Bob Higgs, in a recent post on all the foolishness in American higher education, reminds us of what a danger we face as our colleges attempt to mold students into young Jacobins.  In light of the state of American education, we need some bright spot on what is a dismal landscape.  One bright spot I have found is the blog America Restored, which is operated by several high school students.  In trying to rekindle a respect for liberty in modern America, these students advise “the key to accomplishing this is to stop asking the world for approval, and begin doing what you know is right. Once you do this, you will feel happiness and joy, rather than discomfort and nervousness. Read the words from the men and women who came before us, who loved and cherished liberty, and you will see that they knew these things to be true.”

This is a good point for us all to remember.  Rather than seeking approval from those in power or those enthralled with our current welfare-warfare state, we should do what we know is right whether it causes discomfort or chastisement.  It encourages me to see young folks devoted to liberty in a world that prefers to focus on power and intervention.  Check them out.

* * *

William J. Watkins, Jr. is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and the author of the Independent book, Crossroads for Liberty: Recovering the Anti-Federalist Values of America’s First Constitution.

Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist policies of state control, high spending, class warfare and punitive taxation have been tried in many countries. We know how these policies turn out and it is always the same: badly.

As a starting point, he appointed a Stalinist as a key advisor, ignored warnings about Trot infiltration of the Labour Party and called for the “complete rehabilitation” of Leon Trotsky himself.

We should all know what hardline Communism produces: the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea or, at best, Cuba or East Germany. Yet Mr. Corbyn thinks that the same policies that produced repeated catastrophes before will produce a socialist nirvana in the UK. While the Bourbons learnt nothing and forgot nothing, the UK Hard Left seems to have learned nothing at all. Consider some of Mr. Corbyn’s comrades abroad and the damage they have wrought.

Exhibit Number One is Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. Twenty years ago Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world. Now it is one of the poorest. Food is scarce, people are starving and inflation is approaching a thousand per cent. Venezuelan agriculture and industry have been all but destroyed and the country’s oil wealth has been wasted. But to quote Corbyn shortly after Chavez died in 2013: “Chavez showed us that there is a different and a better way of doing things … It’s called socialism, it’s called social justice and it’s something that Venezuela has made a big step towards.”

Sorry, Jeremy, but a system that starves the population it serves is not one that promotes social justice and the only big step made by Venezuela recently is towards breakdown, mass starvation and a looming revolution.

Exhibit Number Two is Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. At independence in 1980, the Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere told Mugabe “You have inherited a jewel; look after it.” Instead Mugabe squandered it and shamelessly too. Run by a self-described socialist, Mugabe’s regime is a kleptomaniac plutocracy that has mismanaged the country to the point of ruin, produced a hyperinflation of almost 80 billion percent a month by 2008 and destroyed what was left of Zimbabwean civil society. One can add to that enormous human rights abuses and a collapse in public health as the government botched attempts to contain AIDS and other epidemics. Yet the Zimbabwean First Family have accumulated enormous wealth under their dictatorship and Mrs. Mugabe is a notorious shopaholic who is reputed to spend millions on each of her shopping trips.

Example Three is former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina. Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world in the early 20th century.  Decades of economic mismanagement have since reduced it to a third world basket case. Ms. Kirchner’s own policies were a disastrous interventionist cocktail that left the Argentinian economy in yet another major crisis as she left office. She was however one of the first world leaders to congratulate Mr. Corbyn on his election as Labour leader. She described his election as a “triumph of hope” and a victory for those “putting politics at the service of people and the economy at the service of the well-being of all citizens”. She is now facing charges of corruption in office.

What do these examples all have in common? They show how to take a prosperous country blessed with abundant resources and reduce it to destitution—and all in the name of the people. In each case, there is also a massive increase in inequality between the very top and the mass of the population below, the key to which is breathtaking corruption made possible by state control. This is how socialism works in practice.

Nor should we forget that hardcore socialism has been tried in the UK too. We had flying pickets, energy cuts and candlelit diners as the Hard Left in the trade union movement took on the ailing Heath government in 1974. The government then called—and lost—a “who runs Britain” election and Labour came to office with a Socialist agenda.

The results? Out-of-control unions, a bloated inefficient public sector and an economic crisis requiring an IMF bailout. This crisis was followed by the winter of discontent, unburied bodies and trash piling up in the streets.

