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Title: Zodiac Drain
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Flickr User: Avius Quovis

On a brighter note, I have finished the Profiles in Activism DVD. It will be distributed through Students for Liberty, although the details aren’t set in stone yet. It isn’t as polished as I would have liked it to be, but it is still, I hope, a valuable resource. There isn’t any new material on the disc except for a short introduction I recorded. I did, however, go back and fix the aspect ratio on the Michelle Fields and Casey Given videos for the DVD. Everything should be nice and widescreen.

It’s a little early, but I do want to include the next few biographies Will Tew so graciously prepared for the site over the summer. See those at the bottom.

Also, I didn’t have time to type up a “Write” section, but if I had, I would have commented on Brian Underwood’s “The Quest for El Dorado.”

Other than that, I don’t have anything more to say, other than “keep on crashing.”

Max Stirner: Father of Individualist Anarchism; b. Oct. 25, 1806

Max Stirner, the progenitor of individualist anarchism, published his most important book The Ego and Its Own in Leipzig in 1844. Stirner’s book would go on to influence some of the earliest individualist anarchists and libertarians. Emma Goldman, Benjamin Tucker, and others all admired Stirner’s work. One can discern echoes of Stirner in Ayn Rand’s early work, though she never referenced him.

Born in Bavaria (1806), he would study under Hegel in Berlin, and become one of his earliest critics. During his time at the university, he participated in the young intellectual group “Die Freien,” where he would meet Friedrich Engels. Engels claimed to have been good friends with Stirner during their university days, and though Stirner met other influential German philosophers there, no evidence suggests he ever encountered Karl Marx. Marx was certainly familiar with his work, however. He and Engels wrote a scathing response to The Ego and Its Own just a year after its publication. Their extended diatribe actually totaled more pages than the entirety of Stirner’s work!

The Ego and Its Own focuses on the emancipation of the individual and the individual will. Stirner argues that the individual is dominated by “spooks of the head,” which prevent him from acting fully. These illusions, claims Stirner, include institutions like the church and the state, as well as broader concepts like religion, morality, nationalism, ideology, and humanity. The individual must work to free himself from these “spooks” if he is to exert his will. Stirner respected the mechanisms of self-interest, too. He encouraged self-interested cooperation with others, and seemed to understand the benefits of trade. He even translated Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say into German. Stirner died June 26, 1856, leaving behind the foundations of individualist anarchism.

William Graham Sumner: Sociologist, Minister, and Author; b. October 30, 1840

William Graham Sumner was born in 1840 to working class, immigrant parents. He graduated from Yale in 1863 and subsequently worked as a tutor and Episcopalian minister until he accepted the chair of Political Economy at Yale in 1872. He became one of the leading classical liberals of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. At Yale he began teaching sociology and sociological economics, largely based off of the thought of Herbert Spencer, another early libertarian. His sociological research led to the publication of his book Folkways, which describes the customs and mores of societies past and present. Folkways also makes the point that culture decides morals and enforces order, not the state.

Sumner rejected all forms of state socialism. He was a committed advocate of universal free trade at a time when the federal government was financed by heavy tariffs. He attacked bimetallism–the leading proposal to leave the gold standard at the time. It’s hard to understand just how controversial the issue was: no less than the likes of William Jennings Bryan, famous orator and chief inquisitor during the Scopes Monkey Trial, were arrayed against Sumner. He was familiar with controversy though, being involved in disputes with his dean over academic freedom, and being a leading critic of American adventurism in Cuba and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.

Through it all, Sumner maintained the highest ethical standard–the same standard he advocated in his essays. In fact, it was the values of hard work, honesty, thrift, and compassion that Sumner emphasized when he attacked state intervention. In his book The Forgotten Man, he argues that the honest working-man is the most harmed by government policies. His savings are robbed, and his work goes unrewarded. The government never pays any attention to the forgotten man because he’s doing exactly what he should be doing.

Of the nineteenth century libertarians, William Graham Sumner’s writings most prefigured the basic tenets of later libertarianism: anti-welfare, anti-warfare, pro-trade. As a graduate and professor of Yale, Sumner influenced thousands of students in the second half of the nineteenth century, and left a legacy of anti-imperialism and laissez faire economics which still filters into our thought today.

Will Tew writes about Albert J. Nock in commemoration of his upcoming birthday.

