- A libertarian review of Chappaquiddick Stephen Cox, Liberty Unbound
- The 19th century war on dogs Livia Gershon, JSTOR Daily
- The NBA is thriving because it has embraced individualism Douglas French, National Review
- After reading this, I can’t imagine why… Anar Parikh, Anthro{dendum}
Brazilian senator Gleisi Hoffmann sends weird message to “Arab World”
Earlier this week, Brazilian senator Gleisi Hoffmann, president of the Worker’s Party (of the jailed former president Lula da Silva), sent a message to “the Arab World” through Al Jazeera TV to, in her words, “denounce that Lula is a political prisoner.” Hoffmann blames the Brazilian judiciary system, Globo TV (a major mass media in Brazil), American and European oil companies, and even the US Department of State for Lula’s arrest. At the end of the video, she invites everyone (I assume she means everyone in the “Arab World”) to join her in the fight to free Lula.
Hoffmann’s message is very weird, to say the least. What is she expecting? An Arab intervention in Brazil to free Lula? If that is so, she is committing high treason. To say the least, the Worker’s Party is a bad joke. If Lula needs foreign intervention, then how can Hoffmann say that he enjoys full support in his country? The truth is that Lula is history. I would very much like to stop writing about this. But it seems that, while people like Hoffmann are still in power, there is work to do.
“Top 10 Things That Tipped Off Revolutionary War”
That’s the title of my weekend column over at RealClearHistory. Check it out:
5. The continued quartering of British soldiers. Imagine, for a moment, an Iraqi household being forced to give room and board to an American or a Polish soldier in 2005. That’s not quite what happened in the North American colonies but it’s not a far cry, either. The colonists of North America considered themselves to be British subjects of the Crown, and most were proud to be. (In fact, a little further down the list, you’ll see why the Americans, as rebels, were so adamant about liberalizing citizenship laws.) A much better analogy would be to imagine the LAPD or the Texas National Guard forcing households to give quarter to soldiers. The analogy is better, but the picture is still a frightening one.
Please, read the rest. The other 9 are also good. Heck, you might even learn something new…
Nightcap
- Syria: the knowledge problem Chris Dillow, Stumbling and Mumbling
- Why tribal sovereignty is so important Ryan McMaken Mises Wire
- Seattle baseball fans are eating grasshoppers, not hot dogs Eric Gomez, ESPN
- Art, science, and political economy Peter Boettke, Coordination Problem
The problem with Brazil (and it’s not socialism)
The problem with Brazil is not Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. It’s not the Worker’s Party. It’s not Socialism.
Certainly one of the most important politicians in Brazilian History was Getulio Vargas. Vargas came to power in a coup (that symptomatically most Brazilian historians call a revolution) in 1930. He ended up staying in power, without ever being elected by popular vote, until 1945. Then he peacefully resigned, not without electing his chosen successor, Eurico Gaspar Dutra. Vargas came back to power immediately after Dutra, and committed suicide while in office. Almost all Brazilian presidents from 1945 to 1964 were from Vargas’ close circle.
Brazilians to this day are still taught that Vargas was a hero, persecuted by an evil opposition. Initially, Vargas was some kind of Brazilian positivist. He was anti-liberal because liberalism is weak and slow. We need a strong technical government, able to identify problems and come with solutions fast. However, while in office, he became “the father of the poor,” a defensor of the lower classes. Nothing could be farther from the truth, of course, but that’s how Vargas is remembered by many.
One of my favorite interpretation of Brazil comes from Sergio Buarque de Holanda. According to Holanda, the problem with Brazil is that Brazilians are cordial. What he means by that is this: using Weber’s models of authority, he identified that Brazilians were never able to support a Legal-Rational authority. Vargas was seen as “a father.” not a president. The country is seen as a big family. Lula used a very similar vocabulary and tried to reenact Vargas’ populism.
As I mentioned, Holanda’s interpretation is Weberian. Weber’s most famous book is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The problem with Brazil is that it never went through a protestant reformation. And because of that, it never developed the “spirit of capitalism” that Weber describes. Brazil is still, to a great degree, stuck with traditional and charismatic forms of authority.
To be sure, Brazil has many features of a modern liberal state. Since late 18th century Portugal tried to copy these from more advanced nations, especially England. Brazil followed suit. But you can’t have the accidents without the substance. Unless Brazil actually goes through a transformation in its soul, it will never become the modern liberal state many want it to be. Quoting Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, “An ignorant people will always choose Rosas.”
