Obama: The People's War President?

Last week, I received news that an old friend—the son of a former Libertarian congressional candidate—had become a conscientious objector in his Army unit following an action that killed noncombatants. This was Wayne's first tour of duty, but there is no doubt that he was well-practiced in the fieldcraft and personal discipline required for good soldiering.

He grew up in a close-knit Christian family that homeschooled their children on a fifty acre plot of woods in the wiregrass region of lower Alabama. Wayne grew up reading, hunting, fishing, shooting guns, and playing paintball with his brother and sister. While working with the Libertarian Party of Alabama, I visited their home on several occasions between 2002 and 2004, and I remember Wayne as a respectful young teenager with an expansive vocabulary and his father's knack for computer games.

Around five years after the last time I saw him, Wayne's infantry unit deployed to Iraq. Having been in the Army for a couple of years already, his father reports that he was "gung-ho" about the Army life, even in a combat zone. Wayne's unit assaulted a building thought to contain "insurgents," and air support was called in from an AC-130 gunship and an AH-64 Apache helicopter. After the target was bombarded from the air with 105 mm shells and strafed with 30 mm cannon-fire, the structure was cleared, and only lifeless women and children were found inside.

After returning stateside, Wayne determined that his conscience would not allow him to kill for the United States government again. Despite ridicule and worse from his "battle buddies," Wayne, now facing another Iraq deployment, has begun openly speaking his conscience and declaring that participation in the Iraq War is participation in murder.

Barack Obama was held out by many as the most radical voice for peace among the viable Democratic presidential candidates in 2008. What a disappointment to those who voted accordingly! The peace president has broadly expanded the Afghanistan campaign, begun bombing runs in Yemen, and still maintains tens of thousands of combat troops, albeit at reduced levels, in Iraq (although my friend reports that private military contractor usage has been amped up to compensate). There have been rumblings about stepping up U.S. efforts to "stabilize" Somalia, and Xe (formerly Blackwater) mercenaries are already on the ground there. The Obama administration has also worked to move more troops into the murderous anti-coca campaign in Colombia, where "false positives" (anti-narco-gestapo-speak for "murdered civilians") continue to mount.

Fear of American operations into Colombia's neighbors has made political hay for South American political oppressors, as the socialists in power in Venezuela and Ecuador have effectively used the American regime as a foil in their own democratic socialist melodramas, working to clamp down on dissenting media outlets and otherwise centralizing control of those economies into state hands.

In total, the United States has around 394,000 troops deployed on foreign soil. In comparison, the rest of the world's governments combined have fewer than 150,000 of their military personnel on international deployment.

Like his war-hawk predecessor, the current president is pursuing a policy of perpetual war for perpetual peace. And like the Bush government, Obama's administration has moved to cover-up evidence of torture and other crimes committed by U.S. personnel.

Glenn Greenwald pointed out in a recent Salon column that this should come as no surprise to those who remember that in 2008 Obama's current head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, advocated government operations to actively infiltrate and disrupt groups that openly questioned the truthfulness of the federal government's various organs. Sunstein pitched such actions as means for promoting public faith in the government.

Administration figures have also been up to no good in domestic policy debates, with the undisclosed bankrolling of soi disant "independent" experts like Jonathan Gruber. The MIT professor took federal money to promote the president's healthcare agenda in the media, but forgot to mention this rather substantial conflict of interests when grandstanding for his government employer. Greenwald correctly concluded that such official deception is symptomatic of yet another administration's narcissistic self-assuredness and disdain for honest debate.

If anyone doubts that government propaganda kills, look at the eighteen year-old kids who join the military because they believe they will be "protecting freedom" by serving as emissaries of the leviathan state that once used atomic weapons against civilians and which imprisons a higher percentage of its own citizens than any other modern democracy.

Rather than sending naive, trusting young people like my friend Wayne to risk life and limb committing mayhem in the name of "regional stability" and other nebulous trump cards, Obama should bring American troops home now. But he will not do so. He will simply put new window dressing on the tired old political barbarism of high-time preference foreign policy and spending for spending's sake, and will continue to show the same disregard for the individual lives irreparably harmed as a result. Where's the hope?

(Also published in the January 2010 issue of Dicta, the Suffolk Law Paper.)

Healthcare Contrarianism in an Age of Consensus

It was once hip to question authority, partisan allegiances be damned. Among those who once chanted "Hey, hey, LBJ/How many kids did you kill today?" in protest against the Vietnam War, at least a few were left-of-center types more likely to be lumped in with Johnson's Democratic party than with the Republican one. In our modern political climate, however, loose political coalitions sink campaigns. In an age when "spoiler" candidates like Ross Perot and Ralph Nader are almost universally decried as having "taken votes" from their rightful, major-party recipients, the level of intra-party criticism is ebbing ever lower.

Years after the rise of George W. Bush to the presidency, I recall seeing many proud Republicans driving cars sporting "W: The President" stickers, apparently indifferent to the fact that Bush grew government faster than Clinton had, dwarfed Clinton's military expenditures, and threatened other nations with the reckless abandon of the too-drunk friend who you try to whisk out of the bar before he gets himself into trouble. Now, well over six months into the Barack Obama administration, the new president's devotees are likewise still devoted, wearing Obama t-shirts, sporting his campaign stickers on laptops and cars, and denouncing opponents of Obama's policy proposals as partisan, possibly racist no-goods who in the words of Obama himself "created this mess" and ought not "do a lot of talking."

Just as Bush supporters did when they claimed that opponents of the Iraqi and Afghani wars were "with the terrorists," Obama and his supporters pose a false choice: either you give carte blanche to the people in power on Capitol Hill or you are a war-mongering, possibly fascist, indigent-hating Republican. This false dichotomy ignores the fact that millions of Americans have steadfastly opposed government cartelization of the healthcare industry for years, criticized Bush's approval of a massive prescription drug bill, and were just as eager to march against Republican wars in Iraq as they were to protest Democrat-led adventurism into Eastern Europe and Northern Africa.

One doesn't have to be a pro-war neoconservative to see that the further bureaucratization of the medical services industry, especially where price controls are likely, will result in fewer choices for consumers, less flexibility in treatment regimens, and another reason for our benevolent government overlords to further regulate what we eat and drink and smoke. However, by allowing a market rather than a panel of bureaucrats to set prices, shortages could be mitigated in the short term and eliminated in the long term. In a market where prices are a function of supply and demand, prices rise as supplies become more scarce. Free market prices act to prevent wasteful usage of scarce resources, like that of Medicare patients who call an ambulance scores of times for minor or imagined maladies, because such overusage would break the bank for the wasteful patient. Likewise, where there is a more fundamental supply issue, rising prices both encourage entrepreneurs to devise more efficient ways of serving patients and bring more service-providers into that sector of the market.

Although there is much wrong with the healthcare plan being pushed by the majority party right now, it is important to note that this does not mean that the status quo in the United States represents a "free market." Nothing could be further from the truth. Even without the Democratic plan, we have a medical labor cartel, the American Medical Association, in place to artificially limit the supply of medical services and raise their prices. We have lengthy pharmaceutical patents that prevent competitors from reverse engineering drugs sooner and from devising cheaper ways to bring those drugs to market. We have an incredibly onerous drug approval process that is so expensive as to frustrate the business plans of all but the largest of drug companies and keeps possibly life-saving drugs out of the hands of desperate patients who ought to be allowed to do their own risk/benefit analyses when their lives are the ones on the line. Huge entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, while burning through money like almost nothing else besides the military, ensure that the poorest segments of the population will receive substandard care and annoyed looks from paperwork-hating triage nurses.

It is true that the United States has a healthcare system, at present, that is marginally more free than those of many other nations. Although there are price ceilings for certain patients under certain government entitlement programs, there is still a private market in healthcare that allows prices to adjust to their natural levels. For this reason, many foreign medical professionals immigrate to the United States, where their expertise will be better compensated and utilized than under the mess of bureaucratic red tape in their countries of origin. The fact that the United States is effectively alone among industrialized nations in not instituting a single-payer healthcare system is no argument for such a policy. Political keeping-up-with-the-Joneses is lazy and irresponsible in public policymaking.

The United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) is often raised as an example of a single-payer healthcare success story, but the NHS's own statistics show that the number of general practitioners per capita in Britain has fallen dramatically since the imposition of the NHS monopoly. Despite long waiting lists, substandard facilities, and doctor shortages, Britons will have to put up with their bureaucratized healthcare system until the whole British house of cards comes down, because the NHS is now the largest single employer in the United Kingdom and one of the top five employers in the world. With that many people drawing a government check from NHS, the program is entrenched, its miserable failure notwithstanding.

Here in the land of the free and the home of the brave let us actually expect a little personal responsibility. Individuals should plan financially for foreseeable medical expenses and remember that medical insurance is best reserved for catastrophic medical events. Eliminating the administrative costs associated with bureaucracy (and preventing the imposition of more such costs) means prices must fall eventually, all things being equal. Lower prices would mean that voluntary charities could better afford to serve more individuals, but without causing the distortion in the market that government bureaucracies do.

Pretending that we can totally abandon personal responsibility because we have a "right" to the labor of doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators only confuses the issue, discourages talented individuals from pursuing medical careers, and insures that the American healthcare system will continue to decline. Government monopolies didn't carry the now-commonplace heart bypass procedure from experimental to routine, the market did. There is no room for the government in healthcare.

(Also published in the Orientation 2009 issue of Dicta, the Suffolk Law paper.)

Anarchy and the Law of the Somalis

“I don't think there are any warlords in Somalia. There are war leaders, or militia leaders, in various parts of Somalia. People who defend their homes often organize militias; it is done in places as genteel as Switzerland, Texas, and Israel. You find that the mainstream media tends to call the leaders of these militia ‘officers’ in countries other than Somalia. Very often, the elders of a community choose a war leader or officer, and he chooses his lieutenants and subordinates. He provides leadership, until the crisis is past or until another officer is chosen to replace him, or until he dies. Calling him a warlord and calling his lieutenants ‘henchmen’ doesn't further a discussion of these issues.”

—Jim Davidson, Awdal Roads Company, Awdal Province, Somaliland, 2001.¹

In July of 2001, after completing ROTC Basic Camp at Fort Knox, Kentucky, I refused to contract with the United States Army. When Major Hall, my company commander, asked me why I had decided not to pursue a commission as an officer, I told him that I was an anarchist, and that I could not in good conscience take a loyalty oath to fight on behalf of the United States government. I thanked the major for the infantry training and was on my way home the next day.

In September of 2007, I was asked by my legal practice skills professor to complete a questionnaire explaining what I expected from law school, why I wanted to study law, and what I hoped to accomplish with a legal education. I replied that I wanted to learn what I could about the history of the common law and the modern legal process. As for my goals after legal education, I answered to the effect that I hoped to aid in the emergence of a modern polycentric legal order² where private insurance companies, arbitration firms, and security agencies would function in place of the present monopoly justice and security structures administered by the state.

