Positive Liberty

Just recently, a librarian at Ohio State University got in trouble for recommending rightwingnut David Kupelian’s book for freshman reading. I’m skirting the whole freedom of speech issue. Clearly, the book is the ravings of a deluded crank. But cranks have First Amendment rights too.

Rather, I’m going to update a point I made earlier when I discussed Kupelian’s book. The book relies heavily on Marshall Kirk’s and Hunter Madsen’s book, After the Ball — a progay rights book, written by two marketers who suggested using classic marketing techniques to change people’s minds in favor of gay rights — as the prototype for The Marketing of Evil. Continue Reading »

Positive Liberty welcomes Coyote Blog, which I’m surprised that I didn’t notice sooner.

Our coyote seems to be a political fellow traveler, concerned about the regulatory state and the often nonsensical arguments made against free market economics. Even more importantly, the blog is well-written, insightful, full of information, and nicely designed. Consider this post:

The feeding frenzy that the media has been salivating over for days can begin, now that Exxon-Mobil (XOM) as announced quarterly profits. They reported net income of $8.4 billion on $88.98 billion in sales, for a net income margin of 9.4%. Previously I observed that 9.4% for a peak profit in a cyclical industry is pretty average, and that over the last decade oil company profits have been below average for the whole of US industry.

In fact, most investors found these profits to be disappointing. You know you have a fun CEO job when half the country is pounding on you for profits being too high and the other half are pounding on you for profits being too low. The fact is that XOM and other large US oil companies don’t get the benefit of rising oil prices that they did, say, 40 years ago. US oil companies no longer own most of their overseas reserves since many of their foreign operations were nationalized by countries in the 1960s (with the US government refusing to lift a finger to protect these US assets, one of the early instances of the no-blood-for-Exxon argument). Today, XOM must pay near market rate for much of this crude, either in arms-length purchases or through royalty agreements stacked in the favor of local governments.

Good stuff. Coyote Blog hereby replaces Fafblog!, which — sadly — hasn’t posted anything new in weeks. Could it be that the whole world’s only source for Fafblog! is drying up? Did we reach peak Fafblog! without even realizing it? Perhaps we should hold some congressional hearings; undoubtedly, someone is making a profit, and this cannot be allowed.

Imagine that any time you saw “family” issues mentioned, the groups described as most concerned… were usually anti-Semitic.

Imagine a great many people thinking that the biggest issue in preserving the family… is what to do about the Jews.

Imagine that being “family-friendly” meant — besides no violence or sex… that there would be no Jewish people.

Imagine that politicians were rated as to whether they favored the family… or whether they favored the Jews. (Those who claimed to favor both are eccentrics at best and hypocrites at worst.)

Imagine that your parents had covered your eyes the first time you’d gone by a house with a menorah in the window. From that day forward, and wherever the issue came up, you found the same dichotomy — family or Jews. Take your pick.

Now imagine starting a Jewish family.

Continue Reading »

Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death And Life of Great American Cities, a classic indictment of urban planning, died this week. Jacobs’ book was important for its critique of the tabula rasa notion that redevelopment officials have toward cities: that if we just tear down and build up from scratch, we can create desirable places to live. But Jacobs understood that what gives cities life is spontaneity, diversity, and dynamism. Sometimes, this means cities are messy. But it also is what makes a community out of a bunch of buildings. It’s what San Francisco has, and that a pedestrian mall or an awful, uber-planned community does not. And those qualities cannot be fostered by urban redevelopment.

Folks in Southern California should tune in to KNX AM 1070 on Tuesday, May 2nd at 9am to hear Bob McCormack broadcasting live from the Bernard Luggage Store, which is being seized by the city of Los Angeles to make way for a hotel.

The new library down the street has the complete William Shakespeare on CD, so I’ve decided to try to go through them all. I’ve finished As You Like It (not bad), All’s Well That Ends Well (lousy), Comedy of Errors (dumb), Coriolanus (one of my favorites), Cymbeline (silly), Hamlet, and am now going through the Henrys. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of the plot, since it’s only in audio, but of course there are moments of such marvelous poetry, or such clever wit, that I wish I could memorize them perfectly.