Albert Jay Nock was born 141 years ago on October 13, 1870. He would die 75 years later in 1945, largely forgotten and kept from obscurity only by a handful of dedicated individuals. These individuals would, however, go on to the founders of today’s movement. Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Leonard Read, and Frank Chodorov were all influenced by Nock. In life, Nock was not so obscure. No one less than H. L. Mencken praised Nock’s writing and ideas. Nock is often characterized as a member of the Old Right, but he self-identified as a libertarian and an anarchist, two labels not compatible with the Old Right. In fact, as Nock aged he was co-opted into conservative circles to his chagrin. He chaffed at being shut out of leftist circles where he was once popular.

Nock’s unforgivable sin to the left was his vociferous denunciation of the New Deal. He was no fan of Roosevelt, and, like Mencken, opposed both his interventionist foreign policy and his irresponsible domestic policy. Nock was nothing if not consistent. He had previously opposed Wilson’s interventionism in WWI. While writing at The Nation, Nock and the magazine were censored by the Wilson administration.

Nock saw the state as a parasitic body, one which had been pillaging society for the past 5,000 years. His experiences with the Wilson and Roosevelt administrations could have only confirmed his conception of the state: in 1935 Nock published his book Our Enemy, The State, in which we can discern the beginnings of anarcho-capitalist thought. Nock himself draws on the work of individualist and probably-anarchist Herbert Spencer. As an individualist and anarchist, Nock penned some of the most influential, twentieth century pieces against the state. As a writer and journalist he remains a key figure in the development of American libertarianism, and one worthy to be read still.

Write

Uncovering economic hypocrisy at Ole Miss.

Tdbrown3s calls out Chuck Schumer and Sherrod Brown in a recent blog post on the Ole Miss YAL blog. After praising them for denouncing China’s artificial devaluation of its currency, he points out that the Senators lack consistency.

So senators like Schumer and Brown aren’t necessarily opposed to artificial price levels, just those that benefit foreigners at our expense; however, they are in favor of tariffs that benefit select American producers at the expense of all American consumers.

If protectionism is so easily debunked, why is it so popular among legislators? Two factors keep it afloat. First, protectionism is a case of concentrated benefits and distributed costs. The benefits are concentrated in exporting industries and/or industries that are hurt by foreign competition, and the costs are spread out over all consumers. Second, we have a case of “what is seen” versus “what is not seen,” as Bastiat would say. Politicians can point to the jobs in protected industries, but because the negative impact is diffuse, the consumers remain invisible.

Act

Zombies, Nerf, and the 2nd Amendment? This can only end awesomely.

CLOKSU is planning a pro-liberty version of Humans vs. Zombies, or at least something very similar. Some people might complain that 2nd Amendment events should focus on the real reasons for the right to bear arms (governments love a disarmed populace), but I think this would be putting too fine a point on it. The metaphor works, I think; collectivist zombies are coming after freedom-loving humans, who must defend themselves and their individuality against the growing zombie horde, alone if necessary.

Humans vs. Zombies was always a very popular event on Pitt’s campus. I personally recommend the Maverick revolver as it offers a good combination of clip size, accuracy, portability, and price. If you are less of a gunslinger and more of a brawler, check to see if the rules allow the use of a pool noodle.

Regulatory capture, public choice, and government failure.

You hear talk about “market failures” everywhere. But if there can be market failures, can’t there also be government failures?

Of course there can. “Public choice” economics takes the assumptions neoclassical economics makes about market actors (that they’re rational utility-maximizers) and applies the same assumptions evenly to government actors. This results in a model that can explain why policies that go contrary to the public good get implemented.

One example would be a policy with diffuse costs but concentrated benefits, like subsidies to certain industries. Legislators aren’t punished for imposing relatively small costs on a large number of people, but benefit from giving relatively large benefits to a small number of people.

A connected idea is that of regulatory capture. Business has an incentive to co-opt the regulatory superstructure and use it for the benefit of industry or individual firms in an industry. Whenever you hear someone talk about how government is “in bed with” this or that industry, they’re likely talking at least in part about regulatory capture.

It is important to understand regulatory capture and public choice theory when talking about the regulatory state. When someone says, for example, “How would we have safe food without the FDA?” the implicit assumption is that the FDA does ensure we have safe food.

To learn more about these and related issues, read up on George Stigler and James Buchanan (the economist, not the President).

