Op-ed: The Dishonor of Militarism   noreply@blogger.com (Sheldon Richman) at Free Association (Thursday, September 02)

[T]he U.S. government has committed the greatest imaginable betrayal of American values as professed in the Declaration of Independence: Born in rebellion against an empire, America now is the empire against which others rebel.

Koched to the Gills   Roderick at Austro-Athenian Empire » Left-Libertarian (Thursday, September 02)

Predictably, what Jesse Walker has to say about the Kochs is more interesting than what the corporate-liberal media have been saying.

This one's gotta smart ...   KN@PPSTER at KN@PPSTER (Wednesday, September 01)

Christians: Tell Me How I'm Wrong   James Leroy Wilson at Independent Country (Tuesday, August 31)

Reading E. H. Gombrich   Andrew B. Watt at Andrew B. Watt's Blog » Summary Sentence (Wednesday, September 01)

Last June, I had to decide on a book for my incoming students to read over the summer, in about 30 minutes. Maybe it was less, maybe it was more — it was certainly less than a day of time.

I’d been reading E.H. Gombrich’s Little History of the World, originally written in German in 1935 and published in 1936. It’s an enjoyable read, if a bit Eurocentric, and pedantic in a way that only early/mid-20th century literature can be. So I chose it, on something of a whim. I admit that sometimes we teachers decide on a course of action without thinking it through all the way first.

But as comments came in from parents, I realized I’d created for myself a golden opportunity. Some parents and teachers loved the book. Some parents worried that it was too Eurocentric. Some worried about the portrayal of Islam; others worried about the portrayal of Judaism. Some colleagues enjoyed its friendliness and accessibility. And gradually, a ruthless plan began to take shape in my mind. By the beginning of August, I had a clear sense of what I would do, and how I would do it.

Which is why, in class today, my sixth graders read through the copyright page for the information about Gombrich’s life, his work, and his times. Then we started the process of reading his last chapter, written near the end of his life. And then I dropped the bombshell.

“So let’s think about this,” I said. “We have here a historian writing in the 1930s, when his nation is already subject to Nazi law. He’s writing for children, in German, for kids who are already being indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth and being trained to accept the dictates of Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

And then I said, “Your fifth grade teachers told you not to trust Wikipedia… that it could have been written by anybody. That it could be misleading, or it could contain wrong information. Or that it could be deliberately faked, or biased.”

They all nodded.

“What about Books? Should we trust Gombrich? Or should we be suspicious of almost anything he writes?”

Concern About Police Secrecy = “Tilting at Windmills”?   Radley Balko at The Agitator (Wednesday, September 01)

My column this week was about the continuing secrecy of Virginia’s largest police departments and the way the state’s law enforcement community is opposing efforts to make the departments even marginally more transparent. The journalist sounding the alarm about all of this is Michael Pope, who writes for Northern Virginia’s Connection Newspapers, and contributes to D.C. NPR affiliate WAMU.

But Pope’s series of articles inspired this strange reaction from the editor of the Sun Gazette, another Northern Virginia regional paper (motto: “Reaching the most affluent audience in the Washington D.C. metro area”).

Stop Tilting at Windmills, Connectionerinos

The Connection newspaper chain, which is hanging in there by seemingly defying the laws of economics, has a new cause to champion.

The paper’s Arlington edition, and presumably others, ran a story this week about the ability of Virginia’s public-safety agencies to shield information from the view of the public and the press.

I think this whole folderol dates back to last year’s arrest of the Alexandria police chief on a DWI charge in Arlington. Let’s just say Arlington police weren’t as forthcoming as they might have been, going so far as to charge news outlets for costs related to providing some of the meager information they released.

The back story to this appears to be that the reporter involved with this story used to work in Florida (as did I!), where open-records laws are great for the press. Just about everything is open to public review down there.

But the article goes a bit too far with a sub-headline that says “Secret Police?” as if Northern Virginia was akin to East Germany, and terms what public-safety agencies do a “code of silence.”

