It looks obvious

I already set my DVR to record this, if it in HBO usual high standard it should be very good.

When the NY Times publish an an article like this it has to be a good day:

Bullying and protectionism have a lot in common. They both use force (either directly or through the power of the law) to enrich someone else at your involuntary expense. If you’re forced to pay $20 an hour to an American for goods you could have bought from a Mexican for $5 an hour, you’re being extorted. When a free trade agreement allows you to buy from the Mexican after all, rejoice in your liberation — even if Mr. McCain, Mr. Romney and the rest of the presidential candidates don’t want you to.

One have to wonder why the civil-war as solution for freeing the slaves become so holly that questioning its efficiency - in light of the price in casualties, civil liberties and the political structures and balance between the states and the federal government. It seems that any criticism on the war, as the only way to free the slaves, and about its other motives is immediately rejected as racism. For someone like me, who is not emotionally invested in this discussion, it seems like an unreasonable approach. I don’t like the assuming of power by the federal government, nor by any level of government, and I can understand why some people have different view than the PC orthodoxy permits:

All of that states the matter very well. I remain convinced that the vast majority of Confederate soldiers were fighting for constitutional liberty, including one of my own ancestors, and I think that was, is, something worth defending. If that repels the Jamie Kirchicks of the world, I have to conclude that I am on the right track.

The last link for today is a month old article in the economist that takes another look at the era of the hunter-gatherer:

Incessant innovation is a characteristic of human beings. Agriculture, the domestication of animals and plants, must be seen in the context of this progressive change. It was just another step: hunter-gatherers may have been using fire to encourage the growth of root plants in southern Africa 80,000 years ago. At 15,000 years ago people first domesticated another species—the wolf (though it was probably the wolves that took the initiative). After 12,000 years ago came crops. The internet and the mobile phone were in some vague sense almost predestined 50,000 years ago to appear eventually.

 

There is a modern moral in this story. We have been creating ecological crises for ourselves and our habitats for tens of thousands of years. We have been solving them, too. Pessimists will point out that each solution only brings us face to face with the next crisis, optimists that no crisis has proved insoluble yet. Just as we rebounded from the extinction of the megafauna and became even more numerous by eating first rabbits then grass seeds, so in the early 20th century we faced starvation for lack of fertiliser when the population was a billion people, but can now look forward with confidence to feeding 10 billion on less land using synthetic nitrogen, genetically high-yield crops and tractors. When we eventually reverse the build-up in carbon dioxide, there will be another issue waiting for us.

Through Maggie’s Farm I found this very interesting essay (PDF) about the origin of the US involvement in the Middle East. It isn’t short, but it is very good reading. And anyway an essay that state the following, can’t be really bad:

An interesting discussion about the mixing of economy, as a scientific discipline, and the moral driven political action: 

So in response to hatchet-job campaigns like that in The New Republic, or pundits such as David Fraum, we should be prepared because of our failure to prevent the conflation of Austrian economics and libertariansim, and the rhetorical emphasis many have chosen to pursue in presenting the libertarian political philosophy. We must be prepared to respond. 

First, to insist that economics is not an ideologically disputed discipine anymore than chemistry or physics are. The basic teachings of economics are in place, it is the implications, and outter edges, that are in contention just like any other vibrant scientific discipline. There is, in short, nothing out of the mainstream of economics to insist that people respond to incentives, that disperse knowledge is coordinated through the price system, that inflation can distort economic activity, that regulation can be captured by powerful interest groups, etc. 

Second, to point out what role the economist plays in society (Teacher, Student, Social Critic). Economics per se does not lend itself to advocacy of this or that policy, it does provide wisdom on the spontaneous ordering of society, and technical knowledge on means-ends efficiency. Economics must be combined with some moral sentiments (themselves up for debate) to be transformed into advocacy. But the discipline independent of moral assessment provides us with knowledge that places parameters on people’s utopia. Wishing it so doesn’t make it so, and economics tells us why. So much of political campaigning is about selling wishful thinking to a population that doesn’t know any better. Economics has not only a role to play, but a unique and powerful role in serving as the prophylactic against public fallacies. We need to defend the structural integrity of that prophylactic so it can do its job! 

Third, be able to step away from our position as economist quo economist and instead take on our role as citizen and express our libertarianism as a doctrine of empowerment and inclusion. Libertarianism is not a fancy excuse for individuals who want to freely express racism, or bash certain sexual lifestyles, or businessmen who want to smoke dope. Of course, in a free society, just as in any society populated by human beings, there will be those who are ignorant and prejudice. The question is one of minimizing the access to politcal power of the ignorant and prejudice so that whatever repugnant views they may hold cannot be instantiated into policy and must always be confroted with free competition in ideas, in associations, in the market. In short, libertarianism doesn’t promise perfection, it just promises an institutional regime where man’s imperfections are held in check through decentralization of power, and competition.

And last for today is a link for Giuliani’s plan for straitening homeland security. It is interesting to note the classical path for tyranny - the development of external demonized enemies that ambushing in every corner, the siege and the total drafting to fight the “enemies”: 

Getting and keeping federal agencies communicating with one another isn’t enough. An effective homeland security plan also has to establish links to, and make use of, the valuable information collected by the country’s 800,000 state and local law enforcement officers. We should view these officers as counterterrorism resources–"first preventers," as the Manhattan Institute’s R.P. Eddy calls them. Even beyond uniformed services, people such as DMV clerks, and even everyday citizens, may notice clues that would help law enforcement identify would-be terrorists. It was a clerk at Circuit City, after all, who provided the key tip that enabled federal authorities to stop the Fort Dix plot. (We should also reform liability laws so that individuals who act in good faith, such as those who report suspicious behavior on airplanes, will not get sued for trying to help their fellow citizens. Fortunately, a law authored by Rep. Peter King was recently passed to protect Americans who do just that.)

The article is full of incoherent arguments, self contradictions and over simplifications - which is perfectly in line with Giuliani’s foreign policy.