RedStateEclectic

The Language of the World

What this (see below) means in terms of spreading the message of liberty is hard to underestimate. America has been late in becoming a social democratic nation. She still brims with the spirit of freedom. Other countries have lost their antennae for freedom much earlier. Their languages and domestic-language-based institutions serve as powerful repellents against libertarian thinking. The more widely spoken English is, the greater will be the resonance of freedom-loving thinking.

The second president of the United States, John Adams, predicted in 1780 that "English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the end of this one." It is destined "in the next and succeeding centuries to be more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age."

It was a bold prediction, for at that time there were only about 13 million English-speakers in the world, almost all of them living in Britain or on the eastern seaboard of North America. They were barely 1 percent of the world's population, and almost nobody except the Welsh and the Irish bothered to learn English as a second language.

So how is Adams' prediction doing now?

Well, it took a little longer than he thought, but last week one of the most respected universities in Italy, the Politecnico di Milano, announced that, beginning in 2014, all its courses would be taught in English. 

Make sure to read the entire article.

Lies Both Sides of the Atlantic

Among the biggest lies of the welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic is the notion that the government can supply the people with things they want but cannot afford. Since the government gets its resources from the people, if the people as a whole cannot afford something, neither can the government.

The source.

We the Greedy Pigs

Not much difference between Britain and East Germany. The image is from England in the 1960s, but in the 1980s, when I lived in England, there was still a lot of GDR-type dereliction and bleakness around. Image credit.

Referring to political criticism of private equity firms, Don Boudreaux argues:

So if politicians and pundits really wish to excoriate those responsible for shutting down hopelessly inefficient producers and for forcing others to operate more efficiently, they should blame consumers.  These pols and pundits should demonize the likes of families and small businesses that greedily seek to get as much as possible in return for each dollar they spend.

The source.

I do not disagree with Boudreaux, but I insist that the picture is larger than he paints it. The initiative of entrepreneurs is a vital force in its own right in this process.

If we had only demanding customers but no entrepreneurs, not much in the way of advancement would happen. In fact, in such a situation, faithfully enacted in a system called socialism, consumers will, for lack of clout and comparison, tend to adjust to the low quality produce surrounding them all over the place, as I witnessed in East Germany and the UK.

It was hard to fathom for me what kind of grotty stuff the British (not to mention the East Germans) would get excited about after years of socialist gagging. Especially with the British, there was also a good portion of nationalism in their excitement, say, for cars ("made in Britain"), residences etc that people in other countries would turn up their noses at.

The prime status symbol prominently displayed in the living rooms of East Germans was an empty can of Coke.

Gary Johnson Ad

The Garden of Forking Paths

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

    Jorge Luis Borges

Find more of Borges at The Garden of Forking Paths.

  

Letter from Nebraska

 

Here is what Buffett is talking about.

Almost…

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks, and the busyness doesn’t promise to get a lot better anytime in the next 2 months.  Wedding plans for my daughter (and bridal showers), political activism, working for a candidate, trying to help organize Paul supporters in the state, teaching two classes…the bottom line is, that I’m juggling more things than I really should be.

Then 2 weeks ago, I got a summons for jury notice.  I knew I was in the potential pool, but also knew that it’s somewhat unusual for cases in the county court to actually go to trial—pleas are negotiated for most of the lesser crimes in our courts, it would seem.  So, when my summons said “call the day before you are to appear to confirm that you will still be needed”, I kind of assumed I’d call, and be told “never mind.”

Nope.  The response to my call was “the trial is on, we’ll need you to appear.”  Hmmm.

I’ve never served on a jury before, and in spite of having a father who is an attorney (as well as a sister), my experience inside of courtrooms has been limited to the annual GOP County Convention in our county, which is often held in one of the courtrooms (not the one where the trial is being held), and a few runs at the County Spelling Contest when I was in elementary school and junior high, when the contests were held in the courtroom.

Apparently they call a goodly portion of the pool in for the trials.  I reported in at 8:20 (“appear at or before 8:30 a.m.” ) and sat in a small room with about 30 of my fellow poolmates. There were another 30 or so who apparently had taken a seat in the courtroom.  When the time came, we were ushered into the courtroom, and given general instructions about what was going to happen, and sworn in as part of the pool.

And then came the selection.  It was really based on a lottery, and they drew 24 names out of the total pool.  My name was drawn 11th.  After they got the 24 selected, voir dire happened—in other words, the attorneys attempted to determine what biases the prospective jurors might have.  And then, each attorney was able to “challenge” (i.e., dismiss for whatever reason they wanted) 6 jurors, taking the total down to 12.

