Regardless of who I voted for in Debacle 2004, I still support the idea of fighting back against Islamic terror. My objections are objections over tactics more than the goal. The Dutch of Old Europe are now getting what the difference is: it’s not us versus them, it’s free speech versus Islamicism.

In short, a Dutch director who made a film about the treatment of women under current Islamic traditions was apparently killed for criticizing the way Islam is practiced by much of the umma. His family wanted people to make noise in support of free speech rather than a silent vigil. That’s exactly the right response.

Sadly, this is something that Bush doesn’t get. I’m not convinced Kerry does either, but he at least has made better noises about it so far. But I don’t forget that we are indeed fighting for freedom, and that the most important part of the whole battle is remaining true to that freedom even when it seems tempting to weaken.

You feel me, Ashcroft?

I’ve been meaning for some time to explore the myth and reality of national boundaries, and a post over at Cafe Hayek has prompted me to bring out a piece of it.

Don Boudreaux takes on Samuelson on immigration, and points out that there’s nothing about transnational migration that is different in principle from intranational migration. In other words, there’s nothing you can say about immigration of foreigners that doesn’t apply to Mississippians:

Consider California. It is completely open to people from Mississippi. California’s median household income is a whopping 54% higher than is Mississippi’s. […] Californians enjoy environmental and social amenities — beautiful beaches, snow-capped mountains, fabulous weather, big and exciting cities, professional sports franchises — that Mississippians lack. And yet, despite being free to move to California en masse, Mississippians don’t do so. Nor do West Virginians, or Arkansans, or Alabamians.

The reason is that prices and other economic data govern immigration. Most significantly, immigrants must rent or buy living quarters, and each must find remunerative employment (or live with family members). As demand for living quarters increases, rents and real-estate prices rise — putting a natural economic (and non-coercive) break on immigration. Likewise with job opportunities: if the supply of labor rises and thereby lowers employee pay in those jobs experiencing especially rapid increases in labor supply, the urge to immigrate will be dampened.

You can broaden the argument: any interaction between countries that is governed primarily by non-political forces is going to behave much the same way as interactions between regions inside a country. There’s nothing magical about a country-to-country boundary: you have different political rules among U.S. states, yet the District of Columbia (not even a state) has never emptied out , infested the commonwealth of Virginia, and TOOK AHR JAHRBS.

Similarly, jobs moving from New York to South Carolina are, from the point of view of New Yorkers, identical to those same jobs moving to China. The only difference is that federal taxes are recouped on the (lower) wages paid to South Carolinians but not to Chinese workers. Everything else is the same, except the likely racial makeup of the replacement workers–which provides a hint about the fundamental revulsion people feel about offshoring. Corporate profits are still taxed, and any consumption taxes on the product or service are still collected. Since most of the government services that immediately affect New Yorkers come from state and local taxes rather than federal money, the South Carolina relocation is nearly identical to the Chinese case (and since I once lived in South Carolina, I can tell you the factory workers are equally likely to spend their newfound wealth on a vacation to New York City).

There is only one thing that distinguishes trans-national relations from trans-locality relations: the lack of an authoritative governing legal structure. This makes it harder to sue someone in Bangladesh for negligence. Anything else, up to and including armed conflict, can occur equally between localities within a country. The Sudan is proof of that. Just because New York and New Jersey rarely come to physical violence over their disagreements doesn’t mean intra-national fighting doesn’t occur. You could equally give the example of the U.S. and Canada to “prove” that fighting between nations doesn’t occur.

So the only times that your thinking about borders between countries should differ from your thinking about borders between localities is when the lack of a supra-national governing body (and no, the U.N. doesn’t count) makes some fundamental difference. The more you think about it, the less you’ll find that applies.

My brother and I were co-ranting about some of the injustices of state alcohol restrictions, when I casually mentioned that it would be great to have an Alcohol Freedom Index so states could be ranked by the freedom you have to purchase and consume alcohol. I did international relations, rather than political science, but some of the techniques to operationalize such an index would be similar.

The tricky thing would be figuring out what goes into the index. The more difficult thing for a lazy SOB such as myself would be doing the grunt work to collect the data for all 50 states. Weirdly, it looks like the US Army has made that a little easier.

As to the tricky thing, I can brainstorm a few but additional measures would be welcome.