Continue Reading »

One of the niches that I have carved out in the blogsphere is a thorough (but I think ultimately fair) examination of the key Founders’ religious beliefs, done in the context of refuting the “Christian Nation” thesis. Note, refuting the “Christian Nation”* myth (as I think I have aptly done many times over) is not the same thing supporting a modern, 20th Century, post-Everson, ACLU style notion of the Separation of Church and State. Indeed, it’s far easier to refute the Christian Nation thesis than to demonstrate that the Founders would have seen eye-to-eye with the ACLU’s absolutist notion of the doctrine of Separation of Church and State. Continue Reading »

The state Senate Judiciary Committee today refused to pass on Senator McClintock’s SCA 20. This means that the only hope left for eminent domain reform in California is the Protect Our Homes Act. But it needs to get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot—that is, it needs 550,000 signatures by May 10th.

Radley Balko writes,

In February of last year, I told you about Lester Eugene Siler, a Tennessee man who was literally tortured by five sheriff’s deputies in Campbell County, Tennessee who suspected him of selling drugs. The only reason we know Siler was tortured is because his wife had the good sense to start a recording device about halfway through the ordeal.

The audio is now available online (read the transcript here). Drug war outrages lend themselves to overuse of superlatives. But I gotta say, this may be the most horrifying 40 minutes of audio I’ve ever heard.

The police are attempting to get the illiterate man to sign an admission of guilt without telling him what it says. They beat him, over and over, hook electrodes up to testicles and shock him, threaten to kill him, and threaten to go after his family. Early news accounts reported that the torture continued well beyond the end of the recording. After the tape ran out, the same deputies apparently repeatedly submerged the guy’s head in a fish tank and a bath tub, threatening to drown him unless he confessed.

This guy at worst was a small-time drug dealer. He had no history of violence. Right now, we’re having a national debate about torturing terror suspects with designs on killing everyone in this country (longtime readers might remember I’m a bit conflicted on this issue). But an incident like this (and you’re delusional if you think it was isolated), in which a U.S. citizen who had inflicted no direct harm on anyone was nearly beaten to death, has been barely mentioned outside of Tennessee.

Now, I’ve read transcripts of prisoner interrogations abroad — that is, of people who were suspected terrorists — and the treatment they received was far milder than this. Not a picnic, to be sure, and I admit I had some serious moral qualms about how we treated them. But this was completely horrifying. Totally in a different league. It’s the sort of thing I don’t usually like to discuss here, as there’s no issue to debate, not among decent people, anyway.

Continue Reading »

Note to readers: Want to know what’s on the minds of the Positive Liberty crew? Check out the sidebar, where you will find a regularly updated selection books, music, and other media. Broadly speaking, our future posts tend to come from works that we’re in the process of reading — so if you want to leave a comment that really zings, consider reading along with us!

John Stuart Mill: Readers may also be interested in Richard Reeves’ appreciation of John Stuart Mill:

Mill was a second-rate utilitarian, but a first-rate liberal. He retained many of his father’s and Bentham’s views about psychology, especially that the avoidance of pain and seeking of pleasure were the primary human springs for action. But he never saw happiness as more important than freedom—an important consideration today, when a new science of happiness is being fashioned in university economics and psychology departments. He quoted Bentham’s opinion that “pushpin was as good as poetry,” but only as evidence of his godfather’s short-sightedness.

No, it’s not flawless: While Reeves claims (rightly, I think) that Mill was “no libertarian,” Reeves’ defense of the point is weak. He prefers to insist — vaguely — that Mill was “of the left,” rather than pointing to any of Mill’s genuinely unlibertarian policies or ideas. Well, sure — but arguably all libertarians, properly understood, are “of the left.” (For the record, I would disagree with Mill chiefly in his colonialism, which was a disaster, and in his hope for an eventual economic stasis, which would have been another. On these two alone, and not on his “left”-ism, can one most easily argue that Mill isn’t properly called a libertarian.)

