There are few figures in the American libertarian movement that gave rise to as much controversy or passion as Ayn Rand. Love her or hate her, it’s hard to find a libertarian who doesn’t have an opinion about the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. For many of us, she was the one who lit the spark that sent us down the road toward becoming a libertarian. Even after her death, some still consider themselves hard-core Objectivists in the model of those who gravitated around the Nathanial Branden Institute in the 1960s. For most libertarians, though, while Rand is arguably the most influential moral philosopher, she is also someone who’s flaws, both personal and philosophical have been acknowledged, debated, and argued about for decades.

There’s always been a missing piece of the puzzle, though, and that was that nobody had really undertaken a full-scale intellectual biography of someone who, even today, can sell 200,000 copies a year of her 1,000+ page magnum opus. There were personal biographies by Barbara Branden and Nathaniel Branden, but those both seemed to concentrate on the more lurid details of Rand’s personal life and the circumstances behind the 1968 Objectivist Purge. The heirs of Rand’s estate, meanwhile, have guarded her papers closely in an obvious effort to protect her legacy and reputation. Someone wanting to learn more about Rand’s life, the development of her ideas, and her impact on American politics, had almost nowhere to go that wasn’t totally biased in one direction or the other.

That’s why Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right is so welcome.

Instead of dwelling on the lurid aspects of Rand’s affair with Nathaniel Branden, and without taking sides regarding the many controversies that followed Rand in years after Atlas Shrugged was published, Burns provides a thorough, well-written and well-researched survey of how Ayn Rand went from Alisa Rosenbaum of St. Petersburg, Russia, born just as Czarist Russia was beginning it’s decent into chaos, to Ayn Rand, the woman about whom more than one person has said “she changed my life.”

For people versed in the history of libertarian ideas, the most interest parts of the book will probably be Burns’s documentation of Rand’s interaction with the heavyweights of both the Pre World War II Right and the conservative/libertarian movement that began to take shape after the war ended. She corresponded with Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken and, most interestingly, developed a very close personal and intellectual relationship with Isabel Patterson, best known as the author of The God of the Machine. For years, especially during the time that Rand was writing The Fountainhead, Rand and Paterson exchanged ideas and debated philosophy, and it’s clear that they both contributed to the others ideas.

The Rand-Paterson relationship, though, also foreshadowed something that would happen all too frequently later in Rand’s career, the purge. Paterson was among the first libertarian-oriented writers to experience Rand’s wrath for the perception that she was not sufficiently orthodox. Over time, that would continue to the point where, at it’s height, Objectivism displayed a level of orthodoxy and denunciation of perceived heresy that rivaled the religions that it rejected. It was, in the end, the reason why the movement’s downfalls was largely inevitable.

Burns also goes into great detail discussing the process and the ordeal that Rand went through while writing both of her great novels. After reading that part, one marvels at the fact that she even survived.

In the final chapter, Burns shows that, even though Rand herself had flaws that led to the demise of Objectivism as a formal movement, her ideas have a staying power that has permeated throughout the conservative and libertarian movements in the United States. There is hardly a libertarian in the United States who has not read at least one of Rand’s books and, it’s clear that her ideas have taken hold in a way that she probably never expected and definitely would not have approved of. That, however, is the power of ideas, the creator can’t control what people do with them once they’re out there.

Burns does a wonderful job of filling in the missing pieces about Rand’s life and her place in the wider context of the political and social history of Post World War II America. Whether you love or hate Ayn Rand – and I don’t think you can have no opinion about her once exposed to her idea – this is a truly fascinating book.

Huxley’s Brave New World is a classic example. You have a government that controls every aspect of life, down even to selecting (and disabling if necessary) people into a caste system of people based upon their intelligence, educating (conditioning may be a better word) them from birth to accept their caste placement. They ply the populace with consumption, drugs, and sex to keep them happy and docile, and the result is a country largely free of crime and misery. This is all upset when a “savage” from the outside, educated and English-speaking, is introduced to the society. Being an individual and a freethinker, he quickly tires of the life devoid of emotion and value and starts (after the death of his mother) lashing out. The novel ends when John the Savage finds the only escape from the rot that he has left, and hangs himself.

Island is sort of an anti-BNW, in some rather (I would think) deliberate ways. It tells the story of a remote island, Pala, which had closed itself off to the world — an island which correspondingly had little reason for the world to take note. This is rapidly changing, though, as the island is sitting on quite a bit of oil. One journalist shipwrecks on the island (partly tasked by his boss, newspaperman AND oilman, with trying to find a way to exploit that oil) and starts exploring. He finds a populace where everyone seems to be very happy and well adjusted, a society that is well-run but still lightly-governed. The island is heavily informed by buddhist teachings, and uses early childhood conditioning, community families, sex (tantric buddhist variety) and drugs (of the magic mushroom variety) to expand the Understanding of, rather than pacify, the populace. It is not a society built for consumption, but rather a society built for happiness and self-actualization. The journalist (perhaps best described as a “savage” from civilization) grows enamored with this society, sees what he now understands as rot within his own, and wants to join. *(see below the fold for spoiler)

Island is widely described as Huxley’s counterpoint to Brave New World. It is clear that he sees the same demons (consumerism, a lack of individuality, and a value-less society) and the same fetishes (drugs and sex) in both books, but in Island he sees the impression of positive ethics and values as the difference. He changes the game, using sex and drugs as a way of furthering Understanding, using community family raising not as a way to blunt individuality but a way for children to avoid the parental roullette that often cause them to inherit their parents flaws, and using biological/behavioral understanding to inform educators in the proper ways to help each individual student learn and become self-actualized. I’m not well-steeped in Buddhism, but it appears to be heavily influenced by Buddhist rather than Western thought. The result is a society that, while not perfect, appears to meet the magical middle ground between planning a good outcome without really destroying individuality.

Island paints the picture of a beautiful society, and one that I suspect is a guideline, in the mold of Plato’s Republic**, for his ideal state. From a philosophical perspective I think is definitely something that should be read (although not a plank for any cohesive philosophy), as it contains some practical personal lessons about thought and emotion that many folks might benefit from.

But in another sense, it doesn’t work as a novel. It is a philosophical dialectic much like that of The Republic, and my thought reading throughout the whole aspect was Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged. Very long, and pretty important, but certainly not a page-turning thriller. The novel seems to have very little in the way of plot, the “conflict” takes a far back seat to the philosophy, and the scenes become nothing more than an excuse for philosophical pontificating, not advancing a story. I said after reading it on twitter that from a literary standpoint it was weak and grandstanding, and that it seemed far more like a writer’s first novel than his last, which Island was for Huxley.

As with many books I read, I see there to be value for many readers. But if you go into the book expecting an experience like Brave New World, you’re not going to get it. This is a treatise on humanity and the ideal state, informed by Huxley’s own spiritual and ethical beliefs. As such, it contains useful information on a personal level, to better understand yourself, the society immediately around you, and how you might improve both. It’s not much of a novel, and not something I’d pass off to a friend unless I absolutely knew them to be receptive to this type of book, but it’s worth it for what it is.