• Are beer and wine sold through special state stores?
• Can localities make themselves “dry”?
• Is liquor sold through special state stores?
• Can individuals receive shipments of alcohol?
• Does the state only allow the importation of “approved” beverages?
• Do state labeling requirements block the sale of many beers, particularly imports? (Texas, I’m looking in your direction)

Such an index would be useful in turning the tables on modern-day prohibitionists, left and right. You could easily see examples of laws that serve no public safety or food quality purpose and be able to set state governments against one another. Prohibitionists might attempt to use the index for the opposite reason, but I suspect once Marylanders find out that Virginia is not a drunken hellhole because beer and wine can be purchased in grocery stores (certainly it hasn’t affected property values relative to Maryland), the prohibitionists’ arguments might look silly, and the laws themselves would be revealed for what they are: taxation and middleman job security measures.

I could even see cases made that alcohol restrictions aid alcoholism: when beer is only available from state stores, then any time you go to purchase beer you have an opportunity to purchase a case, rather than a six-pack. Good way to market binge drinking, Maryland! “See the Terps and Tie Twenty-Four On!” It’s even worse in Pennsylvania: you can’t even buy small quantities of beer.

Right now, politically-connected middlemen (such as beer and wine distributors) have a reason to pressure their legislators to preserve their business model, but there’s isn’t an easily-digestable way for the average citizen to realize how much they’re being screwed in favor of a tiny, well-off portion of the population. An Alcohol Freedom Index might be a way that Texans could take a good, hard look at their government and ask why the state that celebrates its independence from Mexico is less free than next-door New Mexico.

The Cato Institute would be the logical think tank to publish such an index, and it looks like Radley Balko would be the logical person to compile it.

I’m about to attempt to violate one of my own rules. The rule is thus: any political work that apes the name of a more famous work is usually pretentious and much less valuable than the original work. So hopefully this post is more worthwhile than The Work of Nations.

Over at Just Well Mixed, Jason argues that evangelical Christians uncomfortably resemble the Islamicists they oppose. He further surmises that there may well be a well of Americans who are ready for a charismatic leader to fall in line behind.

It struck me that his argument was essentially the same warning sounded by a guy he would otherwise not agree with much, Freidrich Hayek. In his The Road to Serfdom (abridged version PDF), he argues:

The author has spent about half his adult life in his native Austria, in close touch with German thought, and the other half in the United States and England. In the latter period he has become increasingly convinced that some of the forces which destroyed freedom in Germany are also at work here.

The very magnitude of the outrages committed by the National Socialists has strengthened the assurance that a totalitarian system cannot happen here. But let us remember that 15 years ago the possibility of such a thing happening in Germany would have appeared just as fantastic not only to nine-tenths of the Germans themselves, but also to the most hostile foreign observer.

This is from the April 1945 condensed version published by Reader’s Digest.

Hayek’s main argument is that enhancing the power of the state at the expense of individual liberty provides the tools that later evildoers appropriate for their own purposes. Absent such tools, they would at best have a limited following. Socialism was Hayek’s primary bugaboo at the time. Has George W. Bush found a new road to serfdom?

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At Cafe Hayek, Russell Roberts explains why cheap Canadian drugs won’t stay cheap or available or both for long. He links to a longer article of his that explains the situation very well.

In short, Canadian drugs are cheaper because price controls keep it down rather than any fundamental fact of Canadian efficiency. I would expect that the supply is smaller than it would be otherwise, as well, but the effect may not be large given Canada’s small share of the North American market.

The implication of that is that drug companies make up the profit difference elsewhere; the obvious location is here in the U.S. So we’re paying higher prices to subsidize the consumption of Canadians.

Re-importation will start to make up for that imbalance, but Canadians won’t see it that way. They’ll see it as an attack on their health care system. After all, we’re not being dupes anymore, so there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth as they rant about the evil Americans screwing up another good thing with capitalist greed.

Roberts gives two possible responses: drug companies will raise prices to Canada whether Canada likes it or not, or Canada will act to criminalize the export of drugs. I suspect that it will actually be the latter, given the likely way the issue will be framed.

But remember, Canada is currently screwing the U.S. They just like it when they pitch rather than catch.

