Category Archives: Book Reviews

A Review of ‘Little Brother’ by Cory Doctorow

The always thought provoking Cory Doctorow has a new book out, Little Brother.  I highly recommend it, even though I think he is very wrong on numerous points.  You can download it for free at the link above.

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. » Read more

I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.

Happy Anti-Federalist Day!

So, today is Constitution Day, a day to celebrate the ratification of the Constitution. Aptly, then, I’ve been reading John Ferling’s A Leap In The Dark, a history of the American Revolutionary period beginning in the 1750’s and ending with the peaceful transfer of power to Jefferson in the 1800 election. Over the last few days, I’ve been through the chapters on the battle to create and ratify the Constitution.

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.

The Revolution: A Book Review

About half way thought Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto, I found myself thinking that he should have written this book before he ran for President, not afterwards, and that his campaign should have handed out as many copies of the book as they could, because it does a far better job of explaining and defending libertarian values and ideas than the candidate himself ever did on the campaign trail.

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 Revolution: Reviewed

Glenn Reynolds reviews Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto:

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.

Barbara Branden Speaks On Ayn Rand & Atlas Shrugged

Barbara Branden is one of the few people who was part of Ayn Rand’s inner circle during the years that she was writing Atlas Shrugged who is both still alive and willing to speak outside of “official” Objectivist circles. Back in October she spoke at a conference sponsored by The Atlas Society marking the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication — her former husband Nathanial Branden also speaks briefly.

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:

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