The Daily Mail (U.K.) reports that a British National Party candidate was jailed for burning a copy of the Koran.  He was charged with violation of section 29 of the Public Order Act. Under this statute, “A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred.”

No doubt that burning a copy of the Koran should not be a “recommended” form of speech, but it nonetheless is political speech that makes a point.  While we might not agree with the point made be the speaker, it is part of the public debate.  It is unfortunate to see such a law in the UK, the land from which many of our cherished liberties sprang.

But, as speech codes are becoming more accepted, we must wonder how long until such statutes will be common in the U.S.

Robert Nelson, in the Independent Institute’s recent book, The New Holy Wars, points out that environmental religion owes its moral activism, ascetic discipline, reverence for nature, and fallen view of man to the Protestant theology of John Calvin.

Manhattan’s new Church of Earthalujah is perhaps the most striking—though hardly rare—expression of this new religion. Its leader, the Rev. Billy, outlined the church’s purpose and practices in this recent interview.

Asked about influences in his life, Rev. Billy reminisced on the importance of his high school creative writing teacher:

I moved to the East Coast with his family for a bit to get out of a tough Midwestern Calvinist situation.

The tenets of the Church of Earthalujah are based on the view that:

…these freak storms and tsunamis and flocks of blackbirds are not a coincidence—it’s the Earth talking to us. The Earth’s physical systems are in revolt.

Their faith is practiced both in church:

Every Sunday we have a devil and a saint, and the holy writ is the Earth. We have sermons and songs. Scientists give talks.

And on the street:

Friends give us soil from mountains that have been strip-mined and we go into bank lobbies like Chase and Union Bank as if we’ve been invited by an art curator and we sculpt dirt peaks and sing, then exorcise the demon out of the ATMs.

One might be tempted to laugh off such “performance art,” were it not that so many apparently find such tactics absolutely mesmerizing:

…we talked to many middle managers in the lobby at JP Morgan, and now that bank is in negotiations with Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco over their environmental policies.

When corporate policy—not to mention international economic and public policy—is based on faith over fact, may Heaven help us all.

The Obama administration has detained the alleged Wikileaks whistleblower under torturous conditions—for almost a year, he has been subjected to solitary confinement in a windowless 6×12 cell for 23 hours a day, under constant surveillance, prevented from exercising, lacking a pillow or sheets. For the remaining hour every day, he is allowed to walk in circles in a somewhat larger cell, still without any human company. Every five minutes he is asked, “Are you OK?” and must answer yes. Now he is being forced to sleep naked. Put together, his treatment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment without trial, protest 250 legal scholars, including preemenent liberal law professor Laurence Tribe, a man who taught Obama constitutional law, supported his 2008 campaign, and until recently worked as a Justice Department legal adviser. The letter draws scathing conclusions about his treatment, as well as about Obama’s personal culpability in this mockery of justice:

The administration has provided no evidence that Manning’s treatment reflects a concern for his own safety or that of other inmates. Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both. . . .

President Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency. He should not merely assert that Manning’s confinement is “appropriate and meet[s] our basic standards,” as he did recently. He should require the Pentagon publicly to document the grounds for its extraordinary actions—and immediately end those that cannot withstand the light of day.

I’m glad to see that unlike many of his supporters, the liberal law community has been critical of Obama for his war on terror and detention policies, indicating that they are not purely partisan. And yet, this speaks to the political dilemma involved. For if Obama, a left-liberal who himself taught law at the University of Chicago (as he as a candidate put it, “I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution”), rises to the presidency in an election so widely seen as a popular repudiation of the Bush-McCain approach to civil liberties and the rule of law—if a guy is given the top gig in the White House largely because he promises to restore the Bill of Rights and Geneva Conventions and says encouraging things like, “There is no reason we cannot fight terrorism while maintaining our civil liberties”—and the state of such liberties seems to have remained constant or even worsened once he takes the throne, what then?

