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Liberty and Power

  • Mar 23, 2004

    Painting with a Thin, Precise Brush

    by Liberty and Power

    Pick up any newspaper today and you get a sweeping characterization of ALL Muslims as angry extremists waiting to strap on explosives and exterminate Westerns for the Jihad - whatever that means. However I have long suspected, and continue to believe, that most Muslims just want to be left alone and make a few bucks. Which makes this week's election results in Malay
  • Mar 23, 2004

    The Parade of Disgrunted Former Employees

    by Liberty and Power

    First, there was former CIA weapons inspector David Kay. He had the audacity to say"that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction before the war and that U.S. intelligence agencies missed the signs that would have told them as much."

    Then came Paul O'Neill, former Bush administration Treasury Secretary, who had the colossal gall to claim that the"administr

  • Mar 22, 2004

    Bias in the Classroom at SLU, Continued

    by Liberty and Power

    I just wanted to follow up on the whole bias in the classroom incident on my campus by noting that the academic dean and the president issued a campus-wide email today articulating their position on the whole affair. I quote below the relevant parts:

    This memorandum has two goals: to remind us of our shared commitments as a university to freedom of speech and to the maintenance of a climate of open inquiry; and to put recent campus events and discussions s

  • Mar 22, 2004

    Wolf II: Playing the Victim Role while Denying It

    by Liberty and Power

    (Continued from Part I)

    It’s time for an inventory of what happened, assuming that Naomi Wolf’s story is semi-accurate. A 19-year-old female student has deified a male professor. She has gone to great lengths to attract his attention. Despite her intelligence and her self-proclaimed expertise at handling men (an unwanted hand on the thigh is no big deal, she

  • Mar 22, 2004

    What in the World Is a War on Terror?

    by Liberty and Power

    Robert Higgs has written what I have been thinking for a while, namely:

    "The war on terror," he [President Bush] insists,"is not a figure of speech." Well, I beg your pardon, Mr. President, but that is precisely what it is. How can one go to war against"terror," which is a state of mind? Even if the president were to take more care with his language and to speak instead of a"war on terrorism," the phrase still could not
  • Mar 22, 2004

    Disunion Now

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    Now that Israel has blown to bits the leader of Hamas (and various people in his vicinity), Palestinian militants are vowing revenge -- against Israel's enabler, the United States.

    O fortunate Spain, which was in the enviable position of being able to sever its ties with the United States'"war on terror," and which has finally, sanely, done so. If only we could do likewis
  • Mar 22, 2004

    Is There No End to Demagogy?

    by Liberty and Power

    It’s almost funny how the war party and its cheerleaders will say whatever is convenient at the moment to justify their horrendous policies. Before and after 9/11, many of us pointed to the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia as a dangerous provocation. We were mocked by the La-Z-Boy warriors for “blaming the victim.” Now these same apologists for mass murder (when committed by the American military) credit President Bush’s war against Iraq with permitting the withdrawal of the troops
  • Mar 22, 2004

    Individualist feminism

    by Liberty and Power

    I am not familiar with the debate that previously occurred on Liberty and Power over Naomi Wolf's recent article on Harold Bloom nor do I have the time at the moment to acquaint myself with it. I apologize, therefore, if I cover ground already ploughed or misinterpret someone based on the most recent exchange alone. I have written a column on the savage response of virtually all feminists and most mainstream medi
  • Mar 22, 2004

    Dialectical Feminism: The Unknown Ideal

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

    Robert Campbell invites us to consider feminists as falling into two groups. (It's not clear whether the division is meant to be exhaustive.) One group, the"individualist feminists" or"libertarian feminists," hold that"equality of rights is getting close to being consistently recognized in countries like the United States," and that"furt
  • Mar 21, 2004

    Wolf I: Power Feminist or Victim Feminist?

    by Liberty and Power

    Some feminists, in today’s world, believe that women have the same rights as men; that this equality of rights is getting close to being consistently recognized in countries like the United States; and that further feminist efforts, in this part of the world, should be narrowly targeted at those remaining areas where the legal and political systems privilege men over women. They would also show concern about privileges granted to women over men, or cases in which the rights of both are vio

  • Mar 21, 2004

    Russia’s Models: Gens. Park & Pinochet

    by Liberty and Power

    Perhaps America’s Neocon policymakers will be happy to learn that their nation-building in Russia has born fruit since Putin’s models appear to be those heroic US-approved Generals, Park of So. Korea (I was there on a Fulbright when some of the protests against him erupted) and Pinochet of Chile. To read Eric Margolis’ column on this click here.

  • Mar 21, 2004

    Two Talks in Boston : Classical Liberalism/Civil Rights

    by Liberty and Power

    This will be busy week for me with two talks at Boston.

    On Saturday, March 27, I will speak on"The Collapse of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1912" for the 1st Annual Liberty Conference. It is sponsored by the Boston University Libertarian Society and many of the names will be familiar. Other speakers will be Randy Barnett (Boston University) Jeffery Miron (Boston University) and Stacy Taylor (Louisiana State University. For more information about the speakers and instructions on how to re

  • Mar 21, 2004

    Defining John Kerry

    by Liberty and Power

    It is tempting to view John Kerry as the"Anyone But Bush" or"Anyone But Cheney" candidate and, so, give his Presidential bid a lesser-of-two-evils endorsement...but I've been burned before and recently. I detested the political correctness and identity politics cultivated by Clinton's administration so deeply that, when the hanging-chad scandal arose last time, I hoped Bush would win."He couldn't be worse than Gore," I said -- infamous last words that rank right up there with Socrates'"I drank <
  • Mar 20, 2004

    Out of Control

    by Liberty and Power

    "The military said Friday night that it was dropping all charges, including one of mishandling classified information, against Capt. James J. Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba." —New York Times, Saturday

    Think about what they dragged this guy through, including adultery and pornography charges. No doubt about it: the government is out of control.

  • Mar 20, 2004

    Some Neocon

    by Liberty and Power

    From David Brooks's column in the New York Times today:

    "Correction: In Tuesday's column I quoted the European Commission's president, Romano Prodi, telling the Italian newspaper La Stampa that force was not the answer to terrorism. I was relying on an Agence France-Presse translation, which was incorrect. Prodi actually said force should not be the only answer to terrorism. He said terrorism would not abate until th

  • Mar 20, 2004

    The Martha Saga Recounted

    by Liberty and Power

    All of the Martha Stewart folks who have weighed in at this site, may want to go to Jeffrey Toobin's extensive piece in The New Yorker this week. While touching on some of the poor decision's by the defense lawyers, it notes again that Stewart's repeated rejections of a deal meant the prosecutors would have to go into court. They didn't make these entrapment laws, but do have to carry out the law. She ought to have taken into

  • Mar 20, 2004

    More on CNN and Reports of al-Qaida

    by Liberty and Power

    A headline in the Pakistan"Daily Times" reads "CNN ends up with `much egg on its face'." Yesterday, I mentioned that -- after providing blanket coverage of the imminent capture of al-Qaida's #2 man al-Zawahiri (which has not occurred and is unlikely to do so) -- CNN abruptly dropped the story and barely mentioned it for hours. The background on what happened is an instructive glimpse into the media's mindset and t