Positive Liberty

Part I: The Theory

I just watched Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman speak on today’s economic crisis. I’m skeptical about his Keynesianism. But I’ll defer to his authority and give him the benefit of the doubt. My mind is open. Krugman said the stimulus of WWII got us out of the Great Depression. He also noted it doesn’t necessarily matter where the money was spent — such that even if government paid one group of folks to dig ditches and another to fill in the dirt (he didn’t use that exact example but something close) — that’s ultimately what matters. He noted we should spend a lot on infrastructure. I agree that this is something that government IS relatively competent at doing. If the private market can effectively do it better (which I think they can), I’d rather them do it. But I’m willing to support a publicly funded private/public cooperative to improve roads, bridges, rails and the like and stimulate the economy. Krugman noted military spending could work (after all that’s what got us out of the Great Depression). But given today’s political climate, that’s not a good idea. I agree.

Krugman also noted that stimulus was better if the money is spent on American provided services, not necessarily imported goods. But elsewhere I’ve seen Krugman note that many of these foreign manufactured goods — for instance almost everything Walmart sells — have a great deal of American “value added,” as it were. Continue Reading »

I (born in 1973) was raised on the “war on drugs” propaganda and around age 18 began realizing how much of it was nonsense. Yet, I didn’t need all of the “this is your brain on drugs” nonsense to understand there were serious dangers there. That many notable folks from John Belushi to River Phoenix to Jaco Pastorious to Charlie Parker to John Coltrane to Jimi Hendrix to Janis Joplin and on and on died either in large part or exclusively because of their problems with addiction to legal and illegal drugs testifies to their danger. And one didn’t need “drug education,” just a TV set and access to entertainment news shows to understand this.

Yet, I specifically listed those figures because each was in his own way a creative genius, who did the bulk of his or her creative genius work while high on drugs and died during their creative peak because of such (as Neil Young put it, they burned out instead of, like Paul McCartney or Johnny Rotten to use Young’s specific example, faded away into the land of producing mediocre work). I’m not say that drugs made them more creative/fostered their creativity; but I certainly don’t close my mind to this possibility. Just that drugs sure as Hell didn’t stand in their way of maximizing their creative potential.

Though, I have also noticed that artistic talent — not of the generic sort, but of the profound — doesn’t come from a place within one’s soul that is always happy hunky and dory. From reading the biographies of numbers of notable artists it seems that a disproportionate number of them struggle with severe mental illness, depression and the like. The archetype of a “mad artistic genius” certainly, from my observations of human nature, has a strong kernel of Truth.

[BTW: I didn't mention Kurt Cobain even though he was addicted to drugs and that may have led to his suicide. Cobain also, apropos of this post, struggled with severe mental illness. Indeed he perfectly captures the archetype of the mentally tortured artistic genius. But folks who struggle with severe depression OFTEN take their own lives regardless of addiction to illegal drugs and that's where I put most of the blame for Cobain's suicide.]

My older son is, according to the pop demographic jargon, a Gen Nexter. Thirty-six percent of his generational cohort now sport tattoos. As far as I know, however, he personally remains eligible for burial in an Orthodox Jewish cemetery. Aside from the fact that he isn’t Jewish, that is. But it wouldn’t bother me if he did get tattooed. I didn’t learn all that much from being a long-haired, bellbottom and beads wearing teenager in the 1960s, but I did learn that the less your parents care about how you look, the less bizarre you’re likely to insist on looking. My younger son comes to me asking for a hair cut whenever he thinks his hair is too long; I care only that he keep it clean. Our daughter’s appearance is part of my wife’s portfolio and I await much personal amusement watching and listening to the arguments when she becomes an adolescent in a few years and starts wanting make up, piercings and tattoos.

