Michael Gerson in the Washington Post, “For the GOP, a risky wave to ride or turn back”

In America, the ideology of libertarianism is itself a scandal. It involves not only a retreat from Obamaism but a retreat from the most basic social commitments to the weak, the elderly and the disadvantaged, along with a withdrawal from American global commitments.

Libertarianism has a rigorous ideological coldness at its core. Voters are alienated when that core is exposed.

Our response in today’s Washington Post:

Michael Gerson ["The GOP rides a risky wave," op-ed, July 9] described libertarianism as “a scandal” because it “involves . . . a retreat from the most basic social commitments to the weak, the elderly and the disadvantaged.”

That is, he charged libertarians with a “retreat” from a welfare-state philosophy that is at odds with America’s heritage and with basic principles of limited government. Moreover, he charged libertarians with wanting to change policies that have not served the weak and the disadvantaged well because they encourage weakness and long-term dependence.

Libertarians warn that to continue down the current road leads to the Greek crisis, in which the cruelty of making commitments that can’t be kept is revealed.

Gerson also charged libertarianism with “rigorous ideological coldness.” He considers reason, arithmetic and a realistic assessment of what those “commitments” really mean to be “cold.” That says more about him than about libertarianism.

It might be kinder and gentler to try the Founders’ vision, the libertarian vision, of a limited state that provides a framework in which we can all enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Tom G. Palmer and David Boaz

The Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala, which is a real world leader in online education and media, has just released the full Hayek interviews organized by Armen Alchian of UCLA after Hayek’s Nobel Prize in 1974. The interviews are searchable and you can quickly and easily jump from place to place. Congratulations to UFM for this achievement. (And I’m pleased that I had recommended for an academic internship at UFM this last year one of the people who worked on it, Alex Weller of Penn State.)

My opening remarks (limited to no more than 5 minutes!) on the case against the state at FreedomFest: The Case for Ordered Liberty Without States

Just got in to my hotel in Tokyo. Very exhausted after the FreedomFest and then the travel!

From America’s Finest News Source:

WASHINGTON, DC—A Gallup/Harris Interactive poll released Monday indicates that nearly nine out of 10 Americans are “tired of having a country.”

According to study organizer David Griffith, poll respondents were surprisingly uniform in their opinion that the nation is too much of a hassle.

“I already belong to a health club, a church, and the Kiwanis Club,” Tammy Golden of Los Angeles wrote. “I’m a member of the Von’s Grocery Super Savers, which gets me a discount on certain groceries. These are all well-managed organizations with real benefits. None of them send me a confusing bill once a year and make me work it out myself, then throw me in jail if I get it wrong.”

HT Larry White, via HT to Matt Zwolinski

The libertarian student movement is growing! The ELSS will be held August 25-28 in Brussels and will bring together serious libertarian student-organizers from around Europe for workshops, strategy sessions, and lots of opportunities to share experiences, learn skills, and advance a Europe of liberty.

www.eurolibstudents.com

Over 200 former Cato interns (I think the number was 220) converged on the Cato Institute’s headquarters from all over the country (and some from Latin America, Europe, and Asia) to take part in the first reunion of Cato Institute interns. David Boaz gave an inspiring call to arms Friday evening in Cato’s winter garden, followed by a trek of attendees to a local watering hole to reminisce. Former interns from the 1980s, 1990s, and the 2000s were there, and I was there from the “Class of ’78.” I gave the opening remarks at the meeting in the F. A. Hayek Auditorium the next morning (after working until 2:20 am on projects, and getting up at 7:00 to write my remarks; old college habits never die). My remarks follow:

Greetings from the oldest former intern here

Campus Progress on “Behind the New Student Libertarian Movement”

I’m very pleased to be associated with the motivated and serious (yet fun loving!) young folks at Students for Liberty. (By the way, they’re sponsoring a great book with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation on The Economics of Freedom: What Your Professors Won’t Tell You, which includes an essay contest with….real money prizes.

***

The trip to Istanbul and Ankara was very inspiring for me. I had the chance to meet many leaders of the classical liberal movement in Turkey and to learn what they’re doing to promote freedom in their country and in the region.

Then it was up at 2:45 am to get my flight from Ankara to Istanbul, to connect with a flight to Sofia. I had an interview yesterday with Kapital, a leading business magazine, and then had dinner with old friends from the Access to Information Programme and the Institute for Market Economics. I just finished a quite useful meeting with the staff of the Institute for Market Economics here in Sofia; what an impressive organization, which produces both high quality original studies and programs, such as EasiBulgaria, that educate thoughtful Bulgarians about the principles of liberty. They’re launching a new library (watch this space) and have a number of exciting projects underway. The IME Student Club is sponsoring my lecture this afternoon on the financial crisis at Sofia University. Tomorrow I’ll take part in a preliminar opening of the new library and present my book Realizing Freedom, which I also presented in Ankara at the Association for Liberal Thinking library.

