Liberty

Why are there no “Libertarian Countries”?

henrymoore Liberty , , , , , ,

So asks Michael Lind in Salon yesterday.

My answer to the question would be:

A libertarian state (he says “country”) is a contradiction in terms. Duh! Some states/countries are certainly more libertarian than others, and the Salon piece even acknowledges that, but the state itself is the reason there are no pure “libertarian countries”. It need not have anything to do with anarchism as even limited government advocates view the state as a necessary evil, and its nature as eventually and inevitably corruptive of all that exists within its prerogatives.

If Mr. Lind simply wants an example of a geographic area that is entirely libertarian, sans state, he would first need to acknowledge that no such place can exist within or as part of a state. But since every country in the world is a state, there are no such places. Even if there were, they wouldn’t count according to Mr. Lind, because they would not fit his definition of country. Notice how he discounts several contestants, having already failed to say what he thinks a libertarian country would look like: Continue reading →

Capitalism: Making Lives Miserable Since at least the Late 18th Century

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

Brad Plumer of The Washington Post has a great post up on 31 different charts “that will destroy your faith in humanity.” Here was one of my favorites:

After reading through the charts, come back and let me know what you think of them. For more optimistic garbage, be sure to check this out.

A note on compulsory IRS linedancing

muricaderp Current Events, Economics, Liberty

As a matter of course, I ignore the anti-government donnybrooks that consume Fox News, such as the recent furor over the IRS’s eccentric “conferences.” To my own surprise, I’m not inspired to do this out of any animosity towards Fox; although I find maybe half or two thirds of the politics that it promotes noxious, I enjoy watching it from time to time, and I have come to find it less frequently revolting than CNN, whose pomposity and sleights of hand tend to drive me up a wall. Rather, my reasons for ignoring Fox’s causes du jour are, first, that I just don’t have time to follow its donnybrooks on top of all the more important things that I’m trying to cram into my life, and second, that I find Fox’s signal-to-noise ratio too erratic to take its pronouncements at face value. In practice, this means that I usually insist on hearing corroboration from a significantly less shrill source before believing that Fox isn’t blowing its reports completely out of proportion for partisan and business advantage. Ronald Reagan called this approach “trust, but verify,” but by any honest appraisal it’s a form of distrust.

My corroborating source confirming the seriousness of this IRS linedancing/Star Trek role play idiocy is my mom. By her own admission she’s a hardcore leftist. What she is not, however, is a worshiper of bureaucracy. She spent too much time working for the Veterans Administration, an agency whose dysfunction she can describe in much greater detail and much more cynically than I can, to assume that the IRS is not run by the objectively deranged. So when my mom mentioned to me in a recent phone conversation that the IRS had gotten egg on its face over these ridiculous training seminars, I figured that whatever Fox had to say about the scandal, no matter how shrill, had some merit.

Having now watched Greta van Susteren’s coverage of these training exercises, I agree with her and with my mom that they were absolutely ridiculous and should never have been undertaken. The IRS has clearly delegated responsibility for its employee training to a bunch of useless nutcases. Governments that spend their money on stuff like that are troubled.

Where I disagree with van Susteren is on her insistence that these junkets stand out as wastes of taxpayer money. As a matter of principle, it’s certainly improper to misallocate tens of millions of dollars on ridiculous staff training exercises at posh resorts, but the sums in question ($52 million or so) are chump change in the context of federal spending. Preventing these particular instances of featherbedding and cronyism would have done nothing to appreciably improve the federal treasury’s prudence and solvency. There’s just too much systemic fiscal laxity and corruption for the prevention or redress of these really juicy scandals to make a real difference. The real improvements have to come from concerted, systematic reform. The Inspectors General responsible for curbing this kind of waste are important internal watchdogs, but by its very nature their work has to be done incrementally, often at a pace that seems glacial because the rot is so pervasive. In any event, they’ll be cleaning out the Augean Stables until such a time as the underlying cultures at their agencies start undergoing genuine reform. In a very real way, we’re stuck dealing with the hearts of men, and doing so in a country where the systemic corruption extends far beyond the public sector. I honestly don’t see how systemic reform is viable as long as so many Americans so sincerely believe in hustling, and in being hustled, rather than in plain dealing.

