely a contest between populists and elitists. But something besides libertarians is missing from that simple tale: the elitists in populist clothing, or elitist populists. We have no better example than a conversation the other day between the leading "right" populist Tucker Carlson and the leading "left" populist Glenn Greenwald. (The quotation marks are to indicate that these tribal labels are seriously problematic.)

To their credit, Carlson and Greenwald consistently defend a noninterventionist foreign policy and free speech. However, advocates of full individual liberty should take care because these pundits voice positions that seriously trash individual liberty. See their views on the free movement of people and goods across national boundaries. Voluntary exchange is not a priority for Carlson and Greenwald.

Even knowing this, I was unprepared for what they would say. Carlson offered this (at 28;10):

I think a lot of people have awakened to the now-demonstrable fact that libertarian economics was a scam perpetrated by the beneficiaries of the economic system that they were defending. So they created this whole intellectual framework to justify the private-equity culture that's hollowed out the country.... I think you need to ask, Does this economic system produce a lot of Dollar Stores? And if it does, it's not a system that you want because it degrades people and it makes their lives worse and it increases exponentially the amount of ugliness in your society. And anything that increases ugliness is evil. Let's just start there. So if it's such a good system, why do we have all these Dollar Stores?... If you have a Dollar Store, you're degraded. And any town that has a Dollar Store does not get better. It gets worse. And the people who live there lead lives that are worse. The counterargument, to the extent there is one, oh they buy cheaper stuff. Great. But they become more unhappy.... [The Dollar Store] is also a metaphor for your total lack of control over where you live and over the imposition of aggressively in-you-face ugly structures that send one message to you: which is you mean nothing; you are a consumer, not a human being or a citizen."

There you have it. The market is an exploitative scam, and the Dollar Store, which many of us regard as a godsend, is an ugly, degrading, and dehumanizing snare. Who knew?

Where to start? Libertarian -- in other words, consistent free-market -- economics is a self-serving scam? Really? Got proof? Were Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Kirzner, Sowell, Williams, Buchanan, Rothbard, etc. actually members of a cabal that was getting rich at our expense? Is Carlson having a laugh?

He would have been on firmer ground if had said that libertarian economics is used as a cover for elitist government interventions. But libertarians have said this roughly forever.

"So they created this whole intellectual framework to justify the private-equity culture that's hollowed out the country." This is pretentious rubbish. We must always distinguish market institutions in themselves from the distorted monstrosities created by social engineers through government control. The market for private equity -- otherwise known as private property in the means of production -- is not the problem. It's indispensable for raising the living standards of eight billion people. The problem is privilege: goodies and influence bestowed by the state. How could Carlson not know that?

Now we get to that alleged symbol of ugly American modernity and degradation: the Dollar Store. This is too silly to require an answer. He doesn't the stores are just physically unsightly. Actually, they're not. He means that the very idea is ugly and destructive of good things. Has he asked people who shop there? Do they see it as symbolic of a lack of control? He would have had a point had he lamented that such stores are valued because the government central bank sucks the purchasing power out of the dollar by printing money. Or he might have noted that without the Federal Reserve, more stuff would cost only a dollar. (HT: Bob Murphy.)

Lest you think that Carlson's complaint is about 21st century America, understand that the first "five and dime" store -- officially, F.W. "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store" -- opened in Utica, New York, in 1879. Children of the 1950s like me fondly remember the Woolworth as a cheerful fixture on the avenue. I don't recall being treated as a "mere consumer," whatever that means. (The Woolworth lunch counter in the Jim Crow South was a different story, but that's not what Carlson has in mind.) Woolworth soon had competitors, such as W.T. Grant.

Carlson's elitism is undisguised when he expresses his disdain for the Dollar Store and the people who welcome them. I'm quite sure he and his fellow millionaires don't shop there.

If you expected some pushback from Greenwald, you would have been disappointed. He laughingly recalled how he got into trouble for suggesting that Carlson and Donald Trump's one-time gray eminence Steve Bannon "are a lot more socialist in a certain limited sense than a lot of people who claim that title." He's right. That's because, he added, "you [Carlson] are focused so much on the welfare of ordinary people." I'm not seeing much focus on ordinary people.

As to Carlson's point about ugliness, Greenwald elaborated:

You go to anywhere in the world. You go to Western Europe and you see these structures that people spent 200 years building just for the sheer beauty of it and you go into nature and you see beauty like it never exists. And you go to developing countries and you see a kind of dedication to buildings even that are designed to be inspiring to stimulate things in the human soul. And then you go to places in the United States where our infrastructure is falling apart, where our new structures are designed to be as ugly as possible. And it's a very difficult thing to do to communicate the spiritual components of our politics.

Has it occurred to Greenwald that those beautiful old European structures were built by ordinary people for the government-privileged aristocracy? (HT: David Henderson) Greenwald apparently sees no beauty in the fact that the market-oriented West (despite abundant government intervention for its cronies) brought the first mass production for ordinary people in history. The upper classes of the not-too-distant past would envy the middle and lower classes over what they consume every day. You might expect that to thrill a populist -- but not these delusional champions of ordinary people.

Finally, Greenwald writes that "ultimately politics does have no purpose other than to elevate the happiness of our citizenry." But he doesn't lift a finger to defend this position, which is fraught with difficulties not least because of human differences and the universal need for individual freedom. To name just one, since the state is founded on aggressive force, what does Greenwald have planned for those of us whose happiness requires that the politicians and bureaucrats stop stealing from us and stop trying to manage society? Wouldn't it be better for the government to stay out of the happiness business and to respect freedom of association? 

