I have a post I’ve been working on for like, three weeks now, and I just can’t seem to finish it. Stay tuned!
Co-editor Fred Foldvary kicks off the discussion:
The word “Liberal” comes from the same root as “liberty.” Liberalism is the ideology of equal individual freedom, the natural right of all persons to do anything that is peaceful and honest. It is implemented by a constitutional law that prohibits coercive harm to others and avoids restricting or imposing a cost on all other human action.
In the modern era, liberal philosophy blossomed after the publication of John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government […]
Internationally, liberalism became a global ideology with the recognition of universal human rights by the United Nations. But during the early 1800s, liberalism already started losing its way. While it marched forward for civil rights, such as the equal right to vote, liberalism became confused in the economic front.
Classical liberalism called for freedom on all fronts, including the economic, where it opposed state-imposed monopolies as well as restrictions on trade. Pure liberalism implies a truly free economy […] Liberalism also includes the spirit of tolerant generosity, the acceptance of diverse viewpoints. Tolerance is the heart of liberalism. Economic liberalism died with the Great Depression of the 1930s, and now we are witnessing the death of liberal tolerance.
Do read the whole thing, as he has much to say about anti-Semitism in Europe and the demise of libertarian strains of thought.
Wouldn’t that be so bad ass? Or am I just a geek?
The New York Times picks up on concepts that libertarians have been talking about for years. From the article:
The great paradox of the European Union, which is built on the concept of shared sovereignty, is that it lowers the stakes for regions to push for independence.
Has the NYT been reading Notes On Liberty? That’s a tongue-in-cheek question, of course, but one that makes me feel smug and sexy at the same time!
I have largely addressed the crisis in Europe from a political standpoint on this blog, and I don’t see that changing much over the next few years. Fiscal responsibility and civil society can only flourish if political institutions are well-defined.
The NYT article decided to quote a scholar at the European Council on Foreign Relations (which is not *sigh* a think tank dedicated to furthering the interests of a small, elite circle of bankers and industrialists) instead of me: Continue reading
Fascists Arrest Woman Blogger
Links to the Spanish and English language blogs of a brave Cuban blogger have been on this blog for years. This courageous anti-dictatorship woman’s name is Yoani Sanchez. She was arrested recently by the Castro fascist police. Below is her communication from the English language blog. Notably, I was unable to reach her Spanish blog today.
Read the rest, and do your part to help spread the word. Thugs like Castro would have been gone a long time ago if more people like the arrested blogger had stood up and said ‘no’ the first time around.
It doesn’t help that thugs in DC put sanctions on the Cuban state, either, but I am digressing…
This is a rhetorical question, of course, but one that I don’t think is taken seriously enough in the West anymore. A lot of this has to do with the fact that factions within Christianity have given this religion a very bad name over the centuries, as has the work of left-wing intellectuals to discredit this good religion’s name and accomplishments.
Without going into too many details, I think it would be good to take a step back and view where most of humanity’s scientific, intellectual, and economic progress has taken place over the last five hundred years.
On top of this remarkable feat, I think it would be safe to assume that Christianity also has provided the room for a vast array of religious sects and altogether different religious beliefs to flourish under its domain. Just think of the influence that Atheism has on today’s Western society. Although I consider Atheism to be a branch off of Judaism (and as such, a fraternal religion to Christianity), it would not have been able to flourish or exert the influence it has today without the extensive influence of Christianity on the thought of the West’s greatest thinkers over the past 800 years.
And just think of the influence that Protestantism has had on not only the West but the whole world over the past 500 years as well.
But what is it specifically about Christianity that makes it so radical? Is it the focus on the individual? Don’t Daoism and Buddhism also stress individual importance? The focus on Jesus of Nazareth’s teachings? Or is it, as I suspect, the fact that Christianity harbors a tone of dissidence about it that is unrivaled among the other large religions of the world? I think that a strong case can be made for a general mood in Christianity’s doctrines that stress the importance of disobedience.
What do y’all think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter!
Self-described socialist Mike Beggs writes:
Academic survival is, of course, cold comfort. Does Marxism have a political future? Hobsbawm is clearly not optimistic […] Those of us who have come so very late to the party, so to speak, inevitably have a different perspective. We discovered Marx long after the flaws of Marxism and “really-existing socialism” had become obvious, in a period of protracted recession in the labor movement. And yet, we still found something of value. Many, probably most, of us learned much of our Marx at university, deeply impressed by that intellectual flowering of the 1970s which Hobsbawm sees as the high-water mark. The course of his life has followed an epic rise and fall which naturally shapes his conclusions. For us, there is a lot more future to come.
You can read the rest of the article here. EJ Hobsbawm was a prolific Marxist historian, and I have come across his own work in my studies on national identity. You can find a decent list of his books here. RIP.
