David Boaz

Establishment intellectuals are in high dudgeon at the use of terms like "socialism" and "fascism" to describe President Obama's program of government takeovers of automobile companies; the extension of federal control over banking, financial services, local schools, energy production, health care, and the internet; and "spread the wealth" tax-and-spend policies. But Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan had a point when they pointed to similarities between Mussolini's fascism and FDR's New Deal. And, as I wrote in a review of Wolfgang Schivelbusch's Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933–1939, Mussolini saw the connection, too: In a laudatory review of Roosevelt’s 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices. …  Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.” And today I discovered another example, in Susannah Cahalan's New York Post review of James Mauro's book Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World's Fair on the Brink of War. Mauro relates the visit of Grover Whalen, New York's police commissioner and president of the World's Fair Corporation, to Rome to persuade Mussolini to authorize an Italian pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair. The conversation, Mauro says (as summarized by Cahalan), began like this:

“I understand you served as Police Commissioner of New York,” he said. “How did my people behave?” “Some good, some bad,” Whalen responded. “The bad ones — from Sicily?” Mussolini first balked at participating in the Fair. “What, Italy compete with Wall Street?” the dictator said. “What, for example, would it accomplish?” “The American people would like to know what fascism is,” Whalen responded. “You want to know what fascism is like? It is like your New Deal!”

Mauro's source for this conversation was Whalen's autobiography, Mr. New York.  America is not fascist Italy, much less Germany or Russia. We have only the late Mr. Whalen's word that this conversation took place. But historians should be able to talk rationally about similarities and parallels in disparate programs.

The folks at the Center for American Progress, in their daily anti-right email, wrongly call the Cato Institute conservative and wrongly spell our name CATO. But what I find more amusing is that the email, prompted by Michael Steele's confused remarks about Afghanistan and the reaction against him, is titled "The Right Wing's Addiction to War." They have a point. But who's running the Iraq and Afghanistan wars now? Isn't it the man who once said

I opposed this war in 2002. I will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home.

and

I was opposed to this war in 2002….I have been against it in 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8 and I will bring this war to an end in 2009. So don’t be confused.

The right wing may be addicted to war, but it seems to be a left-wing president who's on the sauce now. I look forward to seeing the Center for American Progress start asking President Obama when it will be 2009.

The goal of a new Chinese government campaign is to "eradicate all social evils" and "advocate a healthy, civilized and high-minded lifestyle," according to the Washington Post. Some elements of the state just don't like the way the Chinese people are using their newfound freedom. On a different level, we face the same arguments here in the United States. Both the Hillarys and the Huckabees in our world seek to fight "social evils" and lead us to "a healthy, civilized and high-minded lifestyle." The Huckabees focus on our souls, urging the government to stamp out sin and push us to do God's will (as they see it). The Hillarys often focus on our bodies, with campaigns against smoking, popcorn, sodas, salt, and all manner of "unhealthy lifestyles." Then again, the Hillarys do want to save our souls, as well, with campaigns to eradicate racism and sexism and spread the environmentalist gospel. In China, economic freedom is giving people an opportunity to throw off old social rules and restrictions and to experiment with living their lives as they choose. Economic freedom has the same impact here, and in both countries there are powerful people who don't like the choices free people make.

USA Today is out with a new poll on Tea Party supporters. Near the top of both the article and the accompanying graphic is this point, also singled out by Howard Kurtz in his Washington Post report on the study:

They are overwhelmingly white and Anglo,

Not too surprising, perhaps. Economic conservatives, we hear, are more white than the national average. But wait --- here's the rest of Kurtz's sentence:

although a scattering of Hispanics, Asian Americans and African Americans combine to make up almost one-fourth of their ranks.

"Almost one-fourth of their ranks" is "a scattering"? Sounds like a pretty good chunk to me, especially in a country that is after all still mostly white. Let's go to the tape. The data-filled graphic says that 77 percent of Tea Party supporters are "non-Hispanic whites." And this 2008 Census report says that the United States as a whole is 65 percent non-Hispanic white. So the Tea Party is indeed somewhat more "white" than the country at large, but not by that much. Twelve points above the national average is not "overwhelmingly white," and 23 percent Hispanics, Asian Americans and African Americans is not "a scattering." At a rough estimate, it represents about 14 million non-Anglo Americans who support the Tea Party movement. How does this compare to the demographics of other movements? Strangely enough, I can't find any real data on the demographics of the enviromental movement. Maybe pollsters and mainstream journalists don't want to know. But here's a report that 84 percent of the visitors to the Sierra Club website are Caucasian. Similar implication here. And here's a story on the environmentalist movement's desperate attempt to seem not so "overwhelmingly white." Yet somehow journalists don't focus on that obvious fact about the environmentalist movement. Instead, they keep describing the Tea Party movement as "overwhelmingly white," even when the data suggest a different conclusion.