No doubt Carlson and Greenwald favor a foreign policy of nonintervention for some good reasons that libertarians also embrace. But they favor it for a bad reason as well. Instead of favoring the taxpayers keeping their own money, Carlson and Greenwald want to spend the Pentagon's huge budget on a gigantic, compulsory, inflationary, wealth-destroying, coldly bureaucratic, intrusive, and condescending welfare state if not outright government ownership and control. 

Individual liberty? What's that?

Appearance on the Scott Horton Show

Scott Horton and I talked about issues related to the Israel-Palestine conflict on his show recently. You can listen here.

TGIF: Ahad Ha'Am's Prophetic Warning about Political Zionism

Ukrainian-born Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (1856-1927), whose pen name was Ahad Ha'Am (Hebrew for one of the people), was a proponent of Spiritual, or Cultural, Zionism, which made him a rival to Theodor Herzl and Political Zionism, the movement dedicated to creating a nation-state in Palestine for all Jewish people worldwide. Ahad Ha'Am remains relevant to understanding the roots of the conflict in Palestine and Israel that has cost so many innocent lives. Hans Kohn, a Bohemian-born American writer, shed light on Ahad Ha'Am's thinking about the "Arab problem" for Herzl's movement in "Zion and the Jewish National Idea," published in Menorah Journal, Autumn-Winter 1958. (The journal ceased publication in 1962.) Here's part of what Kohn wrote. Pay close attention to the quotes from Ahad Ha'Am:

In 1891 Ahad Ha-'Am laid his finger on the problem which, for practical and ethical reasons alike, was the fundamental though neglected problem of Zionism in Palestine -- the Arab problem. To the eyes of most Zionists, the land of their forefathers appeared empty, waiting for the return of the dispersed descendants as if history had stood still for two thousand years. From 1891 on Ahad Ha-'Am stressed that Palestine was not only a small land but not an empty one... He pointed out that there was little untilled soil in Palestine, except for stony hills and sand dunes. He warned that the Jewish settlers must under no circumstances arouse the wrath of the natives by ugly actions; must meet them rather in the friendly spirit of respect. "Yet what do our brethren do in Palestine? Just the very opposite! Serfs they were in the lands of the Diaspora and suddenly they find themselves in freedom, and this change has awakened in them an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, and even boast of these deeds; and nobody among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination." That was written in 1891 when the Zionist settlers formed a tiny minority in Palestine. "We think," Ahad Ha-'Am warned, "that the Arabs are all savages who live like animals and do not understand what is happening around. This is, however, a great error."

This error unfortunately has persisted ever since. Ahad Ha-'Am did not cease to warn against it, not only for the sake of the Arabs but for the sake of Judaism and Zion. He remained faithful to his ethical standards to the end. Twenty years later, on July 9, 1911, he wrote to a friend in Jaffa: "As to the war against the Jews in Palestine, I am a spectator from afar with an aching heart, particularly because of the want of insight and understanding shown on our side to an extreme degree. As a matter of fact, it was evident twenty years ago that the day would come when Arabs would stand up against us." He complained bitterly that the Zionists were unwilling to understand the people of the land to which they came and had learned neither its language or its spirit....

In a letter of November 18, 1913 to Moshe Smilansky, a pioneer settler in Palestine, Ahad Ha-'Am had protested against another form of nationalist boycott proclaimed by the Zionist labor movement in Palestine against the employment of Arab labor, a racial boycott: "Apart from the political danger, I can't put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in such a way to men of another people; and unwittingly the thought comes to my mind: If it is so now, what will be our relation to the others if in truth we shall achieve 'at the end of time' power in Eretz Israel? If this be the 'Messiah,' I do not wish to see him coming."

Ahad Ha-'Am was in the prophetic tradition not only because he subjected the doings of his own people to ethical standards. He also foresaw, when very few realized it, the ethical dangers threatening Zion.

Ahad Ha-'Am returned to the Arab problem in another letter to Smilansky, written in February, 1914. Smilansky had been bitterly attacked by Palestinian Zionists because he had drawn attention to the Arab problem. Ahad Ha-'Am tried to comfort him by pointing out that the Zionists had not yet awakened to reality. "Therefore they wax angry toward those who remind them that there is still another people in Eretz Israel that has been living there and does not intend at all to leave its place. In the future, when this illusion will have been torn from their hearts and they will look with open eyes upon the reality as it is, they will certainly understand how important this question is and how great is our duty to work for its solution."

...In 1920 (three years after the Balfour Declaration) Ahad Ha-'Am warned against exaggerated Zionist hopes. "The Arab people," he wrote, "regarded by us as nonexistent ever since the beginning of the colonization of Palestine, heard [of the Zionist expectations and plans] and believed that the Jews were coming to drive them from their soil and deal with them at their own will." Such an attitude on the part of his own people seemed to Ahad Ha-'Am unthinkable. In his interpretation of the Balfour Declaration he stressed that the historical right of the Jews in Palestine "does not affect the right of the other inhabitants who are entitled to invoke the right of actual dwelling and their work in the country for many generations. For them, too, the country is a national home, and they have a right to develop national forces to the extent of their ability. This situation makes Palestine the common land of several peoples, each of whom wishes to build its national home there. In such circumstances it is no longer possible that the national home of one of them could be total.... If you build your house in an empty space but in a place where there are also other homes and inhabitants, you are an unrestricted master only inside your own house. Outside the door all the inhabitants are partners, and the management of the whole has to be directed in agreement with the interests of them all."

How different things would have been if the Political Zionists had paid heed to Ahad Ha'am.

Anti-Zionism Is NOT Anti-Semitism

 

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro says what needs to be said -- and he said it two years ago, before the clowns in Congress (Thomas Massey and a few others excepted) decreed otherwise. I have nothing to add.

 

TGIF: Inspiration for the Nakba?