Returning to which, Gen Xers weigh in at 40% on the tattoo front, while only one in ten among my increasingly tanned, toned and artificially tucked Baby Boomer generation sports any ink at all, as the kids say. Of course, the canvas, as it were, of our epidermis isn’t nearly as taut as it once was (hence the tucking), so those of us who did acquire ‘body art’ in years past are now watching our once delicate butterflies slowly melting like a Dali clock. Not, I assure you, a pretty sight. The long hair of our youth is largely gone, too. Literally gone in the case of myself and many of my male counterparts and at least significantly shorter on the distaff side, too. You know how it goes. Somewhere around the same time my generation’s “Moonbeams” started calling themselves Betty again, got themselves a real estate license and a Volvo station wagon, they also cut their hair to a “sensible” length.

I reported – if that is the correct term for what amounts to little more than a self-indulgent bit of auto-hagiography – about my own left ear “piercing” some six months ago. I know my bit of piratical whimsy hardly seems the stuff of high adventure these days, though. Some folks of my acquaintance not all that much younger than I am sport multiple ear piercings that then metastasize across their face to eyebrows, nostrils, lips, tongue and who knows where else. Judging from a few web sites I will admit to having checked out in the interest of scientific inquiry, I know where else, but I don’t want to shock our readers here again by posting any of the, um, evidence.

I wonder, is tattooing or piercing addictive? When does one look at one’s ear, already festooned with sterling ringlets and beads and think “Okay, a dozen is enough” and not really mean it? How much does getting “sleeves,” let along going full-circus cost?

Moreover, what will Gen Next’s children do en masse to assert their own individuality? Brandings, perhaps? Or will they eschew body “art” entirely and, opting for a more au naturale visage, look down their well scrubbed and unpierced noses at their elders’ folly?

I found this on YouTube. It’s quite interesting; though I don’t know how much of this is accurate, how much is distortion. I’d like Mormon readers to comment.

The New York Times probes the ‘candidacy’ of a member of “the most storied family in American political history.” I add running commentary:

She has not held a full-time job in years, has not run for even the lowliest office, and has promoted such noncontroversial causes as patriotism, poetry and public service. [In other words, she has roughly the same credentials Hillary had when she first ran for the Senate.] Yet Caroline Kennedy’s decision to ask Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat suggests that she believes she is as well prepared as anyone [admittedly, an abysmally low standard] to serve as the next senator from New York — and is ready to throw her famously publicity-averse self [can anyone else catch the oxymoron here?] into the challenge of winning back-to-back elections in 2010 and 2012. [Because, you know, the electorate in states like New York and Massachusettes have been merciless when it comes to candidates named Kennedy.]

Already, some columnists, bloggers and even potential colleagues in Congress have begun asking if she would be taken seriously if not for her surname [questions rhetorically equivalent to "Is the Pope Catholic?" and "Does a bear sh*t in the woods?"]. Representative Gary Ackerman, a Queens Democrat [watching his own Senate chances now rapidly disappearing], told a radio host on Wednesday that he did not know what Ms. Kennedy’s qualifications were, “except that she has name recognition — but so does J. Lo.”

And might I add that Jennifer Lopez also (1) has talent, (2) would easily capture the Latino vote and (3) has actually accomplished something in her life. So, will Rep. Ackerman be issuing an apology to Ms Lopez any time soon for suggesting she is as weak or unqualified a candidate as JFK’s little daughter is?

I will be guest hosting Straight Talk w/ Jerry Hughes, on the Accent Radio Network, Tuesday, December 16, and Wednesday, December 17 from 2 - 5 PM Eastern (11 AM - 2 PM Pacific). It will be fun to be back behind the mic again, especially because of my guests.

Tuesday, I’ll be joined by . . .
* Larry Pratt, Gun Owners of America
* Frank Viola, author, Pagan Christianity
* Richard Maybury, author of the Uncle Eric series which includes the title, “Whatever Happened to Penny Candy.” He’s also the editor of the Early Warning Report

The Wednesday line-up is . . .
* Jon Rowe, college professor, historian, and blogger at PositiveLiberty.com, and Herb Titus, attorney, Constitutional law scholar, and former law school dean, coming on together to debate the religious instincts and motivations of America’s Founders (scheduled for the 3 o’clock hour)
* Perry Willis, Communications Director, DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

Call in number 866-2ACCENT (or 866-222-2368), and the email will be CALL at DOWNSIZEDC dot ORG (just type it in as it sounds).

