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Libertarianism, proprietarianism, feudalism

[ 0 ] April 15, 2010 | djw

I have a weird sort of idea that I should somehow avoid letting my snark:serious post ratio exceed 1:1, so I’ve been feeling mildly guilty about this little indulgence with nothing to balance it out. I’ve got a post about the whole ‘liberaltarian’ thing in the works, but until then, I recommend this post by John Holbo, who has a similar guilty conscience about snark, but with considerably more follow-through.

(I was looking forward to Jacob Levy’s response, but it appears we’re going to have to wait for the book)

Why I can’t take the construction “libertarian freedom” seriously, part 43,542

[ 51 ] April 13, 2010 | djw

David Boaz of the CATO institute published an article last week about the relationship of the libertarian vision of freedom with the (American) past. I presume he meant it to serve as a corrective to the good deal of libertarian-flavored rhetoric embracing the American jeremiad about the lost ‘golden age’ in our discourse at the moment. As far as it goes, and if suspend your skepticism about the value and coherence of the libertarian conception of freedom, it seems like a sensible and rather obviously correct piece.

While some libertarians (usual suspects: Levy, Wilkinson) have endorsed this position, it has inspired some bizarre and creative innovations in the field of being hopelessly wrong in others. Jacob Hornberger and his co-blogger Arnold Kling, for example, takes the point about slavery being not entirely consistent with libertarian freedom, and sets about constructing an argument in which the year 1880 serves as the pinnacle of freedom in America. When it is gently pointed out that such an argument could only possibly be made if we ignore the freedom of those other than propertied white males, Kling responds by freaking out and, for reasons that remain quite unclear, typing the words “Stop dehumanizing me!” into the comment box.

But Hornberger and Kling hardly prepare us for Bryan Caplan. The details are still sketchy, but as far as I can tell, the facts are as follows: On the morning of April 12th, 2010, Bryan Caplan, an Associate Professor of Economics and George Mason University and adjunct scholar at the Cato institute, got out of bed, ate breakfast, kissed his wife goodbye, drove to work, sat down at his computer, and wrote a blog post that purported to demonstrate that and I quote, “Women of the Gilded Age were very poor compared to women today. But from a libertarian standpoint, they were freer than they are on Sex and the City.” This post has required no less than four follow-up posts attempting to further demonstrate the obviously correct nature of this position and reply to various critics. Trying to excerpt a particular passage or point in pretty much pointless, as the whole thing simply has to be seen to be believed. (It’s just peppered with gems like “I’ll admit that coverture doesn’t sound like a very libertarian doctrine.”) That said, I was particularly struck by his response to a commenter who brought up the marital rape, which was oddly not mentioned in the original post. His reply:

To be blunt, this issue is almost entirely symbolic. While it’s a heinous crime, I seriously doubt that more than a small fraction American women in 1880 worried about being raped by their husbands.

If Caplan bases his ‘serious doubt’ on any actual factual knowledge about the social and gender history of the late 19^th century, he’s keeping very quiet about it. A main thread of his reasoning throughout is that a wife’s power within a marriage is pretty much unrelated to both the law and social norms, because…oh, hell I can’t paraphrase this

This is a good example of the difference between the law and social reality. [so far so good....] If a women in 1880 wanted to write a contract, I think she did the same thing a woman in 2010 would do – talk about it with her husband. If he refused, she did the same thing she’d do today: complain, argue, bargain, etc. A man in 1880 was legally allowed to make a contract without his wife’s approval, but in practical terms, his problem was the same as it is today: If your wife puts her foot down, it’s almost impossible to move forward.

It’s one thing to swallow whole the cultural stereotypes of the domineering wife and her henpecked husband, but it’s quite another to transport it back in time 130 years. I can’t help but be reminded of John Stuart Mill: for all the blindingly obvious reasons, but also for the following observation from On The Subjection of Women: “[O]ne can, to an almost laughable degree, infer what a man’s wife is like, from his opinions about women in general.” Apparently Bryan Caplan is applying the same technique (but across time) to understand the power dynamics of domestic life in 1880′s marriages. At least, I assume that’s what he’s doing, because I’m at a loss to see any other method at work here.

(For more commentary on this exciting new trend in libertarian historiography, take a look at a number of recent posts at Crooked Timber one two three four five)

UPDATE: I mistakenly referred to Kling as Hornberger’s co-blogger, he is in fact Caplan’s co-blogger. I apologize for the error. Kling also feels as though Will Wilkinson misrepresented and distorted his position. I’m not sure exactly how or where Wilkinson distorted his views, but in fairness to Kling, I’ll reproduce here his post on the issue without comment; whether he deserves to be lumped in with the weird wrongness of Hornberger and Caplan is an exercise I shall leave to the reader.