At rock bottom, I believe, it’s a matter of what Vaclav Havel called living in truth. I’d love to see an American leader of Havel’s prominence spread that message with such clarity, but I don’t expect to come across one, especially given the chronic tendency of so many Americans to reject reasonable politicians of goodwill in favor of abject demagogues of the lowest character imaginable this side of the genocidal.

Clearly, one of the factors that drives this deference to openly sadistic leaders is servility. There’s a powerful cognitive dissonance between the rhetoric of American freedom and independence and the reality of a population hesitant to challenge even its most ridiculous and pointless degradation at the hands of its superiors. This is how we’ve ended up with our proliferation of idiotic, disingenuous corporate “teambuilding” exercises, motivational posters and videos, and rude, bumptious, grandiose, incompetent managers. We let them get away with it. Walmart employees in Germany responded to mandatory motivational rallies by fleeing to the restrooms and calling their union reps. They recognized petty tyranny and had too much self-respect to submit to it; American workers generally don’t.

That’s the buried lede in the IRS “conference” scandal. These “training” seminars and the videos made of them had nothing to do with the employees’ job duties, and they must have caused sentient employees who were unwillingly drawn into the fray great annoyance, if not also discomfort. Extraneous seminars of the sort, although rarely extreme enough to involve Star Trek costumes, are so ubiquitous in American corporate and bureaucratic life that they’re widely regarded as unremarkable.

Submitting to such degradation under duress is not a hallmark of a free people. There are certainly extenuating circumstances for doing so, in fact, usually powerful ones, given the abusive dynamics at workplaces where management inflicts this sort of thing on subordinates, but meek, servile submission to this sort of belittling idiocy is not honorable. The proper response is to tell the instructor, “You’re a moron, this is bullshit, and I’m getting a gin and tonic.”

Istanbul: The Protests

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics, Religion , , , , , , ,

A moderately Islamist government has been in power in Turkey for about 10 years now. Over the weekend it faced its first stern test. One brave Turkish blogger has decided to reach out to the rest of the world:

No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out.

But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray.  They chased the crowds out of the park.

In the evening of May 31st the number of protesters multiplied. So did the number of police forces around the park. Meanwhile local government of Istanbul shut down all the ways leading up to Taksim square where the Gezi Park is located. The metro was shut down, ferries were cancelled, roads were blocked.

Yet more and more people made their way up to the center of the city by walking.

They came from all around Istanbul. They came from all different backgrounds, different ideologies, different religions. They all gathered to prevent the demolition of something bigger than the park:

The right to live as honorable citizens of this country.

Read the rest. Hurriyet, one of Turkey’s best media outlets, has been doing an excellent job covering events after the fact. Their English-language site is here, and I recommend reading the site on a daily basis (even after the violence is over).

Here is my two cents: the Erdogan government (the Islamist one) put one too many straws upon the camel’s back. Ankara simply took too many liberties when it came to regulating the cultural and material life of the Turkish people. Too many blasphemy laws and too many clothing restrictions, coupled with too poor an economic performance made these protests inevitable. The harsh crackdown on an otherwise free people ensured violence and larger protests.

By the way, Turkey’s first post-Ottoman government, headed by the ardent secularist and Europhile, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, also insisted on regulating the cultural and material lives of Turkish citizens, so Islam has nothing to do with this (check out our many discussions we’ve had here on the blog on this).

Rather, the “authoritarianism lite” of the Turkish state has more to do with its status as a post-colonial imperial state and a Cold War pawn than it does with any inherent cultural traits of the Turkish people or of the Islamic faith.

