Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War Against Al Qaeda, by a special team from The Cato Institute directed by Christopher Preble.#

This book discusses the problems with the war and occupation of Iraq and discuss why and how the United States can get out as soon as possible. Must of it will be familiar to someone who has paid a great deal of attention to this from the beginning. But it is a great summary and very detailed for one who may be less familiar.#

The book is very clear about its recommendation: Leave Iraq as soon as possible. Its assumptions are also clear.#

The other policy recommendations contained in this report are based on the presumption that American national security policy should seek to preserve American security, not remake other societies. The authors further presume that the leading threat to American security in Al Qaeda and its affiliated terrorist organizations that have demonstrated the capability and the intent to cause harm to American citizens and American interests, both here in the United States and abroad. The sole guiding criterion, therefore, for judging the success or failure of American policy in postwar Iraq is the relationship between the new government in Iraq and the anti-American terrorist organizations dedicated to our destruction. If the new government in Iraq welcomes Al Qaeda into its country, if the new government provides material support to Al Qaeda cells both in Iraq and abroad, if the new government seeks to obtain WMD, then our policies in Iraq will have failed. By contrast, if the new government of Iraq prevents Al Qaeda from operation within its borders; if the new government cooperates with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies in identifying, tracking, and, where possible, eliminating Al Qaeda; if its pledges to develop and maintain military forces solely for the purpose of defending itself from threats, then our policy with respect to post-Saddam Iraq will have been a success. [p. 8-9]

Eat The Rich: A Treatise on Economics, by P. J. O'Rourke, is an every-man discussion of economics and libertarianism. Note, that I read the Abridged Student Edition.#

If you are interested in basic libertarian ideas and might benefit from humour about it, I can recommend it. Here's a sample:#

As a foundation for a political system, fairness may be no virtue at all. The Old Testament is clear on this point. The Bible might seem an odd place to be doing economic research, especially by someone who goes to church about once a year, and only then because that's when my wife says the Easter Bunny comes. However, I have been thinking--in socioeconomic terms--about the Tenth Commandment.

The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law: Though shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, etc. Fair enough. But then there's the Tenth Commandment: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's."

Here are God's basic rules about how we should live, a very brief lift of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts, and right at the end is, "Don't envy your buddy's cow."

What is that doing in there? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose, as one of them, jealousy about the livestock next door? And yet, think about how important to the well-being of a community this Commandment is. If you want a donkey, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don't bitch about what the people across the street have. Go get your own.

The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000--to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell. [p. 45]

It's a funny book that may be helpful as a gateway drug.#

Selected Essays in Political Economy, by Frédéric Bastiat, is a collection of the writings of this 19th century free trade activist from France.#

What is Seen and What is not Seen#

A defense of free trade and the center piece of Bastiat's work. It explains how most fallacies become clear when on looks beyond the initial effects to the consequences--the things that are not seen.#

The Law#

A discussion on the purpose of the state and a defense of the ideal of limited government that establishes "islands of power in a sea of rights."#

Property and Law#

Why the two imply one another, how law is essential to the protection of property and private property essential to keeping a government contained.#

Justice and Fraternity#

A discussion on the difference between a government that ensures justice and one that ensures fraternity, unity, cooperation, or altruism.#

Specifically, he writes about whether a morality imposed by the State is truly moral:

Sacrifice imposed on some on behalf of others, by the operation of the tax laws, evidently loses the character of fraternity. Who, then, deserves credit for it? Is it the legislator? It costs him nothing but the effort of casting his ballot. Is it the tax collector? He obeys out of fear of being removed from office. Is it the taxpayer? He pays reluctantly. Who, then, deserves the credit that self-sacrifice implies? Where is its morality to be found? [p. 134]

And again:

This is the sum and substance of our quarrel with the socialists. Both they and we desire humanity. They seek it in the innumerable schemes that they want the law to impose on men; we find it in the nature of men and things. [p. 138]

The State#

More discussion of the nature of the State.#

Property and Plunder#

More discussion on the essential nature of property for justice.#

Protectionism and Communism#

Why the left is the early stage of the right.#

Academic Degrees and Socialism#

On separation of State and Education. Also on the immorality of the ancients, the Romans and Greeks.#

Declaration of War Against the Professors of Political Economy.#

Speech on the Suppression of Industrial Combinations#

To the Democrats: Reflections on the Amendment of M. Mortimer-Ternaux#

The Balance of Trade#

Many of Bastiat's arguments are very similar to Ayn Rand's and other libertarian influences, but one must remember that we wrote over a century before these authors. The battle for liberty has been long and often must review many steps.#

From Magna Carta to the Constitution: Documents in the Struggle for Liberty, edited by David L. Brooks, is an interesting collection of documents.#

It contains:#

1. Magna Carta (1215)
2. The Mayflower Compact (1620)
3. The Petition of Right (1628)
4. An Agreement of the Free People of England (1649)
5. The Bill of Rights (1689)
6. Declarations of the Stamp Act Congress (1765)
7. Declaration of the First Continental Congress (1774)
8. The Declaration of Independence (1776)
9. Articles of Confederation (1778)
10. Constitution of the United States (1787)

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal is a collection of essays about capitalism, primarily from Ayn Rand with contributions from Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen.#

For the most part is predictable, but persuasive.#

What Is Capitalism?#

Ayn Rand refers to a encyclopaedia entry on socialism and why "investing in people" is the best position for a government.#

The collectivization of Soviet agriculture was achieved by means of a government-planned famine--planned and carried out deliberately to force peasants into collective farms; Soviet Russia's enemies claim that fifteen million peasants died in that famine; the Soviet government admits the death of seven million.

At the end of World War II, Soviet Russia's enemies claimed that thirty million people were doing forced labor in Soviet concentration camps (and were dying of planned malnutrition, human lives being cheaper than food); Soviet Russia's apologists admit to the figure of twelve million people.

This is what the Encyclopaedia Britannica refers to as "investment in people."

In a culture where such a statement is made with intellectual impunity and with an aura of moral righteousness, the guiltiest men are not the collectivists; the guiltiest men are those who, lacking the courage to challenge mysticism or altruism, attempt to bypass the issues of reason and morality and to defend the only ration and moral system in mankind's history--capitalism--on any grounds other than rational and moral. [p. 34]

America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business#

The name says the whole of it.#

The Property Status of Airwaves#

Ayn Rand thinks this "public property" rests on a fallacy.#

There is no essential difference between a broadcast and a concert: the former merely transmits sounds over a longer distance and requires more complex technical equipment. No one would venture to claim that a pianist may own his fingers and his piano, but the space inside the concert hall--through which the sound waves he produces travel--is "public property" and, therefore, he has no right to give a concert without a license from the government. Yet this is the absurdity foisted on our broadcasting industry. [p. 122]

The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus#

What early 20th century party wrote this platform?#

We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunities for employment and earning a living.

The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: ... an end to the power the financial interests.

We demand profit sharing in big business.

We demand a broad extension of care for the aged.

We demand ... the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of the national, state, and municipal governments.

In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education. ... We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents. ...

The government must undertake the improvement of public health--by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor... by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth.

[We] combat the ... materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of The Common Good Before the Individual Good. [p. 219-220]

Other Notes#

I find it very interesting that one of Alan Greenspan's articles is about what is wrong with the Federal Reserve System. What happened there?#