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Nobody cares except some freedom-of-the-press types. Hey, I’m a freedom-of-the-press type, and even I don’t care all that much.

Actually, the “whole folderol” took off when Fairfax County police shot and killed an unarmed man during a traffic stop last year, and have since refused to release the police reports, dash cam footage, or even the officer’s name.

Wednesday Lazy Linking   Rad Geek at Rad Geek People's Daily (Wednesday, September 01)

• Three Shalt Thou Count. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-08-30). The debates in the comments section of my Koch post have gotten me thinking about the different ways in which vulgar libertarianism operates. I think there are three. 1) First, there’s the use of libertarian slogans as mere rhetorical covering for corporatist policies. This kind of vulgar libertarianism is standard... (Linked Monday 2010-08-30.)

• C4SS in the MSM. Roderick, Austro-Athenian Empire (2010-08-30). Congratulations to Ross Kenyon, whose latest C4SS piece has been picked up by the Christian Science Monitor! (Linked Monday 2010-08-30.)

• The Cold, Crisp Taste of Koch. Jesse Walker, Jesse Walker: Reason Magazine articles and blog posts. (2010-08-31). From Frank Rich's rehash of Jane Mayer's recent hit piece on the philanthropizin' oilmen Charles and David Koch: When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security,... (Linked Tuesday 2010-08-31.)

• Why does the Infrastructurist hate libertarians so much? rationalitate, Market Urbanism (2010-08-25). by Stephen Smith Among urban planners, libertarianism gets a pretty bad rap. Melissa Lafsky at the Infrastructurist goes so far as to call libertarianism “an enemy of infrastructure,” and dismisses entirely the idea that private industry can build infrastructure with a single hyperlink – to a poorly-written article on New Zealand’s... (Linked Tuesday 2010-08-31.)

• Argumentum ad un-Americanum. Will Wilkinson, Will Wilkinson (2010-08-27). This Forbes column by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins arguing that the government should stop subsidizing homeownership was skipping along predictably but just fine until… When the government encourages homeownership, the story goes, it strengthens individuals and communities and thereby fosters the American Dream. They’re wrong. A government crusade to... (Linked Tuesday 2010-08-31.)

• Why Do Futurists Get So Much Wrong? Steven Horwitz, The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty (2010-08-25). The Austrian economist Ludwig Lachmann once walked into the colloquium room at New York University, where the blackboard displayed this quotation: “When it comes to the future, one word says it all: You never know. – Y. Berra.” Having built much of his economics on the unknowability of the future,... (Linked Tuesday 2010-08-31.)

• Scary scary news scary! admin, This Modern World (2010-08-31). Scary scary news scary! (Linked Tuesday 2010-08-31.)

Grassroots Organizing: 1930s Style   stuartbramhall at The Most Revolutionary Act (Wednesday, September 01)

The mainstream media makes out like the economic collapse is just something that happened to us. Some greedy banksters gambled with trillions of dollars of our money and in the process, also committed embezzlement, fraud and theft. Now the money is gone, and we just have to live with it. Millions of Americans lose their jobs, homes, savings and pensions. But instead of sending the banksters responsible to jail, the government gives Wall Street trillions of dollars of TARP bail-outs and the CEOs responsible get billions of dollars in golden parachutes and pensions.

Then the government turns around and tells working people they have to tighten their belts – in addition to paying more sales tax, they have to accept pay cuts, longer working hours, loss of public services (such as teachers, libraries, police, street lighting, road and bridge repair, and health clinics). Because there’s no money left to keep the economy going. That’s just how it is.

Now, in the last week, they’re feeding us a new line about a so-called “double dip” recession. In other words, over the next few months we should expect things to get even worse – there will be even more job losses and wage and social service cuts. We might even need to cut Social Security and Medicare. Meanwhile corporate America is once again making out like bandits. Corporate profits are shooting up again, and CEO bonuses are growing handsomely.

