The NYT has a fascinating, for me, article on the free market leanings of Mongolia. Given its geography—it’s landlocked between Russia and China—I find it kind of surprising that they have such strong pro-market and pro-democracy leanings. Their current PM is apparently a student of Hayek and Friedman:

In the army, he was so diligent in running a Revolutionary Youth unit that he won a scholarship to study Marxism, Leninism and journalism in the Ukrainian city of Lvov. Now, his Liberty Center foundation, which promotes political and legal reform, is overseeing translations into Mongolian of the works of Milton Friedman and Friedrich A. Hayek.

The turning point for Mr. Elbegdorj came in 1989, when the Soviet grip began to weaken. He quit a comfortable job as a reporter for a military newspaper to found Mongolia’s first independent newspaper, called Democracy. Soon, he was a charter member of a group that is now revered as the 13 First Democrats, and took the lead in the protests that toppled the country’s Communist government after a 70-year rule.

For protection in the neighborhood, Mongolia is counting on close ties with the United States. To encourage that, it has sent 180 soldiers to Iraq, dropped visa requirements for American tourists and made clear its desire to sign a free trade pact. It regularly unrolls the red carpet for visiting American officials, most recently Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, the commander of United States forces in the Pacific.

Asked if Mongolia would continue to send soldiers to Iraq, the prime minister’s face clouded.

“If America asks us to send a fourth contingent,” he started. Then, noticing a telepathic elbow in the ribs from an aide across the dinner table, he brightened and said with the ambiguity of a seasoned politician, “We would discuss it in the cabinet.”

Too clever by half.*

"State of Fear," with a first printing of 1.5 million copies, resembles Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" -- about 6 million copies sold since 1957 -- as a political broadside woven into an entertaining story. But whereas Rand had only an idea -- a good one (capitalism is splendid), but only one -- Crichton has information. "State of Fear" is the world's first page turner that people will want to read in one gulp (a long gulp: 600 pages, counting appendices) even though it has lots of real scientific graphs, and footnotes citing journals such as Progress in Physical Geography and Transactions -- American Geophysical Union.

Crichton’s subject is today’s fear that global warming will cause catastrophic climate change, a belief now so conventional that it seems to require no supporting data. Crichton’s subject is also how conventional wisdom is manufactured in a credulous and media-drenched society.

[....]

Climate-change forecasts, Harvey writes, are like financial forecasts but involve a vastly more complex array of variables. The climate forecasts, based on computer models analyzing the past, tell us that we do not know how much warming is occurring, whether it is a transitory episode or how much warming is dangerous—or perhaps beneficial.

One of the good guys in “State of Fear” cites Montaigne’s axiom: “Nothing is so firmly believed as that which least is known.” Which is why 30 years ago the fashionable panic was about global cooling. The New York Times (Aug. 14, 1975) reported “many signs” that “Earth may be heading for another ice age.” Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned about “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.” “Continued rapid cooling of the Earth” (Global Ecology, 1971) could herald “a full-blown 10,000-year ice age” (Science, March 1, 1975). The Christian Science Monitor reported (Aug. 27, 1974) that Nebraska’s armadillos were retreating south from the cooling.

Update: Crichton's name corrected in post.

Once again I find myself in agreement with Joe Lieberman:

A rejoinder to this rejoinder is now being beta-tested by Sen. Byron Dorgan: Republicans exaggerate the “crisis” of Social Security, which can be fixed with a few modest tax hikes. Uh huh, in the sense that a bankrupt man might still be able to manage his car payments . . . if you ignore the fact that he owes house payments too.

House payments, in this case, are the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, which vastly outstrip even the unfunded liabilities of Social Security, by a margin of $62 trillion to $10 trillion. For several years, the nonpartisan board of Social Security and Medicare Trustees has flagged these figures, which everyone ignored. Joe Lieberman last year introduced a Senate bill to recognize these obligations in the federal budget. He was ignored.

