PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

TRADE =

PROSPERITY & PEACE. Quotable:

the pacifying effect of trade might be even stronger than the pacifying effect of democracy

(via the Mises Blog)

MAX BOOT --

"The facts are in: Freedom is better." Quotable:

Siegle, Weinstein and Halperin puncture the myth that democracy works only in rich nations. In fact, many poor countries have freely elected governments (think India, Poland and Brazil) while some rich ones (think Saudi Arabia and Singapore) do not. Far from economic development being necessary for democracy, they argue that democracy promotes economic development. Free countries grow faster than their more repressive neighbors. They also perform better on social measures such as life expectancy, literacy rates, clean drinking water and healthcare. And they are less prone to armed conflict.

Skeptics of democracy cite a few cases of impressive economic performance by authoritarian regimes such as South Korea and Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s. But more common are dysfunctional kleptocracies like Congo, Syria and North Korea. According to Siegle, Weinstein and Halperin, autocracies are prone to wild swings in economic and political performance. Democracies, with greater openness and accountability, generally produce more consistent results. They note that "the 87 largest refugee crises over the past 20 years originated in autocracies," and they cite Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's observation that "no democracy with a free press has ever experienced a major famine."

"THE NEXT REVOLUTION

in public policy is past due," so say Armey, Gray, and Kemp who have combine Citizens for a Sound Economy and Empower America to create "Freedom Works". NRO packages this press release under the header "THE NEXT CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION". Or maybe not. The also write this, "the most obvious candidate to lead the next conservative revolution is President George W. Bush." Well, GWB has expanded government in a fashion which rivals the efforts of FDR and LBJ. You can call a dog a rose, but that doesn't make it smell sweet.

CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVE

Doug Bandow throws down the gauntlet against the Bush Presidency. (reg. & 20 sec. ad) Quotable:

George W. Bush presents conservatives with a fundamental challenge: Do they believe in anything other than power? Are they serious about their rhetoric on limited, constitutionally restrained government? ..

Quite simply, the president, despite his well-choreographed posturing, does not represent traditional conservatism -- a commitment to individual liberty, limited government, constitutional restraint and fiscal responsibility. Rather, Bush routinely puts power before principle.

Andrew Sullivan writes: "One wonders why this kind of piece isn't published by the Weekly Standard or National Review."

LEFTISTS

of today -- who call themselves "liberals" -- are a far cry from the liberals of yesterday. So how did the left manage to steal the word "liberal" for themselves? Barry Loberfeld investigates.

RELOAD.

The Goldwater-Reagan counter attack against the Ted Kennedy Republicans and the Bush Presidency begins NOW.

Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day : The Real Deal on How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Other Washington Barbarians are Bankrupting America by Joe Scarborough

The Bush Betrayal by James Bovard

Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency by Patrick J. Buchanan

Call them the William Jennings Rockefeller Republicans, call them the Ted Kennedy Republicans, call them the LBJ Republicans, call them what you will. These are not Goldwater-Reagan Republicans and the war for the soul of the Republican Party IS ON.

UPDATE: What happened to the "Reagan Revolution"? Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan, Stephen Moore and Pete Peterson take a look at the Federal Government out of control -- TRANSCRIPT. Quotable:

Look at these numbers, Pat. I�ve got these in my book. Spending for the Department of Education since [1994] up 101 percent. Department of Justice, up 131 percent. Department of Health and Human Services, up 81 percent .. Justice, 131 percent. This is since Republicans took control. The Department of Education, 101 percent. Department of Commerce, 82 percent increase. Department of Health and Human Services, up 81 percent. You can keep going. The State Department, up 80 percent. The Department of Transportation, up 65 percent. Housing and Urban Development, up 59 percent ..

UPDATE: The folks at the CATO Institute have had it with Bush after early encouragement that Bush would do something about the ever deepening social security / entitlement crisis. Many of the CATO folks are disallusioned with Bush not only because of massive Federal spending increases, but across a whole spectrum of issues, including trade tarriffs, free speech, the Iraq war, Medicare entitlements, and domestic civil liberties, among other matters.

HERE'S AN IDEA --

"First Amendment Restoration Act."

JONAH GOLDBERG

explains the transition from the traditional conservatism of the Founding Fathers to the new, improved "compassionate" conservatism of George W. Bush: "We used to believe that since men are not angels, limited government is necessary. Now it seems to be that until men are made into angels � and by our own hand � unlimited government is required."

Read more here.

RANDY BARNETT

on "The Moral Foundations of Modern Libertarianism." From the abstract:

"Conservatives, neoconservatives, and those on the left who seek to impose by force their comprehensive conception of "the good" neglect the problem of power - an exacerbated instance of the twin fundamental social problems of knowledge and interest. For a comprehensive moralist of the right or left, using force to impose their morality on others might be their first choice among social arrangements. Having another's comprehensive morality imposed upon them by force is their last choice. The libertarian minimalist approach of enforcing only the natural rights that define justice should be everyone's second choice. A compromise, as it were, that makes civil society possible. And therein lies its imperative."

ECONOMIC FREEDOM ON THE RISE

around the globe. Robert Lawson and James Gwartney report on the progress of the global trend toward economic freedom since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution of 25 years ago. Quotable:

In 2002, only 15 of these 104 countries had double-digit inflation rates compared to 76 in 1980.

The use of extremely high marginal tax rates fell sharply. In 2002, not a single country imposed a 60 percent marginal tax rate on personal income; in 1980, 49 did.

In 2002, there were only four countries with a black-market exchange-rate premium of 25 percent or more compared to 36 countries with such a premium in 1980.

Tariff rates were reduced. In 2002, the average tariff rate was 10.4 percent compared to 26.1 percent in 1980.

The size of the trade sector expanded. Between 1980 and 2002, on average, exports plus imports as a share of GDP increased by 25.2 percent.

Many countries have also seen marked improvements in their economic-freedom ratings. Chile�s rating improved from 3.6 in 1975 to 5.8 in 1985 and 7.5 in 1995.

China�s rating rose from 3.8 in 1980 to 4.3 in 1990 and 5.8 in 2000.

India�s rating has improved substantially since 1990. After stagnating between 4.1 and 4.9 throughout the 1970-1990 period, India�s rating rose to 5.5 in 1995, 6.2 in 2000, and 6.3 in 2002.

Ireland�s rating jumped between 1985 and 1995. It rose from 6.2 in 1985 to 7.0 in 1990 and 8.2 in 1995. However, during the last few years, Ireland�s rating has receded slightly, hitting to 7.8 in 2002.

United Kingdom was a big gainer during the Thatcher years when its rating rose from 6.1 in 1980 to 7.0 in 1985, 7.7 in 1990, and 8.2 in 1995, where it has remained during the last several years.

Substantial increases in economic freedom have also been achieved by several other countries, including Botswana, 7.4 in 2002; Ghana, 6.4; Mauritius, 7.2; and New Zealand, 8.2.

"LORD ACTON WAS INDEED A LIBERAL

-- albeit an old-style one, a liberal in the classical sense of admiring nothing in politics so much as liberty .. And it was precisely as a liberal that Acton perceived, as few others in Europe did, the genius of the American system." MORE Paul Cella -- "f Success and Excess".

Should we hand over the word "liberal" to the leftists?

Not on your life. Not, certainly in Australia. Quotable:

"But above all, it is the unbreakable connection between liberalism and free trade in British liberal thought that is most compelling, and that should make us hesitate before conceding the term to the Left. Free trade is central to liberalism because it embodies two of liberalism�s central values. The first of these is the belief that individuals should stand on their own two feet without being propped up by the state. The second is the principle that it is not the job of the state to �pick winners� and to favour particular or vested interests."

Neal Boortz says "later" to the Libertarian Party.

"I�ve found that when I�m trying to sell someone on the libertarian philosophy I usually have around 10 seconds to make that first impression. If I say the wrong thing in those 10 seconds, I�ve lost them. If someone asks me �what do you people believe in?� and I respond, �Legalizing marijuana!� I�m written off as a kook. One convert lost.