I would rather live with the group-status configurations that we have today than with those that prevailed in 1880. For that matter, I would rather live with the plumbing and dentistry that we have today than that which prevailed in 1880. But it’s a swindle to suggest that if we had a libertarian polity we would be back in the days of Jim Crow or women’s subservience. Just as it is a swindle to suggest that if we had a libertarian polity we would be back to using outhouses and having our teeth pulled without anesthetic.

If what you really, really care about are group-status issues, and you really, really think that those battles should be fought politically rather than culturally, and if you are really, really scared of where you think some older Americans stand on those group-status issues, then you can end up where Will Wilkinson is–deeply frightened of the Tea Party movement in spite of its libertarian focus. In that case, your plan is to slip something into the ruling intellectuals’ drink to make them amenable to your free-market seductions.

Check out our latest MB7-255 & 70-653 written by our 70-515 certified teams to help you in pass 70-652 & 156-315.71.

5 minutes of CNN

[ 21 ] April 9, 2010 | djw

I haven’t glanced at CNN for months, but at the gym today I clicked over to CNN to see what they were saying about Stevens and the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy. I like to think I’m quite aware that CNN is breathtakingly vacuous and has no discernable redeeming value or purpose, but even I was unprepared for what I saw.

The scene opens with former Minnesota governor and 9-11 truther Jesse Ventura, who appears to be the “host” of the program. He is interviewing disgraced and indicted former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich on the following topic: Are the Tea Party protesters good for America? this little vignette is wrapping up as I tuned in. Back in studio, an young woman of Asian descent with whom I am not familiar appears to be arguing that Obama and Bush are more or less identical because Bush took us to war in Iraq, and Obama took us to war in Afganistan. Ventura’s remaining connections to reality are apparently sufficiently robust for him to call bullshit on this particular narrative, and as he is doing so, he is interrupted by an off-screen and previously unseen Ron Paul, who proceeds to speak uninterrupted for approximately 27 minutes on the dangers of creeping socialism. When he pauses for air, Ventura interrupts to observe that he “makes a lot of sense” and they cut to commercial.

At the current rate of deterioration, what will CNN’s programming look like in 5 years? The mind, it boggles.

Coalitions and politics

[ 14 ] April 8, 2010 | djw

One curious line of reasoning used by many who defend appalling exercises like Confederate History month is to attempt to muddy the waters by observing that Lincoln, the Republicans, or “the North” were not, in fact pure as the driven snow with respect to slaver. On its own terms, this line of argument seems to pretty clearly be a dead end: a moderate shrinking of the moral gap between the North and South would do nothing to move the absolute position of the South on the moral spectrum here, which is what’s at issue when discussing the appropriateness of this kind of public historical narrative. But beyond that, the notion that Lincoln and many Northerners were primarily motivated by goals other than the abolitionist cause is true, but this is a deeply trivial truth. Indeed, the following is true: De Jure slavery was ended in this country by a political coalition which contained the following: some committed abolitionists, some lukewarm, timid abolitionists, and some people who were largely indifferent to the abolitionist cause. (Lincoln himself moved from the second category to the first). In this sense, the end of slavery is exactly like every other major political accomplishment in American history–by skill, luck or both, a group of committed reformers manages to steer a larger coalition long enough to accomplish a major goal. That’s how good things happen in politics. The notion that this ‘revelation’ makes a moral evaluation of the Confederacy more ambiguous is beyond bizarre.

Changes

[ 0 ] March 1, 2010 | djw

When this blog was launched nearly six long years ago, it was a Seattle-based blog, as all three ‘founders’ were graduate students in the political science department at the University of Washington. Shortly thereafter my two founding co-bloggers headed east to take tenure track positions in New York and Kentucky. I remained in Seattle, and spent the next several years adjuncting all over town and not finishing my dissertation. Eventually, in 2007 and 2008 respectively, I managed to get a full time non-tenure track lecturer position and finish my dissertation. These two accomplishments were a tremendous relief, emotionally and financially. However, the funding for my position has been increasingly difficult for my department to sustain, and it became clear it would not be renewed forever.

