- Centuries-old German toy shop conquers internet Katrin Terpitz, Handelsblatt
- Interviews with Nazi Filmmakers [pdf] Gary Jason, Reason Papers
- Comparing Mao to Hitler and Stalin Ian Johnson, NY Review of Books
- 10 Weapons That Forged British Empire (my latest at RealClearHistory)
Author: Brandon Christensen
A short note on Rand Paul’s shaming of the GOP
For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Rand Paul delayed a new, 700-page congressional budget that purportedly adds $300 billion to the deficit. CNN has the money shot:
“When the Democrats are in power, Republicans appear to be the conservative party,” Paul said at one point. “But when Republicans are in power, it seems there is no conservative party. The hypocrisy hangs in the air and chokes anyone with a sense of decency or intellectual honesty.”
Read the rest. The delay lasted a couple of hours. What I found most interesting was the complaining, by Senators and House Representatives alike, about having to stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning to pass the budget.
Good. At first I was incensed that politicians could think of nothing other than getting a good night’s sleep after adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit (these are the same people who have voted to give themselves six-figure salaries for their “public service”), but then I remembered, thanks in part to Rick’s constant reminders, to give my enemies all my faith. Washington’s politicians probably believe they are doing honest work, and that adding to the already massive deficit is okay as long as it achieves a bipartisan consensus.
One other thought: Rand Paul is playing politics when he uses the term “conservative” to describe budget discipline. He knows, like Jacques, that conservatives are unprincipled, middle-of-the-road opportunists, but in today’s public discourse, fiscal discipline is somehow associated with conservatism, so he uses the term “conservative” to describe his libertarian politics.
Does anybody know where the deficit actually stands?
Nightcap
- The Men Who Made the Third Reich Richard Evans, the Nation
- Missionaries Didn’t Ruin Native Cultures John McGreevy, Commonweal
- Gutenberg: the democratizer of knowledge Bettina Baumann, Deutsche Welle
- Richer than Rockefeller? David Henderson, EconLog
Nightcap
- Scenes from a Police Detention Irfan Khawaja, Policy of Truth
- The Weight of Words Jacob T Levy, Niskanen
- Trump’s Making the Liberal World Order Stronger Christopher Preble, National Interest
- Brexiters’ blind spot Chris Dillow, Stumbling and Mumbling
Nightcap
- Polystates, Geostates, and Anthrostates Rick Weber, NOL
- Flags, Chinese Pirates, and the American Navy Claude Berube, War on the Rocks
- Congress is *Supposed* to be Dysfunctional Philip Wallach, National Affairs
- How Soviet Artists Broke with the Past Francis Vermeylen, 1843
Nightcap
- Xi Jinping Looking More and More Like Mao Doug Bandow, National Interest
- Fear, Loathing, and Zulm in Iran Mehrad Vaezinejad, History Today
- India, Pakistan, and Balochistan: A History of Trouble Ahsan Butt, the Diplomat
- A History of Craft Beer in America Derek Thompson, the Atlantic
Nightcap
- What Causes Cities to Become Sites of Revolution? David Bell, the Nation
- William Farquhar – the founder of Singapore Alex Colville, Spectator
- American History Needs Defenders Amity Shlaes, City Journal
- U.S. Once Had Lots of Norwegian Immigrants Nurith Aizenman, Goats and Soda
Nightcap
- Czeslaw Milosz: A Worker in the Vineyard Andrew Motion, Hudson Review
- When Americans Despised the Irish Christopher Klein, History
- How Brexit Has Reopened Old Irish Wounds Tony Connelly, New Statesman
- Quantum Mechanics? Try Entangled Time Instead! Elise Crull, Aeon
Lunchtime Links
- Nation-Building, Nationalism and Wars [pdf] | Would A Libertarian Military Be More Lethal?
- Formal or Informal, Legal or Illegal: The Ambiguous Nature of Cross-border Livestock Trade in the Horn of Africa [pdf] | A note on the police or – “Why I don’t trust the police.”