But what if I respond to that initial query with something like; �Well, Libertarians believe that if you make $1000 a week your paycheck every other Friday should be for $2000.� OK � now you have their attention. That idea has universal appeal, and you have just been granted an extra few minutes to make the sale. Or you could respond; �Libertarians believe that the government shouldn�t be allowed to condemn your home, seize it, and turn it over to a developer for a fancy new condo project.� Once again, you have their attention ..

After the nominating speeches are concluded, and after the delegations present their votes in writing, there�s a lull in the action while votes are tabulated. This is a prime opportunity for the Libertarian Party to sell itself to the C-Span viewers. So, what do we get? .. Predictably, some rocket scientist at the Libertarian Party decides to fill this void with a feature on � what else! � medical marijuana! Here comes that �legalize drugs� thing again .. ". MORE Neal Boortz: "Blowin' smoke".

Reagan & "American Conservatism".

"When he went searching for radical ideas in the 1950s, he turned to European intellectuals such as Friedrich Hayek .. ". More "American Conservatism" in the WSJ.

Quotable Victor Hanson.

"As long ago as the fourth century B.C., Demosthenes warned how complacency and self-delusion among an affluent and free Athenian people allowed a Macedonian thug like Philip II to end some four centuries of Greek liberty -- and in a mere 20 years of creeping aggrandizement down the Greek peninsula. Thereafter, these historical lessons should have been clear to citizens of any liberal society: We must neither presume that comfort and security are our birthrights and are guaranteed without constant sacrifice and vigilance, nor expect that peoples outside the purview of bourgeois liberalism share our commitment to reason, tolerance and enlightened self-interest .. ". MORE Victor Davis Hanson

Steyn -- 25 years of Thatcherism.

Steyn puts out the call -- "Complete the Revolution".

Quotable: "On any honest account of 21st-century Britain, most of the problems derive from the unThatcherised sectors, in which the post-war, centralised, bureaucratic conventional wisdom still holds .. Forget all the strikes in that "winter of discontent", and try to remember how well Britain worked when things were going well. In a "globalised economy", would you still want to be trying to get an extra phone line from the old GPO? Would you want them regulating your access to the internet? The things that don't work in post-Thatcher Britain are not in those areas where she followed her market instincts, but in those where she didn't .. Mrs Thatcher privatised British Telecom, British Airways, British Leyland. But we still have a nationalised British political culture: the reflexive gripe that, if something's wrong with your local hospital or your local school, it ought to be fixed by some secretary of state in a Whitehall department. It never will be. But the way to get some dynamism and creativity into the system is to denationalise the problems, and make them local issues to be solved locally, in a thousand different ways. As Mrs Thatcher recognised, the British are an inventive people. Unfortunately, though she freed them to apply that inventiveness to their economic life, they're artificially prevented from applying it to everything else. It's time to complete the revolution."

Friedman Prize.

John Blundell on Friedman Prize winner Hernando de Soto.

Whose Liberalism?

"I continue to think that an argument for classical liberalism over modern liberalism cannot be premised on pragmatic/ utilitarian/ consequentialist terms alone. I think the question to pose to Brad is this: do you want a social environment based on the primacy of the individual and on negatively-defined rights?" More Lynne Kiesling.

National Movement to Shackle Tax & Spend Politicians.

Colorado's Taxpayers Bill of Rights is seen as a model for the nation by activists across the country. It also happens to be just the thing California will need if it is to survive as an economic power in the 21 century. (via Bill Hobbs).

VDH.

"To sustain both our military power and foreign largess, we also must look to ourselves inasmuch as we are running vast trade deficits, along with unsustainable budget shortfalls, and are stuck in an entitlement craze where government payouts bring not gratitude but shrill demands for even more subsidies. Our borders are porous and yet we are paralyzed and afraid to enforce our own laws � even as 12 million illegal aliens inside the United States cannot be identified or even be referred to as illegal. Our educational system is increasingly therapeutic and turning out too many poorly educated youth who have not inherited the tradition of American expertise and competence and cannot in the immediate future ensure our privileged position as the world's most affluent consumer society. The Chinese, Europeans, South Koreans, and Japanese are all lending us money for consumption. But they do so only in the trust that our legal system, stability, and competence will continue to justify such debts, which can only be paid back on the expectation that America can sustain its global civilizing role and lead the world in technological innovation and capital formation. So to press on, we must begin to look at the struggle across the spectrum in this new multifaceted war: bring consensual government to the Middle East; destroy the last al Qaeda holdouts; put Syria and Iran on notice to cease their support for terrorists; reexamine the location and purpose of all our bases; encourage candor and a new honesty with our allies; and seek to bring a new discipline to our own government and citizenry .. ". more VICTOR DAVIS HANSON.

Google Search.

Google search defining liberalism. Amazing how the internet has spred the power to play a role in the evolution of civilization -- even such a central part of civilization as the language.

Tony Blair.

What was "right" is now "left". These political labels can make you dizzy. It's truly remarkable to see British Labour move continually closer to the view of Hayek -- and ever farther away from those of Keynes.

FREEDOM INDEX.

How free is your state? The 2004 Fraser Institute Economic Freedom of North America Report.

Freedom of Religion. "The encroachment of antidiscrimination laws on civil liberties has become so commonplace that new examples of the phenomenon usually elicit yawns. But even the jaded may find their breath taken away by Monday's stunning decision of the California supreme court holding that Catholic Charities could be compelled to violate Catholic doctrine by offering its employees insurance coverage for contraceptive products .. The court relied on the U.S. Supreme Court's 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith for the proposition that sincerely held religious objections "do not excuse compliance with otherwise valid laws regulating matters the state is otherwise free to regulate."

Justice Janice Brown, nominated by President Bush to the federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote the masterful dissent. She noted that Smith applied directly only to individual religious claimants, not to the religious conduct of religious organizations. Religious organizations are clearly entitled to an exemption from government regulation when they are engaged in "ministerial" activities central to their religious mission. One could hardly imagine, for example, that the government could force the Catholic Church to hire female priests without violating the Church's free-exercise rights .. ". more DAVID BERNSTEIN.

Liberalism. A don't miss posting by Randy Barnett on the 9th Amendment with lots of links to the ongoing blogosphere debate. Barnett provides this wonderful quote from founding father Roger Sherman:

"The people have certain natural rights which are retained by them when they enter into Society, Such are the rights of Conscience in matters of religion; of acquiring property, and of pursuing happiness & Safety; of Speaking, writing and publishing their Sentiments with decency and freedom; of peaceably assembling to consult their common good, and of applying to Government by petition or remonstrance for redress of grievances. Of these rights therefore they Shall not be deprived by the Government of the united States."

Liberalism. Michael Novak on The Moral Case for Capitalism -- a speech delivered before the Mont Pelerin Society in Sri Lanka on January 11, 2004.

Economist Steven Horwitz turn 40 and takes a look back. Quotable:

But here I am at age 40, and almost everything we worried about has not come to pass .. Libertarian and related ideas have spread beyond their early narrow life in economics, political science, and philosophy to the other social sciences and humanities, as well as the arts and sciences. There is a virtual tidal wave of work on Hayek that's coming from all over the intellectual map. These are amazing developments that have exceeded what were my most optimistic expectations as an undergrad and grad student ..

When I look at my own career to this point, I actually have the same feeling of having exceeded my own expectations, but I think that success is at least as much about very good changes in the world that have made that success possible. I am by nature an unrelenting optimist, about both people and the future. I'm also convinced that we live in the best of times right now. We are, I would argue, freer, more prosperous, and more secure than any time in human history ..

Forty, shmorty. There's no time for moping when there's a world to enjoy and more progress to be made ..

More on gay marriage from Steven Horwitz.

A pleased alum notes that the U. of Washington gets a green light rating for allowing free speech on campus, a rating provided by SPEECHCODES.ORG. These ratings are a service of The Foundation of Individual Rights in Education. Board member Virginia Postrel explains.

An interview with liberal activist Sabine Herold, editor of Libert� j'�cris ton nom. Quotable:

when I was eighteen and still in high school, I was absolutely not interested in politics. Then I arrived at the Universit� Science-Po [Political Science University] in Paris � and when I got there I was still almost apolitical .. [however] I met many interesting people. Everyone there is very political. You have the left wing of course, but then I started talking with others and thinking, and I started reading some very interesting authors like Jean Francois Revel, Toqueville, and about six months later I discovered Hayek .. . Read the rest.

