I’m really happy with this way this article turned out. It is published at Crisis. The editor John Zmirak had initially sent me a piece by the legendary historian Christopher Dawson and asked me to respond. I generally avoid this sort of debate so I didn’t bother to look at the piece for probably ten days or so. In fact, I didn’t really accept the challenge.

Then I read the piece. It was quite incredible. Dawson sweeps his scholarly hand over vast continents and epochs and makes wild claims entirely abstracted from the real experience of humanity. Nowhere does he show the slightest interest in the plight of the common man and his quality of life. He is happy to declare the middle ages to be this wonderful time of faith and order and then proceeds to blast away all of the last several hundred years as hopelessly corrupted by materialism. His target is what he calls the bourgeoisie, and here he admits that his thinking is in line with Karl Marx. But there is a difference. Whereas the Marxists posited a hopeless conflict between capital and labor, his model posits a conflict between real faith and material provision. The two are irreconcilable.

The real danger of the Dawson piece is its erudition in big things and its deep disengagement with the small things that make life good, like clean clothes, medical care, running water, job opportunities, access to food to feed the children, and the like. He cares nothing for these things. He is content to simply praise the past for its Michelangos and Berninis and condemn the present for its Lady Gagas and Justin Beibers. It’s really a cheap trick and an obvious one: pick the best of the past and the worst of the present and you can paint a picture of relentless decline.

My response points to the dramatic change that took hold of the world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a change that created what we call the middle class today. It gave life to hundreds of millions of people. Without the bourgeoisie and the capitalist marketplace they sustain, the world could not support seven billion. Surely a high-minded cultural historian like Dawson should care about things like this? Surely!

Recommended podcast:

• The Last Day of the Soviet Union, KERA Think, Dec. 7, 2011 (“What events actually led to the 1991 dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and how did the bitter relationship between Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin contribute to the superpower’s demise? We’ll talk this hour with journalist Conor O’Clery, author of the book Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union“). This podcast has become one of my favorites. I think Kris Boyd is the best interviewer I’ve ever heard. She is amazing. One riveting interview after another. Great voice, great tone, great questions, great topics, and very intelligent.

Recommended podcasts:

• Aaron Burr and the Challenge to Jefferson’s America, KERA Think, Dec. 1, 2011 (“Who fostered imperial dreams for the young United States of America? We’ll explore the life and story of our country’s third vice president this hour with historian David O. Stewart. His new book is American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America“);
• 238. Lew Rockwell Attacked By a Parasite, LewRockwell.com Podcasts, Dec. 2, 2011 (“Ron Smith talks to Lew Rockwell until a federal employee intervenes”. In the podcast, Lew quotes a great line from a recent Gary North column: “Europe’s game of kick the can will continue. The best summary of the outcome was made by a Spanish government worker on Sunday, November 20, the day of national elections. The socialists were thrown out of office. He said this: ‘We can choose the sauce they will cook us in, but we’re still going to be cooked.’”).

(I’m reposting this from Whiskey&Gunpowder because it is of particular libertarian interest)

How much more ridiculous can the US Postal Service get? This you will not believe. It has embarked on a public relations campaign to get people to stop sending so much email and start licking more stamps. This is how it is dealing with its $10 billion loss last year. Meanwhile, rather than offering better service, it is cutting back ever more, which can only guarantee that the mails will get worse than they already are.

It’s true that mail still has a place in the digital world, as the post office says. But the government shouldn’t be the institution to run it. It already has competitors in package delivery but the government stands firmly against letting any private company deliver something like first class mail. And so it has been since the beginning. The state and only the state is permitted to charge people for non-urgent paper mail in a letter envelop.

It’s a control thing. The government is into that. And it is far from new.

Do you know the amazing story of Lysander Spooner? He lived from 1808 to 1887. His first great battle was taking on the post office monopoly. In the 1840s, he was like most people at the time: fed up with the high prices and bad service. But as an intellectual and entrepreneur, he decided to do something about it. He started the American Letter Mail Company, and his letter business gave the government some serious competition.

It opened offices in major cities, organized a network of steamships and railroads, and hired people to get the mail to where it needed to be. His service was both faster and cheaper than the government’s own. Then he published a pamphlet to fight the power: “The Unconstitutionality of the Laws of Congress Prohibiting Private Mails.” It was brilliant. It rallied people to his side. And he made a profit.

