The Temptations of Libertarianism
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EDITORIALS AND VIEWPOINTS 1 The Temptations of Liberalism EDITORIALS 2 Letters 5 No to Fracking! ARTICLES AND COLUMNS The Temptations 6 FOLLOW-UP 8 NOTES FROM A SMALL PLANET of Libertarianism What Young Green Jews Are Thinking Basia Yoffe “The Pursuit of Happiness” 10 THE VIEW FROM ISRAEL Rent, Cottage Cheese, and Peace vs. “the General Welfare” Ron Skolnik 14 FOOTPRINTS: JC AT 65 t has been paralyzing for progressives to spend Pride Vs. Ambivalence: the bulk of our political energy cheerleading The Secular Jewish DIlemma Ifor the Democrats, however dispiritedly, for Lawrence Bush nearly three years. Yes, we joined Paul Krugman 20 American Jewish Athletes: Lesser-Known Facts in criticizing their stimulus package as inadequate; Bennett Muraskin we moaned as Congressional Democrats ignored 23 The Boxing Match the “Medicare for All” option and created a mon- Lou Charloff strously complicated health insurance reform act; 26 Chosen Clowns: The Influence of Jews we fumed about the major concessions to energy on Segregated Baseball corporations contained in Henry Waxman’s failed Mikhail Horowitz cap-and-trade bill. Notwithstanding our criticisms, 30 MEGAPHONE: INTERVIEWS WITH JEWISH ACTIVISTS however, the left has been so afraid of seeing the Shari Silberstein, Equal Justice USA Big Bad Republicans restored to power that we 54 MAMELOSHN: English to Yiddish have largely abandoned independent action, except A.E. Housman and Barnett Zumoff in the most desperate circumstances, and allowed 69 CONCEALED/REVEALED: Essays on “In the Bedroom” ourselves to be cast as reluctant defenders of a 78 IN MEMORIAM worsening status quo. Bennett Muraskin Other Americans have been less loyal, withdraw- ing from both political parties in record numbers JCULTCHA AND FUNNY PAGES (Gallup pegged it in 2010 at 31 percent Democratic, 33 Artworks, Poetry and Fiction 27 percent Republican — all-time lows — and 38 featuring artworks by Ezra Jack Keats, percent independent). Meanwhile, the most pas- photographs by Harry Wilks, sionate “anti-Establishment” political force has fiction byHelen Staley, been the Tea Party, whose representatives in Con- a memoir by Ken Winograd, gress have now foisted a major social experiment and much more — trillions of dollars of harsh budget cuts — on the American people. REVIEWS They’ve done so, sad to say, with President 56 The Breakdown of the Jewish Consensus Obama’s complicity. Obama has shown little faith Paul Buhle on Between Two Worlds in the power of progressive policies to win popu- 57 How To Make a Good Khasid lar support, and little ability to articulate a vision Zelda Gamson on Mitzvah Girls of government as the ally of working people. He 61 B’KITSER: IN BRIEF ceded the argument about deficit-cutting to the 63 The Great Leap Backwards Republicans at the very start of the debate by agree- George Jochnowitz on Mao’s Great Famine → page 3 66 Katchor’s Stuffed Valise 1 JEWISH CURRENTS Mitchell Abidor on Ben Katchor LETTERS Libertarianism . manifestations of liberty. The magazine also decries Names will be withheld from publication on to pacifism, or is it that you are no longer international- → from page 1 intrusions into private life by the national security request. Jewish Currents reserves the right ist in your outlook? Barring these possibilities, I don’t ing that excess government spending is a pressing establishment since September 11th, 2001, and wor- to edit letters to restrict their length. grasp the nature of your complaint. problem, when actually it is the inadequate level ries about anti-Muslim bias in America. All of this RALPH SELIGER of government spending that has helped prolong contrasts sharply with the hypocrisy of the Christian New York, New York The War in Libya our economic hardship. Because of these and other Right and other conservative elements that con- failures of leadership, some polls now suggest that a demn “government interference” yet are only too Your brief editorial on the conflict in Libya is The Editorial Board replies: majority of Americans actually do consider it a high glad to pass laws that institutionalize their biases. puzzling and a disappointment. The first paragraph It is difficult, as historically conscious Jews, not to priority to shrink the government. Those polls con- What Reason argues for under the rubric, “free indicates that you fully understand what is different back military interventions that might prevent mass tradict themselves when specific cuts in programs about the current United States effort in Libya against slaughter — but such interventions should be carefully markets,” is a whole lot less tempting, however. Qaddafi from the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s thought out and fully justified. The recent history of are named — folks still want dollars for education, Welch and Gillespie unveil their logic as follows: Iraq in 2003: the earlier intervention was unilateral, U.S. war policy is not at all reassuring in this regard: infrastructure, Medicare, and all of the basic pro- counter to the vote of the United Nations Security Our