SPOILER ALERT!
* In a final dystopian spark of Huxley, his plan to get his boss access to the oil plays out with a neighboring totalitarian island invading and taking over his newfound paradise, in the name of modernization, progress, and a reform of the buddhism to the new Religion.

** I’m going from memory on The Republic, as it’s been many years since I’ve read it. I might have to go back to it one of these days.

Over the past 30 years, America has seen Presidential scandals ranging from Watergate to Iran-Contra to Travel-gate, Whitewater, the Lewinsky scandal, and the Valerie Plame affair. We’ve learned the truth about some of the truly nefarious actions undertaken by some of most beloved Presidents of the 20th Century, including the iconic FDR, JFK, and LBJ. And, yet, despite all of that, Americans still have a reverential view of the President of the United States that borders on the way Englishmen feel about the Queen or Catholic’s feel about the Pope.

How did that happen and what does it mean for America ?

Gene Healy does an excellent job of answering those question in The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, making it a book that anyone concerned with the direction of the American Republic should read.

As Healy points out, the Presidency that we know today bears almost no resemblance to the institution that the Founding Fathers created when they drafted Article II of the Constitution. In fact, to them, the President’s main job could be summed up in ten words set forth in Section 3 of Article II:

he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,

The President’s other powers consisted of reporting the state of the union to Congress (a far less formal occasion than what we’re used to every January), receiving Ambassadors, and acting as Commander in Chief should Congress declare war. That’s it.

For roughly the first 100 years of the Republic, Healy notes, President’s kept to the limited role that the Constitution gave them. There were exceptions, of course; most notably Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War but also such Presidents as James Polk who clearly manipulated the United States into an unnecessary war with Mexico simply to satisfy his ambitions for territorial expansion. For the most part, though, America’s 19th Century Presidents held to the limited role that is set forth in Article II, which is probably why they aren’t remembered very well by history.

As Healy notes, it wasn’t until the early 20th Century and the dawn of the Progressive Era that the idea of the President as something beyond what the Constitution said he was took forth. Healy documents quite nicely the ways in which Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson to FDR went far beyond anything resembling Constitutional boundaries to achieve their goals, and how they were aided and abetted in that effort by a compliant Supreme Court and a Congress that lacked the courage to stand up for it’s own Constitutional prerogatives. Then with the Cold War and the rise of National Security State, the powers of the Presidency became even more enhanced.

One of the best parts of the book, though, is when Healy attacks head-on the “unitary Executive” theory of Presidential power that was advanced by former DOJ official John Yoo in the wake of the September 11th attacks and the War on Terror. As Healy shows, there is no support for Yoo’s argument that the Founders intended for the President to have powers akin to, or even greater than, those of the British Monarch that they had just spent seven years fighting a war to liberate themselves from. The dangers of Yoo’s theories to American liberty and the separation of powers cannot be understated.

If the book has one weakness, it’s in the final chapter where Healy addresses only in passing reforms that could be implemented to restrain the Cult Of the Presidency. I don’t blame Healy for only giving this part of the book passing attention, though, because what this book really shows us is that no matter of written law can stop power from being aggregated in a single person if that’s what the people want and, to a large extent, we’ve gotten the Presidency we deserve.

Healy’s closing paragraph bears reproducing:

“Perhaps, with wisdom born of experience, we can come once again to value a government that promises less, but delivers far more of what it promises. Perhaps we can learn to look elsewhere for heroes. But if we must look to the Presidency for heroism, we ought to learn once again to appreciate a quieter sort of valor. True political heroism rarely pounds its chest or pounds the pulpit, preaching rainbows and uplift, and promising to redeem the world through military force. A truly heroic president is one who appreciates the virtues of restraint — who is bold enough to act when action is necessary yet wise enough, humble enough to refuse powers he ought not have. That is the sort of presidency we need, now more than ever.

And we won’t get that kind of presidency until we demand it.”

And, if we don’t demand it we will find ourselves living in a country where the only difference between President and King is merely the title.

In his new book End the Fed, though, Paul provides a clear, concise explanation for why we all need to be worried about the fiat paper money system that we’ve lived under for decades. As Paul says, the system itself is unsustainable over the long term, and Federal Reserve itself has contributed to economic instability in the 96 years since it’s founding.

This isn’t a detailed economic treatise, it’s a call to political action, and Paul does an excellent job of making his case for the argument that we need to bring an end to the monetary system that is, slowly but surely and inevitably, destroying us and destroying freedom. Instead, he argues that we need to return to the days of the Gold Standard, which doesn’t even need a central bank to function properly. You may disagree with the end scenario that Paul proposes, but it’s hard to disagree with his assertion that liberty in money is as necessary for a free society as liberty in thought or property.

Paul’s most important insight in this book, though, comes in his concise demonstration of how the “magical printing press” monetary system that we have today makes possible the leviathan state that is threatening to bankrupt us. Without a central bank with the ability to create money at will and in secret, it’s highly unlikely that the welfare-warfare state would be able to exist. Without free money, the state would be forced to either raise taxes or borrow money to finance it’s ventures and adventures and it’s unlikely that either taxpayers or bondholders the kind of unlimited spending that fiat money makes possible.

What this means is this — you’ll never have a truly limited government as long as you have a central bank with the power to create “money” at will.

That’s why it’s important to End the Fed, and that’s why this book is one that everyone should read.

What we haven’t seen very often, though, is an argument about tax policy from a moral perspective, an examination of the impact that tax policy has on society in the manner that it punishes good behavior and rewards bad behavior. That is exactly the argument that Leslie Carbone takes up in Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform, and it’s a welcome addition to the debate.

Through a combination of history, economic analysis, and good old-fashioned common sense, Carbone demonstrates quite clearly how tax policies over the past 70 years or longer have succeeded in sending the wrong signals to citizens and helped to encourage behaviors that have adverse consequences for individuals and society as a whole. In one compelling section, Carbone examines the immorality behind the IRS’s tax enforcement mechanism and concludes with this devastating point:

When a government does to people not convicted of any wrongdoing what the people cannot do to one another, the march toward tyranny has begun. When it takes from some just because they have more than others, when it places its interests in self-support above the privacy of its citizens, when its enforcement of unnatural law is identical to its enforcement of heinous natural offenses, when it can’t even understand it’s own laws, it has shifted from enforcing justice to enforcing injustice and sows disrespect for the Rule of Law. It becomes an instrument of the very wrongs it is instituted to subdue.

That’s the America we live in today.

The book concludes with an insightful analysis of the various tax reform proposals that have been made in recent years, ranging from the flat tax to the national sales tax, and makes clear that only reform that allows the people to keep more of what they earn can ever be considered moral.

