Thanks also for the plug to the Manhattan Libertarians’ site. They do great stuff - one of the best organized LP organizations I have dealt with anywhere.

On Preston Peet’s http://www.DrugWar.com mail list the other day I posted a response to a “liberal” who sees “consevatives” as being the source of all that is stupid and evil . I’ll take the liberty of quoting a chunk :

Yes , the collective State , even in a majority-rule democracy , is a
different creature than the individuals who compose it . It is a
geographical monopoly on the use of force , including the right to
kill . It’s tool is force as opposed to the free market whose rule is
choice . As Hayak pointed out in his chapter “Why the worst get on
top” in his classic “The Road to Serfdom” , the motivations of the
people attracted to ascend its power structure are very different than
those who must produce products others voluntarily choose to trade
their resources for . Thus you get tyrants and would-be tyrants and
fanatics from Saddam to Bush , from Olmert to the Taliban . You get
the expansion of the government thru the criminalization of the
population for everything from growing proscribed plants to wanting to
keep their own resources to plan for their old age or medical needs .

As I pointed out , the origins of the Drug War are the very “liberal”
( in its 20th century , not classical , meaning ) creation of the FDA
and the arrogation by the state of what previously had been considered
the inalienable right to choose one’s own medications .

Your last couple of lines are very important . I cannot conceive any system with as much face legitimacy as direct democracy . I fail to see any evidence that indirect representation offers any protection . Surely the rejection of the direct referendum of the people in Gonzales v. Raich by supposed right to legislative redress does not support the notion that indirection enhances protection . The EU , of course , has a very indirect hierarchical structure . http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865 is an interesting interview with former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy on its parallels with the Soviet structure .

My lifetime spent programming long ago taught me the more mistakes you can make per unit time , the more you can accomplish . I believe direct democracy allows a population to make mistakes more rapidly than any other system and if we’re so bright , we ought to be able to teach .501 of the population why individual freedom maximizes quality of life .

Jim,
You point out and accurately:

John Lowell

There were so many conservatives who claimed to be principled in the 1990s who pawned their soul for a White House dinner invite - or even a returned phone call from a junior White house aide - after 2001.

I do try to be bipartisan in my disdain.

Edmund Burke said that people never give up liberty except under some delusion. “Majority rule” is invoked by the same politicians who make sure the majority doesn’t get in the way of their power grabs.

Democracy certainly boosts gullibility…

You say:

“Greenwald has been good on this issue, as have some of the other liberal bloggers. They have shown far more curiosity about the prerogatives that Bush is claiming than the vast majority of conservative writers.”

Greenwald’s analyses have been exceptionally good in my view. It’s the end to which they’re being put that concerns me. Reading your commentary about torture or the war, for example, I come away without the feeling that the analysis is being subordinated to some partisan end, the fact that you may wish to see Bush run out of town on a rail notwithstanding. With Greenwald the sense is entirely different. Day after day the blog sifts anti-Bush, anti-Republican agitprop along with a sympathetic accompanying commentary. And the unmistakeable impact: Vote Democrat. And now the man moves on to Salon, Michael Kinsley’s old organ, and the odor keeps getting stronger.

John Lowell

Your kind words are like a balm given some of the environments that I’ve taken to populating recently, this fine blog excepted, of course.

You are quite right to point to the “other things” you sense. One comes away from some of the liberal blogs - Greenwald’s, Floyd’s - with the distinct impression that the principal value to be derived from the torrential anti-Bush polemic now in motion consists solely in its potential for electing Democrats. It is almost as though in Greenwald we have found the anti-Limbaugh. As a matter of fact, one might even be pardoned the impression that in making such a discovery one has arrived where one is clearly intended to have arrived.

The merit of much of the analysis made here is that it carries with it a certain “arms-length”. I’ve never had the feeling that Jim has had an axe to grind particularly. No so in the left blogoshere.

Regards.

John Lowell