The “Economic Crisis” is Really an Attack on American Workers

I just don’t buy it. Any of it. In fact, I believe there is overwhelming evidence that Wall Street and Washington are simply using the global economic crisis to justify a massive attack on the working class. I think there is a clear agenda to cut labor costs by reducing US workers to Third World status in terms of wages, working conditions and social services. Obviously this is much more expedient than continually closing down factories and moving them to Mexico and Asia.

Fighting Back

Fortunately I am no longer alone in seeing the “economic crisis” for what it is: an attack on working Americans.  It’s also gratifying to see workers beginning to organize to fight back – and to acknowledge the need for intensive cross-class, cross-gender, cross-cultural organizing not seen in the US since the 1930s recession (which, in many ways, was also a systematic attack on workers).

Concern About Police Secrecy = "Tilting at Windmills"?   Radley Balko at Hit & Run (Wednesday, September 01)

FAQ against the current court system   Francois Tremblay at Check Your Premises (Wednesday, September 01)

I have written this FAQ in order to answer common arguments given by US courts to justify their twisted and degraded practice of the doctrine of jury duty, and the court system in general.

…

Rape case re-opened in Sweden against Wikileaks founder Assange   Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing (Wednesday, September 01)

Ross Kenyon on Thinking Liberty   Brad Spangler at Center for a Stateless Society (Wednesday, September 01)

C4SS News Analyst Darian Worden and others host a really great online talk show called Thinking Liberty. Their guest last night was our own Ross Kenyon. Listen here.

Schulman Leaves C4SS Advisory Panel   Brad Spangler at Center for a Stateless Society (Wednesday, September 01)

Earlier today, award winning science-fiction author and close Konkin associate J. Neil Schulman resigned from the C4SS Advisory Panel and his resignation was regretfully accepted. We wish him well.

Charles Johnson: Opposing the Civil Rights Act Means Opposing Civil Rights?   Brad Spangler at Center for a Stateless Society (Wednesday, September 01)

Charles Johnson, Molinari Institute Board of Directors and C4SS Advisory Panel member, asks “Opposing the Civil Rights Act Means Opposing Civil Rights?” in The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education.

Johnson was also a recent guest on Internet talk show Thinking Liberty, hosted by our own Darian Worden and others. Listen here.

Competition is Theft   Kevin Carson at Center for a Stateless Society (Wednesday, September 01)

In one of Nina Paley’s cartoons (she wrote the song “Copying is Not Theft,” which you should look up at YouTube just as soon as you finish reading this), one of the characters says “Copying a song instead of buying a copy is stealing!”  His friend says “Doing  for yourself what you could pay someone else to do is stealing!”  Together:  “Competition is theft!”  That’s pretty much the actual operating philosophy of capitalism as we know it.

Capitalism is commonly defined as being about “private property.”  And it is — but not in the sense that “property” would be used in a genuinely free market (i.e., property resulting from the products of our own labor and peaceful exchange).  “Property rights” under capitalism, as we know it, are about the right to control access to natural opportunities.

The Marxist Maurice Dobb, in “Theories of Value and Distribution,” raised the hypothetical example of the state granting an exclusive right to erect toll gates across highways and thoroughfares — not to fund the operation of the roads, mind you, but simply to pocket the tolls in return for letting people pass.  By the standard rules of J.B. Clark’s marginal productivity theory, whatever the cost of tolls added to the final price of finished goods would be the “marginal productivity” of the toll gates, and that portion of the price of goods would reflect the toll gate owner’s “contribution” to production.  As John R. Commons observed in “Institutional Economics,” many of the “productive services” for which the rentier classes exact tribute consist of not obstructing the production of others.

The main effect of patents and copyrights, as well as business licensing, local “safety” codes and zoning, is to erect a toll gate in the way of your ability to transform your energy and skills directly into use-value.