Really. We have seen this movie before. Vote for Corbyn’s Labour and our past will soon become our future.

***

Kevin Dowd is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and co-editor of the Independent book, Money and the Nation State: The Financial Revolution, Government and the World Monetary System (with Richard H. Timberlake, Jr.

Berkeley’s soda tax is being trumpeted as a success because a new study finds that purchases of sugary soft drinks fell by 10 percent in the city from March 2015 to February 2016. Of course, soda-tax advocates claim that the penny-per-ounce excise tax, which took effect in 2015, is fully responsible for the drop.

We could make many criticisms of the study and the tax advocates’ use of it, but more fundamentally, it’s wrong to think that bludgeoning (not just “nudging”) people with taxes is the best way to improve their diets. Those who are worried about soda’s health effects have identified a real problem—sugary beverages are not good for you—but they’ve yet to find a solution consistent with the principles of liberty.

Economic theory and empirical research suggest instead that health can best be promoted by removing the barriers to wealth creation in low-income communities, which are plagued by obesity, Type II diabetes, and tooth decay.

Put simply, richer people eat better and have more time to exercise than poorer people.

Recent economic research shows that selectively taxing products that elites disapprove of exacerbates income inequality because such levies burden people living in poverty more than others. That is, the soda tax makes the folks it is meant to help worse off economically, and fails to encourage healthy dietary habits because the effects of selective taxes on consumption are tiny.

The better path to health, then, is individual economic empowerment, which increases the wealth of low-income people, rather than singling out and punishing the consumers of one class of goods. Instead of making bad habits more expensive, policymakers should remove the many barriers that keep poor people poor.

One of those barriers, occupational licensing, may be intended to protect consumers from shoddy services, but it bars entry into many jobs that serve customers in poor communities, blocking the first steps to prosperity for individuals who sorely need it.

Trying to change poor people’s behavior by raising prices through “sin” taxes won’t bring about the results that soda-tax advocates want to see. In fact, the history of other sin taxes shows that people find ways around the barriers between themselves and their vices. Prohibition in the 1920s was a boon to moonshiners, and cigarette taxes in New York today are equally a dream come true for cigarette smugglers.

Soda taxes elicit similar changes in behavior. The new Berkeley study shows that, while soda sales fell by 10 percent in Berkeley, they rose by almost 7 percent outside the city. So soda taxes are unlikely to deliver the health benefits their supporters promised. The increase in sales outside the city is consistent with a wealth of peer-reviewed economic research showing that individuals shop across borders to avoid taxes.

Until policymakers and health advocates realize that the people they want to help aren’t mere chess pieces to be moved around on the board at will, but rather are autonomous, thinking individuals whose choices deserve respect, failed policies—with all their unintended consequences—will persist.

Instead of being enamored with their own brilliant plans, policymakers should get out of the way of individuals who are trying to improve their lives. Good health will follow.

* * *

William F. Shughart II is Research Director at the Independent Institute, J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice at Utah State University’s Huntsman School of Business, and editor of the Independent book, Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination. Josh T. Smith is a master’s student in economics at Utah State University.

Gordon Lloyd has a review up on the Law of Liberty Blog of my book Crossroads for Liberty.  Lloyd is the Dockson Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University and has been heavily involved in the creation of the useful website TeachingAmericanHistory.org.  I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Lloyd a few years back at a Liberty Fund Colloquium.  I enjoyed his company and the exchanges we had.  He consistently and vigorously supported Federalist positions, whereas I argued for a rediscovery of republican (small “r”) and Anti-Federal ideas.

In the review, Lloyd states that he agrees “we need, in effect, an Antifederalist Revival. . . . We are not going to get back to limited government through the Federalist because it is through the perversion of the Federalist by the Progressives that we find ourselves in the current irrelevant and incoherent position of presidential government.”  So far so good.

However, after agreeing we need an Anti-Federalist revival, Lloyd accuses me of believing that the Anti-Federalists were uniformly attached to the Articles.  This is a misinterpretation.  As I point out in Chapter 4, the Articles were not perfect, and sensible amendments were needed so confederative government could survive in the U.S.  The Anti-Federalists understood this and were willing to grant Congress additional powers over certain continental concerns.  What they did agree on was that the plan of government proposed by the Philadelphia Convention abandoned much of the good found in the Articles and that a puissant national government was inevitable under the new plan.

