Terry Arthur’s 1975 work 95% is Crap was a treasure of my youth (current version is simply called… Crap). I found it a library in Lancing, Sussex one summer holiday whilst staying with my grandparents, and it was a source of both amusement and comfort to me.
Finding a pro freedom, anti big-government book was a rare treat and Terry Arthur’s work was the first humorous such work I had ever read. The endless nonsense taught by schools and broadcast by the media is very painful to people who know it to be nonsense. And from my early childhood I understood that what the teachers said and what was broadcast via the radio and television was nonsense. Terry Arthur taught me to sometimes smile at it, rather than to always be filled with a mixture of rage and despair (although I would not claim that I did not continue to be filled with rage and despair a lot of the time). With this personal history I was eager to read Terry Arthur’s new work – and it did not disappoint.
Mr Arthur examines, normally with total fairness, the speeches and writings of various politicians, journalists and politically connected academics. It should come as no shock to people here that Terry Arthur shows the “reasoning” of these people to be wildly defective – but he also (and here is his true strength) shows their words to be, unintentionally, very funny as well. The ignorance of the “great and the good” (as we say in Britain) is shown in all its glory. But it is not just ignorance of such things as basic economics. The powerful men and women of our time are shown to have no grasp of how to reason. They are shown to contradict themselves, and their “arguments” are shown to be no arguments at all.
What comes over most clearly is the baseless faith in the state that so many of the journalists, politicians and academics have – even when they are claiming to be wary of the ability of government to achieve X, Y, Z. Also the lust for ever more power that lies under the words of these people is exposed. Many of the economic and “social” projects of the powers-that-be (and their supporters in the press and so forth) are also exposed in all their absurdity. So far most people who visit this site will be united in their pleasure at Terry Arthur work – but there are things that may divide us.
For example, Terry Arthur takes a very hostile attitude towards the Iraq war. However, it is at least consistent for someone who (and with good reason) does not believe that government can achieve anything in many fields, to also believe that government will not be much good at “spreading democracy in the Middle East”. And although the source of Mr Arthur’s knowledge of the Iraq war is the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, he shows none of the desire to claim that the war is an evil plot to spread an “American Empire” that one gets from some people connected with the institute.
Terry Arthur assumes that the people involved in the Iraq enterprise were entirely sincere in their motives. Which, of course, makes what he sees as their utter failure more amusing. One can say Mr Arthur is being unfair to some people involved in the enterprise. For example, Donald Rumsfeld is mocked for saying that the whole military operation would only last a brief period of time (at most five months). However, Mr Rumsfeld was clearly in favour of a very different post war plan than the one that was carried out. The Rumsfeld view of the post war operation was very much like that of former General Jay Garner (the first person to be in charge after the overthrow of Saddam) – go in and overthrow Saddam (for supporting enemies of the United States around the world), then elections within 90 days and hand over power. And if the Iraqis made a muck up of things – well that would be their problem. However, it was decided to go in for “reconstruction” and “nation building” before elections and a hand over of power. This was very different from what Donald Rumsfeld had in mind – and it did not turn out well.
Still Mr Arthur is not writing a history of the Iraq war – and, he could argue, if Mr Rumsfeld really opposed the notion of “nation building” why did he not resign when it was decided that this would be the policy?
However, there are also things that to Americans at least will ring a false note:
Not things like half of high school seniors not knowing that 87% of ten is less than ten. Terry Arthur has always been wary of “statistical crap” and does not claim that exactly half of all seniors in government schools are totally ignorant of basic math – he is just saying that government education is not good, which is true.
However, when Mr Arthur faithfully reproduces the standard Ludwig Von Mises Institute line that the Republican party was founded simply to rob the taxpayers to get money for big business, an American is likely ask “what about slavery?” It is not convenient for pro-Confederacy people to talk about slavery so they tend to down play the anti-slavery motives of the founders of the Republican party – and Terry Arthur’s sources are pro-Confederate ones. Of course, these same sources do not like talking about such things as the Confederacy putting on restrictions on overseas trade (for example demanding that ships using certain ports – which, unintentionally, helped the Union blockade) or that the Confederacy followed a policy of higher income tax rates and more fiat money inflation than the Union did – i.e. that the war was not really about resisting Northern big business subsidies.
Still I am being a po faced over serious person again.
However, there is one point in the book where Terry Arthur does the thing he points at so many of the Great and the Good doing – he says something that is unintentionally funny.