Consider local zoning and “safety” laws that require a seller of baked goods to rent expensive commercial property instead of operating out of their home, and to use standard industrial-sized ovens and dishwashers instead of the spare capacity of their regular household appliances.  The only way to amortize that cost is by operating on a scale that requires several employees, lots of hours of paperwork, extensive remodelling to meet local code and ADA requirements, and so forth.

A Distinction Without A Difference   David D'Amato at Center for a Stateless Society (Wednesday, September 01)

With the standard dramatization that accompanies all non-stories reported by the sycophants in mainstream journalism, much has been made of the exodus of combat troops from Iraq. Advanced as a pivotal moment in the development of the U.S. “mission,” and supposedly foretokening Iraq’s coming political independence, the withdrawal is actually notable for what it does not represent — a substantive departure from the policies of savage imperialism.

Arriving in Baghdad on Monday to further memorialize the United States’ bloody occupation of the country, Vice President Biden alighted from Air Force Two to tell reporters, “We are going to be just fine,” a laconic statement that, actually, could hardly have been more accurate. Though he doubtless intended the sound bite in the characteristically reassuring style of all political misinformation, there is another, more disturbing message embedded in Biden’s spin.

If the Vice President’s “we” symbolizes an ingrained political establishment with no scruples regarding war profiteering, then there can be little doubt about the veracity of his prediction, about the fact that the state and the elites operating it will continue to make a killing — both literally and figuratively — from war. Far from the “hope and change” promised, the Peace Prize White House has unsurprisingly continued to drive the warfare state onward, ratcheting up military spending and droning innocents in the nebulous shadow war called, in the parlance of the political class, “the War on Terror.” The distinction drawn by this putative milestone, setting “combat troops” apart from every other kind, is the quintessence of government mendacity, calculated to make us forget that 50,000 troops remain in Iraq.

Given the differentiation, we are apparently meant to believe that the soldiers remaining are staying on for the local art and culture, that they are not still toting the implements of mass murder to prop up American colonialism. And the United States’ other overseas possessions, acquired through needless wars (forgive the redundancy) of the past, evince a pattern that is especially apposite in analyzing this next stage of the occupation. From the “New Nationalism” of the Progressive Era’s Spanish-American War to World War II and beyond, the insatiate state has always turned to war as its most dependable path to aggrandizement, and as a fail-safe source of new favors to dole out to the war industry.

Iraq: The Never-Ending Story   Thomas L. Knapp at Center for a Stateless Society (Wednesday, September 01)

“Tonight,” US President Barack Obama said in a nationally televised speech on Tuesday, “I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.”

That claim was about as accurate as former US President George W. Bush’s announcement more than seven years ago on May 1st, 2003: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

At the time of Bush’s victory lap on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, only 139 US military personnel had died in the project of invading and occupying Iraq.

Even as Obama put the final touches to his own gloss on the same speech, the 4,278th American to die in Iraq since that speech fell to a sniper’s bullet in Tikrit.

Obama claims that the 50,000 US troops remaining in Iraq aren’t “combat troops” — that their new mission is “advising and assisting Iraq’s Security Forces, supporting Iraqi troops in targeted counterterrorism missions, and protecting our civilians.”

If ever such a creature as the “non-combat troop” existed, that species is long extinct — and would in any case constitute an anachronism in an era of wars lacking distinctions such as “front lines” and “rear areas.” The remaining US troops are combat units with previous tours in Iraq. They remain under arms. When — as is inevitable — the situation calls upon them to do so, they will fight. Just as inevitably, some of them will die. The only change here is a politically convenient change of labels.

The US military force remaining in Iraq is as large — and surely as beset — as Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia during the siege of Petersburg in 1864-1865. Including the technically civilian mercenaries (“private contractors”) who’ve been brought in to replace departing troops, it’s probably as large as its counterpart in that siege, Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac.

This war, which has raged more or less continuously since 1990, is far from over. The reasons for its longevity — and for its likely extension into the distant future — may be found not on the ground in Iraq, but in the campaign headquarters of American politicians and the boardrooms of American profiteers who benefit from its continuation.

