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Liberty and Power

  • Apr 2, 2007

    A Bitter Legacy

    by Liberty and Power

    Robert Tait explains why most Iranians see Britain as an old colonial power that's still meddling in their affairs.

    UPDATE: Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, explains here that: (1) the Iran/Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist; and (2) accepting the British coordinates for the p
  • Apr 2, 2007

    Obama's Opposition to the War is Just a Show

    by Liberty and Power

    Events in the last week have made it increasingly obvious that neither the Democrats in Congress nor in punditry have the stomach to do what it takes to end the war. The recent voter referendum on the war has proved meaningless. Even before Bush exercises his threatened veto, the allegedly antiwar Obama has thrown in the towel:

    If President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congr
  • Mar 31, 2007

    Jeffersonianism Interred

    by Liberty and Power

    For historian Arthur A. Ekirch Jr., the decline of American liberalism tracked the rise of nationalism and the corporate state, the intimate alliance between business and government. He equates liberalism -- libertarianism -- with economic freedom and property rights for the common citizen, not just for an aristocracy. From the relative, though imperfect, laissez-faire periods of the Jefferson and Jackson presidencies, the United States moved almost unswervingly to become what
  • Mar 31, 2007

    Sandra Day O’Connor’s Date Dies

    by Liberty and Power

    Or, as David Bernstein notes at Volokh.com, "William Rehnquist has passed away".

    I understand that O'Connor dated Rehnquist when they were students together at Stanford Law School. He graduated first in his class (ahead of O'Connor).
  • Mar 31, 2007

    Hey, it's not like anyone has to pay for it...

    by Liberty and Power

    Reader Dan Schmutter passes along the following item: Cindy Sheehan writing on the Huffington Post website railing against the President's handling of New Orleans. Among other things, she criticizes the treatment of looters as follows:

    "The vast majority of people who were looting in New Orleans were doing so to feed their families or to get resources to get their families out of there. If I had a

  • Mar 30, 2007

    The Death Toll in Iraq

    by Liberty and Power


    The BBC carries an interesting update about the Lancet peer-reviewed survey of the number of victims of violence in Iraq published last October. The report suggested that 655,000 Iraqis had died but was severely criticized by the Iraqi government and by Tony Blair and George Bush ("I don’t consider it a credible report"—but then who considers GWB a credible president?).

    The BBC World Service made a Freedo
  • Mar 30, 2007

    God

    by Liberty and Power

    I don't know whether Eric Clapton reads L&P, but if he does: Happy Birthday!
  • Mar 30, 2007

    Bob Barr: Drug Warrior No More

    by Liberty and Power

    Bob Barr had a pretty good civil liberties record (for a Republican) while he was in Congress but there was always one notable exception, his support for the drug war. Now, this former drug warrior is changing his tune.
  • Mar 30, 2007

    Byzantine Twilight

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    I’m currently in the middle of the third volume of John Julius Norwich’s Byzantine trilogy (a generally fascinating work, I should specify, since I’m about to be critical), wherein he naturally enough attempts to explain the Byzantine Empire’s gradual decline and eventual fall. His exp

  • Mar 28, 2007

    Politics and Banking

    by Liberty and Power

    I have only recently stumbled on an outstanding work of scholarship published in 2001 that commands the attention of all those interested in either American financial history or money and banking. Entitled POLITICS AND BANKING: IDEAS, PUBLIC POLICY, AND THE CREATION OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), the book is written by Susan Hoffmann, a former city planner who got a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and who is hostile
  • Mar 28, 2007

    Medical Marijuana: Katie Couric's Lost Opportunity

    by Liberty and Power

    On last Sunday’s 60 Minutes program Katie Couric interviewed Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth who has been diagnosed with life threatening bone cancer. Couric, whose own husband died of cancer, has been criticized by some for treating the candidate and his spouse in an overly harsh and aggressive manner. (See
  • Mar 27, 2007

    Gender Gap Favors Ron Paul in Zogby Poll

    by Liberty and Power

    Although libertarianism is overwhelmingly a male enterprise, Ron Paul is a hit (relatively speaking) among women. Despite the near complete black-out of his campaign by the MSM, he is up to 3 percent nationally and has 6 percent among women (tied with Fred Thompson):
    In the Republican race, Giuliani holds big leads among both men and women, but women are much more on the fence. Among men, he leads with 33%, f
  • Mar 24, 2007

    The Virtues of Capitalism

    by Liberty and Power

    If you’re interested in exploring the moral foundations of market institutions, I recommend The Bourgeois Virtues by Deirdre McCloskey (University of Chicago Press, 2006). One thing that makes the book unique is that it’s a defense of markets based on the virtue-ethical tradition (the author calls herself "an Aristotelian libertarian"). She discusses the influence of institutions on moral character, and vice versa. The book is full of little-known (at least to me) historical