Andrew Sullivan on Bush II and human freedom at home:

There's barely a speech by President Bush that doesn't cite the glories of human freedom. It's God's gift to mankind, he believes. And in some ways this President has clearly expanded it: the people of Afghanistan and Iraq enjoy liberties unimaginable only a few years ago. But there's a strange exception to this Bush doctrine. It ends when you reach America's shores. Within the U.S., the Bush Administration has shown an unusually hostile attitude toward the exercise of personal freedom .. more.

Tyler Cowen takes a stab at making sense of the differences and commonalities between "conservatives" and "libertarians" over on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. But one of his central premises is false. Many libertarians do not "share the conservative emphasis on just deserts", take a look, for example at chapter 6 "Equality, Value and Merit" from Friedrich Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty. Classic liberals and "libertarians" see the world as a place where luck or happenstance plays a ineliminable role in life's circumstance, and hence where much of what life takes on for an individual will be "undeserved" or "unmerited". And I also should think that "conservatives" like Burke or Oakeshott have taught this insight as well as anyone. So the "emphasis on just desserts" does not by necessity apply to conservatives either, contra Cowen. Where does this leave us? Well, in need of an alternative theory, of course. Mine? Well, in America, it's a matter of historical record that in contemporary times the "Religious Right" was pushed out of the Democrat party and into the Republican party by the effort of the Carter administration to tax them -- this is the background history of the founding of the "Moral Majority". There is more to the story than that I'm well aware ...

Of course, the labels "conservative" and "libertarian" are problematic in there own right, and a better question to explore is the relationship between religion and classical liberalism -- especially the dynamic interaction between historical events and ideas.

Cowen was commenting on a conversation found here.

George Soros -- Enemy of the Open Society.

The CATO Institute is taking nominations for the $500,000 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. The nomination form can be found here. Why not give it to the U.S. GI who bagged Saddam Hussein in his rat hole?

Jean-Francois Revel:

The principal function of anti-Americanism has always been, and still is, to discredit liberalism [i.e., capitalism and free trade] by discrediting its supreme incarnation.

Read the review of his new book Anti-Americanism.

Shelby Steele identifies a problem with (classical) liberalism:

When Howard Dean brought Confederate-flag whites into identity politics, he implied one terrible thing: that whites, like other racial identity groups, have the right to pursue power in the name of their race. He inadvertently sanctioned one of history's most destructive formulas: race alone justifying power. And yet, had he reached out to angry black separatists, he would have been hailed as a racial healer. Why the difference? And how does it affect our politics?

The answer goes back to the fundamental conflict between democracy and atavisms--those tribal elements of ourselves that we inherit like a fate from our group and that we share with our grandfather's grandfather. I am a black American, I say, and thus announce my atavistic connection to all others who live as black Americans, to all who ever lived as black Americans. Religion, caste, class, gender and race can all be atavisms, and they are inherently anti-democratic because they exclude all outside the atavism.

Embracing atavistic identities too strongly leads to three great sins: asserting the inherent superiority of one's group over others, excluding others as inferiors, and invoking an enemy to fight in the name of one's superiority. White racism, black separatism, Islamic extremism and Nazism are all atavistic identities gone too far, gone to where one's When Howard Dean brought Confederate-flag whites into identity politics, he implied one terrible thing: that whites, like other racial identity groups, have the right to pursue power in the name of their race. He inadvertently sanctioned one of history's most destructive formulas: race alone justifying power. And yet, had he reached out to angry black separatists, he would have been hailed as a racial healer. Why the difference? And how does it affect our politics?

The answer goes back to the fundamental conflict between democracy and atavisms--those tribal elements of ourselves that we inherit like a fate from our group and that we share with our grandfather's grandfather. I am a black American, I say, and thus announce my atavistic connection to all others who live as black Americans, to all who ever lived as black Americans. Religion, caste, class, gender and race can all be atavisms, and they are inherently anti-democratic because they exclude all outside the atavism.

Embracing atavistic identities too strongly leads to three great sins: asserting the inherent superiority of one's group over others, excluding others as inferiors, and invoking an enemy to fight in the name of one's superiority. White racism, black separatism, Islamic extremism and Nazism are all atavistic identities gone too far, gone to where one's superiority is confirmed only by the denigration and even annihilation of an enemy. Whenever power is pursued in the name of an atavism--my blackness, your whiteness, his Catholicism, her gender--enemies arise and our democracy of individuals is injured. This is true even when oppressed minorities pursue power in the name of their atavism rather than in the name of freedom.

No group in recent history has more aggressively seized power in the name of its racial superiority than Western whites. This race illustrated for all time--through colonialism, slavery, white racism, Nazism--the extraordinary human evil that follows when great power is joined to an atavistic sense of superiority and destiny. This is why today's whites, the world over, cannot openly have a racial identity.

White guilt--the need to win enough moral authority around race to prove that one is not a racist--is the price whites today pay for this history. Political correctness is a language that enables whites to show by wildly exaggerated courtesy that they are not racist; diversity does this for institutions. But white guilt's greatest taboo is the one that Howard Dean violated--assigning whites a racial identity out of which they can pursue power as whites.

Yet Mr. Dean did not cross this taboo as a racist; he crossed it as a hard-core liberal, a supporter of race-based affirmative action, who in the name of racial progress has learned to mentally compartmentalize Americans by atavisms. So used was he to acknowledging the atavistic identity of every minority in the country, it was no doubt a small leap to "include" Confederate-flag whites.

The underlying irony here is that white guilt has given America a liberalism that revives as virtue the precise moral formula at the core of fascism: power justified by race alone. Today a wealthy black will be preferred over the son of a white mailman at all of America's best universities. This of course is illiberalism of the same sort that segregation was.

Classic liberalism (today's conservatism) sees atavistic power as illegitimate because it always steps on individual freedom. The mailman's son is not free if his race is held against him. But the problem with classic liberalism is that there is no room in it for white redemption. American institutions simply want easy ways to show that they are not racist. Their selfishness in this demands the glibness of visible atavisms--black and brown faces more empowered to be present in institutions than other colors. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor recently called this selfishness "a compelling state interest," which is a rather good characterization of white guilt ...

Read more here.

In light of the President's speech on the importance of democracy and freedom to world peace, it is worth red flagging Professor Rummel's web site dedicated to spreading word of the Big Truth that freedom saves lives. Quotable:

It is true that democratic freedom is an engine of national and individual wealth and prosperity. Hardly known, however, is that freedom also saves millions of lives from famine, disease, war, collective violence, and democide (genocide and mass murder). That is, the more freedom, the greater the human security and the less the violence. Conversely, the more power governments have, the more human insecurity and violence. In short: to our realization that power impoverishes we must also add that power kills.

Through theoretical analysis, historical case studies, empirical data, and quantitative analyses, this web site shows that:

Freedom is a basic human right recognized by the United Nations and international treaties, and is the heart of social justice.

Freedom is an engine of economic and human development, and scientific and technological advancement.

Freedom ameliorates the problem of mass poverty.

Free people do not suffer from and never have had famines, and by theory, should not. Freedom is therefore a solution to hunger and famine.

Free people have the least internal violence, turmoil, and political instability.

Free people have virtually no government genocide and mass murder, and for good theoretical reasons. Freedom is therefore a solution to genocide and mass murder; the only practical means of making sure that "Never again!"

Free people do not make war on each other, and the greater the freedom within two nations, the less violence between them.

Freedom is a method of nonviolence--the most peaceful nations are those whose people are free.
The purpose of this web site, then, is to make as widely available as possible the theories, work, results, and data that empirically and historically, quantitatively and qualitatively, support these conclusions about freedom. This is to invite their use, replication, and critical evaluation, and thereby to advance our knowledge of and confidence in freedom--in liberal democracy. It is to foster freedom.

Drop in and take a look around. Thought provoking stuff.

Bring down that wall -- the power of rock'n roll. Quotable:

When not practicing diplomacy, Andras Simonyi practices blues-rock on his guitar, just as he did as a teenager.

Hungary's ambassador to the United States is coming to the Rock and Roll of Fame to explain his belief that when rock 'n' roll found its way into his country, it helped spark a yearning for freedom and an eventual end to a communist government.