The unspeakable violence that plagues Israel and Palestine daily relates in part to the assertion of an ancient, ancestral, and even divinely bestowed property right to a parcel of land, which is often called "holy" and "promised." For background, here are a few influential -- which is not to say factual -- passages from a perennially bestselling book (or set of books) deemed important by the three Abrahamic religions.

From the Book of Genesis:

[15:18]In that day [the Lord] made a covenant with Abram, saying: 'Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt [Nile] unto the great river, the river Euphrates [Iraq]; [15:19][the land of] the Kenite, and the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite, [15;20]and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Rephaim, [15:21]and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite.'

From the Book of Joshua:

[1:1][T]he LORD spake unto Joshua the son of Nun [allegedly in 1400 BCE] ... saying, [1:2]...go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. [1:3]Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. [1:4]From the wilderness [Sinai?] and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. [1:5]There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. [1:6]Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them. 

[6:20]So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. [6:21]And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.... [6:24]And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein....

[8:1]And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed: take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai: see, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land: [8:2]And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the city behind it. [8:3]So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai: and Joshua chose out thirty thousand mighty men of valour, and sent them away by night. [8:4]And he commanded them, saying, Behold, ye shall lie in wait against the city, even behind the city: go not very far from the city, but be ye all ready: [8:5]And I, and all the people that are with me, will approach unto the city: and it shall come to pass, when they come out against us, as at the first, that we will flee before them, [8:6](For they will come out after us) till we have drawn them from the city; for they will say, They flee before us, as at the first: therefore we will flee before them. [8:7]Then ye shall rise up from the ambush, and seize upon the city: for the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand. [8:8]And it shall be, when ye have taken the city, that ye shall set the city on fire: according to the commandment of the LORD shall ye do....

[8:11]And all the people, even the people of war that were with him, went up, and drew nigh, and came before the city, and pitched on the north side of Ai: now there was a valley between them and Ai. [8:12]And he took about five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city.... [8:14]And it came to pass, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hasted and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at a time appointed, before the plain; but he wist not that there were liers in ambush against him behind the city. [8:15]And Joshua and all Israel made as if they were beaten before them, and fled by the way of the wilderness. [8:16]And all the people that were in Ai were called together to pursue after them: and they pursued after Joshua, and were drawn away from the city. [8:17]And there was not a man left in Ai or Bethel, that went not out after Israel: and they left the city open, and pursued after Israel.

[8:18]And the LORD said unto Joshua, Stretch out the spear that is in thy hand toward Ai; for I will give it into thine hand. And Joshua stretched out the spear that he had in his hand toward the city. [8:19]And the ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand: and they entered into the city, and took it, and hasted and set the city on fire. [8:20]And when the men of Ai looked behind them, they saw, and, behold, the smoke of the city ascended up to heaven, and they had no power to flee this way or that way: and the people that fled to the wilderness turned back upon the pursuers. [8:21]And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai. [8:22]And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape. [8:23]And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.

[8:24]And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. [8:25]And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai. [8:26]For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. [8:27]Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the LORD which he commanded Joshua. [8:28]And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day. [8:29]And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until eventide: and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcase down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raise thereon a great heap of stones, that remaineth unto this day.....

[10:40]So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded. [10:41]And Joshua smote them from Kadeshbarnea even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon. [10:42]And all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time, because the LORD God of Israel fought for Israel.

[11:1]And it came to pass, when Jabin king of Hazor had heard those things, that he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of Achshaph, [11:2]And to the kings that were on the north of the mountains, and of the plains south of Chinneroth, and in the valley, and in the borders of Dor on the west, [11:3]And to the Canaanite on the east and on the west, and to the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite in the mountains, and to the Hivite under Hermon in the land of Mizpeh. [11:4]And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as the sand that is upon the sea shore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many. [11:5]And when all these kings were met together, they came and pitched together at the waters of Merom, to fight against Israel. [11:6]And the LORD said unto Joshua, Be not afraid because of them: for to morrow about this time will I deliver them up all slain before Israel: thou shalt hough their horses, and burn their chariots with fire.

[11:7] So Joshua came, and all the people of war with him, against them by the waters of Merom suddenly; and they fell upon them. [11:8]And the LORD delivered them into the hand of Israel, who smote them, and chased them unto great Zidon, and unto Misrephothmaim, and unto the valley of Mizpeh eastward; and they smote them, until they left them none remaining. [11:9]And Joshua did unto them as the LORD bade him: he houghed their horses, and burnt their chariots with fire. [11:10]And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, and smote the king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms. [11:11]And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them: there was not any left to breathe: and he burnt Hazor with fire. [11:12]And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of them, did Joshua take, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and he utterly destroyed them, as Moses the servant of the LORD commanded. [11:13]But as for the cities that stood still in their strength, Israel burned none of them, save Hazor only; that did Joshua burn. [11:14]And all the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they any to breathe....

[11:16]So Joshua took all that land, the hills, and all the south country, and all the land of Goshen, and the valley, and the plain, and the mountain of Israel, and the valley of the same; [11:17]Even from the mount Halak, that goeth up to Seir, even unto Baalgad in the valley of Lebanon under mount Hermon: and all their kings he took, and smote them, and slew them. [11:18]Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. [11:19]There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon: all other they took in battle. [11:20]For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no favour, but that he might destroy them, as the LORD commanded Moses. [11:21]And at that time came Joshua, and cut off the Anakims from the mountains, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the mountains of Judah, and from all the mountains of Israel: Joshua destroyed them utterly with their cities. [11:22]There was none of the Anakims left in the land of the children of Israel: only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod, there remained. [11:23]So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the LORD said unto Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. And the land rested from war.