The provision of dispute resolution services and security services by market means is not a radically new idea. With regards to theoretical arguments for market, rather than political, provision of dispute resolution and security services, Gustave de Molinari argued in 1849:

“This option the consumer retains of being able to buy security wherever he pleases brings about a constant emulation among all the producers, each producer striving to maintain or augment his clientele with the attraction of cheapness or of faster, more complete and better justice. If, on the contrary, the consumer is not free to buy security wherever he pleases, you forthwith see open up a large profession dedicated to arbitrariness and bad management. Justice becomes slow and costly, the police vexatious, individual liberty is no longer respected, the price of security is abusively inflated and inequitably apportioned, according to the power and influence of this or that class of consumers. The protectors engage in bitter struggles to wrest customers from one another. In a word, all the abuses inherent in monopoly or in communism crop up.”³

A number of radical libertarian writers in recent years have expanded on Molinari’s thesis, posing sophisticated arguments for a free market in justice and defense.⁴ However, there is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that people have been privately going about their own dispute resolution business for thousands of years. One strong indicator of this tendency is the fact that the government rulers who have long fought to monopolize the provision of binding dispute resolution have for hundreds, if not thousands, of years threatened criminal penalties against crime victims who independently endeavored to secure recompense from an offender. Rothbard recounts that,

“in the Middle Ages generally, restitution to the victim was the dominant concept of punishment; only as the State grew more powerful did the governmental authorities encroach ever more into the repayment process, increasingly confiscating a greater proportion of the criminal's property for themselves, and leaving less and less to the unfortunate victim.”⁵

As time went on, the king sought to protect his court revenues. Benson describes the development in English law:

“[R]oyal law imposed coercive rules declaring that the victim was a criminal if he obtained restitution before he brought the offender before a king's justice where the king could get his profits. This was not a strong enough inducement, so royal law created the crime of ‘theftbote,’ making it a misdemeanor for a victim to accept the return of stolen property or to make other arrangements with a felon in exchange for an agreement not to prosecute.”⁶

Theftbote has evolved into what is now referred to as “compounding a crime,” which is committed when a crime victim accepts restitution in lieu of punishment. As Barnett explains, “In the quest to punish criminals, whether for retributivist motivations or to protect the public, crime victims become mere means to the ends of the institutions created to punish.”⁷ If one takes the purpose of the criminal justice system to be the deterrence of wrongful acts and protection of victims, it is strange indeed that the very system which is supposed to offer hope for relief would instead create new obstacles to the righting of wrongs. However, this development should come as no surprise to those who remember that criminal law came into its own as a means of fattening the king’s coffers, not as a bulwark against predation by the unjust.⁸

Because I recognize that government courts serve primarily to advance the interests of government power, my goal as an aspiring attorney is to use what I can from my legal education to work against the State—to oppose government action where private, voluntary action would better serve the interests of justice. It is the subsequent question—“How can private actors be entrusted with the provision of public goods like defense and justice?”—that makes a book like The Law of the Somalis important.

Van Notten, a Dutch lawyer, lived with the Somali people and applied his legal expertise to learning and understanding the Xeer, the traditional Somali legal system that has developed over thousands of years. The Xeer is remarkable because it is not dependent on a central government authority, but instead relies on familial, economic, and cultural pressures to insure that justice is done. While the details of the system leave some things to be desired—equal rights for women and greater alienability of property outside of the clan, for starters—it is based on core principles which are admirable and reasonable:

1) The law is separate from politics and religion

2) The law has a built-in method for its development

3) There is a plurality of jurisdictions and norms

4) Government personnel must abide by the law

5) The law originates in the reason and conscience of the community

6) Judges are specialists, each with his own method of analyzing the Law⁹

These core principles are admirable enough, and familiar to those already acquainted with American law: The first protects the elevated place of rational discourse in judicial decision-making. The second hearkens to the English Common Law, which too provides for its own development. The sixth recognizes that judging legal disputes is rightfully a specialized vocation deserving of professional experts in the law.

However, number three’s legal plurality is somewhat alien to those accustomed to hierarchical, monolithic legal systems. Likewise, number four conflicts with the English concept of sovereign immunity, where as a matter of policy certain state actors are shielded from liability that would, save their position of favor with the state, otherwise leave them vulnerable to remedial action from the courts. Number five reminds one of the traditional English and American jury system before the Sparf decision that deprived the petit jury of the power to determine both law and fact,¹⁰ a power it had enjoyed since Bushell’s Case in 1670.¹¹

The most important role of van Notten’s book, besides offering a glimpse at the legal culture of a distinctly independent people who have successfully resisted centralized government authority since 1993, is to offer one contemporary example of a legal system that is the result of spontaneous order and not the edict of a person in power. Although no utopian vision, van Notten provides us with proof positive that emergent systems arise to satiate demand for solutions to even complex social problems like inter-cultural dispute resolution.

Now it is left to experts in law and security to work to craft market mechanisms,¹² to render obsolete the inexpedient government models that cost too much in terms of both dollars and individual liberty. In the meantime, I plan to apply my convictions as a criminal defense attorney who is uniquely qualified to vigorously represent any client, no matter how deserving of disdain. Imprisonment is at worst criminal and at least counterproductive. Even where a criminal defendant is guilty of wrongdoing, imprisonment frustrates efforts by victims seeking restitution. Slaves, even slaves whose enslavement falls within the Thirteenth Amendment exception “as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted,” tend to be slow earners, and so less capable of making their victims whole. And again, curing the damage caused to the victims is supposed to be the aim of the whole exercise. As a criminal defense attorney, I can rest assured that my opponent will always be the state, and thus that my cause will always be just, whether my client is innocent or guilty of the crime charged. More than that, though, working to put less-than-innocent people on the street gives victims a better shot at actually securing restitution.

1 Davidson, James. "Somalia and Anarchy." Formulations. Free Nation Foundation. Issue #30 (Summer 2001). [URL: http://libertariannation.org/a/n030d1.html ]

2 See generally, Rothbard, Murray N. The Ethics of Liberty. New York: New York University Press, 1998.; Barnett, Randy E. The Structure of Liberty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

3 de Molinari, Gustave. "The Production of Security." Journal des Economistes. February 1849. J. Huston McCulloch, trans. 1977. [URL: http://praxeology.net/GM-PS.htm ]

4 Tannehill, Linda and Morris. The Market for Liberty. New York: Fox & Wilkes, 1993.; Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. Democracy: The God That Failed. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishing, 2001.; Murphy, Robert P. Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy. New York: RJ Communications, 2002.

5 Rothbard, Murray. The Ethics of Liberty. New York: New York University Press, 1998. p. 87.

6 Benson, Bruce. The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State. San Francisco, California: Pacific Research Institute, 1990. p. 62.

7 Barnett, Randy E. The Structure of Liberty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. p. 236.

8 Benson, p. 52–53.

9 Van Notten, Michael. The Law of the Somalis: A Stable Foundation for Economic Development in the Horn of Africa. Asmara, Eritrea: Red Sea Press, 2006. p, 34.

10 Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 63 (U.S. 1895).

11 Parmenter, Andrew. “Nullifying the Jury: ‘The Judicial Oligarchy’ Declares War On Jury Nullification.” Washburn Law Journal. Vol. 46, p. 379. Winter 2007. p. 382.

12 Perhaps a “Subscription Patrol and Restitution” insurance model, as suggested in Guillory, Gil and Patrick C. Tinsley. “The Role of Subscription-Based Patrol and Restitution in the Future of Liberty.” Libertarian Papers. Vol I. 2009. [URL: http://libertarianpapers.org/2009/12-the-role-of-subscription-based-patrol-and-restitution-in-the-future-of-liberty/ ]

(Also published at Strike The Root on 22 April 2009 and LewRockwell.com on 28 April 2009.)

Happy New Year--Tough Times Ahead

Happy New Year. January 2009 brings with it the landmark inauguration of Barack Obama. The GOP machine that has held the executive reins in Washington will yield to the new Democrat executive. Yet, what will change? Despite his occasional antiwar rhetoric, Obama has announced that he will retain Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. So much for "change." Gates was slippery enough to avoid criminal liability in the Iran-Contra scandal. As deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gates was a belligerent influence, encouraging covert bombing raids against the Sandanista government in Nicaraugua. However, his refusal to cooperate with the Office of Independent Counsel eventually paid off for him--his endurance in stonewalling OIC investigators outlasted that office's political capital and Gates escaped mostly unscathed, although the scandal lost him his 1987 bid to become top spook at Langley.

Obama also promises to step up the efforts of the Bush administation in hemorrhaging dollars for the sake of some ill-conceived "stimulus" program, as if more wild spending could be used as an effective salve for the pains now felt from years of carefree government excess. Even worse than the monetary helicopter that Obama plans to deploy to bribe the electorate, leading voices in the new administration and in the Democrat-controlled Congress are calling for trillions more in direct and indirect bailouts for companies either too irresponsible or too outmoded to perform efficiently in modern markets. The penalties against companies like Ford that refuse to participate in such quasi-nationalization of industry will likely continue as well. A $1 trillion plan for expansion of public works projects, which was pushed in part by steel industry lobbyists, is in the works. Numbers in the trillions are hard to fathom, but a useful point of reference is the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $12–14 trillion, if World Bank, CIA, and IMF figures are any indication.

More central the current economic crisis is the epidemic of bank failures. As reported by ABC News last year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has compiled a secret list of 117 banks that are on the brink of failure. After the twenty-five bank failures in 2008, the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund has been drawn down to roughly $20 Billion. This means that the fund could be bankrupted by as few as two of three large bank failures. Despite the looming insolvency of the FDIC, Obama has decided to retain current FDIC chair and 2006 Bush nominee Sheila Bair, probably though the end of her original term in 2011. Bair, one might recall, took unprecedented steps to extend the liabilities of the FDIC by providing unlimited backing for some kinds of non-interest-bearing accounts and backing other kinds of debt issued by at-risk banks.

All of these decisions seem to indicate that Obama's inauguration represents not a refreshing change from the irresponsible and short-sighted policies of the Bush II years, but rather a continuation of those failed policies, compounded by wild new spending initiatives and more monetary expansion from the Federal Reserve. Instead of a sober period of fiscal belt-tightening, Obama appears to be suffering from the same Keynesian delusion as his predecessor—that the answer to irresponsible, wasteful spending is even more spending, including the creation of up to 600,000 new government jobs. The same mental malaise has also taken hold of the minds behind the Wall Street Journal, which on January 6 ran an article entitled "Hard-Hit Families Finally Start Saving, Aggravating Nation's Economic Woes." While decreased consumer spending will mean slower growth, this is a good thing where we are talking about phantom growth driven by monetary policy mania rather than solid economic fundamentals. Far from "aggravating" the crisis, responsible financial decisions—choosing to live within one's means, saving, and planning for lean times ahead—are the only way to end what will otherwise blossom into America's Second Great Depression. Sadly, Washington seems set to continue on as a fount of fiscal lunacy, and the American people will suffer because of it.

(Also published in the January issue of Dicta, Suffolk Law's newspaper)

Your Presidential Choice: Two Names for More of the Same

On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, voters across the United States will take to the polls in hopes of determining their political and economic futures. Fat chance. The two major party candidates are so close in terms of policy positions that only a two-party system could produce two "opposition" candidates so nearly identical to one another. Both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama advocate managed, rather than free, international trade, although each candidate's rhetoric is expertly designed to appeal to his respective political base. Both candidates voted to again canonize Big Brother government by reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act in 2006. Both accept as a given the productivity-discouraging fractional slavery of the federal income tax. As best-selling author and historian Tom Woods snidely remarked in a speech on September 5,

On taxes, the Democrat favors a top income tax rate of 39.5 per cent and the Republican favors a top rate of 35 per cent. Well ain't democracy grand? We get to debate a whole four and a half percentage points. We'd better spread this system around the world!

And indeed, both candidates seem poised to continue spreading away, with each man supporting the expansion of the United States' global hegemony, already enforced by the troops manning the more than 800 U.S. military installations in 140+ countries around the world. The differences between Obama and McCain on foreign policy are nuanced and unsatisfying, especially to the radical anti-war activists that have worked for many long years to bring American service members home to their families and productive domestic lives. Both candidates advocate increasing troop deployments, although Obama's military adventurist aspirations would in part serve to satisfy the pop-interventionists who have been lusting for American involvement in Sudan and would in part show that Obama is a tough guy who can really get the arch-terrorists along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. McCain's hawkishness, on the other hand, alternates between chest-pounding and talk of saving face by "winning," as measured by some undefined standard that, in its vagueness, may as well be synonymous with "make war for as long as possible wherever possible."

Of course, "as long as possible" just may be growing shorter, since the Federal Reserve's enaction of Ben Bernanke's brand of Friedmanite monetarism—mistakenly labeled "free market"—is likely to prolong the current recession by both preventing the full correction needed to adjust for the misallocations of the boom period and by compounding these misjudgments by luring entrepreneurs and consumers alike into even further debt. The plutocrats like United States Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his former financial market colleagues, along with activist central bankers, led by Chicago School true-believer Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, are now in a position to really distort markets, thanks to the extensive new powers granted by the pork-induced congressional "bailout," a clear capitulation to the executive branch's whims.

