Showing How Millions of People Were Duped

The New York Times: “Behind Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand”

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Russia's New Elite

Felix Dzerzhinsky: His Influence Is Still Felt

This BBC story helps to understand just what is happening in the Russian Federation today: “Russian ex-spies flex their muscles.” The only thing left out is the sense of entitlement that the KGB had developed during the Soviet time, when the highly educated, well trained, and well traveled KGB officers had to take orders from the party, which was dominated by former managers of tractor factories from the Urals and similar un-worldly people. The party is gone, so now is the time for the KGB to take the power and the wealth that they think is by right theirs. It’s no longer communism they’re defending; it’s their own power and wealth.

A True Hero of Liberty

Baron József Eötvös de Vásárosnamény

I met my old friends Ivan Csaba, whom I knew from the old days, as well as from Oxford, and Tamás Meszerics, whom I had not seen in ages (and who is now teaching political science at the Central European University) today. Tamás suggested we meet at the statue of József Eötvös, whom he knew to be one of my heroes. I have read a few of his books, and was especially influenced by Die Nationalitätenfrage, in which he offered a classical liberal diagnosis and remedy of the conflict of national identities. Only one of his books, also one of his greatest, is available in English, Der Einfluss der Herrschenden Ideen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts auf den Staat, translated as The Dominant Ideas of the Nineteenth Century and Their Impact on the State (Vol. I, Vol. II). I recommend the work highly. (The three dominant ideas are freedom, equality, and nationality, and he warns that they are incompatible unless one — freedom — be made the idea by which the others are interpreted.)

A Great Approach to History

My friend Steve Davies, a truly wonderful lecturer on history, gave a great talk yesterday on the nature of history at this IES Europe seminar. A precis of it can be found in the January 2007 issue of The Freeman, “A Different Story” [PDF] [HTML].

Goodbye, Boris Yeltsin

He left a very mixed legacy, notably the disastrous war in Chechnya, but no one had ever tried to undo 70 years of insanity before. As the old joke in the waning years of the Soviet Union went, “It’s not hard to turn an aquarium into fish soup. But turning fish soup into an acquarium is rather harder.”

His farewell address as president — the first Russian head of state to leave power voluntarily (and perhaps the last; we shall see) — included an astonishing statement:

“I want to ask your forgiveness for not fulfilling some hopes of those who believed that … in one go … we would be able to jump from a gray, stagnating totalitarian past into a bright, rich, civilized future. I believed in this myself. It didn’t happen in one jump.”

Here’s David Boaz’s evaluation of Yeltsin’s legacy.

National Socialism Appraised Early On

David’s Medienkritik, which reports on media coverage in Germany, has done a signal service by making available an essay by S. Miles Bouton from The American Mercury, “Why Germany Endures Hitler.” It’s a most interesting essay, written when so many intellectuals were hailing the emergence of collectivism.

A Day to Celebrate!

“Due to the situation which has evolved as a result of the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent states I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” Mikhail Gorbachev, December 25, 1991

Wow! The Latin Christmas celebration. The birthday of Sir Isaac Newton. And the dissolution of the Soviet Union all on the same day. That was yesterday. Today is the anniversary of the day when the Russian government took over the offices of the USSR. Let us hope that the USSR, in any form, never, ever comes back.

Muslim Basher Robert Spencer Upset at my Dismissal of his Book

Don’t Bother: It’s Not Worth the Effort
Robert Spencer, author of one of the trashiest and least enlightening books I’ve read, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (part of what seems a generally low-brow and unreliable series of books), has gotten himself very upset at my remarks.

The Story of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 Retold

(Budapest, 1956: Note the hole in the flag)
I saw the movie Freedom’s Fury, about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, this evening in the enormous Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. at an event organized by the Hungarian Embassy. I recommend the film, although I found the choice of material and organization worthy of comment.

The film is organized around the story of the Olympics match between the Hungarian and the Soviet Waterpolo teams in Australia in 1956. That contest provides an interesting way to organize the material and served as the occasion for staging and filming a reunion of the surviving Hungarian team members and four of the surviving Soviet team members, a reunion that displayed reconciliation and friendship. When I asked the directors why they chose water polo to organize the story, they said that A) one of the directors was a water polo player in college, and B) organizing it in that way allowed a chance of reconciliation. Despite my hatred of what the Soviets (and Communist traitors to their country such as J�¡nos K�¡d�¡r) did, I found the reconciliatory images touching and an interesting way to close a terrible story. As one of the Hungarian water polo players points out, the Soviet team members were victims of communism, as well.