Update: Blue State Digital claims they are not responsible for the e-mail list software (Lyris) being used by Democracy for America. So I’m going to remove my more incendiary comments about them and the links to their site. However, I’ve taken the e-mail measure that Joe Rospars of Blue State Digital suggests, and I’m in no mood to spend money talking to them on the phone. Given the passions spamming arouses, Blue State Digital may wish to rethink the prominent branding on the DFA site that suggests they are indeed responsible for all the tech being used. If I find out that they are indeed responsible for e-mail policies at DFA, I will repost my characterizations of them with some extra helpings of bile.

In the primaries, I was rather public about my support for Howard Dean, to the point that I actually voted in the Democratic primary for him. Somehow (I don’t recall how, actually) I ended up on the mailing list. It was infrequent, so I didn’t freak out.

Of course he lost.

So afterward my e-mail address was kept on to the new organization he created, Democracy For America, to support select Democrats in various races around the country. While I thought Dean was encouraging, I’m still mainly interested in a split, do-nothing government. I haven’t turned into a Democratic activist.

So I decided I really wasn’t interested in giving them any money or reading about it. So I followed the directions and unsubscribed.

As I did for the next e-mail.

And the next.

And the next. This one I sent back with a warning that unsubscription wasn’t working, and my patience was at an end–and to unsubscribe me. The next one I did the same, as well as filling out the form on their Web site.

So the next one got reported to SpamCop, and I sent it back with a nasty note that it and all future ones were not welcome and would be reported as spam.

The next one I just reported to SpamCop.

So this one has pretty much ended any amusement I had left. So I want it known loud and far that Howard Dean’s organization are no-good goddamn dirty spammers.

I haven’t subscribed to try it, but I’m willing to bet Bush 2004 would unsubscribe me if I asked, and asked, and asked. So why the fuck can’t they stop being no good goddamn dirty spammers and turning Howard Dean into some sort of Jerry Fallwell-alike money-grubber who won’t let you go?

And yes, I’m making that comparison because they just went off about Jerry Fallwell in their latest spam, so if they don’t like the comparison–they can take me off their list.

I haven’t yet made it down to the newly-opened National Museum of the American Indian, but Don Bordreaux’s take on the lack of science, particularly anthropology, is not encouraging. This CNN story suggests that history isn’t a big part of it either. So the remaining focus is culture–but culture devoid of historical or pre-historical context. This is really sad, given that it is officially a member of the Smithsonian family of museums. American Indians have a contentious relationship with history, as it has been written by the winners, and anthropology. Sadly, the latter is an almost exact mirror of the evolution battles by fundamentalist Christians (and, increasingly fundamentalist Muslims).

The good news is that the building, which actually fits in on the funky southern side of the Mall with its Hirschorn, Air and Space museum, and Smithsonian castle, is actually quite nice (I’ve been able to see it several times walking around that area). As long as that’s done right, the rest can improve over time.

I read an interesting if suppositionally-based post over at Crooked Timber, but the comments section made much more of an impression. Apparently, the Lefty blogosphere wants an ideologically pure victory free from allies.

As I’ve written before, libertarians used to have a sort of quid pro quo with Republicans and, by extension, conservatives: you agree with us on economics and keep the Bible-thumping to a dull roar, and we’ll hold our nose and support you, as long as it keeps the Commies out. Absent the Commies, well, that Bible-thumping was kinda irritating, but as long as they didn’t get too wacko, well, old habits die hard.

Enter George Bush and the neo-cons. They abandoned economic liberalism for a nativist corporatism (protectionism) mixed with a big-government welfare expansion that, had it come from Clinton, would be triggering calls for an armed insurrection by the right wing. All this while they informally suspend habeus corpus and greatly expand police powers while reducing judicial oversight. Some of that was inevitable after 9/11, but they’ve jumped on it with an enthusiasm not seen since World War II.

So I’d been thinking that there was an historic opportunity for a new quid-pro-quo with the Democrats and, by extension, liberals: you keep on with Clintonomics instead of Chomskyomics, and play up keeping the government out of people’s bedrooms while keeping the nanny-state instinct down to a dull roar, and we’ll support you as long as it keeps out the neo-cons. I thought Dean might do that–he clearly appealed to the base while getting respect out of those not already compulsive Rush Limbaugh listeners.