For a quick read, this is an excellent edition to the voluminous literature condemning the leviathan that has become America’s tax system.

THIS BOOK IS BASED on a single idea: You should be allowed to do whatever you want with your own person and property, as long as you don’t physically harm the person or property of a nonconsenting other.

Thus begins a book that everyone interested in politics should read; Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Country by Peter McWilliams.  Published in 1998, it is a damning survey of how the United States had become a state composed of “clergymen with billy-clubs”.  It analyzes the consequences of punishing so-called victimless crimes from numerous viewpoints, demonstrating that regardless of what you think is the most important organizing principle or purpose of society the investigation, prosecution and punishment of these non-crimes is harmful to society.

This remarkable book is now posted online, and if one can bear to wade through the awful website design, one will find lots of thought-provoking worthwhile commentary, analysis, theory and history.

His final chapter, on how to change the system, while consisting mainly of pie-in-the-sky, ineffective suggestions of working within the system, starts of with an extremely good bit of advice that I urge all our readers to try:

The single most effective form of change is one-on-one interaction with the people you come into contact with day-by-day. The next time someone condemns a consensual activity in your presence, you can ask the simple question, “Well, isn’t that their own business?” Asking this, of course, may be like hitting a beehive with a baseball bat, and it may seem—after the commotion (and emotion) has died down—that attitudes have not changed. If, however, a beehive is hit often enough, the bees move somewhere else. Of course, you don’t have to hit the same hive every time. If all the people who agree that the laws against consensual crimes should be repealed post haste would go around whacking (or at least firmly tapping) every beehive that presented itself, the bees would buzz less often.

I highly recommend this book.  Even though I have some pretty fundamental disagreements with some of his proposals, I think that this book is a fine addition to the bookshelf of any advocate of freedom and civilization.

Hat Tip: J.D. Tuccille of Disloyal Opposition.

Co-blogger Chris just announced a new cookbook that he and his wife are putting together, heavily based upon a number of recipes that he’s posted on his blog. I still haven’t managed to go and enjoy any of said cooking on my trips into the Phoenix area, but I can say that based on the recipes I’ve seen him post — I’m looking forward to it.

Since the book hasn’t been released yet, I can’t offer any definitive comments. But I can tell you that I’m not expecting The French Chef; rather something more along the lines of 1,001 Ways to Cook Large Dead Animals. Either way, I expect to see a lot of tasty offerings.

Chris mentions that since it will be a limited print run, the best option is to pre-order for a book that will be officially available sometime in the next month or so. You might want to jump on this one quickly. Head on over and take a look.

PSA – The Liberty Papers, nor any of its contributors, subsidiaries, employers, friends, relatives, or pets will not be held responsible for any ill effects to your health resulting from over-consumption — or just consumption — of any of these recipes. I said your stomach will thank you; your arteries are a different matter entirely!

Trevor Paglen is an author, and Dr. of Geography, who developed a fascination for the “black” side of the military some years ago; and started snooping.

His first book on the subject “I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me“, was basically a recounting of his experiences in trying to figure out what mission patches for classified projects meant.

…snipped a video…

His new book is “Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World.“; in which he extends and develops on the methods and means from the first book, into an expanded view of the black world, focused on geography (and specifically logistics, and how they are related).

…snipped another video…

If you haven’t watched them yet, go back to the original post and watch the videos; and be prepared to be amazed at just how much can be inferred about black projects, by simple things like unit patches, and public records.

Amazed, and/or horrified (or perhaps simply resigned and amused), if your job is (or used to be) to keep such things secure…

Which brings me to the fun part of this post.

Dr. Paglens publishers saw my original post, and have graciously sent me a review copy of the book; which I plan to read and review this weekend.

In addition, they’ve offered a signed copy of the book to one of my readers, to be decided by blog contest (smart publicists these ones).

So, here’s the rules and parameters of the contest:

1. Submissions accepted as comments to the contest post on my blog, from now through Monday morning 12:01 AM

2. At 12:01 I will pick what I think are the top five posts if we get ten or more, or top ten if we get 20 or more. I will them put them up for a vote to the readers of the anarchangel blog, (and copy the stories here, but it would be a little complicated to have two polls) open from the time I post the stories, until 5pm Monday evening (at which time I will also be posting a review of Dr. Paglens book).
3. Entries will consist of one each of the following:

   a. Your best, funniest, most interesting, or scariest (from a security perspective) patch, flash, sign, symbol, or insignia story; preferably with a pic, but at least with a very clear description and detailed story.

   b. Your best, funniest, most interesting, stupidest, or scariest (from a security perspective) security story. It can be infosec, comsec, psec, prosec, opsec, doesn’t matter.

4. Stories do not have to be military or governmental in nature; though I suspect most of the best and funniest will be (governments are even better at absurdity than big corporations), so make it good
5. Multiple entries from a single individual will be accepted; and if the stories are good, are in fact encouraged.
6. All entries must be true and correct to the best of your knowledge (notice the out I gave you there).
7. First hand stories are preferred, and will be given more credit; but a sufficiently good second or third hand story will certainly be considered.
8. All entries should be either declassified, or sanitized sufficiently to avoid compromise; or in the case of non-military security stories to avoid compromise or disclosure of private or confidential (or higher) information.

Also, although I’m generally not a linker or memer, I would ask that if you find this interesting, please link it up, and forward it around. I’d really love to see what we get.

If there are enough entries, or if people post some REALLY GREAT after the deadline, I might even throw in a consolation prize myself afterwards.

It is very difficult to write a political novel.  I should know, I’ve started 3 or 4 of them, and they all turned out badly.  When the author is convinced that he is right, the protagonists tend to preach at each other, and the antagonists tend to sound like evil simpletons.  In Little Brother, Mr Doctorow has managed to avoid the former pitfall, while falling deeply into the latter.    While the central theme of the book is interesting, there are several improbable plot twists, a deficiency of analysis, and a deus ex machina ending.  Thus, while I think everyone should read this book, and will actually enjoy it, it will not be the classic that, say 1984 would be.  I will, however, be giving it to my children when they are old enough to understand it.

What follows is chock full of spoilers.  Please stop reading here if you wish to keep the ending a surprise.

The Main Theme

The book is built around the war between 17 year old Marcus Yallow and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in San Fransisco after a major terrorist attack kills 4,000 San Franciscans.  Marcus and his friends have the misfortune of being near the scene of one of the bombings and are picked up DHS for investigation.  At the time of the bombing, they had been playing an Alternate Reality Game, and were carrying various odd tools they needed to play, including Wifi finders, cell phones and portable computers with hacking software and various gizmo’s they had used to sneak out of school without being caught by the ubiquitous surveillance.   Naturally these devices arouse DHS suspicion, and Marcus and his friends find themselves in that awful world where one is suspected of having committed a crime, where one is forced to prove one’s innocence.  Eventually DHS releases Marcus and several members of his team.  They continue to hold one member of his team.  And when they are released, they are all warned that if they say a word about their incarceration, they will be going to jail for a long time.