On the other hand, the film errs in stating that the 1956 revolution was the first uprising against Communist tyranny behind the Iron Curtain, a statement that ignores the 1953 uprisings in East Germany. Moreover, Freedom’s Fury offered a rather skimpy treatment of the political events of 1956. While the evil KÃ?¡dÃ?¡r and the brave Imre Nagy are mentioned, other players are ignored, including such traitors as AndrÃ?¡s HegedÃ?¼s,* who signed the invitation to the Soviets to invade, and such heroes as IstvÃ?¡n BibÃ?³.

Besides the sadness I felt at hearing the story again, the images and the sound of the Hungarian language caused me to feel significant nostalgia for Budapest and the Hungarians. I have to get back there sometime soon. (But Beirut and Tehran are on the menu for the next month. So maybe next year.)

*(I met HegedÃ?¼s before the Yugoslav wars in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia at a meeting of eastern European sociologists. The conversations were interesting. In the years since he had worked to make amends for his criminal culpability in the events of 1956; as he told me, he had gone to Moscow to study sociology after the uprising because “we had forgotten about legitimacy” and he thought that the study of sociology would correct that oversight. At one of our seminars on economic sociology, I suggested to him, as the turnover of Hong Kong to China was then being discussed, that Hungary would benefit by allowing Hong Kong entrepreneurs to move to Hungary, to which he responded that “Hungary would not be Hungary.”)

The End of Republics

Pompey the Great
Robert Harris, the author of the excellent book Fatherland and of the new book (I’ve not read it, as I gave my brand new copy to Jose Pinera, who was about to take a long plane ride to Prague) Imperium, recently had a most interesting comparison to make between the Roman and the American Republics, in his September 30 New York Times essay on “Pirates of the Mediterranean.”

As Harris writes,

Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of “Civis Romanus sum” - “I am a Roman citizen” - was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.

All of that was swept away by the quest for an imperial power that was justified in the name of security from pirates.

Absorbing Immigrants

Roots of American Success

My friend Don Boudreaux has a great column on the issue of immigration, “Absorption Nation.” He addresses one narrow claim, viz. that the United States cannot “absorb” any more immigrants. Rubbish, as anyone who has ever flown across the United States and looked out the window ought to know.

An Excellent Book!

I just finished Mancur Olson’s last book, Power and Prosperity and I’m pleased to report that it’s a real page-turner. I learned almost as much from it as I did from his classic work The Logic of Collective Action. Among its many valuable features, Power and Prosperity provides a very helpful theoretical account of the functioning of the Soviety economic system and the difficulties of transitioning to free markets. The treatment of the role of “encompassing interests” and the transition from roving banditry to stationary banditry (autocracy) and from stationary banditry to democratic liberalism was also quite helpful and drew on his earlier work on collective action. (I may blog a longer essay on the topic, but…it’s late. So that will wait for a day or two. I’ll also add some critical remarks on his theory of collective action, which is rich with insights, but could use a dose of Anthony de Jasay’s insights from his book Social Contract, Free Ride.)

As usual, I’ve got a number of other books going. I just picked up and found quite engrossing Neal Ascherson’s Black Sea, through which I hope to become better informed about and better able to understand the politics of the region (e.g., the conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia, which is one among many conflicts that cannot be understood without a better grasp of the history of the region than I have at present).

(Note: Power and Prosperity has the unfortunate subtitle “Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships,” which doesn’t really make much sense. But don’t let that put you off the book.)

It's the Institutions, Stupid....

Daron Acemoglu of MIT

I had the pleasure on Thursday of attending a presentation at the World Bank by Professor Daron Acemoglu of MIT. He presented the data and analysis from the paper he co-authored with Simon Johnson and James Robinson on “Institutions as the Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth.” It’s one of the best papers I’ve read on the topic. We have a pretty good idea of what policies (respect for property rights notable among them) are conducive to growth in living standards, but we don’t have a good understanding of the preconditions or the means of acquiring the institutional foundations of good policies. Acemoglu and his colleagues have generated some eye-opening results from their study of economic history (notably about the relationship of urbanization to wealth and the “reversal of fortune” that took place circa 1500) and have done a brilliant job of highlighting the problems to the solution of which the study of institutions should be directed.