With the current hyper-interventionist Bush regime often being incorrectly described as laissez-faire, one cannot help but be reminded of the popular but incorrect account of the Great Depression and the Hoover-Roosevelt regime change. The story goes that speculators ran amuck in a too-free market under a free-wheeling do-nothing Herbert Hoover. Then along came Franklin Delano Roosevelt, armed with his New Deal, to rescue the battered proletariat from the merciless jaws of its capitalist abusers. Of course, this account is incorrect. During the 1932 campaign, FDR actually criticized the incumbent Hoover for excessive government spending. Hoover said the following about his own policies:

We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action. No government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times. Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until we had found bottom. We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitter-end liquidationists and see the whole body of debtors of the United States brought to bankruptcy and the savings of our people brought to destruction.

Rather than being a do-nothing president, Hoover was indeed an economic interventionist of the first order. Historian Joseph Stromberg argues that FDR only extended and formalized the corporatist policies of Hoover.

Herbert Hoover was a major architect of peacetime corporatism. As Commerce Secretary he encouraged the cartelistic integration of trade associations with labor unions. As President, he pioneered most of the New Deal measures, which had the unexpected effect of prolonging a depression itself caused by governmental monetary policy. In the election of 1932, important business liberals shifted their support to FDR when Hoover refused to go over to a fully fascist form of corporatism. By contrast, the Roosevelt Administration pushed through the National Recovery Act, which openly sanctioned the cartelizing activities of trade associations, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, cartelizing the farm sector. The Wagner Act of 1935 integrated labor into the nascent system.

Under the Hoover administration, the American people saw increased inheritance taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, public works spending, extensive stock market regulation, systematic immigration and labor restrictions and regulations, and unsound monetary policy. That last was made possible by the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. FDR's own interventions certainly extended beyond those of his predecessor, but it should be noted that on March 9, 1933, only five days after assuming office, one of FDR's first acts was to push through a sweeping "Emergency Banking Relief Act" that was largely drafted by the supposedly do-nothing Hoover administration. Austrian School economists such as Murray Rothbard have shown that the actions taken by both Hoover and Roosevelt actually deepened and extended the depression.

In keeping with the tradition of inaccurate portrayals demonstrated by the Hoover-FDR example, George W. Bush, who has presided over one of the largest, most interventionist governments in human history, is largely portrayed by both parties and by uninformed commentators as a champion of free markets. The present crisis is being blamed—mistakenly—on "market failure," when nothing could be further from the truth. The current financial crisis is only the natural result of the meddlesome policies of the federal government, combined with the incentivized responses of market actors reponding to manipulations of money and credit. One wonders if those objecting to the operation of economic law would be equally vehement in denouncing physics for interrupting one's upward travel by operation of that pesky law of gravity.

With "freedom" like what we've seen over the past eight years, it is no wonder that many people are seeking an alternative. Unfortunately, the American people are faced with the disconcerting certainty that the next president will preside over an America that is less free, less prosperous, and more inhibited by government intervention in the marketplace than any time since the New Deal. It isn't clear that democratic action can or will prevent the desperate actions of lawmakers who are willing to break any oath in order to appear busy in the face of a looming catastrophe, and who are even more desperate to protect the position and influence of the plutocrats who in many cases played a major role in getting them elected. When it passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933 and the $850 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the Congress leapt before it looked. Both acts were passed by a congressional body before it could fully read and understand what it was approving. Both major party 2008 presidential contenders voted in favor of the latter legislation. Regardless of which candidate succeeds George W. Bush, Americans face the very real threat of the next top executive wielding even broader emergency powers than Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR did.

(Also published in the HTML Times, at LewRockwell.com and in the October issue of Dicta, Suffolk Law's newspaper)

Is the Free Encyclopedia a Democratic Encyclopedia?

This term “democratic” gets tossed around a lot, usually in a positive, “power to the people rather than some arbitrary ruler” sense. By that meaning, Wikipedia is indeed democratic. Yet, unlike a state democracy, 51% at the polls will not necessarily trump a Wikipedia adversary. So in the sense that the word “democracy” comes loaded with a “one man, one vote” ideology, Wikipedia is not democratic at all. And it is a good thing that Wikipedia isn’t a democracy....

(Read more in the HTML Times)

Barr or Baldwin?: Comparing the Deviations

According to this release from his Campaign For Liberty website, Ron Paul has endorsed Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. How does Baldwin stack up against the Libertarian Party nominee, former Republican Congressman Bob Barr?

Baldwin is worse than Barr on:

• Immigration (advocates punitive measures at the federal level for those who hire undocumented immigrant workers)
  
• China (too adversarial)
• Tariffs (very protectionist rhetoric; favors not so protectionist 10% uniform tariff as primary means of federal revenue gathering)
Veteran healthcare (panders to warhawk nation-worshippers)
Federal involvement in abortion (favors federal definition of life as beginning at conception, which paves the way for expansion of federal government intervention in state-level policymaking)

Baldwin is better than Barr on:

• Income tax (abolition + low uniform tariff vs. national sales tax + abolition)
• Social Security (abolition vs. "system of private accounts")
• Sound money (abolition of Fed vs. "reconsidering the Fed")
• US involvement in the UN (total withdrawal vs. "[t]he U.S. should push to roll back the UN's functions and slash America's financial contribution")

They are comparable on other issues. Baldwin is definitely more radical generally, if his rhetoric is any measure. I am not sure that either one "gets it." I don't know for certain where Baldwin is on the War on Drugs, but I suspect he would oppose federal involvement in the issue. Barr is a relatively recent convert to the anti-prohibition cause, having been a Marijuana Policy Project lobbyist for nearly two years. Libertarian radical Anthony Gregory said today, "I trust Baldwin more on the issue, since he has never actually put people in jail for drugs."

Bottom line: Both Barr and Baldwin are more libertarian than the socialist Obama, national socialist McCain, green socialist McKinney, or pop-foreign intervention socialist Nader. Both deviate from the libertarian plumbline in ways that are problematic for those seeking to cast a vote that doesn't appear to advocate aggression.

(Position comparison gleaned from Wikipedia.)

The Freedom to Import Labor

On August 25, hundreds of armed federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended on a Howard Industries factory in Laurel, Mississippi. The fact that Howard Industries is one of the top employers in the area, where nearly 30% of the population lives below the poverty line, did not dissuade the federal government from carrying out the single largest immigration raid in United States history, arresting 595 employees and causing significant disruption and expense for one of the town's most effective benefactors. This mass arrest of undocumented workers voluntarily employed by a wealth-creating domestic company certainly did not help the Laurel economy, but it did allow the federal government to take advantage of xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiments at large for the purpose of consolidating unprincipled political support behind certain folks in plush chairs in Washington, D.C.

The Laurel raid was not the first such endeavor this year by ICE, which has apparently decided to follow along with the Olympic spirit in breaking as many records as possible. It was only three months earlier, on May 12, that the federal immigration police set the previous arrest record, that time in Postville, Iowa. That town, from which 389 workers were taken, is still suffering from the effects of losing a significant portion of its workforce. The corporate entity involved in that dust-up was Agriprocessors, which was engaged in the mundane business of operating the world's largest kosher meat-processing plant in the small Iowa town. Like Howard Industries in Laurel, Agriprocessors was one of the largest employers in Postville.

On March 6, well before the mass kidnapping in Iowa, several hundred ICE agents raided Michael Bianco, Inc., a leather manufacturer and U.S. military contractor operating in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In that sweep, ICE arrested more than 350 workers, including the company owner and several managers. Again, the purported purpose of the arrests was to discourage illegal immigration and to punish those who hire off-the-books workers. An important threshold question that seems to have not been asked is whether immigration restrictions actually help the domestic economy. As was documented in an August 17, 2008 Associated Press article, many Postville residents characterize the May 12 raid as an unmitigated "disaster" for their town's economy. This result should come as no surprise, since the federal action disrupted an agreeable employment arrangement that benefited the workers and employer, not to mention the local community at large.

A second important question that no one is asking is whether such restrictions have any effect on the various human rights abuses and unfair trade practices associated with illegal immigration. Since the New Bedford raid in March, many former Michael Bianco employees have joined a lawsuit against their former employer, claiming that the company often cheated its workers out of overtime pay and even hourly base pay. While some would make the case that such abuses show the need for further crackdowns, such interpretations put the cart before the horse. It is the secretive, black market nature of this sector of the labor market that makes undocumented workers particularly vulnerable to such overreaching and maltreatment. If workers were free to move on to more promising employment, rather than imprisoned by their fear of government kidnapping, they would not be so willing to acquiesce to unfair employment practices. Indeed, such practices in a free, open market would quickly be penalized, as competitors would take advantage of the disparity between each worker's marginal productivity and hourly wage by hiring away the underpaid laborers. In the labor black market, as with other sectors of the black market, formal dispute resolution is either unavailable or too risky and so disputes are often not resolved in an equitable fashion.

If one's purpose is to strengthen the domestic economy while protecting human rights and promoting entrepreneurship, one must oppose the government's restrictive central planning of immigration. Such planning hurts real, productive, innocent people, is uncharitable, and is destructive of the very engines of enterprise that keep the United States running as an economic power. If we are to be a free and prosperous people, we must have free labor.

(Also published in the September 2008 issue of Dicta, Suffolk Law's newspaper.)

Packing Heat: Hard in Mass.

After moving from the Pittsburgh area to Boston last fall to begin his 1L year at Suffolk, Andrew Capone found himself in an unfamiliar new setting that sometimes seemed less than safe. When his girlfriend, a fellow Suffolk Law student, began to investigate the possibility of buying a handgun for personal protection, Capone--who is Vice-President of the Suffolk Federalist Society--decided to go through the process with her.

In Capone's home state of Pennsylvania, any law-abiding citizen twenty-one years or older who is of sound mind can visit a licensed gun dealer and purchase a handgun. Anyone who is eighteen or older can buy a shotgun or rifle. After the dealer completes the federally-mandated background check using the Pennsylvania Instant Check System (PICS), most would-be gun owners in Pennsylvania can walk out with their new firearm on the same day. No license is required to keep a gun at home, and most majority-age Pennsylvanians would qualify for the license to carry a concealed pistol after undergoing a criminal background check, being double-checked by local law enforcement, and paying a modest fee.

Other than the initial background check, which in most states is conducted using the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the process of buying and legally carrying a pistol in Pennsylvania is fairly representative of those in most other states. Some states are even less restrictive on concealed carry--Vermont and Alaska allow their law-abiding gun owners to carry concealed weapons without any permit at all, for example, and most states that do require permits for concealed carry issue them on a "shall issue" basis, meaning that the issuing authority has little room to exercise discretion in denying or approving qualifying applications. Massachusetts, however, is a very different place when it comes to gun regulations.

As Andrew soon discovered after he began the process this past January, Massachusetts has some of the most restrictive gun regulations in the country. When it comes to buying and carrying a handgun, the process in Massachusetts is more onerous than in any state but Wisconsin or Illinois, with layers of sometimes expensive permit and license requirements that one must navigate in order to purchase and keep a handgun for defense or recreation in the Commonwealth. Even the carrying of pepper spray is illegal in Massachusetts without the proper permit.

After procuring a Massachusetts drivers license ($90), Capone then had to complete a certified firearms training course ($150), join a gun club ($150), apply for the license-to-carry ($90), and take a shooting proficiency test. By the time he finished these steps, it was the end of April. After waiting for more than a month, he again contacted the issuing authority and was informed that there had been a delay of some sort that had prevented his application from being processed. Finally, at the end of June, Capone was granted a restricted License-to-Carry that permits him to legally keep a handgun in his residence. Despite the name, the restricted LTC does not allow him to carry a weapon for defense outside of his home.

According to Capone, "The process was frustrating. It seemed like during every step of the application process someone was trying to hinder my efforts. I remember asking a woman at the police department where I would go to join a gun club, and she told me there were no gun clubs around. I later discovered that this was false."

