The Humble Libertarian original

By: Ben Bryan , T H L Contributor While I’m not particularly interested in dealing with the overall argument he makes, I must take issue with the claims Tom Mullen makes in a recent post , featured here at T H L , about Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution. Mullen argues, along Hamiltonian lines, that the power given to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States” grants a sort of unlimited power. I find this argument rather textually problematic. Before dealing with the textual issues, however, I have some concerns with details conspicuously absent from the historical account Mullen gives. He is quite right that Hamilton supported his reading of the Constitution. He fails to point out that Madison held the opposing position. Without this detail it sounds as if the Constitution was clearly created with Hamilton’s understanding in mind. But, as it turns out, the founders were far from univocal in their acceptance of some sort of big government construct...

Photo by geckowithcanon By: Ben Bryan , T H L Contributor I stumbled upon this today while rereading Book Four of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics : Vain people, on the other hand, are fools and ignorant of themselves, and conspicuously so; for thinking themselves capable of honorable undertakings, they make the attempt, and they are exposed. And they adorn themselves in dress and pose for effect and do other such things... thinking that through these they will be honored. Could there be a better description of the Obama administration?

By: Ben Bryan , T H L Contributor Today some friends and I met with Congressman Jim Cooper. He’s been seeing people in his office during the recess and so we got an appointment to meet with him. He seems like a nice enough fellow, but I learned little from this meeting. There is only so much you can do in a half an hour meeting and my friends and I left the meeting realizing we had made poor use of it. So here’s a few pointers about how to make use of any meeting time you happen to ever get with an elected official: 1. Skip the small talk Your congressman will ask you about yourself and get distracted by personal details. Don’t let him deter you. When you’ve got 30 minutes to talk, don’t waste 2 of them talking about which coffee shop you, he, or his staff frequent. If he’s your congressman like he talks like he is, the best thing he can do is cut to the chase and forget all the personal blabber. 2. Ask direct questions Don’t ease into the subject. Just ask what you want to know. If ...

Looks like more of the inevitable is happening at the post office. When will we understand that this government enforced monopoly is pointless and wasteful? If we opened first class mail up to competition, FedEx and UPS would almost certainly thoroughly and quickly replace the post office, probably reducing the price and certainly preventing the steady stream of price hikes created by the current enforced monopoly. The silliest part of it all is the notion that the Forever Stamps, which allow people to buy stamps that can be used any time, even after a price increase, will do any good. These stamps have no effect on the problem. The problem is not that the American people are paying too much. The problem is that we don't have a true price system, so we have no clue what "too much" is. The post office, like every enforced monopoly is constantly aware that they can simply raise prices to cover costs, and never have to worry about competition. Even a monopoly in a market is...

If the man were as immortal as his ideas, Friedrich Hayek would be 110 years old today. His words, from The Road to Serfdom , are as relevant today, in a world of bailout and stimulus packages as they were in his day: It is often said that political freedom is meaningless without economic freedom. This is true enough, but in a sense almost opposite from that in which the phrase is used by our planners. The economic freedom which is the prerequisite of any other freedom cannot be the freedom from economic care which the socialists promise us and which can be obtained only by relieving the individual at the same time of the necessity and of the power of choice; it must be the freedom of our economic activity which, with the right of choice, inevitably carries the risk and the responsibility of that right. The key words for us today are "the risk and responsibility of that right," concepts that are entirely alien to bailouts or stimulus. Responsibility means consequences. And ap...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Snoutbreak '09 - The Last 100 Days thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis First 100 Days Beyond making you laugh till you soil yourself, the above depiction of the fearmongering of the media should raise some questions. After seeing it, I got to thinking about the role of the media in our society. Freedom of the press, friends of liberty have always thought (and rightly so), is an essential safeguard against government power. The press helps to keep its people informed and to question authorities and expose their failures. Most contemporary media outlets, however, it seems to me, totally fail to serve this purpose. The media are friends of the government, not a means by which it is kept in check. They nurture the fear that big government feeds upon. And this is just as true of Fox News as it is of CNN. The right has scared us into an unnecessary war, and the left has scared us into unprecedented deficit “stimulus”...

