Ross Douthat writes in part:

No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that’s just why it remains on the ideological fringe — because it boils down the most difficult questions in human affairs to a simple equation, a What Would the Market Do bumper sticker.

Hey, thanks for the idea!

I followed a link or two from Glen Whitman’s Agoraphilia, packed with bloggy goodness.

Duncan Frissell (Technoptimist) explains How to Invade Iraq Without Violating the Non-Aggression Principle (In case you felt the need to). Link from Daniel Boone (Nolo Consentire).

In “An American Empire! If You Want It instead of Freedom, Part 1”, Richard Ebeling quotes Garet Garrett on the symptoms of imperialism. “Second, domestic-policy issues become increasingly subordinate to foreign-policy matters.” But perhaps this was inevitable; foreign policy is the one field in which the central authority is most thoroughly exclusive under the US Constitution (power is shared with the provinces to some degree in most other matters), and so naturally ambitious politicians would tend to be attracted to it and favor it.

I’ll think about whether and how to address this problem in my new utopian constitution – when I’m not wearing my anarchist hat!

Demons in a death penalty case – Ellen Goodman writes in the Boston Globe about the peculiar practice of forcibly medicating mad prisoners.

I am particularly struck by the ruling in Ford v. Wainwright that it is “cruel and unusual punishment” to put to death someone who was mentally incompetent – so incompetent that he didn’t understand his fate or the meaning of death or why he was condemned. I agree that it’s cruel to kill someone without letting him know why; but, y’know, if I were about to die but too addled to know what ‘die’ means, I think I’d rather be left in that state than have it ‘mercifully’ explained to me.
( . . more . . )

When was the last time street protests had any effect on US policy?

The ultimate generic industrial film, built around every script and visual cliché. I’ve just begun scratching the surface of the Prelinger Archive of ephemeral movies. (Link from two–four, who really doesn’t need to use such large type)

Roderick Long writes in Shades of Grey (and Blue):

To their joint discredit, both Union and Confederacy waged war against the principle of free association. Southern rebels claimed the right to exit the Union, but hypocritically denied slaves the same right to exit the plantation.

President Lincoln, for his part, stated plainly that his “paramount Object” was “to save the Union,” and “not either to save or to destroy slavery.” If there had been no slaves, Lincoln would have sought to crush secession anyway. (And with conscripted troops!)

North and South alike, then, championed compulsory over free association. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Civil War was an unjust war on both sides.