Why are people still drawn to Marxism? Did you know it's still hot among the professoriate? I know, I know. Thoroughly discredited. But they eat that stuff up in the ivory tower. Brad Thompson's thesis is essentially that Marx was a great sloganeer. And he was. (I'd also argue that people have inherent dispositions to socialism.) My friend Michael Strong argues quite powerfully that -- due to academia's continuing fixation with Marx -- higher ed may be the "world's leading social problem."
My story starts so predictably I'm almost embarrassed to admit it: my creative writing teacher in high school gave me Atlas Shrugged. And while I don't consider myself a Randian or an Objectivist, I would not be here were it not for Ayn Rand.
So what is your story? Did you read Ayn Rand? Milton Friedman? Friedrich Hayek? Robert Heinlein? Who? Leave a quick response in the comments below!
This video is not just an outline for aspiring politicians. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita actually describes, however indirectly, the architecture of power. I can't wait to read his book. It sounds to me like what you get when you marry Machiavelli with Buchanan and Tullock (public choice theory). So what do we mean by the architecture of power?
State Policy Network has just come out with their second in a video series on the Constitution and its erosion. The production values in this piece are pretty darn good. Indeed, this piece is much better than most of what think tanks turn out. If I had any critique, it would be that the talking heads disrupt the flow of a pretty good narrative. In any case, the view count of this piece suggests it's not getting the eyeballs it deserves.
This is refreshing. When someone off camera asks John Tomasi why he's a libertarian, he says: "I value those bourgeois American virtues." Most political philosophers would say something about reason demanding it. One ought to be libertarian because the political form embodies some sort of objective truth about human nature and the good -- right? Not exactly.
When the original 1980 Free To Choose was aired, inflation was starting to make life tough in the U.S. We were in the waning days of the Carter era. And the economy wasn't looking so good. It's interesting that Friedman was able to augur a long era of relatively low inflation in the U.S.
That said, a lot of people are under the impression that Friedman was perfectly happy with the Federal Reserve System we have today. But it's better to say that Milton was a pragmatist on such matters. As with many other issues, Friedman understood that well entrenched systems don't just get trashed with a penstroke. One might say Friedman was an early, pragmatic inflation Hawk.
Here's a great video for the libertarian philosophers among you. The question is: if value is subjective, how can we have a system of objective rights and rules? Aeon Skoble lays it out nicely in this video. And I think for an introduction to the question, this is a tidy talk. I do, however, have some concerns.
It's not just that U.S. colleges are propaganda factories. They are. It's also that they are censoring speech. We should be concerned that college campuses have "free speech zones," especially public universities.
Do you have kids or know people in college? Please let them know about this...
A condition of freedom is rare, says Milton Friedman. And he's right. In order to preserve it -- and especially to restore it -- we've got to celebrate it. We have to celebrate its meaning for us and its implications for the rest of humanity (especially that portion of humanity that still lives under tyranny). That's what Milton Friedman did in his life. Because of his work, people are still rising out of poverty and servitude today.
So how can you celebrate? There are a number of ways...
