digamma.net - notes

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett makes some good points on libertarianism and war:

….I was more concerned with the degree to which Libertarianism qua Libertarianism says anything about foreign policy. Because Libertarianism is essentially a philosophy of individual rights, I doubt it says much about what policies either individuals or collective institutions ought to pursue other than that they should not violate the rights of individuals in pursuing them.

Agreed. On the other hand, libertarianism (Barnett uses a capital L, I don’t) DOES make certain predictions as to what outcomes are probable when governments try to do things, and these predictions apply both at home and abroad. Barnett continues:

Even if, as many Libertarians believe, governments themselves inherently violate rights, it does not follow (as some Libertarians appear to assume) that everything such an unjust institution does is a rights violation. Consider mail delivery. The post office may be an unjust monopoly (and unconstitutional to boot), but the letter carrier who coincidentally is walking up my driveway as I type this) is not violating my rights by delivering my mail. Likewise, even if the government of the United States is an unjust institution, this does not make everything (or anything) done by the U.S. Army a rights violation.

Well, I suppose “some Libertarians” might think that, but you won’t hear that in the Cato Institute’s or Reason’s opposition to the war, and they’re a lot more mainstream libertarians than, say, Roderick T. Long. There are a lot of good libertarian arguments against wars like the most recent one in Iraq, and focusing on this one is almost arguing with a straw man.

I'’ll be away for the next week and a half visiting two countries, one of which is bravely allied with the United States in the War on Terror, the other of which yearns for the fall of western civilization and worldwide Islamofascism. Or something like that. So the one year I decide to support the Democrats in the Presidential race, I’m missing their convention. C’est la vie, as they say where I’m going.

I’ll try to grab an American paper every day and stay abreast of what happens, although I’ll still be starved for details. Here’s hoping Kerry can, like Clinton in 1992, ride his “convention bounce” into the White House. I’ll leave with a quote from Jesse Walker:

Making me root for a sanctimonious statist blowhard like Kerry isn’t the worst thing Bush has done to the country. But it’s the offense that I take most personally.

Well, actually, I am, for the most part. But I don’t use the l-word to describe myself a lot, partly because stating your beliefs in one word is a good way to alienate people who might agree with you about a lot of things, and partly because of stuff like this.

Radley Balko went on CNN to discuss the government decision to treat obesity as a disease for Medicare purposes – in particular, why this is a bad idea. And he’s getting castigated by this John T. Kennedy for not demanding the outright abolition of Medicare.

I have nothing else to add to this because I spent the day drinking and eating burgers. So I’ll link to this Agitator post and say that poor Radley can’t catch a break from anyone.

UPDATE (Monday July 19, 5:14 PM): Radley hits back on Kennedy’s site.

Tyler Cowen claims to be disturbed by Fahrenheit 9/11’s portrayal of the Saudi leadership as “vile connivers, in a manner reminiscent of 19th century racial propaganda.”

Watching the film, the same thing occurred to me, and I wrote it down in my notes for this review. I dismissed that concern before writing, however, because it was based solely on the shots of their faces, rather than anything actually said about them. If some Saudi leaders resemble some racist caricatures of Arabs, as seems to be the case, that’s unfortunate, but it’s no one’s fault.

Portraying the Saudi royal family as theocratic tyrants with ties to terrorist organizations isn’t racist. Most Arabs aren’t the Saudi royal family.

I’m going to feel less sympathetic to Tyler Cowen the next time some idiot calls him a racist for opposing affirmative action or criticizing Jesse Jackson.

Max Sawicky, who I just found out is a fellow Rutgers alum, needs to write about Iraq more often.

They claim the problem with the war is not enough international support. Rubbish. More international support would get us more beheadings of Germans, French, and Russians.

Amen. Or, as I like to put it, a stupid war with Jacques Chirac’s approval is still a stupid war.

They claim they should have disbelieved the WMD stories. But Saddam with WMDs is still not a credible threat to the U.S. North Korea has WMDs. Why don’t they come after us? Why haven’t they blown up Seattle. Because they’re not crazy. Nor was Saddam. Even Dick Cheney once enunciated a case for not toppling Saddam.

The third bankrupt premise is that, whatever the ill-advisedness of the invasion, now we have to stay until “stability” is achieved. But there is nothing about what that means. There is no meaningful exit criterion.

Bottom line: New York Times liberalism condones invasions under international auspices for bad reasons absent considerations of feasibility and without exit strategies.

Matthew Yglesias deftly cuts through some recent Republican spin:

Much to-doing about Joe Wilson’s treatment in the SSCI Report which establishes pretty clearly that the dude has a serious credibility problem. I think that if you look back through my writings you will see me having stated from the get-go that Wilson’s credibility is not really the issue here. Burning CIA operatives is illegal, and the allegation that the burning was done in no way depends on Wilson’s credibility.

Amen. Whether or not the Saddam/yellowcake story is correct matters a lot less to me than whether someone at the highest levels of my government is guilty of treason.

Virginia Postrel has found me out.

All my life, I’ve wanted nothing more than to be hip. To be cool. To be popular. For years social acceptance eluded me, and finally I was left with no choice but to start a libertarian-leaning weblog.

This was a surefire way to gain popularity, I thought. I could link to Reason articles, and quibble with Eric Alterman about third parties. Since I was living in New Hampshire at the time, I knew my on-the-scene coverage of our presidential primary would be must-read material. Maybe I’d even get onto Radley Balko’s blogroll!

But it wasn’t enough. I realized pretty quickly you can’t be cool in the blogosphere unless you support John Kerry’s presidential candidacy. Think about it - is there a single popular weblog that opposes Kerry? No there is not. And so I was forced to endorse the Senator from Massachussetts.