The government hated him and his company and began to litigate against him. It dramatically lowered the price for its services, and used public money to cover its losses. The goal was to bankrupt Spooner, and it eventually succeeded. Spooner’s private postal system had to be shut down. It’s the same way the government today shuts down private schools, private currencies, private security, private roads, private companies that ignore the central plan, and anyone else who stands up for freedom.

From this one anecdote alone, you can see that the post office is hardly a “natural monopoly” — something the government has to provide because free enterprise can’t do so. It is a forced monopoly, one kept alive solely through laws and subsidies. If the post office closed its doors today, there would be 1000 companies rushing in to fill the gap. Just as in the 1840s, the results would be cheaper, better services. The government runs the post office because it wants to control the command posts of society, including communication. The Internet as a global communication device snuck up on the state before the state could kill it.

Let’s return to the 19th century. Spooner didn’t go away. He was more than an entrepreneur. He was a brilliant and pioneering intellectual, as the collection The Lysander Spooner Reader makes clear. He was a champion of individual liberty and a passionate opponent of all forms of tyranny. He was an abolitionist before it became fashionable but he also defended the South’s right to secede.

Most incredibly, he was probably the first 19th century American to return to the old anti-Federalist tradition of post-Revolutionary America. He did this by asking the unaskable question: why should the US Constitution — however it is interpreted — be binding on every individual living in this geographic region?

This document was passed generations ago. Maybe you could say that the signers were bound by it, but what about those who opposed it at the time, and what about future generations? Why are the living being forced to live by parchment arrangement made by people long dead? Why are the living bound by a privileged group’s interpretations of its meaning?

In his view, people have rights or they do not have rights. If they have rights, no ancient scroll restricting those rights should have any power to take those rights away. Nor does it matter what a bunch of old guys in black robes say: rights are real things, not legal constructs to be added or reduced based on the results of courtroom deliberations. Plenty of Americans before his time would have agreed with him! It’s still the case.

Now, keep in mind that Spooner lived in a time where the living memory of these debates had not entirely disappeared. He knew what many people today do not know, namely that the Articles of Confederation made for a freer confederation of states than the Constitution. The Constitution amounted to an increase in government power, despite all its language about restricting government power. Remember too that it was only a few years after the Constitution was rammed through that the feds were suddenly jailing people for the speech crime of criticizing the US president!

Spooner spoke plainly: what you call the Constitution has no authority to take away my rights. Hence his famous essay: “Constitution of No Authority.” In “No Treason” he argues that the state has no rights over your freedom of speech. In “Vices Not Crimes,” he shows that people in any society are capable of doing terrible things but the law should only concern itself with aggression against person and property. Reading them all together, as they are in this book, is a radicalizing experience — a liberating experience. It makes you see the world in a completely different way.

It’s true that they aren’t teaching about Spooner in public school. But he was a giant by any standard, the 19th century’s own Thomas Jefferson (but even better than Jefferson on most issues). There is still so much to learn here. It’s no wonder that his legacy has been suppressed.

This edition of his best work is published by Fox & Wilkes, an imprint of Laissez-Faire Books. Incredibly, you are still permitted to buy this and read it without getting arrested — for now.

David Graeber and Robert Murphy have been debating the validity of the monetary regression theory.  They seem to be talking past one another.  Graeber is assuming that Austrian theory agrees with neo-classical theory in areas where it does not, and Murphy is assuming that Graeber is substantially more familiar with Austrian ideas than he seems to be.  To clear up the confusion, we need to take a step back and start at the beginning.

Like all theoretical sciences, economics is concerned with the identification of invariants.  Austrian theory and the more mainstream neo-classical theory agree on this much, but strongly disagree on methodology.

Standard treatments of economics begin by attempting to model human decision making and then apply techniques inherited from classical mechanics to aggregate these individual decision functions into economic relationships.  As Graeber is no doubt aware, the conventional approach relies on the Von Neumann-Morgenstern utility theorem and its normative description of rational behavior.  (More recent approaches use cumulative prospect theory, but the differences need not concern us here.)