The land thus acquired was then divided among the tribes of Israel. In 24:13, Joshua reported to his assembled people that the Lord had said, in summarizing all the favors he had done for them, "And I have given you a land for which ye did not labour, and cities which ye built not, and ye dwell in them; of the vineyards and oliveyards which ye planted not do ye eat."

Postscript: Archeological and historical evidence -- or more precisely, the lack thereof -- tells us that these alleged events of 1400 BCE never happened. But that cannot be said of the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, of 1947-48 CE, when 750,000 Palestinians were dispossessed and hundreds of others killed and wounded in the formation of the state of Israel. That was all too real.

Kissinger, RIP?

I published my take on Henry Kissinger, who died this week at age 100, in 2014, when presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was courting his support. Read it here.

TGIF: Jewish Dissent on the Balfour Declaration

In the fateful year 1917 the British cabinet had one Jewish member: Edwin Montagu. He was also the only cabinet member to oppose the Balfour Declaration of that year, which paved the way for the self-declared creation of the state of Israel, the so-called Jewish State, 31 tumultuous years later. The declaration was a brief letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a leader in Britain of the Zionist project, launched in the late 19th century by Theodor Herzl, to establish a Jewish state in Palestine The letter stated,

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Montagu responded to the cabinet in a memorandum titled "The Anti-Semitism of the Present Government  Here's what he wrote:

* * *

I have chosen the above title for this memorandum, not in any hostile sense, not by any means as quarrelling with an anti-Semitic view which may be held by my colleagues, not with a desire to deny that anti-Semitism can be held by rational men, not even with a view to suggesting that the Government is deliberately anti-Semitic; but I wish to place on record my view that the policy of His Majesty’s Government is anti-Semitic and in result will prove a rallying ground for Anti-Semites in every country in the world.

This view is prompted by the receipt yesterday of a correspondence between Lord Rothschild and Mr. Balfour.

Lord Rothschild's letter is dated the 18th July and Mr. Balfour's answer is to be dated August 1917. I fear that my protest comes too late, and it may well be that the Government were practically committed when Lord Rothschild wrote and before I became a member of the Government, for there has obviously been some correspondence or conversation before this letter. But I do feel that as the one Jewish Minister in the Government I may be allowed by my colleagues an opportunity of expressing views which may be peculiar to myself, but which I hold very strongly and which I must ask permission to express when opportunity affords.

I believe most firmly that this war [WWI] has been a death-blow to Internationalism, and that it has proved an opportunity for a renewal of the slackening sense of Nationality, for it is has not only been tacitly agreed by most statesmen in most countries that the redistribution of territory resulting from the war should be more or less on national grounds, but we have learned to realise that our country stands for principles, for aims, for civilisation which no other country stands for in the same degree, and that in the future, whatever may have been the case in the past, we must live and fight in peace and in war for those aims and aspirations, and so equip and regulate our lives and industries as to be ready whenever and if ever we are challenged. To take one instance, the science of Political Economy, which in its purity knows no Nationalism, will hereafter be tempered and viewed in the light of this national need of defence and security. The war has indeed justified patriotism as the prime motive of political thought.

It is in this atmosphere that the Government proposes to endorse the formation of a new nation with a new home in Palestine. This nation will presumably be formed of Jewish Russians, Jewish Englishmen, Jewish Roumanians, Jewish Bulgarians, and Jewish citizens of all nations -- survivors or relations of those who have fought or laid down their lives for the different countries which I have mentioned, at a time when the three years that they have lived through have united their outlook and thought more closely than ever with the countries of which they are citizens.

Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom. If a Jewish Englishman sets his eyes on The Mount of Olives and longs for the day when he will shake British soil from his shoes and go back to agricultural pursuits in Palestine, he has always seemed to me to have acknowledged aims inconsistent with British citizenship and to have admitted that he is unfit for a share in public life in Great Britain, or to be treated as an Englishman. I have always understood that those who indulged in this creed were largely animated by the restrictions upon and refusal of liberty to Jews in Russia. But at the very time when these Jews have been acknowledged as Jewish Russians and given all liberties, it seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognised by the British Government, and that Mr. Balfour should be authorized to say that Palestine was to be reconstituted as the "national home of the Jewish people". I do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that Mahommedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test.

I lay down with emphasis four principles:

1. I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion. It is no more true to say that a Jewish Englishman and a Jewish Moor are of the same nation than it is to say that a Christian Englishman and a Christian Frenchman are of the same nation: of the same race, perhaps, traced back through the centuries -- through centuries of the history of a peculiarly adaptable race. The Prime Minister and M. Briand are, I suppose, related through the ages, one as a Welshman and the other as a Breton, but they certainly do not belong to the same nation.
   
   
2. When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country, drawn from all quarters of the globe, speaking every language on the face of the earth, and incapable of communicating with one another except by means of an interpreter. I have always understood that this was the consequence of the building of the Tower of Babel, if ever it was built, and I certainly do not dissent from the view, commonly held, as I have always understood, by the Jews before Zionism was invented, that to bring the Jews back to form a nation in the country from which they were dispersed would require Divine leadership. I have never heard it suggested, even by their most fervent admirers, that either Mr. Balfour or Lord Rothschild would prove to be the Messiah. I claim that the lives that British Jews have led, that the aims that they have had before them, that the part that they have played in our public life and our public institutions, have entitled them to be regarded, not as British Jews, but as Jewish Britons. I would willingly disfranchise every Zionist. I would be almost tempted to proscribe the Zionist organisation as illegal and against the national interest. But I would ask of a British Government sufficient tolerance to refuse a conclusion which makes aliens and foreigners by implication, if not at once by law, of all their Jewish fellow-citizens.
   