Secret Ballots: Reeves does capture one thing I admire most about John Stuart Mill, namely his willingness to see the other side of an issue and even to change his mind:

Mill’s willingness to take conservative ideas seriously lost him countless friends and allies. On topical political issues, Mill was still usually to be found on the radical side of the argument, being in favour of extending the suffrage, removing all aristocratic and ecclesiastical privileges, introducing compulsory national education and repealing the corn laws. In some areas, such as his insistence on equality for women, he was far ahead of even advanced liberal opinion. But Mill was also happy to disagree with the liberal consensus. He supported the secret ballot when the majority were against it—but become an opponent as it gained in popularity, to the fury of his old radical friends. His opposition to voting in secret was, nonetheless, consistent with his mature reflections on human liberty. The danger with voting in secret was that people would vote out of self-interest rather than the broader public interest. And as individuals, people should stand up for their beliefs rather than scribble them furtively in booths.

There are arguments to be made on both sides of the secret ballot, old arguments that fascinated many thoughtful people in Mill’s time. They are also arguments that we mostly do not stop to consider anymore.

Where most of us today find the secret ballot entirely unproblematic, it was not long ago taken for granted that only individuals of particularly independent financial means could afford to vote according to their conscience. Extending the suffrage was futile, argued many in the eighteenth century, because servants of all persuasions would inevitably vote the way their masters told them, for fear of losing their jobs.

To say whether this argument is more damning toward the servants or toward the masters would require a judgment more subtle than my own. The eighteenth century inclined sharply to the former, however, and it denied the suffrage to those who did not own property of sufficient size to guarantee financial independence.
And, however strange it may seem to us, the reconsidering of this argument in the nineteenth century was in any case one of the reasons why we now mostly scribble our opinions furtively in booths, as Reeves would have it. (But do note that history Ph.D.s who lack teaching posts — and who therefore lack independence — also scribble, non-furtively, in blogs.)

Here’s the scenario: a high school student, fed up with what he perceived as the school district’s official anti-gay stance, wears a t-shirt to school that says “Be ashamed. Our school has embraced what all decent people should condemn” on the front and “Homophobia is shameful” on the back. The day he wore the shirt, it went pretty much unnoticed. The second time he wore it, however, a school official noticed the shirt and told him that he had to remove it. The student refused and filed a suit to prevent the school from telling him he could not wear the shirt. The court dismissed the case and the appeals court, on a 2-1 vote, upheld that dismissal.

Bad decision? You bet it is. Under the controlling precedent of Tinker v Des Moines ICSD, the school can only prevent student speech if that speech “materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others” and only if the school can show “evidence that [the ban] is necessary to avoid material and substantial interference with schoolwork or discipline.” And even under that standard, the reason for the alleged disruption cannot merely be that the sentiment is unpopular.

Okay, I have to confess that I changed the facts around a bit in the scenario above in order to make a point. Here’s the real story. A student in California was disturbed by what he perceived to be the school’s pro-gay bias. On the day that many students in the school participated in a Day of Silence, a silent protest against the bullying of gay and lesbian students, he wore a t-shirt that said “Be Ashamed, Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned” on the front and “Homosexuality Is Shameful” on the back. All of the rest is accurate; only the content of the message has changed.
Continue Reading »

Nat Hentoff, long one of my favorite writers despite his surprising and indefensible position on the Terri Schaivo situation, has a column in the Village Voice about the importance of civics classes in public schools. He points to the abysmal ignorance that study after study has shown about some of the very basic facts about our system of law. I’ll post a long excerpt from that column below the fold:
Continue Reading »

It’s funny. See this thread on worldmagblog, which illustrates that stubbornness is intractable in human nature. Someone possesses an erroneous assumption. They are given more than adequate evidence refuting the assumption. Yet, they stubbornly refuse to let go of their error.