Austrians have long contended that this approach is untenable and unscientific.  First, any non-trivial economy is too highly dimensional and too non-linear to be analytically tractable.  Conventional economic theories rely on various idealizing simplifications.  Austrians contend that these idealizations render the results meaningless.  At a minimum, they assume away the very questions economics ought to focus on answering.  More importantly, the analogous physical theories rely on the studied system being linear time-invariant.  (Thus a physicist can model motion in the absence of friction because his answer will merely need a simple correction).  Real economies do not have this property; consequently, the standard idealizations do not produce approximately correct claims, they produce nonsense.

Second, Austrians do not think that economic theories should depend on decision theory.  Because no tractable theory of decision making can capture all the nuances of actual human beings, the “laws” identified by standard economics are not true invariants, they depend on an underlying decision theory that is known to be false.  And, again, because of the inherent complexity and non-linearities involved, we cannot even claim that these “laws” should be approximately correct, as far as we know, they can be arbitrarily wrong.

In the Austrian account, the economy cannot be explained by a series of differential equations modeling the impact of perfectly rational human decisions.  The economy is a complex adaptive system that emerges from the interactions of real human beings.  Barring the development of substantially better mathematical tools, we simply cannot make the kind of quantitatively precise statements made by other schools of thought.  At best we can make qualitative statements about the necessary properties of economic systems.

Thus far, Austrians seem to agree with Graeber:

[Conventional economics assumes] that human beings are rational, calculating exchangers seeking material advantage, and that therefore it is possible to construct a scientific field that studies such behavior. The problem is that the real world seems to contradict this assumption at every turn.

Austrians confront this problem head-on.  Human action is taken as a given; whatever the nature of the underlying decision process, Austrian claims will remain valid.  Instead of making a series of ludicrous idealizations, Austrians develop their theory by a series of thought experiments or, as Ludwig von Mises calls them, imaginary constructions.  Via these thought experiments, Austrians attempt to prove that certain properties of economic systems are logically necessary and thereby identify the invariants of economics.

Graeber believes that he has anthropological evidence disputing the conclusions of Austrian economics.  He is wrong on several counts.  First, he incorrectly assumes that economics does not account for the situations that have been observed.  Second, he relies on observations from economically primitive societies to refute claims only applicable to more developed economies.  Third, he assumes that by showing that a thought experiment is contrived, he has disproved the conclusions drawn from it.

For example, Graeber presents multiple examples of trade as it actually takes place in primitive societies and argues that these examples contradict the predictions of economic theory.  In fact, these examples are well known and explicitly accounted for:

Ethnology and history have provided us with interesting information concerning the beginning and the primitive patterns of interpersonal exchange. Some consider the custom of mutual giving and returning of presents and stipulating a certain return present in advance as a precursory pattern of interpersonal exchange. […]  However, to make presents in the expectation of being rewarded by the receiver’s return present or in order to acquire the favor of a man whose animosity could be disastrous, is already tantamount to interpersonal exchange.

Thus, far from falsifying the claims of economics, Graeber’s examples are actually cases of the very bartering that he wishes to prove did not take place.  (Economically, “barter” applies to all interpersonal exchanges that do not involve money; exactly what form the barter transactions take is an empirical question and beyond the reach of economic theory.)

Moreover, Graeber seems to believe that the Austrian account of money rules out the possibility of credit-bartering.  It does not.  The use of spot transactions to illustrate the nature of pre-monetary price formation is merely a descriptive convenience.  The arguments have nothing to say about credit because it is irrelevant to the thought experiment.  All that is required is that the transactions be “direct” exchanges (as opposed to “indirect,” i.e., monetary, exchanges):

The elementary theory of value and prices employs, apart from other imaginary constructions to be dealt with later, the construction of a market in which all transactions are performed in direct exchange.

Importantly, this construct is 1) imaginary and 2) very general.  A transaction in the economic sense is much broader than formal haggling between merchants; mutual gifting and other such examples are deliberately included.  This imaginary construction is made in full and complete awareness of the fact that true economic calculation requires money; “money prices are the only vehicle of economic calculation.”  In the Austrian account, money’s role as the enabler of economic calculation is paramount.

Turning to the theory of money in particular, economics does not claim that money is a universal phenomena.  Rather,

money presupposes an economic order in which production is based on division of labor and in which private property consists not only in goods of the first order (consumption goods), but also in goods of higher orders (production goods).