In the Fall of 2010, this blog will lose its last connection to the city of its founding. I will leave the persistent and urgent uncertainty of my career to date behind (at least for six years) as I will make the increasingly and distressingly rare leap to the ranks of tenure track faculty. I will be taking up this position at the University of Dayton in Ohio, where I will teach a range of political theory courses as well as an introductory course in comparative politics and a course on comparative democratization. Academically, this is an improbably ideal step for my career; the teaching/research mix and general intellectual environment at UD is just about perfect for my tastes and talents, and I’m remarkably fortunate, and given how many talented, sharp and accomplished people in my field who remain un- and under-employed, humbled to have been offered this job.

The difficulty, though, is leaving Seattle, a place that is very much my home. I have never lived outside Western Washington, and the city and region have become constituitive of my identity to no small degree. With the exception of my whirlwind 36 hours of a campus interview, my only experience with the state of Ohio has been a couple of hours on a layover in the Cleveland airport, and my only experience with the midwest has been a handful of visits to Chicago. So I’ll be heading east this summer with some trepidation. So, people of the internets: the purpose of this thread is to solicit advice, suggestions, warnings, and endorsements regarding any and all aspects of life and living in Dayton, SW Ohio, and the midwest more generally.

Libel laws

[ 1 ] February 26, 2010 | djw

Like any good traitorous socialist lefty, I am supposed to treat European culture and politics as decidedly superior to the American alternative. And I often do! But on the subject of libel laws, it seems quite clear to me that Americans have a much more sensible approach than, at a minimum, the English and the French. The appalling nature of English libel laws became known to me through McDonald’s decision to turn a couple of environmental activists into free speech martyrs with a libel suit in 1990. This was, predictably, a bit of PR fiasco for McDonalds, and many of the claims made by the activists were determined in court to be true. Still, it’s appalling that McDonalds was able to drag a couple of protesters into court for the better part of a decade, and the burden of proof fell squarely on the defendants.

In looking up the case I’m pleasantly reminded that five years ago the European Court of Human Rights agreed with me:

The ECHR ruled that the lack of official funding had effectively given rise to procedural unfairness and denied the litigants a fair trial. It was held to have contributed to an unacceptable inequality of arms with the Corporation. The court ruled that there had been a violation of Article 6.1. The award of damages ordered against the litigants was deemed disproportionate to the legitimate aim served. The court found that the damages awarded “may also have failed to strike the right balance”, The subsequent awards were £36,000 for Steel and £40,000 for Morris.

Now, via Henry Farrell, I learn the French appear to have similar issues. Henry’s post and the EJIL summary and statement are well worth reading, but the executive summary is: Karin Calvo-Goller writes a book, it recieves a negative review in the European Journal of International Law, she demands the editor take down the review from the website, he refuses, she sues him for libel, and now he will be forced to defend himself in a criminal proceeding at his own expense. The substance of her complaints seem quite specious to this non-expert on her subject, and the review itself is a pretty run of the mill negative review. In the pretrial hearing, he was told by the examining judge that she couldn’t rule on substance and the case would be going to trial. Obviously, the idea that book review editors could be subject to criminal sanction, or even defending themselves against criminal charges, could certainly have a chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom.

As with the McDonalds case, it’s difficult to grasp why the complainant finds this particular course of action wise. Even if the book review in question contained actionable libelous claims, which seems doubtful, the notoriety of effectively declaring oneself an enemy of academic freedom will surely do more damage to her reputation than a couple of unfair critical remarks in a book review.

I’d certainly be curious to hear a defense of the “burden of proof lies on the defendant” approach to libel law on the merits, because it’s not easy for me to imagine what that would look like.

In the EJIL editorial linked above, the editor who is headed to court makes the following appeals for assistance:

a. You may send an indication of indignation/support by email attachment to the following email address EJIL.academicfreedom@Gmail.com Kindly write, if possible, on a letterhead indicating your affiliation and attach such letters to the email. Such letters may be printed and presented eventually to the Court. Please do not write directly to Dr Calvo-Goller, or otherwise harass or interfere in any way whatsoever with her right to seek remedies available to her under French law.
b. It would be particularly helpful to have letters from other Editors and Book Review Editors of legal and non-legal academic Journals concerned by these events. Kindly pass on this Editorial to any such Editor with whom you are familiar and encourage him or her to communicate their reaction to the same email address. It would be
especially helpful to receive such letters from Editors of French academic journals and from French academic authors, scholars and intellectuals.
c. Finally, it will be helpful if you can send us scanned or digital copies of book reviews (make sure to include a precise bibliographical reference) which are as critical or more so than the book review written by Professor Weigend – so as to illustrate that his review is mainstream and unexceptional. You may use the same email address EJIL.academicfreedom@Gmail.com

I think I’ll send in Brian Barry’s review of Nozick, and perhaps Okin on Sandel or Nussbaum on Butler.

