A Quote I Like

"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental or spiritual." -- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.

George Washington and Zimbabwe

Reading on Independence Day the increasingly sad events from Zimbabwe, makes me, as an American, realize how lucky we are that our first president and leader of the revolution was named George Washington. Most revolutions start out with stirring rhetoric about liberty and freedom but turn into bloody caricatures.

The French Revolution started out with "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" which were followed by the Terror and increasingly autocratic government, until finishing up with Napoleon.

The Russian Revolution began with calls for parliamentary government and ended up with the Gulag and the Holodomor.

The Chinese Revolution began with call for land, but ended with the famine and the Cultural Revolution.

Our revolution avoided most of those horrors. True, many Tories lost their land and left for Canada, but we avoided the horrors that accompanied other earth shattering revolutions. There were no mass executions. A big reason for that lies in the character of George Washington. He could have grabbed for absolute power. He did no. Rather, after doing his duty, he laid down the honors of office and retired to his plow -- a modern day Cincinnatus. (When told Washington would return to his farm after the Revolution, George III remarked that if Washington did "he will be the greatest man in the world).

Looking at the sad spectacle of Robert Mugabe from afar, you wonder what George Washington would have done. Like Washington, Mugabe was a rebel general who did not so much win a war, but kept an army in the field long enough not to lose it. When he finally forced a settlement, he was the natural man to lead the country. But he could not give up power. And now his thirst for power has so poisoned his country that even if he manages to stay on, you have to wonder, why? There is nothing left of an economy that was once the breadbasket of Africa.

And one should compare Mugabe not just with Washington but with Nelson Mandela. Mandela is a true hero of human liberty. Yet unlike Mugabe, he did not turn South Africa into a one party state. And most important of all, Mandela did not view power as his personal birthright, but rather something entrusted him by the people of his country. And when his term ended, he gladly took that power, and handed it off.

If only Mugabe had half the character of Washington or Mandela.

A Danish Experiment in Self Government -- Part I

When in Denmark, I somewhat surprised our hosts by saying that the first thing I wanted to see was "Freetown Christiania".

The town is a small self governing enclave in Copenhagen. The site of the town is in what was once the defensive fortifications of the city. The forts were obsolete, but the military continued to use the barracks until 1972, when the shut the base down. Soon, some hippies moved in and established their own community.

The hippie spirit still survives!

The old buildings were occupied and redecorated to reflect the free spirit of the new residents. No cars are allowed in the town, so people get around primarily by bicycle. Many bicycles are manufactured and/or modified in the town itself (one of the major business was a bicycle company). The bicycles are custom manufactured to have cargo spaces or turned into tricycles that can carry extra people or goods. The bicycles are very popular and you see them all around Copenhagen.

As you would expect in such an enclave, there were an abundance of artists and other creative types, and their work was very much in evidence.

Seven Cubans Give Up on Free Health Care

Call Michael Moore! Seven members of the Cuban U-23 soccer team, in the US for Olympic qualifying, have surprisingly turned their back on the Socialist Paradise and defected. Due to a red card in their first game against the US, they ended up fielding 10 players for their game tonight against Honduras, losing only 2-0.

Back during the World Baseball Classic a few years ago, there was an issue if the Treasury Department and ICE would give visas to the Cuban team. A bunch of people felt that they should be denied visas. The issue was whether allowing the Cubans in gave legitimacy to the Cuban regime.

My theory is you should give the visas for the simple reason that someone will defect. And this has to be an embarrassment to the Cuban government. Athletes are the elite in Cuba. If they run out on the regime, what does that say to the world about the regime?

Viva Fidel!

Survivor: Cuba

The Cuban version of "Survivor" is the only one where the person NOT voted off the island loses.

Our Cuban policy has kept Castro in power. Unlike Eastern Europe, Cuba is far away from the Soviet Union. So unlike the Eastern communists, he was not kept in power with the threat of Soviet invasion. Rather, he kept himself in power by beggaring his nation. By making people turn their thoughts away from liberty and towards bare survival, he protected the regime. (Cuba in 1959 was not a poverty stricken island -- it was actually fairly prosperous. The Cuban Revolution was driven largely by the fact that the Cuban middle class was tired of playing Batista's tune).

The embargo made Castro's job easier and gave him an excuse for everything.

On top of that, the closeness of the US gave him an escape value. So people who wanted a better life for themselves jumped into inner tubes and headed north.

I am not sure where to go next. Obviously, in an election year, not much will happen. But going forward, progress can be made. Raul Castro needs to be given a face saving out. At the very least, he needs to be rewarded if he releases some political prisoners and loosens restrictions on the media. A full blown liberal democracy may take some more time, but maybe not all that much. With the exception of Haiti, pretty much all of Latin America is democratic these days. Granted, Venezuela is heading in the opposite direction, but it is Cuba which is bucking the regional and cultural trends.

Well, to Cuba Libre!

Castro’s retirement

Fidel Castro "retired" as president of Cuba today. He stayed in power 49 years – that is easy when you do not have to worry about majority votes or term limits and the Constitution is what you say it is. Hearing the name Castro always reminds me of John Derbyshire's gloss on a George Orwell quote -- "Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy."

One side note, although Orwell is always quoted as "Jackboots", in actuality, he only mentioned boots. Not really that important, unless you are concerned about precision.