Thus economics actually predicts, in complete agreement with Graeber’s evidence, that his primitive tribes will not need or develop money.  Rather, the need for economic calculation, and thus money, will arise in situations like those he describes as existing in ancient Mesopotamia.  A band of a dozen or so people does not need money to make reasonable decisions between alternatives, but a massive temple complex with “thousands of people engaged in agriculture, industry, fishing, and herding” needs to measure inputs and outputs — it needs money.  The question is how money developed.

Once we have money, it is easy to see that it is valued because it can be used in exchange.  But if money is valuable today because it can be exchanged for things people want, this seems to lead to an infinite regress.  At some point there was no money, so how did we go from having no money to having a money that is valued almost exclusively because it can be used in exchange?

The Austrian explanation is that goods in a pre-monetary economy are not all equally marketable. “While there is only a limited and occasional demand for certain goods, that for others is more general and constant.”  People can either exchange directly (barter) or they can exchange indirectly (by trading what they have for something more marketable with the intention of using the more marketable good to acquire what they want).  Thus, even if a person doesn’t need something specific right now, he will be willing to trade his less marketable goods for goods that are more marketable because this will put him in a better position to get what he wants in the future.  This process creates a positive feedback loop — as more people trade less marketable goods for more marketable ones, the value of the more marketable ones is increasingly determined by the marketability itself instead of its original use-value.

In this way an economy sufficiently complex to need money can develop it.  The money will be a good that had preexisting exchange ratios with other economic goods (so that people can trade for it) and it will be a good that was initially relatively more marketable than the others (so that people will want to trade for it).

Graeber’s account of Mesopotamia supports these conclusions.  The economy was sufficiently complex to need money.  Silver had preexisting exchange ratios in the form of cultural understandings and credit arrangements.  It was highly marketable because of the demand by temple complexes and thus it emerged as money (and, hence, the unit of account).

In fact, it would seem that this logic is stronger in an economy dominated by credit transactions instead of spot ones.   Because the future is uncertain, lenders do not know for sure what they’ll need at the time of repayment.  Conversely, the borrower doesn’t know exactly what he’ll have in the future. Consequently, both of them are motivated to demand that repayment be in the form of a highly marketable commodity.  (Indeed, the collection rules for the Judean legal system are based on marketability.)

Thus, despite his claims to the contrary, Graeber has not disproved economics.

Though John Hospers was never my hero, he came close. Now he’s dead, like most of the other philosophical writers I admire.

He died yesterday, a few days into his 94th year.

Since I grew up in one of the two states of the union in which his name appeared on the ballot for the U.S. Presidency, I must’ve come across his name in that year of 1972. But it didn’t stick. The renegade electoral college voter, Roger MacBride, who cast his ballot for the Hospers/Nathan Libertarian Party ticket, did leave an impression four years later, with his direct-to-the-camera spiel following the Democratic Nominating Convention.

That was probably my first notice of the word “libertarian” alone and naked, not prefixed by “civil.”

John Hospers was, though, a civil man, a civilized man. Like at least one later Libertarian Party presidential nominee, Harry Browne, he was committed to high culture as well as the arts of peace, prosperity, and freedom. Quiet in bearing, cautious in speculation, careful in reasoning, he also served as the epitome of the philosophic cast of mind. A professor of philosophy, in fact, his career in the field was illustrious.

It was not helped, however, by his 1972 run for the presidency, or by his political philosophy in general — a philosophy greatly influenced by his personal relationship (and its severance) with Ayn Rand. (Jesse Walker, on Reason’s Hit and Run, provides the links.) He once told me that the University of Southern California only reluctantly honored him with emeritus status.

I read his Libertarianism in 1980, shortly after meeting his LP running mate Tonie Nathan. I then  scoured back issues of The Personalist for his essays, and those of his friends. I remember, today, only one of those contributions: “Rule Egoism,” a short note that dovetailed nicely with J.L. Mackie’s comments about coalescing ethical standpoints in the second half of Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, which I read soon after. I leaned more towards Mackie than Hospers, however, and remained puzzled at how this fine thinker could admire Ayn Rand so much. She was so ungainly a thinker. Hospers was not. Even in error his caution and subtlety shined through.