Yet since Mr. Bush introduced the subject of Social Security reform at his party’s September jamboree, public debate has surged ahead of the White House and its Democratic sparring partners. USA Today, to give the underrated McPaper its due, produced a report in October forcing Medicare into the picture, noting it would take $53 trillion invested today to cover the $200 trillion in shortfalls the program is expected to generate just over the lifetimes of today’s youngest workers. By Monday night, even Peter Jennings of ABC News had decided there’s a story here.

If anyone is interested, I have some Gmail invites and have already inundated my family, friends and acquaintances with the past ones. If you want one send me an email; you can find the address by holding your cursor over my name below the post.

Earlier I mentioned, however briefly, my preference for natural liberty—and being left alone in the process. The Professor has a piece over at his MSNBC site that captures my thought pretty well:

My criticism of the United Nations continues to generate hostile email along the lines of “you just don’t like the U.N. because it stands in the way of world hegemony by the Evil Bushitler and his Likudnik neo-con cabal.”

Uh, no. In fact, I’m not a fan of U.S. “world hegemony” at all. Being the world’s preeminent military and economic power has its pluses, but not many. Countries with little else to boast of may draw great solace from military power—the old Soviet Union did that, and many older Russians are still nostalgic—but American don’t care about such things nearly as much. We have better things to do, and most of us, or our ancestors, came here to escape the problems of the rest of the world. We’d much rather someone else dealt with them, and left us alone—though when we express such sentiments we are then accused of “isolationism,” often by the same people who are otherwise complaining about American “imperialism.”

Brad DeLong, whom I like much better as an economist, has a couple of posts that drive my point home. One, which is unintentionally galling, I think, has a discussion of some Republican congressmen going to India to find—horror of horrors—that they don’t care about us. Boo hoo. India has done nothing to help us—they don’t agree with our approach to Iraq and the war on terror—and I’m having a hard time understanding why we should care.

As India sees it, the coming century is a race between them and China for global dominance. Nevermind that it’s only been a couple of decades since India solved their starvation problem and they have yet to dismantle the leftovers of feudalism. Even if they become an economic powerhouse, I don’t see how we lose anything. The only thing they really have to offer us is trade and I think we should take it. Trade with them. End of story.

India becoming a major power shouldn’t be viewed as a threat to us. China could possibly pose a threat to us, in a military sense, but I’m not sure what, if anything, can be done about it. We will continue spending a good deal more on defense than the rest of the world and it will take decades for China to pose a threat to us, outside of nuclear weapons. On that, they would be insane to attack us because our nuclear arsenal is going nowhere unless we launch it against someone. I don’t think they want that, so, again, I’m not sure how we lose anything.

Then Brad has a rather cute post on the reaction of the right to the possibility of torture in Iraq and elsewhere. He ends it with the following statement:

I would say it’s at least nine months past time for the intellectuals of the right to start “speaking more loudly about these worrisome trends.”

If you wonder why I prefer a “natural liberty” approach to the rest of the world, this helps explain why. Thanks to the internet, I’ve been reading foreign newspapers for a few years now and it hasn’t “furthered my understanding” in the sense that most multiculturists yearn for. On the contrary, it’s convinced me that we should stay out of their affairs and involve ourselves with them as little as possible outside of commerce. Brad’s writings on politics are a good example of this, but it gets worse when you read foreign newspapers. They’re very quick to blame America when things go wrong and slow to accept responsibility for their own problems.

I might have more to say about this later, but I’ve got a couple of other things to do. I'll close with a Jefferson quote that seems more apt with each passing year:

"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations--entangling alliances with none, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801. ME 3:321

New England fans are getting a bit antsy after the loss last night. A bit of a shocker, but probably a wake-up call. I hope the near miss for the Steelers acts as a wake-up call as well. The writer below suggests that the Steelers would “only” be 10–4 without Jermoe Bettis’s reemergence and he may be right. Even so, how difficult is the AFC when you look down on a team that’s 10–4?

