This being a review aimed at people who haven’t read the book, I’m going to avoid spoilers. This makes things difficult in SF, of course. So I’ll set the stage without getting too deep.

Graham Smith is an odd fellow. He’s quiet, behaves in a nearly-mute fashion, and his level of living via routine makes OCD look like a hobby. He keeps notes in his pockets, in his house, and anywhere else he knows he’s going to be reminding him of where he works and where he lives. He does this to keep those things from “unraveling”, his word for when they suddenly and inexplicably change. One day he may live in a house on a certain street; the next he might live elsewhere. One day a coworker might be married; the next she’s single. All this without explanation or even acknoledgement that the world’s changed.

This life seems to work for him until he meets Annelise Mercado, a woman trying to save him from a company who wants him dead. She upends his world in short order. But can he keep her from unraveling?

From there, the book delves into its plot in full force, and since I’m avoiding spoilers, I can’t go any further.

Overall, the book’s two main credits are pace and cohesion. I was surprised when checking Amazon’s page for the paperback to find that the book is over 500 pages — it reads much quicker. The advantage of setting your book in contemporary London over a typical SF novel is that you don’t need to spend a couple hundred pages on worldbuilding, and you can head straight to plot. With much SF (and I’m thinking here of Stephenson’s Anathem), you spend so much time trying to figure out the world that you’re in that you find it distracting from the story. Cohesively, the book also avoids one of the main problems I’ve found in a lot of SF, the reliance on the deus ex machina ending (again, Anathem). I really got the sense that Dolley had his central thesis of the book and its ending planned out before he started writing, and managed to build his plot logically and deliberately to its conclusion.

Now why am I posting this review on a libertarian blog? Well, partly because entirely outside of libertarianism, I’ve learned enough about the readers of this site to know that good SF novels are always appreciated. But there is a slight tinge of the story hanging on corporate/government relations. While that portion of the story isn’t exactly imbued with a libertarian message, it’s certainly interesting to anyone who watches the continued interplay, whether cooperative or competitive, between corporations and government.

Resonance was a well-done novel. I’d gladly recommend it at standard paperback prices. But it’s another argument for the Kindle $2.99 price point. I probably wouldn’t have bought it on the whim that I did at standard prices, and I would have been missing out on a great read. So while I’d recommend it at standard paperback prices, it’s a veritable steal at $2.99. Check it out if you get a chance.

At one point a few years ago I had noticed a link to a book Dale has written called Slackernomics: Basic Economics for People Who Think Economics is Boring. Given that I’m not the type who thinks economics is boring, but had enjoyed his blogging, I wanted to get a chance to read it. At that time, the book was only available in print at a price above $20. It took a spot on my “buy when I get around to it list”, and sat there for quite some time, but I never pulled the trigger. Then, more recently, it became avaiable for the Kindle at only $2.99 — I no longer had an excuse not to buy it. So onto the Kindle it went, and after several long months of sitting there taking up space, I’ve finally gotten around to reading it.

Slackernomics is a primer on basic economic theory that, as the title suggests, is written for people who think economics is boring. It’s written in a convivial tone, and the illustrative examples that Dale uses reminds one more of Freakonomics than of Adam Smith. Don’t let that fool you, though — the book is not a “sideshow” like Freakonomics — it gets to the heart of the matter. I liken it to be similar to Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in one Lesson”, but written for people who may not be interested in the more formal writing style of Hazlitt. In addition, having been written many decades after Hazlitt’s book, it’s obviously much more up to date.

The book covers everything from price theory, minimum wage & rent control to monetary theory and the business cycle, Keynesianism, taxes / deficit spending, savings & investment, and economic statistics. He continues with a great defense of free trade and a bit of entrance into politics (touching a tad on public choice theory). In all, for being a relatively short book, he hits all the major notes that anyone looking for an introduction to economic thought would need to learn.

But the big question, for readers of this blog, is whether it’s worth it to buy. “Am I going to learn anything new?” And I can honestly say that despite the fact that I read economic books & blogs for leisure, and that I’ve blogged a fair bit about economics myself, I learned some new things from Slackernomics. Dale’s fourth chapter, unwinding the mess of the myriad of economic reports and statistics he’s constantly posting on Twitter, Google+, and at QandO, was wonderful. I’ve looked at many of these reports merely reading analysts *reaction* to the numbers (Higher jobless claims? How unexpected!), but rarely understood which group (public or private) was putting out certain reports nor how they all fit together. For me, a layman who is conversant on a lot of economic theory but not as perhaps on the technical reports, I have never seen an explanation of the reports that come out each week and each month as simple and readable as that chapter. That was more than worth it for my $2.99.

So my recommendation is simple: at $2.99, if you have a Kindle (or a device with a Kindle app), it’s hard to pass it up. You’re almost assured to get your money’s worth from the book. Even further, if you know someone in high school or college that may not have received good schooling in economics (which is, unfortunately, most of them), and who isn’t exactly about to tackle The Wealth of Nations, find a way to get them a copy of Slackernomics. Dale’s writing style will keep them interested.

All in all, it’s a book that lives up to its title, and goes well beyond.

So I recommend checking out both of the below. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably the type of person who would enjoy both books. Yet even if you don’t, they’re cheap enough to be worth the risk.