The bombing triggers a security lock-down of San Fransisco by the DHS, which working in conjunction of the state and city police begin a massive surveillance program, monitoring people’s travel patterns by tracking their cashless mass transit and toll booth passes.  The government also monitors debit card purchases.   The goal of this data mining, which is based on the now officially defunct Total Information Awareness Program is to look for suspicious purchase and travel patterns so that police can follow up on them.  Those whose travel patterns look unusual are stopped and interrogated by police. The promise in the U.S. Constitution that people will be free of unreasonable searches and seizures is, of course, violated.  The protagonist sets about turning the population of San Fransisco against these security measures, triggering ruthless attempts at suppression by DHS, an escalation which eventually results in the state of CA arresting a group of DHS agents – the transfer of the prisoners held in a secret prison on Treasure Island to the CA prison system.  The victory is incomplete since the agents are eventually released into Federal Custody and permitted to resume their careers.  The book ends with the protagonist starting a voter registration drive so that the population will never again be so poorly treated by the government.

The Good

There are several aspects of this book that I found very worthwhile, one that any person contemplating how to resist tyranny or who does not understand civil libertarians insistance on tying government’s hands would do well to listen to.

Why Extreme Preventative Security Is Incompatible With a Free, Prosperous Society

Extreme preventative security does not work.  We know this.  Consider paranoid organizations like the government of North Korea.  The government vigorously watches nearly every citizen, all major decisions are closely scrutinized with a mind toward the security of the state, interactions with foreigners are tightly controlled, every car that drives down a highway has its license plate written down by spies along the road, huge armies are amassed to protect against outside invasion.  Any dissent or hint that the leader’s might have made a mistake is treated as if it were treason.  The end result, many people are not creating wealth, but consuming it while watching their neighbors, the economy does not produce enough food to feed the population.  If does not produce the trade goods needed to exchange for food.  In effect, the economy has no surplus, but operates at a loss.  The population lives in fear, afraid to speak frankly with each other.

Why do these security measures not work?  Well, the math is quite simple.  Say you have a population of N people.  Among these people are n terrorists.  A security measure is implemented that will identify potential terrorists.  Let us assume that the measure is perfect at detecting actual terrorists (this is highly unlikely, but we’ll make that assumption for now).  Let us assume, though that an innocent person being examined by the system will be flagged as a person of interest x% of the time.  If we were to process all N persons through our security system, the system would have the following results:

Correctly Accused Terrorists
Wrongly Accused Non-Terrorists
Total

OK.  So let us plug in some numbers.  Let’s say we have a population of 10 million people (N=10,000,000), with 100 terrorists hidden within it.  Let us further assume that our test will have only a 0.1% chance of falsely flagging an innocent person as being a terrorist.    Plugging the numbers we find that:

So, the system will flag 10,100 possible terrorists.  The vast majority of those people will be innocent of any wrongdoing.  However, they may have a devil of a time proving their innocence.  And they will have to prove their innocence; a preventative system is not one that has a presumption of innocence built into it.

If we assume that the terrorists are smart and can figure out work-arounds to evade the system so that they falsely appear like normal people to the scanners.  Then you could easily have a situation where all 5,000 flagged by the system are innocent of any wrongdoing.

Each false positive will have to be throughly investigated, meaning that investigators will be very busy.  The system will cause delays.  It will require a large number of investigators who are thus removed from productive activities.  Such measures will alter peoples behavior.  Terrorists behave like hackers:  they improvise their weapons.  Thus the most innovative, inventive people will come under suspicion: kids will not do model rocketry.   Grown men won’t tinker with chemistry sets at home.  Wardriving, photography, ARGing, LARPing all will look suspicious.    The most innovative people will be discouraged from trying crazy stuff, because crazy will appear to be dangerous.

The more active the guys doing preventative security work are, the less innovation there will be.  Pour enough resources into such preventative security, and innovation stops  like  in North Korea.

Given the comparative rarity of terrorist attacks, and the near perfect score of bystanders in stopping them (once the U.S. government’s doctrine of passive cooperation with terrorists was abandoned by the passengers of Flt 93), the expense of trying to stop them, and the large number of innocent people who are harmed by these security procedures and systems, not to mention the fear that these systems induce, we are far better off if we abandon all but the most carefully thought out screening procedures.

Terrorists Don’t Hate Landmarks, They Love Fear

Mr Doctorow makes another observation that bears repeating in these illogical times:

“Why the hell would they blow up the Bay Bridge?” I said. “The Golden Gate is the one on all the postcards.” Even if you’ve never been to San Francisco, chances are you know what the Golden Gate looks like: it’s that big orange suspension bridge that swoops dramatically from the old military base called the Presidio to Sausalito, where all the cutesy wine-country towns are with their scented candle shops and art galleries. It’s picturesque as hell, and it’s practically the symbol for the state of California. If you go to the Disneyland California Adventure park, there’s a replica of it just past the gates, with a monorail running over it.

So naturally I assumed that if you were going to blow up a bridge in San Francisco, that’s the one you’d blow.

“They probably got scared off by all the cameras and stuff,” Jolu said. “The National Guard’s always checking cars at both ends and there’s all those suicide fences and junk all along it.” People have been jumping off the Golden Gate since it opened in 1937 — they stopped counting after the thousandth suicide in 1995.

“Yeah,” Vanessa said. “Plus the Bay Bridge actually goes somewhere.” The Bay Bridge goes from downtown San Francisco to Oakland and thence to Berkeley, the East Bay townships that are home to many of the people who live and work in town. It’s one of the only parts of the Bay Area where a normal person can afford a house big enough to really stretch out in, and there’s also the university and a bunch of light industry over there. The BART goes under the Bay and connects the two cities, too, but it’s the Bay Bridge that sees most of the traffic. The Golden Gate was a nice bridge if you were a tourist or a rich retiree living out in wine country, but it was mostly ornamental. The Bay Bridge is — was — San Francisco’s work-horse bridge.

I thought about it for a minute. “You guys are right,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s all of it. We keep acting like terrorists attack landmarks because they hate landmarks. Terrorists don’t hate landmarks or bridges or airplanes. They just want to screw stuff up and make people scared. To make terror. So of course they went after the Bay Bridge after the Golden Gate got all those cameras — after airplanes got all metal-detectored and X-rayed.” I thought about it some more, staring blankly at the cars rolling down the street, at the people walking down the sidewalks, at the city all around me. “Terrorists don’t hate airplanes or bridges. They love terror.” It was so obvious I couldn’t believe I’d never thought of it before. I guess that being treated like a terrorist for a few days was enough to clarify my thinking.

The other two were staring at me. “I’m right, aren’t I? All this crap, all the X-rays and ID checks, they’re all useless, aren’t they?”

They nodded slowly.

