I’ve been extremely busy lately (meaning work until 4 am frequently, plus travel) and have been behind on some writing projects, but I am really, really pleased that I brought along on my trip to China James C. Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed. It’s a remarkably interesting treatment (I’m only a bit more than 100 pages into it at present, so I’ve got more stimulating reading ahead of me) of the nature of “ungoverned” regions of the world, with a focus on various hill peoples of Asia. To put it in a nutshell, he argues that the traditional view of such ungoverned people is that they are holdovers from previous civilizations, or representatives of how people lived before states, etc., etc. Scott looks at them in a very different way: they live in ways that have enabled them to elude capture or domination by the state, and those ways of life (including agriculture, settlement patterns, kinship systems, religion, etc.) have been deeply influenced by the proximity of predatory states. They have, in effect, evolved in ways that elude being ruled by states. When you think about it for a few minutes, it certainly seems a more fruitful way of understanding such peoples and their ways of life than the dominant mode. And it should tell us something, as well, about the likely success of the Pakistani government in extending its writ throughout the Northwest Frontier Province or of the Afghan government extending its writ from border to border of the territory of Afghanistan. (That said, Scott’s thesis should not be confused with fantasies or romantic notions about how the most wonderful thing imaginable is to live without a state; some — not all — forms of statelessness, such as those that have emerged among groups that have avoided being captured by states, are remarkably brutal and savage, and there are some stateless populations [think contemporary southern Somalia] who are fare worse off by most criteria, including freedom, than people who live under relatively limited government.)

Freedom Dinner 2009 – Video from Atlas Global Initiative on Vimeo.

My colleague Austin Petersen (with some input from me) did a lot of work to produce this. (Note the flag with the bananas on it. Bananas were a symbol of freedom in the East Bloc, where they were almost impossible to obtain. In fact, westerners would sometimes try to throw bananas over such walls, as gifts to the imprisoned populations.)

Still reads well: “Why Socialism Collapsed in Eastern Europe”

(I gave it as a lecture at a Cato University summer seminar on political economy in California during the summer of 1990, after having spent a good bit of 1989 and 1990 in Central and Eastern Europe.)

An excellent piece on how a tyranny crumbled: “Filming a Revolution”

Conny Rakow on her memories of the opening of the Wall.

It’s in German, but this short film the message of this little film should be clear to all.

I have been working with colleagues on some videos and other work on the Fall of the Berlin Wall (to be celebrated November 9 at the Atlas Freedom Dinner), and I remembered I had some old photos, which I rummaged around and found and then scanned. I was in West and East Berlin a few times (and was just in both recently, with a conference on Adam Smith’s moral theory on the east side of where Die Antifaschistische Schutzmauer once stood). So here are a few old shots from my trips in the 1980s:

(You can click them for more legible versions. In order: me [above] expressing my view of communism — from the western side; one of my transit visas from a train trip from Bavaria to West Berlin across the DDR; cross commemorating the murder of Heinz Sokolowski, 48 year old East Berliner killed November 11, 1965, after 7 years of imprisonment, shot when fleeing; me in the early 1980s before the Brandenburger Tor; a shot of a “normal” section of the wall near the Brandenburger Tor; my lunch bill from the Palast der Republik, on Marx-Engels Platz — I had a bottle of something and a trout)

And two shots I just found in another box: one from the winter of 1989 in Central/Eastern Europe (not sure where, but I had bought the coat, which I still have, in Vienna) and one from Prague during the Revolution:

Tom Palmer – “Anarchism, Limited Government & Liberalism: A Modest Case for Sacking the State” from oxford libertarian on Vimeo.

It was a rather informal chat that covered a number of topics in history, sociology, political science, economics, and moral theory. I haven’t had a chance to watch through it, but I had nightmares afterwards that I had misspoken on an important matter, that is, on the absolute incomes of the lowest decile of income in the least economically free and the lowest deciles in the most most economically free. I said, I think, that the latter was something like $17,000, when it should have been more like $7,000 for the most free. That’s a big difference! (Still the lower number is a huge multiple of the incomes of the lowest decile in the least free, which was my point, but misspeaking like that is an embarrassment; I have asked the organizers to check it and post the correction. I will try to check it myself, now that I have some fast internet access.) The stats for the latest report (http://www.freetheworld.com/2009/reports/world/EFW2009_ch1.pdf ) show the percentage of total national income ranges from 2.4 to 2.6 (that is, not much difference) between the least and the most economically free, whereas the average incomes for the lowest decile in the least free countries is $896 and for the most free it’s $9,105.

