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Liberty and Power

  • Jul 5, 2006

    "Wing" Nuts

    by Liberty and Power

    I've got a post over at Cato@Liberty explaining why I hated NBC's West Wing and I'm glad it's gone. It was prompted by an Ezra Klein piece in the American Prospect that celebrated WW's passing for slightly different reasons."Iron Lungfish," a commenter at Ezra's bl
  • Jul 5, 2006

    Mexican Voters in the U.S. Vote for More Free Market Candidate

    by Liberty and Power

    It is common on the right to portray illegal Mexican immigrants as budding clients of the welfare state who are fated to loyally line up behind big government candidates.

    The recent results of the Mexican presidential election show a more nuanced picture. In Mexico, voters were evenly split. By contrast, 57 percent of Mexican nationals in the U.S. voted for the more pro free-market candidate, Felipe Calderon and only 34 percent chos

  • Jul 5, 2006

    Midnight Soccer for Iraq

    by Liberty and Power

    During the Clinton administration, nearly all conservatives and libertarians belittled a federal scheme to fund midnight basketball as just another paternalistic boondogle and waste of taxpayers money.

    That was then. Over at the libertarian/conservative Volokh Conspiracy, a blog that generally skirts the Iraq issue, David Post puts forward a revised version of the same concept:

    A h
  • Jul 3, 2006

    Flawed Science

    by Liberty and Power

    Government science always gives the answer that government wants and there is no more clear cut example of that than the government’s inquiry into the effects of second hand tobacco smoke. In his excellent column for today’s Washington Times, Michael Fumento reminds us that the EPA was only able to declare passive smoke a health problem by violating their own rules, changing the confidence level of their 1993 meta-s
  • Jul 3, 2006

    A Thought for the Fourth

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    (I’m going to be away from my computer on the Fourth, so I’m posting my Independence Day observations a day early.)

    How should we think about the American Revolution? I suggest we should think of it as an uncompleted project. The Revolution, after all, wasn’t just about separation from Britain; it was about the right of the people to “alter
  • Jul 3, 2006

    Consequences of Hate

    by Liberty and Power

    In his post below David Beito quotes Franklin Roosevelt as saying "We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people not just the Nazis. We either have to castrate the German people or you have to treat them in such a manner so they can't go on reproducing." This quotation has elicited two comments of defense from Craig J. Bolton. In the first he recalls “only two recorded incidents of opposition by the German people”<
  • Jul 2, 2006

    Glenn Singleton on Mark Twain: "He's a Racist."

    by Liberty and Power

    Readers of Liberty and Power will recall the disturbing antics of Glenn Singleton, a self-described diversity expert. Singleton typically gets six figures for his services from school districts, such as Cherry Creek, Colorado and Chapel Hill, North Carolina and (courtesy of a blowback from a conservative campaign led by

  • Jul 1, 2006

    The Quotable FDR

    by Liberty and Power

    "We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people not just the Nazis. We either have to castrate the German people or you have to treat them in such a manner so they can't go on reproducing." Roosevelt to Henry Morganthau Jr., August 19, 1944. Henry Morganthau III, Mostly Morganthau - A Family History (New York: Ticknor and Fields,

  • Jun 30, 2006

    Kelo One Year Later

    by Liberty and Power

    Last Friday was the first anniversary of a sad occasion, the day the U.S. Supreme Court said the Constitution permits the politicians who run New London, Connecticut, to throw people out of their homes so the land can become part of a ritzy private waterfront development that is expected to produce more tax revenue than the residences that stand there now. In modern America workers are expropriated for the benefit of" capitalists."
    Read the rest of my
  • Jun 29, 2006

    My Time with the Rich and Famous

    by Liberty and Power

    Just had to brag. I just came from Mississippi after spending last night in Morgan Freeman's home and visiting a juke joint with Ruby Dee. No kidding. More later.
  • Jun 29, 2006

    Anarchism Anti-Defamation League Formed

    by Liberty and Power

    In light of the calumny against anarchism in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I announce the formation of the Anarchism Anti-Defamation League, AADL.
  • Jun 28, 2006

    Black, White, and _Brown_ II: "With No Deliberate Speed"

    by Liberty and Power

    I did some fact checking on Hunter College's graduation rates overall and by race and gender. The problem of low graduation rates is across the board at Hunter, at my institution (Southern Illinois) and nationwide. Women, who now make up a majority of college students, also have higher graduation rates. Hunter seems to be much more female-dominated than most schools, however, with 70 percent of students women.

    Here are the numbers for Hunter College (available from
  • Jun 28, 2006

    Black, White and _Brown_

    by Liberty and Power

    In a post below ("Hunter is Hunting Black Males"), Ralph Luker takes me to task for seeming to be indifferent to the plight of black males in higher education. My response below is to correct any misconception and raise the issue of "where do we go from here?" with the stunning educational gap between black males (in particular) and other groups? In my view, the constant obsession with "diversity" has blinded us to the problem of black male underachievement which Ra
  • Jun 28, 2006

    Mr. Key, please phone your office

    by Liberty and Power

    Perhaps I should be jaded enough not to be bothered by this anymore, but the perennial recurrence of the “debate” over a constitutional amendment prohibiting flag desecration drives me bonkers. 1, it’s so transparently more about partisan hackery than it is about any substantive issue (“my opponent even voted for flag-burning!”) 2, it suggests that there’s no such thing as private property. If it’s my flag, it
  • Jun 27, 2006

    Reason Papers volume 28

    by Liberty and Power

    Update on Reason Papers no. 28: The print shop is working on correcting the error I mentioned here, and I hope to be able to send out copies to the subscribers soon. Meanwhile, those of you who aren’t subscribers should feel free to start sending in your orders. Ordering info is here. Also meanwhile, with some timely tech assistance from Ste
  • Jun 26, 2006

    Consumers have choices in a market economy

    by Liberty and Power

    Which is why Reason Papers #28 will be delayed a few more days, and why #29 will be printed by a different printing company. I'd announce this at the RP website, too, if I could only get past security - for some reason it's not accepting uploads and I can't update the site. I'll let you know when I've resolved the problem.
  • Jun 25, 2006

    Hunter is Hunting Black Males

    by Liberty and Power

    From NY Amsterdam News (on declining graduation rate of black males, rising rate of black females).

    "One professor from CUNY’s Hunter College tells AmNews that he can attest to the diminishing Black male presence, specifically in his school, and begs to have at least one Black male in his classes each semester.

    “In my classes alone, if I have a Black male - one a whole year, I’m happy - I am serious,” declares Henry L. Evans, who teaches Diversity Theory and Philo
  • Jun 25, 2006

    Aristotle, Anarchy, Action!

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    I’m back from San Diego, but once again I’m too busy to blog about it. (My backlog of things I want to blog about – my b(ack!)log? – has grown to monstrous dimensions.) But I’m not too busy to engage in a bit of shameless self-promotion:

    Tomorrow I start my philosophy seminar on th