Nightcap
- A profile of new NY Fed Chairman John Williams Tate Lacey, Alt-M
- How to win a trade war Oliver Roeder, FiveThirtyEight
- The road to Iranian democracy Luma Simms, Law and Liberty
- Where Arnold Kling gets his news Arnold Kling, askblog
Brazilian Senator Aécio Neves close to jail
Brazilian Senator Aécio Neves is close to the jail. He is charged with corruption and obstruction of justice.
Aécio Neves is one of the main leaders of PSDB, the party that, especially since 1994, has been the main electoral opposition to the Worker’s Party (PT) of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president from 1995 to 2002, is also in the PSDB. Neves was presidential candidate in the last elections, in 2014, and was really close to defeating Dilma Rousseff, the candidate of PT that was later impeached.
The Aécio Neves trial is extremely symptomatic in Brazilian politics. There are no popular manifestations in his favor. No political analyst is claiming that he is innocent and being unjustly accused. In other words, the contrast between Aécio Neves and Lula, recently sent to jail under a lot of noise, couldn’t be greater.
A popular phrase in Brazil is very telling. The translation to English loses the rhyme, but here it goes: when Lula was facing trial, some militants of PT carried signs saying “Lula is my friend, you mess with him, you mess with me.” Former Aécio voters later carried signs saying “Aécio is not my friend, if you mess with him I couldn’t care less.” As usual, the right is right.
“Horrors Didn’t End When Bataan Death March Did”
That’s the title of last week‘s Tuesday post over at RealClearHistory. I’ve been so busy I forgot to share it here. Check it out:
Camp O’Donnell was no relief from the Death March of Bataan. In it, disease spread like wildfire and starvation was rampant. The Japanese, who were fighting Americans elsewhere and Filipino guerrillas close by, had no empathy for their prisoners. The prisoners who survived the harsh march from Bataan had another 3 ½ years of hard manual labor in prison camps to look forward to, if they survived the horrific conditions of the camps.
As the Allies began slowly retaking the Philippines from Japanese forces, these prisoners of war were shipped from one of the 70 prisoner camps on the archipelago to China and Japan itself to continue their slave labor for the Empire. The Japanese shipped these prisoners to the mainland on unmarked vessels, a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and it’s possible that the American and British Navies may have inadvertently sunk a number of these vessels.
Please, read the rest.
Nightcap
- Syria’s humanitarian disaster is fast becoming a global crisis Bob Seely, CapX
- Trump is celebrating torture, not tolerating it Andrew Sullivan, Daily Intelligencer
- The brutal legacy of childhood trauma Junot Díaz, New Yorker
- Which countries get the most sleep? James Tozer, 1843
Time for optimism in Brazil
If you only read left-leaning newspapers, things might appear dismal in Brazil right now. But I am very convinced that it isn’t so.
With former president Lula in jail, it becomes more and more likely that Jair Messias Bolsonaro will be Brazil’s next president.
I already wrote about Bolsonaro here. To sum things up, I don’t think that he is a libertarian champion. Far from it. There are many things about Bolsonaro that will displease those who are more market-friendly. He is still too nationalistic in his economic thinking. He fails to see how awful the military government in Brazil (1964-1985) was (even though the alternative – Brazil turning into a South-American USSR – was even worse). But Bolsonaro represents something extremely important: the left is losing the culture war in Brazil. After decades of hegemony in Brazil, Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School seem to be on the ropes. People are so sick and tired of cultural Marxism that they are willing to elect someone whose agenda is to fight against it.
Maybe a world with Bolsonaro president is not the best of worlds. Maybe he is very much a Brazilian Donald Trump. But it is certainly good to know that cultural Marxism is turning against itself and that now Brazilians might be willing to elect a president that, although only moderately market-friendly, is not ashamed to call himself a conservative.
Pot smoking and freedom: ‘Murica!