Lloyd also complains that most of the book concerns “a historical description of the politics of the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederation, odd citations from the Constitutional Convention, and the Federalist, with an admixture of random Antifederalist remarks; and 2) analysis of specific constitutional clauses.”  Well, yes.  As I note at the end of Chapter 4, the book is intended to examine the arguments of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists regarding myriad constitutional provisions and to examine how these provisions were actually used by the national government.  In other words, in light of over 200 years of experience, I wanted to examine which group had the better argument about the effects of the new Constitution.  The Anti-Federalists win this unequivocally.

Lloyd’s big problem with the book is that “unfortunately, the coherence and relevance of the Antifederalists, for Watkins, are anchored in an abiding attachment to the Articles of Confederation.”  Am I attached to the Articles?  In comparison to the Constitution that has given us a consolidated government, yes I am.

Despite what we are told, the Articles were an American success story. The two main goals of the Confederation were the defeat of Great Britain and preservation of self-government in the 13 states. Both were achieved in a confederative structure. In 1783 the Treaty of Paris officially ended the American Revolutionary War. King George III acknowledged that the 13 former colonies were “free sovereign and independent states.”

Under the Articles, each state retained “its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right [not] expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” After the experience with British meddling in colonial affairs, the people preferred to be governed by their own local and state leaders rather than a distant centralized body. The Articles magnificently secured this right of self-government.

Writing in 1786, Thomas Jefferson described the Articles as a “wonderfully perfect instrument, considering the circumstances under which it was formed.” Upon his initial reading of the Constitution of 1787, which ultimately replaced the Articles, Jefferson observed that “all the good of this new constitution might have been couched in three or four new articles to be added to the good, old, and venerable fabrick, which should have been preserved even as a religious relique.”

Amen to that.

* * *

William J. Watkins, Jr. is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and the author of the Independent book, Crossroads for Liberty: Recovering the Anti-Federalist Values of America’s First Constitution.

What happens if the TSA catches someone with a firearm at one of their checkpoints?  It happens a lot.  Last year the TSA found 3,391 guns in carry-ons at checkpoints.  This happened to a friend of mine this week.  Here’s what he told me.

He and his wife were going through the TSA checkpoint to go to their flight when the TSA found a handgun in her purse.  She carries it regularly and had forgotten to leave it home before her flight.  The TSA allowed my friend to take his wife’s handgun back to their car in the airport parking lot.  A TSA employee accompanied my friend to the car and watched him lock the handgun in the car’s glove compartment.  They then left on their flight, gun-free.

My friend’s story reminded me of another story I’d read in the news a few months ago.  Guitarist Rick Derringer had been found with a handgun at a TSA checkpoint, was charged, pleaded guilty and was fined $1,000.  Some people are charged; some they let go.

There are several differences in the two cases, including the fact that Derringer actually carried his gun on a plane and the TSA discovered it after he arrived in the US on an international flight.  Also, Derringer claimed to have carried the gun regularly on past flights, whereas my friend’s wife forgot she had it in her purse.  But, if she’d gotten past the checkpoint with the forgotten gun, she also would have carried it on the plane.

I’m not passing judgment here on the TSA, Rick Derringer, or my friend’s forgetful wife.  I’m just passing along this story because I thought it would interest some readers of The Beacon.

For a century or so, U.S. universities have been an adornment of American culture, and indeed of world culture, but, with notable exceptions, only in the sciences. Bright people have flocked to the USA from all parts of the world to study, research, and teach in physics, chemistry, biology, other physical and life sciences, and related fields such as medicine, mathematics, and engineering. The products are all around us, from life-saving drugs to the Internet, smart phones, GPS guidance systems, and countless other marvels.

But in the humanities and social sciences, the story has been different, especially during the past forty years, as Marxist-spawned doctrines such as Critical Theory and Multicultural This and That have proliferated, destroying disciplines such as English, history, sociology, anthropology, and even in large part economics and replacing them with tendentious dogmas cum jihads such as black studies, gender studies, and LGBT studies.