Nic o Nas, Bez Nas!*

For Your Freedom, and Ours**

It looks like the Social Democrats suffered a crushing defeat in the Polish elections. The interesting question is what will be the outcome of the likely coalition between the conservative Law and Justice Party and the more classical liberal Civic Platform.

One desirable and fairly likely outcome would be for Poland to join the trend toward a flat tax, a movement that has already had positive results (in terms of both increased freedom from state manipulation and increased economic performance) in Estonia, Russia, Georgia, Slovakia, Latvia, Ukraine, Serbia, and Romania. (I wonder if low flat taxes might be introduced in, say, the U.S.)

*Slogan of the Republic of Nobles of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: “Nothing About Us, Without Us!”
**Slogan of Polish fighters who fought for American independence, including the great friends of liberty, Kazimierz Pulaskiand Tadeusz Kosciuszko: “Za wasza wolnosc i nasza.”

Useful Essay on the Struggle for Islam

Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

Zaiuddin Sardar, who is the presenter for the BBC Two program on Islam mentioned below, had an interesting and helpful essay in the Toronto Star in July on “The Struggle for Islam’s Soul.” Unfortunately, it does not mention one of my favorite medieval philosophers, Ibn Rushd (Averroes in Latin), who helped to enlighten Europe about the project of philosophy.

You Can Learn Something New Every Day

First Page of “Original Rough Draught” of the Declaration of Independence

One of the very sharp research interns (Jonathan Rick) at the Cato Institute (of course, they’re all very sharp, or they wouldn’t be at the Cato Institute) challenged me (very politely) during our seminar the other day on the Declaration of Independence, when we were discussing the meaning of “self-evident.” He said that Jefferson had not used that term in his first draft. I said that the text we had, from The Portable Jefferson, showed the first draft submitted to the Congress and all of the changes, and that showed “self-evident” in the first draft submitted to Congress, so I would need further evidence before accepting Mr. Rick’s claim. Well, he up and done it with a link to a very interesting site, which offers the opportunity to print off images of the “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence. (One of the pleasures of working at the Cato Institute is leading seminars for our new staff and research interns.)

He Changed the World for the Better

David Lange, R.I.P.

David Lange has died. As prime minister of New Zealand, he changed much of the socialist left and, in the process, even more of the world, starting with New Zealand but extending much further. With Roger Douglas as finance minister he promoted privatization, elimination of subsidies, free trade, and much more. New Zealand, which had been a sleepy and relatively impoverished country, prospered after the heavy shackles of state controls were removed. (I recall relatives years ago describing the incredibly old cars and appliances people were forced to keep running, because tariffs were so staggeringly high.)

Additional Links: David Lange, Roger Douglas.

NOTE: If you want to know why the New Zealand experience is so important, consider two cases in which New Zealand has set an example for the world:

New Zealand has effectively eliminated agricultural subsidies and protection and shown that the agricultural sector can flourish when producing for the market, rather than for the state;

New Zealand has, with Iceland, shown the way to averting the tragedy of the commons in offshore fisheries by creating and protecting transferable property rights in the fisheries.

The Worst Book I've Read in Years

The book was recommended by someone I respect. I had enjoyed greatly one of his earlier books. So I was looking forward to John Lukacs’s new book Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred.

The book is rambling, unfocused, incoherent, and deeply offensive to standards of evidence and argumentation. It’s full of glaring historical errors. I hated almost every minute of the experience of reading it. I also know why some others have reviewed it so favorably. There’s something to please just about everybody, from Catholic conservatives, who will like his attacks on the involvement of the laity in the church and his railing against gay marriage (it seems that since the 1980s, “more and more people insisted that the legal [and sacramental] institution of marriage be extended to them”; besides gay people, whom does he mean by “more and more people”? ), to luddite radicals, who will keen to his rants against mechanization and “fields…plowed by monstrous machines and made artificially fertile through sometimes poisonous chemicals,” to libertarians, who will like his fulminations against the decision to go to war with Iraq and his attacks on modern conservatives for claiming to be for smaller government while supporting Pentagon spending with nary a peep of skepticism, to Michael Moore fans, who will like his comparison of George W. Bush to Hitler. The book even contains some sentences that make sense and a few claims that are true, such as that Mussolini and Hitler were not reactionaries, but revolutionary radicals who were trying to sweep away all that had preceded them and to make the world anew.