My latest Tuesday column over at RealClearHistory takes aim at the history of marijuana in the United States. I’ve got a 600 word limit, but hopefully I packed in plenty of info. Here’s an excerpt:
During the much-loathed Prohibition era (1920-33), marijuana was targeted along with alcohol and other substances deemed immoral by bootleggers and Baptists. Unlike alcohol, which was re-legalized in 1933, marijuana ended up in a legal limbo that continues to this day. The legal, political, economic, and cultural battles surrounding marijuana use in the United States have helped shape three generations of lawyers, businesspeople, activists, academics, and medical professionals. Thanks to the questions posed by marijuana prohibition, rigorous and creative arguments in favor of the drug’s legalization have contributed to a better understanding of our federal system of government, of Judeo-Christian morality, and non-Western ethical systems (pot-smoking “Buddhists” are practically cliche today), of the human body and especially the brain, of global trading networks throughout history, and of intercultural exchange and communication. Freedom still defines us as a society. Freedom binds Americans together. Freedom drives our conversations and our institutional actors. This may be difficult to remember as the news cycle grows ever more sensational, but this quiet, humble truth still remains.
Please, read the rest.
Nightcap
- Skripal Case Descends into a Propaganda War der Spiegel
- American options in the face of Turkish-YPG crisis Burak Kadercan, War on the Rocks
- Syria’s Nuclear Program Was Always a Doomed Idea Robert Farley, National Interest
- How George HW Bush dodged death by cannibalism in WWII Jennifer Wright, RealClearLife
Monarchical Brazil was not a conservative paradise
Seems to me that there is a strong tendency between contemporary Brazilian conservatives to consider the Brazilian Empire (1822-1889) a golden age in Brazilian history. Many Brazilian conservatives are now defending the monarchy as an ideal form of government for Brazil.
As someone said, “the more we change, the more we remain the same.” Brazil became independent from Portugal in 1822. The independence was officially proclaimed by Dom Pedro I, son of Dom João VI, the king of Portugal. I think that maybe Brazilians are so acquainted with this fact that they don’t realize how crazy it is: the prince of Portugal declared the independence of Brazil! That didn’t happen because Dom Pedro fought with his father. By all accounts, father and son enjoyed the best relationship possible. Dom Pedro declared Brazil’s independence because if he didn’t, someone else would.
Dom Pedro’s independence was just one among many others. Tiradentes tried to proclaim the independence of [at least part of] Brazil in 1789, basically 30 years before Dom Pedro! And this is just one example! Tiradentes independence was not successful because it was averted by Portugal. Dom Pedro’s independence was successful because he was Portugal (ok, he wasn’t Portugal, but he was part of it)!
The fact that Brazil’s independence was proclaimed by a Portuguese monarch gives a very special meaning to what means to be conservative in Brazil. Today, in the US, one may call himself a conservative because he defends the ideas of Thomas Jefferson. But in his day Thomas Jefferson was a radical! A rebel who revolted against the British monarchy. Dom Pedro was not exactly a rebel. He wanted, to a great degree, to maintain things just the way they were. Certainly, many of his supporters were afraid of a more radical independence movement. To say the least, Brazil’s independence was a compromise between radicals and conservatives.
Brazilian monarchy avoided many reforms, inspired by classical liberalism, that were happening in other places. To give just one example (in my personal view, the most glaring), Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery (in 1888). I don’t blame Dom Pedro I for this. I also don’t blame his son, Dom Pedro II, who ended up being emperor for the majority of the monarchical period (1840-1889). But the fact is that the monarchy maintained many of the privileges inherited from Portugal, and avoided reforms that Anglo-American conservatives would support.
Brazilian conservatives have to be careful with the use of this word. To be a conservative in Brazil is not necessarily the same as being a conservative in England or the US.
Nightcap
- Religion and human rights Bruce Clark, Erasmus
- Voltaire and the Buddha Donald Lopez, Public Domain Review
- The politics of the past in Europe and Russia Douglas Smith, LA Review of Books
- Lessons unlearned, empire falls Niall Ferguson, Vanity Fair
Eye Candy: Kurdistan
Countries with significant Kurdish populations in the Near East: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
Countries with significant Kurdish populations in the Near East that the United States has bombed or put boots on the ground in: Iraq and Syria.
Countries with significant Kurdish populations in the Near East that the United States has threatened to bomb and possibly invade: Iran.
Countries with significant Kurdish populations in the Near East that the United States is allied with: Turkey.
Three of the four countries with significant Kurdish populations in the Near East are (or was, in the case of Iraq) considered hostile to the US government, so the use of Kurds to further American Realpolitik in the region is almost obvious, until you consider that Turkey has been a longtime ally of Washington.
Suppose you’re a big-time Washington foreign policy player. Do you arm Kurdish militias in Syria, encourage continued political autonomy in Kurdish Iraq, finance Kurdish discontent in Iran, and shrug your shoulders at Istanbul? Seriously, what do you do in this situation?
Notes On Liberty 