My response (“Liberty is Liberty“) to the provocative essay (“Conceptions of Freedom“) by David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan is now online.

I’m mostly through their very interesting (not in the British sense of the word, but the American sense) book A Brief History of Liberty. I disagree robustly with the thesis of the essay in Cato Unbound (which is drawn from the introduction to A Brief History of Liberty), which does not stop me from enjoying thoroughly their book.

The new Cato Unbound is focused on the nature of liberty. The lead essay (“The Big Myth About Liberty“) by David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan is quite provocative. My response essay will run on Friday, followed by the responses from John Christman and Philip Pettit, and then a discussion among all of us. I hope to learn from the discussion.

I just found (thanks to snooping around some emails) the text of the Julian L. Simon Memoral Lecture I gave in 2009 in New Delhi on “Democracy and Limited Government: The Unbreakable Partnership.” For those who are interested, some years earlier I wrote essays on “Challenges of Democratization,” “The Role of Institutions and Law in Economic Development,” and other essays on the central role of institutions in the development and enjoyment of liberty that are included in Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice.

The Colombian Constitutional Court has put a stop to the principle of “President for Life” (BBC: “Colombian judges deny Alvaro Uribe third term poll“)

A Power Failure for Chavez (BBC: “Lights failure throws Chavez into darkness“)

I discussed the topic of sustainable democracy in the 2009 Julian L. Simon Memorial Lecture in New Delhi, “Democracy and Limited Government: The Unbreakable Partnership”

Thanks to the good work of Pierre Garello and Philippe Maitre, a great journal lives again. (Click on the image to the left for more details.)

Yours truly in today’s Washington Post: “Plaintiff in handgun case is suing D.C. for right carry firearms in public”

It was a good chance to head out to the shooting range in Virginia!

Some find this a difficult topic to discuss, but it’s going to happen to all of us (well, probably), so it’s childish to avoid it. Yes, I’m discussing death. Jamie Dettmer, a friend and former colleague, has had to deal with this, as have I. His thoughts on the topic, drawing on his experience with his mother, can be found here: “The Gilderdale Case: The Right To Die”

David Boaz and John Locke on the rights of the Na’vi: “Collective Property Rights in Avatar?”

(Note: I haven’t seen the movie, but it’s not necessary to understand the issues involved.)

The FAZ, one of the most influential newspapers in Europe, reviewed my book Realizing Freedom and Detmar Doering’s very good Traktat über die Freiheit. The reviewer, Professor Michael Zöller, is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bayreuth. In the review, which is favorable to both books, he refers to my essay “Twenty Myths About Markets” (in Realizing Freedom) as a “Vademecum [Handbook] for dragon slayers.” He cites approvingly both my and Doering’s attempts to provide a coherent account of liberty that does not load it down with qualifiers; Doering notes that many contemporary formulations of freedom suggest that freedom of movement requires, for its proper enjoyment, not merely the absence of human hindrances to movement, but a Ferrari, and my essay “Freedom Properly Understood” in Realizing Freedom takes aim at such views, including Amartya Sen’s, which seeks to redefine freedom as “the expansion of the ‘capabilities’ of persons to lead the kind of lives they value – and have reason to value,” which I point out requires us to justify our choices to others, rather than simply having the right to make them. Zöller writes,

“In his other essays, Palmer bursts one intellectual balloon after another, be it the common opposition between the state as oriented to the common good vs. society as the expression of self-interest, or the theory of justice of John Rawls, the most influential attempt to expand the definition of freedom. Palmer picks to pieces the so-called Difference Principle, which Rawls used in putting both individual freedom and the equal distribution of opportunities and goods in one and the same social contract.”

I update and comment on matters on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/RealizingFreedom

My old friend Danny Shapiro on Book TV on his very good book of the same name: “Is the Welfare State Justified?”

The book is a very serious and — a nice surprise! — readable treatment of the subject. I recommend it highly. Is the Welfare State Justifed?, by Daniel Shapriro (Note: People looking for angry denunciations of statism will not find it in this book; it is a sober comparison of the various foundational reasons for supporting policies with the empirical evidence.)

David Boaz waxes nostalgic in the Washington Times for the days when government was almost, sorta, kinda limited, compared to now: “We Miss You, Bubba“

I’ve finished a careful reading of James C. Scott’s really fascinating, deeply insightful (and occasionally oddly not-very-insightful) book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. I’ll be reviewing it shortly.

I also read a few other books lately, including Malcolm Gladwell’s really fun Outliers: The Story of Success. His writing is so elegant and enjoyable that you have to catch yourself and not be swept away into his conclusions just because of the sheer pleasure of the reading. (I was not convinced of several of his points, notably the discussion of the relationship between intelligence, achievement, and “threshold effects,” especially on pp. 77-90. He might be right, but I was not convinced. The other material on the role of sheer luck in having access to opportunities, however, was quite persuasive.) Another very pleasurable book on luck that I’ve been reading in little bits of down-time standing in lines and the like (but haven’t finished yet) is Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.*

Besides some other works I’m working through, I’m hoping to get through Ian Carter’s A Measure of Freedom, which should be helpful for a project on the development of metrics of liberty.

*I admit that I bought the Gladwell and Taleb books from a street cart in Shanghai. I rather suspect that they are pirated editions, which I find dodgy, so I considered (for a few seconds) sending small payments to the authors and to their publishers, but decided instead that I’d buy clearly non-pirated editions in the US.

New York Daily News: “The moral and constitutional case for a right to gay marriage,” by Robert A. Levy

The Nature of Rights

Liberty and Tradition

The Washington Post displayed good sense in this important editorial, “Redefining human rights,” which reveals a most disturbing trend in the thinking at the highest levels of the US government.

(This is a very, very important topic and one that requires careful thought to see through the absurdities propounded in the name of “rights.” I address the confusions in the approach in my essay “Saving Rights Theory from Its Friends,” in Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice.)

The discussion with Tyler Cowen reminded me again that we had disagreed (agreeably) on a number of things in an online discussion of Libertarianism: Past and Prospects, which was kicked off by Brian Doherty, author of the really fine book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.

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?”

At noon, eastern standard time (you can watch online, too):

Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice [Facebook page on the book]

BOOK FORUM
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
12:00 PM (Luncheon to Follow)

Featuring the author, Tom G. Palmer, General Director, Atlas Global Initiative for Free Trade, Peace, and Prosperity, and Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; with comments by Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics, George Mason University, and General Director, Mercatus Center.

And don’t forget that it just might make a fine present for libertarian thinkers, people interested in political theory, history, or economics, and for your favorite thoughtful socialist or conservative who might enjoy an intellectual challenge. (Note: all proceeds from sales go to a good cause, the Cato Institute.)

Alan Charles Kors – Freedom Dinner 2009 Keynote from Atlas Network on Vimeo.