Positive Liberty

The long wait, and the long job search, are over.

I have accepted a post as an academic assistant with the Cato Institute. One of my first duties will be to help put together the long-awaited Encyclopedia of Libertarianism; similar projects will follow, mostly in the academic editing-and-publishing side of things.

I will also be working on the Institute’s ongoing efforts to translate, edit, and distribute fundamental texts of classical liberal thought to the Muslim world and the former Soviet states. I have long admired this work and considered it an important part of creating a freer world. I now look forward to doing what I can to help.

The new job will mean new responsibilities, a slightly different personal schedule — I’m a creature of relentless habit — and meeting many, many new people. This last actually frightens me the most; while I can usually pick up a new idea without any trouble, remembering a new name is always difficult for me. Agorism? I could give a definition on one foot. The names of the couple down the street? Um… At least I know what I need to work on.

I may also be very light on blogging in the next few weeks. I don’t want to promise a hiatus while I make the adjustment, because I know I don’t usually keep that kind of a promise. It may well turn out that my new job will stimulate me to the point where I redouble my blogging efforts. But for the moment you should expect much less.

As always, the opinions I express on this blog remain strictly my own.

I don’t mean to revive the debate between Jim Babka and Dr. Gregg Frazer over whether the principles of our Founding are consistent with the Bible and orthodox Christianity. But I have uncovered a couple of interesting sites which might shed light on this issue.

I am debating a fundamentalist from the Caribbean named Gordon Mullings, infamously known on the Evangelical Outpost comments section for writing book length posts. Continue Reading »

Baron Von Raschke

Although, I do find his scientific explication of how “the brain claw” works to be quite illuminating.

Today, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed five new bills allegedly aimed at curbing the abuse of eminent domain. Over at PLF On Eminent Domain, I explain why each of these bills creates virtually meaningless protection for the state’s property owners. (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5).

The recent release of Bruce Springsteen’s The Seeger Sessions spurred my interest in “roots music” as it’s being called nowadays. Three new albums in particular pleased me.

First, Ollabelle has released their second album, Riverside Battle Songs. I mentioned them when their first album came out, and although the first album is still better, the second is quite lovely. Ollabelle’s best work is their covers of old spirituals, and their version of “Down By The River Side” is particularly nice here. Very soothing and beautifully produced. But the new album also has some original compositions, of which my favorite is “Northern Star.” Amy Helm and Fiona McBain, the two lady singers in this band, have such beautiful voices, and the lead singer on “Northern Star” (Helm, I think; the liner notes don’t say) has a particularly rich and soulful voice that’s a real pleasure. Still, their first album was better—check out particularly “Elijah Rock.”

Second is The Wailin’ Jennys, a Canadian band whose new album is Firecracker. They blend beautiful, folksy harmonies with an updated instrumentalism (electric guitars and whatnot) in a way that’s not unlike The Dixie Chicks, but with a somewhat gentler sound to them. I especially enjoyed “Avlia” and “Prairie Town.” You can listen to the whole album on their website.

Finally, and best of all, in my opinion, is Red Molly, a new group from the Pennsylvania/New Jersey area, whose new album is Never Been to Vegas. Their harmonies are astonishingly lovely, particularly on “So Are You To Me” and “When The Roll is Called Up Yonder” (the best on the album, I think). You can listen to some clips on this site. I just love the blend of their voices with the banjo and Dobro sounds. I don’t normally like twangy music like Hank Williams, but even their almost yodeling version of “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” is lovely, with perfectly harmonized curlicues of music. Their sound is everything you look for in modern folk music: perfectly in synch, soulful, cheerful, fast or slow. An excellent album and very highly recommended.

Thanks to Homeland Stupidity for the nice review of my book and of the talk I gave at the Cato Institute last week. I assure you, there was no chance of a fistfight breaking out.

Incidentally, you can watch the Cato talk on line in Real Video, by clicking here.

David Barton, one of the foremost perpetrators of the “Christian Nation” myth explains his partisan hackery here.

Here is an excerpt:

David Barton of Wallbuilders may be the pre-eminent historian on the role of religion in the founding and history of the United States of America. That makes him a natural for an interview with this blog. Lowell and I recently interviewed him and are happy to present the transcript of that interview here. There were some technical difficulties in the both the call conferencing and the recording that we will skip over that and get to the meat of matters.

Continue Reading »

Andrew Sullivan writes what’s also been on my mind today:

A president in the past has had the option of seizing enemy combatants on a battlefield and detaining them without charge as POWs. There’s no threat to liberty there. What’s new is that in this war, enemy combatants have been designated as such not just on the battlefield - but anywhere in the world. What’s new is that they are no longer entitled to POW status. What’s new is that this war is for ever. So any changes are not just for a time-limited emergency but threaten to alter basic balances in constitutional order. What’s also new is that torture is now allowed on the down-low, on the president’s authority. And what’s also new is that an enemy combatant may or may not be an American citizen.

Put all that together and you really do have the danger of taking emergency measures for wartime and transforming a peace-time constitution into an essentially martial system, where every citizen or non-citizen can be apprehended at will and detained without charge. I repeat: this is a huge deal. It really should be a huge deal for conservatives who care about restraining government power. Its vulnerability to abuse is enormous; sanctioned torture, history tells us, never remains hermetically sealed. It always spreads. It eats away at decency and law and civility. If the president sincerely believes that torture is our most potent weapon in this war, and that habeas corpus is a quaint relic from the past, then we are in far greater peril than even the most dire pessimists believe.