Gramsci and Left Managerialism : Kees van der Pijl   @ndy at Anarchoblogs (Wednesday, September 01)

Gramsci and Left Managerialism

Kees van der Pijl

This is Zionism.   lenin at LENIN'S TOMB (Tuesday, August 31)

"The soldier, who has only been identified as "Captain R", was charged with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.

"The manner of Iman's killing, and the revelation of a tape recording in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was "scared to death", made the shooting one of the most controversial since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though hundreds of other children have also died."

Copyleft of Lenin's Tomb

Not Enough Dutch Criminals, Prisons Close   PermaKent at PermaKent Permaculture Ideas of J. Kent Hastings (Tuesday, August 31)

Liberalism and Democracy   at Social Memory Complex: Left Libertarian Content (Tuesday, August 31)

AlternativeRight.com is a site I've been interested in, if a bit wary of, since Keith Preston informed me of its launch earlier this year. I've seen some commentary there that I find not so challenging or interesting, but some of the articles provide food for thought. Of particular interest to me are the realist approaches of many on this alternative right, and acknowledging novel and new insight into the realities of our world need not necessitate the adoption of their politics nor the acceptance of their conclusions. As a staunch leftist egalitarian, I find that maintaining an open mind towards the reactionary wing forces me to ground my ideals in the human. Ignoring or rejecting the ugly is insufficient for those who take ideas and politics seriously.

Still, I was a bit taken aback when I first heard of Keith's plans for a four-part series of articles on German jurist Carl Schmitt (Part 1, Part 2). Here was a thinker who provided the legal basis for a continuity between Nazi-era totalitarianism and emergency, extra-constitutional measures in the present "War on Terror". But as it turns out, Schmitt's actual scholarship on these subjects has been rather narrowly read over the past eighty or so years. One need not adopt his advocacy for the establishment to see the problems with liberal democracies he pointed out. This passage from Keith's latest is particularly compelling:

At a fundamental level, there is an innate tension between liberalism and democracy. Liberalism is individualistic, whereas democracy sanctions the "general will" as the principle of political legitimacy. However, a consistent or coherent "general will" necessitates a level of homogeneity that by its very nature goes against the individualistic ethos of liberalism. This is the source of the "crisis of parliamentarianism" that Schmitt suggested. According to the democratic theory, rooted as it is in the ideas of Jean Jacques Rousseau, a legitimate state must reflect the "general will," but no general will can be discerned in a regime that simultaneously espouses liberalism. Lacking the homogeneity necessary for a democratic "general will," the state becomes fragmented into competing interests. Indeed, a liberal parliamentary state can actually act against the "peoples' will" and become undemocratic. By this same principle, anti-liberal states such as those organized according to the principles of fascism or Bolshevism can be democratic in so far as they reflect the "general will."

I oppose civil rights acts because I support civil rights movements   Rad Geek at Rad Geek People's Daily (Tuesday, August 31)

Appearing this month in The Freeman (60.7, September 2010):

Opposing the Civil Rights Act Means Opposing Civil Rights? It Just Ain’t So!

Charles Johnson, September 2010 • Volume: 60 • Issue: 7

Just after winning his Republican primary in May, Rand Paul got himself into a political pickle over his views on property rights and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Having reluctantly discussed concerns about antidiscrimination laws with the Louisville Courier-Journal and NPR, Paul made his now-notorious appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show, where Maddow grilled him for 15 minutes on whether he opposed government intervention to stop racial discrimination. After saying he favored overturning government-mandated discrimination, Paul finally admitted that he opposes Title II, which forbids private owners from discriminating in their own businesses.

As he told the Courier-Journal: I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners—I abhor racism; I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant; but at the same time, I do believe in private ownership… .