IME recently translated my essay on “Myths of Individualism” into Bulgarian: “Митове за индивидуализма“.

***In case you would like to play the Bulgarian national anthem in the background as you read….

The Afghanistan Economic and Legal Studies Organization with which I work has just published their first book, a Dari edition of Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity, by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, and Dwight Lee.

I just stumbled upon Gary Johnson’s website, via his Facebook page. The updates are pretty good.

If you’re a student and would like to understand better just what is happening today, as government expands in all directions, and what you can do about it, apply for a Bastiat Scholarship to attend Cato University 2010.

Now I spent a lot of time reading Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and many scholastic thinkers, and I’ve learned a lot from them, but it’s remarkable to hear someone quote from them as if there were no, um, advances in knowledge about psychology, sexuality, or other matters over the past 800 years or so. (“The only intelligible end of the reproductive organ is reproduction, and insofar as the organ is utilized toward that end, it is a rational human act, a free act, an act of the free will, the rational appetite. Insofar as the sexual organ is utilized for instrumental reasons, it’s not an intelligible act, but rather a purely animalistic act.” Um, right. The part on the extraction of the intelligible species would have gotten an “A” in a history of philosophy class, or at least a “B,” but the study of perception and thought has come a long way since St. Thomas’s wonderful “On the Unity of the Intellect Against the Averroists.”)

For standing up against bigotry: “SFL Causes CPAC Controversy” and “SFL Controversy Video”

ISFLC Introduction Video from Students For Liberty on Vimeo.

I have just received the PDF of the Dari (the Persian spoken in Afghanistan) version of the book Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity, by the outstanding economic educators James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, and Dwight Lee. The new think tank, the Afghanistan Economic and Legal Studies Organization, will also publish in Dari Frédéric Bastiat’s The Law and “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen,” David Boaz’s Libertarianism: A Primer, and other books. Translations into Pashto are underway. I was in Afghanistan in June and in December and I am very, very happy to be associated with such outstanding libertarians.

I’m also pleased to say that just north of Afghanistan, the Tajikistan Free Market Centre has been started, is honing its business plan, and is preparing to unveil their website and their first projects. (That thanks to the great work of the Central Asian Free Market Institute, headquartered in Bishkek, which provided assistance to their Tajik neighbors after the Fall Free Market School in Issyk Kul. I lectured at the school, and gave a series of lectures in Tajikistan, in Dushanbe and Khudjand, in February of last year.)

Anyone who’d like to provide financial support for these brave people is welcome to contact me.

NOTE: If you click on the link for the Central Asian Free Market Institute, you can get their very impressive 2009 report, in either English or Russian. Please note that the group was formally started in April of last year and had a really brilliant first (partial) year. I’ve gotten several donations for CAFMI already today, so if you’re interested, you won’t be alone. (I’ll bundle them and send them, with no “fee” or “charge” for wiring the money. A dollar donated to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation for CAFMI will be a dollar in their account or spent on projects, equipment, and the like that they designate.) This is a very impressive group of young libertarians and they’re doing a lot to promote freedom in a region that has known very little of it.

Thomas Walls has created a special page on Mercy Corps for friends of liberty to donate to help the people of Haiti: Van Libète | Vent de Liberté. I’m an enthusiastic donor. Thank you, Thomas!

David Boaz has an interesting post at Cato@Liberty: “Ayn Rand Is In“

The Central Asian Free Market Institute, which was founded in April of 2009, has released its 2009 Accomplishments, in Russian and in English. Financial support is much appreciated! (They are working hard to spread the ideas and policies of liberty in Central Asia, and recently helped to estalish an affiliate, the Tajik Free Market Center, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. I am hoping to work with them and the recently-established [December 10, 2009] Afganistan Economic and Legal Studies Organization to organize jointly libertarian schools in Tajik and Dari next year.)

I just remembered, after Tyler Cowen’s very generous comments on my book Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice that I had criticized his views in this podcast: ““The Nature of Liberty: A Response to Tyler Cowen,” Cato Institute Podcast, March 22, 2007

NOTE: The podcast in which Tyler made his remarks is here, and the essay in Cato Unbound is here.

P.S. I got several (three) abusive emails (with the usual obsessive sexual references: you can find the type on the Mises.org blogs) from the followers of a certain cult expressing faux surprise and mockery because I would disagree on something with a person who said nice things about my book. It’s a sign of the dogmatic and religious mentality that disagreement is seen as a form of personal animosity. In my view, reasoned disagreement can be one of the fruits of friendship.

A surprisingly interesting critique of the “Pledge of Allegiance” (to a flag…ugh!) from Michael Lind: “The Pledge of Allegiance is un-American: Shouldn’t the government pledge allegiance to the people rather than the other way around?”