federation

A Problem with Political Authority

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Politics , , , , , ,

As a libertarian with deep anarchist leanings, I have plenty of problems with political authority myself. Nevertheless, I find the society in which I live to be libertarian enough, and that any deviation from the rules and procedures in place can be considered to be a threat to my freedom. With this being said, the Wall Street Journal has a great editorial out on the Obama administration’s increasingly authoritarian and cavalier approach to the political process. What I like best about this editorial is that it focuses on one of the Obama administration’s less well-known attempts at consolidating power: that of granting regulators powers that they don’t actually have. Observe:

In re: Aiken County is another episode in the political soap opera about spent-fuel storage at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, an Energy Department project that requires the approval of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission […] Yucca has since been infamously stop-and-go amid opposition from the green lobby and not-in-my-backyard Nevadans and Californians. This particular application was submitted to the NRC in June 2008.

Mr. Obama promised to kill Yucca as a candidate and the Energy Department tried to yank the license application after his election. But an NRC safety board made up of administrative judges ruled unanimously that this was illegal unless Congress passed a law authorizing it. Mr. Obama then teamed up with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to stack the NRC with anti-Yucca appointees.

Although Congress appropriated money to conduct the review, the NRC flat-out refused, in violation of the three-year statutory deadline.

The explanation continues:

A federal court is stating, overtly, that federal regulators are behaving as if they are a law unto themselves. Judge A. Raymond Randolph notes in a concurrence that former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, who has since resigned, “orchestrated a systematic campaign of noncompliance.” If Mr. Jaczko worked on Wall Street he’d be indicted.

Judge Kavanaugh then offers some remedial legal education in “basic constitutional principles” for the President who used to be a constitutional law professor. Under Article II and Supreme Court precedents, the President must enforce mandates when Congress appropriates money, as well as abide by prohibitions. If he objects on constitutional grounds, he may decline to enforce a statute until the case is adjudicated in the courts. “But the President may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections,” writes the court.

That is especially notable given that ObamaCare’s employer-insurance requirement and other provisions are precisely such unambiguous statutory mandates, with hard start dates […] All of this highlights that Mr. Obama is not merely redefining this or that statute as he goes but also the architecture of the U.S. political system.

Indeed. Dr Delacroix has suspected the Obama administration of authoritarianism from the beginning, and it looks as if time has proved him right (which is a good thing for him, given his penchant for missing the mark in foreign affairs). Stay tuned. This blog is just warming up.

La mort d’un jeune homme, le verdict, la montee du fascisme, le racisme.

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law , , , , , , ,

Je suis desole pour le manque d’accents et de cedilles. Avec mon logiciel de traitement de texte americain ils sont simplement trop difficiles a former.

Introduction

Fin Mars 2012, un homme denomme Zimmerman tuait d’un cou de feu un adolescent de dix-sept ans nomme Martin. Je decris le debut de cette affaire dans un rapport intitule: “Un adolescent noir assassine….”

Le treize Juillet 2013, Zimmerman etait acquitte. Je brosse ci-dessous ls principaux faits de la suite de cette affaire. Je mele a cette description mes commentaires et mes opinions, en caracteres gras.

La victime

Ce n’etait pas le jeune garçon joufflu que TV5 – la chaine francophone internationale – a eu l’outrecuidance (ou la betise) de montrer mais un adolescent de dix-sept ans, plutot grand, bine bati. Il aurait pu facilement faire du mal a l’inculpe. (Je ne sais pas s’il l’a fait, bien sur mais il en etait capable, physiquement), un homme un peu courtaud. La main-courante de son ecole indique que Martin etait un petit deliquant, un voleur pour etre precis. Il n’etait pas particulierement pauvre. Lors de sa rencontre fatidique avec l’inculpe il rendait visite a son pere divorce dans un quartier residentiel economiquement un peu superieur a la moyenne.

Lors d’une breve conversation telephonique avec une de ses amies le soir de sa mort, la victime a brievement employe un terme raciste anti-Blanc (“Cracka”).