This weekend I had the pleasure and honor of being part of a small, invitation-only academic conference, Advanced Topics in Liberty, hosted by the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) and Liberty Fund . Something rather remarkable happened at this conference: 15 intelligent, educated people with diverse viewpoints and interests gathered to talk about a controversial political issue and did so in a kind, unargumentative, and productive fashion. Frankly, given my past experience with an IHS seminar (which from talking to others about their own experiences, was a rather anomalous experience), I expected to have a room full of people with rather similar views, inclined to agree with one another too easily and not to challenge one another. What I found instead was an intensely diverse group of people who were both willing to challenge one another and disagree, but whose doing so always seemed to have the goal of coming together to the truth. The topic for the weekend was “Education, Compulsi...

Photo of Wilson Library at Montgomery Bell Academy ( CC ) In my last post I argued, with Auberon Herbert, that school choice is the best way to challenge the status quo and produce new ideas in education. This is a point much emphasized by contemporary advocates of school choice. This argument, however, was one among several arguments Herbert makes in his essay "Education: Help or Hindrance" . Of the several paths Herbert's argument takes, I found one of particular interest: private education, he argues, supports virtue in parents: The effort to provide for the education of children is a great moral and mental stimulus. It is the great natural opportunity of forethought and self-denial; it is the one daily lesson of unselfishness which men will learn when they will pay heed to none other. There is no factor that has played so large a part in the civilization of men as the slow formation in parents of those qualities which lead them to provide for their children. In this...

I've recently been enjoying the barrage of articles over at Cato on the recent death (or murder) of the D.C. voucher program (see here for Cato articles on education, most of the recent of which deal with the voucher scandal). If you're unfamiliar with this situation in particular or education vouchers in general, allow me to explain: In Washington, D.C. they've had a voucher program. This basically allows students to take tax money that would have been spent educating them in public schools and spend it in private schools. Thus poor students who can't afford to choose private schools otherwise can afford it by using the tax money that would have been spent on their public education. Research has shown that the voucher program in DC has produced better results for less money spent per pupil. Yet, the DC voucher program has been killed, and before it was killed, the research demonstrating its effectiveness was conveniently kept quiet . This is outrageous. What is most...

Vaclav Havel argues in "Power of the Powerless" that real change in the post-totalitarian Eastern Europe in which he lived and wrote could not happen by traditional political means, but must happen by a ground-up transformation of the people themselves. The people must learn to, as he often puts it, “live within the truth,” refusing to remain under the foot of the ruling regime. He puts it as follows: A genuine, profound, and lasting change for the better . . . can no longer result from the victory (were such a victory possible) of any particular traditional political conception, which can ultimately be only external, that is, a structural or systemic conception. More than ever before, such a change will have to derive from human existence, from the fundamental reconstitution of the position of people in the world, their relationships to themselves and to each other, and to the universe. If a better economic and political model is to be created, then perhaps more than ever be...

I was organizing some files on my computer today and stumbled across some questions I had to answer for an application for an Institute for Humane Studies summer seminar last year. I took a glance at my answers and was struck by the quality of some of them. Sure, after a year more of school, there's several things I'd say a little differently now, but I loved the raw feel of this, so I thought I'd share: The question: Choose a political or social issue that is of importance to you and that you believe is of pressing concern. (This issue may be, but need not necessarily be, related to the topic of the seminar you wish to attend.) In 500 words or less, discuss why this issue is significant to those it affects and to the larger community or the world. What is the best way, in your view, to address this issue? My answer: One of the most important social issues today is that we can’t stop this silly talk about issues. This is rooted in a deeply impoverished view of human beings...

