the sword and the lie

A nice summation on what went wrong in Iraq from a reader of Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish:

You stated that,”We tried to construct a constitutional order [in Iraq] for a non-dictatorial, national political settlement.”We did what, exactly?  Here’s what we did.  We disbanded the army, throwing thousands out into the street with no pay, no pension, no way to support their families.  We shut down the state-owned industries that produced goods and services basic to the national infrastructure, throwing thousands out into the street with no pay, no pension, no way to support their families.  And then we expected investors to line up while we threw reconstruction dollars at Halliburton and KBR and other American firms under no-bid loopholes in U.S. Government Procurement Law. Worse still, we eviscerated the civil service by purging it of Baath party members (who wasn’t a member of the Baath Party?  The cleaning crew?) thus ripping out the bare bones that would have supported the construction of constitutional order.  Never mind throwing thousands out into the street with no pay, no pension, no way to support their families.  We sat back while all these constitutionally and economically disenfranchised people looted what remained, said “stuff happens” and then proudly we pointed to purple fingers and claimed victory.We burned down the house, that’s what we did.

John Stossel on global warming activism, and the self-interest that may lie behind much of it:

It reminds me of George Mason University Economics Department Chairman Don Boudreax’s suggestion that such schemes really mean ‘government seizing enormous amounts of additional power in order to embark upon schemes of social engineering - schemes whose pursuit gratifies the abstract fantasies of the theory class and, simultaneously, lines the very real pockets of politically powerful corporations, organizations, and “experts.”’ He is so right. The abstract fantasies of the theory class will soon send huge chunks of your money to politicians, friends, activist scientists, and politically savvy corporations.

Several public intellectuals were recently asked what the “idea” of America was. Of course most had a grand vision that conveniently overlapped whatever their pet cause is. George Will, however, had a refreshing take on it:

It has been often said that any idea is dangerous if it is a person’s only idea. Talk about “the” American idea is dangerous because it often is a precursor to, and an excuse for, the missionary impulse that sleeps lightly, when it sleeps at all, in many Americans. After all, if the essence of America can be distilled to a single idea, it must be supremely important, and there might be a moral imperative to export it.

Chris Matthews, at least momentarily, abandoned his Machiavellianism to say something quite penetrating (even if it was borrowed from Fareed Zakaria) about terrorism and liberty:

MATTHEWS:  …I agree with what Fareed Zakaria wrote in “Newsweek” this week, which is terrorism isn‘t explosions and death, terrorism is when you change your society because of those explosions and you become fearful to the point where you shut out immigration, you shut out student exchanges, you shut people out of buildings, you begin to act in an almost fascist manner because you‘re afraid of what might happen to you.  That‘s when terrorism becomes real and frighteningly successful.  That‘s what I believe, and that‘s why I question the way Giuliani has raised this issue.  He raises it as a specter.  In a weird way, he helps the bad guys.

Louis XIV, the “sun king” of France from 1643 to 1715, is often marveled over by historians for his “magnificence”. Buy like most rulers with their own cult of personality, he did far more harm than good to his people:

The economic and financial condition of France at the beginning of the eighteenth century was truly pitiable. In spite of her great natural resources, the variety of her favourable climates, the fertility of her well-watered soil, and the thrift, industry, and intelligence of her people, the efforts of able ministers like Mazarin and Colbert to increase her national wealth had been rendered nugatory by the senseless politics of the Great Monarch. Costly campaigns abroad, ruinous extravagance at home, left the kingdom at his death, in 1715, with a debt of 3460 million francs, of which over 3300 had been contracted since the death of Colbert in 1683. His murderous wars, reducing the birth-rate, increasing the mortality, and “an act of religious intolerance, disavowed by religion” –the expulsion of the Protestants–had reduced the population by four millions, or 20 per cent, since 1660. Agricultural products had fallen off by one-third since he ascended the throne.

The Physiocrats, Henry Higgs, p. 5

This is what centralization of power around a few egos leads to: “costly campaigns abroad” (like those brought to us by today’s neocons), ruinous extravagence at home (like that brought to us by today’s “compassionate conservatives” and tax-and-spend leftists), and massive debt (like that brought to us by the combination of all of the above).

Maps, like history, has politics as its default subject. When we think of a “map of the world”, we automatically think of a multi-colored display of nation-states and their capitals. What is seen as most important is not the land itself or the nature of the people who populate it, but rather how it is chopped up by our overlords, and which city each cabal of overlords chooses to set up shop.

Why is it that when we study history, so much of it is recounting a succession of rulers and wars: that is, political history? As a liberal, I believe the state is predominantly an agent of violence. And wars are obviously violent. So looked at that way, the common conception of history seems to be a history of violence. What is more important to the mass of humanity is not so much which cast of thugs has managed to put them under a yoke in any given period: but what they themselves have managed to achieve in spite of them. So a truer history of humanity, I think would consist of what is now called cultural, economic and technological history.

Great quote from theWorld’s Shortest Libertarian FAQ

Libertarians are frequently characterized as “conservative on economic issues and liberal on personal issues.”  That’s not a bad definition, but it’s kind of like saying vodka is “half screwdriver and half white Russian.”  It implies that libertarians are being inconsistent, whereas in fact libertarianism is more consistent than either conservatism or liberalism.  I prefer to say, “Conservatives are frequently libertarian on economic issues, and liberals are frequently libertarian on personal issues.”  (I would also say that conservatives are usually authoritarian on personal issues, and liberals are usually authoritarian on economic issues.)