Simonyi contacted Rock Hall Chief Executive Officer Terry Stewart last May and asked whether there might be interest in what he had to say. Stewart was thrilled. He arranged Simonyi's appearance to an invitation-only audience of about 250, planned for Saturday night at the hall's main stage.

"I think it's a firsthand account from the point of view of someone whose life was changed by this art form," Stewart said. "It's quite exciting for us. It speaks to the influence of this art form called rock 'n' roll and what it has meant to the world since its inception. It's unusual to have someone of this high a rank to say what it has meant personally."

In 1989, the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party - the communist and Soviet-backed controller of Hungary since shortly after World War II - started abdicating power in a peaceful transition. Other Soviet bloc communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe similarly collapsed.

Simonyi, 51, an economist, is convinced rock music was as key as any political or economic factor involved in the Hungary's change.

Born in Hungary, Simonyi had lived with his family for a few years in Denmark, where he became acquainted with Western-style music. When the family returned to Hungary, he still wanted the music. He found out he was not alone.

"Not only for me but also for other Hungarians of my generation, this became the stuff that really linked us to the free world," he said. "As I listened to this kind of music, I felt I was part of the free world myself."

In a nation where the governing party frowned upon rock music, Simonyi said he and his friends always found a way to gather collections. They would trade or borrow tapes and records smuggled into the country. They also would try to listen to Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other foreign stations.

"I started out with the Beatles, but then I pretty much moved on," Simonyi said. "I embraced the really exciting and progressive part. I became a great Cream fan and Jimi Hendrix fan. There was one hero that I had, and this was Stevie Winwood, who established the group called Traffic."

In 1969, during a brief easing of government cultural control, Traffic performed in Hungary.

"They came to Hungary 35 years ago and I met Stevie. We had a little chat and I hung out with the rest of the band. Two weeks ago he was playing in Washington, and I met him again and we had a long talk," Simonyi said.

It wasn't the lyrics that were important, but the sound and feel of the music, Simonyi said.

"It was the power of music that was really exciting," Simonyi said. "It was the rock generation of the 1960s that said, 'Listen, we don't like to be separated from Europe, and we don't like this dictatorial system.' That is how I feel about it. Of course, that might not be true for everyone, but for a big part of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland, this is definitely the case."

[ex]Communists still control the economy of Romania, where markets struggles to survive the death grip of the state bureacracy. At what point does a bribe simply become part of the market, rather than an act of corruption? For Romanians, it's when your child is sick and your [state owned] health center needs a "contribution".

Chief Wiggles has a web site which will transform your donations into toys for Iraqi children. Please consider helping out with a few dollars -- or you can send in a toy directly for distribution in Iraq. See the site for details.

Chief Wiggles, American Hero. (via the blogfather)

"Live Free or Die" -- voting with their feet -- New Hampshire and the Free State Project.

An Interview With Milton Friedman -- by John Hawkins of RWN.

This is interesting:

As a teenager you are usually an ideological accident waiting to happen: You are either so eager to conform to your surroundings that you may end up supporting anything mainstream, or you are so rebellious that you are willing to advocate basically any odd-sounding idea as long as it will make your family and teachers go nuts. In my case, being a 14-year-old in the welfare state of Denmark A.D. 1981, I guess I was plenty of both.

Looking back, I probably had it coming somehow. In the big picture, Denmark in the early 1980s was � as was most of the western world � an odd mix between the remnants of ancient bourgeois values and the after-shocks of 1968. In the small picture, everyone in my family was (to cut a long story short) either extremely right wing or considerably to the left.

My father had always been a rugged individualist, who did not give a damn about what other people thought about him. If anything he seemed to almost enjoy the very outrage he could create in others. He was a fundamentally conservative, self-made industrialist, who in 1973 had been one of the early supporters of Danish tax-protester Mogens Glistrup�s populist and (then) quasi-libertarian Progress Party. My mother was largely apolitical, but liberal in a broad sense even if bourgeois in her manners. She had in the early 1970s, when she was in her mid-30s, had a late flirt with the radical chic, quit her day-job, gone back to school and experimented with her life.

Add to that that my parents were divorced and that I grew up without siblings, and then you may picture why I always had an ambivalent attitude toward authority. On the one hand, I always sought recognition from authority figures; on the other hand, there was no surer way to make me adamant than to tell me what I ought to do.

I still clearly remember a summer in the early 1970s, when my mother had moved the two of us to a hippie commune on a countryside farm. There we had to share bathrooms and kitchens and everything with everyone else, and the grown-ups applauded enthusiastically when we kids lined up and shouted "Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh!, Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh!" as we had been taught in the municipal kindergarten. I do not know how long we were there, but it seemed like years and I hated every moment of it. If there ever was a politically defining moment for me, it was when a longhaired, bearded guy scolded my mother for letting me play with a plastic toy gun. This was "aggressive, imperialistic toys, produced for profit" or something similar. We left soon after, and since then I have loved guns. Go ahead, make my day.

So in 1981, at age 14, I was a raging radical with reactionary leanings looking for a rebellious cause to join. What particular rebellion probably did not matter, as long as it was outrageous. I can still remember � to my own present embarrassment � that in the summer of 1981 I went to the offices of the youth organization of the Danish Socialist People�s Party (my mother�s favorite party that year), but the office was closed and I � fortunately � left, in search for another rebellion.

Well, not perhaps just any rebellion; I clearly had some leanings. First, many of my friends at that time belonged to the punk and mod crowds so characteristic of larger European cities in the early 1980s. With them I shared a certain disregard for "the establishment," hippies and the 1970s. Whereas the hippie types at school always were demanding more attention, more this, more that, we just wanted to be left alone. The pinkos wanted "participatory student democracy," we wanted freedom. For us, fashion wise and otherwise, the creed was "anything goes" � and so it did.

Second, in the early 1980s there was hardly anything more rebellious you could do than dress up in a blue blazer and a tie, praise Reagan and Thatcher, and attack the modern state. And so I joined the Danish Young Conservatives. This was in early December 1981, and before Christmas I was driving my 9th grade school teachers and family crazy. (Some of my mother�s leftist relatives even called a family meeting over the phone in order to discuss the matter. They finally accepted my mother�s judgment that it was not quite as bad as if I had been a juvenile delinquent.) However, in search for something truly outrageous, I initially became a rabid statist conservative of the Central-European Bismarckian persuasion. For me the ideal became something like the 1880s Europe: A strong Christian government to enforce traditional values, defend the nation, keep out the foreigners and smooth over social tensions.

So, I was, in other words, a teen, who was a punk by night, dressed in black, doing the pogo and screaming the lyrics of Sex Pistols� "Anarchy for the U.K." with my friends, while in daytime I was a conformist neo-conservative, dressed in blue, handing out leaflets for local conservative candidates and praising God, King and Country. As Dave Barry says: I am not making this up! It was a fascinating time, but clearly not a stable equilibrium ...

Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard's autobiographical essay from Walter Block's libertarian autobiography archive.

In the cradle of liberal freedom, British citizens are ready for less socialism and more freedom a new poll shows. Quotable:

Voters are prepared to pay for health insurance if it guarantees them better and faster care, according to a ground-breaking new poll that suggests the public is far more open to radical ideas than politicians realise. The survey finds strong support among taxpayers for a range of controversial policy alternatives, including giving parents the right to choose private schools for their children ..

America is #3. The Economic Freedom of the World: 2003 Annual Report is out today.

Meanwhile, here are some familiar laggards: Germany, 20; Japan, 26; Italy, 35; France, 44; Mexico, 69; India, 73; and Brazil, 82.

And the bottom five? Guinea-Bissau, Algeria, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Myanmar.

Do the math. Free economy = wealth and prosperity. Unfree economy = poverty and more poverty.

When will Democrats and Socialists -- and Republicans -- learn basic math?

Who says they don't like America? Stuff yourself with one of these 4th of July recipes from the BBC -- and celebrate America the way American's do! This seafood gumbo looks especially good. I'll be having lobster -- and a beer or two. Bet John Adams and Ben Franklin did something of the same.

