James Buchanan, RIP

Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan, a founder of the Public Choice school and a proponent of radical subjectivist economics, died today at the age 93. He leaves a library full of writings important to libertarians.

Gary Chartier has notes on Buchanan at the Center for a Stateless Society site.

Israel Lobby or Jewish Lobby?

I'm amused by the criticism of Chuck Hagel for referring to the Jewish Lobby, instead of the Israel Lobby. When it's convenient, Israel's supporters never fail to insist that Israel is the state not of its citizens or even its Jewish citizens, but of the Jewish people worldwide. Any Jew (by criteria set by ultra-orthodox rabbis) may move to Israel and immediately become a citizen. A Palestinian Arab born in what became Israel in 1948 and driven out during the Nakba is forbidden to return to his home.

Of course, not all Jews are Israel chauvinists, but that's not relevant here. The point is that Jewish Israel chauvinists support Israel because in their eyes what's good for Israel is good for the Jewish people.

I tried to capture this point in my cartoon.

By the way, "Jewish Lobby" is an uncontroversial synonym for AIPAC in Israel.

Priorities

Hey, no big deal if the U.S. government murders people in other countries.

No big deal if it sends people off to be tortured. 

No big deal if if holds people indefinitely without due process. 

But God forbid it should miss a bill payment!

Bottom Line on the "Fiscal Cliff"

The tax increases will be real. The spending cuts will be illusions, at best, a minor slowing of the rate of increase. We may not even see that. Word is that the two division of the uniparty are discussing postponing "sequestration," the automatic so-called across-the-board cuts in domestic and military discretionary scheduled to kick in at midnight. Republicans reportedly want a three-month postponement, Democrats a two-year postponement.

Business as usual. You can't make this stuff up.

Latest FFF Scribblings

Op-ed: "Gun-Control, Mental-Health Laws Won’t Make Us Safer."

TGIF: "The Year That Was."

More on Right to Work

My FFF op-ed this week is titled "The Fight Over Right-to-Work."

And if you haven't had enough on the subject, Gary Chartier and I respond to Shikha Dalmia's defense of right-to-work laws (at Reason.com) in our Center for a Stateless Society commentary, "Right-to-Work Legislation Is Not the 'Good.'"

TGIF: Intervention Begets Intervention

This week's TGIF looks at Ludwig von Mises's "critique of interventionism." Bottom line:

Is there a lesson to be drawn from Mises’s critique? I think so. Intervention tends to beget intervention. Therefore, when you see a public problem, don’t look to government intervention for a solution. Instead, look for the previous intervention that created it — and work to have the offending legislation repealed.

Read it here.