Category Archives: Liberty

Thomas Paine: 18th Century Che Guevara

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Founding Fathers, History, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy

My Friday column for October 22 will probably be titled “Thomas Paine: 18th Century Che Guevara.” The column following it, to be published on Friday October the 29th, is “The ‘Moronizing’ Of Modern Culture.”

You’ll have to read the first to appreciate the second, as they are part of a conversation with Dennis O’Keeffe, Professor of Sociology at the University of Buckingham, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, “the UK’s original free-market think-tank, founded in 1955.”

Under discussion is the subject of Professor O’Keeffe’s latest book, “Edmund Burke.”

One of the questions I asked Dennis was “Why is it that one rarely hears Edmund Burke mentioned in American public discourse, yet my countrymen know and love Thomas Paine, who sympathized with the Jacobins and spat venom at Burke (‘the greatest Irishman who ever lived’) for his devastating critique of the blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious ‘Revolution in France’?”

Indeed, although neglected, Edmund Burke’s thinking is central to American—and any other—ordered liberty.

Be sure to read the two columns, which you can follow from Barely a Blog to WND.COM.

I am away at the 3rd annual meeting of the HL Mencken Club. Please join me if you are in the vicinity. The details are HERE.

UPDATED: Economic Indices Ignore ‘Century of the State’

Economy, Free Markets, Individual Rights, Liberty, The State, The West

Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada and Chile have leapfrogged over the United States on the Fraser Institute’s index of economic freedom.

“In this year’s index, Hong Kong retains the highest rating for economic freedom, 9.05 out of 10. The other top 10 nations are: Singapore (8.70), New Zealand (8.27), Switzerland (8.08), Chile (8.03), United
States (7.96), Canada (7.95), Australia (7.90), Mauritius (7.82), and the United Kingdom (7.81).”

Forty-two data points are used to construct a summary index and to measure the degree of economic freedom in five broad areas:
1 Size of Government: Expenditures, Taxes, and Enterprises;
2 Legal Structure and Security of Property Rights;
3 Access to Sound Money;
4 Freedom to Trade Internationally;
5 Regulation of Credit, Labor, and Business.

With some variation, The Heritage/WSJ’s economically freest countries are these:

1- Hong Kong
2- Singapore
3- Australia
4- New Zealand
5- Ireland
6- Switzerland
7- Canada
8- United States
9- Denmark
10- Chile

Lest you forget, these indices provide important but woefully incomplete data. Long ago, Pierre Lemieux, a libertarian Canadian economist (a friend too) explained:

“If ‘economic freedom’ is inseparable from the rest of human liberty in a social context (using one’s property to express dissenting opinions, travel, have sex, grow marijuana, store one’s firearms, raise funds from “public” investors, etc.), the freedom indexes are off the mark.

“This explains why some countries ruled by hard tyrannies (as opposed to the soft, Tocquevillian brand we know in the West), where nobody in his right mind would want live except to make a buck as a privileged foreigner or a member the local nomenklatura, make it to the top of the list. Who would want to live in Hong Kong (ranked 1st of 151 countries in the HF/WSJ index), that is, under one of the worst tyrannies on earth, and so much so for its very efficiency? Who would want to be a peasant under other Asian tyrannies like Singapore (ranked 2nd)?”

“The selective definition of economic freedom also explains why the indexes show growing economic freedom while everybody who lives in the real world must know that the 20th century, rightly described by Mussolini as ‘the century of the state,’ is continuing in the 21st with a vengeance. During the 12 years of the HF/WSJ index, economic freedom is supposed to have increased. For example, over that period, both the U.S. (now ranked 9th) and Canada (ranked 12th) have improved their scores by 11%, while in both countries (and others) the Surveillance State was growing uncontrollably, including on financial markets. In the U.S., so many business executives are going to jail that perhaps repression will have to be outsourced to China.”

“Thus, the ‘economic freedom’ that is being measured is a rather special animal: it is the freedom to do what is narrowly defined as freedom in the statistics underlying the index. In practice, the freedom indexes encompass some general conditions for economic freedom (like a stable currency, or narrowly defined ‘property rights’), specific government restrictions or controls (on foreign investment, for example), and consequences of state intervention (the informal economy or corruption). And, of course, the weights assigned to the components of the indexes are arbitrary.”

“I am not saying that such indexes are totally useless. They do regroup variables that are correlated with GDP per capita and its growth, but keep in mind that GDP is a very unreliable construct that reveals basically nothing about the general welfare, and is based on arbitrary value judgments (this is pretty standard welfare economics: see my upcoming article in The Independent Review). The indexes may correlate with the difficulties the businessman will have with local bureaucracies. They may even indicate opportunities for investors to make money in limited contexts, assuming the information has not already been incorporated in prices. The HF/WSJ publication even contains some useful country summaries and international statistics.”

“But the freedom indexes have little to do with ‘economic freedom’ as we use the term in politics, economics and philosophy.”

UPDATE (Oct. 17): Interestingly, John Stossel has addressed Myron’s question:

“This evening on Eric Bolling’s show, Follow the Money, when I argued that economic freedom brings prosperity, lefty lawyer Ron Kuby said I was ‘full of it’ because the freest countries are not at the top of a list of the world’s richest countries:

1- Monaco
2- Liechtenstein
3- Norway
4- Luxembourg
5- Channel Islands
6- Qatar
7- Bermuda

But this is deceptive nonsense, like so much of what lefty lawyers say. It’s no surprise that small oil-rich nations, tax havens, and countries with old wealth have the highest per capita income. But the freest counties are all near the top of the list. Here’s Heritage’s list of the least economically free countries:

172- Democratic Republic of Congo
173- Libya
174- Venezuela
175- Burma
176- Eritrea
177- Cuba
178- Zimbabwe
179- North Korea

Do you want to live in any of those counties? I sure don’t.”