For a real life example of “government failure” (as opposed to “market failure”) see Daniel Shiner’s article discussed below.

Write

GMU’s Daniel Shiner writes on Chinese cronyism.

Responding to this John Lee editorial, Shiner writes:

The only effective way to eliminate cronyism is to strike at its root by reducing the power of government over the economy. This would remove the option of government favoritism as a business tool and force business leaders to compete in the quality and price of their products rather than trade in political favors.

In other student blogging news, blogger-extraordinaire Casey Given wants to let you know that the Manhattan Institute is looking for student bloggers. Casey himself recently started a regular column for UC–Berkeley’s student paper.

Act

Taking a box cutter to free speech.

You may have remembered that I linked to a write-up on this story earlier on Bureaucrash’s Facebook page. When Sam Houston State University’s Students for Liberty teamed up with several other political groups on campus to put up a free speech wall, things were going great–until a professor took a box cutter to the wall and the police got involved. One aspect of the case is especially interesting to me. SHSU SFL President Morgan Freeman writes:

The professor swiftly returned with a box cutter as promised. He announced to the some 50 students standing around that he was now going to exercise his freedom of speech by removing the statement that offended him. We attempted to talk him out of it by telling him he could draw a line through it or write a refutation, but he ignored us and proceeded to cut out the “Fuck.”

What do we make of the claim that cutting down part of the wall is a legitimate speech act, and not mere vandalism? A strict Rothbardian view of the case would ask “who owns the wall?” The university owns the exhibition area, and gave permission for the wall, which is owned (presumably) by the clubs that assembled it. The clubs in turn invited all comers to write on the wall, but not to modify it in other ways. Seems straightforward.

Where it gets interesting is that part of the point of a free speech wall (at least in most cases ) is to model free speech as protected by the First Amendment, which does not follow the Rothbardian principle. The government owns public lands, but does not exercise complete discretion over its use for speech purposes. Some places even have a close analog to the “free speech wall,” public graffiti walls. See for example, this example in California.

In this case, it still seems that destructive behavior is out of bounds. You wouldn’t take a jackhammer to the wall, for example. Yes, legitimate speech acts can be destructive (see flag burning), but not destructive of public property.

The free speech wall seems to be gaining popularity as an activism tool. The University of Texas–Austin’s Libertarian Longhorns and YAL chapter hosted one recently.

Reading Suggestion: The Obviousness of Anarchy by John Hasnas.

Dedicated Bureaucrash readers may remember my mentioning Professor Hasnas’s The Myth of the Rule of Law. That’s a great read, too, but if you’re looking for a centerpiece to talk about the minarchist/anarchist debate, The Obviousness of Anarchy is an excellent choice. Hasnas gets into the nitty-gritty practical questions, i.e. “how would society accomplish x or y without government?” The article’s funny to boot: Hasnas begins by saying “In this article, I have been asked to present an argument for anarchy. This is an absurdly
easy thing to do.”

I’ll let you be the judge of just how easy it really is.

Write

Moriah Costa of Arizona State University writes about privatizing disaster response.

Over at the national SFL blog, Moriah Costa argues that the government ought to get out of disaster response and recovery.

Ever since Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been criticized for its ineffectiveness in providing disaster relief. Many have questioned if it should even continue to be funded. This concern increased after Hurricane Irene left many in need of aid. Many Democrats feel that disaster relief should be provided, regardless of the tremendous debt the country is facing. Meanwhile, Republicans feel that relief should be provided at the cost of other government programs. I find both sides appalling since neither argument addresses the real concern– the ineffectiveness of FEMA to provide adequate disaster relief. Instead of increasing funds for FEMA, the government should rid itself of the agency entirely and let it be replaced with private insurance companies and charities, such as the Red Cross.

In attacking the (more-or-less) libertarian position of (more-or-less) radical decentralization, people sometimes point to the need for rapid, coordinated responses in the face of natural disasters or threats to national security. Ms. Costa’s argument is that this is simply not the case, a conclusion that falls in line with much of what I’ve read about Hurricane Katrina and the more recent earthquake/tsunami double whammy in Japan.

Political scientist Daniel Aldrich began studying how people help each other during disasters after his own neighbors warned him to evacuate—long before the government did—when Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans. His research reveals how important civil society is to disaster response and recovery.