This is where Mr Arthur attacks President Bush for being anti immigrant – for example for ordering the building of a fence along the border with Mexico. As Americans will know, President Bush (wisely or unwisely) showed no interest in stopping illegal immigration for years. Also that he had to be dragged kicking and screaming into approving the fence – and that he still has not built it. George Walker Bush may be many things (good and bad) but anti immigrant he is not.
“As Americans will know, President Bush (wisely or unwisely) showed no interest in stopping illegal immigration for years. Also that he had to be dragged kicking and screaming into approving the fence – and that he still has not built it. George Walker Bush may be many things (good and bad) but anti immigrant he is not.”
Yes, indeed I could not consider Mr. Bush an anti-immigrant, and although he ended up pleasing the anti-immigrants in and out the Republican Party by approving the fence, he also made them pay a high price by irritating and exposing them in congress as xenophobic when at the same time he approved the fence he started pushing congress for an immigration amnesty bill.
Democrats accusing him of building the wall and playing to the xenophobic extreme right, conservatives of promoting amnesty laws.
Mr. Bush ended up between a rock and a hard place.
IBTL/IBTSWRAP
We’re difficult that way.
I suspect that he may have fallen into the same trap as so many overseas: America is so damn different from what they thought or had been told. They try to look at it through the prism of their own experiences and end up even more confused.
Example: the 2006 Federal election results. Often in Europe, it seems that people thought the election was essentially a referendum on either President Bush or the Iraq war. News flash: the last time he ran for office was 2004, and that will be likely the last time he ever runs for elective office again. History offers few examples of an ex-President running for so much as a local zoning board after the White House.
And there were domestic issues and domestic dynamics that simply don’t exist in other countries: our border and immigration. I would respectfully submit that very few non-US observers understand just how big a deal that was.
The closest example I can think of is, imagine if the UK were taking in over a million illegal immigrants from France each year, who worked at low-skill jobs for less than minimum wage, and with no EU mandate to let them stay but no political will to send them back. Imagine then that about 10% of these illegal Frenchmen had tendencies towards violent crime far in excess of the UK national average (already worse than that of the US average). And that close to 50% of them committed various flavors of identity theft in order to have any documents at all. And that about 5% harbor a belief that SE England is really part of Brittany and was stolen.
Add a French President who makes speeches about how it’s illegal for the RN to patrol the Channel (in spite of an 1848 treaty specifically allowing the RN to do so) and that France doesn’t stop at the French border. These remarks further inflame the situation, as most of the PM’s political supporters tend to be unusually-patriotic (‘nationalistic’ if you prefer) and the PM and French President have claimed to be good friends in the past.
Add in a number of other things: let’s try to imagine (I know that this will be a stretch) that the Conservative party usually claims to support limited government, fiscal responsibility, border security, property rights, and individual liberty. Let’s say that the Conservative MP’s then end up supporting massive expansion of the NHS, budget deficits equal to about 15-20% of the total budget, restrictions on political campaigning, and an amnesty for our aforementioned million Frenchmen. And have some hope of drawing in Labour voters.
How many Labour voters will they really draw off? And how many Conservatives will actually show up on the next election day?
I’d translate this into maybe a French/German analogy, but I don’t know either country’s politics well enough to go there.
And that about 5% harbor a belief that SE England is really part of Brittany and was stolen.
They’re just jealous that the part they were born in wasn’t stolen. (Not that I blame them)
IMHO the “immigration problem” is really a welfare state problem.
I can understand a lot of anti-war arguments, but the “no intervention at home, no intervention abroad” just makes no sense at all. Why should the American government a priori be more incompetent than the Ba’athist one? Or has Mr. Arthur forgotten there was already a government in Iraq before the Yanks showed up.
Sunfish:
“Example: the 2006 Federal election results. Often in Europe, it seems that people thought the election was essentially a referendum on either President Bush or the Iraq war.”
Not only Europe but throughout the world everyone thought the 2006 Presidential Elections was a referendum on the war in Iraq, with the ensuing shock.
It was something that flummoxed many for a while and I´d like to think that maybe American voters separate POLITICS, which is part of the democratic system with elections and campaigns and debates and mud-slinging and all that, from WAR, a totally different thing, which in the United States, as should be in many other parts in the world, is a non-partisan, very hard and well thought out decision taken by an president and approved by the representative body in congress after much debate and in the firm understanding and conclusion that war was the last resource and that if no action is taken then national security (ergo: world hegemony for a superpower) or Americans citizens lives at home or abroad, could be in peril or threaten.