I'm tired of hearing all this talk of a "21st century regulatory framework" that Barack Obama and others so ceaselessly promise to create. Such people speak as if there is something special about the new century, as if we know something about human beings and politics that people in the twentieth century did not. This claim that there is something superior about the knowledge of the 21st century is not a particularly odd claim, though it is perhaps false. There is a further claim smuggled into it, however, that is plainly ridiculous. The more ridiculous claim is that the 21st century is, simply by virtue of the passage of time, morally superior to the past. Certainly we have advanced scientifically. We have bigger and better computers. And for reasons such as these I can understand the origin of the misguided claim that such technological advances constitute more knowledge. But even with that understood, I cannot understand what sort of foolishness it is that leads peopl...

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.” Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. As a young man, the above passage, from Orthodoxy by...

This week I finally finished reading what has been perhaps the most formative book for me, in terms of my political philosophy, I’ve ever read. I’ve been working slowly through Human Rights: Fact or Fancy by Henry Veatch for some time now, and with my semester ended I finally had time just to sit down and finish it. And I’m so glad I did. It has been an immense pleasure. As with everything else in life, this book is imperfect and I don’t agree with every word Veatch writes, but he has continued to confirm and clarify my conviction that any ethical justification of liberty must be of a distinctly Aristotelian sort. Veatch’s argument is subtle but not terribly complicated. Veatch categorizes most attempts to justify ethics into two categories: teleological or deontological. And both of these fail. Teleological ethics pursue a goal, some desired end. The structure of such ethics makes perfect sense. There is a goal, whether the greatest good for the greatest number in the case of a utili...

I read this quote today in John Locke's Essays on The Law of Nature and it reminded me of my election day thoughts: 'The voice of the people is the voice of God.' Surely, we have been taught a most unhappy lesson how doubtful, how fallacious this maxim is, how productive of evils, and with how much party spirit and with what cruel intent this ill-omened proverb has been flung wide lately among the common people. Indeed if we should listen to this voice as if it were the herald of a divine law, we should hardly believe that there was any God at all. For is there anything so abominable, so wicked, so contrary to all right and law, which the general consent, or rather conspiracy, of a senseless crowd would not at some time advocate? Democracy, when it is seen as an end in itself, rather than as a means to the end of liberty, becomes little more than the rule of a mindless mob. The mob that Locke dismisses in the above quote as a possible source of natural law is also entirely...

This article confused me. Bush has apparently come to regret saying certain things he said during his presidency. But why exactly he regrets it I’m not sure. Bush says he wishes he hadn't said “There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring 'em on.” Bush regrets these words . But he doesn’t seem to regret acting in ways consistent with these words. He wishes he hadn’t talked like some sort of trigger happy cowboy. But what about acting like one? But enough with Bush’s regrets. I want to talk about mine for a second. I can’t judge what’s going on in Bush’s head, but I know what happened in my own. I was wrong too, and I want to talk about why. You see, when 9/11 happened I was a typical “conservative Christian.” I was a walking stereotype. And I supported the war. No, I didn’t vote for Bush. I was too young, so I did worse. I supported him as obnoxiously as I possibly could. I spent all my time yelling at those “libe...

Alexis de Tocqueville said: Our contemporaries are ceaselessly agitated by two conflicting passions: they feel the need to be directed, as well as the desire to remain free. Since they are unable to blot out either of these hostile feelings, they strive to satisfy both of them together. They conceive a single, protective, and all-powerful government but one that is elected by the citizens. They combine centralization with the sovereignty of the people. That gives them some respite. They derive consolation from being supervised by thinking they have chosen their own supervisors. Every individual tolerates being tied down because he sees that it is not another man nor a class of people holding the end of the chain, but society itself. Under this system citizens leave their state of dependence just long enough to choose their masters, and then they return to it. At the present time, many people fall in with this type of compromise between a despotic administration and the sovereignty of t...