CBO projections as political props

[ 0 ] December 25, 2009 | djw

Glenn Greenwald has a nice catch here, on Matt Welch’s egregious hackery. Calling a document traditionally labeled a report a report ‘lying’ is pretty rich, but the larger issue is, as Greenwald demonstrates, Welch and Reason’s writers are perfectly happy to cite CBO “reports” as accurate and reliable when it serves their purposes to do so.

There’s a sense is which Welch is kind of right, of course–CBO budget forecasts change quite a bit from year to year. This kind of projection is just inherently speculative, as all kinds of important complicated factors for program cost and cost savings, including but not limited to the performance of the economy overall. Welch points readers to the Peter Suderman piece on the CBO, which isn’t bad, but doesn’t really offer much new information and insight, other than reiterating what we all knew–economic projections are volatile and uncertain. Suderman labels them “Gatekeepers” and means to suggest tehy are a powerful independent actors, but their power is rather clearly limited to the power politicians wish them to have. Somehow, CBO cost projections failed to prevent the Bush tax cuts or the Iraq war. Suderman obviously overstates the CBO’s independent political power; their power is clearly a product of other political actors.

Interestingly, Suderman cites this Jon Gabel op-ed from August, in which Gabel demonstrates that the CBO has systematically underestimated cost savings from previous Medicare reforms. If this is continuing to occur, then obviously the use of the CBO is making good HCR more difficult. The current director of the CBO responds to this and other charged here. On the other hand, the CBO dramatically underestimated the costs of the Iraq war. What I’d really like to see, though, is some more systematic data on the accuracy of the CBO’s projections, and the directional trend of their inaccuracy. (This may well be available, and if it is please point me to it. I’d conduct a more thorough search myself, but my current internet connection is intolerably slow.)

More on felon disenfranchisement

[ 0 ] December 9, 2009 | djw

In the thread to the post below, Scott P. suggests denying felons the right to vote is consistent with social contract theory. I think that’s probably true for some but not all versions of social contract theory, but not a particularly helpful observation. Another commenter, Thomas, suggests “One who has wronged society should not get to participate in the legislating of that soceity until their debt is paid.” This is, I think, simply too abstract a way to think about the issue to be of much use.

I’d recommend that anyone who finds this line of thinking persuasive read this old Matt Welch piece. Central to his argument is that, when we take a closer look at the laws, most of us are probably unprosecuted felons. It’s much more helpful to think of the disenfranchisement of felons as the disenfranchisement of a subset of felons–those who live in populations where felonies are agressively policed, and who commit felonies we choose to actually enforce.

Once we view the matter in this light, abstract social contract theory about the treatment of ‘those who have wronged society’ becomes much less helpful in thinking about this issue in the context of contemporary American politics. We’ve chosen some felonies and some populations to agressively police and prosecute, and others to almost entirely ignore. In the contemporary American political context, the relavent question is not “should those who have wronged society have their participation in collective governance suspended?” A better question would be “should everyone who has ever taken a hit of X have their voting rights stripped if they happen to get caught and for some reason are not given the opportunity to plead out?” An even better one might be “should communities whose illegal drug use is heavily policed deserve their collective voting power diminished vis a vis communities whose illegal drug use is not heavily policed?”

Minaret Ban

[ 0 ] November 30, 2009 | djw

I think the ban on the hijab in public schools and other public places in France and elsewhere is deeply misguided at best, thinly veiled racism at (much more likely) worst, but at least in that case, I understood the plausible rationale behind the policy. I’ve read several discussions of Switzerland’s Minaret ban, and have come up completely empty on the reconstruction of a plausible non-bigoted justification. (The closest I’ve seen is a bizarre, metaphorical 12-year old quote from The Turkish Prime Minister.)

File under “Reasons why unpopular minorities and those concerned with their status remain unenthusiastic about plebiscitary democracy, #43,214.”

Friday cat blogging: Beau

[ 0 ] November 21, 2009 | djw

…update from davenoon, inspired by comments…

Pishtacos

[ 0 ] November 21, 2009 | djw

From the “subplot excised from The Road for being too disturbing and creepy” file:

Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.

The gang allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before killing them and extracting their fat.

The liquidised product fetched $15,000 (£9,000) a litre and police suspect it was sold on to companies in Europe.

At least five other suspects, including two Italian nationals, remain at large.

Police said the gang could be behind the disappearances of up to 60 people in Peru’s Huanuco and Pasco regions.

One of those arrested told police the ringleader had been killing people for their fat for more than three decades.