- Political Cleavages and Changing Exposure to Trade [pdf] | Slowly debunking the trade leads to peace fallacy
- Realism, Liberalism and the Iraq War [pdf] | When Should Intellectuals be held Accountable for Popular Misrepresentations of their Theories?
- High-Value Work and the Rise of Women: The Cotton Revolution and Gender Equality in China [pdf] | When (Where and Why) Women Were More Literate than Men
Worth a gander
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“the term ‘hippie trail’ began to circulate in the late 1960s: it referred principally to the long route from London (or sometimes Amsterdam) to Katmandu.” | The Protestant Reformation and freedom of conscience
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Flags, Chinese Pirates, and the American Navy | Naval power and trade
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Xi Jinping is looking more and more like Mao | The legacy of autocratic rule in China
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that time when North Korea saved Benin from a coup led by mercenaries | The re-privatization of security
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how Brexit has reopened old Irish wounds | Credit and the Great Famine of Ireland
BC’s weekend reads
- “What equivalent claims (if they could be established) would falsify your political position?“
- “White males may enjoy a great deal of privilege, but they still have rights, and when those rights are violated, they ought to be rectified.“
- “[…] actually, the whole country of France is like an attractive museum that would have a superlative cafeteria attached.“
- “They worked hard to look like they weren’t working too hard.“
Tocqueville on the Russians
There was a winter storm that blew through Austin last night. The entire city, which isn’t big population-wise (1.5 million give or take) but large geographically, shut down and I have the day off. So, I am working hard on my weekly column for RealClearHistory, and came across this sociological gem of Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote the best book on America, ever:
The American struggles against the natural obstacles which oppose him; the adversaries of the Russian are men; the former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its weapons and its arts: the conquests of the one are therefore gained by the ploughshare; those of the other by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common-sense of the citizens; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm: the principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter servitude.
Keep in mind that Tocqueville’s book was published in 1835. During the Cold War, this passage, which is the last paragraph in Volume 1 of Tocqueville’s 2-volume treatise, this passage was almost a necessary introduction to anything related to Soviet-American interactions.
Now, I fear, my generation must also heed Tocqueville’s prophecy about Russian and American society. Trump is a loudmouthed demagogue, but he is restrained by the people, most of all his base, which, for all its many faults, is democratic in its mores. Free-thinking Russians left Russia en masse while they could, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, for the West and their children and their children’s children will grow up free. The Russian people will continue to serve a despotism they think they need to survive. There is a conspiratorial, somber, and pessimistic tone in the voice of most Russian authors, even those who have managed to make a life for themselves in the West, and I get it.
When I think of Russia, with all its beautiful biodiversity, its people, and its potential, I brood.
Lunchtime Links
- High Hitler (drugs, drugs, drugs!)
- every generation gets the drugs it deserves
- Lawsplainer on federal and state marijuana laws
- why illegally obtained evidence is generally inadmissible in court
- Putin and patriotism: national pride after the fall of the Soviet Union (excerpt)
- long, fraught history of Pakistan and the US
- Old Dogs, New Tricks: Turkey and the Kurds
- Good piece, but I’m still waiting for a great book (or article) on the Hanseatic League. All the great ones are probably in German…
A quick update, then liberals and democracy, followed by racism and rectification
I have been busy. I picked up a gig at RealClearHistory as a ghost editor, and I also write a weekly column there. I have a baby daughter (she’s 8 months old). My musings here at NOL have been sporadic, but I have been learning a lot. Bill (morality) and Federico (law and liberty) continue to make me smarter.
Tridivesh’s thoughts here so far have a heavy element of “democracy-is-best” in them. I find this to be the case for most South Asian liberals. I wonder if this community has had the time to ponder Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom…, which laments the fact that most liberals worldwide have eschewed the “liberty” in the phrase “liberty and democracy.” One is surely sexier than the other, and there are probably many pragmatic reasons for this phenomenon, but it’s worth repeating here that you can’t have liberal democracy without liberty. China holds elections all the time, but this doesn’t mean the Chinese are free.