However, when looking at what I thought was a fairly respectable Left-leaning blog, the comments really took me by surprise. Sure, selection bias, etc., etc., but geez:

The right think they can destroy the system and create the Libertarian Paradise, but I am now hoping to seem them all on a gallows in my lifetime. I have never been so hopeful.

Oh, wait, decency still has a place, as in this rebuke to the above from the blog owner:

I presume and hope for your sake that you’re trying to provoke an outraged reaction here from someone rather than make a serious claim – this is trolling in my book, and not compatible with the kinds of argument that I want to have in my comments section. You’re on your first warning. Feel free to express strong and vigorous opinions about me or whoever else – but saying that you want to string up everyone on the other half of the political spectrum is way beyond the kinds of argument I’m prepared to tolerate.

But wait, this is the “explanation”:

I apologize to Henry for the violent metaphor, which is all it was intended to be.

In my defense I can only say that I take Krugman and Volcker seriously, in that we are likely to have an international monetary collapse, perhaps as soon as five years. That four of the major world leaders (Bush,Blair,Howard,Putin) are polarizing figures desperately trying to deceive their electorates. That solutions to the MiddleEast and Islamism seem absent among the best. That the election of Kerry is irrelevant.

In other words I do sincerely believe we are headed for a catastrophic transitional period. History informs my personal opinion as to how it will resolve itself.

Consider, for a moment, if someone had said “I want to see all blacks strung up” and had been rebuked, but then they came back and said, “Naw, I meant metaphorically, because I think if blacks get the vote they’ll destroy the world and it will provoke just that kind of thing. It was analysis, y’see? Sorry for mah strawng tawk.” What would be the decent reply to that?

According to this blog owner:

Bob – apology and explanation duly accepted.

So: the Left thinks that the Republicans are in any way libertarian, which proves they either don’t know what libertarian is or they don’t actually watch Dan Rather’s non-memo-based news. Oh, and they think libertarians are going to destroy the world and they’ll cackle in delight to see us get murdered in the ensuing chaos.

And that’s OK.

Apart from the similarity of this to the Republicans saying, “Hey, Clinton’s election is a good thing! Now he’ll ruin the economy and we’ll never have to worry about Democrats again ever!” I haven’t felt this much love since the last Osama bin Laden video. At least he’s honest that he’s not metaphorical when he says he wants to see me dead. This is the kind of rhetoric I expect out of the Free Republic on the right and the Democratic Underground on the Left. But Crooked Timber? I’m going to have to look at Little Green Footballs to see if they’re advocating killing libertarians “metaphorically.” I kinda doubt it.

The rest of the posts don’t froth at the mouth to this degree but they basically say “the time for objectivity and fairness is over, it’s our way or the highway.” Even if this didn’t bode ill for me finding any solace whatsoever in a Democratic victory, it makes Four More Years of Bush look increasingly likely. The lesson of Clinton, that there’s a lot of opportunity to be had in grabbing the center, has been utterly lost on the Lefty blogosphere, at least as represented there. Instead they’ve gotten suckered into this game of 50% plus 0.0001% partisan tit-for-tat that Republicans are playing.

That’s a losing strategy in the long run.

Now my only hope is that the offline Left is a bit more sane than the online variety, and that Crooked Timber was having a really bad comments day.

Moralizing twerps come in all shapes, colors, and creeds. The anti-abortion activist shares much in common with the animal rights activist. Jews for Jesus rub some rather uncomfortable elbows with pseudo-environmentalist pseudohippies. I hate moralizing twerps.

One thing that really amuses me is hypocrisy, particularly when it comes from moralizing twerps. When televangelists get caught with the inevitable fraud and hookers, I do the dance of schadenfreude. The cowering faces as they are hauled off to jail or tearful confessions on their very TV empires bring me that special kind of joy.

When I ceased being amused and start being pissed off is when a moralist tells me his hypocrisy is somehow unavoidable, excused, or consistent according to some tortured logic. This happens less with the aforementioned televangelist than with the liberal variety.

The following quotes are made up, but bear the sense of excuses I’ve gotten from the aforementioned activists, followed by a parallel to illustrate the point.

“It’s unavoidable,” says the anti-meat and globalization pseudohippy wearing leather shoes made in a sweatshop in China, “that in our corporatist world, the products they force on the masses like me are the products of their hate machine. So really, it’s not a contradiction. I’m a victim, too.”