I met him, for the first time, at a Liberty conference (I was a sub-editor at Liberty from its inception till 1999), and was quite familiar with his writing style from working on many of his brilliant manuscripts presented for publication. His writings were challenging, often straying outside the rigors of libertarian ideology. His style was always crystal-clear, without a hint of Kantian clumsiness, Hegelian obscurity, or Heideggerian impenetrability.

The world of scholars will remember him chiefly for his work in philosophy as editor, author and anthologist. His writings on aesthetics (Understanding the Arts), ethics (Human Conduct) and basic philosophy (Introduction to Philosophical Analysis) are all worthy contributions. He was also a great pedagogue. His editorship of The Personalist provided an early first academic outlet for a wider-than-usual variety of viewpoints, including the libertarian — a variety quite alien to American philosophical circles at that time.

In all his work, up towards the end, Hospers exhibited a strong intellectual curiosity, which disallowed him to take comfort the confines of any ideological box. I always admired this. I could not be angered by most of his forays into territory that put him at odds with the mainstream of libertarian thought, even when I was pretty sure he was dead wrong. Yet I did have great trouble with his late, post-9/11 warmongering, and handled it chiefly (I freely confess) by ignoring the man. Perhaps I was wrong to do so. Philosophical lapses of the aged deserve some tolerance, as we give, say, to Anthony Flew for his flirtations with ideas that he had, during the height of his intellectual powers, demolished so severely.

The arc of life necessarily involves declension towards the end — that’s to be expected. That arc hits dirt and ash at terminus. So it has ended for John Hospers, as it will one day end for each of us.

We bear this truth “philosophically” — as John Hospers advised.

Consider Bastiat’s comments on Rome and how–if you substitute for slavery the drug war and tax slavery–they apply to the modern US:

What is to be said of Roman morality? And I am not speaking here of the relations of father and son, of husband and wife, of patron and client, of master and servant, of man and God—relations that slavery, by itself alone, could not fail to transform into a whole network of depravity; I wish to dwell only on what is called the admirable side of the Republic, i.e., patriotism. What was this patriotism? Hatred of foreigners, the destruction of all civilization, the stifling of all progress, the scourging of the world with fire and sword, the chaining of women, children, and old men to triumphal chariots—this was glory, this was virtue. It was to these atrocities that the marble of the sculptors and the songs of the poets were dedicated. How many times have our young hearts not palpitated with admiration, alas, and with emulation at this spectacle!

From Bastiat, Selected Essays in Political Economy, quoted in Geoffrey Allan Plauché, “Roman Virtue, Liberty, and Imperialism: The Murder-Suicide of Classical Civilization.” America is riddled with patriotism, with American flags senselessly displayed all over, and people mindlessly responding to criticism of the Fatherland with the retort, “You show me another country that’s better!” Its wars, the welfare state, its taxes and manipulation of money, its jails full of non-criminals have indeed debased morals. We have scourged the world with fire and sword, and statues of our modern warlord gods, such as Lincoln, adorn our capital city. As for the last line, about the youth swooning over our military might and conquest, one is reminded of the not completely tongue-in-check skit Wayne’s World during Gulf War I, when Wayne and Garth had fun watching the videos of US missiles destroying Iraqi targets.

Easily 99% of what American libertarians talk about is the demise of the country, with countless daily examples of new regulations, and the devastating results of those regulations. The US is, after all, in what to many appear to be an accelerating rate of decay compared to other countries around the world. The endless complaining and whining of the libertarian is not without merit–”our” federal government has for decades now been a worldwide aggressor. That said, there are a few aspects of American lifestyle that, in my opinion, are worth mentioning. These are things that I think are at least superior to that which exists elsewhere. In making this list I asked for comments by fellow TLS bloggers.

Full disclosure: for what it’s worth, personally, my only point of comparison is having lived half of my life in Perú and the other in the USA.

Of course, for each one of the points mentioned below there is some sort of state intervention that makes things more expensive or complicated. Still, there is something to be said about Americanism that is not all negative.

Affordable access to technology. Though things are improving in South America, import taxes are so high that it is not uncommon for people to travel to the US and bring back all kinds of electronics in their suitcase, pass them as their own, and then give them to buyers.

Can-do attitude. Everyday life is not a challenge. For the most part, people are cooperative, helpful, thankful and attentive. Special circumstances are not often resisted or met with disdain. In Perú, things are impossible, difficult, and take eons, but only because of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Speed of business. My cousin spent a year doing lab research in Italy. He noted that things got done “whenever” and nobody ever knew when an order would be fulfilled. Sure, there is a difference in culture. In my opinion, so long as things are done well, faster is better–it also makes you less poor.