Aldrich’s findings show that ambulances and firetrucks and government aid are not the principal ways most people survive during — and recover after — a disaster. His data suggest that while official help is useful — in clearing the water and getting the power back on in a place such as New Orleans after Katrina, for example — government interventions cannot bring neighborhoods back, and most emergency responders take far too long to get to the scene of a disaster to save many lives. Rather, it is the personal ties among members of a community that determine survival during a disaster, and recovery in its aftermath.

When Aldrich visited villages in India hit by the giant 2004 tsunami, he found that villagers who fared best after the disaster weren’t those with the most money, or the most power. They were people who knew lots of other people — the most socially connected individuals.

Read more about Aldrich’s data on disaster survival here.

If there is an upside to natural disasters, it isn’t that the destruction lets loose “pent up demand” or other such nonsense. Rather, its that the bonds of civil society can be strengthened. Consider the story of Atsushi Kawahara:

When the tsunami waves crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Mr. Kawahara, a drop-out from a graduate program in quantum mechanics, knew a major disaster was brewing. After packing a bag for evacuation and spending a sleepless night, the next day he did what would previously have been unthinkable for him: He knocked on the doors of several neighbors and proposed they helped each other if the situation got out of hand.

“It took a lot of courage but I thought it was an extraordinary time,” said Mr. Kawahara, who had never talked to any of his neighbors before. “To my surprise, everyone was happy to see me.”

There was an article in the June 11th edition of The Economist about Japan’s recovery that seized upon this phenomena titled Who needs leaders? The article sees the disaster as an opportunity for Japan to embrace the strength of its civil society: “By reminding Japan of the hidden depths of its local communities, especially compared with the shallowness of central government, it has also provided a sense of how Japan could emerge stronger from the crisis, ending years of economic drift.”

If someone were interested in writing another blog post about disaster response, an interesting direction to go might be to describe how the growth of government destroys civil society and thereby undermines society’s resilience to disasters. Another way to go would be to describe how nationalized disaster insurance incentivizes people to live in disaster-prone areas, magnifying the human cost of disasters when they inevitably arrive.

Act

Anthony Hennen gives fourteen tips oh rhetoric…you figure he’s holding out number fifteen on us?

YAL’s Anthony Hennen has some advice for you as you talk to potential new members, and I would add that this applies to actual new members as well. Your new additions are probably still a little skittish, no sense scaring them more than necessary.

If I were to venture a fifteenth tip, it would be to have fun. If you can’t manage that, at least appear to be having fun. No one wants to join the no-fun club! But really, what’s more fun than fighting for liberty? Cultivate a sense of joy about what you’re doing, it will make you more creative and energize you during the tougher parts. Get out there and rock some socks!

Ludwig von Mises’ birthday is September 29th. Will Tew writes about his life and influence.

Ludwig von Mises was born to wealthy Jewish parents on September 29, 1881. He grew up in Austria-Hungary, settled for most of the first half of his life in Vienna. Influenced by the work of Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School, he studied under another early Austrian, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. Von Mises’ studies continued after earning his doctorate—he continued to teach and write. He lectured at the University of Vienna for almost twenty years while also working as a secretary in the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. With the advent of Nazism and Hitler’s rise, von Mises headed to Switzerland in 1934, and then to New York City in 1940.

After getting to America, von Mises struggled to find a job. He eventually secured a non-salaried position at NYU, where he taught economics to students like Israel Kirzner and Murray Rothbard. As an economist von Mises argued for methodological individualism as a process for deriving economic laws. He introduced the economic calculation problem as a criticism of socialism: socialism must fail because planners lack the mechanism of the price system to determine where to allocate resources. His magnum opus, Human Action, disseminated the word “praxeology,” which means, unsurprisingly enough, the study of human action.

Human Action and the other works of von Mises have had a profound impact on the modern libertarian movement, as any visit to mises.org can attest, but von Mises’ influence is not insulated to libertarians. Friedrich Hayek, perhaps the most famous Austrian economist and student of von Mises, founded the Mont Pelerin Society with von Mises and others in 1947 to preserve classical liberalism and free-market economics. As a friend and associate to many European leaders, he had a hand in shaping the face of post-war western Europe. Ludwig von Mises’ ideas have proven to be further reaching than even he probably could have imagined.

Write

Anthony Priestas of Liberty at Boston University writes about the White House’s new jobs plan, gets quoted in Daily Free Press.