They didn’t tell us in what order we were challenged—the list was read as a group of people who were excused, although the order that the judge read wasn’t alphabetical, so if it was in the order challenged, I was deleted from the jury somewhere around 6th or 7th.  I didn’t track it well, so I’m not sure whether the prosecution or the defense challenged my seating as a juror.

The particular case that was being heard didn’t appear to me to be one that would last too long, nor was it exactly a high stakes case.  But if I were an attorney—either for the prosecution or the defense—and had done a little bit of research on the prospective jurors, I suppose I might have dismissed me, as well.  They knew that I taught political science (I was asked, by the defense attorney, who apparently already knew); and a simple google search of my name would show me as a Republican (“law and order”?) but also as a libertarian (civil liberties?); and my status as a political scientist could mean anything, I suppose.  I’m middle aged, and well-educated.  At its core, I suppose if I were an attorney, I’d be a little unsure about what Juror #11 might be thinking.

So, I missed my chance at being a juror, but I’ve got great new insight into the process that I can share with my American Government classes when we talk about the Constitution and the Judiciary in the future.  And who knows?  Maybe I’ll get another chance—I think I’m in the pool for the rest of the year.

LLE

Breitbart Lives! And The Hypocrisy Lives, Too

Check out these carefully crafted disclaimer paragraphs from the Breitbart site's story about the fact that apparently Obama sometimes pretended that he was born in Kenya:

Andrew Breitbart was never a "Birther," and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of "Birtherism." In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961.

Yet Andrew also believed that the complicit mainstream media had refused to examine President Obama's ideological past, or the carefully crafted persona he and his advisers had constructed for him.

Fair enough.  But we all know what happens when we engage try to engage there, and start writing things that start like this:

Ron Paul was never a "truther," and he has never advocated the narrative of "trutherism." In fact,he believes, as we do, that Islamic terrorists attacked our towers on 9/11/2001.

 

Yet Paul also believes that bloated and inefficient government was lax in examining credible evidence in advance of the attacks, and carefully crafted an investigation that ultimately and intentionally underplayed the role that the government's negligence played in the success of the attacks.

 And I could do "anti-Semite" too. But what's the point?  People aren't interested in the truth nearly as much as they're interested in being right.

Ron Paul's concession of nomination to Mitt Romney a signal to the GOP

The Ron Paul campaigns suspends spending money on primaries it cannot win:

In an email to supporters, Paul urged his libertarian-leaning backers to remain involved in politics and champion his causes despite the apparent end of his presidential aspirations. Paul has found success in wrecking the selection process for delegates to the party's late-summer nominating convention in Tampa, Fla., and trumpeted that he has delayed Romney's expected nomination.

"Moving forward, however, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted," Paul said in his statement. "Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have. I encourage all supporters of liberty to make sure you get to the polls and make your voices heard, particularly in the local, state and congressional elections, where so many defenders of freedom are fighting and need your support."

What does this mean for the movement Ron Paul inspired?

Before we start, we need to make the distinction between the official Ron Paul campaign (led by Jesse Benton and others close to Ron Paul) and the grassroots organizations that are currently causing trouble in state conventions around the country in Oklahoma, Idaho, Nevada, and other states.

 If the GOP establishment thinks that this announcement makes it easier for the Mitt Romney campaign, they ought to think again. Ron Paul's concession of the nomination to Mitt Romney just means that this primary race and the delegate selection process are now free-for-alls. The announcement effectively unbinds the grassroots supporters from the official Paul campaign. Whatever happens between now and Tampa is now out of the official Paul campaign's hands and entirely the fault of the infamously enthusiastic Ron Paul Revolution. The Paul campaign is signaling to the GOP that if chaos does occur in Tampa that it is not their doing.

So, why would the Paul campaign do such a thing? Some possibilities:

1. In order to control the agenda, the Paul campaign needs to continue its delegate accrual unopposed. We already saw the Republican National Committee meddling in Nevada, threatening to unseat delegates for being disproportionately Paul supporters. By conceding the nomination to Romney, the RNC and the Romney campaign will not be spooked by Paul takeover of state conventions.
2. Fast-forward to Tampa and the impending chaos. The Paul campaign probably realizes that anything can happen in Tampa (the aforemention "unforeseen" events), including the Paul faction "stealing" the nomination from Mitt Romney. By washing their hands of what the grassroots does, they can be made blameless. This protects Ron Paul, his staffers, and someone else.
3. It is also a restatement of what has always been true from the very start, all the way in 2007: the official campaign has never been able to control the grassroots Ron Paul Revolution.