At Politico Arena, the question of the day is:

A new Siena College poll ranks Barack Obama as the 15th best U.S. president (landing him below Bill Clinton, ahead of Ronald Reagan). Franklin Delano Roosevelt earned top honors, while Andrew Johnson was last. Pollsters say Obama is high on imagination, communication and intelligence, but weak on background. On your list of best presidents, where would President Obama land? Who was the best president, and who was the worst?

I responded: Of course Obama ought to be given an incomplete. But he got a Nobel Peace Prize purely on spec. He does now have 18 months of presidential action, and he has already done many things that establishment political scientists like. Presidential scholars love presidents who expand the size, scope and power of government. Thus they put the Roosevelts at the top of the list. And they rate Woodrow Wilson -- the anti-Madisonian president who gave us the entirely unnecessary World War I, which led to communism, National Socialism, World War II, and the Cold War -- 8th. Now there's a record for President Obama to aspire to! Create a century of war and terrorism, and you can move up from 15th to 8th. George Washington, who made real the Founders' dreams of a free republic, should surely be rated first. That he is not speaks volumes about the interests and values underlying this survey. In his book Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, Ivan Eland gives high grades to presidents who left the American people alone to enjoy peace and prosperity, such as Grover Cleveland, Martin Van Buren, and Rutherford B. Hayes. The fact that you can't remember what any of those presidents did is a plus. At the bottom he places Wilson, Truman, McKinley, Polk, and George W. Bush. Bush is also rated near the bottom by the Siena poll. But when current passions have faded, and the next generation's establishment presidential scholars reflect on Bush's expansion of federal power and executive power, Bush will start rising in the rankings. I'm also amused by the presidential scholars' ranking of Lyndon Johnson 1st in the category of relations with Congress. LBJ was known for his vulgar, arm-twisting, threatening, corrupt manipulation of a huge congressional majority. One would hope that congressional scholars might rate higher a president who recognized the constitutional limitations of the executive branch.

John Stossel, usually seen on Fox Business Network, will have a special on the Fox News Channel this weekend, well targeted to Independence Day: "What's Great about America." He'll interview Dinesh D'Souza and immigrant businessmen, among others. Saturday and Sunday, 9 p.m. ET both nights. Fox News is on lots more cable systems than Fox Business, so if you don't get Fox Business, this is your chance to see Stossel. Tonight at 9 p.m., I think it's a rerun of his recent show on Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, featuring . . . me. Along with Johan Norberg, Tom Palmer, and Bob Chitester. For some of my own thoughts on what's great about America, see this article.

Journalists have been repeating lately that "economists say" that we need yet more government spending now to keep on goosing the economy, even though -- to be sure -- we will need to cut back on spending at some point in the undefined future, to avoid the fate of Greece. Well, maybe some economists. But I'm sure this "economists agree" claim is no more true today than it was a year ago. Here's one example, from NYU economist Mario J. Rizzo, coauthor with Cato senior fellow Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr. of The Economics of  Time and Ignorance:

But let’s look at the arguments made by the opponents of fiscal stimulus. Some have argued that, as deficits increase, people now offset the putative stimulus by increasing their savings in anticipation of future tax increases. So there is no stimulus now. Others have argued that, for example, extending unemployment insurance (again) to those unemployed for more than six months will increase the length of unemploymentnow (by subsidizing it) while failing to stimulate. The stimulus failure is due to the relatively small increase in spending induced by non-permanent increases in income (as unemployment insurance is certainly not permanent source of income). Even more, producers know that the spending is non-permanent so it is unlikely to result in increased employment of labor. Thus, there is no stimulus now; in fact if unemployment continues there is a kind of anti-stimulus now. Austrians have argued that failing to allow the housing market to adjust by both fiscal and monetary propping-up measures, worsens the situation now by prolonging the inevitable adjustment to a bubble sector. As the adjustment is dragged out and the rest of the economy suffers the dampening effectsnow. This must include the uncertainty as to when (in calendar time) the market will be allowed to adjust. In empirical work, John Taylor finds that to the extent there was some effect of the fiscal stimulus it was very small and lasted only a matter of two or three months for each major injection. So I guess the long run is four or five months by this reckoning:

Compared with the 2008 stimulus, the 2009 stimulus was larger, but the amount paid in checks was smaller and more drawn out. Nevertheless, there is still no noticeable effect on consumption. I also show the timing of the “Cash for Clunkers” program in Figure 7; it did encourage some consumption, but did not last and cannot be considered an effective method to stimulate the economy. In addition, my analysis of the government spending part of the stimulus is that it too had little positive impact.

Even frameworks that stress future consequences of current stimulus need not be long-run theories in the calendar sense. For example, if the anticipated taxes required to pay off or service current deficits consist of rises in marginal income tax rates, output will be considerably lower and the real interest rates higher in a matter of a couple of years than without stimulus. The upshot of all of this is that the anti-stimulus economists are not claiming we must trade off benefits now for some long-term pie-in-the-sky benefits. Most are saying: The stimulus route leads to (almost) no benefits now as well as costs later.

Senator Robert C. Byrd, who died today at age 92, had a long and varied career. Unlike most senators, Senator Byrd remembered that the Constitution delegates the power to make law and the power to make war to Congress, not the president. He often held up the Cato Institute's pocket edition of the Constitution as he made that vital point in Senate debate. I have several emails from colleagues over the years reading "Senator Byrd is waving the Cato Constitution on the Senate floor right now." Alas, if he really took the Constitution seriously, he would have realized that the limited powers it gives the federal government wouldn't include many of the New Deal and Great Society programs that opened up whole new vistas for pork in West Virginia. Justin has already used the photo of Senator Byrd wielding the Cato Constitution to make a point on Meet the Press in 2004. At right, at a Capitol Hill press conference in 1998 after the Supreme Court rejected the line-item veto, Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Byrd cite their pocket Constitutions as Sen. Pat Moynihan (D-NY) looks on. For more examples of senators and other public figures displaying the Cato pocket Constitution, see this Cato Policy Report (pdf) article. To purchase copies of the Cato pocket edition of the Constitution, which also includes the Declaration of Independence and an introduction by Roger Pilon, click here. Let us hope that some other senator takes up Senator Byrd's vigilance about the powers of Congress and the imperial presidency.

The Wall Street Journal reports Saturday that Turkey and Pakistan are blocking, monitoring, and threatening such websites as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, and Amazon. At least you've got to give them credit for going after the big guys! The Journal notes, "A number of countries in the Islamic world, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, have banned Internet content in the past for being sacrilegious. But those countries have authoritarian governments that closely monitor the Internet and the media." Of course, it's not just Islamic countries that try to protect their citizens -- or subjects -- from dissenting thoughts. China has been involved in well-publicized battles with Google, Rupert Murdoch's Star TV, and other media companies. But it's hard to make your country a part of the world economy and keep it closed to outside thoughts and images. North Korea may be able to do it -- though recent stories suggest that even the benighted people of the world's most closed society know more about the world than we have previously thought. Countries that don't want to be North Korea have a harder time. The latest example: Thomas Erdbrink reports in the Washington Post that Murdoch's Farsi1 satellite station is

pulling in Iranian viewers with sizzling soaps and sitcoms but has incensed the Islamic republic's clerics and state television executives. Unlike dozens of other foreign-based satellite channels here, Farsi1 broadcasts popular Korean, Colombian and U.S. shows and also dubs them in Iran's national language, Farsi, rather than using subtitles, making them more broadly accessible. Its popularity has soared since its launch in August.... Satellite receivers are illegal in Iran but widely available. Officials acknowledge that they jam many foreign channels using radio waves, but Farsi1, which operates out of the Hong Kong-based headquarters of Star TV, a subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corp., is still on the air in Tehran. Viewers are increasingly deserting the six channels operated by Iranian state television, with its political, ideological and religious constraints, for Farsi1's more daring fare, including the U.S. series "Prison Break," "24" and "Dharma and Greg."