The show is heard on about 15 stations around the country. But everyone can listen live via the Internet from the Accent Radio Network site.

Hardball delenda est.

Should I donate $20 to help students miss class in order to go to DC for Obama’s inauguration?

One of my colleagues has organized a trip to D.C. for some of our students to be there during Obama’s inauguration.  Note I don’t say “at” the inauguration.  I have my doubts they’ll get close enough to actually see it, although they plan to leave an all night party at 4 a.m. to camp out on the mall for the 2 p.m. inauguration.  Who knows, maybe they’ll get lucky.

I’m glad she’s organizing this trip–it’s a historic occasion, and students who go will obviously remember it forever.  But I’m a little annoyed that they’re not leaving D.C. to return to Michigan until Thursday (the inauguration’s on Tuesday).  Because I teach Tuesday/Thursday, that means the two students of mine who are going will miss two classes–a full week of the term.  Continue Reading »

From the Home Office in Baghdad:

10. “So nobody checked the guy with the Nikita Khrushchev tee shirt?”

9. “Cheney’s huntin’ stray cats again!”

8. “A bullet maybe, but I ain’t taking no wingtip for the President!”

7. “No, you idiot! Not a cobra, a moccasin!”

6. “Hey look! Air Jordans!”

5. “How many ‘Sole Survivor’ coffee mugs should we order, Boss?”

4. “Couldn’t have been Kerry, they weren’t flip-flops.”

3. “Yum! Cobbler!”

2. [Maxwell Smart voice] “Missed him by that much!”

1. “Lame Duck!”

“The Notorious” Bettie Page is dead at the age of 85. She once said in a Playboy interview:

When I turned my life over to the lord Jesus I was ashamed of having posed in the nude. But now, most of the money I’ve got is because I posed in the nude. So I’m not ashamed of it now. But I still don’t understand it.

See a memorial showing, um, more of Bettie here.

(P.S. — No, I never worked with her. )

H/T to Jesse Walker @ reason’s Hit & Run.

Some good solid evidence:

More 10th Graders Smoke Marijuana Than Cigarettes

That’s the astonishing finding from the latest Monitoring the Future survey, but strangely, it wasn’t mentioned by White House drug czar John Walters or in the initial news reports. 13.8 percent of 10th graders reported smoking marijuana in the past 30 days, while just 12.3 percent smoked cigarettes. For 8th and 12th grades, cigarette use still narrowly exceeded marijuana, but the gap narrowed to insignificance.

The Associated Press reported, “[T]he White House says the sustained trendline is the key.” Makes sense to me. According to the new survey, current (i.e. past 30 days) marijuana use has nearly doubled among 8th graders since 1991, from 3.2 percent to 5.8 percent, with big increases among 10th and 12th graders, too. During that same period, cigarette use dropped like a rock, with current cigarette smoking dropping from 14.3 percent to 6.8 percent among 8th graders, and dramatic drops in the older grades as well.

Notable facts here:

–Self-reporting of drug use skews low, out of the fear that teachers, administration, or parents will find out. It’s all but certain that the real numbers would be higher, if we had any way of measuring them.

–When compared to the above figures, which are probably too low, the proportion of youth pot smokers who get busted remains comically small. Thus the drug war penalizes indiscretion more reliably than it does drug use.

–Virtually all of these pot smokers will grow up to be ordinary adults, just as pot smokers always have. Except for the ones who get caught, whose lives may well be ruined.

In a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing to examine the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the financial crisis, former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines named ‘the real culprit’:

[The] regulator was to blame for allowing them to get into trouble. “It is remarkable,” he told the committee, “that during the period that Fannie Mae substantially increased its exposure to credit risk its regulator made no visible effort to enforce any limits.”

