Paul defends Romney ‘fire’ comment, history at Bain

This question was posed by PolicyMic.com:

“I’m an American underwater in debt and with a stagnant income. Which group should I support: the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street?”

I took one side, Peter Rothberg of The Nation the other. You can see the discussion here.

An excerpt from my talk to the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Full presentation is available through the preceding link.)

I just finished Henri Francfort’s quite interesting book The Birth of Civilization in the Near East, from which I picked up some very interesting information and ideas. The discusion of Mesopotamia was quite interesting (including the short description of Urukagina’s attack on predatory behavior by the rulers of Lagash, probably the first libertarian reform movement of recorded history), the discussion of the writing system, etc. Similarly, the treatment of Egyptian civilization was helpful, although I found the following (page numbers from undated edition from Doubleday Anchor Books, New York):

“On one side, Narmer, wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, destroys a chieftain of the northern marches. On the other side, the king, now wearing the crown of Lower Egypt, inspects a number of beheaded enemies. Thus, Narmer is shown as the first ‘Lord of the Two Lands.’” (p. 91)

From a scribal text: “And now the scribe lands on the river bank and is about to register the harvest tax. The janitors carry staves and the Nubians (policemen) rods of palm, and they say, ‘Hand over the corn,’ though there is none. The cultivator is beaten all over, he is bound and thrown into the well, soused, and dipped head downwards. His wife has been bound in his presence, his children are in fetters. His neighbors abandon him and are fled.” (p. 105) (Francfort follows with “If such brutality had been the rule, it is clear that Egyptian society could not have survived,” but he does not suggest it was uncommon, either.)

“The upper register shows the deceased in his function as ‘Scribe of the fields of the Lord of the Two Lands.’ On the left are shown a group of his officials, dressed in white, pencase in hand, busy measuring the grain on the stalk; their attendants (with bare bodies) hold the measuring cord. A peasant (followed by his wife who carries a basked on her head with further gifts) offers something to the tax officials, to propitiate them. But on the right, before the kiosk of the tomb owner and near the mooring-place of the boat, which brought his subordinates to the scene, a peasant, who apparently defaulted, is beaten, while another kneels and prays for grace.” (p. 107)

“If officials abused their power and oppressed the people, the peasants had an effective weapon at their disposal: they fled.” (p. 115)

Interesting. Oddly, here is how Francfort concludes his study of Egypt:

“Whatever aspect of Egyptian society we have scrutinized, we have found Pharaoh at the centre. Yet nothing would be more misleading than to picture the Egyptians in abject submission to their absolute ruler. Their state can be described as ‘a self-directed organism held together by a common regard for their customary rights and obligations.’ [Footnote to F. M. Powicke, The Reformation in England, Oxford, 1941, p. 31] Their polity was not imposed but evolved from immemorial predilections, and was adhered to without protest, for almost three thousand years. Similar predilections have, in fact, maintained the institution of divine kingship among Africans related to the ancient Egyptians down to our own days. It was good, not evil; it gave a sense of security which the Asiatic contemporaries of the ancient Egyptians totally lacked. If a god had consented to guide the nation, society held a pledge that the unaccountable forces of nature would be well disposed and would bring prosperity and peace. Truth, justice, were ‘that by which the gods live,’ an essential element in the established order. Hence Pharaoh’s rule was not tyranny, nor his service slavery.” (pp. 119-120)

I try to be careful not to read back onto such different contexts and civilizations ideas and concepts that are more familiar to me, but may have been foreign to the people of the time, but the beheadings and beatings sound rather like coercion to me, and apparently were perceived as such by the people who tried to avoid them, and not very much like “a common regard for their customary rights and obligations.”

Not only intolerant and radical “Islamism,” but also military/socialist dictatorship:

New York Times: Egyptians Say Military Discourages an Open Economy

Egypt Will Never Be the Same: What I saw on the streets of Alexandria, by Kareem Amer (Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2011)

(I was involved, with many others, in the four-year Free Kareem campaign. It is good that he is free. I want him to remain so.)

Egypt’s Front Pages, from The Economist

Washington Post: “A government of the people’s every wish?”

If you don’t live in this country all of the time, and I don’t, here is what you notice when you come home: Americans — with their lawsuit culture, their safety obsession and, above all, their addiction to government spending programs — demand more from their government than just about anybody else in the world. They don’t simply want the government to keep the peace and create a level playing field. They want the government to ensure that every accident and every piece of bad luck is prevented, or that they are fully compensated in the event something goes wrong. And if the price of their house drops, they will hold the government responsible for that, too.