Despite all the rhetoric of both parties, civil liberties is just another example that they are virtually identical on the most important components of policy. The Democrats claim to be less warmongering and pro-police powers, and the Republicans encourage this misconception by accusing their opponents of being weak. The Republicans, meanwhile, claim to be for smaller government involvement in the economy and low taxes, and the Democrats encourage this confusion by accusing their opponents of wanting to eliminate welfare and leave everyone to fend for themselves in the soulless and predatory free market. In truth, the Republicans and Democrats, at least once in power, invariably agree with each other that we must have detention without trial; torturous treatment of prisoners; kangaroo courts; warrantless surveillance; presidentially directed executions without due process of accused terrorists abroad including American civilians; presidential wars without Congressional ascent, a clear mission or a remote connection to defending Americans on U.S. soil; the largest military on earth with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and bases in most of the world’s countries; the TSA; tightening border controls; the never-ending drug war; gun controls; a growing police presence characterized by ever more invasive and dangerous practices, equipment and agents; a growing prison system; massive deficit spending; a central bank and national directing of large swaths of the economy; federal control over education, to say nothing of public schools that become more authoritarian every year; gigantic federal subsidies for health care for the poor and elderly; Social Security; a multi-trillion-dollar budget that necessitates an oppressive tax structure; licensing in virtually every industry; significant and burdensome national environmental and labor regulations; civil rights laws that restrict private property rights; federal administration of energy, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, housing programs, telecommunications and parks; governmental ownership and maintenance of roads; bailouts of banks, auto companies and other businesses; “disaster relief” that involves martial law powers claimed by federal agents; an ever more absurdist and draconian web of legislative and regulatory copyright and patent law. Basically, combine everything the two parties considered to have not been non-essential (the stuff that would have continued apace even with a government “shutdown”) and add it to everything the two parties DO consider non-essential (that is, the stuff everyone loves and so Americans can be expected to protest when it is taken away) and you have everything that everyone in Washington, minus a few strange birds like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, agree on: The whole of the federal leviathan, its police state, empire, and soft socialism at home.

I would stop to pay attention to any president who fundamentally challenged any two or three of the items from my list above. For better or worse, the libertarian has almost no reason to care who wins the presidency or power in Congress. We libertarians are often accused of being far too demanding and making the perfect the enemy of the good. Well, I am a purist in a sense, but I sure wouldn’t mind seeing one or two out of the hundred government programs that I hate come to end. It never happens, however, which seems to indicate that it’s not the libertarians who keep getting what they want.

If Bush taught us once and for all that there is no hope even for a slightly small increase of government growth under Republicans, Obama is teaching us once and for all that civil liberties and peace are no better secured under Democrats.

It’s not often we get a real market test of the popularity of public employee unions, so this recent experience from Wisconsin provides an interesting peek at the real public’s perception. If a harbinger of broader public opinion, members of public employee unions may want to rethink their tactics.

Owners of businesses from large banks to Mom-and-Pop stores in Wisconsin have been approached to display pro-union signs in their windows. Those who refused—like Dawn Bobo, the owner of a Dollar Store in Union Grove, WI—subsequently received letters from union reps threatening boycotts:

With that we’d ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means ‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.

After local media picked up the story, business at Ms. Bobo’s store quadrupled.

A few days ago, tens of thousands of Mexicans in scores of Mexican cities participated in public protests against the War on Drugs and the use of the Mexican army as anti-drug warriors. The violence that has accompanied the Mexican government’s attempts to defeat the drug dealers during the past several years has claimed perhaps as many as 40,000 lives. Some cities, especially Ciudad Juarez, across the river from El Paso, Texas, have become virtual battlefields.

All of this would be sufficiently dreadful if it had accompanied legitimate efforts to suppress real criminals. But although the drug dealers have committed murders, robberies, and other genuine crimes, to be sure, the foundation of this entire “war” is the U.S. government’s attempts to suppress actions — possessing, buying, and selling certain substances — that violate no one’s natural rights. Not to mince words, the War on Drugs is completely evil, from alpha to omega. No one who believes in human liberty can coherently support it. That its prosecution should have resulted in death and human suffering on such a vast scale constitutes an indictment of every person who has conducted or supported this wicked undertaking from its outset.

The Mexican people are showing in many ways, and with unprecedented determination, that they are completely fed up with this gringo-prompted war in which, in recent years, they have become the most devastated victims. Governments that treat their people in this way have no legitimacy whatsoever. They deserve to be brought down. And if the people of Mexico bring down Calderon’s government, then peaceful, rights-respecting people everywhere will have reason to cheer and hope.

However, not until the source of this manifest wickedness, the government of the United States, is also brought down will be world be able to believe that justice might be reestablished and human rights elevated to a higher plane. Aside from Puritan busybodies who take pleasure in bullying their neighbors and causing them to suffer, government officials and their palace guards — pandering politicians, the police, the prosecutors, and the prison-industrial complex — are the only real beneficiaries of this horrendous policy. This fact alone justifies its immediate termination. Yet, because the government’s tyrannical apparatus benefits so greatly, it will fight with every resource at its disposal to hang onto this evil undertaking.