   
3. I deny that Palestine is to-day associated with the Jews or properly to be regarded as a fit place for them to live in. The Ten Commandments were delivered to the Jews on Sinai. It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mahommendan history, and, after the time of the Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in Christian history. The Temple may have been in Palestine, but so was the Sermon on the Mount and the Crucifixion. I would not deny to Jews in Palestine equal rights to colonisation with those who profess other religions, but a religious test of citizenship seems to me to be the only admitted by those who take a bigoted and narrow view of one particular epoch of the history of Palestine, and claim for the Jews a position to which they are not entitled. If my memory serves me right, there are three times as many Jews in the world as could possibly[y] get into Palestine if you drove out all the population that remains there now. So that only one-third will get back at the most, and what will happen to the remainder?
   
   
4. I can easily understand the editors of the Morning Post and of the New Witness being Zionists, and I am not in the least surprised that the non-Jews of England may welcome this policy. I have always recognised the unpopularity, much greater than some people think, of my community. We have obtained a far greater share of this country's goods and opportunities than we are numerically entitled to. We reach on the whole maturity earlier, and therefore with people of our own age we compete unfairly. Many of us have been exclusive in our friendships and intolerant in our attitude, and I can easily understand that many a non-Jew in England wants to get rid of us. But just as there is no community of thought and mode of life among Christian Englishmen, so there is not among Jewish Englishmen. More and more we are educated in public schools and at the Universities, and take our part in the politics, in the Army, in the Civil Service, of our country. And I am glad to think that the prejudices against inter-marriage are breaking down. But when the Jew has a national home, surely it follows that the impetus to deprive us of the rights of British citizenship must be enormously increased. Palestine will become the world's Ghetto. Why should the Russian give the Jew equal rights? His national home is Palestine. Why does Lord Rothschild attach so much importance to the difference between British and foreign Jews? All Jews will be foreign Jews, inhabitants of the great country of Palestine. 

I do not know how the fortunate third will be chosen, but the Jew will have the choice, whatever country he belongs to, whatever country he loves, whatever country he regards himself as an integral part of, between going to live with people who are foreigners to him, but to whom his Christian fellow-countrymen have told him he shall belong, and of remaining as an unwelcome guest in the country that he thought he belonged to.

I am not surprised that the Government should take this step after the formation of a Jewish Regiment, and I am waiting to learn that my brother, who has been wounded in the Naval Division, or my nephew, who is in the Grenadier Guards, will be forced by public opinion or by Army regulations to become an officer in a regiment which will mainly be composed of people who will not understand the only language which he speaks -- English. I can well understand that when it was decided, and quite rightly, to force foreign Jews in this country to serve in the Army, it was difficult to put them in British regiments because of the language difficulty, but that was because they were foreigners, and not because they were Jews, and a Foreign Legion would seem to me to have been the right thing to establish. A Jewish Legion makes the position of Jews in other regiments more difficult and forces a nationality upon people who have nothing in common.

I feel that the Government are asked to be the instrument for carrying out the wishes of a Zionist organisation largely run, as my information goes, at any rate in the past, by men of enemy descent or birth, and by this means have dealt a severe blow to the liberties, position and opportunities of service of their Jewish fellow-countrymen.

I would say to Lord Rothschild that the Government will be prepared to do everything in their power to obtain for Jews in Palestine complete liberty of settlement and life on an equality with the inhabitants of that country who profess other religious beliefs. I would ask that the Government should go no further.

E.S.M., 23 August 1917

TGIF: Arms Sales and Democracy

The U.S. government's role as the world's premier arms donor and dealer is now under renewed scrutiny. I can't imagine why.

But seriously...

We may legitimately ask if this role fulfills democracy's promise of, in Lincoln's words, "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Or are we justified in concluding that with the government's arms distribution, democracy falls short of its promise even more so than it does in its other functions?

This is something Chris Coyne of George Mason University and its Mercatus Center F. A. Hayek program spends a lot of time studying. In this video and published work, Coyne closely examines the international arms trade, which the U.S. government dominates. Things look bad both for the arms trade and for democracy.

David Friedman, the author of The Machinery of Freedom, has pointed out that Winston Churchill's observation about democracy -- "the worst form of Government except for all those other forms" -- is not praise democracy but actually a put-down of government per se: if democracy is the best we can do, then we've got problems. 

The intrinsic flaws of democracy have been much discussed. (Here's an unappreciated example.) The problems start with the impotence of a single vote. If by your own actions you can't affect the outcome of an election, what incentive do you, a busy person, have to invest time, money, and effort to become an educated voter? In selecting a candidate you'll use criteria other than the kind you use when buying a car, a carp, or a carpet because in contrast to the marketplace, in politics your choice is not decisive.

Most people don't like to hear that their one vote does not count. They evade the simple probability. I would ask the skeptic this: if it were legal to buy another person's vote, how much would you pay? 

Related to the problem of the impotent vote is the problem of costs and benefits. When you pick out a car, carp, or a carpet, you know you will pay the price and get (virtually all of) the benefit. So you choose accordingly. Contrast that with politics, where any one voter will pay only a tiny fraction of the full social cost and get only a tiny fraction of the total benefit, say, from a tax cut. Incentives matter. In politics, spill-over effects abound, and no one, unlike in the market, has a profit incentive to "internalize the externalities." Political operatives actually benefit from that problem because they can exploit it to justify wielding more power. That's a perverse incentive.

Democracy's other flaws relate to the politicians' and bureaucrats' limited knowledge and limited ability to create social order and to their desire to advance their own careers. These are the well-documented Austrian and Public Choice critiques of government. Some political operatives may be sincere, but if so, they are sincerely deluded in thinking their method -- coercion -- works for the rest of us.

