- Foucault, Max Weber, and Hayek Eric Schliesser, Digressions & Impressions
- It’s been a bad week in America Andrew J Cohen, Prosocial Libertarians
- Summer 2008 redux? David Glasner, Uneasy Money
- Meanwhile, in Iraq…
Iraq
Nightcap
- What did John Calvin think about economics? Steven Wedgeworth, Calvinist International
- The ethnocultural borderlands of early Maoist China Benno Weiner, Age of Revolutions
- Burning books Akram Aylisli (interview), Los Angeles Review of Books
- Ivy League English departments and low culture Mark Bauerlein, Modern Age
- “But Maliki was supported both by Iran and by the United States.” John Jenkins, New Statesman
Nightcap
- David Graeber, 1961–2020 New York Review of Books
- Eat the Buddha: China & Tibet Rana Mitter, Literary Review
- Understanding the path to Iraq Joseph Stieb, WOTR
- Against space exploration Andrew Szarejko, Law & Liberty
Nightcap
- Professional Libertarians and the posts they delete Irfan Khawaja, Policy of Truth
- Small business, bankruptcy, and the Federal Reserve George Selgin, Alt-M
- This is the best left-wing essay on capitalism I’ve read in years Jodi Dean, LARB
- Iraq has a new government Douglas Ollivant, War on the Rocks
RCH: Iraq, then and now
Folks, I’m still plugging away at RealClearHistory. This week’s focus was on Iraq. Here’s the link to my Tuesday column. And here’s the link to my weekend column. I’m not going to spoil anything. Just read ’em already!
RCH: MacArthur’s rule over Japan
That’s the subject of my latest over at RealClearHistory. An excerpt:
The relative graciousness of the American occupation of Japan led to the most peaceful and prosperous era in Japanese history. MacArthur’s governing strategy for a conquered people was so successful that it was aped by Washington in 2001 and 2003 when the United States invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. What went wrong? You could write a dissertation trying to answer that question, but the most straightforward answer is that Iraq and Afghanistan were not conquered. The governments of Kabul and Baghdad never officially surrendered to Washington, and they never really had the capacity to wage war the way that Japan was able to wage war on the United States.
As always, I appreciate the clicks…
Nightcap
- West Coast jazz revival Ted Gioia, City Journal
- Augustine’s Cogito David Potts, Policy of Truth
- Iraq: A failure of ideas Sam Roggeveen, War on the Rocks
- Confucian patriarchy and the allure of communism in China Alan Roberts, Not Even Past
Nightcap
- ISIS never went away in Iraq Krishnadev Calamur, the Atlantic
- In search of “real” socialism Kristian Niemietz, CapX
- Localism and its trade-offs Jason Sorens, Law & Liberty
- Latin America’s greatest storyteller Thomas Meany, Claremont Review of Books
Nightcap
- The transformation of the liberal political tradition in the nineteenth century Pamela Nogales, Age of Revolutions
- Kurds have conditions for an alliance with Shiites in Iraq Omar Sattar, Al-Monitor
- Mau-Mauing Myself Harry Stein, City Journal
- Is the sharing economy exploitative? Per Bylund, Power & Market
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?
Nightcap
- How Men In The Middle Ages Dealt With Gossiping Wives Katie Serena, ATI
- King’s Men & Bum’s-bailiffs Jonathan Healy, Social Historian
- Trump Shouldn’t Talk to Feds. And Neither Should You Ken White, Reason
- Frankenstein in Baghdad Robin Yassin-Kassab, New Statesman
Lunchtime Links
- oil and Kurdistan
- after Raqqa, Iraq’s army turns on Kurdistan
- “There has been a common and unfortunate tendency among many analysts and policy makers to underestimate the strength of Iraqi nationalism”
- separatist movements in Europe don’t actually want independence
- GREAT topic, but poor methodology, poor theory, poor use of data, and bad faith
- meh (try this book review instead)
- Law without the State [pdf]
Worth a gander
- good update on the mayhem in the Middle East
- as good as that update is, though: Iraq, Saudi Arabia to reopen border crossings after 27 years
- great read on Russia’s Far East and Russia’s travel writing genre
- in Russia, Lutheranism (Protestantism) is considered a “traditional” religion (h/t NEO)
- how social is reason?
BC’s weekend reads
- Who’s who in Hamburg’s G20 protests
- “But, if Marxism is not inevitable, it is nothing. Ronald Reagan, with his abiding fear that the Evil Empire would spread without intervention, was, in this sense, a much better Marxist than David Roediger could ever hope to be.“
- It’s business as usual between Turkey and the EU
- “So far there is not much sign of the fresh dawn that IS’s downfall should bring.“
- Hell Makes the News
BC’s weekend reads
- “[…] many Chinese people believe it should be the United States, European states, or at least Arab states that resettle Middle Eastern refugees, based on the logic of ‘punishing’ those who caused the problem in the first place.“
- ‘It was the biggest explosion I have ever experienced.’
- Why Saudi Arabia hates Al-Jazeera
- “The money spent on Aboriginal language television programming could have been spent on something else, and that something else would also have created jobs. What is special about Aboriginal language television programming?“
- Cool map, bro
Notes On Liberty 