Around the web: class, work, and a call for the totalitarian oppression of servants

muricaderp Economics, Law, Liberty, Links, Politics

In the course of a recent internet search for “lazy millennials,” “entitled millennials,” “milliennial brats,” and the like (call it an effort at self-diagnosis, if you wish), I came across one of the most biting and clearheaded blogs I’ve found to date covering work and the workplace. Normally, everything that I find on these subjects in any medium is some combination of banal, derivative, sycophantic, foolish, and intellectually dishonest. Perhaps this is in part because, although I disclose this at some risk to my credibility, I follow John Tesh on Pinterest (but mainly to enjoy him ironically and hipster-like; he, and Wilford Brimley, are my PBR). Tesh, however, does not set the lower bound for workplace advice; browsing workplace-themed blogs at random or the book section of any office supply chain is weirder and more disgusting. Michael O. Church, then, is a welcome relief from the endless drivel, and a fine writer and political thinker to boot.

One of Church’s favorite concepts is “libertarian socialism.” Outwardly, this may sound as ridiculous as the UK being governed by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, but what he proposes, a government safety net beneath a dynamic private sector, is exactly what most Western governments have attempted, with varying degrees of success, since the Second World War. Church’s proposal avoids by a wide margin the sclerosis of command economies (which, in extreme instances such as North Korea’s, causes an outright death spiral), but it also renders moot the sclerosis of large, ossified corporations, with their legions of marginal-to-useless bureaucrats, layers of political intrigue, and penchant for regulatory capture. His model is for an advanced sort of Jeffersonian yeomanry as an alternative to, and eventually a replacement for, the Hamiltonian model that predominates today. Here’s one of his critiques of the current system: Continue reading →

Update on the “tunnel people”

muricaderp Liberty

The “tunnel people” of Las Vegas were featured on Inside Edition last night (5/28). Yes, it’s an atrocious show on the whole, the breathlessness of the field reporting was unnecessary, and someone should have fact-checked the report closely enough to keep the reporter from erroneously referring to the storm drains as sewers, but even so, it was a surprisingly well-done piece. Inside Edition’s liaison in the storm drains was a photojournalist who had covered them previously and whose commentary was intelligent and decorous. More impressive was the footage of a young man hauling a number of his possessions, including a guitar, through another couple’s living space, which occupied the entire width of their drain between his quarters and the nearest exit to the outside world. This footage conveyed the difficulty of living in the storm drains and the resourcefulness of the residents with a power that still shots would have trouble equaling. The report was half-cocked at times, but it was exactly the kind of serious journalism that should be broadcast more often.  

This is especially true of television broadcasts, which reach an audience that for various reasons simply cannot be reached in writing. Reform becomes much easier and more viable when one is able to get through not only to an engaged minority, but also to the lazy and the disengaged. Merely presenting more or less honest, accurate reporting in lieu of propaganda and sensational tripe is an incremental improvement. It’s one less piece of rubbish distorting the senses of the citizenry.

The effects are subtle, perhaps even imperceptible, but they’re meaningful because their aggregate effects are huge. Nicolae Ceaucescu, for example, tried to propagandize his subjects about the evils of American capitalism by liberally broadcasting Dallas on Romanian state television, but instead he ended up confirming his subjects’ suspicions that he was mismanaging their country to the point of penury, and that he and his wife were why they couldn’t have nice things of the sort enjoyed by scheming Texans. Had he been less tone-deaf, he might have broadcast that other Inside Edition classic from last night, an update on the boy who divorced his parents. 

I knew I had reasons for only watching that crap by accident. 

Adventures in Christian Vulgaria

muricaderp Liberty, Religion

A couple of weeks ago, my dad and I were in a hotel elevator with a group of conference-goers when, within twenty seconds of the door closing, one of the latter gents said, “I thought the whole point of this conference was not to play with ourselves.” His comment was apropos of a discussion about who was responsible for pushing the elevator buttons for the rest of us, but not  apropos by much. My dad and I laughed at this witty commentary somewhat more sheepishly than the other eight or so passengers, some of whom reacted with ostentatious gusto. Neither of us considered thinly veiled references to masturbation appropriate to the circumstances, but there were only two of us.