Maddow responded: I think wanting to allow private businesses to discriminate on the basis of race, because of property rights, is an extreme view. Within a day Progressives were touting the interview as proof of a deep conflict between libertarian defenses of private property and struggles for racial equality. Meanwhile, compromising libertarians like Brink Lindsey reacted by discovering exceptions to libertarian principles—to make room, again, for federal antidiscrimination laws. The entire debate has played out as an argument over libertarianism and extremism, with Progressives and many nominal libertarians both condemning Rand Paul’s simplistic extremism about private property and libertarian rights.

I have little interest in defending Paul but it’s strange to treat him like some case study in the dangers of libertarian extremism. Rand Paul is a conservative, not a libertarian—let alone an extreme one. He’s said as much, in so many words, in repeated interviews. Now, you could simply say, He may be no libertarian, but never mind Rand Paul—what about the issue? Libertarianism opposes government control of private business decisions; taken to extremes, doesn’t that include laws against racist business practices—the civil rights movement’s crowning achievement?

Well, I do have something to say on behalf of extremism. Not on behalf of sacrificing the civil rights movement’s achievements to extreme stands on antistatist principle. Rather, extreme stands on antistatist principle show what the civil rights movement did right, and what it really achieved, without the aid of federal laws.

[…]

[I]f libertarianism has anything to teach about politics, it’s that politics goes beyond politicians; social problems demand social solutions. Discriminatory businesses should be free from legal retaliation—not insulated from the social and economic consequences of their bigotry. What consequences? Whatever consequences you want, so long as they’re peaceful—agitation, confrontation, boycotts, strikes, nonviolent protests.

So when Maddow asks, Should Woolworth’s lunch counters have been allowed to stay segregated? neither she nor Paul seemed to realize that her attempted coup de grace—invoking the sit-in movement’s student martyrs, facing down beatings to desegregate lunch counters—actually offers a perfect libertarian response to her own question.

Because, actually, Woolworth’s lunch counters weren’t desegregated by Title II. The sit-in movement did that. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott onward, the Freedom Movement had won victories, town by town, building movements, holding racist institutions socially and economically accountable. The sit-ins proved the real-world power of the strategy: In Greensboro, N.C., nonviolent sit-in protests drove Woolworth’s to abandon its whites-only policy by July 1960. The Nashville Student Movement, through three months of sit-ins and boycotts, convinced merchants to open all downtown lunch counters in May the same year. Creative protests and grassroots pressure campaigns across the South changed local cultures and dismantled private segregation without legal backing.

Should lunch counters have been allowed to stay segregated? No—but the question is how to disallow it. Bigoted businesses shouldn’t face threats of legal force for their racism. They should face a force much fiercer and more meaningful—the full force of voluntary social organization and a culture of equality. What’s to stop resegregation in a libertarian society? We are. Using the same social power that was dismantling Jim Crow years before legal desegregation.

I oppose civil rights acts because I support civil rights movements—because the forms of social protest they pioneered proved far more courageous, positive, and effective than the litigious quagmires and pale bureaucratic substitutes governments offer.

—Charles Johnson, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (September 2010): Opposing the Civil Rights Act Means Opposing Civil Rights? It Just Ain’t So!

Another superb anti-theft sign   Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing (Tuesday, August 31)

“The Law” Doesn’t Matter   Kevin Carson at Center for a Stateless Society (Tuesday, August 31)

In “1984,” Winston Smith reflected that there were no laws in Oceania — at least not in the sense of uniformly applied, written laws. You just knew you’d committed an offense when you found yourself doing ten years in a forced labor camp.

Funny how that keeps coming back to me.

A recurring theme in the news lately has been people arrested for recording arrests on their cell phone cams. Now, in most of these jurisdictions it’s formally specified in the law that filming public officials, in public, in the performance of their public duties, does not constitute illegal wiretapping. And it does not constitute “interference with police business.” And yet they’re arrested for it, on the grounds — as stated by the cops — that they’re engaged in illegal wiretapping and interference with an arrest. If you can afford a civil liberties lawyer, afford the risk of losing your job and getting blacklisted by employers, and are willing to spend time in lockup, you might possibly be able to fight it out in court and beat them. But the fastest way to get brutally taken down and arrested — regardless of what “the law” says — is to expose the cops to public scrutiny.