Finally, we have the problems of asymmetrical information and lack of accountability. Voters will always be ignorant about much of the bureaucracy's operations and full consequences. Closely monitoring the state is impossible. Moreover, should voters learn about the harm the government does, the costs of really changing things are likely to be prohibitive. Forget about suing the state. All of this adds up to virtually zero accountability.

Coyne builds on this critique by taking a concept -- "noxious market" -- that is used against the free market and applying it to government arms sales. "Noxious market" is a term a philosopher coined to condemn certain alleged morally offensive private exchanges. The markets for kidneys, drugs, sexual services, and other things are said to involve sellers or buyers who are so vulnerable and ignorant that the government ought to step in to protect them and society at large.

Coyne thinks entrepreneurship can provide remedies in the private market, but then asks a good question in the interview: "What happens if we extend the logic of noxious markets to the government realm?"

So one area where we focus our research is on the international arms trade. Our conclusion is that it is a highly noxious market. It takes advantage of the vulnerable [such as the powerless taxpayers]. There are massive asymmetries [of knowledge], both domestically and internationally. And there's reason to believe it leads to really significant harms for societies where the arms go, but also the broader world as well.

In other words, he says, if the objection to noxious markets is "weak agency" in some of the participants, there is no realm in which agency is weaker than in government arms dealing and foreign policy in general. In that realm, the ruled populations on all sides can hardly know what is going really on, and catastrophic unintended consequences usually result. Where do those arms end up and who are they used against?

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people is a chimera. The only alternative is a framework based on individual rights, including property and contractual rights.

 

TGIF: Cooperation versus Bigotry

We who value individualism, freedom, and social cooperation as essential to flourishing should be distressed by the hostile bigotry that has lately reared its ugly head, to some uncertain extent, on the streets and campuses of America and abroad. This is not new. In America we've seen it intermittently in both directions on racial issues just in this century. It seems related to an intolerant, zero-nuance, take-no-prisoners, and glib attitude among many contenders over racial, religious, and ethnic controversies.

Now it is showing itself in ugly group chants and more personal communication calling for violence against Jews and Arabs, and perhaps even direct harassment and assault.  A couple of people have died. Anti-Semitism and anti-Arabism should be off-limits. Regardless of the target, the unrestrained hostility is frightening on many counts, not least of which is its ominous implications for spontaneous social /market cooperation..

I couldn't possibly know whether these clashes are common or just fringe opportunism -- let's hope the latter. In the heat of a controversy it is possible to misread innocent events and words. The principle of charitable interpretation ought to apply unless solid evidence to the contrary revokes it. We should also be aware that government officials and the news media, for obvious reasons, might be inclined to exaggerate. 

The point is that much could be at stake if impressions are not exaggerated -- including the trust and cooperation that characterize market-oriented societies. Social strife can have severe consequences. Even public demonstrations can create rippling animosity.

I am not suggesting, of course, that limits on free speech and the press would be in order in the name of social cooperation. That would make no sense. For one thing, hate-speech prohibitions and the like would bolster state power with vague statutes: governments have been major disrupters of cooperation, market and otherwise, throughout history. Contrary to what we teach our children, words can hurt, but it's not the kind of hurt that justifies retaliatory force. Threatened and initiated force, though, is another story.

Similarly, restrictions on immigration and the internet, along with enhanced government monitoring and data collection, would be ludicrously ironic since those are the means of interfering with cooperation.

The right and wrong of foreign conflicts, and U.S. government complicity in them, is separate from my point. Strong convictions and feelings are entirely understandable and proper. But when become collectivist bigotry, civil peace can be put at risk. That should worry anyone who grasps the relationship among social cooperation, markets, and general well-being.

Champions of individualism reject the divisive collectivism displayed in ethnic, racial, and religious hostility. Such feeling flows from the tribalism that is a vestige of a primitive, pre-individualist distant past. A person's natal or otherwise unchosen "membership" in a group says nothing about his or her character, moral principles, or position on controversies. The right to be free of coercion is an individual-based, not group-based principle. Persons can think for themselves. That's individualism, both ethical and methodological. We abandon it at great risk.

As the economist Ludwig von Mises explained in Human Action, which he considered calling "Social Cooperation," civilization began to dawn when the earliest perceptive people realized that strangers could represent not existential threats but potential gains from trade. There lay the road to mutual self-interest and prosperity. It was long ago, but some people haven't yet learned. Samuel Johnson was onto something when he said, "There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money."

I'll give Mises the final word on the link between free cooperation and prosperity, and by implication the danger from overwrought polarization (from Human Action, chapter 24, "Harmony and Conflicts of Interest", section 3, "The Harmony of the "Rightly Understood" Interests):

[N]ature does not generate peace and good will.... What makes friendly relations between human beings possible is the higher productivity of the division of labor. It removes the natural conflict of interests. For where there is division of labor, there is no longer question of the distribution of a supply not capable of enlargement. Thanks to the higher productivity of labor performed under the division of tasks, the supply of goods multiplies. A pre-eminent common interest, the preservation and further intensification of social cooperation, becomes paramount and obliterates all essential collisions. Catallactic competition is substituted for biological competition. It makes for harmony of the interests of all members of society. The very condition from which the irreconcilable conflicts of biological competition arise--viz., the fact that all people by and large strive after the same things--is transformed into a factor making for harmony of interests. Because many people or even all people want bread, clothes, shoes, and cars, large-scale production of these goods becomes feasible and reduces the costs of production to such an extent that they are accessible at low prices. The fact that my fellow man wants to acquire shoes as I do, does not make it harder for me to get shoes, but easier.

Let's not have our mutual interest get lost in the heat of controversy.