Children who encounter something called the Hundred Years’ War in their history books must sometimes wonder what possessed people to keep them fighting for a century. If it seems crazy, however, one need only recall that we are just three years away from the one-hundredth anniversary of the enactment of the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. An even worse statute, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, as amended, has now been in force for more than forty years, and no prospect of its repeal looms on the horizon. In our eyes the Europeans who continued to slaughter one another more or less continuously from 1337 and 1453 seem like madmen. Future historians may well look back at our War on Drugs with equal incomprehension and dismay.

Thank goodness for the Republicans and Democrats, who in the eleventh hour, put aside their differences and compromised to avert the catastrophe of a government shutdown. You see, the Republicans wanted to cut something like $78.5 billion from what Obama wanted to spend—itself more than $78.5 billion over the year before. The Democrats were initially willing to talk about “cutting” much less. And now, thanks to the greatest political compromise since the one in 1850—and surely one that will be as permanent in preventing a national crisis—we can all sleep at night knowing that Yosemite and the National Archives will continue to be open for business. The Washington Post reports:

The final pact on 2011 spending called for $38 billion in cuts to federal agency budgets compared with last year’s levels, about $78.5 billion below the president’s initial funding request for 2011. The White House, which initially resisted any funding reductions, started touting all the cuts it signed off on in a statement that praised reductions of $13 billion in funding for education, health and labor programs.

Oh my, oh my! $38 billion cut from Obama’s budget proposal? I guess everyone gets what they want. Obama gets to pat himself on the back for avoiding a shutdown. The Republicans get to pat themselves on the back for avoiding a shutdown, and the American people are satisfied as well.

Oh, wait. Those who love government spending are not so satisfied. You see, the cuts appear to target hot-button social programs. And those who want (at a bare minimum) for government to live within its means might also be dissatisfied. They might protest that even if we go by Obama’s projected deficits, these cuts will only shave a few percent of the amount deeper the U.S. goes into the debt hole in a year.

Yet we should forget about all this and just be glad the government didn’t shut down. For if it did, we would surely awake to a dystopian nightmare, coastal cities collapsing into the ocean, civil unrest at every corner, whole swaths of previously populated centers abandoned, disease and lawlessness rampant in every direction. Thank goodness Congress and the President got together and stopped this.

After all, we all remember when happened when the government shut down in 1995. Traffic lights didn’t work. All the prisoners were running wild in the streets. The US military was completely put out of commission, allowing the Soviet Union to spring back to life and take over half of the world. In the Great Government Shutdown of 1995, an estimated 150 million Americans died of starvation, pertussis, rubella and acute cynicism. Cats were chasing dogs, telephones and plumbing ceased to function completely, and only 75 channels were available on cable television.

Some will respond that these claims are preposterous—that in fact, not only do modern “government shutdowns” only close down a handful of functions (including such programs as tax refunds and national museums, just to annoy the American people)—but that, in the United States, such shutdowns are so superficial an example of the government truly shutting down that they actually cost more money than allowing the government to run as normal.

Sure, refuse to take such a catastrophe seriously. But as our Dear Leader says, “Americans of different beliefs came together. . . [i]n the final hours before our government would have been forced to shut down. . . [to pass] a budget that invests in our future while making the largest annual spending cut in our history.” Thanks to these courageous and selfless efforts, “when 50 eighth graders from Colorado arrive in our nation’s capital,” they might “get a chance to look up at the Washington Monument and feel the sense of pride and possibility that defines America.”

Doesn’t that make your burn with patriotic fever? Red-white-and-blue fumes are just making their way up my esophagus right now. The two parties put aside their vast disagreement—over whether to borrow another trillion or so of to be paid back by these eighth graders or whether to cut that amount down by a few percent—and they agreed to meet in the middle. Just like their parents and grandparents, these kids will have the pride to know that they live in a country where every generation has the chance to grow up with much more money owed by the government on their behalf that the generation before it.

Ever since Woodrow Wilson, who embroiled American troops in the mud of Flanders and contributed to the deaths of millions of soldiers in a global “war to end all wars”, U.S. presidents have, to greater or lesser extents, pursued the goal of making the world safe for democracy.

That objective is a fool’s errand. Except for Germany and Japan, whose constitutions were imposed by the victorious Allies at the end of the Second World War, there are precious few historical examples of democratization successfully being created at gunpoint by western military powers.

The reason underlying that conclusion is that voting is at best the window-dressing of democratic governance. As a matter of fact, because one person’s vote has no chance of being decisive, voters rationally are ignorant about the instrumental consequences of the choices before them and they therefore show up at the polls on Election Day only to express their preferences as to candidates and policies on the ballot, fully aware that their individual choices will not affect the outcome.