I didn’t have nearly enough presence of mind at the time, but I realize in retrospect that the equitable and salutary response would have been to promptly ask: “Dude, what the fuck?” That earthy, worldly query would have struck precisely the right tone. By most likely provoking a frenzied protestation of hurt Christian fee-fees, it would have offered me a timely opportunity to note that it was not I who had just raised the specter of masturbation in front of strangers in a crowded elevator. To adopt the parlance of the present company, it would have been edifying, a word, if not the Word, to strengthen a Christian man in his Walk.

The religious angle to this episode is bizarre but fascinating. The goofiness, subtle overfamiliarity, and faux self-deprecation with which these men approached the world was circumstantial evidence for their being Christian fellas after God’s heart, but I glanced down long enough to see the smoking gun: a study guide for “Every Man’s Battle.” Continue reading →

Liberalization in India, and NOT Just in Markets

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , ,

Shikha Dalmia, of Reason, has a new piece up in the Wall Street Journal on India’s harassment problem:

I’ve never met an Indian woman—rich or poor, upper or lower caste, pretty or homely, young or middle-age—who hasn’t been harassed […] Unlike rape and sex-selective abortion, which represent a genuine devaluing of women, sexual harassment in India is, I believe, an expression not of the power of Indian men but of their helplessness. It’s a pathetic attempt to have a sexual encounter, no matter how meaningless and evanescent. Its real cause is free-floating male libido with no socially acceptable outlet.

India’s sexual mores and institutions are rooted in a pastoral past, when people died before 50, so marriages between minors were the norm. Families in villages would betroth their children, at birth sometimes, and have a formal ceremony after both attained puberty, when the girl went to live with her husband’s family. This arrangement, now banned, had many horrendous downsides, but it produced an organic harmony between the sexual needs of individuals and the social expectations of monogamy and chastity […]

What would work [for easing India’s harassment problem]? Nothing short of transforming India’s puritanical culture and giving men and women more freedom to forge sexually mature relationships outside of marriage.

Read the whole thing. I don’t know how much good liberalizing India’s sexual mores would be without first more liberalization in markets. I often think of the US’s own problems when it comes to the sexual revolution of the 1960s: more STDs, more unplanned, unwanted pregnancies, and more costs associated with public health. Another downside was the attempt, by certain feminists, to destroy the very libido of men that Dalmia recommends liberalizing. The attempts by these authoritarians can still be felt today, especially in American universities (see Ken Masugi’s thoughtful piece on this problem).

La mauvaise foi

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Liberty , , , ,

Le mensonge adulte me fascine depuis longtemps. Le mensonge collectif m’intrigue particulièrement. La mauvaise foi de tout un groupe, toute une caste ne cesse de m’étonner. Pourtant, Jean-Paul Sartre l’avait bien analysée (avant d’en donner lui-même des exemples inoubliables).

Je commente quelquefois sur ce blog l’indifférence aux faits que je rencontre souvent dans les medias français. (Voir: “Un Menteur bien français”) Un ami parisien, avocat et réalisateur talentueux de documentaires (avec beaucoup de coeur) m’écrit sa colère sur le même sujet. Mon ami se place à gauche (à mon avis, seulement, “l’option défaut” – une autre histoire) tandis que je suis un conservateur “anglo-saxon” classique (pas nationaliste, pas gaulliste, pas religieux). Voici, ci-dessous, son texte retouché seulement un petit peu pour protéger quelques susceptibilités particulières. L’écriture y est celle qu’on trouve dans un courriel (“maille” en Franglais) expédié rapidement a un ami. – JD

Parlant des journalistes français en général:

En attendant aussi, je pense que la journaliste (de la télévision), Madame X, comme 90% des journalistes (français en tout cas) sont bien trop fainéants pour faire leur travail. En l’occurrence vérifier l’information, ce qui est le B-A BA de leur métier.

..et en plus ( ceci allant souvent avec cela), ils sont d’une incroyable prétention (suffisance, arrogance, plein d’autres mots me viennent à l’esprit les concernant).

Sur plusieurs sujets, j’ai moi-même fait l’expérience de leur nullité.

Par exemple, sans doute as-tu suivi l’affaire Cahuzac, ce ministre du budget qui a planqué du fric ã l’étranger et qui a nié jusqu’au bout, quitte à mentir de la tribune de l’Assemblée Nationale.