Slackernomics – Dale Franks [of QandO]
$2.99

This is a book I’ve been intending to read for a few years, but the >$20 price point for the printed version just made it something that was constantly on my Amazon wish list but never something I’d pulled the trigger to purchase. At $2.99 and without shipping costs, though, it’s a no-brainer. I’ve read Dale and the guys from QandO for years. Dale’s always been clear-headed about economic topics in the past, so while I can’t say I’ve read the book yet, I trust it will be solid.

BMOC – Warren Meyer [of Coyote Blog]
$0.99

I was lucky enough to get a review copy of this book when it came out [review here], and thought the book was an excellent example of a page-turning novel that happened to integrate Warren’s libertarian-businessman point of view. If you like his blog, you’ll like the book, but even if you’ve never read his blog [a sin on its own merits], you’ll like his book.

Bad decision. As I remarked to a good friend, it was meandering, it seemed to lack any true central conflict about any particular character, and it was infused with a very particularly Russian fatalism. At the end of the day, I had no real emotional attachment or involvement in the story, and the last 20% or so was simply a slog through to be able to say I finished it. To thus my fried replied, “yep, that pretty well describes Russian literature.”

However, one specific attribute of that fatalism I found quite interesting, and possibly timely:

That the peoples of the west might be able to accomplish the military march upon Moscow, which they did accomplish, it was essential (1) that they should be combined in a military group of such a magnitude as to be able to withstand the resistance of the military group of the east; (2) that they should have renounced all their established traditions and habits; and (3) that they,should have at their head a man able to justify in his own name and theirs the perpetration of all the deception, robbery, and murder that accompany that movement.

And to start from the French Revolution, that old group of insufficient magnitude is broken up; the old habits and traditions are destroyed; step by step a group is elaborated of new dimensions, new habits, and new traditions; and the man is prepared, who is to stand at the head of the coming movement, and to take upon himself the whole responsibility of what has to be done.

While I’m not a believer in either the societal or personal fatalism espoused by Tolstoy, one can make an argument that what “had to be done” was to crumble the final vestiges of feudalism’s legitimacy in society. This can’t occur by overthrowing a single despot. Political change of that magnitude must be jarring enough to destroy even the memory of what came before it. Society, like a phoenix, must be destroyed and rise from its own ashes to build anew.

Britain, while still a monarchy, had largely transitioned from a feudal society to a mercantile society. America was still a pre-teen on the world stage. Europe, though, was still fighting the final stages to break off the chains of feudalism and monarchy. The slaughter of the French Revolution produced Napoleon, and Napoleon slaughtered Europe.

Is this what “had to be done”? Millions dead, cities burned, the entire existing social hierarchy torn from its roots? Perhaps it did have to occur. Feudalism and monarchy are stories of powerful entrenched interests and a complacent underclass. It is not enough to cast those bonds off on paper; they must be cast off in the soul. This is not easy to do without a jarring blow.

At the end of the French & Russian war, swaths of Europe had been destroyed, and the people were prepared to accept peace — peace on different terms than had existed previously. Society could now be built on a foundation other than feudalism and monarchy. It needed to occur, but it was only the jarring blow that allowed people to come to terms with what was needed.

War is messy. War is hell. War is cruel and painful. But war works.
-John Fuller, my high school AP US History teacher

At the end of the US Civil War, hundreds of thousands of Americans lay dead, essentially to right a wrong that had been building since before the Declaration of Independence. Was war truly necessary to free the slaves? No, but war was probably necessary to settle, in the minds of America, that the freedom had been won. The Civil War was a black mark on the history of America, but nobody can say that the question of slavery was left unsettled at its conclusion.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and — thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never solves anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor; and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.
-Robert A. Heinlein

The thesis that a jarring blow is necessary to effect the inevitable social changes that occur over time, though, is troubling to me. It’s troubling because I see significant social changes on the horizon.

Technology has brought us global, immediate, and zero-cost-of-entry communication, cutting the information stranglehold of governments and destroying entire business models in the process. Modern communication and modern transportation have made the world smaller, perhaps finally putting the lie to economic mercantilism. Governments have been debasing fiat currencies for decades since the end of Bretton Woods II, and global financial stability appears to be solely based on nations’ ability to lend to each other [especially to the US].

There seems to be a palpable tension building in the world and it’s unclear where it will lead. Much of that tension has already been seen in Iran, Greece, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. There is tension both within China and in America’s trade/debt relationship with that nation. Unlike some hyperbolic pundits, I won’t quite put Madison in a category as serious as those just discussed, but a fight between fiscal reality, monetary stability, and the promises of government is certainly brewing — and that fight won’t be pleasant.

The world 25 years from now may very well be a place that people alive today don’t quite recognize. But there are a lot of people invested in this one, who will be very upset to see it change. So there’s only one question, and a troubling one, to ask. What sort of jarring blow is on the horizon to cleanse us of the old ways?

What’s currently on the reading shelves for all of you?

For me:

Just finished:
The American Story, by Garet Garrett. — Available from the Mises Store. I plan on a review of this once I get a bit of time to put it together.

On tap:
Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover – The Great Depression 1929-1941 [PDF], by Herbert Hoover. — I was trying to decide whether or not to buy it, but since I saw it on PDF I figure I’ll need to get around to reading it.

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.