The Economist: “What happens when you display “Forbidden art”

From Prof. Andrei Zorin of Oxford University (and a contributor to InLiberty.ru and speaker at InLiberty.ru events):

There can be no doubt that a guilty verdict will dramatically change the political climate in Russia and deal a powerful, if not a mortal, blow to the much-hyped modernisation plans of President Dmitry Medvedev. Whether economic and technological modernisation can succeed without political reforms is the subject of intense discussions in Russia. But no one can hope to modernise society without freedom of conscience and the freedom of thought.

Russia’s image abroad, which had just started to improve, will be ruined for at least another decade. The damage to the country’s reputation may prove even longer-lasting than in the Khodorkovsky case. Businessmen are pragmatic people and can sometimes be prepared to trade one of their own to save their investments. Artists and intellectuals are less forgiving.

The story of an art curator and human-rights activist jailed for arranging an exhibition will haunt Russia and all its projects of cultural integration with the West. In such an environment who needs grandiose events like the current “Russian year” in France?

Daily Telegraph: “Nick Clegg: tell us the laws that you want scrapped”

The public will be asked what laws they want ripped up, in far-reaching reforms designed to put back “faith in politics”, the Deputy Prime Minister will say.

The reordering of power will sweep away Labour legislation and new criminal offences deemed to have eroded personal freedom.

It will involve the end of the controversial ID cards scheme, the scrapping of universal DNA databases – in which the records of thousands of innocent people have been stored – and restrictions placed on internet records. The use of CCTV cameras will also be reviewed.

Dubbed the “Great Reform Act”, the measures will close down the ContactPoint children’s database. Set up by Labour last year, it includes detailed information on all 11 million youngsters under 18.

In addition, schools will not be able to take a child’s fingerprint without parental permission.

In an attempt to protect freedom of speech, ministers will review libel laws, while limits on peaceful protest will be removed.

HT: Jim Peron

Los Angeles Times: “Rand Paul of ‘tea party’ movement wins GOP primary in Kentucky”

You can take issue with his stands on Guantanamo or foreign policy, but he’s sent a little shiver down the backs of the politicos in Washington. That’s worth it.

Interview on American politics

Explained by Experts Takis Michas and Patrick Welter

I’ve known both Takis and Patrick for years and it was great to have them both together in D.C. to talk about a subject on which both are experts, albeit from different directions.

Kazakhstan Boosts President’s Powers

ALMATY, Kazakhstan—Kazakhstan’s parliament was poised Wednesday to declare President Nursultan Nazarbayev “leader of the nation” for life and grant him immunity from criminal prosecution and extensive powers after his departure from office.

And the Senate of Kazakhstan approved just a few days later! (Central Asia Online: “Senate approves Nazarbayev’s ‘leader of nation’ status“)

The bill awaits Nazarbayev’s signature.

Will he sign it? Or will he veto it? What do you think?

George F. Will: “Greece and GM: Too weak to fail“

David Bernstein on the rather, um, selective history of “Progressivism” given by the “Center for American Progress”: “Whitewashing Progressivism”

One could add many, many sins to the account of so-called “Progressives,” including prohibition, victimless crime laws generally, vice squads, public morals legislation, and generally attempting to replace the rule of law by the rule of wise and moral “experts,” i.e., themselves.

Reason.com: “Up from Slavery: There’s no such thing as a golden age of lost liberty”

I am particularly struck by libertarians and conservatives who celebrate the freedom of early America, and deplore our decline from those halcyon days, without bothering to mention the existence of slavery. Take R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., longtime editor of the American Spectator. In Policy Review (Summer 1987, not online), he wrote:

Let us flee to a favored utopia. For me that would be the late 18th Century but with air conditioning….With both feet firmly planted on the soil of my American domain, and young American flag fluttering above, tobacco in the field, I would relish the freedom.

I take it Mr. Tyrrell dreams of being a slave-owner. Because as he certainly knows, most of the people in those tobacco fields were slaves.

Ten years ago I wrote for Slate the truth about what our federal census has become: “Census 2000: You May Already Be a Winner!”

(Note: Some of the links — ten years on — don’t work, but you could have learned how to say “The money will be distributed by national and local authorities,” among other fascinating things, in Hmong, Polish, and Laotian.)