Separatist agitations in Spain have prompted some observers to reconsider the concept of secession as a viable option in politics again. The BBC has a very good report here, and the Economist has an even better one here.
When I was taking an Honors course on Western civilization and we got to the European Union, a thought immediately came to my head and I shared it with the class: does the European Union mean the demise of the big nation-states of Europe?
My hope is that it will, but my Professor and my Left-leaning classmates either thought ‘no’ or had not thought about this question at all. One sexy girl did think it was possible, though I think she was just humoring me so that I would ask her out on a date (yes, I did, but she couldn’t get into UCLA, though, so she ended up at Berkeley!).
I thought about the confederation of states in Europe that the EuroZone has created, and remembered that many regions within the nation-states of Europe have harbored separatist sentiments since being absorbed into the nation-states of Europe (sometimes hundreds of years ago, sometimes decades ago), as well as the peaceful split-up of Czechoslovakia into two states within the EuroZone.
The purpose of the nation-states was to streamline trade between regions by standardizing trading policy and eliminating parochial tariffs that regions within the nation-states had erected over the course of centuries. So, in what is now Germany, for example, there were hundreds of small states that each had their own economic policies, and most of these states had erected protectionist tariffs, even on neighboring states. The German state standardized trading policy in what is now Germany so that a tariff-free zone of trade eventually emerged within Germany. The federal set-up of the United States accomplished the same thing.
Now, though, the European Union has essentially taken the place of the nation-state as the chief entity in charge of standardizing trading policies in Europe. My line of thought leads me to conclude that this political setup is a great opportunity for regions that have been absorbed into larger nation-states to assert more fiscal (local taxes) and political (local elections) independence because of these region’s new interdependence with a larger part of the European economy thanks to the elimination of tariffs between the larger nation-states currently in place. In short, the confederation has provided the opportunity for smaller states to emerge while at the same time eliminating the parochial and self-defeating aspects (trade policy) of small state polities that often accompanies “smallness.” The best of both worlds has the chance to flower: local governance and total participation in world trade.
I realize that the EuroZone shot itself in the foot with the creation of a central bank and the attempts to delegate to itself ever more political power, but with these two blemishes notwithstanding the European Union is a good thing for both peace and prosperity.
The question of secession in political science has recently emerged as a good one for many scholars, but unfortunately their focus has tilted heavily towards Europe and Canada (Quebec and Nunavut). If we apply this concept to other regions of the globe – especially China, Africa, the Middle East and India – then the notions of violence and despotism that Westerners largely harbor towards these regions disappears.
I hope this makes sense. If it doesn’t you know where the ‘comments’ section is!
Been busy lately. My goal for the rest of the year is to post more often.
My laptop was stolen earlier this summer, so it has been tough for me, but I can manage now. I hope to have some cool stuff coming up soon.
Stay tuned y’all!
Dr. Foldvary is renowned for his predictive capabilities, especially after calling the 2008 financial crash in 2007. However, I’d like to highlight his keen sense of direction and justice in regards to foreign affairs as well.
From a 2005 article on the situation in the Middle East, Dr. Foldvary writes:
Before Israel become an independent state in 1948, there were 150,000 Jewish citizens in Iraq. Israelites have lived in Iraq for over 2500 years. In 586 B.C.E., Babylon conquered Judea and brought many Jews to what is now Iraq. Baghdad later became a major center of Jewish thought. During the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi ideology infected the Arab region. In 1941, led by a mufti allied with Nazi Germany, there was a pro-Nazi coup, followed by killing, raping, and looting of Jews. Iraqi Jews call this the “Farhud,” or “violent dispossession.” The British army then came in and squashed the pogrom.
After World War II, the government of Iraq enacted Nazi-like anti-Jewish laws. Most of Iraq’s Jews fled to Israel. In 1952, the Iraqi government prohibited Jews from emigrating. Additional restrictions were placed on Jews in 1963 when the Ba’ath Party came to power. After 1967, Jewish property was confiscated and Jews were executed. Most remaining Jews were allowed to emigrate from Iraq during the 1970s.
This Jew-hating ideology still reigns in Iraq. There is also a concern that if Iraqi Jews are allowed to return and become Iraqi nationals, they will seek to be compensated for their confiscated property. Also, if Iraqis abroad are able to vote in Iraqi elections, Israeli Iraqis would be voting also, and many Iraqi Arabs don’t want foreign Jews voting in their elections.
Muslims, especially Arabs, denounce Israel for not letting Arab Palestinians return to their original places. How, then, can Arabs justify not allowing Jews to return?
Now Dr. Foldvary is not pointing fingers, mind you. He’s just trying to point out the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics and introduce a level of fairness in the whole damned process. Do read the whole thing.