The gang has been referred to as the Pishtacos, after an ancient Peruvian legend of killers who attack people on lonely roads and murder them for their fat.

Many, many questions remain. For one, what on earth did these cosmetics manufacturers think they were buying? What were they told? What did they think they were paying 15 grand a litre for? And if this theory of the crime isn’t accurate, what the hell were these people doing?

(And yes, I know these are lousy tags. I wish we could add more tags)

November 11

[ 0 ] November 11, 2009 | djw

Two QOTDs:

Jacob Levy:

A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers. It should be in part a day of anger and horror about the particular war that ended on this day, the stupid brutality of it, and the evil that followed in its wake. Of course, no continuously-existing government (US, UK, Canada) is likely to create a day officially dedicated to pointing out that its predecessor contributed to the deaths of millions for no good cause. But we have the capacity to remember lessons other than the official ones.

Taking a step back, Randolph Bourne:

In a republic the Government is obeyed grumblingly, because it has no bedazzlements or sanctities to gild it. If you are a good old-fashioned democrat, you rejoice at this fact, you glory in the plainness of a system where every citizen has become a king. If you are more sophisticated you bemoan the passing of dignity and honor from affairs of State. But in practice, the democrat does not in the least treat his elected citizen with the respect due to a king, nor does the sophisticated citizen pay tribute to the dignity even when he finds it. The republican State has almost no trappings to appeal to the common man’s emotions. What it has are of military origin, and in an unmilitary era such as we have passed through since the Civil War, even military trappings have been scarcely seen. In such an era the sense of the State almost fades out of the consciousness of men.

With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war. For the benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve; for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a bigger role in the destiny of the world. The result is that, even in those countries where the business of declaring war is theoretically in the hands of representatives of the people, no legislature has ever been known to decline the request of an Executive, which has conducted all foreign affairs in utter privacy and irresponsibility, that it order the nation into battle. Good democrats are wont to feel the crucial difference between a State in which the popular Parliament or Congress declares war, and the State in which an absolute monarch or ruling class declares war. But, put to the stern pragmatic test, the difference is not striking. In the freest of republics as well as in the most tyrannical of empires, all foreign policy, the diplomatic negotiations which produce or forestall war, are equally the private property of the Executive part of the Government, and are equally exposed to no check whatever from popular bodies, or the people voting as a mass themselves.

The moment war is declared, however, the mass of the people, through some spiritual alchemy, become convinced that they have willed and executed the deed themselves. They then, with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed scheme of things, come within the range of the Government’s disapprobation. The citizen throws off his contempt and indifference to Government, identifies himself with its purposes, revives all his military memories and symbols, and the State once more walks, an august presence, through the imaginations of men. Patriotism becomes the dominant feeling, and produces immediately that intense and hopeless confusion between the relations which the individual bears and should bear toward the society of which he is a part.

The patriot loses all sense of the distinction between State, nation, and government.

As Bourne wrote these words in the Winter 1917-1918, he was facing severe poverty due to the loss his primary source of income, writing for journals of opinion. Pro-War members of editorial boards, including his former teacher and mentor John Dewey at (of course!) The New Republic, had him blacklisted. At The Seven Arts, the editor continued to publish him and other anti-war voices, which lead to left-Wilsonian backers to withdraw financial support, making it impossible to continue publication. This is trivial compared to the statist attack on rights and liberties that came with WWI, all of which must be understood as costs of war in addition to blood and fortune. Bourne’s unforgivable sin was not merely to oppose the war but to point out the staggering stupidity that was Left-Wilsonianism. Whatever one thinks about the American decision to enter WWI, his critique was surely correct. Robert Westbrook*:

Moved by Wilson’s rhetoric, these progressives defended American intervention in the war on the grounds that it would provide a unique opportunity to reorganize the world into a radically democratic social order. “Industrial democracy is on the way,” Dewey told a New York World reporter in July 1917. “The rule of the Workmen and the Soldiers will not be confined to Russia; it will spread through Europe; and this means that the domination of all upper classes, even of what we have been knowing as ‘respectable society,’ is at an end.” This was, to say the least, poor prophecy—the result not of the informed judgment that Dewey’s ethics required but of what he himself called “footless desires.”

Bourne’s posthumously published essay “The State” is the source of famous ‘War is the health of the State’ line, and has long been a favorite of libertarians, paleo-conservatives, anarchists, socialists, and other disreputable characters. The rest of us should give it a second look.

*Westbrook, “Bourne over Baghdad,” Raritan 27:1 (Summer 2007), pp. 106-107.