“It’s unavoidable,” says the “Save the planet” t-shirt-wearing soccer mom with one child and a Kerry-Edwards sticker on her Chevy Suburban, “that in our corporatist world, the mix of cars forced on us trends toward SUVs. The government should make it harder to buy them. And besides, I need all that room for when I have three people in the car and a soccer ball. You can’t expect me to put that in a sedan! If there were better mass transit, I’d take that–you know, if there weren’t so many poor and minorities on it. I’m a victim, too.”

“It’s unavoidable,” says the mugger standing over the bloodied brow of an elderly woman, “that in our corporatist world, insufficient resources are redistributed to the poor, forcing some of us to take radical direct action to survive. I’m a victim, too.”

Fortunately, I’ve seen some consistent liberals lately. If you’re going to put a Kerry-Edwards sticker on something, putting it on a Prius will win you points from me. I may not agree that legislating the rest of us out of our chosen cars is necessarily the way to go, but at least you’re sticking up for what you believe in, and paying small-SUV prices to do it. Bravo.

I’ve also seen some anti-meat types with no leather in their possession or on their person. Again, you’re at war with basic biology (the large intestine is indeed evolved for meat digestion), but at least you’re consistent.

Note that I have never, ever seen a consistent anti-globalization activist. Almost all have some foreign product on them. Remember, fair trade is still trade.

The quote by Emerson is usually shortened to “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” but the full quote is, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

It is not foolish to ask environmental activists not to drive SUVs or anti-globalization activists to buy only local products or radical vegetarians not to kill any animals ever.

Bravo those that manage that level of consistency. I may not agree, but at least you mean what you say.

I’ve been watching Joss Whedon’s (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) short-lived science fiction Western Firefly, thanks to Corey. First of all, I’m not sure why I didn’t “get it” when I first tried watching it. Well, maybe I am sure:

1. I wasn’t a Buffy fan yet, so I didn’t know Joss Whedon from a hole in the ground. Therefore, I had little trust in a “Sci-Fi Western” coming from Fox. What can I say? After Berman et. al. running Star Trek into a deep dank hole in the ground, I’m a cynical bastard. And it takes trust to give a new show time.
2. And Firefly really needed time, as some early episodes were kind of slow (I saw “Bushwhacked” initially, then saw the pilot later on).
3. Of course, the song was just a trifle corny. I will get vehement disagreement on this point, but I think that could have been solved by doing a cool instrumental version for the opening credits and doing the vocal version on the end credits–at least for season 1.
4. The time it was on was terrible, especially since I had a girlfriend at the time and was out during the regular time.
5. Sci-Fi Western–it’s a dangerous concept, because it requires somebody skilled at worldbuilding to bring it off. See point 1.

All that being said, get it on DVD and see the upcoming movie version. Especially on DVD, you can give it more time without getting bored at the commercials.

All that is a warm-up to the topic it got me thinking about: legalized prostitution.

Huh?

In the show, the crew of Serenity have a “Companion” on board, who is something like a geisha in Japan: much more than just a prostitute, though she is that as well. She has high status in society and commands respect from most of the hoi polloi, but at the same time the captain of the ship (who has a thing for her he won’t admit to, and she has a thing for him she won’t admit to, wackiness ensues) will use the word “whore” casually to level the social playing field, particularly when he’s feeling jealous.

But the Companion belongs to a guild with strict rules, screens her clients carefully, and is a true escort and social companion–witty, erudite, a great counselor and conversationalist–in addition to a provider of sex. Still, some of her clients inevitably look down on her. Others want to take her away from all that–but she really doesn’t want to leave.

Of course, just as in Japan, there are regular prostitutes in this Westerworld of the future. Some are struggling for respect, others wallow in the disrepute. Some are cast out of the Companion Guild, others are just regular ol’ workin’ girls (and boys, natch).

One of the conflicts set up in the show is the aforementioned romantic tension between the captain and the Companion. When the captain spends the night (his first in a loooooong time) with an ex-Companion friend of the Companion on his ship, the Companion cries out of a feeling of–hurt? jealousy?–but makes a brave face about it and claims a healthy attitude toward sex, free from jealousy. The captain, for his part, resisted initially but gave in, possibly through projection of his desire for the Companion on this ex-Companion.

So that brings to mind a number of thoughts–if you are still reading, click below to see them.

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