Moreover, aggressive administrators and zealous faculty adherents of these doctrines have now begun to extend their gaze toward and their interventions in the STEM fields, threatening to destroy the last bastions of what was glorious and truly progressive in the universities. For a long time the faculty in the substantive fields tended to ignore the crazies in the humanities and social sciences, being satisfied to be left alone to do real work. But whether they will be able to continue in this strategy seems now to be in serious question. Pusillanimous administrators have been easily swayed, if they did not in fact lead the way, in favor of the bullshitization of the U.S. universities, turning institutions away from understanding and scholarship toward ideological crusades and identity politics.

If the worthwhile parts of the U.S. universities are to continue to thrive, or even to survive as serious endeavors, it would seem that a parting of the ways must come. The STEM fields must separate themselves from the bullshit parts of the universities. The latter can then go their own way to fester in their nonsense until the general public awakens to the need to cease supporting such activities altogether. This divorce cannot come too soon. Scientific and technical progress is too important to mankind to allow it be be taken hostage by practitioners of anti-rational, mumbo-jumbo-talking, ideological zealots.

Films often take creative license to deviate from historical fact, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales follows in this tradition. Often, this creative license simplifies complicated realities. Below are four ways the Pirates of the Caribbean films oversimplify the complicated and very rational real-world of Caribbean piracy during the so-called Golden Age (1650 to about 1730).

First, real-world pirates rarely used vessels large enough to be called “ships”. During the age of “fighting” sail, the term ship was reserved for vessels with three or more masts. Pirates needed fast and agile boats that could overtake their prey and escape quickly. Thus, most pirates used schooners with one mast, rigged with a substantial amount of sail to maximize speed. They were also shallow-draft boats to allow for quick escape into lagoons and rivers along the island coasts to evade bigger regular naval ships.

In contrast, the ships in Dead Men Tell No Tales are large and bulky, Galleon-style ships with several rows of cannon—historically accurate for regular navy ships but not pirate ships of the period. Stacking gun decks created significant fire power, an advantage based on the fleet battle tactics of the time.  By 1600, most navies engaged in sea battle by having heavily armed warships sail past each in straight lines. These “ships of the line”) were heavy and slow. They were also not particularly effective in chasing down pirates using vessels retrofitted for quick search, capture, and escape tactics.

Last week the City of New Orleans removed a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.  This was the fourth, and final, Confederate monument the city has removed since late April. As usual in modern America, civil and intelligent discourse has been lacking in the debate about Confederate monuments.  The Huffington Post states the removal of Lee’s monument marks the end of a “campaign to expel symbols of white supremacy from public property.”  The Daily Kos has branded the Louisiana House of Representatives an organ of “white supremacy” for passing a bill to prevent any war memorial from being removed or altered.  The majority supporting the bill were called  “hideously racist.”

In America today, such rhetoric makes civil discussion of issues relating to the Civil War or War Between the States impossible.

This is sad.  In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Union and Confederate veterans regularly met in organized reunions.  These men who had seen comrades suffer and die were able to put aside such ugly memories and reminisce  about the shared experiences of being a combat solider.  Old Yanks and old Rebs celebrated each other’s martial valor; they believed that the Grey and the Blue fought for equally honorable causes.  (A good book discussing these reunions and other issues is David Blight’s Race and Reunion.)  They could believe in the righteousness of their own causes without demonizing those who disagreed.

Not that long ago, even Hollywood and the entertainment industry had no problems respecting Confederates.  For example, take the movie She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) staring John Wayne.  In this western, Wayne plays an aging cavalry captain whose last mission is to suppress an Indian breakout.  There’s a scene toward the end of the movie where Trooper Smith, an ex-Confederate, dies of his wounds in a battle with the Cheyenne.  Wayne has “Trooper Smith” buried under his real identity, CSA Cavalry Brigadier General Rome Clay, who had joined the U.S. Army after the War Between the States.  Wayne, whose character fought for the Union during the War, has Rome Clay buried with a makeshift Confederate Battle Flag over his body and describes him as “gallant solider and a Christian gentleman.”

Or how about the song “You’re a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith,” sung by Frank Sinatra in 1964 and appearing on the Album America, I Hear You Singing, a collection of patriotic songs that were recorded as a tribute to the assassinated president John F. Kennedy.