The problem is that none of that adds up to anything coherent. Ok, one might say, but give the guy a break. It�s a set of meditations on the world. So it�s a bit rambling. Fine, but even rambling meditations should use terms consistently and contain sentences that make sense individually, even if they don�t form parts of a long chain of argumentation. Instead, despite his repeated insistence that they be distinguished, terms such as nationalism, patriotism, populism, and democracy are used inconsistently and sprinkled across the pages like the multi-colored candy bits on a child�s birthday cake. Moreover, terms that ought to mean something are used in ways that do violence to the English language and to mind itself. Consider the following, from pp. 195-6, which follows some complaints about the difficulties of historical documentation in an age when documents are proliferating, many forms of communication are unrecorded, etc., etc.:

However, the problems go beyond and beneath the difficulties of professional historians. Beyond and beneath the problem of the eventual reconstruction of what people wanted we must recognize the constantly increasing influence of mind into matter in the very lives of people. This influence is, probably inevitably, inseparable from inflation, which, in turn, seems to be a fundamentally democratic phenomenon. Consider, if only for a moment, the virtual vanishing of the inflation-deflation “business cycles.” What we, in reality, experience is a constant increase of inflation* (true, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but still)ââ?‰?and, therefore, the dematerialization of money and of possessions, especially in societies where creditability has become more important than actual possessions (which may be legally “owned” but are, in reality, rented). Thisââ?‰?often falseââ?‰?spiritualization of matter, this present and ever-increasing intrusion of mind into matter has led to a world where more and more images and abstractions influence more and more peopleââ?‰?abstractions and images that are presentations of prearranged “realities” rather than representations of them.

All of this renders what we may call the structure of events more and more complex.

*The inflation of words (and, perhaps, of pictures and images, too) led to the inflation of money and of possessions�and not the other way around.

I cannot imagine a more confused and meaningless assemblage of words.

Yale University Press should be ashamed for publishing such an absurd excuse for a book.

By the way, the book by John Lukacs that I so enjoyed is Budapest 1900, which is an excellent guidebook to that wonderful city.

Well Picked

One of the most evil figures of the 20th century was murdered on August 20, 1940 on orders from one of the other most evil figures, the one who beat him to the punch. Now we may have a look at the likely weapon.

The icepick has long been associated with Trotsky. I well recall working in opposition to conscription with a coalition of groups that included churches, left-liberals, libertarians, conservatives, leftists, and so on. The one group that all of the sophisticated members of the other groups feared and hated was the Trotskyists, who were masters at taking over coalitions, diverting them to their sectarian purposes, sucking them dry of resources, and then moving on. At the big CARD (Committee Against Registration and the Draft, of which I was national secretary) convention in Detroit 25 years ago, those who knew how the Trots worked wore little lapel pins with no wording, but an obvious meaning: a drawing of an icepick. The slogan: “A chicken in every pot, An icepick in every Trot.” Leon Trotsky himself surely got better than he had handed out to his enemies back in the USSR. His followers were simply swept up in a cult, but they followed the party line with monomaniacal intensity.

Alexander -- the Life, the Book, the Film

Next week a friend will be coming back from Baghdad and we’ve agreed to go and see Oliver Stone’s new movie about Alexander. I’m looking forward to the experience, despite the awful reviews the film’s been getting.

The best bad review is undoubtedly Stephen Hunter’s quite insightful critique in the Washington Post. [Requires simple registration.] Hunter’s not merely a fine film critic; he’s a very sharp student of history and politics. Here’s a sample from the review:

“The movie lacks any convincing ideas about Alexander. Stone advances but one, the notion that Alexander was an early multiculturalist, who wanted to “unify” the globe. He seems not to recognize this as a standard agitprop of the totalitarian mind-set, always repulsive, but more so here in a movie that glosses over the boy-king’s frequent massacres. Conquerors always want “unity,” Stalin a unity of Russia without kulaks, Hitler a Europe without Jews, Mao a China without deviationists and wreckers. All of these boys loved to wax lyrical about unity while they were breaking human eggs in the millions, and so it was with Alexander, who wanted world unity without Persians, Egyptians, Sumerians, Turks and Indians.”

In the meantime, I’m reading Guy MacLean Rogers’ new book Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness, which is enjoyable and interesting so far. I’m not that far into the book, so I can’t say much about it yet. I bought it on an impulse at the San Francisco Airport, where I noticed that several books have come out timed to the Oliver Stone film, including another interesting looking one that was next to Rogers’, Paul Cartledge’s Alexander the Great: The Hunt for a New Past, which I’ve ordered to read later.