TGIF: When History Didn't Begin

I agree with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. I've never written those words before. But on Oct 24, Guterres said to the UN Security Council (emphasis added):

The situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour.

The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region.

Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over.

At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles -- starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.

I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel.

Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.

All hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions. I respectfully note the presence among us of members of their families.....

It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.

The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.

They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.

But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people....

What was the reaction? Israel's government demanded that Guterres resign for justifying (sic) Hamas's crimes. According to statements from Israeli UN ambassador Gilad Erdan and foreign minister Eli Cohen, Guterres therefore is unfit for his job.

According to the officials, Guterres's offending words were these: "the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum." Those words preceded Guterres's reference to what the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank endured under Israeli occupation since 1967.

Beyond doubt, Guterres condemned Hamas's mass atrocities of Oct. 7. He clearly said that killing civilians cannot be justified. And he unequivocally called for the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages. Look at his remarks. But he has been vilified by Israeli politicians for saying in effect that history did not begin on October 7, 2023. Of course, the statement is true, but some things just may not be said.

Strangely, the Israeli government says Guterres did not condemn the horrendous Hamas violence against Israeli civilians. Israel's position apparently is that even to remind people that history did not begin on October 7 is to justify murder, kidnapping, and mayhem. It's as if trying to comprehend is to justify. But those are two different mental operations. 

The Israeli officials also presumably objected to Guterres's condemnation of the collective punishment that Israel was inflicting, again, on the rightless Palestinians in the crowded Gaza Strip, most of whom are not members of Hamas and most of whom could not have voted for Hamas almost 20 years ago because they were too young or had not even been born yet. Almost half the 2.3 million Palestinians of tiny Gaza are under 18.

So Israel is gaslighting. If we can't believe the Israeli government on something we can so easily check, how can we believe it on anything else? Just the other day U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said something similar to what Guterres said, but so far without consequence: "Ultimately, the only way to ensure that this crisis never happens again is to begin setting the conditions for durable peace and security, and to frame our diplomatic efforts now with that in mind." In his requests is that Israel not reoccupy Gaza and that it end the 17-year blockade. That sounds like another way of acknowledging that the October 7 attacks "did not happen in a vacuum."

Why is Israel going after Guterres for his unexceptional statement? It wasn't just the timing. Yair Lapid, a former prime minister of Israel and a former journalist, gave the answer when he said, "If the international media is objective, it serves Hamas. If it just shows both sides, it serves Hamas... My argument is that the media cannot just claim to bring both sides of the story. If you do that, you are only bringing one – Hamas’s side...."

Really?

TGIF: The Glorious Bourgeois Peace Movement

Those of us whose pro-peace/antiwar principles are of the bourgeois classical-liberal variety need reminding now and again that we have a glorious tradition going back hundreds of years. We need not get lost in the dominant rhetoric that opposes war, empire, and its deadly accouterments from a flawed anti-individualist, anti-Western, and socialist position.

No, we can draw on a proud history of writers and activists who opposed war and intervention not just for the obvious reason --  harm to others -- but also because peace and nonintervention are required for reaping the full benefits of private property, specialization and the division of labor, free global trade, and the unobstructed movement of people in search of better lives. It would be mistaken to regard this as a union of humanitarian and so-called "economic" justifications for peace-mongering. For those classical liberals, freedom to produce, trade, and consume was simply another humanitarian reason to oppose the disruption of war.

Two of the best exemplars of bourgeois pro-market peace activism were the Englishmen Richard Cobden and John Bright, both members of Parliament, manufacturers, orators, and activists. In the mid-19th century, they built a movement that has been in the history books ever since. They are best known for opposing England's tariff on imported grain ("corn"), which raised the price of bread to enrich the land-owing aristocracy. Cobden and Bright successfully fought their battle through the Anti-Corn Law League.

Cobdden and Bright did not compartmentalize but rather explicitly linked free trade to peace and opposition to military spending and intervention. They had a friend and ally on the continent in the French laissez-faire liberal Frédéric Bastiat.

These classical liberals understood that if a social conflict is to be avoided and society is to develop for all, then the industrious members of the population -- entrepreneurs and employees, both of whom produce valuable goods through their labor -- must be free from those who use government-granted privileges to legally steal from the industrious. (Ironically, Marx credited the classical liberals with devising this class analysis, but then screwed it up by putting business creators in the exploiter class.)

Cobden and Bright were not only clear and analytical; they were also passionate. They were great orators inside of Parliament and outside. The liberals' association of peace and free trade can be seen in this example of Cobden's eloquence:

How shall a profession which withdraws from productive industry the ablest of the human race, and teaches them systematically the best modes of destroying mankind, which awards honours only in proportion to the number of victims offered at its sanguinary altar, which overturns cities, ravages farms and vineyards, uproots forests, burns the ripened harvest, which, in a word, exists but in the absence of law, order, and security — how can such a profession be favourable to commerce, which increases only with the increase of human life, whose parent is agriculture, and which perishes or flies at the approach of lawless rapine?

He finishes this passage with a rebuke to those who wanted the English government to compel foreign populations to do business with privileged government-granted monopoly interests:

They who propose to influence by force the traffic of the world, forget that affairs of trade, like matters of conscience, change their very nature if touched by the hand of violence; for as faith, if forced, would no longer be religion, but hypocrisy, so commerce becomes robbery if coerced by warlike armaments.

Cobden told his fellow members of the House of Commons:

It is only necessary that you should be agreed that war is a great calamity, which it is desirable we should avoid if possible.... My object is to see if we cannot devise some better method than war...; and my plan is, simply and solely, that we should resort to that mode of settling disputes in communities, which individuals resort to in private life. I only want you to go one step farther, to carry out in another instance the principle which you recognize in other cases -- that the intercourse between communities is nothing more than the intercourse of individuals in the aggregate. I want to know why there may not be an agreement between this country and France, or between this country and America, by which the nations should respectively bind themselves, in case of any misunderstanding arising which could not be settled by mutual decision of arbitrators.