There’s no written law anywhere that defines carrying more than a certain amount of cash as a criminal offense. But if a cop pulls you over and finds a large sum of cash on you, you’ll almost certainly “civilly forfeit” your money for fitting the profile of a drug dealer.

But even when the laws and the rules are objectively enforced at any given time, if you figure out some way to come out ahead despite adhering to them, the people in charge will change the rules just as soon as they notice.

A good example is card-counting — the technique used by idiot savant Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man” to beat the house. Card-counting isn’t cheating, and isn’t violating the casino owners’ rights in any objectively definable way.  It isn’t even violating any previously defined rule.  It’s just using your eyes and your brain, and making deductions from what you observe. But if you start winning too much, the guys behind the security cameras will start bird-dogging you for any sign that you’re counting cards. And if they think you’re doing it, out you go.

What Counts as Political?   Darian Worden at Center for a Stateless Society (Tuesday, August 31)

It is common to find an overly narrow view of what makes a statement or event “political.” This can be seen in Ross Douthat’s editorial, “Mr. Beck Goes to Washington” (New York Times, August 29, 2010).

Douthat writes that the August 28 Restoring Honor rally lived up to Glenn Beck’s promise of being “an explicitly apolitical event.” But as he describes later in the editorial:

There was piety — endless piety, as speaker after speaker demanded that Americans rededicate themselves to God. There was patriotism: fund-raising for children of slain Special Forces vets, paeans to military heroism (delivered by Sarah Palin, among others), encomiums to the founding fathers. There was an awards ceremony on the theme of “Faith, Hope and Charity,” in which community-service prizes were handed out to a black minister, a Mormon businessman and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols. And since this was (as you may have heard) the anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, there was a long tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.

How does this count as apolitical? The question of Christianity weighs on every politician seeking high national office. Tea Party organizers and others have explicitly named the importance of some kind of Christian values to politics and governance. Praising military sacrifice is bound up with political values. Military personnel are honored for their obedience to government commands. Saying that it is noble to subject individual conscience to the commands of leaders is a statement that deals with the fundamentals of politics. Duty is defined as answering the call of service regardless of how honest that call really is –– just let the higher-ups decide that for you.

Even the choices of which American values to emphasize, and which interpretations of historical figures to promote, are political decisions. As is the choice of where to hold the event in the first place.

Opposition to conventional values is frequently labeled political, and therefore inappropriate in certain settings — like school or patriotic celebrations. Dissent is political while supporting the establishment is just going along with what is. In this way some things are placed outside the bounds of political discussion. The premises are off-limits and only the implementation can be tweaked.

Another By-the-Numbers Defense of Sweatshops   Kevin Carson at Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism (Tuesday, August 31)

Christians: Tell Me How I'm Wrong   at James Leroy Wilson (Tuesday, August 31)

Ivy Covered Waste   Bill Waddell at Evolving Excellence (Sunday, August 29)

A socialist-feminist document from 1849   Shawn P. Wilbur at Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth (Tuesday, August 31)

What is the State?   Vinay Gupta at The Bucky-Gandhi Design Institution (Monday, August 30)

The State is that entity which can retroactively legalize criminal behavior.

Voodoo Or Do Not, There Is No Jedi   admin at Not Always Right | Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes (Monday, August 30)

(Resort | Orlando, FL, USA)

(I’m the resort coordinator and often deal with claims from guests who have had an incident.)

Me: “Thank you for calling [resort]. How may I help you today?”

Guest: *already irate* “You can help me by filing a claim for me! I slipped and fell on your property during my vacation and I deserve compensation.”

Me: “I’m so very sorry that happened to you. Can you please provide me with your name and the dates of your stay so I can pull the incident report?”

(She gives me the information.)