Now, the reality is that the crisis was precipitated in an, um, bipartisan manner and that the government did play a substantial role both in pressuring both Freddie and Fannie to take greater risks in the name of “more affordable housing” and in looking the other way at the level of risk being taken. (Until a few months ago, the obvious joke here would have been “Who the hell has unaffordable housing?” As it turns out, though, the answer appears to be millions and millions of people whose real estate investment strategy was that an even bigger fool would be along shortly.) The WSJ story went on to note quite correctly that Freddie and Fanny were both “spending millions on lobbying to ensure that regulators did not get in their way” and that both were making investment decisions and policies to placate politicians whose grasp of economics might be just a tad unsound.

Captive regulators? Government pressure and complicity? Who knew?

In a related story, listening to NPR the other night I heard a ‘financial expert’ explain that the current financial crisis was set off by flooding the market with too much cheap money resulting in too many low interest mortgages and that the solution is to flood the market with cheap money to permit more low interest mortgages.

The expert was vaguely concerned that there might be a problem here but fortunately he had a solution:

This time we’ll be careful.

This post is a bit whiny, so feel free to either skip it entirely or bash me for complaining about what is, all in all, a pretty good life.  I’m just a bit overwhelmed right now and need to vent.  Besides, it’s a good reference for the next time someone argues college profs “only teach 6 hours a week.”

In addition to my regular teaching, which in addition to my face-to-face classes includes two-three online classes per term for a community college, this year I:

• Single-handedly organized an academic conference on the 40th Anniversary of Garrett Hardin’s article “The Tragedy of the Commons” in November;
• Am part of a committee organizing a Law Symposium in March;

Continue Reading »

Playing Six Degrees of Separation is fairly easy for me. Aside from growing up just outside Washington, D.C. and thus having known various elected officials or their minions over the years, I went to a high school that produced a few famous actors (the connection being long serving teachers), crossed paths with a future movie star back in the same college that later produced a well known comedian, as well, and I’ve even broken bread with an Archbishop of Canterbury or two. A more interesting connection, however, was the summer after college when I worked at Arena Stage and thus met Robert Prosky. Prosky died several days ago at the age of 77. Most people, if they remember or recognize Prosky at all, will probably recall that he took over the watch sergeant role on Hill Street Blues after Michael Conrad’s death in 1983. But he was an actor of great range with hundreds of credits to his name, one of which I remember in particular.

In 1973, Washington’s Arena Stage was invited to play in the Soviet Union and mounted two productions, Our Town and Inherit The Wind, in what was at the time a major diplomatic event. Sadly, I didn’t get to go, but Inherit The Wind played in D.C., too, with Prosky in the Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan) role. My role was a bit less grand or noticeable, perched on the catwalk above the stage operating a follow-spotlight. The wages, moreover, were great for those not requiring food and shelter, Arena’s attitude being that this was one of those gateway jobs for a life in the theatre. My life took a different direction, but it was still great fun and I got to hang out in the Green Room, drink copious quantities of the then trendy and coveted Stolichnaya vodka (‘smuggled’ back under diplomatic seal from what was then Leningrad), and to meet people like Prosky.

Yes, this is mostly about me and only a little bit about Robert Prosky, but I did enjoy seeing him pop up over the years in this film (e.g., Dead Man Walking) or that TV show. It’s never been entirely clear to me what counts as a “character” actor, but Prosky was certainly a “type,” had a certain look about him and was, in that sense, like the dozens of stock actors one saw over and over again in the Golden Age of Television. Obviously, the man was never a major star, but in theater and the film industry, being a working actor is being a major success against prohibitively high odds. I doubt we ever had a conversation beyond two or three sentences, but I was happy to have met him, I admired the man’s work, and I’m sorry to hear of his passing.

Buying elected offices with your own money or with campaign contributions from vested interests is as American as apple pie.

But selling them is still generally frowned upon.