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Liberty and Power

  • Mar 13, 2004

    Pi in the Sky

    by Liberty and Power

    [cross-posted at In a Blog's Stead]

    Three news items that caught my eye today:

  • Police recently found a house in Fresno with a pile of butchered corpses and, nearby, a pile of coffins. According to the AP report:"Authorities did not know why the coffins were there and said it might be a coincidence."

    A coinci
  • Mar 13, 2004

    House of Bush, House of Saud

    by Liberty and Power

    Excerpted at Salon.com today are two sections from Craig Unger’s forthcoming book, House of Bush, House of Saud.. Another follows there next week. Non-subscribers can sign in for a free day and read those selections.

    Some of you may also have read Walter Karp’s classic, Indispensable Enemies, The Politics of Misrule in America (1973), detailing the corruption of the American Party System over what was then more than a century and a half.

    Of course, the Parties are on

  • Mar 13, 2004

    Business as Usual

    by Liberty and Power

    From today's Washington Post:

    "The government's longtime chief analyst of Medicare costs said yesterday that Bush administration officials threatened to fire him last year if he disclosed to Congress that he believed the prescription drug legislation favored by the White House would prove far more expensive than lawmakers had been told."

    As we know now, the official cost estimate is a third higher

  • Mar 13, 2004

    "The Empire Backfires"

    by Liberty and Power

    A number of you have probably read many of Jonathan Schell's books, dating back to The Fate of the Earth, and most recently, The Unconquerable World.

    Schell has just published in The Nation, what I believe is a very important essay, “The Empire Backfires,” perhaps the best summary assessment of the reactionary nature of the Bush Administration’s overall policies, quite apart from the distortions

  • Mar 12, 2004

    Bush Ads using 9/11

    by Liberty and Power

    Time to change the subject.

    I've been following the controversy over Bush's use of 9/11 imagery in his campaign ads, and I really don't get the objections. Let me preface this by saying that I can imagine some uses of 9/11 that would cross the line, but talking about 9/11 and using short, non-graphic images as part of a re-election campaign is totally in-bounds. However much I might disagree with decisions he has made, Bush has the right to run on what he perce

  • Mar 12, 2004

    Why the Media Always Gives In

    by Liberty and Power

    Some readers may find this of interest:

    ON THE MEDIA

    Be Not Wicked

    By William Powers ,National Journal Friday, March 12, 2004

    If you want to know why American newspapers are dying a long, slow death -- sort of like the dinosaurs, but more pathetic -- look no further than a story that crossed the media's radar screen for about one second last week. It was a tiny flap, and it wasn't even about the news per se . It was about a cartoon. But it laid bare a mentality that's

  • Mar 12, 2004

    Are Conservatives All Socialists Now?

    by Liberty and Power

    Have you noticed when it comes to the airwaves, nearly everyone is a socialist? In the controversies surrounding Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Howard Stern, and Bubba the Love Sponge, the phrase"the public's airwaves" has been invoked multitudinously. In all the cable-TV debates over the coming crackdown on TV and radio indecency, I haven't heard one person question this collectivism. Conservatives are the worst offenders. Where are the individualists among
  • Mar 11, 2004

    Politics, Culture, and Fear

    by Liberty and Power

    I'd like to highlight another fine Chronicle of Higher Education article, which appears in this week's issue. Jonathan Brent's"Gucci Shoes and Khachapuri: Power and Belief in Russia Today" deals extensively with a topic that has preoccupied many of us: the relationship of politics and culture in the movement toward a free society. In an era when Wilsonian central planners are nation-building in Iraq, without a firm understa

  • Mar 11, 2004

    Wonderful Hayek Quote

    by Liberty and Power

    My March 2004 *Freeman* arrived today (and thanks to new FEE president Richard Ebeling for getting back the original name), complete with a short tribute to Leonard Read that Hayek wrote in 1968. The piece is called "The Defense of Our Civilization Against Intellectual Error." I am going to quote at length from the last two paragraphs because it is a call for civility and the assumption of good faith in political argument that is often absent the
  • Mar 11, 2004

    Looking at the Small Picture

    by Liberty and Power

    Trade deficits, Social Security's looming bankruptcy, federal budgets...it is natural for people to focus on the"big (federal) picture" and not on the multitudinous ways in which local, county, and state bureaucracies are going to nickel and dime you into destitution in the coming months. They have to. City Halls are facing the same sort of fiscal crunch as every other level of government and they have only you to fleece on a most personal level to make up any shortfall. And I'm not talki
  • Mar 10, 2004

    Jesus or Jihad? GWB in '04.

    by Liberty and Power

    William Marina might make good use of his post below on possible Bush/Cheney bumper stickerss to make actual Bush/Cheney posters.

    The Bush campaign's website offers users a handy function that allows you to make your own, quasi-official campaign sign. They've put in some filtering software to weed out troublemakers, but that just means you'll need to get creative in your tomfoolery.

  • Mar 10, 2004

    Why Haiti?

    by Liberty and Power

    My modest contribution to opposing the Haitian intervention ran in the Orange County Register today. Have a look. (Registration is free.)