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What happened to the polymaths?

In my latest article for Discourse magazine, I take a look at the past, present, and future, of the "Renaissance Man." Here's an excerpt:

As Richard Dawkins once put it, “You could give Aristotle a tutorial”—not because each of us is individually more brilliant than the great Greek philosopher, but because our intellectual world has built cumulatively to a greater height than he could access. And although superstition and fraud are still regrettably commonplace, our atmosphere of knowledge has been purged of much of the nonsense that polluted even the great minds of Aristotle’s day. Thus there’s a sense in which each of us is a Renaissance man or woman without even realizing it. Within a few minutes, any person with access to the internet can learn more about a bird, or Rachmaninoff—or about how to fix a broken dryer or carburetor—than da Vinci or Jefferson was likely to learn in a year. The internet and other technological resources have democratized the uomo universale into the popolo universale.

But that’s true, of course, only if we choose to take advantage of it. There’s a kind of moral hazard in the bounty of our knowledge: It can become an excuse—even a subconscious one—for intellectual laziness. The ready availability of such a rich body of research and art makes it easy to take it for granted, and to devote our energies elsewhere, confident that if a question comes up, we can “just Google it.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, being a Renaissance man or woman is energy-intensive, and the great advantage of intellectual specialization is that it’s more efficient to let doctors worry about treating cancer, engineers focus on building satellites, lawyers attend to the lawsuits—and to consult them only when one needs their expertise. But both specialization and intellectual sloth pose a threat to mental health no less than physical lethargy does to the body.

As the creators of the “liberal arts curriculum” knew, a broad exposure to ideas in a wide range of fields makes one more creative and insightful, particularly because it enables people to recognize patterns or similarities in different fields of study. When Darwin encountered Malthus’ “growth model”—a principle of economics—he realized that it held the seeds for an insight equally applicable to the world of biology. Today’s life sciences, in fact, owe their very origin to this “multidisciplinary” insight. It’s impossible to guess how many equally brilliant connections today’s researchers may be overlooking right now by not attending to what’s being said on the other end of campus.

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Green Bag Supreme Court bobbleheads for sale!

I've listed my Green Bag bobbleheads of John McLean and Byron White for sale on eBay. Well, McLean doesn't bobble...he bubbles!

Get them before it's too late!

The National Constitution Center on our proposed amendments

A while back, the National Constitution Center did me the honor of inviting me to participate in a project to draft a new proposed U.S. Constitution, as well as some amendments to the current Constitution. You can read our Libertarian Constitution here, and learn more about our proposed amendments here. Now the Constitution Center has hosted a discussion between Caroline Frederickson, David French, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Akhil Amar, discussing our proposed amendments. You can listen to that here.

The Natural Right to Property

My new article, “The Natural Right to Property,” has been published by the Texas A&M Journal of Property Law. The article is part of a symposium that critically examines Eric Claeys’s manuscript for a book on property rights. 

The Arizona Gift Clause in the Twenty-First Century

I signed a publication agreement today with the Drexel Law Review to publish my paper "The Arizona Gift Clause in the Twenty-First Century." This paper is a companion piece to my paper "The Origins of the Arizona Gift Clause," forthcoming in the Regent University Law Review, which discusses the history of this provision of the Arizona Constitution. The "Twenty-First Century" paper discusses the current state of Gift Clause jurisprudence and discusses one issue that is definitely on the horizon: whether that Clause limits the government's power to grant tax exemptions as a form of subsidy. You can read the current draft on SSRN here.

A centennial appreciation for Albert King

This week is (probably) the 100th anniversary of the birth of my favorite blues musician, Albert King. Probably the most influential blues musician after Robert Johnson, King was a hero to such performers as Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and his most famous song, "Born Under A Bad Sign," has been covered by everyone from Eric Clapton to Homer Simpson. I got a chance to write about his unique artistry for The Dispatch

What Vaughan admired most was the way King sang with his guitar, bending Lucy’s voice into a personality as real as his own. In “Laundromat Blues,” she’s alternately sassy and vindictive; in “I Wanna Get Funky,” she’s a confident, cunning seducer; in “As the Years Go Passing By,” her brooding matches Albert’s introspective vocals. That took more than proficiency; it required a grasp of the emotional impact of Lucy’s sound, and a willingness to hold back. “If you play too fast or too loud, you cancel yourself out,” King advised young players. “First, you got to get in your mind what you want to play. If you hear a good lick—even if you’re just rehearsing to yourself—and you feel it, then hit another one…. But if you rush right through, hitting them all, you’re not even going to know what you did. You’ve got to…take your time in your delivery.”

It wasn’t that King played slow, but he had a spare form of expression, with the patience to build a mood. “When we’d get tired of jumping up and down in the clubs,” he told Stevie Ray, “we’d back up—reach and get one from the bottom.” The conservatism of his playing in such slow-burn tunes as “The Sky is Crying” (performed here with Vaughan, Paul Butterfield, Phil Collins, and B.B.) shows the wisdom of not confusing profusion with eloquence. “[King] can take four notes and write a volume,” said bluesman Michael Bloomfield. “He can say more with fewer note than anybody I’ve ever known.”

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Are some forms of Populism more equal than others?

At Discourse, I have a review of a new book about the rise of populism. Believe it or not, this article was originally commissioned by a different journal, which then rejected it for being too "pro-Trump." Seriously. The editor said I was "wearing my MAGA hat while writing it." I'll let you judge for yourself. Here's an excerpt:

In the sixth century B.C., Pisistratus rode into Athens in a chariot beside an actress dressed as Athena, to wow the hoi polloi into thinking he was divinely selected for dictatorship. Episodes like that were precisely why the classical liberals who founded the United States fashioned a constitutional state instead of a pure democracy. They did so with a clear eye to the underlying principle that democracy is legitimized, and thus necessarily limited, by deeper principles of individual liberty—principles we flout at our peril.

Issacharoff makes no mention of this. Instead he asserts that “a well-functioning democratic state should offer citizens a sense of individual dignity emanating from control over their political fate and a sense of collective gain from an accountable state delivering material improvements over time.” He maintains that “wrest[ing] popular support for democracy back from authoritarian demagogues” depends on proving that democracies can give people a “sense of common mission” by engaging in public works projects such as railroad construction and green energy programs.

But the authors of the Constitution believed the opposite: that a properly designed state would preserve freedom by so severely restricting what citizens could accomplish through politics that they would concern themselves with productive private-sector undertakings instead. The American Constitution’s legitimacy rests not upon a desire for government munificence, but on the wish, as George Washington liked to say, for the freedom to rest under one’s own vine and fig tree, with none to make him afraid.

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The Origins of the Arizona Gift Clause

This morning I signed the publication agreement to publish my article "The Origins of the Arizona Gift Clause" in the Regent University Law Review. The article offers the first-ever comprehensive look at the history behind the Arizona Constitution's categorical prohibition on corporate welfare--a provision adopted from the Montana Constitution, but based also on experiences in many other states. I learned some interesting stuff while writing the article--and you can check out the current draft here.

Talking with Hugh Hewitt about Freedom's Furies

I talked this morning with Hugh Hewitt about my book Freedom's Furies, about which he said some very kind words--although our conversation ranged into some other fun topics, as well. Check it out:

Upcoming speaking events

Here's the latest list of my upcoming speaking events. Remember, if you're interested in having me come speak at your campus or to your community group, drop me a line!

Apr. 6 - 5 p.m. - Freedom's Furies - Dartmouth College Libertarians - Dartmouth College, NH

Apr. 17 - noon Eastern Time - The Indian Child Welfare Act: separate and unequal? - University of Florida Federalist Society - Gainesville, FL

May 11 - 6:00 p.m. - Freedom's Furies - Hayek Group - Reno, NV

June 22 - 4:45 p.m. - Rebel Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright - Level Up Conference - Phoenix, AZ

June 23 - 2:45 p.m. - A Future of Flourishing and How to Achieve It - Level Up Conference - Phoenix, AZ

June 28 - 3:30 - The Indian Child Welfare Act - Arizona Judicial Conference - Scottsdale, AZ

Court could help clean up homelessness chaos in this city, and yours

I have an article this morning on Fox News’ website about the recent court ruling that declares Phoenix’s homeless “Zone” an illegal public nuisance. Excerpt:

Phoenix leaders had claimed their hands were tied by a 2019 Ninth Circuit ruling that held that the city of Boise, Idaho, violated the U.S. Constitution’s "cruel and unusual punishment" clause by arresting people for sleeping on sidewalks. "Human beings are biologically compelled to rest," that court reasoned, so punishing them for "involuntarily sitting, lying, and sleeping in public" was cruel — akin to punishing them for "an illness or disease." If a city lacks sufficient bed space in its shelters to accommodate the homeless, the Ninth Circuit said, it’s unconstitutional to arrest them for sleeping on the streets.

But whatever one thinks about that case, it hardly applies to Phoenix’s situation, which doesn’t involve people "involuntarily" sleeping on sidewalks for lack of shelter space. The Zone’s residents are living there indefinitely, not because they’re biologically compelled to, but because they choose not to seek other arrangements.

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Talking about the Arizona "Zone" lawsuit with Armstrong & Getty

I talked this morning with my friends Armstrong and Getty about the ruling in the Phoenix homeless "Zone" lawsuit, as well as about other pressing matters of the day. You can listen here:

The life and ideas of Isabel Paterson

The Objective Standard Institute has posted the video of my talk about the life and ideas of Isabel Paterson, from last year's TOS-Con. You can watch it here:

The dark side of historical preservation

I have an article in Discourse Magazine about the downsides to “historic preservation” laws, which often impose Byzantine bureaucratic rules on people who just want to live in their homes, and which sometimes impose crushing—and unconstitutional—takings of private property without compensation. Excerpt:

Preserving the past is a worthy goal. But like all worthy goals, it also represents a tradeoff, with costs and benefits that must be weighed in the balance. Ignoring property rights, the role of incentives and the principles of due process—which forbid vague laws—blinds both politicians and voters to the cost side of the equation. That tends to benefit the politically powerful at the expense of less influential property owners—and of consumers who would benefit from new and more innovative construction. Without legal checks and balances, historic preservation cannot only stifle new building and improvement, but even obstruct the goal of preservation itself.

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Talking about the ladies who founded libertarianism

I spoke a few weeks ago with Juliette Slegren for her Great Antidote podcast, about the lives and ideas of Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand. You can listen here.

Subversive as all hell

I have an article in Symposium today about the way in which Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Ayn Rand can be considered "counter culture" figures. It tells one of the classic stories of Lane's life--the time the FBI went after her for writing a postcard to a radio talk show host in which she expressed opposition to the Social Security program. You can read those fun details by clicking here.

The Importance of Paterson, Wilder, and Lane

I talked the other day with Jon Hersey about my book Freedom's Furies: How Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand Found Liberty in an Age of Darkness, for the podcast Philosophy for Flourishing. Jon had some unusual and interesting questions for me about the book and about the lives and ideas of these remarkable women. You can watch it here:

New review of Freedom's Furies

At Discourse, Robert Tracinski reviews my new book Freedom's Furies. Excerpt:

What is perhaps more remarkable from today’s perspective is that these women came up through the world of art and literature. Similarly, H.L. Mencken and Henry Hazlitt—the latter was a leading free-marketer of the time and a friend of the trio; he and Mencken would be fused into the crusading pro-liberty columnist Austen Heller in The Fountainhead—were both editors of the American Mercury. This was one of the prominent right-wing publications of the early 20th century but also one of its leading literary journals. Paterson was a key figure covering the book publishing scene in New York City, while Ayn Rand started out as a scriptwriter in Hollywood and later hobnobbed with studio executives and movie stars. These people were what you might call “coastal elites”—yet they argued for laissez-faire economics, promoted individualism and fought against the left.;

