Another devastating takedown of the Rockwell cult from Tom Palmer.

I can see Virginia Postrel's point. Soft sell really doesn't work in politics. But I do like the ad's concept. It's moving, which is what it needs to be.

LGF has named me an anti-idiotarian. I'm honored!

The far-left and sometimes profoundly dishonest historian Richard Hofstadter wrote famously about what he called the “paranoid style in American politics”: that is, the tendency of political leaders to portray themselves as the only rescue America could hope for from sinister forces quietly working for revolution. This is really just typical demagoguery that is as old as democracy itself, and that led Hofstadter to suggest that it “may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population.” On occasion, the paranoia could take over a substantial portion of the population leading to mass movements. I think there’s something to be said for this, but that it is largely the product of ignorance—an ignorance that Hofstadter himself shared, in fact, and one which is extremely common not just in politics but in economics. Let me explain.

One of the great benefits of an education is that when we understand the natural forces responsible for a phenomenon, we are no longer as afraid of it as we once were. As Epicurus put it thousands of years ago, “It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn’t know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths.” If one thinks that, say, lightning is a weapon of supernatural entities punishing us for moral transgressions, we tend to be more afraid of it than if we realize that it is just the natural discharge of electricity from the clouds. We might persecute our neighbors, put them on trial for witchcraft, or whatever, out of fear that their actions are bringing lightning storms upon us. But if we know the natural causes that give rise to lightning, we will not be at each other’s throats, but can figure out how to make the lightning rod to protect ourselves.

A very substantial portion of the population thinks about economics the way their primitive ancestors thought about lightning. They believe that the prices of things like gasoline rise because sinister forces are at work—specifically the CEOs of “giant oil companies” who want nothing more than to rob us and literally to Destroy The Earth. These people genuinely believe that there is a conspiracy of sinister forces at work to manipulate and enslave us by controlling our wants and needs.

When we understand supply and demand, we know that high prices indicate that the product is rare, or that there are many alternative use of the resource, or that it is hard to obtain, or hard to put together, or that there are restrictions on its manufacture that make it expensive to produce. We understand, then, that the seller isn’t “out to get us” or intending to cause us misery or harm; he’s just responding to the pressures of the marketplace. Gas prices are high because inflation is high, because the demand for oil in China has been skyrocketing, because wartime pressures in the Middle East are making oil production difficult, because the government forbids much production of oil in the United States, and so forth—not because evil geniuses are at work raising prices just for the diabolical fun of it. (And actually, gas prices are not that high!)

Think for a moment what life is like for people who do not understand these basic economic concepts. For them, every commercial transaction of their lives—each of the hundreds of purchases they make in a week—is perceived as another step in a conspiracy to do them harm. Sellers are constantly out to abuse and take advantage of them. If there’s a product the person wants that costs a lot, it’s an example of the seller’s greed and cruelty. On the other hand, if there’s a sale, there must be some “trick” to it; if there’s a low-price product, there must be a “catch.” High gas prices are proof of sinister forces at work. Low prices at Wal-Mart are proof of sinister forces at work. Expensive houses are proof of sinister forces at work, and cheap houses—which is to say, new development of unsightly apartment buildings or construction of new homes that disrupt my view of the valley—why, that’s also proof of sinister forces at work! Ignorance is translated into fear of subterranean or supernatural processes that are, inevitably, a threat.

In the most extreme form, this kind of paranoia is typically transformed into Anti-Semitism or hostility to whatever “Other” is seen as responsible for the secret conspiracy. (Another example would be the myth that the CIA foisted crack cocaine on the inner city: it’s not supply and demand, no; it’s a cadre of secret racists who are responsible.) But in its less virulent, more common form, it becomes a general resentment toward all human economic activity—which is, of course, means toward the whole world, basically.

And it’s very easy to transform economic conspiracy theories into other kinds of conspiracy theories. Why is some non-market institution doing something nasty to me? Well, there’s probably some hidden economic motive! The best example of this is the way environmentalists dismiss any scientific research that differs from their preconceptions on the grounds that it was “funded by Exxon” or some other nasty conspirator: non-profit foundations or scientists are simply ignored because they are tainted by a touch of the Dark Forces. (A colleague pointed out that this even reached the United States Supreme Court: in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker, 128 S.Ct. 2605, 2626 n. 17 (2008), just two months ago, when the Court said, it was “aware of a body of literature running parallel to anecdotal reports, examining the predictability of punitive awards,” and citing work by Cass Sunstein and other respected scholars, but then concluding, “[b]ecause this research was funded in part by Exxon, we decline to rely on it.” Amazing!)

The paranoid style of economics—believing that sinister “capitalists” are responsible for manipulating society and steering it away from the way The People want things to be—is of course absolutely fundamental to Marxism, and therefore Hofstadter himself was prone to it. Thomas Leonard’s excellent recent paper “Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism” examines how Hofstadter constructed basically out of snips and snails and puppy dog tails the entire notion of “social Darwinism” which was supposedly a movement of capitalists inspired by Darwin to cull the poor out of the species altogether. Turns out that not only was there really no such thing, but Hofstadter was forced to revise and revise his model over the years to patch the expanding holes in the theory.