Anthony has a blog post up in response to last week’s jobs speech, and was quoted in Boston University’s student newspaper. Both links are well worth checking out.

Anthony writes, “Stimulus bills are deficit spending measures that only “increase short-term aggregate demand,” according to the Congressional Budget Office. This means we add to our ballooning debt without realizing long-term benefits – in effect, kicking the can down the road.” This hits the nail on the head, but I would have liked to see some analysis of the “crowding out” effects of government spending, and a more critical look at national income accounting (GDP) as a measure of social wealth.

On one hand, we ought to consider that even if spending pushes up GDP, it has done so at the cost of precluding some amount of private spending (at least in the long run). There’s a joke in libertarian circles (I first heard it from Hans Herman-Hoppe at the Mises University summer program but I don’t know where it originates) about government efficiency.

The joke goes like this: “Government efficiency, why would you want that? We like private companies to be efficient because they produce goods—but the government produced bads!”

Like many jokes, this exposes a fundamental tension with how we think about the world. We count government spending as part of GDP (and this leads into the second point) because we assume government spending produces products and services of value; but many (if not all, depending on your definition) government activities are simply destructive of wealth. Taking a slightly rosier view, if the government spends a dollar on roads, why should that count as much as a dollar spent on private road construction that is more efficient?

Onto the second point, what about the implications for GDP-based analysis? The aggregate demand/aggregate supply methodology measures social wealth in a way that an increase in government spending, other things constant, constitutes an increase in social wealth. Most government services do not have a reliable market price, so does this make sense? Why not something like Private Product Remaining instead? If the way we define social wealth means that an increase in government spending tautologically implies an increase in social wealth, isn’t that something we ought to express some concern over as libertarians? I also want to mention, but not examine to closely, the implicit Benthamite utilitarianism underlying national income accounting as a framework.

That, and any of the issues I’ve touched on here, would make a great blog post. Vanderbilt, Boston, and Berkeley, and UNC have been especially active lately. Are you going to take that lying down, Ole Miss, Otago, UC San Diego, and Virginia?

Act

Fall recruitment, Profiles in Activism DVD in progress.

Fall recruitment event reports continue to pile in (good job, everyone!) and a few groups have held early-semester events already. See:

• Sharon Presley delivered a talk titled “Government is Women’s Enemy” at Berkeley
• Vanderbilt posted video of their first meeting, a lecture by club faculty advisor Dr. John Lachs, “The Significance of Individuals.”
• Robert Shibley of FIRE gave a talk on due process in campus sexual assault cases at UNC.
• CLOKSU went a slightly less academic, but more hilarious, direction.

In Profiles in Activism news, I am almost done prepping the video files to put on the DVD. Also fixed some editing goofs in the first two videos–pictures in widescreen aspect ration will now actually use the whole screen. Keep an eye out for further updates.

This week I’d like to share an anecdote about the re-discovery of Bastiat by Leonard Read.

You’re probably familiar with Frédéric Bastiat’s The Law. It’s a well-known introduction to the classical liberal way of thinking. But Bastiat wasn’t always well known in libertarian circles.

In his biographical essay about FEE founder Leonard Read, Edmund Opitz explains how Read encountered Bastiat and went on to share Bastiat’s works with the world.

Thomas Nixon Carver, distinguished professor of economics at Harvard who championed the free-market economy during the ’20s and ’30s, had retired to southern California. Carver attended a luncheon at which Leonard was the speaker. After the talk Carver approached Leonard and said, “Mr. Read, you sound like Frederic Bastiat.” “Who is Bastiat?” inquired Leonard. Carver responded and promised to mail Bastiat’s booklet titled “Communism versus Free Trade.”* Leonard loved it and soon issued it under the imprint of Pamphleteers, Inc., a small group of friends of liberty within the Chamber [of Commerce] orbit who, in their “ninth-floor underground,” occasionally chipped in to print short works that otherwise might be neglected, like Rose Wilder Lane’s Give Me Liberty and Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Not long after this, Mr. Hoiles reprinted three of Bastiat’s books in the English translation of about 130 years ago. Several years after founding FEE, Leonard published Dean Russell’s robust translation of Bastiat’s The Law. Well over 500,000 copies have been circulated.

A chance meeting at a speaking engagement, and the rest, they say, is history. The question remains, of course, where did Professor Carver hear of Bastiat?

