Wolly Palmer on the Computer

Wolly was the anchor of my life and my best friend. The grief is very, very hard to bear and at times overwhelming. I had so much more to learn from her and would gladly have given half of my remaining life so that we could spend it together. Our cat, Tiggy (Antigone) Palmer, is confused and struggling to understand why Wolly is not here. She goes to Wolly’s bed and paws at it and asks where Wolly is. Tiggy is very loving and knows that I am sad and grief stricken and that something is very wrong, and she is trying to console me. (Tiggy was the latest addition to the family and assumed the role of the Forever-Kitten, as Wolly was the Queen and Matriarch of the family. For Wolly, she and I were partners and we had a cat. For Tiggy, we were a family of cats, and she was the baby.)

I am working on an essay on our friendship that I will post later.

Wolly expressing her love by using my forearm as a pillow during a power nap

Wolly on May 22, 2010, with a new possession, which made a good pillow

Wolly (on her heated bed) and Tiggy (next to her favorite scratching perch and toy) getting ready for bed time

Wolly as a Kitten Who Knew She Was -- Is, and Always Will Be -- Loved

I’m in Berlin (Potsdam, actually) for a conference on dealing with the problems involved in measuring freedom and coming up with some measurement system. Last night I did a television interview in Berlin for John Stossel’s show on Fox Business. It will air Thursday at 8 p.m. and 12 midnight, Saturday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., and Sunday at 10 p.m. (all times eastern).

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

Washington Post: “Tyler Cowen’s appetite for ethnic food — and answers about his life”

Tyler is one of the smartest people I know. I’ve known him since he was 15 or 16 and I met him at a Libertarian Scholars Conference, and later traveled up to New Jersey to speak at his high school in opposition to conscription. (His classmates were Daniel Klein and Randall Kroszner.)

One hundred and eleven years ago today F. A. Hayek was born in Vienna. He was a scholar, an activist, an inspiration.

I’m at a seminar in Indianapolis on the economics of sound money; the discussants include very serious economists (and some others, as well!) and a set of readings largely focused on the writings of Ludwig von Mises, especially Human Action. I’d not read the book for many years and was struck by how original and intelligent it is (as well as occasionally repetitive and a wee bit harsh on his critics, but those are minor flaws in a serious book). It’s been a joy to read as I snatched time between meetings in Kyrgyzstan (and it helped me to fill the many flights and hours to get there and back — it’s a big book). It was in my satchel during my presentations on the model of economic reform in the Republic of Georgia at the Kyrgyz Ministry of Economic Development, at the invitation of acting minister Emil Umetaliev, a founding board member of the Central Asian Free Market Institute. I think that Mises might have been pleased.**

The conference on sound money is organized by the Liberty Fund, which is the publisher of Mises’s books. They are commemorating their fiftieth anniversary by “re-running” a number of their old seminars, including one that was held on these readings (plus or minus a few) in 1974. (At the University of Southern California in 1973-1974 we had a reading group that read Mises. I recall our meeting on October 10, 1973, at which the wonderful teacher and philosopher Prof. John Hospers was present, when we learned about the death that day of Mises; a great mind left the scene that day, but through his works he continues to be active and to enlighten and inspire us.)

**By the way, there’s an interesting, critical discussion of the reform process in Georgia, focusing on the contributions of fellow Mises fan Kakha Bendukidze, here; I organized some of the conferences in Tbilisi that are discussed in the papers.

Exiled Iranian Journalist Awarded $500,000 Milton Friedman Liberty Prize

New York Times: “Putin Visits Venezuela to Discuss Oil and Arms”

Mr. Putin’s one-day visit built on a relationship rooted in billions of dollars of Russian arms sales to Venezuela over the past decade. Venezuela has also emerged as one of Russia’s most vocal supporters, recognizing two Russian-backed separatist enclaves of Georgia in 2009 and applauding Russian efforts to advance the ambitions of an embryonic group of gas-rich nations.

New York Times: “Criticism of Chávez Stifled by Arrests”

When Judge María Lourdes Afiuni issued a ruling in December that irked President Hugo Chávez, he did little to contain his outrage. The president, contending on national television that she would have been put before a firing squad in earlier times, sent his secret intelligence police to arrest her.

My appreciation of Hayek on the occasion of his 100th Birthday (May 8, 1999): “F. A. Hayek: Prophet of the Modern World”

I recall being at a birthday party for the great man in Vienna at the Handelskammer in, I think, 1988 or 1989, when Karl Milford, the grandson of the Austrian-Marxist Rudolf Hilferding, spoke. It was at that party that I met a wonderful Czech libertarian, Miroslav Sevcik, with whom I worked to promote liberty in Czechoslovakia when I was promoting liberty in the Soviet Bloc nations.