Un seul journal, sur le web, Mediapart a sorti l’info. Son patron Edwy Plenel a été traîné dans la boue par tous les autres journalistes et, notamment, les stars de la télé. Pourtant Edwy Plenel n’avait qu’un mot à la bouche à leur adresse: “faites votre travail”.

Autre exemple beaucoup plus grave encore: l’affaire Al Dura, du nom de ce gamin qui se serait fait buter dans les bras de son père par l’armée israélienne, pris dans des tirs croisés à un carrefour de Gaza. Il se trouve que le seul mec, au départ, et qui se bat seul depuis plus de 10 ans, pour expliquer au monde que c’est une mise en scène, est l’ami d’un ami, Philippe Karsenty. Un jour je suis allé l’écouter, il faisait une conférence sur le sujet. Il a montré les rushes qu’il avait réussi à soutirer à France 2, la seule chaîne qui ait, à l’époque, diffusé ces images. Et là, on voyait comment les faits avaient été mis en scène par les Palestiniens et comment l’enfant bougeait à la fin des rushes; comment surtout, on le voyait prendre dans sa poche un bout de tissu rouge, le placer au niveau de sa poitrine et faire le mort. Je t’assure que ces images, que j’ai vu, sont incroyables.

Le journaliste de france 2 est une sommité, Charles Enderlin. Ce jour là, il n’était pas sur place. Il a fait fait confiance à l’un des cameramen avec lesquels il a l’habitude de travailler, un Palestinien. Et il s’est fait manipuler. France 2 a soutenu, soutient, son journaliste. À intenté toute une série de procès à mon pote… Qui les a tous gagnés. Pourtant impossible d’obtenir de mea culpa de la chaîne qui continue les procédures.

Et, impossible, pour moi, d’aider ce mec depuis toute ces années. Ma nana, de 2005 à 2010, était est grand reporter au Nouvel Obs (dont Jean Daniel a pris l’initiative de lancer une pétition de soutien à Charles Enderlin).  Je lui ai proposés plusieurs fois de rencontrer Karsenty. NIET. À la fin, je crois que le commencement de la fin,avec elle, date d’une engueulade à ce sujet: “Karsenty était un psychopathe à moitié facho, un abruti qui avait le malheur d’être très à droite, maire adjoint de Neuilly, proche de Sarkozy, et moi un imbécile qui ne méritait pas d’autre explication de son refus”. À un point, citant un de nos copains communs, grand Reporter à Telerama, elle s’est exclamée qu’il avait fait une super enquête qui prouvait ses dires que Karsenty était un taré.

Je me suis procuré l’article du copain dans Telerama… Pas
une fois la parole n’était donné à Karsenty. Alors, j’ai demandé a ce dernier… Et tu t’en doutes déjà, inutile de prolonger le suspense, jamais il n’a rencontré le grand reporter de Telerama qui l’a pourtant assassiné dans son article.

Pire encore sur ce même sujet. J’en ai parlé à mon amie Annick Cojean. Je l’adore et elle est sûrement une des journalistes françaises les plus respectée par ses pairs en France ( grand reporter au Monde, prix Albert Londres et présidente de ce prix), comme dans le monde ( elle est l’auteure de ce best seller mondial, “les proies” en français, sur le harem de khadafi et traduits en plusieurs langues). Elle m’a expliqué qu’une journaliste, également prix Albert Londres, Catherine Gentile, de TF1, avait expliqué au conseil d’administration du prix, qu’elle connaissait vraiment bien Enderlin, que c’était un très grand journaliste et qu’il ne pouvait pas avoir été manipulé et que le cas échéant, il aurait fait acte de contrition. Et, en plus, dixit, “elle avait tout checké, le gosse était bien mort dans les conditions que l’on sait. Elle avait fait l’enquête”.

Très bien. Ai-je dit.  Puis: “Avait-elle rencontré Karsenty”? Renseignements pris par Annick… Tu te doutes de la réponse, Non évidemment.

