Freespace

A Sweet victory for economic liberty

A very gratifying development in one of my cases.

A good statement from Obama

President Obama's statement on Iran this morning was excellent. Exactly what was called for. I see he's been reading Freespace.

Arnhart on Leon Kass

Larry Arnhart has some choice comments on the Obama Administration's abolition of the Council on Bioethics, and particularly on its anti-science leader, Leon Kass:

Kass's deep fear of modern science as impious and immoral distorts his view of everything associated with modern science and technology.

Kass's dishonesty was evident in 2004 when he pressured the White House to dismiss Elizabeth Blackburn from the Council because of her firm disagreement with Kass. Along with the voluntary resignations of William May and Stephen Carter, this created three vacancies. Kass successfully recommended three replacements--Benjamin Carson, Peter Lawler, and Diana Schaub. Many people at the time noted that all three of these people were in general agreement with Kass, and so it was clear that Kass was being careful to insure that the majority of the Council would be on his side....

And yet, in response to his critics, Kass wrote an article for the Washington Post arguing that he knew nothing about the views of these three people, and that there was no political bias in his appointments. He suggested that he selected these three people only because they were obviously the most qualified people for the positions. Even some of Kass's friends were embarrassed by the blatant dishonesty in his statement.

Roger Pilon on Obama and Iran

Roger Pilon makes some very important points about how the Obama Administration ought to respond to the situation in Iran:

President Obama should have taken as his model Pope John Paul II, Lech Walesa, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. Instead, he looked to George H.W. Bush, whose August 1991 “Chicken Kiev” speech, although aimed at Yugoslavia, was read by his Ukrainian audience as undercutting their own efforts at independence, even as the Soviet Union was collapsing.

To be sure, we should not be seen as promising more to the Iranian opposition than we’re prepared to deliver, or to be taking actions that will enable their oppressors to claim credibly that America is fomenting these protests. But Obama’s initial reaction – that Mousavi’s policies would prove little better than Ahmadineijad’s, and that we needed to be careful not to undermine prospects for a “grand nuclear bargain” – reflected a breathtaking naïveté about the way the world works. It is as if the president had no familiarity with the writings of Solzhenytzin, Sharansky, or Valladares, who told us repeatedly how important it was that we knew what they were suffering. The signs in the streets of Tehran were in English, after all.

Read the rest...

Giving the devil his due

This is ironic. Reader Alexander Schnell writes,

I want to let you know that the saying you attributed to Christopher Hitchens in your latest column and on your blog is actually Hitchens citing Chomsky.

From Letters to a Young Contrarian (p. 87, paperback edition):

"Noam Chomsky, a most distinguished intellectual and moral dissident, once wrote that the old motto about 'speaking truth to power' is overrated. Power, as he points out, quite probably knows the truth already, and is mainly interested in suppressing or limiting or distorting it. We would therefore do better to try to instruct the powerless."

I'm not sure where Chomsky made this remark originally.

Considering my opinion of Chomsky, had I known this I probably still would have cited Hitchens.

What Obama says to Iran matters

The Orange County Register has printed my column, "What Obama says to Iran matters."

Justin Logan: misrepresenting the opposition

In our previous examination of Justin Logan’s article “Government, War, and Libertarianism,” we discussed Logan’s position that

the United States sits unchallenged atop the international order, with an unparalleled ability to shape it and with any potential peer competitor several decades away. This state of affairs is hugely beneficial to us; imperfect though it is, the United States should be working to preserve, not overturn, the existing international order.

Logan is not claiming here that the international order is optimal or just or even moving in the right direction; he is arguing that it is beneficial to us, and that we ought therefore to seek to preserve that order. Not acquiesce in injustices which we are powerless to remedy, but that we should actively work to preserve the existing international order—an order which includes what Logan with typical diplomatic euphemism calls “imperfections”: imperfections like laogai, or the Korean reeducation camps, or the fact that one out of every five human beings lives in a totalitarian dictatorship. Because America benefits from this situation, we ought to work actively to preserve it. This he characterizes as the libertarian position.

Kuznicki on the Iran issue

Jason Kuznicki has some good observations on my comments about Iran. It looks like we actually agree in princple. I'll post more on this later, when I have some time.

Photos of American Revolution veterans

Here's a website featuring photographs of American Revolutionary War veterans. Obviously they were pretty old by the time photography came to be widely used. (HT: my mother).

Justin Logan: don’t rock the boat

I complained below about Justin Logan’s view that American foreign policy should be organized around the principle of Not Annoying Dictators. It reminded me of this interesting article that Logan published last summer, reflecting on libertarianism and what it suggests as far as foreign policy is concerned—an article that serves as an effective example of what troubles me.