More powerful than any law, executive order or court decision is the culture of equality fashioned by the words to be found in that Declaration. It is that culture of equality � a belief that all Americans are not only equal in the eyes of God but equal in the eyes of the government � that binds us and unites us as one people "indivisible." Should a significant segment of the people lose faith in the principles contained in the document that represents the social contract we have with each other, that culture of equality will erode and America will cease to be a nation that promises and delivers "liberty and justice for all." It is not the law that unites people; it is trust. Friendships are forged, marriages are sustained, currencies are valued, and governments survive on the basis of trust. The Court's UM decisions tear at our sense of trust in our government. The time for America to break free from its obsession with classifying and dividing her citizens by "race" has come. And the popular revolt will begin in the state of Michigan where a national effort must be mounted to prohibit the university and all other entities of government from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any American citizen because of "race," ethnic background, sex or national origin. It must begin in California where Americans are blending at an astounding rate and defy the rigid categories of "race" imposed by the government. And the battle must be waged in every other state where the people have the right to petition their government and to enact laws through such a process. We must strain every sinew and muster every ounce of courage to negate this unjust decision. Let us declare anew our devotion to equal treatment and defend that principle against those � even the Supreme Court of the United States � who would deprive us of it.

-- Ward Connerly

Connerly is the founder and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute and the author of the autobiography Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences.

The autonomy which gives Hong Kong its traditional freedoms is threatened by a new anti-subversion law which goes into effect the 9th of July. Protesters have taken to the streets and CNN reports in Hong Kong have been censored. A beacon of freedom in the world continues to be pulled into the system of the Communists in Beijing, despite the official "one country, two systems" rhetoric of the government. CNN's report on the situation is here, with backgrounders.

It's happy 160th birthday for The Economist. The magazine celebrates itself with a special section on the hope of Liberalism in the 21st century titled "Capitalism and Democracy". And the original Preliminary Number and Prospectus of The Economist, dated Aug. 5th 1843, has been made available. Stories in the special section include Liberty's great advance, Pro-market, not pro-business, and Give freedom a chance.

Jacob Levy reflects on the tension between Liberal reform and Conservative institutional reverence as the British Constitution undergoes a new round of revolutionary change concocted on the fly by Tony Blair:

In the past the system has tottered along largely on the strength of British institutional conservatism. The traditional constitutional order exercised a hold on the political imagination; upheavals were out of character. But New Labour's modernizing project shows that this Burkean conservatism has dwindled, and it's further contributing to its diminution. Whatever emotional attachment Britons might have had to the centuries-old Lord Chancellorship--with its pomp, circumstance, and Great Seal--they are unlikely to extend to the new Minister of Constitutional Affairs.

It's long been known that the British system allows for rapid and extreme swings in economic policy; the postwar move to socialism went further faster than the New Deal or Great Society, and the Thatcherite reforms went further faster in the opposite direction than did the Reagan so-called Revolution. With the old attachments falling away and no new restraints developing, constitutional policy now looks to be moving the same way. The most obvious red flag here is the absence of a bill of rights and a prime ministers' ability to curtail traditional criminal procedural protections (e.g. the right against self-incrimination) and freedom of speech in response to short-term concerns. And though at least some in Britain are mollified by the entrenchment of European human rights law as a constraint on Parliament, that may be small comfort in a country that has seen many civil liberties have been eroded in the past twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the possibility of wild gyrations in institutions and procedures--swinging from quasi-federalism back to centralization and back again, partisan back-and-forth over the rules governing the upper house, delegations of power to and reclamations of power from Europe, instability in electoral rules or the place of the monarchy or the Anglican Church--is even more worrying. Democratic politics depends on moderately stable background procedures, and Britain is losing its ability to treat those procedures as settled.

Keynes, the political insider, reassured Hayek, the foreign-born theorist, that "dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly." By contrast, Hayek was concerned with how institutions altered character, and how reliable action depended on a firm background of stable and well-adapted principles, institutions, and practices -- e.g. things like the system of the rule of law. He saw danger in a more "pragmatic" system which depended so much on the whim of particular men -- and which increasingly privileged ever changing particular purposes, undermining a system ordered largely according to long proven principles and institutions. It was no secondary accident, of course, that Hayek had witnessed what had happened on the Continent in the 1930's as the deeply stressed German Liberal system was progressivly betrayed -- and power came to be concentrated in the hands and at the whim of a single man.

Is Blair strengthening or weakening a system of checks and balances in Britian? Tradition and the institutions of the past have been themselves one of the strongest of various checks and balances in the British system. The paradox of Liberal constitutional reform is that you can always be charged with weakening this genuinely important check on arbitrary power -- when in other respects you you aiming to add weight and legitimacy to institutions which had steadily been losing their authority. My own sense is that Blair on many fronts has been going in the right direction, if not according to any well considered blueprint. For example, I give Blair very high marks for his move giving autonomy to the Bank of England. And in general I support his move toward a Federal system. How things work on the ground is a different issue -- all be it a very important one. I'd welcoming hearing from folks on the ground in Britain -- what's the feeling out there among "right thinking people"?

George Will on the Michigan cases. It's worth reading.

What does it mean? Ron Bailey and The Agitator join the ACLU.

Clint Bolick has an interesting piece defending freedom of asssociation as a cornerstone right. Worth quoting:

Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty, represented by my organization, the Institute for Justice, submitted a brief disdaining the Boy Scouts' discriminatory policies but defending their right to maintain them. The brief argued that "[w]hile a creeping infringement of [freedom of association] would harm all Americans, it would particularly threaten the welfare of gay and lesbian Americans, who have historically suffered when government has not respected citizens' right to gather together free from government harassment."

Well, I blew up a long piece on Judge Richard Posner's new book LAW, PRAGMATISM, AND DEMOCRACY. There is a review of the book here. Quotable:

Posner�s legal pragmatism recognizes fewer theoretical constraints on judicial power than does conventional constitutional theory. He admits that �ideology, in the sense of moral and political values that transcend the merely personal or partisan, is not an illegitimate, but an inescapable, feature of legal judgment� (p. 353), and he concedes pragmatic adjudication �will inevitably be based to a disquieting extent on hunches and subjective preferences rather than on hard evidence� (p. 126). The discretion of pragmatist judges is limited not by fidelity to interpretive theory or traditional legal constraints, but by �psychological, career and institutional factors.� Pragmatists accord �due respect for rule of law virtues;� however, this respect is practical, not principled, and sometimes outweighed when social change is necessary (p. 61). Posner acknowledges the practical necessity �for deference to democratic preferences and modesty about the power of legal reasoning to put judges in touch with the truth.� Such constraints �limit the discretion even of the perfectly self-aware judge.� But these constraints are practical and political, not theoretical.

And this:

Posner�s applications of legal pragmatism are equally provocative. He considers the Supreme Court�s opinion in CLINTON v. JONES �notably unpragmatic.� Clinton should have been granted official immunity from the civil suit because �a president�s extramarital sex life is a politically explosive subject.� To Posner, �recognition of this fact should have been at the center of the Court�s consideration, even though it was a fact without conventional legal significance� (pp. 318-319).

I find Posner's illiberalism and his disrespect for the rule of law nothing less than shocking. But this sort of shock is by now actually boring. It's been over a hundred years since the illiberal historicism of Holmes and more than 50 years since the illiberalism "legal realism" of Douglas. The wonder is why we allow these unelected rulers their power -- when they so disrespect the limitations on arbitary whim presupposed by the liberal principles of our legal and political system. I see no problem with the impeachment of such folks on the ground that they have knowingly violated their constitutional oath of office.

Here is the official description of Posner's book:

A liberal state is a representative democracy constrained by the rule of law. Richard Posner argues for a conception of the liberal state based on pragmatic theories of government. He views the actions of elected officials as guided by interests rather than by reason and the decisions of judges by discretion rather than by rules. He emphasizes the institutional and material, rather than moral and deliberative, factors in democratic decision making.