Annick voulait-elle le rencontrer… Tu te doutes de la réponse ( quoique quelque peu embarrassée).

Et pourquoi, je te raconte tout ça? Et bien, parce qu’enfin, Israël bouge et a décidé de publier les rapports sur l’enquête que l’emmerdeur de Karsenty l’a contrainte de mener et qui conclut que l’enfant n’est très certainement pas mort comme le montrent les images de France 2 et que Karsenty a très certainement raison.

Si tu veux, je t’envoie le lien de l’article. Ça me fait plaisir pour Karsenty…. qui a été traîné dans la boue depuis toute ces années. J’espère qu’on va, enfin, le prendre au sérieux et vérifier ce qu’il avance. Dommage qu’il ne soit pas journaliste… Il serait sûrement le prochain lauréat du prix… Albert Londres!

Commentaires?

The Obama Administration: RIP

Warren Gibson Current Events, Liberty, Politics

OK, that pronouncement is a bit premature. But if the Republicans hold the House next year as seems likely, it’s a done deal. Just keeping track of all the attacks on the administration has become quite a chore. And quite a few of those attacks are coming from Obama’s base of support.

  • The press is howling about the Justice Department’s heavy-handed subpoena of journalists’ phone records. “A fishing expedition for sources and an effort to fend off whistleblowers” is how the New York Times editorial board describes it. This issue isn’t going away any time soon.
  • Then there’s Guantanamo, the closing of which was to be Obama’s first priority upon taking office in 2009. Thus New York Times commentator Joe Nocera:  “The president could have jumped through the hoops Congress now requires and continued moving prisoners out of Guantánamo. But he didn’t. Instead, he froze all transfers, including 56 men from Yemen who had been ‘cleared’ for transfer by a national security commission that Obama himself established. The government, the commission essentially said, has no national security interest in holding these men. Yet Obama continued to let them rot in that Cuban hell. And you wonder why they are on a hunger strike?”
  • Some unions are mad at Obama as Brandon Christensen pointed out on this blog, where he quotes one union’s demand: “repeal or complete reform” of Obamacare.
  • The IRS scandal may have a shorter half-life. The Times correctly points out that Presidential use of the IRS to bludgeon political enemies goes back at least to Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. Still, it’s heartening to see the Tea Party rejuvenated, with street protests and blogs pointing out that thuggish behavior is a long-standing and probably irremediable attribute of the IRS.
  • Waiting in the wings is Dodd-Frank. This financial “reform” act is mostly not yet in effect because the agencies are trying to figure out how to write the rules that will actually put into practice the clear-as-mud intent of the law. It’s a near-certainty that this law has fixed nothing and that another financial crisis will hit, possibly before Obama leaves office.  Already we see signs of bubbles in the housing and stock markets.

“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer,” said Will Rogers. Three years of gridlock, if we’re fortunate enough to get it, should hide away the hammer, at least for a time, from both Congress and the President.

Reading Hayek in Beijing

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , ,

That’s the subject of a fascinating account of life in China through the eyes of a dissident in this last week’s Wall Street Journal. An excerpt:

Put another way, the conventional notion that the modern Chinese system combines political authoritarianism with economic liberalism is mistaken: A more accurate description of the recipe is dictatorship and cronyism, with the results showing up in rampant corruption, environmental degradation and wide inequalities between the politically well-connected and everyone else. “There are two major forms of hatred” in China today, Mr. Yang explains. “Hatred toward the rich; hatred toward the powerful, the officials.” As often as not they are one and the same.

There is more, too: Continue reading →

The Triumph of Liberalism Over Socialism

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , ,

The Economist has a great piece on France’s current socialist government and the scandal of wealth that has recently erupted there. From the report:

Now the Socialist president’s new disclosure rules reveal that seven of his ministers, including his prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, are millionaires.