Me: “It seems that your stay with us occurred in 2007, almost three years ago. The report says you didn’t want to file a claim at the time. May I ask why you’re just now contacting us?”

Guest: “You should know! You’re the one that hired that voodoo man!”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Guest: “The security guard! The security guard who helped me up! He wiped my memory and his spell just wore off!”

Me: “He wiped your memory?”

Guest: “That’s what I just said, you idiot! Wiped it clean so I wouldn’t sue you people!”

Me: “He wiped your memory? Like a Jedi?”

Guest: “Yes! A Jedi! Now you understand why I have to deal with this now! That voodoo man is evil!”

Not Exactly Gifted   admin at Not Always Right | Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes (Monday, August 30)

(Retail | Culver City, CA, USA)

(Customer has been hovering around my register for the past few minutes.)

Me: “Can I help you find something, sir?”

Customer: “Do these gift cards have expiration dates?”

Me: “Nope, they’ll last until you feel like spending them.”

Customer: “Oh. Uh, where can I find the restroom?”

(As soon as I turn around and point to the bathroom, he grabs a rack of gift cards and sprints for the door, trailing cards behind him.)

Me: *yelling after him* “Sir, those don’t have anything on them until you purchase them.”

(He stops at the door for a moment, then sheepishly returns and puts the rack back.)

Customer: “Why don’t you guys have a freaking sign out saying they’re empty?!”

8/31 cartoon: Mike Luckovich on Iraq   AJC Opinion at Mike Luckovich (Monday, August 30)

Steam Engine Prototype 1 Design   Marcin at Open Source Ecology (Monday, August 30)

Towards the end of yesterday’s blog post, we mentioned our progress on the modern steam engine. This is part of our near-term development program (and part of Proposal 2011) towards upgrading our Power Cubes and the LifeTrac infrastructre to modern steam power. Yesterday we met with Robert Thomas, one of those rare individuals who builds steam and gasoline engines for fun. He built this steam tractor replica (23 hp) of a larger 1920s farm traction engine completely from scratch, including building the steam engine from heavy-walled pipe and cutting the gears:

Three Shalt Thou Count   Roderick at Austro-Athenian Empire (Monday, August 30)

The debates in the comments section of my Koch post have gotten me thinking about the different ways in which vulgar libertarianism operates. I think there are three.

Income Inequality: the Real Cause of Poor Health   stuartbramhall at The Most Revolutionary Act (Monday, August 30)

The University of Washington epidemiologist Dr Stephen Bezruchka has been writing and speaking for nearly two decades on the real cause of illness and poor health. As he repeatedly points out, lifestyle factors (including smoking) only account for ten percent of the causation of illness. According to Bezruchka, the single most important determinant of adult health status and life expectancy is your mother’s income and social status during pregnancy and the first three years of life.

Although more than fifty years of epidemiological studies bear this out, it is only in the last decade scientists could explain why this is – thanks to the new science of epigenetics. While the early Freudians used to make similar claims about unfavorable “psychological” influences on infants and young children, it is now clear the effect is biological rather than psychological. That it relates to “epigenetics” – a term referring to changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than the underlying DNA sequence.

Numerous studies show that environmental stress and hormones (particularly stress hormones) produced during pregnancy can cause genetic code to be transcripted (into proteins and enzymes) in such a way to negatively affect the development of the immune system – in addition to predisposing the fetus to biochemically based mental illnesses.

The Link Between Income Inequality and Poor Health

However the most important epidemiological finding, according to Bezruchka, is that the effect of low income status on health is much more pronounced in societies with extreme income inequality. Study after study bears this out. In other words, a poor person’s adult status and life expectancy will be worse if he is born into a country with big gap between the economic status of its rich and poor residents (such as the US where 10 percent of the population controls 71 percent of the wealth). In fact the US is near the bottom of the charts if you look at statistical indicators that measure the overall health of a country. In life expectancy it rates 38^th, just behind Cuba. In infant mortality it rates 30^th, just above Slovakia.