As President Bush would say, New England misunderestimated its opponent. The Patriots went into Monday’s game with the same mindset that the 2001 St. Louis Rams entered Super Bowl XXXVI. But then again, the Greatest Show on Turf was a 14-point favorite. Heading into the season’s stretch run, and the playoffs, the Patriots should remember that before the celebration must come motivation.

Next, an assessment of the Steelers. To twist a Mark Twain quote, reports of Pittsburgh’s dominance have been greatly exaggerated. In their most recent performance, the Steelers barely won a game against a hapless New York Giants team (5–9). Their defense, which entered the game ranked first in the NFL, surrendered 30 points in that game. Meanwhile, their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, throws an interception on nearly every other play; he threw two against Big Blue. Were it not for the resurgence of Jerome Bettis, Pittsburgh would be 10–4 or so.

An excellent first-person account of the killings in Mosul yesterday from an Army chaplain. Quite moving.

(þ: Blackfive)

I saw this yesterday at Jeralyn’s place and meant to blog about it then, but didn’t. There’s a good discussion about this very issue going on over at QandO and I agree with Dale and Jon: we shouldn’t be doing, or condoning, this kind of behavior. I don’t know the difference between stress positions and torture, and if the perpetrators don’t know, they shouldn’t be applying stress positions either.

This sort of thing is exactly what endangers our soldiers and builds public support in the Middle East for killing them. That part of the world is already conspiracy minded as it is; no need to be feeding the fire with actual events.

Lawyers will have to sort out the legalities here, but in the mean time a good rule of thumb is to default to doing nothing when you don’t know how you’re behavior might be spun. I should add, though I shouldn’t have to, that it’s wrong as well. For that reason alone we shouldn’t be doing it.

Greg Djerejian has more support for the "do nothing" hypothesis. He says it's a training problem, among other things.

I thought the blue states were where all of the smart people hung out?

(þ: The Professor)

Great book review by Virginia Postrel. The author of the book, David Hackett Fischer, is apparently hostile to any individualist notions of liberty:

New England Puritans pursued ’‘ordered liberty,’’ or community self-government, which could impose substantial restrictions on individual freedom of action or conscience. Southern cavaliers believed in ’‘hegemonic liberty,’’ a status system in which liberty was a jealously guarded aristocratic privilege that entitled some men to rule the lives of others. By contrast, Delaware Valley Quakers subscribed to ’‘reciprocal liberty,’’ in which every person was recognized as a fellow child of God, entitled to self-determination and freedom of conscience. Finally, the largest group of immigrants, the borderlanders often called Scotch-Irish, adhered to ’‘natural liberty,’’ a visceral, sometimes violent defense of self and clan. In foreign policy, Fischer’s ’‘natural liberty’’ maps directly to the ’‘Jacksonian America’’ outlined by the political scientist Walter Russell Mead—isolationist by preference but relentlessly violent when attacked.

’‘Liberty and Freedom’’ expands greatly on that earlier book’s discussion, adding other ethnic influences, particularly that of German refugees who sought ’‘a freedom that would allow them to establish their own way of life in security and peace.’’ For German-Americans, the icons of freedom were the fig tree and vine, alluding to the biblical prophecy that ’‘they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.’’ This dream, Fischer observes, ’‘was an image of a world without violence, very different from the bellicose ways of British borderers but similar in a desire to be left alone by government.’’

Its goal, one government official said, was ’‘to re-establish the common ground of all Americans’’ and ’‘to blend our various groups into one American family.’’ Fischer visited the train as a child in Baltimore, and it made a lasting impression: ’‘The train itself and its streamlined cars were emblems of modernity, and its big locomotive (number 1776) was a symbol of American power. By contrast, the documents seemed old and fragile. They were symbols not of power but of right, and their condition made clear their need to be protected in a dangerous world. Altogether the Freedom Train expressed the material strength and moral resolve of a united people.’’