The French are discreet about money and flinch at ostentatious displays of wealth. So the new rules have prompted much discomfort, with ministers given only a week to declare their wealth. On April 15th Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, who comes from a family of art dealers, duly declared over €6m ($7.9m) of assets, including a flat in Paris worth €2.7m and two country houses. Michèle Delaunay, minister for the elderly, reported €5.2m of assets, including two properties in Bordeaux and two houses in different south-west resorts. Michel Sapin, the labour minister, declared three country houses, some large tracts of farmland and a flat in Paris, for a total of over €2m. Even Mr Ayrault, a former schoolteacher, is a millionaire, with two properties to his name.

Other details raised eyebrows. Cécile Duflot, the Green housing minister who makes much of taking public transport, owns two cars, neither of them electric. Mr Fabius, despite his millions, has a €30,000 overdraft. Arnaud Montebourg, the left-wing industry minister, owns three properties and a Charles Eames armchair worth €4,300. French Socialist ministers turn out to be keen property investors; almost none holds shares.

Mr Hollande hastily devised the new rules after his former budget minister, Jérôme Cahuzac, had confessed to lying about a secret foreign bank account. Until now, only the president had to publish his wealth. Mr Hollande’s 2012 declaration included two flats in Cannes and a villa nearby, valued in all at nearly €1.2m, just under the threshold at which France’s annual wealth tax kicks in.

Now the president wants to extend the disclosure rules to all of France’s deputies. This will be tough. Even Claude Bartolone, the Socialist parliamentary speaker, denounced the exercise as “voyeurism” and expressed fears of the advent of “paparazzi democracy”. And Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fiery hard-left European deputy not bound by the rules, mocked them by revealing on his blog his height and weight, and stating that he owned no paintings, cars, yachts or horses—and did not dye his hair.

Be sure to check out the graphic, too. The reality of the world today is that socialism is truly dead and done. Something else – equally reactionary – will arise in its place to challenge the liberal order’s peace and prosperity, but for the next few decades the world will know nothing but relative calm as it enjoys the benefits brought about by individualism and world trade.

When a new collectivism arrives to challenge liberalism, you can be sure that it will look very much like the collectivisms of old. Do you know what collectivism looks like?

Eye Candy

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , , ,

Just beneath the fold. Continue reading →

L’Amérique et les armes: mise à jour.

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Liberty , , ,

Le taux de crimes à main armée (presque toutes avec armes a feu) a chute environ de moitié depuis 1990.

Pendant la même période, tous les chiffres liées à la possession d’armes privées ont augmenté.

D’accord, ça ne prouve rien. Il n’y a pas nécessairement cause à effet.

Quand même, si je gagnais ma vie le revolver àla main, j’y regarderais à deux fois avant de m’en prendre à un porteur de revolver de calibre plus ou moins égal.

Quand même, si je pensais évoluer dans un milieu où de nombreux citoyens sont armés àtitre privé, je songerais sérieusement à me reconvertir dans la fraude bancaire.

“Europe’s Job Seekers Flock to Germany”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , , ,

That’s the title of a recent piece on immigration in Europe, as told through a Greek family settling down in Germany, by the Wall Street Journal. Among the gems:

Despite the enmity often directed at Berlin for its insistence on painful austerity as the cure for Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis, Germany has become a new land of opportunity for tens of thousands of people fleeing their recession-racked homelands.

Data released Tuesday by the German statistics agency showed immigration hit a 17-year high last year, with the increase from Europe’s crisis-riddled nations “particularly evident.”

And this:

Germany has long had an uneasy relationship with migrants. Previous generations have often integrated poorly, facing high hurdles to gain citizenship—if they even try. Many Germans also believe that migrants come to live off welfare benefits or criminal activity [but] experts say today’s renewed influx of migrants is good for Germany. As its population declines and ages, the nation badly needs qualified workers to fuel economic growth and support its pension and health-care systems […]

The youngest, Nikos, at 15 years old, told his parents he missed his friends. Don’t worry, Mr. Karoustas replied. He’d see them again.

“I don’t hope for it,” the father told his son, “but all of them will come to Germany too.”

Read the whole thing. You can get around the WSJ‘s subscriber firewall by copying-and-pasting the title of piece and Googling it. Once you do that, just click on the article.

See our past notes on the EU here.