It is a very cold and calculated move on the part of Jesse Benton and others in the official campaign. All of it to signal to the GOP establishment that the Ron Paul campaign are team players and ultimately to protect Rand Paul.

Is it no holds barred in Tampa? Probably and this seems to me that the Paul campaign is expecting it.

Lucky, Fawn, Martingale, and Stockman

Before ushering you to some weekend reading at the bottom of the post, some light personal news.

I had a perfect Saturday, collecting Lucky early in the afternoon to take him for a two hour tour of the wilderness. Just before we were going to return to the civilised world, a man turned up with a beautiful she-dog. Lucky had fun with black beauty Lola for another two hours, while I joined our new companion on his search for a ditched glider. Mysteriously, yet reassuringly, there was a note on the glider to the effect that the pilots had decided to land so as to have a drink in the pub of a nearby village.

There was one thing, however, that made me feel very sad. Lucky ferreted out a dead fawn, probably the victim of an unusually cold night yesterday. Once again, Lucky proved an excellent tracking dog and pointer with no interest in actually killing game. I observed carefully how he approached what turned out a dead fawn. Once again, Lucky remained perfectly obedient to me in the face of game alive or dead. He would be the ideal dog for a hunter who does not want his dog to interfere with the killing job or the prey.

However, the sight of the perished mini deer, so beautiful and cute (probably only a few days old), did make me feel really awful for a while.

Life goes on.

For a weekend read, try this on Martingale, and this by David Stockman.

PS

While Lucky was right with his prediction that my home team would suffer relegation from the first German soccer division this year, I am glad to report:

Hurrah, Borussia Dortmund, who have snatched the German soccer championship for the second consecutive year from Bayern München, look like defeating Bayern again decisively, in the final of the German Football Federation Cup. This being a most remarkable fifth consecutive win over Bayern, who in their turn have made it to the final of the European Champions League, where they face the English team of Chelsea.

As the Euro-Worm Turns

Economist and author Detlev Schlichter weighs in on the  recently hyped anti-austerity movement in Europe:

For a long time media pundits have treated us to the perceived wisdom that economic growth can only come from the actions of the government. Only devaluation through euro-exit, inflation through more money printing and more government deficit-spending, preferably by the still credit-worthy Germans and then fiscally-transferred to the maxed-out Greeks, can revive the economy because only this can lift aggregate demand, the magic cure-all of economic problems.

What is lost on these commentators is that the European mess is nothing but the inevitable result of government-stipulated aggregate demand.  Easy money funded the Spanish and Irish real estate booms and bankrupted their banks and by extension their governments. Easy money allowed Greece’s political class to go on a borrowing binge that has now bankrupted the country and lured large parts of the population into zero-productivity, soon-to-be-eliminated public sector jobs.

Do you still want the state to ‘stimulate’ the economy? – Be careful what you wish for.

Since when have the masses been careful with wishes?

My Newfound Drink

While my curiosity isn't enough to kill a cat, it can be piqued on occasion, well below the level of feline expiration. So it is that I found myself in downtown Aiken at a store called, ironically, The Curiosity Shop.

This store is neat. It's one of the few places where one can enter and have tea and scones, sample European food products, peruse bookshelves, clothing racks, and displays of various and sundry household items not normally chanced upon within the big-box stores. It is here that I bought my copy of 'For a New Liberty', by Murray Rothbard. Just the other day, I witnessed a young lad purchasing a Guy Fawkes mask and, if ever one needed to please an anglophile's lust for 'Dr. Who' merchandise, you need go no farther. Also, if of Scottish heritage, you will find popular Highland wear available in your clan's woven pattern.

On one particular venture, the kids and I were in need of refreshment. While they decided upon their crème soda, birch beer, or cherry-flavored Tango, I zeroed in on something called Kombucha - a kind of fermented sweet tea. I've never tried it but it sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a whirl. Upon opening the cap, one discovers a strong hint of vinegar, but the taste is that of a tangy, weak, sweet/sour Champaign that is very refreshing indeed. It has a slight effervescence and traces of alcohol: two pluses in my book. Being low in carbs as well, I had stumbled upon an instant winner; this is even before I looked at the other benefits.

Within this elixir one can expect to find a goodly portion of enzymes and probiotics, as well as 25% of one's daily intake of Folic Acid, and 20% of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, and B12, as well as stuff heretofore unknown to me listed below:

• 100 mg of EGCG: A potent antioxidant.
• 10 mg of Glucuronic Acid: Helps the body in making vitamin c, as well as a detox agent and liver cleanser. Also helps in regulating hormones.
• 30 mg of Acetic Acid: Helpful in controlling Insulin and blood sugar.