Michelangelo’s most recent note on race is interesting, as always. If it’s just the US Census then I agree with Thomas: eliminate the race question. Matt’s idea, to leave it blank and let people fill it in themselves, is a good idea, too, provided the Census continues to pry too much into the lives of people living in the US. As far as race goes in general, the American system of classification is ridiculous (to be fair to us, I’ve never come across a good one). However, the US government has committed some heinous crimes based on racist classifications and as such I do think there is a need to continue asking race-based questions. My approach would be much simpler, though. I’d ask:
- Do you identify as African-American?
- Do you identify as Native American?
- Do you identify as Japanese-American?
That’s it. Those are the only 3 questions I would ask about race. These three groups are groups because the US government, at some point in time, classified them as such and then proceeded to implement plans that robbed them of their labor, or their land, or their freedoms, and justice has yet to be delivered.
From the Comments: the Ottoman Empire, the millet system, and nationalism
Barry has an excellent response to Jacques’ equally good essay on the Ottoman Empire and libertarianism:
Jacques, the Millet system was as much constructed as destroyed in the late Ottoman period. The idea of such a system was itself projected back onto the earlier Ottoman system to reflect modern assumptions about national belonging, which was understood to exist in the Ottoman state through a systematic accommodation of Christian nations.
The classical Ottoman system was very dispersed and irregular in the functioning of power under a sultan who [had] absolute power in certain spheres and certain circumstances. So the contrast of the millet system with emergent Turkish nationalism itself presumes nationalist categories anachronistic to the earlier Ottoman state. The understanding of a millet system does of course coincide with the destruction of said system, since the idea of such a system comes from a kind of nationalism, or at least [an] assumption of a top down administrative state with strongly homogenising tendencies. The greatest massacre of Armenians took place in 1915 under the direction of an element of Young Turks (the general term for reformists) manifested in the most extreme tendencies of the Committee of Union and Progress.
In any case there is some continuity with the policies of Sultan Abdülhamit following a version of Ottoman statism constructing a homogenising administrative state after suspending the constitutional system and its representative assembly. If we apply ‘millet system’ to the early Ottoman system, with the reservations I mentioned, you can of course talk about greater peace for Ottoman Christians than that experienced during the 30 Years War, in exchange for the surrender of young sons for training as ‘janisseries’, new believers serving the sultan as soldiers and administrators. However, the picture is less sunny if we look at the massacres of Alevi, what were known at the time as Qizilbash, that is followers of a rather unorthodox offshoot of Shia Islam. Particularly under Selim I, Yavuz Selim, Selim the Grim (an appropriate moniker) in the 15th century Alevis were massacred by the tens of thousands in connection with his wars against Iranian Shia. Maybe if we compare the Ottoman system with the Christian states of the time, we see more religious peace, but relatively speaking.
In any case by the late nineteenth century the peace was eroded by wars of separation and by persecution of ‘dangerous’ minorities within the remaining Ottoman lands. In terms of Ottomanist ideological legacy, Abdülhamit is a hero to religious-conservative and ultranationalist currents mobilised by an ideal of strong Muslim rulers presiding over a Muslim community and with Abdülhamit taken as a model. Of course they are applying something foreign to the Ottoman system in its earlier years and which even Abdülhamit would have found alien in its commitment to Turkishness. The actions of Abdulhamit and then the trio at the head of the CUP who orchestrated the massacres of 1915 show the dangers of statist modernisation. In both cases though, they would have understood their actions as done to protect the glory of the Ottomans.
Barry has more at NOL here. Jacques has more at NOL here. Both can often be found in a responsive mood in the ‘comments’ threads, too, as long as your comments aren’t too nasty or vulgar…
Notes On Liberty 