UPDATE II: Megyn Kelly’s Mesmerism

Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Media, Regulation

Dr. Adam Dorin, president of the Tea Party Doctors, was on with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly to expose the American Medical Association (with its “white-coat representation at the White House”), for selling out America’s doctors to her statists.

Dr. Dorin made some invaluable points about healthscare, such as that the AMA represents at best 17 percent of practicing physicians; that it has an “exclusive [copyrighted] coding deal with the US government,” compelling all doctors to bill in a certain way; that most doctors do not favor this legislation, and that, by legislative fiat, ObamaCare “elevates non-physicians (those big fat, nurses and their assistants we all dread) and other auxiliary staff, to perform the role traditionally performed by physicians. The addition of 30 millions new free loaders, moreover, will necessitate the importation of Third World, non-American trained doctors.

Now Kelly is a sharp lady, head-and-shoulders above your regular Foxette (and isn’t that a gorgeous blue dress she is wearing? Classic.). But she disappointed this time, taking a sudden turn away from the fact-packed, rational discourse of Dorin, to impugn The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons which publishes his op-eds (they once published one or two of mine, as well).

Apparently the AAPS published a piece about Obama’s oratory—which certainly has a fuzzy, hypnotic quality—having induced in voters an hypnotic state. Jumping from that factual observation to the conclusion that Americans were more somnambulist than normal when they elected BHO is nonsensical. It was my impression, however, that Kelly was mocking the former observation rather than the latter conclusion.

Either way, if this article was of interest to Kelly, she ought to have devoted a seperate segment to it, rather than taint Dorin’s perfectly straightforward position by implying he kept dubious company. The Left is praising Kelly. They are wrong. Guilt by association is an error of logic when deployed to refute an argument.

The AAPS is an avowedly pro-liberty organization, whose representatives have appeared on Fox News. Jane Orient, Executive Director of the AAPS, has done an immense amount of good for free medicine in this country.

UPDATE I (Sept. 12): My plucky physician, who had recently gone solo, has just informed me she is giving up her independence to join a group. Managing the business side of the practice had become too daunting, and will become even more so as Obama-Care regulations kick in.

I anticipate notice, any day, from my insurance, informing us of “changes” pursuant to Obama Care. Once the insurance providers and the swarms of attorneys they employ go over the Bill, they are bound to find ways to shove the insured into the government health care gulag.

UPDATE II (Sept. 13): Dr. Orient has responded to Ms. Kelly, and provided a hyperlink at the AAPS to this Barely A Blog post.

UPDATE II: Megyn Kelly's Mesmerism

Barack Obama, Conspiracy, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Media, Regulation

Dr. Adam Dorin, president of the Tea Party Doctors, was on with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly to expose the American Medical Association (with its “white-coat representation at the White House”), for selling out America’s doctors to her statists.

Dr. Dorin made some invaluable points about healthscare, such as that the AMA represents at best 17 percent of practicing physicians; that it has an “exclusive [copyrighted] coding deal with the US government,” compelling all doctors to bill in a certain way; that most doctors do not favor this legislation, and that, by legislative fiat, ObamaCare “elevates non-physicians (those big fat, nurses and their assistants we all dread) and other auxiliary staff, to perform the role traditionally performed by physicians. The addition of 30 millions new free loaders, moreover, will necessitate the importation of Third World, non-American trained doctors.

Now Kelly is a sharp lady, head-and-shoulders above your regular Foxette (and isn’t that a gorgeous blue dress she is wearing? Classic.). But she disappointed this time, taking a sudden turn away from the fact-packed, rational discourse of Dorin, to impugn The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons which publishes his op-eds (they once published one or two of mine, as well).

Apparently the AAPS published a piece about Obama’s oratory—which certainly has a fuzzy, hypnotic quality—having induced in voters an hypnotic state. Jumping from that factual observation to the conclusion that Americans were more somnambulist than normal when they elected BHO is nonsensical. It was my impression, however, that Kelly was mocking the former observation rather than the latter conclusion.

Either way, if this article was of interest to Kelly, she ought to have devoted a seperate segment to it, rather than taint Dorin’s perfectly straightforward position by implying he kept dubious company. The Left is praising Kelly. They are wrong. Guilt by association is an error of logic when deployed to refute an argument.

The AAPS is an avowedly pro-liberty organization, whose representatives have appeared on Fox News. Jane Orient, Executive Director of the AAPS, has done an immense amount of good for free medicine in this country.

UPDATE I (Sept. 12): My plucky physician, who had recently gone solo, has just informed me she is giving up her independence to join a group. Managing the business side of the practice had become too daunting, and will become even more so as Obama-Care regulations kick in.

I anticipate notice, any day, from my insurance, informing us of “changes” pursuant to Obama Care. Once the insurance providers and the swarms of attorneys they employ go over the Bill, they are bound to find ways to shove the insured into the government health care gulag.

UPDATE II (Sept. 13): Dr. Orient has responded to Ms. Kelly, and provided a hyperlink at the AAPS to this Barely A Blog post.