We interrupt this program to bring you some awesome pop-cultural news:
And a tidbit of an old video:
Oh What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me
I knew I chose anthropology for a reason.
For those of you who don’t know, co-editor Fred Foldvary is an editor for the Journal, and Warren Gibson is the math reader. From the website:
James Tooley on Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s Poor Economics: Banerjee and Duflo propose to bypass the “big questions” of economic development and focus instead on “small steps” to improvement. But, says Tooley, they proceed to make big judgments about education in developing countries, judgments not supported by their own evidence.
Why the Denial? Pauline Dixon asks why writers at UNESCO, Oxfam, and elsewhere have denied or discounted the success and potentiality of private schooling in developing countries.
Neither necessary nor sufficient, but… Thomas Mayer critically appraises Stephen Ziliak and Deirdre McCloskey’s influential writings, particularly The Cult of Statistical Significance. McCloskey and Ziliak reply.
Was Occupational Licensing Good for Minorities? Daniel Klein, Benjamin Powell, and Evgeny Vorotnikov take issue with a JLE article by Marc Law and Mindy Marks. Law and Marks reply.
Mankiw vs. DeLong and Krugman on the CEA’s Real GDP Forecasts in Early 2009: David Cushman shows how a careful econometrician might have adjudicated the debate among these leading economists over the likelihood of a macroeconomic rebound.
Rating Government Bonds: Can We Raise Our Grade? Marc Joffe, a former Senior Director at Moody’s Analytics, discusses limitations of the methods employed at the credit rating agencies and problems in trying to infer default risks from market prices, suggesting another approach.
Also, if you’re unsatisfied with the status quo in terms of political parties, including the Libertarian party, Dr. Foldvary has established the Free Earth Party for you to look at. Be sure to check it out!
I didn’t catch President Obama’s speech to the UN last night. I had other things to do (like stare at a brick wall).
I think the UN actually deserves credit for helping to avert nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. The UN also did a good job of containing any French, British, or Chinese jealousies that could have erupted during the Cold War by keeping them included in the decision-making process. The diplomatic institutions it put in place were voluntary and had three clear-cut goals in mind: 1) avert nuclear war between the two rising superpowers, 2) avert rivalries between the two fading European powers not defeated by the United States, and 3) ensure that tensions in the Far East remained manageable.
The UN did all of these fairly well.
Today, though, I think the UN is a sham. The few good programs it has, such as the ones focusing on health and clean water, can be better run by various agencies in a decentralized manner. The goals of the post-Cold War UN are vague and paternalistic, which is why I suspect it attracts the curiosity, awe and respect of so many young Leftists. Continue reading
If a man tormented by starvation and civil war in South Sudan declares that he is “happy, no, very happy, a regular three, mind you,” we have learned something about the human spirit and its sometimes stirring, sometimes discouraging, oddity. But we inch toward madness if we go beyond people’s lips and claim to read objectively, or subjectively, their hearts in a 1-2-3 way that is comparable with their neighbors or comparable with the very same South Sudanese man when he wins an immigration lottery and gets to Albany.
From Deirdre McCloskey in the New Republic. It’s about the mismeasurement of happiness. Read the whole thing, but don’t you dare smile!
…so Tallahassee can develop a commercial spaceport.
This is both good and bad. Here’s why:
Liquidating NASA as a government entity will likely have the same type of effect on society that liquidating the computer industry had. There is a lot of technology in NASA that is just waiting to be developed by average, everyday geeks wanting to get rich.
Unfortunately, when I read that the state of Florida wants to buy up land and, presumably, technology from NASA I see a big problem ahead. It’s the same type of problem that always happens when “privatization” occurs. Instead of full-fledged privatization, as was the case when computer-based technology was passed on to the private sector, what we are seeing is a hybrid-type of privatization where the state still has a say in the process.
What’ll end up happening if Florida is any indication is probably nothing with big financial loses. “Nothing” by itself, however, is a bad sign, because again, there is a lot of potential bottled up in the NASA program. If the politicians in Florida really want a commercial spaceport, they would do well to heed to historical precedent and let the greedy geeks of the world make it happen with their own time and money being invested and potentially lost, rather than the taxpayers.
Many good economists have been talking about a “great stagnation” looming ahead for the West – a period where all of the available technology has been used up, as have all the available new ideas – and this stagnation may well come true, but I think that the de-socialization of NASA could help to alleviate this looming problem in a major way. It’s a shame that politicians think so lowly of their fellow citizens.
Also on the backburner: aside from the inevitable failure of a project like this, think of the ominous associations being created with ventures like these. Government and business working hand-in-hand to create a new niche in the economy for the citizens of Florida and the United States. This is the worst kind of fascism at work. The private sector could do much better, as could the American people.
Notes On Liberty 