Chavez Loses

I guess the people of Venezuela did not quite want socialism after all, at least not the one man socialism that Chavez was offering.

Why is it every time I see this guy on t.v., I think about this?

I believe that many people frankly LIKE totalitarianism. Why? Because it means that you are never personally responsible for anything. Big Brother watches you. He will deliver everything good to you and if you get something bad, well, it is not your fault.

Oil is pushing $100 a barrel and there are reports of food shortages in Venezuela. That is all you need to know about socialism.

Chavez's next speech:

From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish.
Silence!

In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check.

Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now... 16 years old!

Who supports jihad?

Andrew Sullivan notes that a recent study shows that among Arabs, the richer you are, the more likely you are to support jihad.

One could probably spin these numbers lots of ways. But there is much anecdotal evidence that the usual line that "poverty breeds terrorism" is not really true. Bin Laden is [was?] a billionaire and we do not see much terrorism in Sub Saharan Africa.

Sullivan believes the problem is religious ideology. While I have little doubt that is part of the problem, I believe the larger part of the problem is simply the authoritarian nature of those governments. In Western societies, those who are wealthier or better educated are more influential politically. They can give money, host talk shows lobbing soft ball questions toward favored candidates, establish think tanks and run for office. (As an aside, I think that is one of the reasons Hollywood is so far left of the rest of the country -- they have money and glamor but generally are locked out of political influence.)

But if you are a wealthy or educated Saudi you probably find yourself locked out of government. There is no parliament to run for and any think tank will be censored. So you turn to religion and jihadism.

If this sounds far fetched, think back to European history. The Glorious Revolution, while portrayed as a religious and liberal revolution, was in any ways the revolt of the "squirarchy" who felt left out of the governing class by an increasingly authoritarian James II. The French Revolution began as an attempt of the urban middle classes and wealthy to take control of the French government (and it rapidly spun out of control). Even our own revolution was the result of the local elites wanting to control the colonies' destiny, not some far distant parliament.

I know most Americans have given up on democracy as a panacea for the problems of the Middle East (Sullivan seems to), but liberalization of the political structures in the Arab world is needed to stop jihadism. If wealthy and educated Arabs are in parliament or able to have influence in civil society, then maybe they will be less inclined to support bomb throwers.

What Libertarians Want

There has always been a tension within the conservative movement between libertarians and traditional (and now social) conservatives. Libertarians tend to be against government "interference" in personal affairs, while conservatives are willing to allow government intervention to protect societal values. This tension has been around since the early days of the modern conservative movement, and was played out initially with in the pages of "National Review". This tension continues today, as noted on the pages of Instapundit and Classical Values.

I think the problem is one of perception. I generally worry about the same things that social and traditional conservatives worry about. I do worry that our culture is degrading. While I self describe myself as a libertarian, I am also Catholic. I have one wife and view that as a permanent arrangement (one woman in my life is tough enough, why do some people want more?). Other than the glass of wine with dinner, I am not running around trying to score substances. I avoid most t.v. as it is a sewer.

But I believe that much of the cause is the increased role of government in our lives. Increasing government's role will exacerbate, not solve the problem. When people began to see government as the be all and end all, personal responsibility disappears. And if you try and regulate your way to virtue, you send up with hypocrisy and depravity.

The Call of the Entrepreneur

I went to see the Chicago Premier tonight of the Acton Institutes's film The Call of the Entrepreneur. The film looked at the utility of entrepreneurship to society in the guise of three people, a compost farmer in Michigan, a merchant banker in New York, and a media mogul in Hong Kong.

To often, people view the economy as a zero sum game. Yet, that is far from true. Levittown made the Levitts wealthy, but did it really pauperize anyone? It gave people like my grandfather jobs building the houses, and created new homes for people needing homes. Wealth was not transferred, it was created from basic materials with labor, risk and a desire of others to buy. No one was impoverished by building Levittown, rather people were enriched to varying degrees.

After the film, the producer had a question and answer session. When all that is said and done, what is the real difference between rich and poor societies. It is not race or religion but rule of law. In countries with rule of law, people are able to take risks. If there is not rule of law, if private property is not respected, society becomes impoverished.

Keeping with the beliefs of the Acton Institute, the film has a strong undercurrent that faith and economic liberty need not be in opposition, but rather entrepreneurship is really something from God.

I highly recommend the film.

Is Catholcism opposed to Libertarianism?

Robert George, who I knew well in my Washington days, has an interesting blog called "Ragged Thots". I check it every night. One of comments asks if Catholics can truly be libertarians.

I agree that it is difficult on its face. Catholicism requires that you believe in the Pope's authority and the Magisterium of the Church. And the social doctrine of the Church can be described as "Christian socialist." Libertarianism has as its base the belief that all humans themselves are sovereign and today at least if anti-socialist (I say today, because many protolibertarians, such as Lysander Spooner, also influenced socialism).

In addition, libertarianism grew out of classical liberalism, which was strongly anti-clerical. The Church returned the favor, rejecting "liberalism".

But Catholicism, does at its base believe that human beings are free. Paragraph 1731 of the Catechism says that:

Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

Ultimately, the decision to do good therefore must be with the individual. If virtue is enforced, can someone truly be virtuous? These are issues I hope to further explore.

A quote I really like

"If there were just one gift you could choose, but nothing barred, what would it be? We wish you then your own wish; you name it. Ours is liberty, now and forever." -- Isabel Paterson.