My plan was only just starting to reach fruition. Girls were starting to stop me on the street and ask “Aren’t you digamma? Oh my God, that post in January where you complained about the weather was awesome! Aren’t you glad you aren’t one of those non-Kerry-supporting bloggers?”

And now Virginia Postrel has exposed my fraudulence. What am I to do? I’m going to have to take up smoking - it’s the only thing cool enough to rehabilitate me now.

Glen Whitman is still in denial.

I broke down yesterday and saw Fahrenheit 9/11. It was sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to watch it for free, and Michael Moore had even given me permission, but the invitation came from a friend I don’t see enough, so peer pressure trumped principle.

If, like me, you hated the incoherent mess that was Bowling for Columbine, I have good news for you: Michael Moore has grown up. Columbine’s cynical manipulation and lack of a central thesis are in sharp contrast to this devastating denunciation of George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.
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It’s about time that the Kansas farmers who are prohibited by the USDA from testing their beef for Mad Cow Disease, is getting some attention from the right. I was getting sick of lefties linking to the story and making snarky “some free market this is” comments.

In fact, the USDA’s behavior is a textbook example of why conservatives question regulatory agencies - regulatory capture. The USDA has gotten so closely involved with the beef industry that it now serves the needs of their biggest players at our expense.

Regulatory capture. Unintended consequences. The right used to be all over this stuff, until they found out it’s fun to be in power.

There’s a good thread going on at Chez DeLong about the Supreme Court’s New Deal-era shift to interpret the Commerce Clause to mean “everything Congress might ever think of doing affects interstate commerce, and since Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce, Congress can do anything.” The most egregious example of this jurisprudence is, I think, Wickard v. Filburn, wherein a farmer was prevented from growing wheat to feed his own family.

What irritates me is when the “Congress can do anything” interpretation is discussed in opposition to the Lochner cases, in which the Supreme Court struck down progressive state legislation on the grounds that, basically, the Fourteenth Amendment imposed free market policy on the states. But discussing Lochner as the alternative to Wickard is a false dichotomy. There ought to be a true federalist middle ground here - the federal government doesn’t get to control every last kernel of corn, but if states want minimum wage laws, they should be able to have them. No?

Here’s my question, since I’m neither a lawyer nor a historian: did the free market extremism of the Lochner-era court lead to a backlash, whereby when the economy went south, the American people put no faith in federalism, and headed immediately for the opposite extreme?

Two observations on American history as my girlfriend and I watch the Twlight Zone Marathon.

1. Living in the 1960’s was friggin’ scary.
   
2. The USSR was a lot scarier in their day than al Qaeda is in ours.

That is all.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n - rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Via Juan Non-Volokh and Isaac Asimov, a history of the song.

I don’t write about film here nearly as much as I should. For example, this shouldn’t be my first-ever MT entry about film. So here are two quickies:

• Marlon Brando: 1924-2004. Jesse Walker put it best here: “At his best, he was one of the greatest there ever was.” Sure he made some stinkers, but his performances in The Last Tango in Paris and The Godfather – in the same year! – were all-star.

  “Well – this wasn’t enough time, Michael. Wasn’t enough time… “

• On a lighter note, I got around to watching The Bourne Identity tonight. If it weren’t such a “location” movie, I wouldn’t care about it one way or another – the romanting scenes are downright embarassing – but someone in that crew really knew Paris, and knew how to make Paris work as a backdrop for an action flick. Roger Ebert called it “unnecessary, but not unskilled.” I can’t really disagree, but the “necessity” of a film has never been a major priority of mine.

• Everybody knows about IMDB, which is obviously a great resource for film data, but Yahoo! Movies, in addition to its showtimes for current films, makes it really easy to find reviews of just about any film you could want to know about. That’s how I found Ebert’s review of Bourne.

• No, I still haven’t seen Fahrenheit 9/11. I read the partial transcripts posted here and here (via links from Crazy Andy), and it seems to me like a bunch of things I already knew (and was already angry about) compressed into a manipulative “two minutes hate” montage. N. Todd says he “shook with rage“. Shaking with rage isn’t really my style (although it describes how I felt when I wrote this), but if the weather is bad when my (more loyally Democratic) parents come to visit this weekend, we’ll probably check it out.

Jim Henley has given up on Eugene Volokh.

I’ve always considered his specialty to be showy moral handwringing on the way to siding with Power anyway. The further you get from standard Republican issues like guns and university speech codes, the more likely he is to arrive, with exquisite regret, at the conclusion that the State, particularly when helmed by George W. Bush, must have its way.

I came to the same conclusion a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t easy. Volokh is a great writer, and his opinions used to carry a lot of weight with me.

But don’t stop reading the Conspiracy - even as Eugene jumps the shark, Jacob Levy is blogging up a storm on the Bush-Zarqawi story.

Via Hit & Run, I see that National Review editor-at-large William F. Buckley has expressed “retrospective doubts” about the Iraq war:

Mr. Buckley said there was a growing debate on the right about how the war in Iraq squared with the traditional conservative conviction that American foreign policy should seek only to protect its vital interests.

“With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn’t the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago,” Mr. Buckley said. “If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

How reasonable. How sensible. How open-minded.

Let’s see how reasonable, sensible, and open-minded National Review was during that “debate on the right about how the war in Iraq squared with the traditional conservative conviction that American foreign policy should seek only to protect its vital interests.”

National Review’s cover story, April 7, 2003: Unpatriotic Conservatives: A War Against America.

Ah, I remember now. That was the day I cancelled my NR subscription. I found out later that my dad cancelled his NR subscription years ago after a similar attack on conservatives who opposed Vietnam.

I know exactly what Buckley can do with his “retrospective doubts".