Homeschooling. In large parts of Europe homeschooling is illegal or extremely regulated. Yes, there is always the black market, but there are huge risks involved (losing your kids or parenting rights, fines, jailtime, etc.). Homeschooling is legal in every state of the US, with some states giving homeschooling parents very favorable conditions (see a href=”http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp”>this map).

Entrepreneurship. Nobody blinks an eye upon being told, casually even, that the person conversing with them owns a business or two or three. The idea of starting a business, even a tiny, one-person operation, is not special.

When working on this post I received the following comment (edited for bloggability) from Anthony Gregory:

Music — jazz, country, blues and rock, all ours. Film — we invented it and still dominate. Literature — some of the best stuff written in English. Food — lots of stuff was developed and created here. Culture — we kick ass in everything from clothing to modern art. Political philosophy — we said goodbye to empire, ushering in two centuries of global liberalization. Modern libertarianism — our people invented the freaking thing. I love America as much as anyone in this country, goddamn it. I will defend America until I’m blue in the face.

Let’s continue.

Optimism. “Americans are uniquely (and, to foreigners, obnoxiously) optimistic. Pessimism is the order of the day elsewhere, but not here.” ~Akiva

Service. Granted, this one varies widely, but in my experience, in the US those in the service industry are either happy to see you, or, most likely, pretend to be. That’s fine, because in other countries, you are sadly more than often treated as a burden. Yes, customers treated like a burden who ruin a clerk’s otherwise completely idle day.

Drive-thrus. A convenient, time saver. No need to get out of your car and walk in the cold or in the heat. Once, years ago, my wife and met a German exchange student. He said that in his country, drive-thrus were seen as inhuman and were not popular. I just rolled my eyes and thought “FAIL” at such a comment. Do they have stoves in Germany or cars?

Charity. Personal and corporate charitable donations, foundations, scholarships, memorial funds abound. Americans tend to rank near the top when it comes to non-profit financial support.

24/7 places. Some years ago Gabriel Calzada (founder of the Instituto Juan de Mariana) and I were walking around Manhattan. He still got a kick out of seeing businesses actually opened on Sundays, as well as businesses running 24/7. In Spain, he told me, some businesses are prohibited from opening on Sundays, supposedly for protectionist reasons (big stores vs. small stores).

Guns. Though a few states have it almost as bad as Europe, in most of the US you can go buy a firearm in minutes from a store; in most states you can also (legally) buy one from a private seller with no government notice, permit or registry. And in a handful of states you can take a handgun and carry it concealed without a permit.

Classlessness. In developing countries, where income mobility is not high, a de facto class system has therefore been established. In Perú, for example, it is common–indeed expected–for the poor to not generally approach or talk to the non-poor unless they are begging for money or asking for business. For the upper middle class and above, it is just not usual, and sometimes even frowned upon, for the “privileged” to mingle, chat or engage in random conversation at a checkout lane, with the lower classes. In the US there can be a bit of this, but it is nowhere near as pronounced. Most folks have no problem interacting with any other person regardless of their position in life or income. Americans greet, and shake hands, with anyone else, and tend to respect the other person for their accomplishments and work. There are even linguistic examples of “classiness.” If you are upper middle class, it is expected for you to use the informal version of you (tu) when speaking with someone of a “lower” class, whereas the “plebes” are expected to use the formal you (usted) when addressing their “betters.”

Fellow TLS blogger Akiva shares the following comment regarding American optimism and individualism:

On the first day of B-school, they had an expert on international culture who consults with major companies come and give us some behavior and attitudes test and then explain the outcome. The bottom line is that Americans are *extreme* outliers. American culture is unique. Despite all the crap that has happened, Americans are as culturally exceptional as they were in de Tocqueville’s day.

They reject fate and believe in in the power of individual choice. American celebrate mavericks; they’d never say, “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down”. On a very fundamental level, Americans value others as free individuals and expect those around them to do the same. There is no deference to authority, experience, or seniority, Americans expect people to justify themselves by their words and deeds, not because of who they are. Individualism and freedom are not political ideas here, they are cultural values, to the point that even the enemies of freedom must pay lip service to them.