Charles G. Koch on the “Science of Success”

“The Challenge Process”

Three Women Who Launched a Movement

The Sunday “Credo” interview in today’s Washington Examiner: “Credo: Tom Palmer”

At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe that the individual human life matters. I believe that human freedom is a constituent element of a good life — of human happiness — and is, consequently, intrinsically valuable.

(Since I’m reading rather carefully Ian Carter’s excellent A Measure of Freedom, I might have substituted for “intrinsically valuable” the term “non-specifically and constitutively valuable,” but that would probably not have conveyed my point any more clearly.)

Michael Moynihan of Reason has been doing some super sleuthing. He wants to know, “Just what makes something humorous?” And now he has the answer: Jonathan Chait, to whom he has awarded the prestigious title of “The Left’s Own Topo Gigo.” If you’re not chortling and guffawing over Chait’s John McCain hand puppet telling the Sarah Palin hand puppet that he picked her as his running mate because “I was a sad, desperate old man trapped in a loveless marriage — I saw you and I saw a second chance,” then you must be like me: stupid and humorless, in the words of Matthew Yglesias, one of the smartest and funniest guys around. So smart and so funny he told my friend Veronique de Rugy to SHUT UP! about tax policy because she’s …. get this!!! … FRENCH. Ha ha! FRENCH!!!! Oh, how we laughed!

But you know, when you keep on having to say, “But I’m funny. Really!,” you ought to wonder whether maybe you’re….well, you’re just not. That you’re crude and boorish and that you really ought to apologize to the person you mocked because of her name and nationality. Or at least that your “humor” is not really suitable for grown-up conversation. (And yes, I do know that they were trying for some sort of “irony,” but they failed utterly [for one thing, saying racism is "unAmerican" and saying Jews and Catholics are "unAmerican" really are different uses of the term].) Moreover, undeniably hidden behind the protestations of humor was a very clear message to someone who disagreed about what the essence of America is [hint: not using the power to tax maliciously to punish people], and that message is:

SHUT THE HELL UP AND GET OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!

Thanks, Jonathan and Matthew, for raising the tone of policy discourse so. You’re great guys. Class acts. Really.

A nicely done video on the enduring legacy of Ayn Rand. I’m not a follower (I’m more eclectic in my views), but I find much to admire in her work, including the insight regarding the morality of socialism: it’s not the case that people are not good enough for socialism; socialism is not good enough for people. It’s rather promising that her works continue to sell so briskly and that “Ayn Rand Is In.” (I try to expand on some of her insights in Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, especially in the chapters on moral philosophy. The long chapter on Rawls moral theory deals with the moral implications of a right to withdraw, a right that is at the core of Atlas Shrugged. It was a major part of my dissertation at Oxford on “A Cosmopolitan Theory of Justice.”)

The ‘true story’ of how Dr. King kept Uhura on Star Trek

(I added the exclamation point because I’m not a Trekkie, although I do remember watching the show when it came on. They are among the memories I have of my father, who watched it with me.)

HT: Anastasia Uglova

Leonard Liggio

Chait’s Response to the criticism offered below.

And a Little More: Now We Know What Real Humor Is….Or at Least Real Jokes

An old friend, Veronique de Rugy, has been slimed for her defense of some fundamental moral principles. I’ve known her for at least 19 years, since we organized the first English-language IES-Europe seminars (modeled on the IHS seminars in the US, which I had organized for some years before) in Szirak (Hungary) and Dalarö (Sweden). (I also stayed in her flat when she would leave Paris for weekends during the hottest Paris summer since Charlemagne; that was in 1995, and I was living in a one-room garret at 35 avenue Mac-Mahon near the Etoile. The heat was suffocating, even at night, and there was no running water, other than a tap in the hallway, so I would go to her place on those weekends when she visited her family to immerse myself in cold baths to survive the heat.) But I digress.

Vero recently criticized a proposal by Rep. Barney Frank for a special tax on high compensation and concluded “This anti-capitalist and anti-wealth mentality is scary and very anti-American.” (I suspect that what Vero was searching for was “un-American,” but you’ll understand why that may not have come to her as quickly as it might to some.) That did not sit well with two lefty bloggers. Jonathan Chait thought it clever to respond, “Hey, you know what else is anti-American? Being named ‘Veronique de Rugy.’” How very sophisticated. But, not to be outdone, Matthew Yglesias added some icing to the cake,

Veronique de Rugy is So Anti-American That She’s Not Even an American!

Jon Chait and I both likes it when Barney Frank dismissed concerns that a bank tax would drive talent out of the industry by quipping “I don’t know where people would go for comparable salaries, I guess perhaps they could star in major motion pictures.”