Andrew Capone is not the first to discover that local law enforcement officials sometimes make it difficult for law-abiding citizens to acquire a gun permit. In a May 29, 2008 expose by the Boston Globe, it was revealed that local officials often unilaterally raise the bar for obtaining a permit by requiring reference letters, certification by a physician, expensive gun club memberships, requalification, and often even heftier fees than what the relevant statutes authorize. Law enforcement justifies these locally-tailored requirements and restrictions by arguing that they, not the legislature, should have the final say as to who may possess weapons in their communities. Self-defense advocates respond that these various regulatory schemes are really designed for one purpose: to discourage people from even applying for a permit in the first place.

---

Massachusetts has long had strict gun rules, but those regulations may soon be called into question as a result of recent decisions about what the 2nd Amendment protects. Here are some landmarks in the history of the 2nd Amendment:

• December 15, 1791
  The Bill of Rights become law when Virginia's ratification meets the three-fourths requirement
  
  
• March 27, 1876
  The Supreme Court declares in United States v. Cruikshank that the 2nd Amendment "has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government." Later affirmed by Presser v. Illinois (1886).
  
  
• May 15, 1939
  In United States v. Miller, the Supreme Court holds that the non-military nature of the defendant's sawed-off shotgun excludes it from the class of arms designated by the 2nd Amendment's prefatory clause, which refers to a "well regulated militia."
  
  
• October 16, 2001
  The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals holds in United States v. Emerson that an individual right to keep and bear arms protected by the 2nd Amendment was violated by a federal law that forbade the defendant--who was subject to a divorce-related temporary restraining order--from keeping firearms.
  
  
• June 26, 2008
  The United States Supreme Court holds in District of Columbia v. Heller that D.C.'s effective ban of the possession of operational firearms violated an individual right to keep and bear arms protected by the 2nd Amendment.
  
  
• June 26, 2008
  Alan Gura, the lead attorney for Dick Heller, files McDonald v. Chicago in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, seeking to invalidate Chicago's restrictive gun control laws by arguing that the 2nd Amendment ought to be incorporated under the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause.
  

(Also published in the Fall 2008 orientation issue of Dicta, Suffolk Law's newspaper.)

Giving Up Bi-Partisan Politics

Far too often, conversations about political matters end up sounding like conversations about team sports: the party affiliation of the politician in question often has more impact on the tenor of the discussion than do policy questions. While I would certainly never criticize a fan's loyal advocacy for his local ball club, it is pretty clear that team loyalty is less admirable when it comes to politics. It happens too frequently that a policy denounced by one party as despicable one year becomes the same party's grand plan the following year.

Take for example the Republican criticism of Clinton for his military interventionism in places like Bosnia. Clinton was decried for wasting taxpayer money and sacrificing American lives at the behest of the United Nations. Clinton was again criticized for the suspicious timing and questionable policy basis for an Iraq bombing run in 1998 on the eve of impeachment proceedings. Senator Trent Lott said, "Both the timing and the policy are subject to question." In 2000, George W. Bush ran on promises of a "humble" foreign policy and no nation-building, questioning Clinton's use of American combat personnel in Haiti and elsewhere. He said, "We must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course."

Yet, the opportunity to attack Iraq proved too great a temptation for Bush as well. Like Clinton's intervention in Bosnia, Bush's military activities were partially obscured from public view by the use of mercenary troops. Clinton notably hired DynCorp contractors who were later accused of participating in sexual abuse and even child sex slavery. Complaints of human rights abuses by Blackwater and other corporate troops in Iraq are still fresh in the public memory. Although Bush's heavy use of Blackwater private security details and operational teams in Iraq resulted in a greater public awareness of the use of such private soldiers, it is clear that both presidents sought to make it appear that fewer casualties were being sustained than was really the case. Regardless of the scale of these engagements, both presidents seem to have forgotten that the secession announced in the U.S. Declaration of Independence was justified in part by another head of state, King George III, "transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."

It is only by the deceptive hand of bipartisan politics that the population has been divided against itself with each faction eagerly supporting one day policies that it ridiculed the previous day. This election season, when the need for political change seems more desperate than any time in recent memory, it is vital that we as thinking citizens drop the team politics and worry less about which self-aggrandizing politico has his finger on the button and more about whether we need that button in the first place.

(Also published in the Fall 2008 orientation issue of Suffolk Law's newspaper, Dicta.)

Civil Disobedience and the Libertarian Division of Labor

Having witnessed first hand the fruits of brutal libertarian in-fighting, I think it is important to examine the roots of such needless, yet casualty producing conflict. Libertarians believe in a legal theory based upon non-aggression--that is, a respect for the rights of others. We oppose the idea of a monolithic, ever-present state wielding arbitrary and capricious power over subjects. Where so-called libertarians deviate by endorsing some form of aggression, we should, no doubt, ferret out the incorrect position so as to prevent anyone from confusing it with a libertarian one. The evil sell-outs and the misguided retreatists, as Rothbard called them, ought to be battled on philosophical grounds. Not all inter-libertarian conflicts arise from such principled disputes, however.

Wilt Alston has previously addressed the problem here with his posited categories of "pre-lib" and "pre-con" libertarians. I think that one's previous political disposition that may be inculcated by parents, or by some other means, may color our libertarian lens like Wilt suggests. I think, though, that the way many libertarians focus their indignation may be even more obvious and primal than mere prior team affiliation. When dealing with the government itself, we each see the face of the state in the areas where we have best tasted of its evil effect.

For those of us who are successful businesspeople, the taxing power of the state that has so many times inhibited the growth and success of vibrant enterprises is the arm of the state that must be attacked. For those of us who are parenting young children and are required to jump through legal hoops to home educate them, the specter of centralized, regimented, state regulation of education is the usurpation that ought be battled first. For those of us who have a friend or relative who has been imprisoned for self-medication outside of the bounds of state approval, on the other hand, the War On Drugs is the tentacle most in need of a chopping.

It is obvious, and to be expected, that one would hate the part of the state with which he has had the misfortune to wrangle most often. Yet, it isn't obviously right to say--speaking as a libertarian strategist--that any of these branches of the state apparatus is necessarily the right one with which to start. This is because they all are. An individual soldier must defend the front that he occupies. So too must we libertarians defy the state's grasp where it reaches for us personally--an activist division of labor.

It is some small satisfaction, no doubt, to moralize about the wrongs committed against others, and to voice opposition to their oppression. This is itself praiseworthy, and can be helpful in popularizing a movement, and in guiding its participants. Yet, when we look for the heroes of any revolution that casts off one tyrant or many, we must look first for the individuals who simply stood their ground. The most lauded heroes--and thus the most effective figures for the purposes of fomenting revolutionary ideas--are those who did not seek out a fight, but rather stood steadfastly and refused to yield when assailed by the usurper.

The search for libertarian heroes is made more difficult, though, by the fact that while we libertarians nearly universally recognize an individual's inherent freedom to do with his body as he wishes, we don't necessarily find the use of intoxicants or other acts of carnal indulgence praiseworthy. For example, take the massive act of civil disobedience staged by ten thousand students and activists in Boulder, Colorado on 4/20/08. Some libertarians may find this sort of behavior foolhardy, even without the risk of arrest. With that view of the underlying drug use, they then find it difficult to praise the act of resistance to the state, even though they advocate the abolition of all drug prohibition. Yet, these college students are heroes. Whatever a libertarian may think of the wisdom of smoking marijuana, it cannot be denied that these particular pot-smoking college students--who were presumably not picking up the habit solely for this event--were engaging in what can only be called anti-state activism. Rather than cowering away from the state, hoping to be overlooked, they risked arrest in an act of defiance that brought one of the state's more ridiculous laws into greater disrepute. And what may be helpful to libertarians who are apprehensive about fully applauding such behavior is the fact that they did it without engaging in anything more or less moral than what they already do anyway.

Likewise, regardless of what one thinks of Wesley Snipes' acting abilities, his battle against the IRS is more heroic than Susan Sarandon's speeches against the war. After all, while Ms. Sarandon's antiwar position--insofar as it is a consistent one--is laudable, it is only a matter of words. Wesley Snipes acted to defend his property from federal usurpation--he stood his ground, and paid heavy consequences for it.

Now, I do not mean to say that each and every libertarian must subject himself to a scourging by the state to show his devotion to resisting it. I agree with my friend Manuel Lora that libertarianism is not an altar call for martyrs. I do not think that most libertarians ought to pull up stakes and abandon their gainful employment only to throw their bodies into the cogs of the state. However, when the state comes roaring towards your home, it is heroism to dig in, stand firm, and resist for as long as possible. Likewise, those students in Boulder were already part of a legally vulnerable class of citizens--recreational drug users. By taking their resistance outside, where others could see some indication of the strength of those in defiance, they are to be praised as having made a contribution to the cause of liberty.

Just as atheist libertarians should applaud the sentiment of Daniel's pious disobedience to Darius, so too should socially conservative libertarians applaud the revolutionary sentiment expressed by those tie-dyed students in Boulder.

(Also published at LewRockwell.com.)

Study Indicates Likely Corruption of Louisiana Supreme Court

If a study detailed in a forthcoming Tulane Law Review article is right, judicial campaign contributions talk in Louisiana's highest court. In "The Louisiana Supreme Court in Question: An Empirical and Statistical Study of the Effect of Campaign Money on the Judicial Function," Tulane Law Professor Vernon Palmer and Loyola University economist John Levendis show a substantial statistical correlation between a party's campaign contributions and favorable treatment from three of the seven Louisiana Supreme Court jurists, including current Chief Justice Pascal F. Calogero, Jr.

The study examined cases decided between 1992 and 2006, and focused on tort/negligence and constitutional law cases where justices typically have more discretion. It showed that the individual justices on the court encountered a campaign contributor in 17% of cases heard, with some 47% of all cases heard in the court involving a donor to at least one justice's campaign committee. The pair concluded that "[s]tatistically speaking, campaign donors have a favored status among litigants appearing before the Justices."

The authors examined each justice's tendencies on the bench--for example, whether she was typically a "defendant's judge" or a "plaintiff's judge." These data were collected in order to determine whether a justice's legal philosophy might be the reason for favorable treatment received from the court. A justice's shift away from his usual voting preferences in cases involving a donor, then, would lead to the conclusion that donors are not simply supporting the justice whose judicial philosophy and tendencies most favor their cases, but rather influencing the outcome through campaign contributions. The authors recorded how each justice performed when a campaign contributor was before her, and determined how the size of the party's campaign contribution affected the likelihood of a favorable verdict. The figures indicated that Justices Calogero, Kimball, and Weimer were all more likely to render a favorable verdict to the party who was a "net contributor," i.e. made a larger donation to that justice than did the other party. For example, a defendant's odds of receiving the support of Judge Kimball were shown to increase by 30% with each $1000 campaign contribution. When Palmer and Levendis factored in the timing of the gift, the correlation became even more pronounced: a donation within the prior month correlated to more than twice the likelihood of support from Justice Kimball, for example.

While the authors take pains to stress that the study shows correlation and not necessarily corruption, the reaction from the justices implicated by the study has been sharp. The justices have denied any causal relationship between campaign cash and friendly treatment by the court. Justice Kimball said, "I have never in my life made one single decision based on who the plaintiffs were or who the lawyers were," and noted that she has a hired fundraising coordinator and does not personally solicit contributions or otherwise oversee her campaign's war chest.

Palmer says that the study was originally inspired by his doubts about the propriety of elected justices sitting for their donors' cases, but Levendis has pointed out in a recent presentation at an economics conference in Auburn, Alabama that mandatory recusal in such cases would not be likely to resolve the problem. If a justice were forbidden from hearing a donor's case, Levendis reasoned, litigants might then make strategic campaign contributions in order to "knock out" the jurists most likely to be hostile to their cases. Although the remedy to this troubling problem remains an open question, one can be sure that possible solutions are being weighed in the bayou state.

(Also published in the April 2008 edition of Suffolk Law's newspaper, Dicta, and at LewRockwell.com)

Are "Legacy" Preferences in College Admissions Unlibertarian?