I don’t have anything to add. I fear the United States is changing, and decidedly for the worse. I see very little that can be done. I’ve complained in the past — sure. But after a while, the complaints all start to sound the same. And they don’t accomplish anything. What can be done?

Among the many reasons for my light blogging of late has been my reading schedule. To catch up, I thought I’d go quickly over some of the good and not-so-good books I’ve been reading.

Continue Reading »

Many people have heard the phrase “Shoot, Shovel, And Shut Up,” whch refers to the attitude many property owners have toward endangered species on their property. Since the federal government has almost unlimited power to control the use of a person’s property when an endangered species is found on that property, and because there are so many such species, property owners are often desperate to use their land as fast as possible before an endangered species can be found on it, or to hide the presence of such species as much as they can, lest their land be confiscated (without compensation) by the federal government. Here’s an excellent example of this perverse incentive.

Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker….

Hoping to beat the mapmakers, landowners swarmed City Hall to apply for lot-clearing permits. Treeless land, after all, would not need to be set aside for woodpeckers. Since February, the city has issued 368 logging permits, a vast majority without accompanying building permits.

The results can be seen all over town. Along the roadsides, scattered brown bark is all that is left of pine stands. Mayor Joan Kinney has watched with dismay as waterfront lots across from her home on Big Lake have been stripped down to sandy wasteland.

Behold The natural consequences of federal land-use regulation.

This week’s quotation of John Adams is quite interesting:

I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation. For as I believe the most enlightened men of it have participated in the amelioration of the philosophy of the age, once restored to an independent government & no longer persecuted they would soon wear away some of the asperities and peculiarities of their character [and] possibly in time become liberal unitarian Christians for your Jehovah is our Jehovah & your God of Abraham Isaac & Jacob is our God.

John Adams to Mordecai Noah, March 15, 1819. Adams Papers (microfilm), reel 123. Quoted from James H. Hutson’s The Founders on Religion, p. 127.

It’s interesting that Adams thought it would be a good idea for Jews to convert not just to Christianity, but to “liberal unitarian Christianity,” which arguably isn’t Christianity at all, but what Gregg Frazer has termed Theistic Rationalism. The Theistic Rationalists believed that all religions, even those outside of the “Judeo-Christian” tradition, contained the same basic Truth as Christianity, and were thus valid ways to God. They believed all religions, especially orthodox-Trinitarian Christianity, had been corrupted. Once you stripped away the “corruptions” from all world religions, the same Truth would be revealed. And that Truth was, conveniently, the tenets of Theistic Rationalism (or as Adams terms it here, “liberal unitarian Christianity”).

Dr. Frazer, an orthodox Christian himself, though he approaches the Founders’ religion with fairness, notes from the perspective of an evangelical, the Founders’ theological assertions at times seem quite arrogant.

Regarding the fact that Adams states he and the Jews worshipped the same God — the God of “Abraham Isaac & Jacob” — two things should be noted. First, Adams didn’t mean this in an exclusivist way, but an inclusivist. Washington likewise said similar things when he addressed the Jews. And Michael Novak, in his book on Washington’s faith, misreads Washington’s remarks and notes that the proper name for Washington’s God was “Jehovah” and that Washington’s God was “Judeo-Christian.” Well, no. The God of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin was actually universalist, and though It encompassed the Judeo-Christian religions, It also extended beyond such systems to the pagan, Eastern, Muslim, and Native American religious systems. These Founders believed all these religions worshipped the same God, who came to different peoples through different names. This may not be sound theology, but it is what they believed.

Second, Adams and the other rationalist Founders believed in the God of the Bible and Scripture, but only insofar as Scripture was reasonable; to them, parts of it were; parts of it weren’t. So if we want to say Adams et al. worshipped the God of the Bible, we could say yes they did minus everything written in the Bible that didn’t comport with their notion of man’s reason, like God’s irrational wrath and jealousy. The parts of the Bible that showed God’s benevolence remained.

My article, Don’t Mess With Property Rights in Texas: How The State Constitution Protects Property Owners in the Wake of Kelo, in the current issue of the A.B.A. Real Property, Probate, And Trust Journal, is now available on line. In it, I argue that the Texas Constitutions’ authors did not intend for “public use” to be interpreted broadly, and that Texas Supreme Court decisions holding otherwise suffer from some unusually obvious errors.

In Western Seafood v. City of Freeport, now pending in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, PLF filed a brief asking the Court to send the case to the Texas Supreme Court for resolution under state law. So we may see whether my argument finds any support in the Lone Star State.

I realized the other day, near the very end of this year’s barbecue season, the real reason why I don’t look forward to traditional American barbecues.

It’s not the meat, which I usually like. It’s the side dishes. I just don’t much care for any of them. Not coleslaw. Not collard greens. Not corn on the cob. Not even buttermilk biscuits: The buttermilk biscuit just isn’t worth eating unless it’s covered with sausage gravy and served for breakfast. As a side dish, buttermilk biscuits are just so much paste, cleverly disguised in biscuit form. Yes, they are an excuse to drink more beer. But I don’t need an excuse to drink more beer.

And then we have the baked beans. Which are an abomination.

Continue Reading »

See Joe Carter’s post criticizing the rhetoric directed against the religious right as wanting to impose “theocracy” and arguing that what the religious right wants to do — impose religious values through the secular laws — is not theocracy.

Two points. First, I agree with Carter that some of the theocracy rhetoric is overblown. For instance, I don’t think George Bush wants to impose theocracy in the United States. And I don’t think the theocrats — “the Christian Nationalists” — represent mainstream conservative or even Christian conservative thought. Continue Reading »

A very touching story indeed. (HT Tom Palmer)