That's quite a drink! And to think… I now have even more reason to visit my favorite store in town. However, due to its acidity and price, it will never be more than an occasional indulgence. But there’s always the crème soda…

Rand Paul: Critiquing the Sausage-Makers

”Republicans have been correct in criticizing the president for trying to pick the winners and losers in energy production. Yet now, a majority of republicans are poised to vote for their own set of taxpayer-subsidized loans to the export-import bank. … The American people know hypocrisy when they see it. The American people know corporate welfare when they see it.”

The Mineral Paradox

The pursuit of self-interest and the insatiability of human desires and needs are not the problem. Rather they are the solution provided by a supremely adaptable species to the challenge of survival. Thus I argue in the first two posts listed at the bottom of this article. For a case in point consider ...

The Mineral Paradox

Mineral resources, not synthetically producible in human time frames,1 are fixed in the earth. As each is mined, less supply remains, suggesting that cost and, thus, price must increase as production cumulates.

Yet, for virtually all minerals, the opposite seems to be true: As more is mined, more is discovered to be mined. Prices and costs do not inexorably rise. What was high-cost yesterday has become lower-cost, undercutting the perennial complaint that “the easy stuff has been found.” Overall, there seems to be little difference between minerals and general goods and services.

Solving the Mineral Paradox

[R]esources are not known, fixed things; they are what humans employ to service wants at a given time. Human “appraisal” turns the “neutral stuff” of the earth into resources. What are resources today may not be tomorrow, and vice versa.8

Zimmermann wrote:

Resources are highly dynamic functional concepts; they are not, they become, they evolve out of the triune interaction of nature, man, and culture, in which nature sets outer limits, but man and culture are largely responsible for the portion of physical totality that is made available for human use.9

Zimmermann concluded: “Knowledge is truly the mother of all resources.”10

The functional or real-world theory clearly distinguished between the natural scientific and social scientific views of resources. “To the physicist the law of the conservation of matter and energy is basic,” Zimmermann stated. “The economist, however, is less interested in the totality of the supply than in its availability.”11  He warned: “To those who are used to view resources as material fixtures of physical nature, this functional interpretation of resources must seem disconcerting” because “it robs the resource concept of its concreteness and turns it into an elusive vapor.”12

Physical to functional; objective to subjective; absolute to relative; static to dynamic; one- to multi-dimensional: Orthodox economists ignored the real world in their quest to remake their discipline into a “hard” science based on mathematical relationships. Economists embraced deterministic ideas of known, fixed resources that enabled them to calculate the “optimal” extraction rate of a “depletable” resource.13

But this determinism came at the expense of understanding the dynamic nature of real-world resources. This explains why, time and again, economists have fallen short of finding a “depletion signal” in the empirical record, breeding false worries about “peak oil” or peak minerals in general.

Back in the 1970s, Hotelling’s framework captured the thinking of the economics profession and policymakers. “We have a classic Malthusian case of exponential growth against a finite source,” stated economist and Department of Energy secretary James Schlesinger. “[I]n five years’ time we may have chewed up most of the possibility of further expansion of oil production.”

Paul Samuelson called for a “Manhattan Project” to counter dwindling oil and gas.14  And at Resources for the Future, once a bastion of resource optimism, depletionism was de rigueur.15

The source.

See also: Politically Correct Neanderthal, Greed versus Self-Interest, Homo Faber, The Obsolete Economics of Peak Oil.

The long, long reach of Bradley Manning

(Published on Bradley Manning Support Network.)

Jayel Aheram, Iraq War veteran turned antiwar activist, attended an event in southern California, a stop on the campaign to free Bradley Manning. Jeff Paterson and Emma Cape, of the Support Network and Courage to Resist, have traveled around the country discussing Bradley’s case, the government’s show trial to send him for life in prison, and the activist efforts to free him. This post first appeared at Jayel’s blog.

By Jayel Aheram. May 7, 2012.

Did Bradley Manning help end the Iraq War?

Bradley Manning’s trial continues with the defense succeeding in getting the judge to force the prosecution to release the government’s damage assessments:

A military judge has ordered the state department to release into her hands official documents that assessed from the viewpoint of the US government how damaging the leak of state secrets to WikiLeaks had been to American national interests.

[…]

For months Manning’s defence lawyer, David Coombs, has been pressing the soldier’s military prosecutors to hand over in the discovery stage of the trial the official damage assessments. The assessments, carried out by several federal agencies including intelligence bodies, could have a crucial bearing on any sentence handed out to Manning should he be found guilty.