For the February issue, Reason magazine's Shikha Dalmia authored a scathing condemnation of preferential treatment for "legacy" candidates at U.S. universities. While the state of higher education in the United States offers much to criticize, it isn't clear that preference for "legacy" candidates is particularly unlibertarian. Although compiling the statistics would be impossible, it is a safe bet that virtually every college, public and private, puts a legacy applicant's file at the top of the stack. And why not? Those alumni whose children later apply are more likely to have offered gratuitous financial support to their alma mater. Doesn't this leave the possibility of saving tax money in end, in the case of public schools? Of course, Dalmia is quite right in her gut feeling that such rent-seeking is unseemly. It is, in fact, only the involuntary nature of public university finance that makes such arrangements inappropriate. Yet, this problem is not one of admissions standards, but of socialism.

Consider that it just may be the case that standardized test scores are attempts to put a number on personal attributes that can't be described very well in such discrete terms. Seeing that an applicant was reared by a parent who had previously succeeded in that particular educational setting offers at least a reasonable belief that an otherwise borderline applicant may fit the mold after all. Such applicants are not only the progeny of alumni and the potential inheritors of their personal attributes, but are also more likely to be practically acquainted with what that school requires for success. They are more likely to know what it is actually like to live in that place, to sit in those chairs, and to cheer for that team. Surely a libertarian must consider that an individual's appreciation for and understanding of such factors of personal proclivity may play an important role both for the matriculating students and the school.

There is no reason to worship at the altar of centralized, standardized testing at the expense of a more basic bet on nature and nurture. Individual schools are unique entities, and it is a pretty good bet that there are widely varying schools that sit right next to each other in terms of test score and GPA statistics. More qualitative information like legacy status gives admissions officers some much-needed "real world" data with which to better make admissions selections. Finding a good fit for a particular school is more important than a one-size-fits-all, egalitarian admissions policy that has the force of law.

Rather than bailing out the Titanic, libertarians should fight to privatize public universities. Transferring control of public universities to non-profit foundations for administration and development would be one fiscally responsible escape that would allow us to avoid the socialist calculation problem altogether. Simply implementing some "more libertarian" centrally-planned admissions standard is not going to fix Socialist U. Once we move schools to a private, competitive environment, we can allow the experts in the market to experiment and devise the best admissions policies for their individual enterprises.

Because Dalmia makes the mistake of assuming that the admissions policy that is the problem, she proposes even more intervention. She says,

Private schools, of course, should be free to admit whomever they want, and it is therefore tempting to ignore their use of legacies. But there are few genuinely private schools in America anymore, thanks to the enormous amount of federal funding they accept. And setting public policy aside: Just as a matter of propriety, should there be room for legacies at institutions that market themselves as bastions of meritocracy? The use of legacies by the Harvards, Yales, and Princetons of the world dilutes the standards of excellence they pretend not merely to uphold, but to embody.

While she means these thoughts to be noble, they are not self-evidently correct or noble. Institutions that market themselves a certain way and don't satisfy can be dealt with by the market. Surely Dalmia doesn't mean to suggest educational protectionism for Harvard and Yale! Why is it a matter of justice which schools are held in highest repute? Centrally planned academic prestige is no more satisfying than any other statist intervention. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all came to exist and became prestigious in the market. Dalmia's belief that such prestige can be shored up by bureaucratic intervention in these institutions is both ill-advised as a matter of economics and historically unfounded.

(Also published at LewRockwell.com)

Why be an anti-drug war radical?

(From an email discussion on a libertarian mailing list, to a fellow member who was unsure about ending drug prohibition altogether. To read the definitive libertarian treatment of this issue, be sure to check out Prof. Mark Thornton's Economics of Prohibition.)

The pro-liberty position on prohibition is the one that is both just and most likely to have the best outcome.

If we are really worried about gang violence, cut off their exclusive, monopoly hold on the illegal/illicit drug market in urban centers. The drug war indirectly subsidizes gang violence by driving profit margins up while driving the responsible, law-abiding businessmen out of the market and removing any legal (and non-violent) recourse for breached contracts, stolen goods, fraudulent sales, etc.

If we want to reduce the number of overdoses, stop allowing the War on Drugs to create artificial irregularities in the supply line that result in "hot doses" of drugs like heroin after a series of "bunk" (low potency) lots of the substance. Most heroin overdoses seem to result from irregularity in the supply line that cause people to take more of the drug than they realize after learning their level of tolerance from their use of a batch of drug with different potency. The "hot dose" combined with other substances, particularly alcohol and benzodiazepines like Xanax, result in fatalities where combination with a lower-potency drug have previously produced the desired effect without the tragic consequences.

If you are concerned about the most vile and dangerous homecooked drugs, like crystal meth, stop the governmental hampering of the market--the thing that drives people to these more dangerous substitutes for other, imported drugs. Cocaine is an addictive drug that I think it is unwise to toy with, but the facts show that powder cocaine doesn't pose such an immediate threat to the abuser's health as the cheaper, more accessible, substitute stimulant, meth. When some drugs are outlawed, other less desirable but more readily available drugs are used as substitutes.

If you are worried about kids doing drugs, allow the legal market to distribute them. If a store sells a dangerous item to an infant (a non-majority-age individual who is legally incapable of giving consent for dangerous activities or any other binding contracts), that store can be held responsible. If a kid buys drugs from "Big Mike" who got them from some shadowy drug dealer, you are far less likely to be able to get any relief from irresponsible sellers.

If you want fewer people to do drugs, remove the "taboo" of illegality from behaviors that are essentially harmless to others. By outlawing victimless acts, we teach people to disrespect the law. The resultant acculturation into lawlessness is not a good thing.

I don't think most pro-drug war types are mean-spirited folks. I think they just don't understand the real ramifications of the actual policies in place. It is nice to hear a politician say "we're gonna stamp out drug abuse by doing X, Y, and Z." It seems that voting for that politician or that measure is voting against drug abuse itself. But what one must consider is whether the policy will actually have it's intended (or purported) effect. It feels good to "do something," but the stick of government force often fails to work the way those who wield it believe it will.

We should heed Frederic Bastiat's advice from the final words of his short but powerful work The Law:

"Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works."

What is Wikipedia, and what is it good for?

There are a lot of bad things said about Wikipedia, the ninth most-visited destination on the internet. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, critics argue, is one that is vulnerable to endless mistakes. Such criticisms have been raised by skeptics since Wikipedia's creation in 2001. Despite the critics, Wikipedia has grown to include 8.2 million articles in 253 different languages. The English Wikipedia alone includes nearly two million articles, and has a word-length fifteen times that of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia is the single largest encyclopedia ever assembled, having long since surpassed the Yongle Encyclopedia of 15^th century China.

The man credited with founding Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales--known to Wikipedians as "Jimbo"--was a finance major at Auburn University when the Mises Institute's Mark Thornton suggested he readhe read "The Use of Knowledge in Society," a now-famous essay written by Austro-libertarian economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek. The essay argues that prices in the market represent a spontaneous order that results from the interaction of individuals with diverse wants, allowing them to cooperate to achieve complex goals. According to a June 2007 Reason magazine interview, this insight of Hayek's is what led Wales to found Wikipedia. The rather lofty vision that inspired Wales? "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."

While that ultimate goal imagined by Wales for Wikipedia has not yet come to fruition, there is no questioning the breadth and usefulness of Wikipedia. Those who refused to believe that a user-generated encyclopedia could compete with the monolithic, traditional encyclopedia written by experts and organized by professional editors, were no doubt shocked when Nature magazine published a 2006 article comparing Wikipedia to the well-known Encyclopedia Britannica. The article concluded that Wikipedia articles were comparable in accuracy and thoroughness to those of the older, paper encyclopedia.

According to a 2007 study by the Pew Research Center, Wikipedia is by far the most popular educational and reference destination on the web, with nearly a quarter of the total traffic to such sites going to the free encyclopedia. According to the study, "Wikipedia has become the No. 1 external site visited after Google's search page, receiving over half of its traffic from the search engine." All that traffic does not include sites that syndicate Wikipedia content, such as Ask.com.

Such syndication is free thanks to the special license agreement to which all contributors consent when adding content to the encyclopedia. The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) allows for royalty-free reproduction--in original or modified form--even in for-profit projects. While some images in the project are utilized under "fair-use" doctrine, the vast majority of images and text are either subject only to the GFDL or are in the public domain.

But how does such a poly-centric, even anarchic system, composed of editors acting independently and for their own reasons, result in such an utterly useful resource? The answer goes back to the Hayekian inspiration for the project. Because editors receive both psychological satisfaction and material usefulness from their contributions, the project has grown to include safeguards that help guarantee that the development of the project will move in a positive direction--towards broad, accurate articles that depend on reliable, verifiable sources.

One could very aptly describe the Wikipedia system for directing the development of the project as being a common law system of sorts. The encyclopedia has basic policies--the constitutional law of Wikipedia--which require articles be written from a neutral point of view, make use of verifiable sources, and including no original research. Less concrete are "guidelines," which are rules based on commonly followed interpretations of policies--very similar to judicial precedents--that help users to contribute in a manner that upholds the policies. Guidelines are generally followed because they have been accepted by the community as means by which to avoid editing disputes and thus direct more energy to productive ends. Below guidelines are "essays"--arguably the dicta of Wikipedian law--which may be seen as the musings of individual users regarding certain conflicts or inefficiencies in the system.

Whenever a content dispute does arise between editors on the "talk" pages that accompany each article, there are a host of dispute resolution options available to resolve it. The community has created the "Third Opinion" board, where editors at loggerheads can request an outside perspective on a disagreement. There is also the "Request for Comment" process, where one editor may request formal oversight by the community at large, and particularly by veteran editors whose informed opinions usually carry more weight than those of new users. There are also the Mediation and Arbitration Committees, which are for solving more complex, ongoing disputes, and who actually refer to past precedents in making judgments.

Wikipedia's reflection of market dynamics is most easily observed in what many people view as the project's weakest areas: obscure articles which draw little traffic. In articles about third-rate garage bands and other topics of limited interest, one will often find factual and typographical errors at a much higher rate than in high-traffic articles like "England" or "Barry Bonds." The much higher demand for information about the latter topics means that many more eyes will be combing those much-demanded articles for mistakes. Since Wikipedia is open to correction by anyone, it only stands to reason that the articles attracting more potential editors will be of a higher quality. Rather than a failure of Wikipedia, this is a great demonstration of its efficient allocation of resources. The project, like any other, has a finite amount of productivity to apply to its various activities. It is a positive thing that those articles in greatest demand--those about topics of popular curiosity--would be those that are the most complete and reliable.

The entire system, which is fabulously complex and robust to the contributing editor, is remarkably simple for the basic user, who wants only to find data on an unfamiliar topic. So long as one exercises discretion in accepting information from Wikipedia, and so long as one's research extends beyond the Wikipedia article to the sources it cites, Wikipedia is an exceptional resource that is unique to our generation.

(Also published at LewRockwell.com, Mises.org, and in the September 2007 edition of Suffolk Law's newspaper, Dicta.)

Dog-fighting: A Capital Offense?

A tremendous furor has been raised over NFL Quarterback Michael Vick's alleged involvement in dogfighting in South Carolina. Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) went into a murderous rage over the subject, in effect saying that he wouldn't object to watching Michael Vick be executed. From Radar Online:

Byrd, 89, said he'd witnessed one execution in his life--a man put to death in the electric chair. "It's not a beautiful thing," he said. "I could say I could witness another one if it involves [long pause] ... this cruel, sadistic, cannibalistic, business of training these vulnerable creatures to kill."

Many other people have jumped on this bandwagon. In response to this news story, Facebook groups have sprung up with thoughtful titles like "Michael Vick should be put in a ring with 50 rabid pit bulls," "All Those In Favor for the Injection of Rabies into Michael Vick!!," "Americans for the Death by Wild Dog Mauling of Michael Vick," and "All Those in Favor of Drowning Mike Vick and Then Electrocuting Him!"

Well, before we re-institute lynching, perhaps people should really think about what they are saying.

I would assert the following:

1. Dogs are sweet, fun, playful, loyal pieces of property.

2. An owner should enjoy full discretionary use of his own property, so long as he doesn't violate anyone else's right to do the same.

