Author: Brandon Christensen

North Korea’s “Artificial Earthquake”: What is to be Done?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , ,

Foreign policy has been awfully quiet these days. President Obama has been murdering people left and right on a whim, and nobody in Washington seems to care. You can imagine what the reaction would be in Washington if a Republican had been the one flaunting the rule of law. The Economist has a good article on this development if anyone is interested.

One newsworthy item that concerns American foreign policy has been centered on the Korean peninsula, a place that the United States first became involved militarily during the 1950’s. Given that our government is currently mired in two foreign occupations at the peripheries of the Islamic world (Afghanistan and the Balkans) as well as being embroiled in conflicts along the Sahel (thanks to President Obama’s attacks on the Libyan state), one should naturally be curious as to why the current affairs of the Korean peninsula are of interest to the United States government.

To make a long story short, the US government currently has some 50,000 troops stationed along the border of the North-South divide (drawn up in the 1950’s after a devastating war was fought between communist and conservative factions within Korea, China, and the United States), and has an alliance with the South that guarantees military help in case of a war with the communist North. The later state is actively attempting to build a nuclear weapon.

As a rule, I think it is appropriate that when citizens of a republic hear about other nations and events, the subject matter ought to revolve around how beautiful the geography of a said nation is, or how beautiful the women are, or how bad the food is, or which team won the national championship, and in which sport. That American citizens are hearing about a possible escalation of military tension in the region is, by itself, not a bad thing nor a surprising thing, but when our military and our tax dollars are suddenly involved in the escalation itself, then American citizens have ample cause to be worried, angry, and tense. These are not qualities that are often sought out by individuals on a daily basis, and when a government that claims to be republican in nature begins to cause these said psychological factors within it’s borders, then citizens ought to question the supposed republicanism of their government. Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links
  1. North Korea: the new capitalists
  2. The rise and fall of Market Monetarism
  3. Listen to the fascists sing: a sublime parody
  4. The Caucasus: Another Regional War in the Wings. Don’t forget who is playing here: Russia, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran.

 

Religion and Liberty

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , ,

I’m not a religious person. I have an unconventional Mormon background but rejected the faith of my parents for a large number of reasons. I’m not hostile to religion, either. At least, I try not to be (it’s hard sometimes!). I’ve seen first-hand what religious organizations can do for humanity. When I was living in a Ghanaian village of no more than 300 people, I had access to no more than two hospitals in the village. One was run by the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the other I cannot remember (the SDA hospital was closer). It was most likely a Catholic one. Religious organizations representing Islam, Judaism, Christianity and even Buddhism were ever-present in Ghana, and they all provided much-needed skills and supplies to that magnificently socialist state.

I attribute my atheism and my libertarianism to my skeptical nature. If you can prove to me that God does indeed exist, or that paternalism is good for me and my fellow man, then I will turn on a dime. I don’t know very much about anything, after all.

Anyway, religion has been under attack in the West since the Enlightenment. There are both good and bad reasons for this. One of the best reasons is that religious authorities often burned dissidents at the stake for opposing their claims to authority. In much of the world today, especially in some Muslim regions, non-believers are subjected to stonings, beheadings, and torture when the authority of the ecclesiastical class is challenged. However, in today’s Western world, the war on religion is a rather petty affair. Most skeptics don’t want to argue about the existence of God, they simply want to denigrate believers at best, and persecute them at worst. Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links
  1. Forget Asia: Time to Pivot to Europe
  2. Islam and Constitutionalism
  3. Ever heard of the Serer religion?
  4. India: The Neverending Saga

“How China Became Capitalist”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, History, Liberty , ,

That’s the title to this short piece by Nobel laureate Ronald Coase and his co-author Ning Wang published by the Cato Institute. Among the gems:

The presence of two reforms was a defining feature of China’s economic transition. The failure to separate the two is a main source of confusion in understanding China’s reform. The Chinese government has understandably promulgated a state-centered account of reform, projecting itself as an omniscient designer and instigator of reform. The fact that the Chinese Communist Party has survived market reform, still monopolizes political power, and remains active in the economy has helped to sell the statist account of reform. But it was marginal revolutions that brought entrepreneurship and market forces back to China during the first decade of reform when the Chinese government was busy saving the state sector.