Ah, the good old days. The closer the book gets to the present, the less it discusses popular culture or visual symbolism. It loses its early, charming tone and becomes instead a dutiful, sometimes cranky march through the political movements of the late 20th century. Cliffs Notes versions of ideas and individuals appear, but iconography and material culture almost entirely disappear. Fischer doesn’t mention the Adam Smith neckties conservative activists adopted in the late 1970’s or explain how triangles and rainbows came to symbolize gay liberation. He has room for a mention of Shulamith Firestone’s radical, intellectual feminism but none for Marlo Thomas’s popular record and television special, ’‘Free to Be You and Me.’’ He provides a dumbed-down version of Friedrich Hayek’s classical liberalism but doesn’t mention Ayn Rand’s blockbuster novels. He devotes pages to Stokely Carmichael but says nothing about Afros, dreadlocks or cornrows. He misses the chance to consider California as a symbol of freedom across the political spectrum. In short, once the apparent uniformity of World War II dissolves, ’‘Liberty and Freedom’’ loses interest in popular culture. This absence may reflect the author’s fatigue as the book moves beyond its 500th page. Or perhaps it is simply harder for Fischer to take a sympathetic interest in the mental and material lives of those contemporaries with whom he disagrees. He seems to resent all these contentious people (except for consensus civil rights heroes) who insist on disturbing established institutions and ideas with their demands for liberty and freedom.

Indeed, he implies that they’re downright dangerous. ’‘If a free society is ever destroyed in America, it will be done in the name of one particular vision of liberty and freedom,’’ he concludes. But not, of course, his own.

(þ: Knowledge Problem)

Rachel Lucas offers a rather amazing photo of Kirsten Dunst; she’s quite grown up from her Interview with the Vampire days. Wow.

Professor Bainbridge has a lengthy post where he dissects the EU triumphalists. I went into this at some length the other day and won’t do so again.

What I will do is note that I agree with Professor Bainbridge—we referenced the same Economist article for Europe’s median age problem—though I don’t find the EU quite as bothersome as he seems to. The EU is a declining power for the time being and will continue that way just due to demographics. Even if they were economically ascendant, I wouldn’t find it all that troublesome since economics isn’t zero-sum (they would have to undo their labor market rigidities and limit their fiscal burdensand would still have a hard time growing as fast as the U.S. in the coming decades). On foreign policy, they won’t spend what’s necessary to build a military so there’s no threat there. The only problem I’m aware of is their recent decision to start selling weapons to China. More than a little troubling ($).

You know that the EU ascendancy meme has jumped the shark—along with that phrase—though when Jeremy Rifkin and others start getting worked up over it ($):

Eurocrats are understandably flattered by this unusual American praise for the grand European project; Mr Rifkin’s book has gone down well in Brussels. But the mood of real “builders of Europe” is often decidedly more pessimistic. This week European leaders are likely to take a big step towards admitting Turkey to the EU, a decision about which many of them have deep misgivings. Mr Reid’s argument that there is an inexorable historical logic driving forward European unity is often made by Brussels federalists too. But these same people are also well aware of the fragility of a process of political integration that has very shallow popular support.

Then there is the economy. Europe’s economic growth continues to lag that of the United States, let alone China and India. And Europe’s population is ageing and shrinking. Two-thirds of the way into his book, Mr Rifkin interrupts his dream to note that “the sad truth is that without a massive increase in non-EU immigration in the next several decades, Europe is likely to wither and die.” This looks like a fairly big qualification to the book’s general mood of sunny optimism. But no matter: within a few pages we are back to the “politics of empathy”.

Awareness of the depth of the political and economic challenges that lie ahead accounts for the fact that many European officials are more inclined to troubled pessimism than to Rifkinesque optimism. This European willingness to be self-critical is, as it happens, a genuine strength. Unfortunately, there is a lot to be self-critical about.

(þ: The Professor)

Brad DeLong has a great entry on Adam Smith. One of the many interesting points is when he mentions “market fundamentalism”. It reminded me of this Cannan edition of Wealth that is annotated, just like a Bible. You can quote it chapter and verse.

What still strikes me about Smith is how broadly he saw things: he didn’t just write a book on economics, he drew a very broad picture that encompassed both the morality and the funtionality of the marketplace. Contrary to one of the commenters, I think Smith would be quite pleased with what he would see today. Is it perfect? No, but it’s a far shout from where he was in his day and much of the progress since then is due to him (and Cantillon).

(þ: Marginal Revolution)

The blogosphere’s own LaShawn Barber has a column in NRO about the smaller corners of the blogosphere that haven’t gotten the attention of Power Line and LGF. They deserve the attention and she talks about a couple of my favorites: The Shape of Days, run by a fellow Macophile Jeff Harrell, and Cassandra, now of Villainous Company. Jeff has a good post on why he prefers Macs and it has to do with the concept of “kerning” (big issue in Ra^therGate). LaShawn apparently missed Cass’s departure from Jet Noise, but be sure to check out her new digs.

(þ: The Professor)

The Steelers pulled out a nail-biter yesterday and the Boston Globe is writing about the significance of home-field advantage in the playoffs. The Patriot fans are apparently quite concerned about this, but it doesn’t seem to matter:

Since the inauguration of the cap, home-field advantage in the conference championship games has been of little or no statistical importance. Since 1992, when the cap went into effect, there have been 24 conference championship games. In the AFC, half have been won by the visiting team. In the NFC, five of the 12 games have been won by the visiting team. Thus, in a statistical sense, at least, the advantage of home field as it relates to a Steelers-Patriots showdown would be minimal.

Since the dawn of the new millennium, it’s been the same story. The visitors have won a trip to the Super Bowl in half of the eight conference title games, including the last two in the NFC. Perhaps more significant, the Steelers are a lowly 1–3 in AFC title games since 1992, despite hosting the game four times—1994 (lost to San Diego), ‘95 (beat Indianapolis), ‘97 (lost to Denver), and 2001 (lost to Patriots).

What is clear is that home-field advantage throughout the playoffs meant a lot more in the conference title games prior to the advent of the salary cap, hinting that increased parity has changed considerably the disparity of talent between top teams.

From the first year of the AFL-NFL merger to the final year without the cap (1978–91), home teams dominated the 28 conference title games. In the AFC, the home team was 11–3, the only losses coming in 1980 when the Raiders beat the Chargers in San Diego, 1985 when Raymond Berry’s Patriots upset the Dolphins in Miami, and in 1986 when the Broncos needed a 98-yard John Elway-led drive to beat the Cleveland Browns as time was running out in old Cleveland Stadium.

Statistically it might not matter who has home field advantage in the playoffs, but the Steelers team that the Patriots faced in 2001 lacked the confidence, I think, that the current team has. The game against the Giants should serve as a wake-up call—they’re not unbeatable.

On an unrelated subject, Cass has started blogging again at Villainous Company. I’ve been remiss in not blogrolling her and bookmarking her. That has now been fixed.

Apparently the blogosphere has gotten the better of Michael Kinsley, in this round anyway. He plans a more detailed response for next week’s WaPo, but this week is simply a concession that some bloggers got the better of him, i.e. made him think twice about dissing Social Security privatization. Here’s a quote:

That conference was the last straw. Last week, to vent my frustration, I sent an e-mail to some economists and privatizing buffs saying, look, either show me my mistake or drop this issue. Refute me or salute me. Disprove it or move it. Or words to that effect.

As an afterthought, I sent copies to a couple of blogs (kausfiles.com and andrewsulllivan.com). What happened next was unnerving.

A few days later, most of the big shots hadn’t replied. But overnight I had dozens of responses from the blogosphere. They’re still pouring in. And that’s just direct e-mail to me. Within hours, there were discussions going on in a dozen blogs, all hyperlinking to one another like rabbits.

