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Liberty and Power

  • Jan 11, 2007

    YouTube of the AHA Speech Code Debate

    by Liberty and Power

    Rick Shenkman has a story for HNN on the debate and kindly provided a link here to a video showing yours truly. The clip is brief but has added entertainment value because of the obvious squirming of some our pro-speech code opponents in the background.
  • Jan 11, 2007

    A new low in shameless self-promotion...

    by Liberty and Power

    ...because it's all about me. I was listening in the car to some NPR report about Katrina, and almost drove off the road when one of them asked one of the others how well the political leaders are"dealing with" the disaster. As if being a governor were somehow like being a superhero. I wrote something on this a couple years ago for a Hoover Institute volume called
  • Jan 10, 2007

    France's Shame?

    by Liberty and Power

    Rwanda's civil war saw 800,000 Tutsis slaughtered by the Hutus - armed and supported by France. Now, thirteen years later, is Paris once again meddling in the country's affairs? Read the story here.
  • Jan 10, 2007

    Questions on Mises XI: A Stumbling Block

    by Liberty and Power

    I've hit a serious snag in my understanding of Mises. I'm not just being Socratic.

    In chapter 15, Mises writes,


    Credit transactions fall into two groups, the separation of which must form the starting point for every theory of credit and especially for every investigation into the connection between money and credit and into the influence of credit on the money prices of goods. On the one hand are those credit transactions which are characterized by
  • Jan 8, 2007

    Antiwar Radio

    by Liberty and Power

    Announcing Antiwar Radio, the new show for KAOS Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas and Antiwar.com.

    I did a couple of interviews of Robert Dreyfuss and Ron Paul back in December but took the rest of the month to upgrade some equipment and celebrate the holidays. Today is, I hope, the real beginning of the ne
  • Jan 8, 2007

    The AHA Wimps Out on Speech Codes

    by Liberty and Power

    The business meeting of the American Historical Association easily voted down our proposed resolution opposing the use of speech codes to restrict academic freedom. Our critics from last year who earnestly volunteered that they would support a resolution on this issue if proposed separately remained silent and probably voted against us. The results of the meeting further illustrate that those who set the agenda for the AHA subscribe to the t
  • Jan 8, 2007

    So What Exactly Is Going On in China?

    by Liberty and Power

    Will Hutton takes a stab here in a fascinating extract from his new book, The Writing on the Wall.

    "The truth is that China is not the socialist market economy the party describes, nor moving towards capitalism as the western consensus believes. Rather it is frozen in a structure that I describe as Leninist corporatism - and which is unstable, monumentally inefficient, dependent upon the expropriation of peasant s
  • Jan 7, 2007

    A Question for Our Readers

    by Liberty and Power

    "One Last Push and That's You Finished in Iraq, Mr President." That's how Simon Jenkins begins his column in today's Sunday Times. Jenkins concludes,"The only good news is that it surely must be the beginning of the end." Amen.

    Read it and consider what I'm about to say. I invite our readers, and especially those who supported U.S. intervention in Iraq either in March 2003 or subsequently argued against wit
  • Jan 6, 2007

    Two New Articles

    by Liberty and Power

    The least appreciated form of tyranny in the United States goes by the names"redevelopment" and"government-business partnership." While everyone knows about the threat of development-oriented eminent domain, thanks to the 2005 Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London, local tyranny goes much deeper than the"mere" taking of property in order to give it to another private party. A case out of Port Chester, N.Y., illustrates the danger.
    The rest of this week's <
  • Jan 5, 2007

    Milton Friedman featured in new issue of Liberty

    by Liberty and Power

    The February issue of Liberty is now available. It includes personal histories of Milton Friedman by Mark Skousen and Tibor Machan, an assessment of his career by Bruce Ramsey, and a less significant entry by Stephen Cox.

    Bruce Ramsey also contributes an analysis of the Great Depression in a review of Robert Higgs' "Depression, War, and Cold War"; and Timothy Sandefur performs a thorough autopsy on the failure of eminent domain reform in California.

    Those are
  • Jan 4, 2007

    Count Down to Saturday's vote on AHA Speech Code Resolution

    by Liberty and Power

    I'm off to the American Historical Association conference to interview candidates and fight for a resolution at the business meeeting on Saturday at 4:45 p.m. The resolution condemns the use of speech codes to restrict academic freedom. Details here.

    If you are an AHA member and can attend, the sponsors of the resolution need your help. It will be an uphill battle to get this passed but the potential pay-off for academic freedom of

  • Jan 3, 2007

    Will Smith Gets Subversive

    by Liberty and Power

    I hereby give Pursuit of Happyness a glowing endorsement. It is a compelling, energetic, and unabashed celebration of free markets, individual responsibility, and old-fashioned pluck. Based on a true story, Will Smith plays Chris Gardner, a man who never lets up in his dream of becoming a stockbroker despite the responsibilities of a young son and the

  • Jan 3, 2007

    Scenes from a State Funeral

    by Liberty and Power

    There they were, watching as the casket bearing former President Gerald R. Ford was taken to Air Force One for the trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan: former congressmen, former House staffers, current congressmen, and other dignitaries.

    Intoned MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews:"They are the foothills of Mount Rushmore."

    Gag me with a spoon.

    Cross-posted at Free Association.
  • Dec 31, 2006

    Ethiopia's Other War: Gungrabbing and Genocide Against the Anuaks

    by Liberty and Power

    Even as the Ethiopian government celebrates its victory in Mogadishu, it is stepping up a war of genocide against its own Anuak minority. While the Bush administration has praised the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia, it has shown a blind eye to these atrocities. As Dave Kopel, et al. points out, the war against the Anuaks also shows the horrific consequences of the UN's campaign against civilian gun ownership: