Freespace

The song of the New World

A couple weeks ago, I spoke at Level Up (the annual Objective Standard conference) about an unusual subject: the Ninth Symphony by composer Antonin Dvorak, also called "From the New World." It's a classic today--according to one poll, the most popular symphony ever written--and in my presentation, I explain how it expresses the astonishing transformation of human life in the late nineteenth century, which resulted from political and economic freedom. The video's been uploaded to YouTube, and you can watch it here:

The Identity Left’s war on science

In my latest book review for The Objective Standard, I examine a new memoir by anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss, who ran into trouble for her criticism of NAGPRA, a federal law that forces universities and museums to turn over scientific specimens to Indian tribes (who then destroy them). The law was originally written in response to allegations of theft and grave-robbing by scientists, but today it’s often used by Native religious fanatics and their work allies who are committed for ideological reasons to the destruction of science and civilization. Here’s an excerpt:

Religion is, indeed, what instigates much of the controversy involving NAGPRA. Some Native groups hold that their tribes were created within North America by the gods—that the first humans emerged from the Earth at the behest of Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka (Great Spirit) or were transformed by Áwonawílona (the Maker of All) out of web-footed creatures swimming in the underworld, to cite just a few examples. Many tribes are also hostile to the land-bridge theory most anthropologists hold, according to which humans migrated to North America about thirty thousand years ago through what is now Alaska.

But most of those responsible for implementing NAGPRA, and state-law versions of NAGPRA such as California’s “CalNAGPRA,” don’t hold these religious beliefs themselves. Rather, they’re adherents of postmodernist, anti-reason ideologies according to which Native Americans are spiritually pure due to their being “untainted” by Western civilization. According to this “noble savage” myth—which dates back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau—indigenous peoples are models of moral sanctity, political peace, and ecological harmony with nature. In other words, adherents of this anti-Western ideology view Native Americans not as individuals facing real challenges in contemporary life, but as stereotypes—convenient symbols for everything opposed to capitalism, technology, and the complexities of modern life. As Weiss notes, acolytes of postmodernist mythology are sometimes motivated to be more “Indian” than actual Native Americans themselves—even pretending to be Natives when they aren’t—and taking up what they consider a moral crusade against science and reason in the name of “social justice”—a crusade that does nothing to benefit Native Americans or anyone else.

Read the rest…

Libertarianism doesn’t need an ‘update’

A few days ago, Randy Barnett argued on the blog Law & Liberty that libertarianism needs to be “updated” in light of modern developments. I disagree, in an article published this morning in Discourse. Here’s an excerpt:

Barnett’s claim simply isn’t true. Libertarianism is not an “ideal theory” in the sense he means, and while its approach to the problem of private power differs markedly from those offered by other political philosophies, its distinctive answers to the questions he poses are a sign of its strength, not its weakness.

Philosophers use the term “ideal theory” to describe an argument that posits an optimal society based on abstract, idealized assumptions about people’s behavior. Libertarianism is the opposite of this. It doesn’t assert that people are inherently good, or that they would accomplish great things if government merely got out of the way (although that’s often true). Instead, it recognizes that people are fallible—often ignorant, foolish and malevolent—and concludes that for this very reason, their ability to use government’s coercive powers should be minimized. Thomas Jefferson put the point succinctly when he said: “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him?”

In other words, libertarianism is skeptical, even pessimistic, about human capacities—especially those of the humans who wield government power, and are as fallible as the rest of us, if not more so. Precisely because libertarianism does not make idealized assumptions about people’s behavior—and holds that utopia is impossible—it concludes that the least bad alternative is to leave people free to make their own choices (subject to legal accountability if they harm others). After all, they have a stronger incentive to avoid bad decisions in their own lives than any outsider could possibly have.

Read the rest…

The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots

In my latest book review for The Objective Standard, I write about a newly re-discovered memoir by an escaped American slave named John Swanson Jacobs, whose better-remembered sister Harriet also wrote a famous memoir of her days in slavery. Unfortunately, this new book is hampered by the editor's woke Newspeak:

Comments like these are symptomatic of Shroeder’s approach—which combines the gibberish lingo of Critical Race Theory with the nihilism (or as Shroeder prefers, “Black radical antisentimentalism”) of the 1619 Project—and these severely mar the biographical essays and explanatory notes in the book. Consider Shroeder’s assertions that “[the] sentimental mode that is hardwired into the liberal contradictions of American national fantasy. . . makes scenes of pain serve as both embodiment of Black inhumanity and proof of Black humanity,” or that Six Hundred Thousand Despots “radically rewrites the humanitarian contract between reader and text.” To the extent these phrases mean anything, they aren’t true.

Faddish jargon like this is bad enough when it’s merely distracting, but Shroeder’s efforts at profundity repeatedly cross the line into the ridiculous. At one point, for example, he says that “slaveowners enacted their violence in the marketplace by breaking the bodies of the enslaved down into parts (field hands, long fingers for picking cotton, and so on).” Presumably, if using a term like “field hands” constitutes “breaking the body,” Douglass was also breaking it when he wrote “Men of Color, to Arms!” during the War, and Garrison was equally to blame when he prayed, “Let us shiver to atoms those galling fetters, under the pressure of which so many hearts have bursted [sic]. Let us not shackle the limbs of the future workmanship of God.”

In another place, Shroeder interprets Jacobs’s farewell letter to his slavemaster, Sawyer, in an equally bizarre way. Jacobs wrote, “when I have got settled I will give you further satisfaction,” which Shroeder sees as “a play on words,” because “[the term] ‘settled’ often meant putting things in a desired order and closing an account,” and he concludes that Jacobs was really “call[ing] for reparations.” Actually, it’s more likely that Jacobs just meant...settled.

Read the rest...

Supreme Court homelessness ruling could help defeat crisis

I have an article on Fox News’s website this morning about the Supreme Court’s decision in the homelessness case, Johnson v. Grants Pass. Excerpt:

Even city officials acting in good faith found the Ninth Circuit’s one-size-fits-all rule unworkable — and why city officials not acting in good faith found that rule a handy rationale for simply leaving the homeless on the streets, as Phoenix officials did when they created the infamous "Zone."

This new decision also makes clear why local communities must take responsibility for enforcing the law to protect taxpayers and property owners, rather than engage in massive, ideologically driven dereliction of duty.

Read the rest…

Talking about Chevron deference with Andrew Heaton

I had a good time talking with Andrew Heaton on his podcast about why Chevron Deference deserved to die--and what it means for the future.

The court got it right on free speech and social media

I have an article in The Dispatch this morning about the NetChoice cases, which concern the free speech rights of social media companies. Excerpt:

In 2021, lawmakers in Florida and Texas passed laws that prohibit “social media platforms” from deleting, editing, “de-boosting” or “inhibiting the publication” (whatever these things mean) of users’ messages, without first providing a “precise and thorough explanation” for doing so. Moreover, the laws entirely forbid social media companies from deleting or editing any post by a “journalistic enterprise”—defined to include blogs. Lawmakers adopted these laws after some conservatives complained that social media companies were “censoring” or “shadow-banning” their messages, terms which are effectively synonyms for “not publicizing someone’s messages as much as conservatives would like”....

The First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, not some “balance” of speech that politicians consider worthwhile. In fact, for all of American legal history, courts have made clear that the Constitution doesn’t call for any (so to speak) ideological affirmative action, in which government boosts “underrepresented” viewpoints and muffles others that are heard “too much.” The protection of free speech is achieved, not by giving bureaucrats power to “balance” who hears what, but, in Kagan’s words, “by preventing the government from ‘tilt[ing] public debate in a preferred direction.’”

Read the rest…

Supreme Court strikes down administrative state tyranny

I have an article in the Orange County Register today about the Supreme Court abolish the doctrine of Chevron deference. Excerpt:

The U.S. Supreme Court took an important step in defense of both democracy and freedom on Friday when it overruled a 1984 case called Chevron v. NRDC. That decision—which gave federal bureaucracies power to essentially act without meaningful legal limitations—was adopted out of a concern for “judicial restraint.”

It required judges to accept (or “defer to”) legal interpretations adopted by unelected bureaucrats, despite the fact that judges are supposed to be the ones responsible for interpreting the law. The predictable result was that administrative agencies began interpreting laws in ways that expanded their own power. In other words, a “restrained” judiciary ended up meaning an unrestrained bureaucracy.

(Read the rest…)