Just so I don’t sound too naive: I am familiar with the blog phenomenon, and I worked at a Web site for eight years. Some of my best friends are bloggers. Still, it’s different when you purposely drop an idea into this bubbling cauldron and watch the reaction. What floored me was not just the volume and speed of the feedback but its seriousness and sophistication. Sure, there were some simpletons and some name-calling nasties echoing rote-learned propaganda. But we get those in letters to the editor. What we don’t get, nearly as much, is smart and sincere intellectual engagement—mostly from people who are not intellectuals by profession—with obscure and tedious, but important, issues.

On a somewhat related note, I thought I remembered a quote by JFK, about the WaPo no less, regarding getting in a fight with people that buy ink by the barrel. Turns out it was Clinton:

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

You can send your views electronically to a blog in less time than it takes to find a stamp, let alone type a letter.

Apparently, in Arianna’s world, a guy that creates a company from scratch in his dorm room—enriching millions in the process—is a demon when it becomes economical to offshore 3000 jobs to India:

MICHAEL “DUDE, YOU GOT OUTSOURCED!” DELL

Name: Michael S. Dell
Company: Dell Computers
Title: Chairman and Former CEO (Chairman and CEO until July, 2004)
Crime Against America: Dell’s Bangalore and Hyderabad, India, facilities employ close to 3,000 people.
Partner in Crime: Dell has contributed $3,000 to the Bush campaign in 2003 and 2004, plus an additional $25,000 the Republican National Committee, and $10,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Dell CFO James M. Schneider is a $25,000 contributor to the RNC.

Tyler Cowen has been beating the drum against social security privatization for a good while, and it has finally sunken in with me. After thinking about it enough, it appears that he is right: we will end up with two programs if we transition to private accounts and it won’t reduce the unfunded liability, which is the central problem. Presumably, when the actuaries refer to an unfunded liability they are referring to an excess in the present value of all cash outflows versus the present value of all inflows. If the first number exceeds the second, you have a liability. We’ve promised to pay too much and benefits will have to be reduced, or taxes raised, to bring the system into balance.

Private accounts alone won’t change the unfunded liability. However, Tyler offers an intriguing solution to part of that problem: auction off the right to leave the system. An auction provides a great mechanism to separate those that are risk averse from those that are not; those with financial savvy from those with none. It also creates a logical break point to show where they have left the system and have acknowledged that the system owes them nothing, though they have paid into it. They should similarly understand that they will need to save enough for their own retirement and will have to keep working without enough savings.

There would be an initial inflow of money that could be used to retire debt—thereby enabling future borrowing for the government to cover shortfalls—and presumably an increase in savings from those that leave the system; no more payroll taxes, higher disposable income. The system could then transform into a poverty program for the elderly, which should be far [Ed.: got a little carried away.] smaller than in its current setup.

I’m sure the details would need to be hammered out by actuaries—how many people would pay to leave the system, how much would they pay (meaning how much current debt could we retire) and how much would the unfunded liability would be reduced. Even with these questions, it seems like a sounder suggestion than getting people into a forced savings program where the government still implicitly takes responsibility for everyone’s retirement and the unfunded liability is unchanged.

Cass has more here.

I’ve seen this poll in a number of places, but Volokh conspirator Orin Kerr is the first I’ve seen that really dissects the results. Do 44% of Americans really want to curtail the civil liberties of Muslims in America? It doesn’t sound like it.

I just watched I, Robot (DVD, Book) and have a couple of questions for you sci-fi buffs out there. Not surprisingly, the movie is no better on its second viewing than on the first. However, it did make me want to read the book—which is one of my holiday to-do items—and it’s not bad as pure entertainment.

Having me question sci-fi logic is about as useful as watching a Hollywood movie discuss economics, which this one does—badly. Even so, I have a question: why not just modify Asimov’s first law to say that a robot shall not harm the life or liberty of a human? Because it might ruin the potential for future books pondering this dilemma?