It has taken centuries for the institutions of western democracy to evolve and it always has always striven not always successfully, to balance the threat of the tyranny of the majority against the interests of political minorities. In order to curb the influence of factions, James Madison and his fellow Founding Fathers tried to create a system of checks and balances that would counter the influence of one faction at the expense of others.

More than 200 years since, one can debate the extent to which the Founding Fathers were successful in achieving their political goals. There can be no debate, however, over their overarching premise that democratic voting on candidates for political office or on important public policies cannot be conducted until a constitution is in place.

Nations of the Middle East and of Central Asia cannot be allowed to vote until a constitution is in place, whether imposed by the western powers or agreed to in a plebiscite subject to supra-majority rule. Democratic voting otherwise will reinforce the grievances of unrepresented minorities and lead to the continuation if ethnic/tribal conflict for the foreseeable future.

The U.S. is running deficits somewhere between one and one and a half trillion dollars, and in Washington the Republicans and Democrats are still squabbling over petty change. The Republicans are pushing $40 billion in “cuts” as a compromise to prevent a “government shutdown.” It is hard to keep track of the exact partisan positions, but this is a few tens of billions more in “cuts” than the Democrats want. (I put “cuts” in quotes because an actual cut would be a reduction in overall spending, whereas these appear to just be “cuts” in the Washington sense—that is, a reduction from the amount they would prefer to spend, which is always more every year.)

In any event, tens of billions of dollars would not seem to matter, given the problem at hand. These clowns are all fighting over about 2% of the deficit.

U.S. politicians could outright close the deficits if they really wanted to, but this would require tackling entitlements and war, which no one wants to do. So all the focus is on the other programs whose costs do not even add up to the deficit.

It goes without saying that the administration and his party are shameless spendthrifts who are either bent on spending this country right into the ground, or are too clueless to recognize that that’s what they’re doing. Either the malice or incompetence involved rises to levels of gross criminality.

But consider the ridiculous Republicans. For holding their ground, they want our praise and appreciation, and presumably our support for them to reoccupy the White House in a couple years. But what is this high principle they are sticking to? To borrow only $1.30 trillion in the coming year, rather than 1.33 trillion—or some comparable numbers?

No one should take this seriously at all. Republican fiscal conservatism is akin to a 500-pound-man declaring aloud in January that he is determined to lose weight, and so he promises to forgo exactly half a glass of eggnog on Thanksgiving—and if you protest, and insist he drink the whole glass, he will have none of it, because he has made up his mind to lose weight and refuses to compromise.

This is the state of modern American politics. The Democrats say they are for peace and do exactly what the Republicans do, except more so. The Republicans say they are for fiscal responsibility, but flout the very idea every chance they get, and propose spending packages that are so close to those recommended by the Democrats that they might as well not waste their time doing so.

We ought to just abolish the political parties and unify them under one umbrella. Although there’s a dime’s worth of difference between them, when you break it down, it works out to less than $100 per American per year. Surely this is much more than a dime, but it is rounding error when people go shopping for a car. Yet here we are with a supposed choice between two governing philosophies—the Republican approach, which the warmongering Democrats call overly adventurous overseas, and the Democratic approach, which the budget-busting Republicans call socialistic.

Some people complain that American politics comprises two extremes with no one willing to meet halfway. It’s more accurate to say that no one dares to find themselves between the two parties, because they would suffocate from the lack of space.

If there’s ever a case for the president to stand up to Congress and do things his way, it’s when he is within his Constitutional authority and is defending the principles of the Bill of Rights against a hostile American public and legislature. That is, if the president should ever be “tough” and uncompromising, it is to withstand the lynch-mob mentality of the rest of political culture and defend the rights of individuals.

There was a chance for Obama to do this, and it wouldn’t have even cost him much politically. He was elected by voters who knew that he was promising a different approach to civil liberties and the war on terrorism than Bush and the Republicans. He promised during his campaign to protect the Fourth Amendment, stop torture, close Guantánamo, end the lawless military commissions, and restore habeas corpus. He had the political capital to achieve these goals in 2009 and beyond.

Then, even his party in power turned on this supposed goal of his. They refused to fund the closing of Guantánamo. They expressed reservations about trying Khalid Sheikh Muhammed in a civil proceeding. They did not unify behind their president in the way that Republicans unified behind Bush as he trampled the rule of law with everything he did in the war on terror.

Of course, this analysis is charitable to Obama. It assumes that he indeed wanted to stand up for due process and was betrayed by his own party. But let’s be charitable. After all, it always helps to assume the best of an administration before we tear apart its latest pronouncements to show that, even taking the executive at its word, there is no excuse for its behavior.

