Roderick Long defends Herbert Spencer:

So what common ground could there be between Spencer and the eugenicists? Both, to be sure, were “Social Darwinists,” if that means that both thought there were important sociopolitical lessons to be drawn from evolutionary biology. But Spencer and the eugenicists drew opposite lessons. For the eugenicists, the moral of evolutionary biology was that the course of human evolution must be coercively managed and controlled by a centralized, paternalistic technocracy. For Spencer, by contrast, the moral was that coercive, centralized, paternalistic approaches to social problems were counterproductive and so would tend to be eliminated by the spontaneous forces of social evolution, which would instead favor a system of fully consensual human relationships.

Admittedly, industrialist Andrew Carnegie was an admirer of Herbert Spencer, and the Carnegie Institution appears to have played an important role in the eugenics movement. But so what? I do not know how far Carnegie himself personally supported the tyrannical policies that Black discusses, but suppose he supported them up to the hilt; if Carnegie said nice things about Spencer, but also supported policies antithetical to everything Spencer stood for, this can hardly be laid at Spencer’s door.

Ouch. Paul Krugman writes:

It’s all coming true. Before the war, hawks insisted that Iraq was a breeding ground for terrorism. It wasn’t then, but it is now.

Bumper Hornberger denounces Ilana Mercer’s innuendo against Sheldon Richman

Rethinking the Articles of Confederation, by Scott Trask

The American confederation was destined to become a free-trade area, even without a consolidated union. Hamilton, in Federalist No. 12, all but admitted, and complained, that such would be the case. He worried that the multiplicity of state jurisdictions would keep tariffs too low and variable for the raising of sufficient revenue or the provision of industrial promotion.

The relative situation of these States; the number of rivers with which they are intersected, and of bays that wash their shores; the facility of communication in every direction; the affinity of language and manners; the familiar habits of intercourse – all these are circumstances that would conspire to render an illicit trade between them a matter of little difficulty and would insure frequent evasions of the commercial regulations of each other. The separate States or confederacies would be necessitated by mutual jealousy to avoid the temptations to that kind of trade by the lowness of their duties.

In the heart of Anytown I happened to see a sign advertising mailboxes for $13/month, so I went in, as my old mailbox on Market Street is less convenient now than in 1997 when I was nearby every day.

“The person who rents out the mailboxes won’t be in until tomorrow. Meanwhile let’s see if I can find you the forms . . . . You’ll need proof of residency in Anytown. Yeah, the Post Office requires it.”

Damn. That’s new. My terrorist cell will be so disappointed.

How do you get mail if you have no fixed address? What if you sleep elsewhere but spend the day in Anytown? What if you’re about to move to Anytown but don’t yet know exactly where you’ll be living?

Cui bono?

In Oklahoma, a teenager has been charged with the felony of “planning to cause serious bodily harm or death to another” because he wrote a presumably fictional script for a terrorist strike at a school. He did not show his story to anyone, nor did police searches find any of the weapons &c mentioned.

Updates: The judge dismissed the case on 2003 August 30, holding that no crime exists without evidence of intent to do the violence. Because the dismissal came more than a year after the charge, it could not be expunged; the relevant law has now been changed, effective next week (Nov.1).

Government and the godawful greatest generation: Bob Smith traces a cluster of social ills to veterans’ benefits post 1945. (Link updated 2006.)