“Worse than useless,” I said, my voice going up and cracking. “Because they ended up with us in prison, with Darryl –” I hadn’t thought of Darryl since we sat down and now it came back to me, my friend, missing, disappeared. I stopped talking and ground my jaws together.

The police cordons, the checkpoints, the searches, the inspections of ID, the database checks – all heighten people’s fear.  In effect, much of the security theater performed by the DHS acts as a force multiplier for Al Queda.  If terror were income, the DHS would be in effect collecting royalties for Al Queda, without the latter having to lift a finger.

Smash the State – But Have Fun Doing It

Most stories about rebellion involve rebellions by people who have somehow been harmed by the powers that be, who set out to get revenge or to overthrow the oppressors on principle.  Everyone is serious, and everyone is committed etc.

Of course, in reality such organizations are easily rolled up by the state:  after all, all the state has to do is send out a person who pretends to be someone who has been wronged, and they will be welcomed into a group that is united only by their unhappiness.  Since the number of wronged people is generally low, and the people don’t really know each other, these ringers can not only easily join, but they also tend to rise to positions of leadership, and their regular payment of dues or contributions to the organizations generally keeps it financially afloat.

Marcus takes a different route:  the rebellion is camouflaged by a community of gamers. The X-Net, an encrypted network interconnecting the conspirators is primarily designed for game play.  The disk containing the software for logging into the network are copied and distributed and copied and distributed primarily by people who are seeking access to a free gaming environment.

Conspirators log into various games, and communicate by sending encrypted IM’s within the game.   They arrange for interviews with the press in these game rooms.  And when they want to arrange for a large number of people to perform a prank or to protest something, they broadcast the message to all the gamers.  Most of the people on X-Net have nothing to do with th erebllion though.  They are people having fun.

People are recruited not by haranguing, not by looking for people who have been harmed but by bing invited to do something fun.  The power of the group comes from the fact that their primary purpose is to have fun and enjoy themselves.  This is a refreshing change.  It reminded me of a few of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals:

Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

The Bad

School Propaganda

One sub-plot that permeates the first 80% of the book is Marcus’ difficulties at school.  At first it starts plausibly enough: the children are surveilled, monitored and tightly controlled at the school.  Their school issued laptops monitor every keystroke, every file edited or viewed, every website visited.  Certainly the impulse to do this is quite high amongst administrators, so this is quite understandable.

However, after the terrorist attacks, his social studies teacher is fired, and replaced by a person who is a caricature of a political reliability instructor in a school. The new teacher teaches a neocon theory of law, society and history.  Her speeches are essentially a long string of cliches strung together.  I found this implausible: a bunch of kids in a public school are not important to warrant such a change, especially when the change happens on such short notice. While the purpose of the school is to explain how Marcus developed his wizardry at cracking security and surveillance systems, and to also explain why he is so instinctively hostile to authorities,  much of the storyline involving the school detracted from the plausibility of the novel.  I say this with all the authority of someone who has failed every time he has decided to write a novel, especially when confronted with a published book written by one of the more prolific and popular authors of this era.

Redefining Normal

The central goal of the conspirators is to force the redefine what looks ‘normal’ to DHS intelligence agents.  X-Net’s encrypted packets are needles in a haystack of encrypted packets associated with a legal music charing service.  The police are goaded into attacking average law abiding people by fiddling with the data so that ordinary people appear to be behaving in extraordinary ways.  While in principle this is a decent strategy, the execution as described in the book left me unconvinced.

The incitement of police attacks against the law abiding citizenry is achieved by using ARFIDS, devices for reprogramming RFID tags on the fly.  The XNetters carry these devices and randomly swap credit card numbers, transponder codes and the like, meaning that a person who is traveling between two points on the mass transit will have their voyage logged as trips by multiple individuals.  And, looking at the travel logs associated with A’s transponder code would actually be displaying segments of the journeys of B, C, D, and E. The end result is portrayed as chaos as average citizens are pulled over and interrogated by police about trips they never made, trips that were made by someone else carrying a surreptitiously reprogrammed card.

Economics?  What’s That?

The reaction of authorities and the citizenry completely ignored economic ramifications of the XNet attack.

Take Marcus’ father, who was shown falsely to have made several trips to Berkley. These trips would have actually been made by multiple other people.  Of course, Marcus’ father should have been billed for the trips.  The inevitable result would be lawsuits as people received bills for trips they never made, and sued/complained about the injustice  of it all. There should have been a massive backlash by the citizenry in reaction to the significant costs being imposed upon them by the X-Netter attack.  No mention of such a backlash is ever made in the book.  I found the dearth of economic effects very strange; economic considerations would have been driving much of the actions of the apolitical citizenry.

No cop can figure out the tech

Another baffling implication in the story is that DHS hires teenagers to spy on other teenagers’ activities and to explain the operation of the various tools and mods made by the XNetters.  I found this implausible in the extreme:  while the cop on the beat may not be hip to the latest gadgets, police forces are quite capable of finding technologically savvy people who are willing to take the king’s coin in exchange for monstrous, yet interesting projects.  The DARPA autonomous vehicle project comes to mind.

The large number of homeland security projects that have people enthusiastically working on them is a testament to the fact that many technically savvy people will quite happily work on interesting technical problems even when the solutions are intended to facilitate tyranny.

What Idiot Makes Movies of His Conspiratorial Plans?

One disgruntled DHS staffer provides Marcus with a very convenient movie demonstrating that the governemnt is trying to radicalize XNet in order to mute opposition to the president’s policies.  While the fact that such a discussion would take place is quite plausible, the notion that the conspirators would be idiotic enough to film it and lose control of the data file beggars belief.

Cops arresting cops?

The climactic moment in the book occurs when the CA governor orders the arrest of all DHS agents found operating the secret prison on Treasure Island.  I found this implausible in the extreme:  cops don’t arrest other cops unless they absolutely have to.  In fact, thanks to the increasing militarization of the police, and their increasing isolation from the rest of society, generally policemen from different police forces feel greater camaraderie towards each other than they do to non-police who happen to be neighbors.  One only need look at the despicable assistance given by CA state troopers to the DEA when the DEA raided medical marijuana dispensaries.  Despite the laws that forbid state troopers from assisting in the enforcement of some of those laws, the local police provided intelligence and crowd control services during the raids. The effect of the XNetter campaign would have been to further radicalize the police and to encourage them to see themselves on the same side as DHS and not as opponents of their tyranny.

Everyone Should Vote – Because More Cooks Will Improve The Soup

A common misconception amongst people who are socially activist is that having more people vote improves the political process by making politicians accountable.  While this seems obviously correct, it is, in fact, quite wrong.  Expanding the voting pool does not help matters, rather it makes politicians more prone to indulge in demagoguery and to pander to moral panics.  Let’s face it, the average person is as interested in the analyzing the outcome of some politicians policies about as much as he or she is interested in writing a computer program or changing their oil.  Most people are not interested in politics.  They don’t think about politics.  So what do they base their decisions on?  Well, they generally vote based on emotion, meaning that to get these voters , politicians must pander to these emotional judgements.   Bryan Caplan’s Myth of the Rational Voter does a good job of examining voters’ economic ignorance.  Voters are similarly ignorant on questions of science, defense and law.