Posner argues that democracy is best viewed as a competition for power by means of regular elections. Citizens should not be expected to play a significant role in making complex public policy regarding, say, taxes or missile defense. The great advantage of democracy is not that it is the rule of the wise or the good but that it enables stability and orderly succession in government and limits the tendency of rulers to enrich or empower themselves to the disadvantage of the public. Posner's theory steers between political theorists' concept of deliberative democracy on the left and economists' public-choice theory on the right. It makes a significant contribution to the theory of democracy--and to the theory of law as well, by showing that the principles that inform Schumpeterian democratic theory also inform the theory and practice of adjudication. The book argues for law and democracy as twin halves of a pragmatic theory of American government.

UPDATE: There's also a new review of WILD BILL: THE LEGEND AND LIFE OF WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS by Bruce Allen Murphy. I'm not very proud of the fact that this man is from Eastern Washington.

An interview with Niall Ferguson, author of Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and Its Lessons for Global Power. Quotable:

by the time you get into the 19th and early 20th centuries, the British Empire was something unique. It was the world's first liberal empire, trying to export not only free trade and free markets, but also with institutions that many Americans today would regard as very good things, the rule of law being one and non-corrupt administration being another. And that's, of course, what many economists would say the poorer countries of the world most badly need.

So when the United States intervened in a country like Afghanistan, or, most recently Iraq, and talks in terms of creating a market economy and above all democracy there, in many ways it's acting quite like the Victorian British empire did without, I think, admitting it to itself. I know Americans have a kind of allergy to the word "empire." I'm constantly amazed at the legacy of the War of Independence even today.

TCS: As a former colony, I guess it's to be expected to some degree.

FERGUSON: Absolutely, and I think it's understandable, but, you know, in a way, it's time to realize that you're no longer the former rebel colony, you are now the world empire and this brings with it responsibilities and I think admitting the extent of America's imperial power might go a long way to making it more of a force for good than it perhaps has been in the past.

TCS: Are we talking about whether an empire is a good thing or are we talking about whether the English speaking empire was, on balance, a good thing?

FERGUSON: I think the latter. One of the key points I try to make in the book is that compared with the available alternatives in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the British empire was really clearly preferable. Whether you think in terms of the other 19th century empires from the Belgian empire to the Russian empire, or by the time you get to the 1930's to the kind of empires that Hitler and Hirohito wanted to create in the world. By comparison with those alternatives, people who were living under British rule in, say, India or in sub-Saharan Africa were pretty well off.

A supreme court and a new constitution for Britain. iain Murry at The Volokh Conspiracy has some thoughts. Money quote:

The British constitution survived unwritten for over 300 years because no-one, not even the socialist governments of the 40s, 50s and 60s, broke its conventions. Blair has seen fit to ride roughshod over those conventions. In the unwritten British sense, his actions are clearly unconstitutional.

Andrew Sullivan reflects on prior work and contemplates liberalism, Britian and the EU:

What I was trying to do .. was to distinguish between those aspects of the EU that truly do violate sovereignty in profound ways and those aspects that are, properly speaking, liberal and unobjectionable, like free trade or an independent European court. Here's the money graf:

Institutions which can directly regulate, legislate and tax citizens of member countries should be resisted. Powers to determine the ends of national policies should be blocked or opposed. There should be no strengthening of the European parliament, the European commission, or a weakening of any nation-state's veto power over communal decisions.

For those reasons, I still find the proposed U.S.E. Constitution abhorrent. But I tried to posit a way in which Britain could improve the structure of the EU, without withdrawing from it:

At the same time, however, those measures that merely determine the means by which Europeans interact--rules of trade, the rights of the citizen against the state or, indeed, the currency in which individuals trade- -are a different matter. They create an atmosphere of cooperation. They determine the rules of play, but they do not determine who wins the game. They are the mechanisms of procedure, not results.

I still believe Britain should stay in the EU as it is, help reform it in more classically liberal directions and refuse to be coopted into a more ambitious anti-American project.

Posted by Greg Ransom / Permalink | Comments (0)

Important stuff from Randy Barnett on the 9th amendment and judicial review. Worth quoting:

Where I most strongly disagree with judicial conservatives is over their stance on unenumerated rights. If it is improper �judicial activism� to ignore the text, structure, and original meaning of the Constitution, then when assessing the proper scope of federal power it is improper to ignore the Ninth Amendment ,which says "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." And when addressing the proper scope of state power, it is improper to ignore the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which reads: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. . . ."

Judicial conservative deny and disparage both clauses because, in their view, this language provides insufficient guidance to judges to count as "law." .. Unfortunately Justice Scalia has adopted this same skepticism towards unenumerated rights with a vengeance, a stance that skews his entire approach to the Constitution. In contrast, Justice Thomas supported, for example, the judicial protection of the unenumerated right of parents to raise their children, in his concurrence in Troxel v. Granville, while signaling that protection of fundamental rights from infringement by state governments should properly be grounded in the Privileges or Immunities Clause (rather than in the Due Process Clauses). Moreover, he contended that laws interfering with fundamental unenumerated rights should receive strict scrutiny. (Read it -- his concurrence is only 2 paragraphs plus a crucial footnote.) For this and many other reasons, Justice Thomas would have my enthusiastic support to succeed Chief Justice Rehnquist when he retires.

Now I am fully aware that judicial conservatives believe that, because unenumerated rights are supposedly so open-ended, allowing judges to protect them would lead to, in Raoul Berger�s famous phrase, "Government by Judiciary." I will respond to this criticism at length in my forthcoming book Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty ..

For now, suffice it to say that, unlike limiting Congress to its enumerated powers which drives Democrats and leftists into a tizzy, discarding portions of the text (and its original meaning) because these provisions fail to meet your vision of the "Rule of Law" -- as judicial conservatives do both on and off the bench -- is something that may accurately be called �conservative judicial activism.� And it's no different than those on the left discarding the text because it fails to meet their vision of "Justice."

It�s a shame that many conservative Republicans do not understand all this because, if the protection of unenumerated liberties was added to their sometime support for limiting federal powers and their better-than-the-left enthusiasm for free speech, their views would not only be correct, they would resonate with the vast majority of Americans -- resulting in more and better judicial appointments.

When I worked at CATO I did a very small bit of library research on the 9th amendment for Randy (who likely had no idea who was doing it). Even before doing this research I'd thought that this line of thinking was important (taking my own cue from Marbary vs. Madison and the "English Constitution" as much as from the 9th). Barnett continues to show just how deep and strong the idea of unenumerated rights is for our understanding liberal constitutionalism.

Truck and Barter takes up Calpundit's budget cut challenge -- and offers up his own head, er, job for the axe.

Historic churches deserve equal access -- to your tax dollars. So argues Mr. Volokh. He may be right. But we know that tax dollars are never distributed without a consideration of the political metric. Where are we then? Back to the distribution of other peoples money according to the metric of power, privilege and personal taste -- even with regard to faith affiliation.

Are liberal ideas transforming the welfare state in Australia?

A must read on the roots of terrorism from Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova. Snippet:

Countries with more freedom were less likely to be the birthplace of international terrorists. Poverty and literacy were unrelated to the number of terrorists from a country. Think of a country like Saudi Arabia: It is wealthy but has few political and civil freedoms. Perhaps it is no coincidence that so many of the September 11 terrorists -- and Osama bin Laden himself -- came from there.

(via Buzzmachine)

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Allow a man to take property rights in fish, and you won't have to teach him a thing. Soon enough, he'll be fishing better than you, and he'll be selling you fish for less than it costs you to provide them for yourself." -- Greg Ransom

Speaking of evil -- and not just for rhetorical effect -- Radley Balko has the goods on true evil:

Asking every American for 53 cents to help fight pictures of AIDS babies isn't bold. It's easy. Bold would be standing up to the politically savvy cotton industry, for example, and saying "no" to the $3.4 billion subsidy it got from the 2002 Farm Bill. The average cotton farmer in the United States is worth $800,000. He can get up to half of his annual income from government subsidies. And thanks to the 2002 Farm Bill, he can expect to earn about 16% more in the years ahead. Meanwhile, in impoverished Mali - where cotton is pretty much the only export - U.S. and European subsidies will drain an additional 10% from what little income Malian cotton farmers managed to bring in last year. Economists estimate that U.S. cotton subsidies take a quarter of a billion dollars from African farmers every year. And that's just cotton. Thanks to subsidies, American corn sells on the international market at just 80% of the cost of production. Wheat sells at just 54%. There's simply no way African farmers can compete with behemoth western corporate farms that, while feeding at the public trough, sell grain on the world market at a fraction of what it costs them to actually grow it. The United Nations estimates that American and European agricultural subsidies cost African farmers $50 billion annually.