3. Michael Vick is not alleged to have stolen, vandalized, or otherwise violated any one else's property. He is not alleged to have committed any act of violence against any other person.

4. Highly sought after professional athletes frequently spend their money lavishly, and are the subject of envious resentment. This dog-fighting is apparently an outlandish behavior that Vick chooses to spend time and resources on while on private property and out of uniform.

5. Different people come from different cultural backgrounds, at least some of which celebrate dog fighting, cock fighting, bull fighting, and other completely legitimate, if arguably immoral, past-times that involve the injury or death of "sweet, fun, playful, loyal pieces of property." (And of course, many of these pieces of property aren't that sweet.)

6. Unless you are a vegan--which I think is an unnecessary, but consistent position--when you assert that companion animals are agents with rights you are effectively drawing an arbitrary legal distinction between dogs, cats, horses (animals to which people try to impute quasi-personhood because they are cute) and pigs, chickens, cows, minks, etc. (animals that we usually don't keep as pets in the US and thus don't care as much about). Animals from the latter group are subjected to pain all the time, with electrocution, drowning, boiling, and other fairly painful means used to harvest them.

If you want to punish Michael Vick, work to get him fired. He is an entertainer, and if he fails to entertain, or creates a net loss for his team organization, they will have to get rid of him. Do not threaten violence against a man for using his own property as he saw fit. That is just envy and tyranny. I am loyal to humans over all other creatures. No matter how much animal suffering might be alleviated by a human's death, I strongly believe that the human interest must trump the animal interest every time.

And really folks, let's be realistic here. Does the government really even care about animal suffering? If it does, why then is it legal to cause pain in minks destined to become fur coats, and cows destined to become steaks and dress shoes, but not to cause pain in dogs? The real reason that it is illegal to organize dogfights is that some busybodies think it is their responsibility to use violence against others to stamp out gambling. As an article in the Charlotte Observer reports, a spokesman for South Carolina's Attorney General Henry McMaster stated that,

Dogfighting is definitely a crime. Not only is it flat-out cruelty, but most of these cases involve heavy betting supported by drug money.

Aha! All of this moralizing and grandstanding by politicians is just an emotional appeal to the public's fervent desire to end gambling... unless, of course, you instead divert your entertainment dollars to the South Carolina Lottery--the government gambling monopoly. This is not the government fighting crime. This is the government fighting competition.

American Pit Bull Terriers are a splendidly friendly, loyal breed, and abusing them is immoral. It is not, however, unjust. People should do their best to avoid causing gratuitous suffering, both for social and moral reasons. There is some merit in trying to devise more humane methods of slaughtering animals, and some producers are already benefiting from increased demand for food processed by such methods. Animal abuse is distasteful, and people should be free to refuse to do business with or otherwise associate with anyone they view as acting in a distasteful manner.

Letter to a champion of the Nanny-state

"My chief of police does not look like a nanny to me," she said, noting the chief said the bill would save lives. "One person's freedom can be another person's burden."[1]

Dear Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-Exeter):

I must say that I found the quotation from you above to be frighteningly similar to Orwell's famous "big brother" motto from 1984: "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength." No, Ms. Hassan, freedom is never a burden. What right does the state have to impose its will upon an individual when the issue at hand is the condition of that individual's body? No one has the right to reign over another's body, and you, as a freshman Senator, have crossed that line. I hope that your constituents see this for what it is: a betrayal of a long-standing New Hampshire tradition of liberty without a safety net; of freedom without excuses.

Do you truly believe that the community's wishes regarding an individual's life are more important than the desires of the individual? If so, you are effectively assuming a pro-slavery position, for slavery is just that: the sovereignty of an "owner" over another's body. Seatbelts are lifesaving, and I myself have been saved by wearing one in a serious collision that nonetheless left me in an ICU. I think it is intelligent and reasonable for an adult to secure himself thusly, and I cringe when I see people risking their lives by not wearing a seatbelt. It is pure tyranny, though, for the government to use physical force—which it must to enforce any policy that it passes—to bully people into "protecting" themselves from perceived peril.

Just remember, it is only a few steps beyond this sort of policy until we might find ourselves granting government control over other areas. After all, there are many who have in the past and would in the future advocate mandatory testing for congenital birth defects. Many have argued that the termination of "abnormal" fetuses and/or the euthanizing of the severely handicapped would strengthen the human gene pool. I would say, though, that no one else has the right to judge someone else's quality of life, someone else's potential happiness, or someone else's priorities in their life. It is easy to play the tyrant when the victim doesn't look like you or your loved ones. I hope that you will remember those that you love and how you would feel if someone else chose to bully them when you next have to decide whether or not to impose your will on peaceful people.

In Liberty,

Dick Clark

UPDATE: The New Hampshire Senate Transportation and Interstate Committee seem to have deep-sixed the mandatory seatbelt bill. [2]

West Palm Beach police rescue elderly from affordable dentures

On Wednesday, April 25, Roger Bean of West Palm Beach, Florida was arrested and charged for providing a service to customers who were apparently satisfied. He is a criminal without victims, at least according to those that the government claims that he victimized. Unlike other victimless criminals, though, Mr. Bean's dealings were not in prostitution, gambling, or illegal intoxicants.

For some time he had been fitting customers for dentures in his garage, manufacturing the dentures himself, and then providing them to customers for around $200 per set. This service, which usually costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000, was provided to elderly customers who were also Bean's neighbors and friends.

From the news reports, Mr. Bean hardly seems like a scam artist. According to the 72-year-old head of the neighborhood watch program, "He's helping the old people who don't have a few dollars. I think the world of him." Unlike back-room plastic surgeons who we occasionally hear about having horribly disfigured some hapless customer during a cut-rate corporeal upgrade, there is no evidence that Bean was performing invasive procedures, or, in fact, medical procedures of any kind. He was simply fitting clients for dentures and then manufacturing dentures for them.

Bean's "crimes" were against the American Dental Association, whose Commission on Dental Accreditation has been tasked with granting (and denying) accreditation to dental schools since 1979. This ADA commission enjoys a monopoly position as the only dental school accreditation agency recognized by the federal Department of Education.

Roger Bean and others like him are being persecuted for daring to compete with those dentists favored by the powers that be. After all, who were Roger Bean's crimes against? Did he defraud his customers? Or is this just economic protectionism for licensed dentists against a competitor who is providing a substitute for their services at a tenth of the price?

When it comes to transportation, not everyone needs a Cadillac. They are nice, to be sure, but many, many people can do without the luxury features of that high-end brand and instead make it from point A to point B in a Honda Civic or another, more affordable vehicle. To be sure, there are many benefits to the presence of top-shelf brands on the market. Many features now only available to the wealthiest customers will filter down to the buyers of economy-class cars in a matter of years. The purchasers of luxury brands make all of us better off in the sense that they subsidize the research and development of new products and features, effectively helping the relevant industries determine what to include in future product lines.

As with cars, not every consumer of dental services needs a dentist with a DDS or a DMD. Some people might choose to have their needs met through a less costly alternative. Unfortunately for bargain-seekers, the ADA cartel limits the number of dentists who can compete with its membership, and so it lobbied the feds to declare it to be the gatekeeper for entry into the dental profession. When service providers like Bean are arrested, it isn’t protecting the elderly, or the toothless, or the stupid. No, such heavy-handed enforcement is carried out with little regard for these “victims” and the plain fact that each one found himself, thanks to Mr. Bean, either able to afford dentures or, in other cases, able to direct their saved funds towards other ends, perhaps including life-saving or life-lengthening medical care.

The ADA has historically provided many useful services, including its evaluation of dental hygiene and health products. Just about everyone who has purchased a tube of toothpaste or a new toothbrush has seen the organization's familiar logo. The ADA endorsement has been a helpful metric for consumers in determining which products may be best suited for their dental hygienic needs. However, the real value of their "stamp of approval," just as with any other similar organization, plummets as soon as the evaluators are effectively granted a monopoly. While another, competing organization could theoretically be formed to test and rate dental health/hygiene products, the ADA would still benefit from its government-ordained appellation of "official" provider of this information. And with regards to the accreditation of dental schools, the ADA is the only (legal) game in town.

As soon as such an organization depends on government edict rather than consumer confidence for its authority, there is a much lower incentive to provide the most useful information to the public, and ultimately the public suffers. While this, the real crime against consumers goes on, the heroic Roger Bean sits in a jail cell, waiting for the criminal justice system to mete out his punishment for saving his friends and neighbors thousands of dollars.

How I became a Libertarian activist

This essay was written in April 2002 following my internship with the John Sophocleus gubernatorial campaign. Be sure to buy Bob Murphy's new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism.

By last December, my time spent at Auburn University had left me tired of formal classes. I determined that I would take a semester doing anything but going to class. My desire was to find a way to stay out of the classroom while still earning academic credit, and, more importantly, to spend my time in such as way as to complement my studies thus far. December wore on, and one day I received an email from Scott Kjar. This was not an unusual occurrence. Since October, when I accepted the position of President of the Auburn University Libertarians, Scott had worked with me on a number of outreach tables for the Libertarian party. As a very active county coordinator for the state party, Scott had a great deal of experience with political activism. I was at that time a fledgling Libertarian, having been 'converted' only months before from my previous status as a small government conservative.

It all began in the summer of 2000. I was a resident advisor at The Commons, and I was essentially charged with keeping the peace in the building. Over the summer, The Commons is opened up to groups of foreign exchange students, and a strange group of multicultural economists who were described to me simply as the "mises". My interaction with these visitors was usually as simple as handing out keys to the game room or fitness room. One day, however, a man in his late twenties decided to be amicable as he exchanged his identification for a fitness room key. He introduced himself as Bob Murphy. I took this opportunity to try and learn a bit more about the group of economics students staying in 'my' building. He mentioned free markets, natural rights, and liberty. That combination piqued my interest, and I decided to try and learn a little more.

The rest of my summer was spent playing poker with Bob and some of his continental friends. This was a rather nice arrangement, as Bob and I generally left the table with all of the money. The summer came to a close, and I went back to being a resident advisor, trying to fight a losing battle against underage drinking. The year went by, and I was now out of The Commons, and living in a house in a family neighborhood. One day in May of 2001, I was on my way to the grocery store. This trip was not quite what I expected. On my way to the store, I saw Bob Murphy walking down the road, looking as though the heat was getting the best of him. As Bob describes the scene,

I was making the trek from CVS back to my humble abode in the Commons Dormitory in picturesque Auburn, Alabama. The merciless midday sun made me feel like one of those Mexican laborers crossing the border on foot in a botched endrun around the immigration officials. Just as my legendary endurance ebbed to nothingness, my deus ex machina entered; I heard a voice cry out, "Hey Bob!" As I know absolutely no one in Auburn (surprise surprise), it could only be the former RA of the Commons, Dick Clark. (Murphy 1)

I was surprised to see Bob, but was happy enough to give him a ride back to the dorm. During the brief trip, he explained that he had been chosen as a summer fellow at the Mises Institute. I remembered from the previous summer what the institute was fundamentally about, but I was still interested in learning more. That summer, I was enrolled in three classes that were to be crammed into five weeks. To compound the difficulty, I was schedule to leave in late June for some military training in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Despite my somewhat hectic schedule, I made sure to find some time to discuss economics with Bob.

In those few weeks preceding my departure for Fort Knox, I learned a great deal about economics, as well as that word which so many around me have great reverence for—Liberty. I learned about basic market mechanisms, the true role that government plays, and how a consistent system of economics and ethics may be had. This was not exactly what the United States Army had in mind when they told me to train in preparation for Basic Camp.