Do read the whole thing. The Cato Institute ranks third on my list list of trustworthy think tanks. Hoover and Brookings are two that I think produce university-caliber research. Cato ranks far below Hoover and Brookings in my estimation, but it occupies a lonely third place, as none of the other think tanks out there are even close to Cato’s stature, either.

You can check out Cato’s website here.

The Future of Liberty: Reason or Superstition, Abortion Edition

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty

I have been having an ongoing back-and-forth with co-blogger Hank on abortion. You can find the latest volley here.

Among the gems:

The answer to my question is obviously ‘no.’ It has been the answer for 100,000 years. Not 10,000 years. Not 1,000 years. Not 100 years, but 100,000 years. At least. And, of course, this will continue to be the case in the foreseeable future as well. The last thing we need is to replace a fetish of the past with a fetish of the future when it comes to reproductive rights.

Libertarians use reason and facts to guide their thoughts, not appeals to an unforeseeable future or an omnipotent being (see my original post).

The liberty movement will continue to suffer as long as we have people who appeal to superstition and ignorance to make their points. Underlying this debate is a far bigger one: do libertarians really represent a different kind of politics, or are we, as some on the Left and the Right charge, merely Republicans who think smoking weed is not a crime?

The Beltway Consensus: Iraq Edition

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History , , , , , ,

The illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq undertaken by the Bush administration is one of the American republic’s darkest moments. I rank it as the fourth-worst policy in our history, just after slavery, the extermination of the Indians, and the invasion and occupation of the Philippines and just before Jim Crow and the New Deal. Invading and occupying Iraq rejected the American notions of liberty and justice, individualism, republican government, and free trade. It also further damaged American credibility in the eyes of the world.

For the most part, populations have been okay with Washington’s antics since the end of World War 2. There are certain expectations that everybody has of a world hegemon, and the Cold War atrocities that Washington committed were largely understandable. But attacking a third world despot in the middle of the Islamic world – for no apparent reason except to “bring democracy” to the region – not only undermined the US’s claim to be defender of the peace, but it exposed the extent of the republic’s intellectual decay that has been going since the New Deal. Not only does nobody believe our claims when we attack a helpless state, but they don’t think we have the intellectual capacity to do the job, either.

My own perspective on the crimes against humanity that Bush and his cronies committed are much more superficial, of course (I live in LA, after all!): we have basically copied the British imperial model. Not only are my taxes being spent on killing innocent people abroad, but Washington is not even doing it creatively! The following article in Foreign Affairs illustrates my point perfectly. Continue reading →

Adamson’s Book Signing

Brandon Christensen Books, Current Events, History

Dr. Adamson’s new book just came out two weeks ago, and he has passed along a couple of photos from his book signing event. More below the fold. Continue reading →

Abortion, the Conception of Life, and Liberty

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty , , ,

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. – Thomas Jefferson, 1816

My blog post on freedom and feminism prompted a number of short but informative dialogues in the comments section, and I thought it would be a good idea to draw some of these arguments out a little more and really delve into the implications of what it means to be free.

My original post was meant to serve as a general outline of the major rift within libertarianism (and, by implication, the American Right) today: the cultural one. I think that the rift between libertarians on cultural issues is actually much less serious than the one between libertarians and conservatives, and the comments section highlighted this important disagreement. Instead of a mutual mistrust based upon suspicion of authoritarian tendencies hiding in plain sight, libertarians actively fight conservatives when it comes to the struggle between liberty and power.

Two key arguments will be exploited on this blog for the sake of showing Ron Paul Republicans and other, newer members of the libertarian movement just how nakedly aggressive and barbaric anti-abortion laws really are. Continue reading →

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links
  1. Gun control: change we don’t believe in
  2. A photo essay of Antarctica. I’m weird (news flash!) and I’ve always had an obsession with Antarctica
  3. On the ethics of voting. Grab a cup of coffee or tea
  4. Canada’s First Nations: Time we stopped meeting like this
  5. What is driving growth in government? This weekend’s must-read

Fresh Blood!