If you think about the massive poverty and disease of Africa -- and the massive wealth of fat and happy American agribusiness and its kept politicians -- you can't help but see evil in this. For the language challenged academics out there, we'll call it "structural injustice". But I -- like the President -- like the plain old word evil.

UPDATE 1: From Bloomberg -- "The World Bank estimates that a WTO agreement, including cuts in industrial duties and greater access for banks, telecommunications and insurance companies in worldwide markets, would add $800 billion a year to the $31 trillion global economy. Still, in order to get that accord, the U.S. has said that the 15 members of the EU need to agree to cut their $40 billion a year in agricultural subsidies. The Geneva-based WTO missed a March deadline on how to open trade in farm products."

UPDATE 2: Peter Beinart -- "A year ago, Bush signed the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002. The law�crafted to help Democratic and Republican farm-state senators up for reelection �boosted agricultural subsidies by an astonishing 80 percent. And, because the president signed it, many Africans will die. To understand why, consider just one provision of the legislation: the subsidy on cotton, which the 2002 law more than doubled, from 35 to 72 cents per pound. The United States is a highly inefficient cotton producer; in fact, America's production costs are roughly three times those in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. Yet Burkina Faso is losing market share because the United States subsidizes its cotton industry by roughly $2 billion per year (three times as much as the U.S. Agency for International Development spends annually on Africa). According to Oxfam, the United States actually spends more subsidizing the production of cotton than it earns selling it�making the industry a net loss to the U.S. economy. Those subsidies go to America's 25,000 cotton farmers, who boast an average net worth of $800,000; by contrast, the average yearly wage in Burkina Faso is roughly $200. Burkina Faso relies on cotton for 60 percent of its exports. And Oxfam calculates that, as a result of U.S. subsidies, its export earnings have dropped 12 percent. (Neighboring Mali has seen a drop of 8 percent, which translates to more money than it receives annually in U.S. aid.) Before the 2002 farm bill, the cotton industry was bringing real benefits to Burkina Faso's people. Last summer, the Times of London noted that, in the village of Sobara, cotton exports had funded the construction of 21 new schools and a rudimentary health clinic that distributed anti-malaria pills and polio inoculations. Upon hearing of last year's legislation, the treasurer of the town's cottongrowing cooperative told the Times, "This means our schools and our health centres will close down." That means people in Sobara will die."

This article has a nice quote from Paul Berman (author of Terror and Liberalism),

Freedom for others means safety for ourselves. Let us be for the freedom of others.

Posted by Greg Ransom / Permalink | Comments (0)

Could it be that political labels are simply matching accessories for underlying subcultural identities, rather than markers for important theoretical differences? Brink Lindsey investigates in the world of young "conservatives" and "libertarians".

TheAgitator points to some truly radical proposals for Africa -- coming from none other than the usually hopeless Nicholas Kristof:

note Kristof's bullet points for putting Africa on the road to recovery: Trade, not aid. Phase out agricultural subsidies and tariffs in the U.S. and Europe (you might add textiles to that, too). And, most certainly, allow foreign investment to get in on the ground floor in the Eritreas, Ethiopias and Malawis.

Throw in a radical push for sound property rights and de-statization, and you've got a program which might hope to throw back 50 years of LSE socialism on the African continent. Compare this with the increase in money aid for Africa proposed by Bush -- which Andrew Sullivan and Bob Geldof appear to think is somehow "radical". The dollar amounts may be funnelled in new directions (maybe even a better direction), but the dumping of money on Africa is nothing new -- in fact it has a long and sad history. Read the depressing story of Zimbabwe if you'd like.

TheAgitator asks a good, loaded question:

Why was Senator Ashcroft so sympathetic to the "states' rights" cause when it came to issues like the Confederacy and segregation, but when it comes whether or not a terminal cancer patient ought to be able to ease his pain with a marijuana cigarette, Attorney General Ashcroft can't let the states govern themselves?

Read the article. There's a lot more than merely pot behind this question.

Radley Balko proudly wears the liberal label. I've been on board this wagon for some time now. Say it with me now .. "I'm a liberal". That didn't hurt, did it?

Hayek-Ler Richard Ebeling is named President of the Foundation for Economic Education.

It's always an eye-opener when an economist writes history (ever read Douglass North? You haven't? Well, why not?). Randy Holcombe has written a new history of America, From Liberty to Democracy: The Transformation of American Government. Holcombe is particularly interested in the period between 1890 and 1920, a period when America's traditional principles of liberal governance were replaced by new principles of democratic governance. Or, at least, that the case Holcombe is making. John Dinan has a review. Tidbit from Dinan:

Holcombe notes that a number of states have deviated at times from the normal practice of electing members of the House of representatives from single-member districts, and that general ticket representation and at-large representation were both used by several states as late as the 1960s.

Samizdata wants to know why true liberals have turned against intellectual property rights, and aims to get to the core of the matter. A taste from a long discussion:

Libertarians have an emotional commitment to property rights. They don't just believe in them as a reasoned, pragmatic response to certain identified problems, they - WE - feel in our gut that property is good. It is morally right that you should own stuff, and that when you own it you should be be able to do with it as you choose. If someone tries to interfere with your stuff or take it for themselves then it is not just morally justified for you to defend it, but we'll all have a sneaking admiration for you if you take the opportunity to convince the malefactor of the error of his ways while you're about it. All the rest - the empirical knowledge of the chaos of collectivism and the horrors of big-C Communism, the deep economic analysis of the price mechanism and the profit motive, the easily digestible stories of the "invisible hand" and the division of labour, and the highly indigestible praxeology of the Austrians and the intellectually respectable homegrown IEA -- all of that, it just goes to support and reinforce and justify an emotional commitment to the concept pf Property, which we know, in our gut, to be right anyway. Intellectual Property is qualitatively different to physical property (either land or chattels). If I take of your land or chattels then, to the extent that I have more, you have less. True property is a zero-sum game - not in value terms (when I have 2 cabbages, I have one more than I will eat before it goes mouldy, and exchanging my second cabbage for your second chicken probably creates new value), but certainly so in terms of my possessions: if you take my second cabbage, I cannot give it to my neighbour for his dinner. Free exchange adds to the sum of human happiness, but it doesn't break the Law of the Conservation of Energy. Misunderstanding what is and what is not a zero-sum gain when dealing in property (getting it precisely the wrong way around) is at the root of many failings of socialist economics. Intellectual Property works the other way around. If I upload my copy of The Matrix to you, it doesn't stop me then giving it to my neighbour, and his neighbour, and his neighbour, ad infinitum. Warner Bros doesn't lose anything it can sell, at least not in the same way that they do if I pinch the DVD from the counter at Woolworths.

And this wrap-up.

In conclusion, I believe that most people, and most libertarians, have decided in their hearts that they don't believe in Intellectual Property Rights. They are willing to accept them as a pragmatic implementation of an aspect of the moral position also protected by the law of contract (confidence), of fraudulent passing off (trademarks and design rights), and of libel (moral rights). They like the idea of the madcap inventor having some protection from Big Bad Manufacturer, and are scared that no patents equals no R&D; equally, people dislike corporate behemoth carving out large and incomprehensible monopolies, especially over things that sound like true necessities or simple facts of nature. But since patents really only feature in the world of business there is little that most individuals care or can do about them anyway. However copyright doesn't enjoy any of these defenses; there are no analogies with basic common law, and if ordinary citizens won't wear it then Copyright is doomed. To believe and choose to respect Copyright, personally, deeply, emotionally, you have to truly believe that an idea can indeed be Property. It is in the realm of Copyright where individuals, consumers, citizens are making their moral choice heard loud and clear. We can't even be bothered to be mad as hell; we're just not going to take it any more.

But the whole thing is worth reading.