Absents du dossier: Tous les antecedents judiciaires de la victime s’il y en a . Je ne sais pas s’il y en a. Possible usage de drogue induisant la rage. Continue reading →

From the Comments: Federalism, Local and Global

Brandon Christensen Comments , , , , , ,

From a post of mine on Native American sovereignty, and prompted by the thoughts of readers, I muse a little more:

Hank,

Thanks for the great link. My few thoughts, I am not so sure that Native Americans would choose sovereignty over membership into the federation currently in place. I lived near a reservation in northern California (and I’m sure you have the same sort of deal in Montana) and have some fairly extensive contact with Navajo Indians as well (they prefer the term ‘Indian’ to ‘Native American’, so long as they know you). These are people whose ancestors have fought for the US in all of its major wars over the past century. They are intensely patriotic.

What I think would emerge from working with the Indian tribes is a system where all of the major reservations were turned into regular states (like Montana and California) and the minor ones would just disappear. Indians would then be full-fledged American citizens but could still do what they liked culturally with their heritage, much as everybody else does.

Again, this is what I think would happen. If they wanted full-fledged sovereignty we should grant it (and include generous reparations for stolen property), but I think everybody would opt in for a spot in the federal system we have (despite its shortcomings, it’s still a very, very good system).

This leads to me to an odd-but-perhaps-pertinent musing: I am not so sure that the majority of Europeans, South Koreans and Japanese would want our troops to leave their states. Hear me out on this. Our military essentially provides for the defense of these states, and as a result their these societies are able to use resources that would otherwise go to military expenditures for welfare programs. As Americans, we can see why this is a bad thing, but the states we occupy militarily don’t necessarily think that it is such a bad thing.

As a result, I would be open to our continued occupation of these states under one condition: that traveling, working, starting a business, living, moving, etc., etc. between the US and the states whom we subsidize militarily is as easy to do as it is here in the US. So, for example, moving/etc. from Connecticut to Hesse or Nankaido would be as easy as moving/etc. from Texas to South Dakota. If this were to happen, then I could accept a continued US presence in these regions. What do you think?

Update (6/11): I was inspired to bring this up because of an old post on this subject by Dr Foldvary in the Progress Report. Do be sure to check it out.

Has Foreign Affairs Been Reading NOL?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello all, I signed up for a pretty challenging final quarter here at school, so my postings will probably be scarce for the next two or three months. It seems Foreign Affairs, one of the more sober foreign policy journals out there, is finally starting to read us here at the consortium. I’ll get to that in a minute but first: editorial duties call!

  1. Be sure to read Dr. Delacroix’s Bush-worshiping piece for an example of how obstinate ignorance works. The very man who mocks smart, well-educated people for their acceptance of scientific consensus on global warming as ‘cultists‘ seems to believe that “there were very good reasons for any reasonable person to be misled about the existence of  [WMDs] in Iraq.” You have to admit, the man has a lot of brass!
  2. I still have to get to co-blogger Andrew Roth’s recent comment chastising conservatives and libertarians for failing to recognize the many nuances associated with Bismark’s statecraft and Roosevelt’s New Deal.
  3. We’ve got a couple new writers who will be blogging here at the consortium. One is an economics major at UC Merced and the other is a Guatemalan national doing graduate studies in Denmark, so stay tuned!

Political scientists Roland Benedikter and Lucas Kaelin have a fascinating piece in Foreign Affairs focusing on the one bright spot in Europe these days: Switzerland. Libertarians who have read the political and legal works of Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and James Buchanan will recognize the gist of the arguments right away. To summarize: small, democratic states are the best form of government available to man, given our vast shortcomings, and these small states are, in turn, much better off operating within vast free trade zones that do not hinder the small-scale democracy at work in these states. From the piece: Continue reading →

From the Comments: China and the Future of Nationalism

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events , , , , , , ,

Riffing off of my recent post on Chinese porn searches, Dr. Delacroix writes:

This piece is opening a big closed book about contemporary China. Many Western intellectuals keep pretending that Chinese society and contemporary Chinese culture are inscrutable. I am one of these but I can’t fool myself forever: The pretense is largely a way to avoid commenting on what we really, readily see […]

Think of the psychological implications of having no interest in seeing how others do it! Does it imply anything about the extent of the otherness of others?