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The Stasi Poetry Circle

In my latest book review for The Objective Standard, I examine Philip Oltermann's book on the curious episode in which the East German secret police established a creative writing workshop--the "Writing Circle of Chekists." Why did they do it? Excerpt:

Alongside their propaganda and surveillance missions, they had another goal: to understand poetry. Genuine collectivists, who view privacy as anathema, can never really understand poetry—at least, not lyric poetry—because it is such a direct expression of the evanescent and ineffable creative spark within the human mind, something collectivism can never truly reach. One of the best anti-communist poets, E.E. Cummings, expressed that point in his own quirky way in his classic “Jehovah buried,Satan dead,” which bitterly satirized communist states where “Souls are outlawed” and “dreamless knaves on Shadows [feed].” The result of communist regimentation, he wrote, is that

Boobs are holy,poets mad,
illustrious punks of Progress shriek;
when Souls are outlawed,Hearts are sick,
Hearts being sick,Minds nothing can:

That last phrase—“Minds nothing can”—was not only Cummings’s way of saying that a country that outlaws individual aspiration will also obliterate creativity, but also his way of expressing the essential crudity of communism, which views man as a mechanism to be manipulated, categorized, and put to labor, rather than as a unique creature of infinite potential. East Germany’s rulers, who never lifted their eyes from the dingy concrete of the police state, could hardly comprehend such potential. And that made it impossible for them to grasp, let alone counteract, the attractions of the free world’s culture.

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Abraham Lincoln's intransigence

In my latest book review for The Objective Standard, I take a look at Jon Meacham’s new biography of Abraham Lincoln, entitled And There Was Light. Excerpt:

[Lincoln’s] intransigence proved crucial in the immediate aftermath of his election to the presidency, and Meacham’s description of this episode is the best part of his book. In the months between November 1860 and the inauguration in March 1861—the so-called Secession Winter, during which South Carolina and six other states left the union—slave owners and their northern collaborators proposed myriad compromises to avoid bloodshed. The most popular was offered by Kentucky Senator John Crittenden; it would have drawn a line across North America to the Pacific Coast, guaranteeing the legality of slavery below that line by amending the Constitution. Lincoln opposed the idea, not only because of his antislavery convictions but because the slave states had repeatedly bullied the federal government since at least the 1830s, with the latter almost always conceding to southern demands under the threat of violence. To appease them yet again would only have rewarded their intimidation, effectively guaranteeing another round of extortion.

Lincoln could not actually do anything before his inauguration to block the Crittenden Compromise, except to rally members of Congress to oppose it. That he did, under pressures to which many men in his place would have bent—and Meacham rightly highlights the importance of his inflexibility at this crucial moment: “Lincoln courageously resisted compromising on slavery in an hour when such compromise was within the realm of acceptable opinion,” he writes. “In these cold and complex months, Abraham Lincoln was both statesman and moral being, choosing the difficult over the easy, the catastrophic over the convenient, the right over the wrong.”

In underscoring this, Meacham outclasses David Herbert Donald, whose 1995 book Lincoln until now had been the best one-volume biography of the sixteenth president. Donald was a superb historian but far more interested in the pragmatic, day-to-day machinations of party politics than in leaders who elevated principle above mere scheming. In his version of the story, “the chances for compromise in 1860–1861 were never great,” and Lincoln’s refusal to endorse it, while admirable, was motivated more by awareness that to do so “would disrupt the party that elected him” than by the courage of his convictions.

Yet as Meacham shows, the Crittenden proposal was a real threat—and Lincoln’s moral courage was not just right but also, and for that reason, the only truly practical plan. That’s because by 1860, slavery’s opponents were so accustomed to cowardice on the part of their leaders that Lincoln’s refusal to surrender gave them the morale boost they needed. A cynical Henry Adams, watching Crittenden’s allies negotiating the compromise proposal with Republican lobbyists, predicted that Lincoln’s party would eventually embrace “some damned nonsense or other”—but Lincoln, knowing such concessions would make his party, in his words, “a mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle in it,” said no.

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