Marginal Utility

by Ken Houghton

Scott Horton discovers that the guys at G-Mu (not these guys; the historians) have dropped James Buchanan to #2 in the Pantheon.

Memories of the Ford Administration (even though it elides Buchanan's homosexuality) may never be read the same again.

Labels: Bushonomics, History, literature

by Ken Houghton

UPDATE: De Long responds, accurately, here. Though I'm still inclined to believe that, at best, the U.S. fallout would have been even worse, his scenario is at least plausible from the Cuban perspective.

Catching up on my skimming (in preparation for having a while with time for reading), I find this Adam Clymer op-ed on the Panama Canal:

THIRTY years ago tomorrow, the conservative movement lost a major battle on the way to winning a larger war. On March 16, 1978, the Senate approved — 68 to 32, with just a single vote to spare — the first of two treaties that transferred the Panama Canal to Panama. Conservatives lamented the result, saying it threatened national security and might put the canal in Communist hands.

But losing the canal led to important victories for conservatives. The transfer of the canal to Panama provided the margins for defeat of five Democratic senators in 1978 and 1980, enough to give Ronald Reagan a Republican majority when he took office in 1981. That majority was essential to Mr. Reagan’s legislative successes.

And I am reminded once again of Cuba, and Brad De Long's reply to Jessica (#5) when she noted that "once that die was cast, I don't see where Castro ever had a chance to switch directions without risking not only US invasion, but vindictive and brutal US invasion":

As to when Fidel could have switched to a eurocommunist or social-democratic model without immediately losing his head--well, 1968 with Dubcek, or 1975 with Sadat, or anytime in the Carter administration, certainly.

The man who barely had enough political capital to get rid of an aging, increasingly less valuable resource does not seem likely to have been able to repel the Cuban Mafia's Calls for a Takeover.

Labels: Brad DeLong, History, Politics

by Ken Houghton

datacharmer at Bluematter promised on 4 March that (s)he would post Exhibit B in defense of the conceit that economics is not finished, as suggested (apparently) by a sociologist reviewing the latest book by Tim Harford.

None of the three posts since then has been that exhibit (unless an aphorism from The Other "Uncle Miltie" was supposed to be it). Perhaps the position has been reconsidered, or conceded?

Labels: Economics, History

by Ken Houghton

Via My Loyal Reader, this is either another data point for the paperback edition of Liberal Facism, or proof that A. Hitler really is a better artist than J. Cameron:

Hitler is known to have owned a copy of Snow White, the classic animated adaptation of a German fairy tale, and to have viewed it in his private cinema....

"Hitler had a copy of Snow White," [William Hakvaag, the director of a war museum in northern Norway] said. "He thought this was one of the best movies ever made."

Labels: History, movies

by Ken Houghton

From Keith Knight in 2006:

Labels: Democracy, History

by Ken Houghton

The January 25th issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education features an article on democracy:

Americans were shocked at the photographs of tortured Iraqi prisoners incarcerated at Abu Ghraib. They were horrified by the assault on Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant molested with the broken end of a broomstick by New York City police officers in August 1997. A decade earlier, they were horrified by revelations that New York police officers had used stun guns to coerce confessions from young Hispanic and African-American suspects in 1985 and 1986.

Our outrage is predictable because we reject the idea that democracies engage in torture. That's something authoritarian states do — in the words of a World War II poster, "the method of the enemy."

So far, this sounds like a Jonah Goldberg book. But the article has a better grasp of the history of democracies:

[D]emocracies often set the pace in torture innovation. Legalized torture was a standard part of Greek and Roman republics, our ancient models of democracy. Roman judges used various tortures, most famously the short whips, ferula and scutica, to coerce confessions and get information. Torture was also a standard part of Italian republics like Venice and Florence, our other historical models of democracy. Those city-states adopted some of the same techniques as the inquisitors of the Roman Catholic Church. They often used the strappado, a technique in which guards tied a victim's hands behind his back, hoisted him from the ground by means of a hook and pulley, and repeatedly dropped him to the floor. The political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli was subjected to that process thrice. Before World War II, the British, the Americans, and the French all practiced torture: the French in Vietnam, the British in their mandate of Palestine, the Americans in the Philippines, not to mention what our police were doing in cities large and small. Police in democratic states used electrotorture, water torture, painful stress positions, drugs, and beatings. They did so sometimes on their own, sometimes in collusion with local citizens, and sometimes with the quiet approval, if not explicit authorization, of their governments. All this before the Central Intelligence Agency [if not the OSS--kh] ever existed.

As I said, I don't want to discuss torture per se as part of democracy. But the sidebar is too interesting to ignore. Read the whole thing, as they say.

Labels: Democracy, education, History