Dr. Delacroix goes on to encourage more research on China in the near future and rightly points out that libertarians have not adequately studied the region. I wholeheartedly agree on this point. Libertarianism is extremely weak in most areas of intellectual pursuit. In fact, the only reason libertarianism has any clout at all in academia is because it has a strong showing in two of the most important academic fields of inquiry: economics and philosophy. Perhaps this blog will contribute towards shrinking that gap.

My own impulse is to look at institutions for cultural, economic and political explanations of society. I’ll have more on this later, but another fascinating post by Shanghaiist on the Russian state’s recent debut on Weibo (the Chinese version of Twitter) is worth highlighting. From the report:
Continue reading →

The Holy Roman Empire was…

Brandon Christensen History, Law, Liberty , , , ,

…_______________ (fill in the blank!).

I’ve been meaning to link to a fascinating article in the Economist on the parallels between the Holy Roman Empire and the European Union, but travels, getting ready for school, and other stuff has gotten in the way.

Among the gems:

The empire faced the same problem as today’s EU, only worse. The EU currently has 27 member states. During its final 150 years, the empire had more than 300 territories (the number varied). Should each member get one vote? If so, any hillbilly could block progress. Or should votes be weighted by territory? If so, big princes could bully little ones. Should decisions be taken by simple majority, qualified majority or unanimity? The empire answered these questions as the EU does: with a characteristically decisive it-all-depends.

Do read the whole thing.

My only critique of the article is that it misses a huge piece of the puzzle: the presence of the US military, as a conquering power, on the continent. As long as Uncle Sam is around, Europeans don’t have to worry about descending into yet another war. None of them will ever admit this, though. Europeans would rather spend their time ignoring this point while simultaneously assaulting the very political and economic system that enables the US to provide for Europe’s security.

I’ve written about this before, but due to the inevitable fiscal constraints of empire I think American military policy towards Europe needs to go one of two ways: 1) either withdraw our troops completely or 2) start implementing trade policies that would make living, working, and traveling between the US and Europe much, much easier. Like moving to Louisiana from Languedoc should be as easy as moving from California to Connecticut.

Taking the second route would pay for itself and much, much more. Unfortunately, there are too many isolationists and too many reactionaries (mostly on the Left) on both sides of the pond that would oppose such a policy no matter how much it would benefit themselves and everybody around them. The second route might be the one we need to take. Both, as I mentioned, are going to have to be necessary if the US is going to get its fiscal house in order.

The Case for More States in Africa? Anarchy, State or Utopia?

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

Yes please! There is an old article in the Atlantic arguing that more states are just what Africa needs, and I’d like to highlight why I think more states are a good thing, and at the same time pick up Dr. Delacroix’s argument on states and libertarianism from a little while back and explain why I think that more states are a good thing and why Dr. Delacroix doesn’t really understand libertarian thought.

Now, I know more states seems at first glance to be a counterintuitive position for a libertarian to take, but upon second glance I hope to show you why this isn’t true.

First up, from the Atlantic‘s article:

The idea that Africa suffers from too few secessionist campaigns, too few attempts to carve a few large nations into many smaller ones, flies in the face of conventional wisdom. One of the truisms of African politics is that traditional borders, even when bequeathed by colonizers without the least sympathy for African political justice, ought to be respected. The cult of colonial borders has been a cornerstone not only of diplomacy between African nations but of the assistance programs of foreign governments and multinational non-governmental organizations.

I’ve pointed this out from a number of different angles previously here on the blog, so I don’t want to delve too deeply into this, but the article, written by a professor of journalism at Arizona State, has more: Continue reading →

A European Union of More Nations?

Brandon Christensen Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

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 →

Separatism (Secession) in Spain, and the Rest of the World

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

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!

The UN Sucks

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , ,

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 →

States and Secession: Lamenting the Failure of the Euro Zone

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

The Guardian has a so-so map on secessionist movements in Africa that’s worth checking out. I say it’s only so-so because it doesn’t really cover all the secessionist movements in the region, just the violent ones or the ones favored by Western diplomats.