Hey, you’re a lucky fellow, Mr. Smith (Mr. Smith) to be able to live as you do,
And to have that swell Miss Liberty gal carrying the torch for you.
(You’re a lucky fellow. Mr. Smith), look around you if you want to brag,
You should thank your lucky stars and I mean, thank all 50 in your flag.
(And you really got a family tree) with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Lee,
(You’re lucky to have ancestors like that),
you were born with a feather in your hat

Yep, Ol’ Blue Eyes sees our American family tree as containing Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Lee–all of whom we should be proud of.

How times have changed…

If the former combatants in the celebrated reunions mentioned above could fellowship together, avoid name-calling and imputing dark motives to the other, and the entertainment industry in the mid-twentieth century could honor Lee and Confederate soldiers, why can’t we do that in 2017?  Can’t good and reasonable people hold different views of the monument question (or a host of other matters)?

Not from the perspective of the modern political left.  Increasingly, those with whom the Left disagrees with are considered “deplorables” who should not be debated, but silenced.  Recent examples are Ann Coulter at UC Berkeley and Charles Murray at Middlebury College.  The story of Chadwick Morris and the Left turning on him also makes interesting reading.  (See also this NYT story on Liberal Intolerance).

Right now, the focus on removal of monuments and renaming buildings is the Confederate States of America.  However, there are movements all around the country to remove the names of former slaveholders from public buildings.  Yep, this means George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, etc. We are awash in a tide of presentism: an unthinking adherence to present-day attitudes with which we interpret past events. It’s a great thing we live in a country where we cannot even imagine owning another human being.  But we are all products of our times and are arrogant to believe that had we been born in 1800 we would have been any different than those who actually lived then. Historian Lynn Hunt has this to say about the matter:

Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior; the Greeks had slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and European women endorsed imperial ventures. Our forbears constantly fail to measure up to our present-day standards. This is not to say that any of these findings are irrelevant or that we should endorse an entirely relativist point of view. It is to say that we must question the stance of temporal superiority. . . .

I’d just suggest that on the Monument issue, or any other hotly contested matter, let’s take a lesson from the Union and Confederate vets.  One should believe in the righteousness of his own cause; but don’t assume that those on the other side act from malicious motives because they have come to a different conclusion. Let’s reject the pull of presentism and embrace living in a country that boasts of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Lee.

* * *

William J. Watkins, Jr. is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and the author of the Independent book, Crossroads for Liberty: Recovering the Anti-Federalist Values of America’s First Constitution.

In a unanimous decision (TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC), the U.S. Supreme Court gave a kick in the rear to patent trolls. The Verge has this article on the case.

Patent trolls obtain patents not for the purpose of producing an invention or a technology but to license and enforce the patents. In other words, trolls have no plans to actually make the patented product or process; instead, they prefer to lie in wait, letting someone else do the heavy lifting and then suing just as the new creation is about to take off commercially. It is a shakedown process that threatens innovation.

In a nutshell the Court held that venue in patent suits exists where the defendant company is incorporated.  Until this decision, a patent troll had great liberty to choose the forum in which to sue an alleged patent infringer and often chose plaintiff friendly locations such as the Eastern District of Texas.  Typically, the defendant corporation had no ties with this district, which has been described as a “judicial hellhole.”  But a prior appellate court decision held that suit was proper wherever the defendant sold products.  So, for example, if Apple sells smart phones in east Texas, it was subject to venue there.  No more.  (For a discussion of venue in patent troll cases, see my book Patent Trolls, specifically pp. 50-51.)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has this summary about the import of the ruling:

While today’s decision is a big blow for patent trolls, it is not a panacea. Patent trolls with weak cases can, of course, still file elsewhere. The ruling will likely lead to a big growth in patent litigation in the District of Delaware where many companies are incorporated. And it does not address the root cause of patent trolling: the thousands of overbroad and vague software patents that the Patent Office issues every year. We will still need to fight for broader patent reform and defend good decisions like the Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank.

Agreed.  The war against patent trolls is far from over, but TC Heartland certainly improves the situation.

Aphorism says

Personnel is policy

Trump’s team in chaos

—

No one knows what’s next

Actors and actions in flux,

Regime’s uncertain

—

Situation grim

Investment makes little sense

No prospect of growth