contrived, unjustified war in Iraq has consumed grams put in place by the New Deal and the Great A growing majority of us has responded to the Council, and moved against a dictator whose greatest American lives and enormous amounts of resources, Society. All told, however, the Newsweek headline, stale theatrics of Republican and Democratic crimes were in the past. The U.S. effort in Libya has while our nation-building folly in Afghanistan shows “We’re All Socialists Now,” which startled America misgovernment by making a rational choice: broad international support, is multilateral and was no clear path of exit. The intervention in Libya’s shortly after the financial meltdown, might well be We ignore politics . and instead pursue prompted by the prospect of a great slaughter, with revolution/civil war is only the newest instance of replaced by “We’re All Libertarians Now,” as the happiness. We fall in love, start a home busi- Qaddafi’s forces on the verge of retaking Benghazi America’s willingness to resort far too quickly to 2012 presidential election gets underway. ness, make mash-ups for YouTube . bum and totally defeating the rebellious population when military action to shape the behavior of other nations. around Europe for a year or three . or trick NATO aircraft intervened. Such actions are unsustainable, uncontrollable, and This, at least, is reality as described by Reason out our El Caminos. Through these pursuits As I write this in mid-May, the civil war continues undermining to our country’s economic foundations magazine, the most intelligent proponent of liber- we eventually find [that people], mostly left and we don’t yet absolutely know its outcome. But Notwithstanding his Nobel Peace Prize, President tarian politics (the journal is subtitled, “free minds to their own devices and not empowered by we do know that the power of a ruthless dictator has Obama has not raised the threshold for U.S. military and free markets”). A “yawning chasm” has opened the state to force others into servitude, will been checked and that many Libyan lives have so far invention one whit. The ACLU’s Washington, DC “between popular opinion and the actions of politi- create riches far more meaningful and vast been spared. We also know that the U.S. is primarily director, Laura Murphy, recently warned (in Reason now in a supportive role and is being careful (along magazine) that a provision to declare a global war on cians,” write Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie, the than the cramped business of tax-collecting, with the rest of NATO) not to commit land forces in terrorism will be tucked into the National Defense editor-in-chief and editor, respectively, in their regulation-spewing, do-as-I-say-or-else gov- a third conflict in a Muslim country. Although there Authorization Act this year, which “could become August-September, 2011 issue’s “Declaration of ernments. can be no guarantee as to where this limited interven- the single biggest ceding of unchecked war authority Independents.” The Tea Party has successfully ex- tion may lead, the Obama administration (unlike its to the executive branch in modern American history.” ploited this disaffection by showing independence Never mind the callow obliviousness to their own predecessor) is proceeding cautiously. Under such circumstances, the intervention in Libya from the Republican establishment: “Nothing,” class privilege (Hey, guys: a bunch of Americans Perhaps the editorial board is now totally committed is very troubling. → page 76 they correctly observe, “shakes a major party to are living in their El Caminos): Welch and Gil- its core [more] than when the refrain of ‘yeah, but lespie have here revealed the central fallacy of their the other team might win’ no longer works.” As for Vol. 66, No. 1 (662) Summer & Autumn 2011 libertarianism. They see a smooth highway, “the EDITOR: Lawrence Bush http://jewishcurrents.org the left, “Having followed their original champion, pursuit of happiness,” running between the private JC Howard Dean, into the bosom of the Democratic and the economic, between “free minds” and “free EDITORIAL BOARD: Adrienne Cooper, Joseph Dimow, Henry Foner, Esther Leysorek Goodman, Party . anti-war progressives now have no orga- markets” — if only the government would stop Nicholas Jahr, Rokhl Kafrissen, Milton Kant, Lyber Katz, Myriam Miedzian, Alice Radosh, nizational infrastructure . .” erecting traffic signs and toll booths! But economic Judith Rosenbaum, Yankl Stillman, Tamar Zinn, Barnett Zumoff The “hands-off,” anti-government libertarianism activity is never private. All aspects of wealth- CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Bennett Muraskin, Joel Schechter, Ron Skolnik, Basia Yoffe espoused by Reason may offer some temptation to creation are “social”: from the natural resources WEBSITE PUBLISHING: Nicholas Jahr, Kabren Levinson INTERN: Alyssa Goldstein us “homeless” progressives, especially in the wake we use (our shared inheritance), to the process of of Washington’s bipartisan betrayal of working invention and innovation that sets in motion new Cover Artwork: Artwork from “The Trip” by Ezra Jack Keats.