At the end of June, I packed my bags, shaved my head, and boarded a plane headed for Kentucky. The five weeks spent studying at Auburn at the beginning of the summer were balanced by five weeks of physical and tactical training courtesy of Uncle Sam. Instead of learning about Homer's Odyssey, and the Lais of Marie de France, I became familiar with the M-249 machine gun, the AT-4 anti-tank rocket, and other implements of war. I learned how to move in the woods in such a way as to allow my squad to confront an enemy and win decisively. That five week training period was a bit different for me than for my buddies. While they were concerned about getting good evaluations, I was evaluating my own motivations for wanting to be an Army officer. I tried to apply my fledgling new set of ethics to a career as a soldier in the United States military, and I found that I could not. During the last week of training, our training officers had evaluated us sufficiently to determine who would be offered a scholarship. That day was the one I was supposed to be waiting for, but, as others excitedly discussed their possible branch choices, I quietly pondered my own choice. I knew then that I could not be an Army officer. I knew that I had to decline any scholarship that I was offered. Indeed, when I was called into the room with a young major and his lieutenant, I had already decided what I would say. "I'm sorry, Sir. I am afraid that I cannot accept this scholarship. I am an anarchist." I will leave to your imagination the look on that officer's face. His expression revealed to me that never before in his career had he heard that particular line. Despite my somewhat off-putting remark, the major began flipping through my evaluations, and asked me to reconsider. The lieutenant, a young woman who had recently graduated from Tuskegee University, chimed in to no avail. As I rose to leave, I thanked the two soldiers for the offer. Exiting the room, I walked through a throng of fellow cadets who were still discussing their opinions on the various service areas that lay open to them as future military officers.

Camp ended quickly, and as the jet landed in Birmingham, I could not quite think of how to explain to my parents why I declined a scholarship that would have paid for the rest of my schooling. As it turns out, I did not even have to explain. My parents knew that I had changed my mind, and they decided to support my decision. On that day, I looked forward to something which I had barely had time to think about at the training base.

Earlier that summer, Bob Murphy had tried his best to explain the tenets of the economic theory promoted by the Mises Institute. Since Bob was supposed to be working at the institute every day, he did not really have time to explain everything to me. What I really needed was a seminar. As it turns out, the Mises Institute is excellent for just that sort of thing. Bob recommended me for a scholarship to the Mises University seminar, scheduled for the middle of August. How convenient it was for me to be able to go from military training directly to academic training. My experience at the Mises Institute was a positive one, and I bankrupted myself buying books from their bookstore. By the seminar's end, I felt better equipped to explain my position. I had begun my new journey with an idea about why my position was ethically superior to others. After the seminar, I had a vague understanding of why my position made sense economically.

These experiences and others were in the back of my mind as I opened that email from Scott Kjar. The email declared Scott was the campaign manager for an Auburn economist named John Sophocleus who would be running for governor. Furthermore, his campaign desperately needed the services of that class of laborers lovingly known as "interns". My problems had been solved. I replied to Scott's email, volunteering my services for the spring semester. Upon my return to Auburn after winter break, I made the necessary arrangements to receive credit for my internship.

While I had worked a few outreach events in my leadership role with the AU Libertarians, I really had no idea what to expect when I went to work for John Sophocleus. I soon discovered that I would be doing many of the outreach events that I had done before. In addition to those activities, I would be responsible for doing certain research, and coordinating various campaign outings all over the state.

On Tuesday, 22 January, and Wednesday, 23 January, Paul Frankel (campaign research director) and I talked to three hundred eighty-seven Auburn students and faculty. This particular event was sponsored by the campus club, and was intended to show each person his or her place on the political spectrum. The hope was that those that scored in the libertarian area (eighty-five people over the two day span) would be interested enough to participate in future libertarian events. That week, twenty students attended an "Introduction to Libertarianism" speech given by Dr. Roderick Long of the philosophy department.

On the night following Dr. Long's speech, and the second day of outreach, the real campaign event took place. John Sophocleus spoke to an audience of thirty. As the first official campaign event for which I was responsible, I was proud of the turnout. I had been working on media mailing lists, ideas for the website, and other sundry tasks, but this was the first event where I saw smiling faces that I had persuaded to find out more about John Sophocleus. That evening, I realized that Paul Frankel had been right in his methods of attracting people to the event. His methods are simple. First, get the potential listener's attention with a one-line pick-up. You make eye contact. You approach them casually. You cannot be too aggressive, but you must be firm. You act as though you are selling something, but of course you would never admit it.

The individual will do one of three things. He might try and ignore you, refusing eye contact and brusquely stepping away. He might excuse himself by claiming that he is late for class, all the while shuffling by and looking down. The third and final individual, the listener, will stop, perhaps giving a false start or two away from you, and then concede defeat. He follows you to the table, you hand him a clipboard and pen, and the encounter takes shape. Henceforth, the encounter is run almost automatically by the repetitive performances ingrained in your mind. You have learned to direct him to the first question, so as to ease his confusion. You stand near by, your presence discouraging him from walking away without your approval. He finishes the ten questions, and hesitantly looks around, unsure of what to expect. You quickly herd him over to the chart, glancing at his quiz to determine where to place his sticker. You explain the chart, describing how the political spectrum is usually mischaracterized by the media as being from left to right. You complain that the media generalization is too simplistic. Now you have set the stage for the placement of your listener on the chart. Chances are, he is not a libertarian. Four out of five are authoritarian, conservative, liberal, or centrist. You quickly explain things to those folks, and get them on their way. When you find a libertarian, you do the real work. See, the whole endeavor is like a long fishing trip. You seek out the promising fish, and quickly release any that are not what you are looking for. The unwitting libertarians are quickly informed of their place in the world, and are given campaign and party literature, as well as a handbill announcing the next local event. You build up whatever speaker is on the piece of paper, and you let the guy go. Chances are, you will not see him at an event. In fact, the most likely place to find him is at the next outreach event, now brushing you off with a comment about having taken the quiz before. That is what it is all about.

Besides outreach tables, there are many campaign events to be held. Fundraisers are important, as they provide resources necessary for producing campaign literature, traveling to the next campaign event, and, eventually, buying paid media. In this business, every party event is a fundraiser. If you get any number of people in a room who are known supporters, you ask them to support the cause. You tell them about the success of the campaign thus far, and about the goals that could be accomplished. The goals generally require some financial backing, and that is how you make the sale. With Libertarian Party candidates, you will not find yourself meeting with corporate executives, wrangling for thousands of dollars in contributions. You get donations ranging from five dollars to two hundred, with the occasional five hundred dollar donation. Every dollar counts for a Libertarian candidate, and every donation means a thank you note from the candidate, and the assurance that one more person will be added to the campaign mailing list.

My most essential duty this semester was not doing outreach, or giving speeches, although I did plenty of both. As someone with a mechanically sound vehicle, I was required to provide transportation for myself, the candidate, and other members of the campaign team. Over the course of the semester, I covered more than ten thousand miles, almost completely within the state of Alabama. On 28 January, I drove to Huntsville with Paul Frankel. We stayed with Chris Brown, a local activist, and prepared for an outreach table at University of Alabama, Huntsville on the following day. The event that we were promoting at the table was a speech John Sophocleus was to give that night. That day Paul and I spoke to nearly four hundred students and faculty, all on the campus of a school that was foreign to both of us. Having spoken to so many individuals, we expected fair attendance at the speech. Strangely, very few people showed up. The number of names that we had gathered countered this disappointment. At the end of the night, we turned over the contact information that we had gathered to the local campus club president, Mark Ruocco.

After teaching, traveling, and speaking, John Sophocleus was tired, and ready to enjoy the comfortable accommodations that Chris Brown had provided. The Huntsville trip was still incomplete, and we arose the next morning with a full slate of events for the day. First, we met with Byron Bonds, a local supporter, and Tim Smith, the president of the Alabama Family Rights Association. Over breakfast, John explained his views on the issues concerning Mr. Smith, and in so doing gained another supporter.

The next item on the agenda involved visiting local gun dealers, and presenting John's view on the private ownership of arms. These gun dealers were wary of a 'politician' in their establishments, and guardedly accepted campaign literature. After visiting these shops, we drove to the office of the Huntsville Times, where John had an appointment with the editorial board. The meeting with the board was different than the past meetings with supporters. These guys were looking for a clear understanding of John's positions, and tried their best to pick apart his political ideals. John was friendly, and eagerly answered the questions offered to him. I discovered that day that I really did not have to worry about John tripping up when confronted by those not in agreement with libertarian principles. John was solid and firm in his answers, sometimes explaining them twice to the board. I remained in the corner, occasionally taking pictures of the encounter.

Upon the conclusion of the interview, the campaign team drove to Athens, where a local television personality, Keith Larson, had booked a half-hour interview with John. Keith was already a bit of a libertarian, so the atmosphere was congenial. I again sat off to one side, remaining silent and noting the way that Larson tried to dumb down John's answers, presumably for the benefit of the audience.

The interview was quickly over, and Paul and I started the trip back to Auburn. John and Scott Kjar headed to another newspaper interview, this time in Decatur. The day was done, and the whole team finally arrived back in Auburn.

The next campaign jaunt was on that Thursday afternoon, and consisted of my driving John to Clanton to meet with Sheila Ballard, a writer for the Beacon, a weekly newspaper. Sheila loved John, and quickly absorbed his positions. This interview spawned a full page spread about John and his campaign, and was very successful in terms of the amount of information accurately relayed through the media to the public. I rode with John and Sheila to meet with the local probate judge, and, in so doing, met with the first of many public officials that I would meet over the course of the semester. The day was short, and John and I headed back to Auburn in the late afternoon. I had learned that an affable demeanor with the press can work wonders in getting your message out.

The next morning, I attended the weekly campaign strategy meeting in John's office. The team went over the schedule with John, and reviewed the travel plans for the following week, as well as a few news tidbits that John might be able to use in future speeches. It was at this meeting that the team discussed a news story about some Marengo County families that had lost their lands to eminent domain abuses by the state. As property-rights stood as a plank in John's platform, John decided to use the story as the basis for a press release.

That weekend, Paul and I drove to Birmingham to hold an outreach table at a local flea market. The ground was fertile, and more than a quarter of those that took the quiz were libertarians. With no event to promote, we closed up shop somewhat early, and took advantage of the comfortable accommodations provided us by my parents. The following Monday, I encountered the first failed event. A Birmingham-area supporter had scheduled an outreach table at the University of Montevallo, but had forgotten to schedule the event with the university. Making the best use of our time, we drove into Birmingham to do some work at the Libertarian Party of Alabama headquarters. We worked with the party administrator, Mike Rster, on some basic tasks such as the editing of state party membership rolls, moving various items around in the office, and basically just trying to get things squared away for future events.

That evening, John and Scott joined us in Birmingham, and began preparing for a speech John was to give to the Birmingham area libertarians. This event was very focused on getting volunteers, candidates, and money. John's speech was a general platform speech, and was followed by Scott's plea for donations. The tact worked, and we collected a sizable amount of money from the attendees. Sizable is a relative term, of course, and in all honesty would not be the appropriate adjective for similar contributions at a republican or democrat event. Nonetheless, we were pleased by the event, and we began the drive to Gadsden, hoping for more of the same. Unfortunately, our desire to get to Gadsden was not supported by Scott's car, and we ended up on the side of the road, rearranging materials in my car so as to allow for two additional occupants. Scott's car had refused to go any further, and Mark Bodenhausen (the chairman of the state party) arranged for the car to be towed to an auto shop owned by a friend of mine. We made the drive to Gadsden in my vehicle, leaving Scott's to the fates. Arriving at our hotel at two in the morning, we quickly collapsed into sleep.

The next day, I drove John and Scott to a Jacksonville radio station, and then doubled back to pick Paul up at the hotel. After driving Paul to Jacksonville State University, I began the trip back to Auburn, where I had an appointment with a professor. After the meeting, I drove up to Birmingham, and then to Jacksonville, where John was again speaking at a fundraiser dinner. After the event, everyone loaded into my car, and we returned to Auburn. All in all that day, I drove over one thousand miles. During my absence that day, Scott had to arrange for local supporters to transport John from event to event. Things worked out, and I learned the importance of having a statewide volunteer network.

While I was gone, John was interviewed on two radio shows. One talk show host, J. Holland, was particularly swayed by John's platform, and changed his own position on the constitutional rewrite issue. This success in persuading the media was a clear indication that we had some hope in making a difference in this state. Up to that point, I had some doubt about the effectiveness of debate in actually changing people's minds. I knew it worked for me, but I was unsure about the general public. That J. Holland would change his mind demonstrated to me that the tactic of logical persuasion would be of at least some use over the course of the campaign. It is understood that average people may not be convinced by such methods, but it is also understood that the media, through analyzing the various positions of candidates, gives the public a condensed version of their own resultant position.