My personal favorite of the Bastiat works I’ve read is a piece known as the candlemakers’ petition. I won’t say anything about it to avoid spoiling it for those of you who haven’t encountered it before, but it’s uproariously funny.

Ed. note: I’m pretty sure the work in question is “Protectionism and Communism.” I was unable to find any work by Bastiat titled “Communism versus Free Trade.” back

Write

SFL’s Clint Townsend has an op-ed in the Amarillo Globe-News.

Townsend: Fed’s ’solution’: Continue with the problem

Clint studies economics at the University of North Texas and is the South Central Regional Director and a Campus Coordinator for Students for Liberty. My only addition would be that when Townsend argues:

At last, the opportunity has presented itself for the Fed to finally consider a new, more prudent and responsible policy that would align interest rates more closely with actual market conditions. Like every other good or service in the economy, the laws of supply and demand should be allowed to govern interest rates. No longer should the Fed be able to impose reckless policies that hold interest rates artificially low.

I want you to imagine me being the over-enthusiastic fellow in the back of the room slightly awkwardly interjecting a cheer of “End the Fed!”

Act

Grab bag of goodness!

I happened to be back at my alma mater last weekend and I stopped by the recruitment booth of the University of Pittsburgh College Libertarians, a group I (re)started when I was a junior. Since then they’ve gone through two leadership changes and this year there will be an SFL Regional Conference on campus. Josh Pearson, my successor as President, is currently working for the Paul 2012 campaign and current President Christian Gund seems to have things running like a well oiled machine. Another fellow I met through my libertarian activities at Pitt (current Notre Dame law student Eric Cervone) will be crashing on my couch later this week during a visit to DC.

I tell you this both because I am proud of how far the organization has come and what the alumni have done, and (more importantly) because I want people in clubs now or thinking about joining or starting a club to know that even if it seems like you’re just hanging out in a starkly-lit classroom on Tuesday nights complaining about the government, you’re also forging bonds that, if you want them to, can continue well past graduation.

If you’re in the Pittsburgh area, check out the Facebook event page for the Pittsburgh Regional Conference and then register! I’ll hope to see you there.

But activism isn’t just alive and thriving at Pitt! Vanderbilt’s YAL chapter has a blog post up about their beginning-of-semester recruitment efforts. Look at those shiny new copies of The Morality of Capitalism! Elsewhere, the College Libertarians of Kennesaw State University (”CLOCKSU” to its friends) put on a screening of 10 Rules for Dealing with the Police. Sounds like a great way to attract incoming freshmen to me!

To wrap up this week, I want to remind everyone that Constitution Day is coming up. This year it will be observed on Friday, September 16th. If you’re running low on pocket Constitutions, Bureaucrash has a few copies that I’d love to send you, and lots of other liberty organizations have copies as well. Alternatively, you might consider a Lysander Spooner discussion group.

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

H. L. Mencken spent most of his life in the city he was born in: Baltimore, Maryland. Born September 12, 1880, Mencken would go on to be one of most prolific and influential writers of the first half of the twentieth century. Readers looked forward to his columns and editorials at the Baltimore Sun for 43 years, from 1905 to 1948. His defined style, wit, and intelligence made him an engaging writer and the favorite of American audiences.

Over his career, he critiqued subjects as diverse as creationism, democracy, and the YMCA. Like all good satirists, he was a master of the ironic. His reporting on the Scopes Monkey Trial (a name Mencken coined) framed the way we think of the farcical trial which persecuted “the infidel Scopes.” His best essays are peppered with aphorisms and quips with a distinctly Twainsian bent. Often, one can almost hear the smacks as Mencken’s words land on their targets, and the astonished gasps of the pompous figures that Mencken loathed so much. He never praised when he could scorn, but he never ridiculed anyone (or anything) that didn’t deserve it.

One of Mencken’s chief targets was the state. An individualist who would inspire Ayn Rand, he saw the state as opposing man’s highest goals. Although he lived and worked in the age of progressivism, he derided progressives and their “enlightened” policies. Even the chieftain of the progressive tribe, the infamous Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was not safe from Mencken’s pen. He said of Roosevelt, “If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.” The same irreverent attitude pervades the Mencken’s entire corpus. For substance and style, Mencken ranks with the best.

Write
This week we look at the hysteria surrounding the Four Loko ban, and what it says about the relationship between the political class and the young.