A government that respects the rights of the citizenry is impossible, much like there is no way to force someone to have sex with you without raping them.  Governments are organizations that claim a monopoly on the use of force on some territory.  They use violence to assure that people provide them with goods and services through taxes and jury duty and the like.  They arrogate to themselves useful economic activities such as fire fighting, criminal apprehension, and education which they usually perform very badly since they don’t have to worry about dissatisfied consumers withholding payment.  They often impose emotional rules on the people that live within their territory such as Jim Crow laws, immigration laws,  zoning laws, laws outlawing certain narcotics entirely, and banning others on holy days.  They partner with non-state organizations in providing rents to rent seekers in exchange for rent seekers’ support of the state, this is most blatant with medical licensing laws.

Having more voters provide input into which of 2 – 5 people will control one of the few politically assigned offices in the huge state apparatus will not change the incentives that animate the apparatus.  Leviathan will grow, and people will face fewer and fewer choices as more an more economic activity is controlled not by voluntary choices by consumers but by dictates by the state.

Summary

These problems with the book are far outweighed by its thought provoking nature.  It asks some very interesting questions, and I recommend it with only a few reservations.  I intend to give it to all the young hackers I know, and I urge you to do the same.

The book, which I recommend heartily, gives a strong human feel to the Revolution. Contemporary high-school history classes teach the Revolution as if it were a foregone conclusion, a natural progression of the transgressions by King George III on the colonies. In reality, it was always in doubt, and divergent factions within the colonies could have scuttled the Revolution at any point between the Stamp Act in 1765 and Yorktown.

Enter figures such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, two true radicals committed to independence. Adams in particular was masterful during the days of 1770-1773– a time with little new development from the Crown to cause popular outrage– when he worked to keep the situation simmering. His leadership in the Boston Tea Party directly forced the British hand into the Coercive Acts, likely the point of no return for both sides. Henry entered the national scene thereafter as a Virginian delegate to the First Continental Congress, and his alliance with Samuel & John Adams helped to win his fellow colonists towards independence rather than reconciliation.

The American Revolution was a truly incredible feat, both for having defeated the British and for having ushered in a society unlike any of those in old Europe. Gone were the days of imperial government, of a titular nobility, and of subservience to faraway central governments who could rule with a heavy hand over the individual colonies’ (now States’) matters. Under the Articles of Confederation, thirteen independent States worked to decide matters of importance to all, but with the ever-present assumption that each was– and ought to be– independent of the others.

But although commerce was booming, and the life of the average American in their respective States was improving, not all was well. The Congress (and several States) had racked up enormous debt to fight the war and were vulnerable to outside attack by the powers of Europe. The nature of a one-State-one-vote Confederation between northern mercantilists and southern agrarian planters allowed those European powers to divide-and-conquer to get what they wanted from our national policy.

Several people, such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, recognized that the Articles of Confederation were not working and needed to be revised. They understood that the American States were in jeopardy and would have trouble banding together against regional invasion if a change was not made. They were not, however, looking for a new central government with widespread power.

Enter James Madison, and his ideological cohort, Alexander Hamilton. “The Father Of The American Constitution” was sent as a delegate from Virginia to revise the Articles of Confederation, but he had other designs in mind. He wanted a national, centralized, sovereign government that would supercede the States, binding them into a singular entity. The “United States of America”, per his plan, would be more aptly described as the “United State of America”. He found himself with many like-minded souls at the convention (such as Hamilton) to “amend” the Articles. They moved far beyond the proposed revision of the Articles, and a completely new Constitution was written.

The battles between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists was joined. The Federalists suggested that without a new Constitution, the States would become client-states of Europe, severely limited and unable to protect their own interests from the European monarch’s divide-and-conquer tactics. The Anti-Federalists, on the other hand, saw the birth of a new government that would have the same sort of arbitrary and remote power against which they had just fought a war of Independence. Hamilton wanted a European-style government, destruction or complete subservience of the States, and widespread national powers. Patrick Henry disagreed:

If we admit this Consolidated Government it will be because we like a great splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, and a navy, and a number of things.

When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different.

Liberty, Sir, was then the primary object. We are descended from a people whose Government was founded on liberty.

Our glorious forefathers of Great-Britain, made liberty the foundation of every thing. That country is become a great, mighty, and splendid nation; not because their Government is strong and energetic; but, Sir, because liberty is its direct end and foundation.

We drew the spirit of liberty from our British ancestors; by that spirit we have triumphed over every difficulty.

But now, Sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country to a powerful and mighty empire.

If you make the citizens of this country agree to become the subjects of one great consolidated empire of America, your Government will not have sufficient energy to keep them together.

Such a Government is incompatible with the genius of republicanism.

The Liberty Papers bills itself as written by the heirs of Patrick Henry. Each contributor to this blog, of course, would have to determine for himself how much that description applies, but it is rather clear that the end result of the American republic was Hamiltonian, not what Henry would have wanted.

Much like Frost’s The Road Not Taken, the American Revolution was driven by radical men, blazing the path less traveled. The ratification of the Constitution was the true point at which the more conservative “governmental” members of the movement regained control and put it down the path well worn.

Today is a day to officially cheer the Madisonian/Hamiltonian vision of a great American empire, a vision today fulfilled by men like John McCain and the Washington set. Instead, I suggest you pause and ask yourself whether the Splendid government those men have produced is worth it. Ask yourself whether you would rather follow the path of Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, or of a man like Hamilton who worked tirelessly to enhance and increase the power of the central government. Today, I will be cheering the Anti-Federalists.

There’s not really anything original in the book itself; as other reviewers have pointed out, these are ideas that others have written about before and they are, in fact, older than the American Republic itself. That doesn’t mean the book isn’t important or worth reading, however; as Paul’s campaign and recent polls independent of the Presidential race have demonstrated, there still exists an audience that is quite receptive to the ideas like individual liberty, economic freedom, and the idea that things have gone terribly wrong in this country.

In seven relatively short easy to read chapters, Paul touches on issues ranging from economic freedom, to the assaults on civil liberties and personal property that we’ve seen over the past two decades, to monetary policy, and, of course, foreign policy. If you’re looking for a discussion of what’s wrong in America today from a philosophy that focuses on individual liberty, The Revolution is an excellent place to start.

