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Liberty and Power

  • Apr 24, 2007

    A Distortion of “Stop Snitching’s” Meaning

    by Liberty and Power

    On Sunday the CBS program 60 Minutes presented yet another piece of shoddy superficial journalism. The report hosted by Anderson Cooper dealt with the “stop snitching” phenomenon found in the urban black community. This is a philosophy which asserts that it is unacceptable to cooperate with the police under any circumstances.

    Cooper's thrust clearly put the blame for this way of thinking squarely on the

  • Apr 24, 2007

    Libertarian Theory and Real World Politics

    by Liberty and Power

    I gave this talk at the LP of California Convention on Sunday. It is concerned largely with the role of liberal ideology in American history, and how everything from slavery and Lincolnianism to the New Deal and War on Drugs has largely been a result of not enough radical libertarians and too much compromise —- too much gradualism in theory.
  • Apr 24, 2007

    Higgs "Festschrift"

    by Liberty and Power

    The University of Chicago Press has just released a volume edited by Price Fishback and entitled GOVERNMENT AND THE AMERICAN ECONOMY: A NEW HISTORY. It is based on papers first presented at a conference honoring Robert Higgs held in early 2004. I did not attend but was later asked to provide a chapter on "The Civil War and Reconstruction." The resulting volume covers the government's role in the American economy from the colonial period through the present. Although not a typical fests
  • Apr 24, 2007

    Blue Angels Crash Saturday in South Carolina

    by Liberty and Power

    AN INSIGHTFUL COMMENT FROM MARC JOFFE:

    On Saturday, April 21st, a Navy Blue Angel F/A-18 Hornet jet crashed into a residential neighborhood during an air show near Beaufort, SC killing the pilot. The crash injured eight people and damaged eight structures on the ground. If a similiar incident were to occur when the Blue Angels next fly over downtown San Francisco this October, hundreds of spectators and bystanders could be hurt or killed.

    Including Saturday's crash, 2
  • Apr 24, 2007

    Change: The Only Constant

    by Liberty and Power

    The BBC report that Toyota are now the world’s largest carmaker. GM are in second place.

    This was only to be expected. Since the 16th century, Japanese firms have been steadily building up their capital, & Japanese labour has become evermore skilled. In the mid-1950s, Japanese shipyards overtook the British, who had built most of the world’s shipping in the late 19th century. (In 1999, the South Koreans pulled ahead of
  • Apr 23, 2007

    It Came From France

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    Forget those 700-page libertarian books; they’re for sissies. The libertarian book I just received in the mail is over 1400 pages long; plus it’s in French, and it has no frakkin’ index.

    The tome is

  • Apr 22, 2007

    Bring Back the Posse!

    by Liberty and Power

    Alexander Cockburn explains why we should"disband SWAT teams and kindred military units, and return to the idea of voluntary posses or militias: a speedy assembly of citizen volunteers with their own weapons. Such a body at Columbine or Virginia Tech might have saved many lifes. In other words: make the Second Amendment live up to its promise."
  • Apr 21, 2007

    Progressivism and the fate of Liberalism

    by Liberty and Power

    I have been fascinated and horrified by the total moral and political meltdown by most of the so-called classical liberal community over the past few years. And I have been trying to understand why.

    I think there are many strands to the problem, but one was a fateful simplifying of liberalism that arose in response to its fragmenting over the new developments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This simplification led to a dichotomizing of liberal perspectives into 'ours'
  • Apr 21, 2007

    What's to Lose?

    by Liberty and Power

    What would an American defeat in Iraq mean? Would evil Iraqis conquer the United States, force us all to speak Arabic, and convert us to Islam? Hardly. There is no threat whatsoever to the American people from the sectarian fighters in Baghdad or elsewhere in that country. Even the Iraqis who form the local al-Qaeda chapter have no designs on the United States. Indeed, they have their hands full in their own country. And their hands would be even fuller if the United States should wi
  • Apr 21, 2007

    So How Would a Libertarian Society Handle This?

    by Liberty and Power

    Saturday's Guardian carries a disturbing report about how a mother, her two sisters, and their mother shot a video and shouted abuse as they forced two toddlers to take part in a"dog fight." The" cruel and callous" quartet got suspended sentences and the mother's children had been taken out of her care and are now being looked after by her estranged husband’s family.
  • Apr 20, 2007

    I Should Copyright This

    by Liberty and Power

    In comments threads here at L&P, at Ralph Luker's blog, and at Volokh Conspiracy, I seem to have hit on a great new expression. Rather than passively accept the government euphemism "gun-free zones," I've started referring to "mandatory defenselessness zones." That's primarily for striking rhetorical effect, but it's basically truth: Calling something a "gun-free zone" doesn't mean that criminals and lunatics won't bring guns there- but it does mean that regu
  • Apr 20, 2007

    Shots Heard 'Round the World

    by Liberty and Power

    It's April 20th. D'OH!! That means for the second year in a row, I am late blogging about one of the most important days in American history, April 19th, the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. I meant to, but it's been crazy around here. Anyway, here's to the brave individuals who took up arms to protect their liberty.
  • Apr 20, 2007

    Mill and Metallica

    by Liberty and Power

    Hey, here's an essay on Mill's philosophy of individualism and the metal band Metallica. I frequently write on popular culture, but it didn't occur to me to write this! Interesting take, have a look. It's being hosted by Liberty magazine, and will appear in about 2 weeks in the book Metallica and Philosophy, e
  • Apr 20, 2007

    Progressive Illiberalism

    by Liberty and Power

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