He also warned about the government's unlimited spending on armaments: "I wish to know where this system is to end."

On another occasion, he advised, "I say, if you want to benefit nations who are struggling for their freedom, establish as one of the maxims of international law the principle of non-intervention."

These men were called "Little Englanders" for the obvious reason: they opposed the empire. Cobden also said, "I believe the progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labours of Cabinets or Foreign offices."

Bright was no less eloquent:

This is war -- every crime which human nature can commit or imagine, every horror it can perpetrate or suffer; and that this is our Christian Government recklessly plunges into, and which so many of our countrymen at this moment think it patriotic to applaud! You must excuse me if I cannot go with you. I will have no part in this terrible crime [the Crimean War against Russia]. My hands shall be unstained with the blood which is being shed.... [B]ut no respect for men who form a Government, no regard I have for "going with the stream," and no fear of being deemed wanting in patriotism, shall influence me in favor of a policy which, in my conscience, I believe to be as criminal before God as it is destructive of the true interest of my country." (83)

This could be said about the United States today: "What are we to say of a nation, which lives under a perpetual delusion that is about to be attacked...?"

As noted, these Manchester men of business (along with their predecessors such as Adam Smith, and successors such as Herbert Spencer) embraced Western classical-liberal values with gusto. They were ready to condemn institutions that did not live up to those values. But despite its flaws, they were not embarrassed to embrace Western modernity, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution, understanding that all civilizations had flaws, such as slavery and the glorification of war, which were to be eliminated. But they knew better than to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which many people today do not.

Let's not forget these great figures who were vital to the development of today's high living standards and of the universally applicable philosophy of individual liberty, private property, free markets, and peace. This proper foundation for domestic and foreign policy was and today remains explicitly pro-freedom in all spheres and anti-aggression. Thus in the spirit of Cobden and Bright, true liberals are entitled to oppose war and empire while identifying with neither the "left" nor the "right."

TGIF: Don't Police the World

"We" -- to be precise, U.S. policymakers and their quasi-private-sector, tax-nourished enablers-beneficiaries--  must not police the world, become directly involved in wars, covertly assist belligerents, or act as arms merchants and bankers.

The central government can't be a benign policeman, even if its intentions were as stated (which they may be): international rules-based order and economic stability. But it can wreak havoc by trying. We know this because it already has. Pick your start date, but the last 30 years present evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of what U.S.-sponsored "order" really looks like, thanks to an unbroken bipartisan chain of presidents and a bunch of presumptuous bumblers who wear weighty political titles from the executive and legislative branches. (The judiciary isn't off the hook either.)

The U.S. government's inherent ineptness speaks volumes. "Ought" implies "can," and the policy mavens cannot. Wishful thinking is no substitute for real thinking. Each new crisis is not so different from previous ones as to make it unique. We can and must learn from the past, even the past that is so recent it's still the present.

Government "crisis management" is a contradiction in terms. War typically has calamitous results, however optimistic the prognostications and later assessments. Helping a belligerent bloodies the hands of the helper, even if only metaphorically. Fighting proxy wars, which the policymakers might prefer to direct war these days, or engaging in covert operations is no moral shield. The horrendous consequences are foreseeable. Pleading that "We didn't intend the bad stuff" does not wash. Call it "collateral damage," whatever the policymakers call it, they enable the ruin of innocent lives and entire societies. We should have no part of it.

We know what war brings. It brings the death and dismemberment of innocents, always including children. It brings the utter destruction of the things that make life possible, such as food, water, homes, hospitals, and infrastructure. The chance of killing only bad guys is zero. I think the government's own war simulations would agree. Hypothetical rosy scenarios offered in somber tones from secure stateside arms chairs don't count. Even moves intended as defensive may understandably be perceived as aggressive, bringing snowballing countermoves that threaten more innocents and risk turning a local conflict into a big-power confrontation. The danger of nuclear war always looms.

Before considering joining in a war, assume the worst. Then don't join. It's the safe bet.

On top of that misery, intervening in wars sets the stage for terrible events to follow: revolution, dictatorship, government control of everyday life, atrocious recriminations, and plain chaos. That's the safe bet too.

Intervention also sets the stage for aggrieved foreigners who want revenge against the country that is seen to have enabled their adversaries. If that is not the lesson of at least the last 30 years, what is? Direct and indirect participation in wars can come home to roost traumatically. Policing the world or arming one part against another is no recipe for security. And let's not forget the excuse the U.S. government seizes to spy on and censor Americans in the name of national security.

The likely human cost of an interventionist foreign policy is prohibitive, but that's not the only cost. The money price tag is also gigantic, and the U.S. government doesn't have the money. It has to borrow it -- the debt is larger than the GDP and growing -- and that means Federal Reserve monetary creation and the theft of our purchasing power. It's a subtle form of taxation that politicians use when they believe that the taxpayers don't want a tax increase.

Finally, there is the lack of consent. It would be bad enough if the arrogant policymakers sowed their destruction on their own dime and in their own name. But they don't. They presume to speak for us and to make us pay for their adventures. I never signed that blank check, did you?

But they don't need our consent. The game was rigged long ago. Hypothetical consent is good enough, and most people go along because they're busy living and virtually powerless anyway. They also heard about it in the government's schools.

Helping other governments fight wars is crazy. That's not isolationism because the position embraces free trade with the world (unmanaged by governments) and the free movement of people. The word is nonintervention. When war breaks out, government personnel should be permitted to do only one thing: call for a cease-fire!