For someone such as myself who has been immersed in libertarian ideas from the day I picked up a copy of Capitalism & Freedom and then moved on to spend the summer after my freshman year in college digesting everything from Atlas Shrugged to John Locke’s Second Treatise Of Government, the ideas that Paul talks about will be entirely familiar, and there will be more than one moment of head-nodding in agreement as you read along. The sad truth, though, is that we don’t live in a country where the majority of the public can really be said to be familiar with the ideas that our nation was founded upon and our Constitution was based upon. And the political leadership isn’t any better; beyond parroting the words of the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July or saluting the flag, politicians on both sides of the political aisle pay little more than lip service to the ideas of the Founding Fathers, especially when they inconveniently interfere with whatever it is they want to achieve, whether that’s health care “reform” or campaign finance “reform.”

But that, I think, is what makes Paul’s book so good. I don’t necessarily think that the American people have given up on the ideals of the Founders, it’s just that they haven’t been presented with a political leaders who even come close to living up to them. That, I think, is why Ron Paul, his faults notwithstanding, attracted the vocal, if small, following that he did during the campaign.

There are some disagreements, of course.

I agree with Paul that our foreign policy has gotten too far out of whack, and that the interventionist and pre-emptive war ideas advocated by the intellectuals who got us into Iraq is both unwise and dangerous. That doesn’t mean, however, that I agree with his suggestion that we merely need to look to the foreign policy advocated by the Founding Fathers in the early years of the Republic to tell us how to manage the affairs of a continent-wide nation existing in a world where destruction can come from the skies in a matter of minutes.

The early Founders, and specifically Presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson were concerned primarily with the survival of a small, weak nation on the coast of a continent that sat across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe, where the two most powerful nations on the planet were engaged in a seemingly endless struggle that dated back to the French and Indian Wars. That conflict didn’t end until Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, and America was constantly under pressure to take sides, especially in the years after the French Revolution. Keeping America neutral was in our interests because either nation, England or France, could have destroyed the new Republic merely by imposing a blockade on shipping. We simply don’t know what policy Washington, Jefferson, or Adams would advocate in today’s world; they clearly wouldn’t support foolhardly adventures to make the Middle East “safe for democracy”, but I doubt that they’d also adopt the idea that America’s vital national interests end at the shoreline, which often seems to be what Paul suggests.

The other weakness in the book is also one that existed in the campaign itself; a lack of specifics. Paul admits that most of the changes he proposes, many of which are clearly necessary, can only be achieved if Congress supports them. That isn’t likely to happen anytime soon, and it would have been nice if the book had touched even a little on how to get there from here.

On the whole, though, this is a solid introduction to the philosophy of freedom, and far better reading than yet another devotional to “hope” and “change.”

The main shortcoming in Paul’s book, as with his candidacy, is in the follow through, the transition from critique to action. Although he does include a chapter entitled “The Revolution,” about reducing the size of government, it’s a pretty skimpy plan. Were we to see a Ron Paul Administration, with a House and Senate made up of, well, Ron Pauls, it might have a chance of succeeding, though even so he’s a bit timid in places – proposing a freeze on the budgets of cabinet departments instead of their outright abolition, for example, despite noting that only State, Defense, and Justice have clear constitutional mandates. But given the unlikelihood of a Paul Administration, and the even greater unlikelihood of a Paul Congress, his policy prescriptions aren’t likely to bear fruit. But those who want to see liberty progress right here and right now will look in vain for suggestions on what they might do, right here and right now, to make progress.

Rome didn’t fall in a day, and today’s monster government didn’t spring up overnight. It was the result of incremental expansion. Given that we’re not likely to see an opportunity to downsize the federal government overnight, or even in a single Presidential term, those of libertarian inclinations might well look to incremental approaches to reining in Big Government. They will be well advised, however, to look elsewhere than Revolution: A Manifesto. Still, if Fabian Libertarianism is to have a future, it will owe much to the consciousness-raising of the Paul campaign. Socialist candidate Eugene Debs, after all, never got elected President either, but within a few decades much of his platform was adopted by the Democratic Party. May Paul enjoy similar influence on the future of national politics.

Reynolds also points out the difference between Paul and those libertarian Republicans who did not rally to his cause:

Paul and I are both libertarians, but of different varieties. Paul is an old-fashioned Rothbardian. I’m more of a Heinleinian libertarian and we, like the Randian libertarians, tend to view national defense as more important than the Rothbardians do. Paul’s view, essentially, is that if we quit sending troops abroad, other people and countries would quit wanting to kill us. I’m not particularly persuaded by this. First, even during the minimal-government era of Thomas Jefferson we wound up at war with the Barbary Pirates (in many ways, the spiritual antecedents of today’s Islamic terrorists). And second, Paul is not an isolationist – he favors much more commercial and cultural engagement with foreign countries, something which, if experience is any guide, is as likely to anger Islamic fundamentalists and other varieties of terrorists and tyrants as is the establishment of foreign bases.

All in all, though, it is a fairly positive review, even though I probably agree more with Reynolds on foreign policy than I do with Paul.

I’ve got my own copy on the way from Amazon at some point this month — thanks to an apparent “book bomb” by his supporters, Paul’s book is currently on back order — and I’ll have a review of my own up after I’ve read it.

The most interesting part of Branden’s talk is her description of what the negative reviews the book first received, and the failure of people who supported the book to come to her defense against things such as Whittaker Chambers’ scurrilous review, did to Rand as a person.

Here’s Part One:

And Part Two:

And god help you if you happened to dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy. Academically and politically, advocates of ideas that used to be the prevailing philosophy of the nation were treated as if they were troglodytes. And, as World War II dawned, the prospects for freedom seemed dim indeed.

That, roughly, is where the story begins in Brian Doherty’s Radicals For Capitalism, a massive 700 page history of the libertarian movement in the United States. As would be expected, Doherty gives plenty of coverage to the intellectual giants of libertarian thought whose names should be familiar to most contemporary libertarians — Hayek, Mises, Rand, and Rothbard — as well as plenty of the lesser-known names who have contributed to the growth of libertarian ideas and the libertarian movement. Since most of us weren’t around during those days, it’s valuable to learn how we got to where we are today.

As with any good history, Doherty’s book also teaches a lesson or two.

First, as he points out in the concluding chapter of his book, there is tendency among libertarians to believe in the worst of all possible outcomes, and a failure to recognize just how much progress toward human liberty has been made in the past 50 years or so. Before the libertarian movement came into it’s own, American males were drafted into the armed forces when the turned 18, marginal tax rates exceeded 70 percent, Americans were legally forbidden from owning gold in any form other than jewelry, airline travel was heavily regulated by the FAA to the point where consumer choice was virtually non-existent, and socialism in one form or another was on the march throughout the world.

All that’s gone now, in part thanks to the ideas put forward and the world done by libertarians. Are things perfect ? Of course not, but they’re better than they have been, and they’re better here than most other places in the world.

Instead of recognizing progress, though, libertarians seem to wallow in gloom-and-doom and seem especially susceptible to some of the far-right scams that suggest people who disagree with libertarian ideas aren’t just adversaries, they are enemies out to enslave us, and that the day of gulags in the southwestern desert is just around the corner. More often than not, that leads to rhetoric and policy ideas that, to the average American, sounds just a little nutty — which is part of the reason that something beyond the waterted-down libertarianism of “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” that, I would submit, most people outside the movement mean when they refer to themselves as libertarian, isn’t likely to succeed in the United States in the short term.