It’s not that businesses are never out to screw us. Many of them are, and many sellers are dishonest and many products are overpriced. But when prices go up, it is not necessarily that someone is out to get us. More commonly, it’s because there is some restriction on production, or some alternative buyer who’s willing to pay more—not because he’s just a nasty rich guy, but because he is willing to devote more resources to that exchange than you or I. Understanding the natural forces that govern the marketplace relieves us of the fear that underlies conspiracy theorizing—undoes the paranoia that is responsible for so many misguided political and economic choices.

We'll be taking a short break while I bet me money on a bobtail nag. Blogging will resume Tuesday.

There’s nothing that remarkable about the holding in People v. Payne, 8 Cal. 341 (1857). It’s a typical case about justifiable homicide. One man owned property, and others claimed it, and sought to claim it by murdering him if necessary. He ended up shooting one of them, and the question was whether it was justifiable, which the California Supreme Court said it was.

What’s interesting are the personalities involved. The case was decided by Justice Peter Burnett, who had served as California’s first governor, and famously served as defense counsel for Joseph Smith. Probably his most important legal opinion would be issued the year after Payne—that was Ex Parte Archy, 9 Cal. 147 (1858), which declared, contra Dred Scott, that slavery was not permitted in California. Concurring in both of these opinions was Chief Justice David S. Terry, who would not long after murder California Senator David Broderick in a duel, and then flee to the south to join the Confederate Army. After the war he would serve a leading role at California’s second Constitutional Convention in 1878.

The attorneys arguing the Payne case were no less illustrious. The state was represented by William T. Wallace, who would later become a leading Progressive and Chief Justice of California. A man of distinctly unpalatable political views, Wallace’s most important decision was probably the Stockton & Visalia Railroad case (41 Cal. 147 (1871)), rejecting the substantive due process theories that the U.S. Supreme Court would soon after embrace in Loan Association v. Topeka. Wallace, by the way, married Burnett's daughter.

Payne’s attorney, on the other hand, was Edward D. Baker, one of Abraham Lincoln’s closest friends (Lincoln named his son after Baker) as well as a close friend of Sen. Broderick. Only three years after the Payne case, Baker would move to Oregon and be elected Senator, but shortly thereafter, he joined the Union Army, and was killed at the battle of Ball’s Bluff, becoming the only serving U.S. Senator ever killed in battle. At that same battle, future United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was also seriously wounded. Baker is buried in San Francisco.

Screenwriter Alex Epstein writes,

Some odd bits of Canadiana today. The RCMP is telling my assistant that it has approval over any RCMP characters appearing in movies or TV shows. Wow. To an American, that seems kinda, well, fascist. You can't criticize an Arm of the Government without the Arm's approval?

I was way out of the loop on this, but it looks like Founders College didn't work. (More here.) Although I didn't think it was the wisest use of resources that committed Objectivists could have chosen, I think it would have been nice if it had succeeded.

This year's winner: "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."'

Wow, that's something else. Worse even than poor Bulwer-Lytton himself ever did.

Say it ain't so!

If an attorney wants to appear by telephone at a hearing in California, Rule of Court 3.670(g) requires that he or she notify both the court and opposing counsel of this intention. That rule specifies,

"If the notice is oral, it must be given either in person or by telephone."

Well...yeah. I mean, how else would one give oral notice of anything?

I guess this nixes my plan to take out a series of ads on the local radio station....

"Provocative" foodstuffs. What is it with these people?

The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism is being published today (although Amazon has it for next week). It contains five entries by me: "Frederick Douglass," "Constitutionalism," "Judiciary," "Censorship," and "Individualism, Ethical And Political."

Ezra Levant has received a letter from the so called "Human Rights Commission" dismissing the complaint against him. But as he writes,

I haven’t been given my freedom of the press. I’ve simply had the government censor approve what I said. That’s a completely different thing.... I don’t give a damn what Gundara or the HRC says. Getting his approval is not a success. I won't legitimize his arrogant "authority" by saying "thank you, master". I'll say: "who the hell are you? Besides a busy-body bureaucrat?"....

Sorry again, I don’t give a damn if he likes me. In fact, it rather creeps me out that a whole squad of teat-sucking bureaucrats spent 900 days inspecting me and the Western Standard. I positively want to offend them. In fact, that’s pretty much the only test of my freedom: can I do exactly what Gundara says I shouldn’t? I’m not interested in publishing recipes or sports scores. I’m interested in bothering the hell out of government.

A draft of my law review article, "The Timing of Facial Challenges" is now available on SSRN. The article tries to explain the difference between facial challenges to the constitutionality of laws, and facial takings, and to explain why the incident whereby a facial challenge accrues is not the enactment of that law. The article springs from an error I've seen many times both in decisions and, more commonly, in the work of government attorneys. I would very much appreciate comments and suggestions on this draft.

It appears that SSRN has a new format. To download the article, click on "Choose Download Location" at the top, then select the button that says "SSRN, New York USA."

Okay, that is funny. Good for her.