There have been suggestions that the assessments show that in the official opinion of the US government, WikiLeaks did very little to harm US national interests around the world. That could prove invaluable for the defence in mitigation.

Required reading: Kevin Gosztola was at the trial and has some up-to-date information.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Manning would probably be convicted. After all, it is a trial where the judge’s boss is the Commander-in-Chief who already decided before any trial began that Manning broke the law. It is not really that far-fetched to say that best outcome out of this would be for Manning to wither away in jail instead of being executed for daring to embarrass the Empire. I would ask “Why go through all this trouble of wasting resources conducting a mock trial? Why not just execute Manning and be done with it?” but then I already know the answer.

Anyway, I had the opportunity a few of weeks ago to attend a presentation by Jeff Paterson of the Bradley Manning Support Network. Him and another staffer are traveling the country giving updates to concerned citizens about how eager the government is to make an example of Manning.

Paterson is not only a project director for Courage to Resist, but a fellow Marine artilleryman as well. As part of his presentation, he recounted his own antiwar stand during the first Gulf War as one of the first group of servicemembers who refused to fight that war. He ultimately spent several months in jail before being discharged from the military, after which he disappeared from the public eye. It must be noted that his stand was not an attempt at activism, but a lone protest motivated by a deep moral objection to war.

And because of this action, he has more credibility than most of us could ever hope to achieve. Unlike him, when I joined the Marine Corps in 2006, Iraq and Afghanistan was already well underway. My lack of knowledge is a poor excuse and that I honestly believed the propaganda is irrelevant. The fact that I was a willing cog in the war machine forever discredits me and there is nothing I can do—now or any time in the future—to redeem myself of this complicity.

Which brings me to the Army specialist who found a way to redeem himself: Bradley Manning.

Paterson’s backstory is very important, because it explains his involvement with the Manning case. As he explained in his presentation, he became involved with the military resistance movement at the beginning of second Iraq War. From those efforts came Courage to Resist, a network of veterans, military families, and activists supporting many military resisters defy the War Machine. When it came to light that an Army specialist by the name of Bradley Manning was central in the government’s investigation of Wikileaks, Paterson knew that he had to do something or as he puts it, “before they disappear [Manning].” Within two weeks of Manning’s arrest, Paterson was able to persuade several people to publicize Manning’s plight including establishing the Bradley Manning Defense Fund. To say that Paterson was “involved” with the Manning case is to understate how important he was to this cause. If it were not for his early efforts, who knows what might have happened to Manning?

Paterson’s presentation began with the infamous Collateral Murder video, the release of which firmly embedded the name “Wikileaks” in people’s radars. Manning is accused of leaking the video and also many other documents, including the Iraq War Logs and hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic cables. If the accusations are true and that Manning is to be credited for the leaks, that would make his singular action of leaking classified information the most significant catalyst of change in modern history.

There is some evidence that the classified information Manning allegedly provided to Wikileaks influenced and might have contributed to the Tunisian uprisings, which itself became the fount from which the Arab Spring continues to flow. Could it be that Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, Khaled Mohamed Saeed’s death, and Manning’s reckless bravery are all to be equally credited for the changes sweeping the Middle East? According to Amnesty International in their 2011 report, Wikileaks’ revelations were “catalysts” in the Arab Springs:

While the “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia would not have happened without the long struggle of brave human rights defenders over the last two decades, support for activists from outside the country may have been strengthened as people scrutinized the Wikileaks documents on Tunisia and understood the roots of the anger. In particular, some of the documents made clear that countries around the world were aware of both the political repression and the lack of economic opportunity, but for the most part were not taking action to urge change.

So, while one cannot fully credit Manning and Wikileaks for the Arab Spring, there were fundamental to its strength and ultimate success. Additionally, the Arab Spring’s strength and success served as inspiration for the widespread protests of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Scientists might stand on the shoulders of giants, but modern revolutionaries apparently stand on the shoulders of a 110-pound Army specialist. Some might write about how Wikileaks is changing journalism, but in reality without Manning and his trove of classified information, Julian Assange and his outfit would have a lot less to leak.

So, Manning’s leak might have started revolutions in the Middle East, inspired a social movement in the United States, and changing the journalism itself, but could it have ended a war as well? Paterson asserts that the account of atrocities in the Iraq Wars Logs is what finally pushed Iraqi legislators to grow a spine and refuse granting immunity to American troops from prosecution in Iraqi courts. This refusal was the “deal breaker” that finally led to the Third End of War in Iraq (Obama’s second). If that is the case, then Manning’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination is well-deserved.