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Liberty and Power

  • Dec 29, 2006

    End Slavery Registration Now!

    by Liberty and Power

    Whenever U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat who will soon chair the House Ways and Means Committee, calls for resumption of military conscription, a host of powerful figures, Republican and Democrat, civilian and military, chime in at once to repudiate his proposal. They respond that the U.S. military doesn’t need or want a draft. It’s good to hear them say that, and let’s hope they mean it. The draft has no place in a free society because it is slavery, the kind that ca
  • Dec 29, 2006

    Vote on AHA Free Speech Resolution is Nine Days Away

    by Liberty and Power

    The members of the American Historical Association will soon have a chance to send a powerful message that they oppose the use of speech codes to restrict academic freedom.

    In an article for HNN, Ralph E. Luker, one of the sponsors, sends a reminder to those historians who opposed a previous resolution linking speech codes and the Academic Bill of Rights as twin threats to academic freedom but volunteered to support a targeted resolution on

  • Dec 28, 2006

    Praise the State

    by Liberty and Power

    I believe the government-media complex quite likes when an old ex-president dies of natural causes. Short of an attack on our soil, nothing gives the power-worshipers such an opportunity to feed the public big doses of the secular religion we call statism. No matter how big a mediocrity a man (and perhaps soon a woman) may have been, if he has occupied the office of President of the United States, even if only for 2 1/2 years as the result of appointment by cronies, he becomes bigger than life
  • Dec 27, 2006

    Gerald Ford: America's Greatest President?

    by Liberty and Power

    Alexander Cockburn makes his case here. Yes, in many ways he did a lot less harm than those who held office before and after him. Like Ayn Rand, I prefer the low-key Ford to Reagan and his explicit appeal to religious values. And neither should we forget Ford was a member of America First.

    However, for libertarians I think the choice has to be between Martin van Buren and Grover Cleveland, with Warren Harding as runner
  • Dec 25, 2006

    Give Me Tenure or Death

    by Liberty and Power

    Maybe if I had tried this trick about 13 years ago, I'd be a full professor by now:

    A black professor at MIT has threatened to go on a hunger strike and"die defiantly" outside the provost's office if the university does not grant him tenure, which he said was denied because of racism.

  • Dec 24, 2006

    End Draft Registration Now!

    by Liberty and Power

    When U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel calls for resumption of the draft, everyone else in power says it is unnecessary and would even be bad for the all-volunteer force. George II presumably agrees. (A president running an unpopular war with his approval ratings could hardly afford to support conscription.)

    Fine. If they all really mean it, let them end draft registration. Bush can do this by executive order. The incoming congressional leadership should call on him to do it. If there is no
  • Dec 24, 2006

    Get Out of Iraq Now! (Petition)

    by Liberty and Power

    Howard Zinn and other prominent leftists are circulating this petition calling for an immediate U.S. pull-out from Iraq. The wording is pretty straightforward and mercifully free of statist jargon.

    If you sign, make sure to say something about yourself in the blank on the right. Of course, feel free to use it to say that you are a Liberty and Power reader.

  • Dec 23, 2006

    Could Bush Start Another War?

    by Liberty and Power

    I was so excited that David Beito asked me to do a blog entry for Liberty and Power that I accidentally wrote a whole article.

    It's running this weekend at Antiwar.com

    Thanks again to David for the opportunity. I'll try to make better use of it...
  • Dec 22, 2006

    Seeing Calvin Coolidge as a Dream

    by Liberty and Power

    I recently had an op-ed in the Chicago Sun-Times on the virtues of presidential inaction--and how the presidential scholars who participate in presidential rankings surveys tend to greatly overvalue imperial presidents. Excerpt:

    Summing up the results of one of his surveys, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. -- who in 1948 introduced the practice of presidential rankings -- noted that"
  • Dec 22, 2006

    Our Victimised State

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    Two news items for today:

    • A recent study of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and its viewers reveals that “exposure to the show lowered trust in the media and the electoral process,” and thus had “detrimental effects, driving down support for political institutions and leade
  • Dec 22, 2006

    A Surprisingly Humorous Greetings Card

    by Liberty and Power

    Go here to view the card sent out by Britain's Commission for Racial Equality. I write"surprisingly" because the CRE has the reputation for taking itself very seriously and is not known for its satire.

    Hat tip to Frank Furedi, author of Do they know it's Christmas? on how Christmas has become a battleground in the culture war over the status of religio
  • Dec 21, 2006

    'Tis the Season for Anarchy in DC

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    To anyone planning to be at the APA in DC next week, don’t forget to check out the Molinari Society’s third annual Symposium:

    GVIII-4. Friday, 29 December 2006, 11:15 a.m.-1:15 p.m.
    Molinari Society symposium: “Anarchist Perspectives”
  • Dec 20, 2006

    A Climate Criminal Speaks

    by Liberty and Power

    To my mind, whenever one side in a debate starts to label its opponents as criminals that side’s arguments become suspect. At a 2005 climate conference in Montreal, Greenpeace named 16 “climate criminals” and Paul K. Driessen was among them. He is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow as well as the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power — Black Death. Driessen’s
  • Dec 20, 2006

    I'm Person of the Year!

    by Liberty and Power

    And so are you. Time magazine says we all are. Why? Because the World Wide Web let's us all determine the shape of the new media. Or something like that. I couldn't read the insipid thing. Anyway, if everyone is person of the year, then no one is. That's fine. It reminds me of W.S. Gilbert's lyric from The Gondoliers:
    When e
  • Dec 18, 2006

    Chris Hayward R.I.P.

    by Liberty and Power

    I had to say something about the passing of Chris Hayward, who was partly responsible for two of my childhood heroes, Rocky and Bullwinkle. I never missed a show and was proud that the main characters lived in my home state as residents of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota.

    As I grew older, my affection f