Veronique de Rugy begs to differ, saying “This anti-capitalist and anti-wealth mentality is scary and very anti-American.” Chait retorts “Hey, you know what else is anti-American? Being named ‘Veronique de Rugy.’”

My Googling has, however, revealed something even more disturbing — Veronique de Rugy is literally not an American. She’s French. She holds a PhD from the University of Paris-Sorbonne and is the author of an un-American book with the suspiciously French title Action ou Taxation. It’s true that she agreed to betray her native land by making this France-bashing video, but that doesn’t change the basic facts. Barney Frank is as American as an actual American.

Now, let’s unpack this. On the one hand, Chait and Yglesias just might think that people who are not from America should shut up, in which case they’re idiots. Or maybe they’re trying to be ironic, in which case they’re idiots. Or, if that’s too harsh, either they’re dim, or they’re dim.

Option one:

Yglesias and Chait are idiots (or just dim). They think that mocking people for unusual names is funny, or that only authentic Americans (perhaps native-born, so I don’t qualify, either, or citizens, or whatever) can or should ever make statements about what it is to be an American. That would qualify them as knuckle dragging neanderthals, that is, as idiots.

However, it’s worth considering whether Chait and Yglesias are attempting to be ironic. (I am going to be very careful here, as I recently criticized two dunderheads for their failure to understand the use of irony by a colleague).

So, Option Two:

Chait and Yglesias are trying to turn the tables on those who charge that X or Y is “un-American” (or “anti-American,” in Vero’s phrasing) by returning the favor. Ha ha, some may think. How clever. Yet, upon reflection, it would seem that, if that is their intent, they are too dim to understand the difference between A) calling, say, unequal treatment by the law “un-American” for violating the Constitution and the best core principles of the American tradition, and B) calling the serving of “saucisses et choucroute” “un-American,” in contrast to, say, “hot dogs and sauerkraut” [note the double irony, guys]. Vero criticized special laws punishing people for high incomes as un-American, in the way that one might call censorship “un-American” (Think! Think! The First Amendment is an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America); she did not remark that Hindus, or Catholics, or Scientologists, or sauerkraut are un-American, or use the term in any of the other ways in which the epithet “un-American” is slung around by knuckle-draggers, who confuse “America” with cuisine, or religion, or other inessential matters, rather than with principles of government, of liberty, and of justice.

Or maybe they’ve just put their feet in their big mouths and owe Veronique an apology. I doubt it would erase the embarrassment they should feel, but it would be the decent, French thing to do.

P.S. A note I got from Vero this afternoon: “Thanks also for correction my English. My french brain can’t totally get the difference between Anti and un- american but I can see that it was a mistake. Oh well.” I don’t see them as having any substantive distinction relevant to this smear of her. “UnAmerican” is what she was searching for, but “anti-American” is merely a matter of context; it’s usually used in the context of foreign activities (“anti-American riots,” for example), whereas the domestic context (which is obviously the context for Vero’s remarks about tax policies) would normally require “unAmerican.” In any case, the smear of her for being French and having a French name is disgusting. And the nativist comments from the defenders of Chait and Yglesias support my point. They are disgusting.

UPDATE: It turns out that Mr. Chait is guilty of accusing advocates of tax cuts of being “deeply unpatriotic” after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. As usual, he could not wrap his mind around the idea that any actual taxpayers favor cutting their taxes, so he directed all his bile toward “K Street,” apparently unaware that normally “K Street” refers to DC lobbyists, who normally have their hands out for more subsidies. But here’s what Mr. “How Dare You Call Barney Frank’s Policy Positions UnAmerican” Chait wrote about advocates of tax cuts in The New Republic: “There is something deeply unpatriotic about K Street’s rush to turn the tragedy into quick profit.” Now we get it, Mr. Chait. People who want to limit government are “unpatriotic,” but referring to “the mentality” of punitive taxation (and that is the most appropriate term for Barney Frank’s proposal) as “scary and anti-American” is cause for mocking the name of the “Veronique de Rugy.” I suspect there would have been tears if someone had responded to his smear by mocking the name of “Chait.” (Some might say a foreign name like that doesn’t really sound very patriotic to them!) Grow up, little Jonathan.

Updates here and here.

One of the great speeches of American history
28 August 1963
Full text here

Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, known as Gus Dur, has died. I did not meet him, but heard only praise from Muslim friends. He was involved in the LibForAll foundation, among other groups working for a freer and more just society. When I was in Jakarta I spoke with young Muslim college students who were proud to work with him and proud that a man of such stature would work closely with them on behalf of toleration and equal rights for all.