Those who want to build a wall around the minds of the Iranian people denounce Murdoch and his temptations:

Some critics here hold Murdoch responsible for what they see as this new infestation of corrupt Western culture. The prominent hard-line magazine Panjereh, or Window, devoted its most recent issue to Farsi1, featuring on the cover a digitally altered version of an evil-looking Murdoch sporting a button in the channel's signature pink and white colors. "Murdoch is a secret Jew trying to control the world's media, and [he] promotes Farsi1," the magazine declared. "Farsi1's shows might be accepted in Western culture . . . but this is the first time that such things are being shown and offered so directly, completely and with ulterior motives to Iranian society. Does anybody hear alarm bells?" wrote Morteza Najafi, a regular Panjereh contributor.

The Iranian state -- Akbar Ganji calls it a "sultanate" in Weberian terms -- has tried to block access to Farsi1. It jams foreign channels, it sends police out to confiscate satellite dishes, but it can't seem to prevent many citizens from tuning in to officially banned broadcasts. Way back in 1979, David Ramsay Steele of the Libertarian Alliance in Great Britain wrote about the changes beginning in China. He quoted authors in the official Beijing Review who were explaining that China would adopt the good aspects of the West -- technology, innovation, entrepreneurship -- without adopting its liberal values. “We should do better than the Japanese,” the authors wrote. “They have learnt from the United States not only computer science but also strip-tease. For us it is a matter of acquiring the best of the developed capitalist countries while rejecting their philosophy.” But, Steele replied, countries like China have a choice. “You play the game of catallaxy, or you do not play it. If you do not play it, you remain wretched. But if you play it, you must play it. You want computer science? Then you have to put up with striptease.”  North Korea and Burma choose to "remain wretched." That's not the future Iran's leaders want. But they too will find it difficult to keep their citizens in an information straitjacket while participating in a global economy.  Footnote: In all this discussion of how authoritarian governments try to protect their citizens from offensive images, alternative ideas, and what's going on in the rest of the world, I am for some reason reminded of the "30 Rock" episode in which NBC executive Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is trying to figure out how to deal with a high-strung performer. Another actress tells him, "You've got to lie to her, coddle her, protect her from the real world." Jack replies,"I get it -- treat her like the New York Times treats its readers."

We sometimes talk about 1943 as the year that the libertarian movement really started, with the publication of three passionate books by Ayn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane, and Isabel Paterson. In his review of a new biography of Arthur Koestler, Paul Berman makes 1940 sound like a crucial year for books of liberal anti-communism (that is, of course, anti-communism by modern liberals, not classical liberals, who were always opposed to socialism). Perhaps it took 20 years for liberals and anarchists to realize what was happening in Russia and organize their thoughts about it. Libertarians got there a bit sooner, from Mises's theoretical critique in Socialism in 1922 to Rand's firsthand experiences that led to the publication of We the Living in 1936.  Koestler's book Darkness at Noon was completed in 1940, then smuggled out of Vichy France and published the next year. Also in 1940:

A talented little group of intellectuals in the 1930s was keen on Promethean myths, and the center of that impulse was the United States, where the talented group pictured the Communist movement in the light of Prometheus and his struggles. Edmund Wilson devoted his masterwork To the Finland Station to the Promethean theme—it, too, came out in 1940, by the way.... 

By the time Wilson completed his own manuscript, he knew very well that, in Russia, Marxism had pretty much failed. And he attributed this failure largely to a philosophical error on Marx’s part, back in the nineteenth century. Marx had thoughtlessly incorporated into his own doctrine a whiff of mysticism, drawn from Hegel. The mystical whiff had transformed Marx’s movement from a sober, progressive-minded, social-science action campaign into a movement of religious inebriates. A religious frenzy had produced a hubris. Under Lenin and the Bolsheviks, hubris led to despotism. And to crime—to the deliberate setting aside of moral considerations. To the dehumanization of humanism.

Such was Wilson’s argument in To the Finland Station. Here was the Promethean myth, twisted into tragedy: a story of rebellion and counter-rebellion. Freedom and its betrayal. Fire and self-immolation. Wilson’s philosophical mentors were Max Eastman and Sidney Hook, and in that same year each of those redoubtable thinkers came out with his own variation on the same interpretation—Eastman in an essay in Reader’s Digest (which later appeared in his book Reflections on the Failure of Socialism) and Hook in a volume called Reason, Social Myths, and Democracy. In the United States in 1940, tragic Prometheanism was more than an argument. It was a school of thought.

And somehow Koestler, composing his novel under European circumstances inconceivably more difficult than anything his American colleagues would ever experience, arrived at roughly the same interpretation.

Read more...