In this case, it’s a fellow named Joel Mark who assumed that John Adams was an orthodox Christian, and not a Unitarian, was shown overwhelming evidence to the contrary, complete with references to primary sources, yet still refuses to let go of the notion that Adams was a traditional minded Christian. In one comment directed at me, he wrote:

Jon Rowe,

You are flat out wrong….John Adams was NOT a Unitarian. That was never how he identified himself or was identified and the Unitarians were not even around in Massachusetts or America in his prime years.

You are unreliable on this matter. maybe its just that your sources are poor. But you are wrong.

He further asks for “smoking gun” evidence demonstrating that Adams identified himself as a Unitarian. Ye ask, and ye shall receive. Here is Adams himself on the matter:

I thank you for your favour of the 10th and the pamphlet enclosed, “American Unitarianism.” I have turned over its leaves and have found nothing that was not familiarly known to me.

In the preface Unitarianism is represented as only thirty years old in New England. I can testify as a Witness to its old age. Sixty five years ago my own minister the Reverend Samuel Bryant, Dr. Johnathan Mayhew of the west Church in Boston, the Reverend Mr. Shute of Hingham, the Reverend John Brown of Cohasset & perhaps equal to all if not above all the Reverend Mr. Gay of Hingham were Unitarians. Among the Laity how many could I name, Lawyers, Physicians, Tradesman, farmers!

John Adams to Jedidiah Morse, May 15, 1815. Adams Papers (microfilm), reel 122, Library of Congress.

And:

We Unitarians, one of whom I have had the Honour to be, for more than sixty Years, do not indulge our Malignity in profane Cursing and Swearing, against you Calvinists; one of whom I know not how long you have been. You and I, once saw Calvin and Arius, on the Plafond of the Cathedral of St. John the Second in Spain roasting in the Flames of Hell. We Unitarians do not delight in thinking that Plato and Cicero, Tacitus Quintilian Plyny and even Diderot, are sweltering under the scalding drops of divine Vengeance, for all Eternity.

John Adams to John Quincy Adams, March 28, 1816, Ibid, reel 430.

These quotations are featured in James H. Hutson’s fine book of quotations, pp. 220-221.

Steven Voigt, writing at RenewAmerica, is complaining about the ACLU being able to collect legal fees when they win a suit against a government agency (you may remember Voigt from my earlier fisking of his terrible 14th amendment arguments). This is nothing new, of course; innumerable voices on the right have been complaining about this for years. Funny, though, they never mention it if the Alliance Defense Fund, the Christian Legal Society, the American Center for Law and Justice or any other religious right legal group does the same thing. When the ACLU successfully sued on behalf of Lamb’s Chapel and were awarded reasonable legal fees, we didn’t hear a word. I guess it’s all just a matter of whose ox is being gored. Along the way, Voigt makes a lot of blatantly false claims on the subject. He writes:

The ACLU’s recent lawsuit against Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania, where the ACLU opposed Dover’s effort to balance its science curriculum with different viewpoints on evolution, is over for the ACLU. For local residents, however, the impact of the litigation has only begun. As a result of the judge’s ruling in favor of the plaintiffs–who were represented by the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State (”AUSCS”), and a corporate law firm–Dover Township residents will pay $1 million in attorneys’ fees and costs to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

From the million dollar purse, the two legal organizations and the law firm will first deduct their out-of-pocket expenses, and then the ACLU and the AUSCS will split the remainder as fees, and these fees represent the bulk of the cash.

This is pretty much all false. There were three groups involved, that’s true - the ACLU, AU and the Pepper Hamilton law firm. And $1 million sounds like a lot, until you consider that Pepper Hamilton had 5 attorneys assigned to the case, two of them full partners, plus a number of paralegals, administrative assistants and so forth. The ACLU had one attorney on the case, and AU had two attorneys on it. The hourly billing rate for those attorneys was, bare minimum, $150 an hour and for the partners probably more like $500 an hour.
Continue Reading »

I’m told that letters are going out to a million Californians asking for signatures to support a ballot initiative to end the abuse of eminent domain. I commented on this initiative here.