I’m interested in secessionist movements because of the effects that they have on nationalism, one of the most dangerous ideologies to haunt mankind since the industrial revolution. Nationalism is probably worse than racism, or at least on par with it, when it comes to ideas gone horribly wrong.

That’s why I support free trade between states, and the deeper the better. The true tragedy of the EuroZone crisis is not the inevitable and predictable collapse of the euro but the fact that anti-liberal policies like the central bank and more political integration between states (and away from the people) are being misconstrued as liberal, in the classical sense.

The smaller the states the better, and the freer the trade the better. Mexicans should be able to travel and live in the US and Canada the same way that Nevadans are able to travel and live in California. The EuroZone could have been beautiful, but the pressure for a central bank and more control from a center, in Brussels, has probably ended it. It’s a good primer on how beautiful ideas often don’t pan out the way people would like them to.

Here’s how to fix the EuroZone crisis:

  1. Eliminate the monopoly of the central bank on creating money and credit.
  2. Open up the EuroZone market to more goods from the rest of the world (especially agricultural products from developing states).

I also think it’d be a good idea to keep Brussels as limited as it is. Doing so will not only allow more room for local policies to be experimented with and tested against other policies, but it will continue to erode the nation-state as well. What we were seeing prior to the crisis in the EuroZone is more calls for autonomy from state capitals throughout the EuroZone,  and a powerlessness on the part of states to do anything about it.

So instead of France and Spain, two states, the world may have seen up to five or six states in their stead, all interacting with each other economically while retaining nominal political independence from each other.

What a shame.

Libertarian Internationalism and the Problem of World Government

Brandon Christensen Law , , , ,

Recently, I posted some musings on the writings of many libertarian intellectuals concerning world government. It is important to distinguish, really quickly and in blog form, that libertarians are internationalists, and internationalists are individualists. Indeed, the only logical conclusion of individualism is internationalism.

When libertarians speak of world government, though, we are not speaking of economic planning as has been undertaken by national governments (vigorously and largely unopposed) since the turn of the 20th century. Indeed, Hayek saw the problems we now see with supranational economic planning in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom: Continue reading →

Somaliland in the News

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law , , , , , , , ,

Reports the BBC:

Leaders from Somalia and Somaliland have held their first formal discussions on the future of the self-proclaimed Somaliland republic.

It broke away in 1991 and wants to be a separate country – but it has not been internationally recognised.

Mogadishu wants the northern territory to be part of a single Somali state.

Since declaring independence, Somaliland has enjoyed relative peace in contrast to the rest of Somalia, which has been plagued by conflict […]

It was the first time in 21 years that there had been formal, direct contact between the authorities in Mogadishu, and the Somaliland administration, which used to be a British colony, whereas southern Somalia was governed by Italy.

The two sides agreed the talks should continue and, in a declaration, they called on their respective presidents to meet as soon as possible – this could be as early as next week in Dubai.

They also called on the international community to help provide experts on legal, economic and security matters, which our correspondent says are all issues that will need to be addressed in clarifying the future relationship between Somalia and Somaliland.

This is great news! Continue reading →

Scotland, the Sudan, and Federalism Done Right

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , ,

[new title]

I have been blogging a lot lately on political decentralization and secession as tool for furthering this process.  I am one of those people who thinks that Karl Marx had a lot of stuff right, even though he got some other important stuff very, very wrong.  His prediction of the withering away of the state is something that I think will eventually come true, and I hope it does, too.

Anyway, I don’t mean to suggest, when I advocate secession as a way to further political decentralization, that every time secession does happen that it will turn out great.  Just look at the US Civil War.  Or we can look at what is going on in parts of the world today.  Here is an excerpt from an Economist report on the latest developments between Sudan and South Sudan (what an incredibly dull name for a new country, by the way…): Continue reading →

African Political Structures: A Debate

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

I just hooked a big fish on the end of my line when I tweeted about my support for secession of Azawad to Dr. George Ayittey, an economist at American University and one of Africa’s leading lights of classical liberalism.  I have a talent for ribbing people in just the right place at just the right time, and the following response I got from Dr. Ayittey confirms my magnificent talent (some may disagree with the label ‘talent’, but I digress).

In response to my support for Azawad, Dr. Ayittey tweeted the following: Continue reading →