Next question: one of the reviews of the copy of I, Robot (the book) says Asimov is part of the “ABCs” of sci-fi, with the others being Bradbury and Clarke. Why not extend it by one letter and have “D”, as in Dick, Philip K.? Is he not as respected as the other three? If not, why not?

I hate these f*cking guys. They’re as bad as Illinois Nazis. Not only do they use opposition to the Iraqi war—which can be done in a principled fashion, as it is by many—as a means for bringing, Trojan-horse-like, xenophobia to mainstream outlets that would otherwise be revulsed by it; now, it’s come to include homophobia.

To begin with, I’ve had run-ins with these idiots before. They worship Rockwell—whom I despise, it’s no secret—and lose all sense of proportion when his views are challenged. They’ve been big supporters of antiwar.com, and have used it as a means of pushing rather radical notions: every attempt to support democracy abroad is seen as interference; every foreign supporter is a neocon stooge, or quisling. Even Pat Tillman, who died with the idea of protecting his country in mind, is fodder for their ends. It’s disgusting.

I would write more, but this is getting me a bit angry. Plus, it’s getting late; I was hoping for a peaceful cruise across the blogosphere before bed. Tom has more here and here. Read the comments; follow the links.

(þ: Volokh)

Currently listening to: Dio

One year ago, Al Qaeda believed they should work against the United States, rather than working to destabilize the Arab regimes. One year ago, Al Qaeda was focusing outward, rather than inward. One year ago, Al Qaeda believed in coexistence with the House of Saud.

One year ago, Al Qaeda believed the Caliphate could best be established by detente with the House of Saud, and War against the United States.

Today, Al Qaeda seeks detente with the US, and war against the House of Saud.

(þ: The Professor)

It may seem that we’ve been riding the Samizdata coattails recently, and maybe we have, but they’ve been on a roll and Britain is dealing with many of the same issues that the U.S. faces. Among these is habeas corpus. Our constitution provides us with guidance on the matter, thankfully, and it really hasn’t been as big of an issue as it might otherwise be.

The constitution allows Congress—some would say the President as well, during times of war (I disagree)—to place limits on habeas corpus, but in general it’s understood that the government may not violate it and must follow Congress’s will on the matter. In fact, the most notable, and contentious, example I can think of is the case of Yasser Hamdi. Even then, once it was established that Hamdi was born in the U.S.—and had a claim to U.S. citizenship—he was removed from Gitmo and brought to a U.S. prison where he stayed until released earlier this year, after renouncing his U.S. citizenship. Presumably, if caught in terrorist activities in the future, he won’t be given this kind of consideration.

Without getting too far into the difficulties around Gitmo, it seems to me that President Bush could have avoided that whole controversy by establishing military tribunals for the Gitmo inmates from the beginning, rather than asserting that they could be detained indefinitely with no judicial review at all. Perhaps a reader that is also a lawyer could provide some details and additional perspective.

My point in all of this—and I’ve definitely taken the long way around the barn getting there—is that habeas corpus is an essential barrier between us and a despotic government. Britain is dealing with that very issue now with regard to their own citizens:

I said that the power of detention [without charge or trial] is at present confined to foreigners and I would not like to give the impression that all that was necessary was to extend the power to United Kingdom citizens as well. In my opinion, such a power in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.

“The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.”—Thomas Jefferson to A. H. Rowan, 1798. ME 10:61

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Disagreements?

I haven’t been responding to a lot of comments lately, and please don’t take it personally.

The only reason I’ve had any time to blog is because exams ended last week, though my work did not. Christmas is a lot like a stay of execution in grad school; I still have a lot of shortcomings to address, knowledge-wise, and it will probably take me until next summer to handle them to my satisfaction. So, during the day I address deficiencies and in the evening have been able to blog a bit.

It doesn’t leave much time for responding to comments, though I do read them all.