This is normally older than what I’d like to include here (only the freshest goods for you, dear reader!), but I can’t overlook Andrew Smith’s tract on the Four Loko ban at the UNC Libertarians blog.

Governmental rhetoric concerning alcohol and youths should be called what it is: age discrimination. Statements – like Goldberg’s about youth’s brains – are blanketed and discriminatory. If someone were to say, “ethnic group X cannot use product Y because their brains are inept” that person would rightfully be called a racist. The difference is that is that age discrimination has become institutionalized, meaning it is now part of government policy. Neo-Prohibitionists want alcohol to be heavily regulated and to do that they must demonize youths. They must paint youths in the worst light possible, no matter how inaccurate, so that their depiction becomes the normalized view.

The sections describing how the demonization of young people and cultural elitism contributed to the Four Loko ban are especially interesting. Smith describes how putting age requirements on things that are above the age of majority creates a group of second-class citizens in violation of the principle of equal protection.

There is a rich vein of potential commentary here. Institutionalized ageism takes many additional forms. Social Security is often called a Ponzi scheme, but really it’s worse than that, since it pits parents against children and grandchildren in a kind of generational civil war—with the young people, of course, getting the raw deal. Conscription targets the young—this is discrimination out of practical necessity, true, and we have “ended” the draft, but young men are nevertheless required to register with the Selective Service; the government has told young people that it won’t draft them, but maintains, incredibly, that it can. Minimum wage laws push young people out of the workplace and make them dependent on others for longer, preventing them from gaining the basic security they need to flourish and to influence policy. Subsidies for higher education have destroyed the signalling value (and often the practical value) of college education, leaving young people with a large debt and few prospects. Age requirements to hold public office protect the other forms of anti-youth policy.

The result of this systemic pattern is marginalization. Some policies lead directly to infantilization, like the minimum wage or the requirement in the recent healthcare law that “children” be able to stay on their parents’ insurance well into adulthood. Others exploit, like conscription and Social Security. Others bring harm in benevolent guise. I was going to cite student loans, but the entire government-education complex might be referenced, as might certain transfer payments to the young.

Think about these things the next time some politician talks about how the importance of “our nation’s youth.”

Act
Watch this (funny!) video and avoid common tabling pitfalls.

It’s recruitment season, which means you’re probably going to run a table soon, if you haven’t already. With that in mind, I want to share the following video with you, an old favorite of mine, “What Not to Say at a Libertarian Party Outreach Booth.” The lessons, of course, apply to libertarians as well as LP members:

The Weekly will come out Thursdays in late afternoon/early evening. I chose Thursday afternoon/evening both because it is “prime time” for internet traffic and because that should give student leaders plenty of lead time to incorporate the content from Bureaucrash Weekly into their meetings–in my experience, most clubs meet Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

Each edition of Bureaucrash Weekly will have three sections.

Think

The first section, “Think,” will suggest a potential topic of discussion for your next meeting. The section will highlight some aspect of the libertarian intellectual tradition. If possible, something timely—a birthday of an important libertarian thinker or the anniversary of some event important to the libertarian tradition—if not, something timeless. We’ll give you the time-sensitive stuff at least a week in advance so that you can mention it at a meeting close to the date in question.

Write

The second section, “Write,” highlights some of the best, most interesting posts on student blogs. I’m looking forward to engaging with the emerging community of libertarian student bloggers. I’ve found quite a few on my own, but if you’re a student who runs a libertarian blog, let me know about it so I can add it to my RSS reader. You can reach me at hq@bureaucrash.com.

Act

The third and final section, “Act,” deals with activism proper. I will either highlight an event that took place the previous week, or offer tips on running a student group or holding an event.

The first Bureaucrash Weekly comes out Thursday, September 1st. I hope you will find it useful and enjoyable—watch this space!

The video examines the “Visualize the Debt” events that took place across the country last year. I talk to the man who started it all, Josh Jackson. I hope you find my interview with Josh helpful and inspiring.

I was able to interview Josh in person and I’m very pleased with the resulting upgrade in video quality. Mad props to editor extraordinaire William Tew, who did most of the editing work on this and on both of the videos of John and Barry of UNR. What’s next for Bureaucrash? Stay tuned, I’ve got a new announcement coming up within a few days. Until then, enjoy the video below.