More at Ben Lewis TV

My friends David Beito and Linda Royster Beito have published an important new book, Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (University of Illinois Press, 2009).

It was just reviewed in the Wall Street Journal: “Demanding Rights, Courting Controversy
A flamboyant civil-rights leader —doctor, orator, activist—finally gets his due,” by Mark Bauerlein. After noting that Howard has received much too little attention in the histories of the civil rights movement (”A flamboyant Second Amendment, ­anti-communist capitalist doesn’t please journalists and historians searching for civil-rights martyrs.”), Bauerlein notes,

“Black Maverick” … makes room for exactly such a figure, and rightly so. That Howard made an important contribution is unquestionable. Three months after the Till murder, he lectured in a ­Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., the guest of ­26-year-old pastor Martin Luther King. He spoke of shootings, the FBI and a ­freedom march on ­Washington, D.C. One woman in the audience remembered years later Howard’s vivid ­description of the Till killing. Her name was Rosa Parks, and four days after Howard spoke she answered a Montgomery bus driver, “No.”

Jason Talley interviewed me recently for his MotorHomeDiaries.com project. It was fun! (I was wearing a bit of Tracht that day.)

Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, by yours truly…at a whopping 34% discount off of the cover price.

The official release date is June 23.

(Note: the Amazon description says “300 pages,” but it ended up at 518. But fear not…that’s for 33 separate essays, plus the introduction.)

NOTE: It was brought to my attention that Laissez Faire Books will also carry this title. I am a big fan and was remiss in not promoting their good work. If you’re in the market for books, you really ought to visit their site.

The most despised of the despised in a thoroughly evil regime. Slaves, treated as objects, overlooked because they were not considered human, who provided military intelligence that led to the overthrow of their masters.

The print story on CNN: “Slave in Jefferson Davis’ home gave Union key secrets“

Robert Higgs: “Instead of stimulus, do nothing – seriously”

(A good example of the wisdom of the Chinese idea of “Wu Wei” — “active inactivity,” aka laissez faire).

Erich Honecker

Berliner Morgenpost: “Verlassene DDR-Wohnung in Leipzig entdeckt”

BBC: “Untouched East Germany flat found”

Ah, for the DDR, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, the German Democratic Republic…I have…such fond memories. Of being followed by secret police when walking through Berlin. Of low quality dreck for sale in dusty stores. Of spending my worthless DDR Marks on the most expensive meal I could find (on Unter den Linden), during which, upon biting into a large stone (not a cherry stone, but a stone) in the mousse, I showed it to the waitress, who noted, “Hmmph.. a stone…how interesting!” and marched off. Of “medicine” for a sore throat that was apparently manufactured for a giraffe and caused me to go so numb I feared I would swallow my tongue. Of cheap shabbiness. Of buildings that had not been painted since the war and still bore the peeling paint and posters from the National Socialists. Good bye, DDR. And good riddance.

(See “Good Bye Lenin!” sometime.)

Hoover the Interventionist, thanks to Ilya Somin:

I’m about 100 pages into Peter Heather’s really gripping book, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History. It’s a great read. I wish I had more time just to sit down and get through to the end. (We kind of know how the story ends….but Heather offers important explanations for why it ended that way.)

In doing some research for my paper on “Classical Liberalism, Morality, and Poverty” I re-read Thomas Babington Macaulay’s brilliant refutation of Tory paternalism, “Southey’s Colloquies on Society.” (If you want to read a definitive smackdown refutation, I recommend this as probably the best I’ve ever read.) I asked my friend Don Boudreaux for his ideas on Macaulay (I know Don’s a great Macaulay fan) and he mentioned that Walter Olson, another old friend, had written a great appreciation of Macaulay. A quick google search and there it was, a tribute both to Macaulay’s genius and to Olson’s exquisite command of the English language: “Confessions of a Macaulay Fan: The great liberal historian appreciated on his bicentenary.” Anyone interested in the work of one of the greatest historians and the greatest champions of liberty who ever lived should start with Wally’s essay. Enjoy!

(Macaulay’s entire The History of England from the Accession of James the Second can be downloaded as a PDF facsimile from Google Books. Or you can buy it here from Amazon.)

Peter Leeson in the New York Times Freakonomics blog on “Democratic Dominoes.”

From AfricanLiberty.org

The New York Times: “Behind Analysts, the Pentagonâ??s Hidden Hand”

â??It was them saying, â??We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,â?? â? Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.