Lawrence Lessig's call for competition, free stuff, and better stuff. Snippet:

One general kind of competition that this [internet] platform will enable is competition between commercial and noncommercial content and innovation. A richer public domain, and more in the creative commons will mean more to choose among when creating or sharing or criticizing culture. Competitors hate competition. They will always work to increase barriers to entry. And they will use a string of silly excuses to increase the barriers to the free. We should resist these excuses. We should be fighting to preserve this competition. �How can you compete with free?� Jack Valenti asks, again and again? By making stuff better, again and again."

A surprising bit of history I didn't know:

13 of the "Benevolent Empire" societies raised an estimated $2.8 million between 1816 and 1830, most of which went into financing internal improvements; this was two-thirds as much as the federal government spent on projects during the same period. And the Savings Bank of New York, created in 1819 by the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, was the single biggest investor of funds for the construction of the Erie Canal, holding $475,000 "in Erie Canal debt, as opposed to the $40,000" of the second largest investor.

And something which surprised historian Forest McDonald:

the role of free blacks in reform movements was considerably greater than I had imagined. They were quite active in the campaign to end slavery; when the first issue of William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator rolled off the press in 1831, "three-quarters of its charter subscribers were African-Americans." Moreover, in the mob efforts to prevent the enforcement of the fugitive slave laws during the 1830s, blacks formed most of the mobs, though that is rarely mentioned in conventional accounts.

From McDonald's review of Kathleen McCarthy's American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society

Lawrence Lessig would like you to "help right the wrong of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act". He actually makes it clear that this is important. I support freedom in markets and freedom in ideas. I don't support a corporate-politico kleptocracy. My own view is that the Bono act is plain-as-day unconstitutional. What little if any argument from economics there might be for this granting by the government of monopoly privilege is certainly outweighed by a host of other freedom interests and democratic governance issues.

The comments section is open. Weigh in if you'd like.

I wish someone had time to Fisk this piece of santimonious drivel from Martha Nussbaum on Grotius, Hobbes, Kant and international law. Didn't Benthem say something about "blather on stilts" -- well, maybe not, but he wasn't reading Nussbaum either. Can someone perhaps send a copy of this Nussbaum nonsense to Charles Krauthammer or Mona Charen?

The classic foreign policy debate in the later half of the 20th century was between cynically expedient "realpolitik" (think Kissinger) and hopelessly naive Wilsonian liberalism (think Carter). Narrow self-interested power seeking for its own sake vs. wishful thinking moral preening for its own sake. Of course, when America is its best self and most successful it unites its self interest with its best moral tradition -- that of liberty and the rule of law. And these things are a far cry from the phony U.N. "democracy" of "sovereign" tyrants and deeply corrupt elites. It was in America's self interest to bring true liberalism to Germany, Japan, France, Italy, etc. -- and we did this using both the force of arms and the force of ideas (Voice of America, etc.). Truman created peace in Europe -- Wilson did not.

Bush clearly understands that America's self-interest and her moral vision go hand-in-hand (and that these have nothing to do with European realpolitik or squishy leftist moral preening):

The advance of freedom is the surest strategy to undermine the appeal of terror in the world. Where freedom takes hold, hatred gives way to hope. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty.

Clearly this muscular liberalism is the true liberalism of Grotius and Kant, and not the false "liberalism" of Thomas Hobbes. But something has happened to those of a certain age -- as if some part of their brain has been removed which makes it impossible for them to deal honestly with the deep insights of true liberalism. (And one more thing, Martha needs to read some Peter Bauer on the human disaster which is foreign aid -- even the IMF and the World Bank won't claim that their multi-billion dollar efforts have contributed any net good to humanity. And she also needs to look at the facts and results of private aid coming from private American citizens).

Property rights in fisheries -- it's solved the overfishing problem in Iceland, as Hannes Gissurarson describes. (Gissurarson is a leading Hayek scholar). The Volokh Conspiracy links to another paper on the topic. So why isn't Greenpeace behind it? (Rhetorical flourish, not a quiz).

Richard Posner gives a good Fisking to Michael Sandel on citizenship and America's proud and professional warriors. Posner's setup:

The most sweeping intellectual challenge to our reviving nineteenth-century liberalism comes not from the dwindling band of socialists, with their narrow focus on economic issues, or from the social or religious conservatives, with their narrow focus on abortion, homosexuality, religion, and a handful of other purely "social" issues, but from the communitarians.

File this under "problems of liberalism":

She [Chua] holds .. that when impoverished ethnic majorities are empowered by the sudden introduction of full-blown democracy, they fall prey with discouraging regularity to demagogues who incite them against the often-conspicuous disparity of welfare and privilege between them and the small, exclusive ethnic minorities that just as regularly seize power over huge proportions of the wealth generated by free markets.

The remark is from a review of Amy Chua's new book World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

UPDATE: Find more reviews of Chua's book here, here, here, and here. One more.

It seems that it's Cultural Imperialism from Canada which is degrading American culture:

More than 200 million Harlequin romance novels, a Canadian export, were sold in 1990; they account for two-fifths of mass-market paperback sales in the United States.

Who knew? A much needed debunking of dishonest propoganda equating globalization with "Americanization".

I like this detail:

It is a myth that globalization involves the imposition of Americanized uniformity, rather than an explosion of cultural exchange. For a start, many archetypal "American" products are not as all-American as they seem. Levi Strauss, a German immigrant, invented jeans by combining denim cloth (or "serge de N�mes," because it was traditionally woven in the French town) with Genes, a style of trousers worn by Genoese sailors. So Levi's jeans are in fact an American twist on a European hybrid.

Virgina Postrel, call your office. It looks like Eric Cohen -- editor of the brand spanking New Atlantis -- may be one of those who have seen the future and are ready to become its enemy. Capitalism not conservative? Who would have thunk? Here is Cohen giving us that old and hackneyed chestnut, the choice between "economic conservatism" and "social conservatism":

Clearly, conservatives have won an important economic battle - the victory of markets over central economic planning, of enterprising individuals over the ideology of the commune. But a series of moral questions remain that all conservatives - and all Americans - must soberly confront and that ultimately will shape American society in the decades ahead: Is the spirit of the new capitalism a conservative spirit? Have the highest ideals of postwar American conservatism triumphed or only the economic skeleton of those ideals? Is conservatism about virtue or personal freedom - and what happens when these two competing ideals come into conflict? Is conservatism about preserving institutions and traditions that have long shaped men's souls or about technological progress and creative destruction?

Great mother of the poverty of alternatives, please help us.

The often anti-science "right" has a new journal devoted to issues of science and technology. The journal is published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington based Christian think tank. There are a lot of important things to think about on these topics, and religous folks and conservatives are important voices to be heard on such matters. Let's only hope that closed-minded Ludditism doesn't come to rule the day at this new publication. A sneak peek at the contents of issue 1:

AGELESS BODIES, HAPPY SOULS
by Leon R. Kass
MILITARY TECHNOLOGY AND AMERICAN CULTURE
by Victor Davis Hanson
LIBERTY, PRIVACY, AND DNA DATABASES
by Christine Rosen
THE PARADOX OF CONSERVATIVE BIOETHICS
by Yuval Levin
BIOETHICS AND THE CHARACTER OF HUMAN LIFE
by Gilbert Meilaender
THE NEW POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY
by Eric Cohen
THE FUTURE OF MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY
by Scott Gottlieb
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND HUMAN LIFE
by Charles T. Rubin
THE RISE AND FALL OF SOCIOBIOLOGY
by Peter A. Lawler

Students are smashing at the barracades of the Leftist power stucture ruling our college campuses. The LA Times reports.

The Mencken Society has a great web site devoted to H. L. Mencken and his work. The website includes a link to Keith Edwards' debunking of the new Teachout Mencken biography.

You can get Teachout's Mencken biography for a buck when you join the History Book Club, as I did over the weekend.
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Court Upholds Fundamental Liberty Principles

The recent attempt by Congress to squelch free speech with McCain-Feingold "breaks faith with the fundamental principle - understood by our nation's Founding Generation, inscribed in the First Amendment and repeatedly reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court - that `debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open,'" so says the Federal Bench. The judges went on to say that the McCain-Feingold law was "unconstitutional in virtually all of its particulars." More here. So not only do these folks whore away other people's property, they're ready, willing and happy to betray the most fundamental principles of our Constitutional sytem. Bastards.