Attorney General Eric Holder is whining and complaining about Congress for butting in on the question of executive detention of accused terrorists. The administration, and Holder especially, used to be adamant that civil trials were the way to go. Now Holder is blaming others for the politicization of detention policy. “He scolded Congress for suggesting that the federal court system could not handle a terrorism case,” reports CBS News.

In particular, the attorney general protests that “the prosecution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his co-conspirators should never have been about settling ideological arguments or scoring political points.” He says, “Too many people – many of whom certainly know better – have expressed doubts about our time-honored and time-tested system of justice.”

But here’s where the Orwellian irony comes in. Holder intones: “Decisions about who, where and how to prosecute have always been – and must remain – the responsibility of the executive branch. Members of Congress simply do not have access to the evidence and other information necessary to make prosecution judgments.”

And now for the real kicker: “I know this case in the way that members of Congress do not… I respect their ability to disagree, [but] this is an executive branch function – a unique executive branch function.”

Wow. Just wow.

This is unspeakably brazen because Holder has advanced two complaints, not strictly contradictory but definitely at odds in spirit: One, that Congress has questioned Obama’s wisdom to decide to use the federal civil court system to try suspected terrorists, and two, Obama’s current decision to renege on this promise, and instead try accused 9/11 terrorists and others by military commission,  is a “unique executive branch” decision. The presidency, you see, has “access to the evidence. . . necessary to make” these decisions.

Obama – and most liberals – correctly criticized Bush’s detention policy on at least two grounds: One, that such procedures as military commissions were inherently more lawless than normal prosecution, especially without the protections afforded to POWs in an officially declared war; and two, such decisions, while appropriately a function of the executive branch, were not to exclude totally the role of Congress and the federal judiciary. Congress, being a coequal political branch, has the authority to shape detention policy with the executive. And the court system has the right to question such detentions and ensure that bare minimum legal requirements, such as the right of habeas corpus, be respected.

Obama made these points over and over. So did almost everyone on the left side of the spectrum, including most congressional Democrats, who talked about such questions between about 2002 and 2008.

But now Obama’s attorney general is making the exact opposite point: He is saying that the presidency knows better than Congress (or the people, presumably), and detention policy must be the sole province of the executive branch. He is singing a rendition of Bush’s broad defense of executive supremacy without even changing a single note.

At the same time, he is daring to attack Congress for having not trusted civilian trials! All this while he simultaneously defends the president for not wanting to go through with civilian trials.

But the real absurdity comes in his essentially blaming Congress and others for interfering with Obama’s detention policy. If indeed detention policy is a “unique executive branch function,” why didn’t he and Obama stand up against the Republicans, the moderate Democrats, and the skeptical American public back when they said they favored civilian trials? If it’s really up to the executive branch to determine how to go forward with the trials of terrorists, why didn’t he and Obama make this point two years ago – back when they presumably believed that military commissions were not the way to go?

Oh, the poor imperial presidency. It has every right and power in the world to detain people forever, and to try them in military commissions without traditional due process. This, after all, is a “unique executive branch function.” Yet it is such a delicate flower, that poor, beleaguered executive branch, that some fellow Democrats and Congressional Republicans are capable of forestalling its efforts to bring about justice through their insistence on “scoring political points.”

Poor, poor Obama. He can bomb Libya without even giving a nod to Congress, but he can’t bear to stand up to his own party when they criticize him for doing the (relatively) right thing.

Of course, I am being very charitable here, and assuming that Obama really wanted to restore the rule of law back in 2009. Even if this is so, his betrayal of these promises so as to embrace the Bush approach is sickening and inexcusable. But maybe the charitable interpretation is wrong. Maybe he was always lying. Those are really the only options.

Anyone who thinks that they know anything about World War I, Harry S Truman, or Winston Churchill should first read Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal by Ralph Raico. Once they do, they might realize just how little they really know. I have taught and researched American history for a quarter century but there was a lot here that was completely new to me.

In elegant, and often witty, prose, Raico demolishes interpretations that all too many historians, and members of the reading public, take for granted. Few single volumes by any historian pack so much punch, and or have so much breadth.

Raico shows, for example, that historians who accept the Fischer Thesis, which puts the main blame for World War I on Germany, as the “last word” on the subject are sadly mistaken.

Raico pokes apart the standard assumption that Winston Churchill was a far-sighted and principled wartime leader who consistently opposed Communism. Champions of Truman as a great president will find it hard to explain away stunning evidence of the “plucky little man from Missouri’s” habitual resort to emergency powers and politically cynical war scares.

Those of us in need of rich material for lectures in American history, on the other hand, will be able to profit from a treasure trove of revealing quotations, richly illustrative anecdotes, and high-powered interpretation. Ralph Raico has performed a great service in writing this book.