Americans believe in the rule of law with almost religious fervor. That the state has to justify not only every exercise of power but even its very existence, is a uniquely American attitude. When Americans say that the state “can’t” do something they don’t mean it as a procedural formality, but as a statement of metaphysical reality.

America succeed b/c of the people and despite the government. Everywhere else seems to have *needed* political leadership to get anything done, but Americans by and large just take care of business. Politics is not a field that attracts the best and brightest, America doesn’t produce great statesman, but that’s b/c its best people have
better things to do. Politicians may talk of taxing the rich, but even on the left, very few would begrudge Gates, Dell, or others who made their fortunes with “honest” work.

In short, what is good about America is everything that riles the Europeans, offends those from the Far East, and mystifies everyone else.

To this list I can probably add tolerance and heterogeneity. Unlike places where there is significant pressure to never deviate from “standard” behavior, in the US people do not care too much if individuals or families do things that are not “the norm.” There are numerous “private holidays” and events and activities of all kinds. These exist all over the world, but in my opinion (again, drawing from my Peruvian experience) folks who deviate from what is standard are easily categorized as weird or outcasts, even if their interests are not, for international standards, extravagant or radically unusual.

For the “average” Austro-anarcho-libertarian, the US is free-fall, with totalitarianism around the corner. But there is also plenty of good.

The two are definitely in the same league, in absolute terms. Maybe Obama is Nixon to Bush’s LBJ, in that he is continuing and expanding upon his predecessor’s foreign and domestic enormities, deserving special ire for ramping them up, but with the president before still deserving special hatred for having started so many horrible policies.

Of course, it is unfair to compare Obama to Bush just yet, since Bush had eight years of destruction and Obama has only had a little over two. Nevertheless, let’s remember what Bush had done by this point in his presidency, mid-March 2003. Just over two years into his presidency, Bush had:

• Invaded and occupied Afghanistan
• Invaded Iraq
• Rounded up and detained hundreds of aliens right after 9/11
• Established a policy of indefinite detention and torture
• Created a prison camp at Guantanamo
• Signed the Patriot Act, including major assaults on free speech (National Security Letters) and a near total annihilation of the Fourth Amendment
• Created the Transportation Security Administration
• Created the Department of Homeland Security
• Instituted “Project Safe Neighborhoods” and overseen a vast increase in firearms prosecutions by the Justice Department
• Signed No Child Left Behind
• Rammed through Medicare Part D, adding $20 trillion in unfunded liabilities, the largest expansion of the welfare state in about 35 years
• Rammed through Sarbanes-Oxley, the largest expansion of the corporate regulatory state perhaps since the New Deal, which has devastated the economy
• Signed protectionist steel tariffs
• Expanded farm subsidies
• Made “free-speech zones” a commonplace
• Directed the NSA (a branch of the military) to warrantlessly wiretap the American people
• Accelerated the subsidization (directly and indirectly) of home ownership by minorities and others who couldn’t really afford houses, sowing the seeds for a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble, culminating in the crash of ’08

Obama has done a staggering amount of damage in just over two years, but I submit that Bush might still have him beat in terms of destruction unleashed in so short a time. Also, the war in Iraq has long-term consequences in foreign relations that are yet to be seen. Bush could very well be the Woodrow Wilson of the 21st century, having set in motion a series of devastating events humanity will suffer from for a century.

Obama is definitely no sort of relief from the Bush years. But never let it be forgotten how completely terrible his predecessor was, right off the bat.

With great solemnity, “Defense” Secretary Robert Gates imparted on West Point cadets this Friday a hard-earned pearl of newly discovered wisdom:

“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” Mr. Gates told an assembly of Army cadets here.

In other words, ”Never get involved in a land war in Asia.”

Sounds like good advi… Wait,what? Not everyone knows this already? Inconceivable!

Any culturally literate person has seen The Princess Bride at least once in the last 24 years and certainly knows about the most famous classic blunder:

It must take being a politician or government official to have never heard of this before, or to forget it, or else to possess the hubris to think that they can make things turn out differently this time.

I’m reminded of another classic principle, this one pithily stated by Thomas Sowell:

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Here’s another one Gates is probably not familiar with:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana

[Cross-posted at Prometheus Unbound.]