Brandon Christensen Current Events

We’ve got a couple of new changes coming your way: younger bloggers!

Stay tuned, and enjoy the ‘comments’ thread on my recent post in the meantime (don’t forget to have your say as well).

Libertarianism and Feminism

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , ,

I thought I’d throw in my two cents on the recent brouhaha between the two largest camps within the libertarian movement (the “paleos” and the “bleeding hearts”). Really quickly, the differences between the two camps are few and far between on matters of economics, but on matters of culture there is a wide chasm separating the two. The paleos are cultural conservatives and the bleeding hearts are not.

For the record, I consider myself in the “bleeding heart” camp, even though I spent more than enough time in Santa Cruz doing the co-op thing and hanging out out with lazy, dishonest, stinking hippies.

The bleeding heart camp initiated the brouhaha with the following:

This morning Julie Borowski, who makes videos as “Token Libertarian Girl,” shared her answer to the question “Why aren’t there more female libertarians?” […]

Every single one of these things that she criticizes women for doing should be seen not as causes for shame, but as complex choices that smart, thoughtful women can and do make, without destroying their lives in the process.  In addition, Borowski is making arguments that conservatives hurl at women all the time. If we want to pull young women away from liberalism and toward libertarianism, repeating the very same intellectually patronizing conservative arguments that pushed women to liberalism in the first place doesn’t seem to be the way to go.

And a follow-up post had this tidbit to add: Continue reading →

Environmentalism and Property Rights

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History , , , ,

The horrible air in Beijing has been making the news again, and for good reason. Check out these pictures for reasons why. The topic of environmentalism and its compatibility with liberty has been brought up before here at the consortium, but I’d like to briefly use this opportunity to point out something on property rights.

Conservatives and, lamentably, some libertarians often attribute environmental destruction to “the tragedy of the commons,” but this is short-sighted. Anthropologists have long pointed out that land and property held in common is actually governed quite well. Political scientists and economists have recently begun to come around to this point as well, with Elinor Ostrom (a political scientist by training) winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her work on how some societies govern the commons.

Common land and its use often requires an informal set of rules for maintaining a harmonious balance between man and land, and is also a characteristic feature of societies that we would variously label, rightly or wrongly, as stateless, pastoral, foraging, tribal, or my personal favorite: undeveloped. In other words, common land is often exploited by poor people who do not have the resources to institute a regime based largely on private property. With this in mind, just think: would you want to be the party that is found guilty for violating an agreed-upon set of rules for a specific area of land? Even if there were no formal state apparatus charged with enforcing a society’s rules? Not only would you have to face justice, but you’d also be held responsible for the possible suffering of many other people depending on the land, which could lead to other forms of punishment besides fines or violence; punishments that could affect the lives of your loved ones and your loved ones’ loved ones. Continue reading →

Don’t Forget

Brandon Christensen Books, Current Events, History

Michael Adamson’s new book, A Better Way to Build…, comes out on the 15th of this month. You can check out more of Dr. Adamson’s (bad ass) work in the ‘recommendations‘ section of the blog. He’s got stuff on Native American property rights (or lack thereof), US foreign policy, and the decline of Argentina just hanging out online waiting for curious minds to read and process.

Dr. Adamson is a historian by trade, and we’re lucky to have him on board here at the consortium. Also, check out his demolishing of the rationales used by the Bush administration to go to war in Iraq (the second time around).

RIP James Buchanan

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics

Nobel laureate and classical liberal economist James Buchanan has died at the grand old age of 93. I have been slowly working my way through his book The Calculus of Consent for a while now, and his other works are on my “to do” list once I graduate in June. He was one of the co-founders of public choice theory, a rather common sense approach to economics that has long been derided by authoritarians on the Left.

EconLib has a succinct biography of him here.

This short piece by Buchanan in the Independent Review has influenced my own way of approaching writing and arguing.

I’ll post more thoughts from around the web as they appear throughout the day.

Liberty has lost a true champion today.