After that long day, Paul and I again staffed an outreach table in Auburn, this time with the help of Holly Heckman, a new campaign volunteer. Young women seemed more comfortable at the table, since Holly was present. I had expected that this would be the case, and was pleased. Many of those that stopped by the table attended that evening's speech by Scott Kjar. On Friday, we again met for our weekly strategy meeting.

The next big item on the agenda was the live gubernatorial forum held by the Auburn Student Government Association and Alabama Public Television. We spent much of the weekend printing, folding, and packing the four campaign brochures that we would hand out at the forum. Monday arrived, and the campaign team met at the Student Activities Center, the venue for the forum. Dressed in our Sunday best, we manned the table and handed out literature to the passers-by. Interest in our materials was not overwhelming, but the forum had not yet started. I spent most of the forum watching and listening as the attending candidates tried to convince the audience of their merits. Tim James, Lieutenant Governor Steve Windom, Congressman Bob Riley, and Gladys Riddle attended the event. None of the candidates who had declared as Democrats chose to make an appearance.

As luck would have it, John drew the first speaking position. This allowed him to set the tone for the forum, and essentially left the other candidates in the position to answer his remarks. As I previously mentioned, I had discovered early on that John was a solid candidate, and that I need not worry about his speaking ability. I was not disappointed, and there were many instances where the other candidates found themselves agreeing with John, and even admitting that his perspective had merit. That had to be a tough pill to swallow for Bob Riley in particular, since John had specifically attacked him throughout the fledgling campaign season. John had also been Riley's sole competition in the race that gave Riley his current congressional seat.

After the forum, attendees decided John's literature was worth a second glance. We busily gave away materials until our supply was exhausted. After congratulating John on his success, we packed up and prepared to leave. Before I could escape, I was confronted by an Opelika-Auburn News reporter who I had met only hours earlier while I was in line for dinner at a local restaurant. That chance meeting at the restaurant apparently motivated her to ask me a few questions about John's candidacy. Drawing on what I had learned in the previous weeks, I gave a statement indicating that we were happy with John's performance, and that we expected great things for the future. This was of course vague and basically uninformative, but she seemed happy enough with it. I breathed a sigh of relief, and I departed in the general direction of my bed. I decided on the way home that I would have to develop a good response for such questions in the future, so as to best represent the campaign, and more importantly, what the campaign wanted to reach people with.

I was not to receive much sleep that night, as Paul decided that we should drive to Troy in order to get an early start at Troy State University the next day. We arrived at the home of Floyd Shackelford, a congressional candidate for the Troy area, and were shown our accommodations for the evening. The following morning, Paul and I set up a table at the university, and we talked to a number of students. Given our lack of sleep, we closed shop rather early, and prepared for that evening's fundraiser dinner. Floyd had done a bit of promotion, and the dinner was well attended. The usual format was followed, and John gave a platform speech. Scott's plea for money was well received, and we received several large donations.

The following evening, the campus club had a speaker scheduled. The speaker was Joe Stromberg, historian-in-residence at the Mises Institute. I was happy to see Joe, as I had enjoyed his talks the previous August. Unfortunately I had to teach a violin lesson that night, and, after introducing him, had to leave. The small audience enjoyed the talk on the history of libertarianism, if the positive comments I later received were any indication.

The next day was Thursday, and there was an event in Montgomery. That day was the day of the "Higher Education Rally" in the capital city, and we arrived prepared. Following the lead of Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, John introduced the "Tax Me More" PAC. This PAC was a means by which concerned individuals might voluntarily donate money to the supposedly faltering Education Trust Fund. To combat the cries of various speakers for higher taxes to fund education, John, along with the campaign team, distributed information on how these individuals might put their money on the table, so to speak. As one might guess, there were no donors that day. As a matter of fact, there have been no donors since, either.

Later that afternoon, John was a guest on another talk show. The host was fairly knowledgeable, and the show went well. In a trend that started with John's first radio interview, the host kept John on for longer than the previously allotted time. This was a good indication that the host was pleased by John's performance. Call volume was relatively high, and John was invited back.

Yet another fundraiser was scheduled for that evening, and there was good attendance. The usual rules applied, and by the end of the evening we had collected a fair amount of money. This event was unique in one respect. One must understand that observing the demographics of an event, though not always seen politically correct is an essential concern for a campaign. Racial demographics in particular are a concern for the Libertarian Party, since the stereotype for Libertarians is young, male, and white. The reason for this discussion is that one of the attendees that evening was a man named Horace McCoy. Horace was a retired soldier, a small business owner, and an African-American. Horace also wanted to run on the Libertarian ticket for a state house seat. This was good news, and not only gave us a good candidate, but also racial diversity on the ballot. The undesirable nature of this sort of assessment does not escape me, but I feel it necessary to note, as it truly is important in this business.

The following week brought another fundraiser letter, which is an enormous manpower requirement. Mass mailings are easy with a large budget, as a campaign can just hire out the labor. In the Sophocleus campaign, such an effort is all in-house. This letter took the effort of eight volunteers, and approximately forty man-hours. Such a task is necessary, as I learned, not only to raise funds, but also to keep the mailing list active. I learned that a mailing list will go stale very quickly if not immediately utilized. The recipient of fundraiser letters and updates is more likely to actively contribute to the campaign effort if consistently given the opportunity to do so.

After sending the fundraiser letter out, I had a day to relax. Believe me, that day was much shorter than those preceding it. The next day, Wednesday, John and I drove to Huntsville to attend another fundraiser dinner. At this event, John spoke, and then I made the plea for donations. We raised a pretty good sum of money, and I was very pleased, having had some concerns about how effective I would be as a speaker. A local supporter paid for hotel accommodations. The following morning, we met another local supporter for breakfast at Aunt Eunice's, a local restaurant that has achieved legendary status among Alabama politicians. As the story goes, no one has made a successful bid for governor without stopping by Aunt Eunice's for some biscuits and molasses. Being Libertarians, John and I figured we could use all the help we could get. After ordering breakfast, John followed tradition by making the rounds pouring coffee for other customers. Aunt Eunice was pleased to meet John, and accepted some campaign literature. John was eager to get back to Auburn, so we headed home after breakfast, stopping along the way to meet with his civil rights attorneys at their home. John has a third amendment case pending against the Alabama Department of Transportation, and he wanted to check on its progress.

That Saturday, Paul and I drove to Cullman, where Paul had arranged for us to set up an outreach table. Adam Gilman, our campaign webmaster, drove John to the event, and while Adam and Paul worked the table, John and I made the rounds, talking to the dealers as they sold their wares. We encountered some Native Americans leaders who, upon learning of John's perspective of their plight, immediately pledged their support. When we returned to the table, we were greeted by Jerry Vines, a constable who is one of six Libertarians in elected office in Alabama. A number of attendees scored as libertarians on the quiz, and seemed very receptive to John's message.

That night, John, Paul, and I stayed with my parents in Birmingham. John spoke at length with my parents about libertarianism, and eventually won them over. I had committed some effort to this cause, and was pleased that John had succeeded. This was yet another demonstration, albeit a personal one, that given the right means, the libertarian message is an effective one. I noted the approach that John took in speaking with my parents, so as to use it in the future with people who might resemble them in either belief or attitude.

Early that next week, virtually everyone on the campaign team was ill, and, with the exception of John's speech to an anti-quarry crowd in Loachapoka, the team took a bit of a break. On Wednesday, yet another event failed due to inadequate preparation. The Auburn campus club had scheduled a showing of Fahrenheit 451 without first securing a copy of the movie. There were no attendees, so no one was disappointed, but the failure was glaring just the same.

Over the rest of the semester, events transpired in a predictable manner. Most events were reasonably successful, and some simply fell flat. I learned that planning is great, but actual preparation requires real initiative and hard work. The most difficult thing to do in a campaign of this sort is to attract supporters, who then become volunteers, and then to keep them active. There was a high turnover rate with volunteers, and the coordination of events sometimes suffered from lack of manpower. Nonetheless, the campaign has been, in my estimation, a successful one. There has never before been such a Libertarian campaign in this state, and we hope that an upward trend will continue for the party in the future.

At the state convention, I applied some of the skills that I learned over the course of the semester, and I spoke to the attendees about the campaign, and about myself. I was nominated to run for the Alabama Public Service Commission, against George Wallace, Jr., and a Republican. I persuaded several of my friends to run for various positions as well, and the LPA will have sixty-one candidates on the ballot. Scott Kjar is leaving the campaign team to work on his dissertation, and I have been hired as campaign manager. I have also been elected to the LPA executive committee, representing the Auburn district. This makes me the youngest EC member in LPA history. I feel a bit overwhelmed by these positions, but I am excited. I have learned a great deal about campaigning, Alabama politics, persuasion, and much more. Above, I have learned that with a little effort, and a lot of conviction, one person can make a difference. That sounds cheesy. It is. Unfortunately the truth is that way sometimes. I am committed to going the distance with this fight, and I hope that one day I will see the free society that I have worked for this semester.

Works Cited

Murphy, Bob. "My First Time". LewRockwell.com. 12 June 2001. [1]

Boston is pretty safe, but when something does happen you are helpless

This past Wednesday night at around 8:30pm or so, I was with my girlfriend at a "Finagle-a-Bagel" downtown across from Boston Common. This is not a particularly scary place to be in Boston, so far as I could tell. As a newcomer, having only been in Boston since January, the Common appears generally open and safe, populated with mostly respectable types and just a smattering of panhandlers.

Justina and I were casually enjoying some soup after going to a couple of stores near Downtown Crossing. Part-way through our meal I spotted a girl wearing an Auburn University zippered sweatshirt, and alerted Justina to her presence. We both let out a "War eagle!" (the school battle cry) and the girl greeted us in like manner.

She and her two companions came over to talk to us and we proceeded to chat about Auburn, about the fact that they were in Boston for the first time, and so on. Right as our conversation seemed likely to start losing steam, we heard a bit of an altercation developing off to our right. She then said, "I think they are about to fight!" noting four or five people that seemed to be exchanging heated remarks at the other end of the kitschy little bagel franchise.

Without recounting all the details, let's just say that the scene was ugly. People were yelling profanity at each other, and a guy and a girl squared off and started swinging. The female's companion got involved and got a knife in the cheek for his troubles. His two adversaries fled the scene shortly thereafter, and the police, who actually arrived pretty rapidly were nonetheless too late to do anything other than file a report about the matter.

I am not a Rambo-type by any means, but when I lived in Alabama I almost always carried either a S&W snubnose .38 or a SIG-Pro .40. Had I and other patrons been legally permitted to possess a gun that night, I have no doubts that the assailant would not have found it so easy to make a clean getaway or perhaps even to actually stab anyone to begin with. Instead, we the bystanders were more or less unable to do anything. I was left with the sole option of just standing between my girlfriend and the altercation, ready to perhaps use a chair to dissuade those fighting from bringing the fight our way.

Don't get me wrong, Boston is a pretty safe city. Compared to cities like, say, New Orleans, which had as many as 96 homicides per 100,000 pop. (161 total) in 2006, or Washington, D.C., which had 35.4 murders per 100,000 pop. (169 total in 2006), Boston seems positively placid at only 13.4 per 100,000 (75 total) last year. The police officers are paid fantastic sums of money, and they were quickly to the scene that Wednesday night. Yet, they were not there in time to prevent someone from coming to harm. How could they be? It is a simple matter of necessarily limited information that leaves them as emergency responders.

I know that there are plenty of murders and stabbings where I've lived before, but since I've been twenty-one years old I've exercised my right to bear arms in order to be prepared, just like the Boy Scouts say. Unfortunately, it only takes one dangerous situation to hurt you, and it is a shame that we folks that live here in "the Hub" cannot lawfully carry a means by which to defend ourselves--that is, to stop a crime when it is happening.