Positive Liberty

Leitmotif: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. — H. L. Mencken

Assorted links, in which various parties get what they deserve, below the fold.

First off, I Deserve a Vacation. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism is now in print, and Sage Publications is taking orders.

As you probably know, I’m one of the two assistant editors on the project, and I also wrote several of the articles, including those on Rousseau, Tocqueville, and Diderot (how meta can you get?). Ultimately, I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

That’s why this will be my last blog post until August 25: I’ll be on Waikiki Beach, getting sunburned, drinking tequila out of ceramic Polynesian idols, and hurting myself while I attempt, pathetically, to surf. I understand that the coffee is pretty good, too.

Happily, the blog will be in good hands, including those of our newest co-blogger, Jim Hanley. I may drop by to comment here and there, but I’ll try to keep away from writing.

Why Do We Deserve an Encyclopedia? I get asked this a lot. Here’s one answer.

Time and again, libertarians find themselves in a strange situation, one that liberals or conservatives seem to face a lot less often: Very energetic people denouncing us for positions we don’t even remotely support, and never have, and that are dead wrong on purely libertarian grounds. (See here, for instance.)

At times like these we can only say, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s not what we stand for,” and it may look to neutral observers as though we have something to hide. It’s exasperating never to make any headway with interlocutors who don’t even know why they hate us.

With the publication of the Encyclopedia, I can hold a book up to the world and say — this — this is what libertarians believe in. This is where we’ve been; this is what we’ve done. Accept it or reject it, but at least know what you’re dealing with.

Yes, there are sometimes contradictions and disputes within the movement. The Encyclopedia contains those, too. Libertarianism isn’t the Ten Commandments — final, implacable, set as it were in stone. It’s a set of related ideas, sometimes in tension with each other, but all of them headed in generally the same direction. The Encyclopedia gives an excellent summary of how they all hang together, and that makes it an important work.

No project of this scope is ever going to be fully complete, and I’m sure that some mistakes got by us along the way. Lord knows I corrected plenty of them in the last year and a half. I can see the faults of the project more clearly perhaps than anyone except Ronald Hamowy, our editor in chief, but the strong points far outweigh them, if I may say so myself. The excuses for misunderstanding libertarianism have retreated with the appearance of a reference work explaining exactly what the movement is all about.

May They Get What They Deserve, Too: Hat tip to Tim Sandefur for this hilarious story calling to mind Voltaire’s old adage:

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O, Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.

The reason for the Voltairean mirth?

Al-Qa’eda in Iraq alienated by cucumber laws and brutality

Besides the terrible killings inflicted by the fanatics on those who refuse to pledge allegiance to them, Al-Qa’eda has lost credibility for enforcing a series of rules imposing their way of thought on the most mundane aspects of everyday life.

They include a ban on women buying suggestively-shaped vegetables, according to one tribal leader in the western province of Anbar.

Sheikh Hameed al-Hayyes, a Sunni elder, told Reuters: “They even killed female goats because their private parts were not covered and their tails were pointed upward, which they said was haram.

“They regarded the cucumber as male and tomato as female. Women were not allowed to buy cucumbers, only men.”

I wonder how they feel about tacos.

Another Case of Just Deserts: If Bob Barr keeps saying smart things like these, he may just deserve my vote.

If It’s Not One Thing, It’s the Other: Guest-blogging at The Agitator, Ryan Grim gives us an excerpt from his forthcoming book:

What we think of as today’s major drugs almost all entered American culture in the mid-19th century, and all became hugely popular by the end of it. Key to their success was the demonization of beer, wine, and liquor by the WCTU, the Anti-Saloon League, and their various fellow travelers and predecessors, none of which realized something fundamental about America: that it relates to alcohol and drugs much like an addict does—with spasms of morality and sobriety followed by relapse.

Again and again in American history, use of one substance diminishes while use of another rises, due to a combination of social, political, and economic factors. A movement against a drug might spring up organically, but it’s nurtured by whatever interests it serves. The drug goes from socially acceptable to socially condemned. It often becomes illegal. Then something else takes its place.

And, Finally: Matt Welch uncorks a stunning column about sports, nationalism, and groupthink. This is gutsy, thoughtful, exciting stuff. I admit I’ve been getting bored with Reason since roughly the Ron Paul newsletters saga. It’s been too gossipy, too focused on the boring major parties, and too DC-centric. But this is really what libertarianism is about, and it’s a great read, too.

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