If you doubt me, and as Doherty points out, then tell one of these newly-professed libertarians that their philosophy also requires them to advocate legalizing all drugs, legalizing prostitution, closing the public schools, and privatizing the roads and see how long they keep calling themselves libetarians.

The second lesson that can be drawn from Doherty’s history is that, partially because of the personalities that have populated the movement and partially because of the philosophy itself, libertarians have always seemed to have a tendency toward infighting and, for lack of a better word, tribalism. Two of the movements greatest philosophers — Ayn Rand and Murry Rothbard — were both guilty of banishing people for insufficient orthodoxy, often in a mean-spirited manner. While that may have been a function of two very strong personalities, it’s also evident elsewhere in Doherty’s book — for example, there’s been almost as much purging and infighting in the Libertarian Party in its 35 years of existence as one would expect to see from a bunch of communists.

And, it’s something we still see today.

Libertarians who dissent from what someone perceives to be the accepted orthodoxy on a given issue have been written out of the movement, or subjected to personal attacks, or simply just marginalized even when they’re on the same side of an issue. For example, and this is probably an oversimplification, the guys at Lew Rockwell don’t like the guys at Cato, even though they’re on the same side of the Iraq War issue. Here at The Liberty Papers, a post questioning the effectiveness of Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign, challenging his ideas or pointing out that someone else happens to be in the lead, draws comments that border on personal attacks, which draw comments in response that border on the same — all of which accomplishes nothing.

Just as the gloom and doom is unwarranted given that America circa 2007 is indisputably a freer country than America circa 1960 was, the advance of freedom around the world, all of this infighting is ironic considering that libertarians are still, decidedly, a minority in the political system.

Doherty concludes his book with a quote from Murray Rothbard, and, while I generally don’t agree with most of Rothbard’s political conclusions, this quote is one I think we can all agree with:

“[Libertarians] should remain of good cheer. The eventual victory of liberty is inevitable, because only liberty is functional for modern man. There is no need, therefore to thirst maniacally for Instant Action and Instant Victory, and then to fall into bleak despair when that Instant Victory is not forthcoming. Reality, and therefore history, is on our side.”

Sounds like a good idea to me.

In Not A Suicide Pact: The Constitution In A Time Of National Emergency, Posner examines the questions and conflicts that have arisen between national security and individual liberty in the wake of the War on Terror and asks the question of just how far Courts should go in either protecting liberty or granting leeway to the state to deal with a perceived emergency.

Posner’s entire thesis with respect to the roles that liberty and safety should play in Constitutional jurisprudence can be summed up in the paragraph that opens the conclusion to the book:

Constitutional rights are largely created by the Supreme Court, by loose interpretation of the constitutional text. Created as they are in response to the felt needs and conditions of the time, they can be and frequently are modified by the Court in response to changes in those needs and conditions. A constitutional right should be modified when changed circumstances indicate that the right no loner strikes a sensible balance between competing constitutional values, such as personal liberty and public safety. A national emergency, such as a war, creates a disequilibrium in the existing system of constitutional rights. Concerns for public safety now weigh more heavily than liberties in recognition that the relative weights of the competing interests have changed in favor of safety. That is the pragmatic response, and pragmatism is a dominant feature not only of American culture at large but also of the American judicial culture.

If you’re someone like myself who views individual liberty and the protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights as immutable, a paragraph like that is bound to make your blood boil. And, I will admit that there were several times when I found myself wanting to argue with Posner over one obscure point or another (which I imagine would be a fascinating intellectual experience in itself).

Posner’s approach, however, is entirely understandable for two reasons. First, it is entirely consistent with his broader adherence to law and economics, which is all about balancing, and pragmatism, and finding efficient outcomes, as a legal philosophy. Second, he’s a Federal Judge and, with rare exceptions, the approach that he suggests in this book is entirely consistent with the way that most Federal Judges seem to view questions of the proper line to draw between individual liberty and public safety.

That doesn’t mean that Posner is correct, though.

First, there’s his view of individual/constitutional rights as something that are strictly judge made, rather than something that exist independent of the whim of the judiciary. Because of what Posner contends to be the inherent vaguenesss of the Constitutional text, it is up to Judges to determine the boundaries of constitutional liberty. The problems with this approach are replete and exist throughout the 200+ years that the Supreme Court has existed. All too frequently, judges have interpreted portions of the Constitution too narrowly, or too broadly, or just ignored it entirely and ruled based on how that though the case should be decided. Leaving the definition of civil liberties strictly and exclusively in the hands of an unelected judiciary is, in the end, a recipe for disaster.

Given Posner’s views on the malleability of constitutional rights, it isn’t entirely surprising where he comes down on the debate over when and how much individual liberty should be sacrificed in the name of public safety at a time of supposed national emergency, such as that represented by the War on Terror. With very few, though very interesting exceptions, Posner would give more power to the state to fight the threat posed by terrorism — notwithstanding the fact that, except for September 11th, there hasn’t been evidence of a single foreign terrorist plot on American soil in over five years — at the expense of individual liberty and privacy.

Another area which Posner brushes over is the fact that national emergencies have, in the past, served as the justification for increases in the size, scope, and power of government. Posner briefly addresses this issue by citing examples from the Post-WW2 and Cold War eras of government regulation that has since abated. In reality, of course, the end of each of these supposed emergencies still resulted in a Federal Government that exerted more control than it did at the time the “crisis” started.

Of course, much of that is explained by the fact that local incumbents in law enforcement find it in their interest to point out how bad things would be under a second term.

There are some points one which I must admit that Judge Posner is right. There is a distinct difference between law enforcement and intelligence gathering. And there seem to be far fewer Constitutional limitations on intelligence gathering, which logically must be considered part of the Article II power of the Executive Branch, than on law enforcement, which finds itself limited by the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments, just to name a few.

And maybe that makes sense.

The purpose of intelligence gathering is, or at least, should be, preventing attacks on the homeland, whether from terrorists or foreign nations, from happening. Law enforcement steps in only after an attack has occurred. In the case of terrorism, law enforcement is an admittedly ineffective tool.There’s no point in filing criminal charges against the 19 men who hijacked planes on September 11th, but if we’d been able to break up that conspiracy on September 9th……..well, that wouldn’t have been a bad thing after all.

In the end, as Posner points out, and as reluctant as I may be willing to admit, it may well be true that there is a trade-off between liberty and security that we all will have to make a decision on in the near future.

On each side, there’s an extreme that is entirely unpleasant. Too little government vigilance in the face of a real terrorist threat could lead to the deaths of millions. Too severe a restriction on individual liberty could lead to a free reign for destruction.