I could make a list of thousands of well structured analysis published in magazines around the world and given in talks and lectures at universities and conferences during the 2006 elections by writers and intellectuals who took Kerry’s victory for granted on the premise that indeed the “election was a referendum on the Iraq war”. They were all politically correct at the time, but dead wrong in the end because they ignored that simple fact.
So the famous “it´s the economy stupid!” did not translate into “it´s the war stupid!”. At least this time it didn´t.
And it begs a question, did they underestimate the American voters?
On my above comment, I should have written 2004 instead of 2006, I got mixed up with the years. Sorry.
No, I don’t think they did. Certainly not to any greater extent than they underestimate the voters of all major democracies.
WAR and POLITICS are highly coupled here as well. And it’s right that they should be for wars like Iraq and Vietnam, where the survival of the nation is not directly at stake. I’m pretty sure that WAR transcended POLITICS during WWII in the US as well as the UK. Which is to say, our populations have in common that people can put aside their differences when we’re collectively threatened. But when we’re fighting for long-term, abstract goals, then WAR is just a political policy like any other, and it’s right that it should be debated as such.
The reason that Kerry didn’t win in 2004 on a tide of anti-war sentiment is because he isn’t anti-war. Oh, he tried to give certain groups of voters the impression that he was, but then he’d turn around and try to leave other groups of voters with the opposite impression. Which just ended up convincing most voters that Kerry was “more of the same, but even less honest about it.” This goes for a whole range of issues, actually – including government spending programs, gay marriage, you name it.
No doubt he picked up the vocal anti-war vote. But those people were voting democrat anyway.
Most elections, in fact, are not decided by the people you see screaming on TV – neither the rabid religious fundamentalists on the right nor the wacko hippies on the left. They just scream on TV. Elections are decided by middle-ground swing voters, and these people aren’t as easily fooled.
I think it would have been interesting to see what would have happened in 2004 if a REAL anti-war candidate – say, a Kucinich plus some implants to help him do math and understand basic economics – had been up. Only then would you know whether the American people truly disapproved of the war and wanted it stopped enough to make it the decisive issue. It’s hard to gauge what they think on an issue when the two candidates have more or less identical positions on it and only haggle over details. In such situations, people who are not themselves obsessed over details (which is most voters) look to other issues to make their decisions.
However, when Mr Arthur faithfully reproduces the standard Ludwig Von Mises Institute line that the Republican party was founded simply to rob the taxpayers to get money for big business, an American is likely ask “what about slavery?”
I suspect I know the answer already, but can anyone explain to me why US libertarianism tends to be so sympathetic towards the Confederacy and heaps such abuse on Lincoln? For me personally, despite my libertarian leanings, this bias is the main reason I don’t call myself a libertarian.
I don’t know the precise answer, but my thoughts are probably along the same lines as yours. i.e. Lincoln largely destroyed the concept of Federalism.
Personally I don’t mind the demonization of Lincoln by U.S. libertarians, I don’t agree entirely, but I do find it preferable to the deification he gets from everyone else.
Curt wrote:
Essentially, because the Lincoln presidency destroyed the concept of Federalism and elevated the Federal government over that of the States. The classic example is, that ante bellum, it was The United States are and post bellum The United States is
Even as late as 1928 total Federal government spending was about 3% (yes three – not thirty or something like that) of G.D.P.
So whatever Mr Licoln may have done, create a peace time mega government was not it – that had to wait for F.D.R.
This goes back to Jefferson Davis’ post war defence of the Confederacy. In his book slavery hardly gets a mention – it is all opposition to big government in Washington D.C.
The mistake of some (not all) libertarians is to mistake a whitewash for an unbiased history.
Hillsdale (founded by Free Will Babtists and the first college to accept blacks as equals) was proud to send many young men to fight for the Union – and it is pro Union still (and, no, it does not accept lots of Federal subsidies). And one of the best Union Generals was George Thomas – of Virginia (and were the new West Virginia and Kentucky somehow unSouthern because they supported the United States?)
Do not get me wrong, Mr Lincoln was Henry Clay Whig (internal building projects, national bank, tax on imports) and I am not.
However, that is not ALL Mr Lincoln was – and being a follower of Henry Clay does not make a man a Welfare Statist either (although, as Bastiat pointed out decades before in France, supporting subsidies to certain business interests leaves the situation vulnerable to people who will demand subsidies for “the masses”).
Nor were all the people in the Republican party followers of Henry Clay’s economic ideas (although most of them were). For example, Salmon P. Chase (the “slaves’ lawyer” and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) was a free market man (although war made him make some hard choices) – he left the Republicans, but he was a Republican for years.
And there is the problem that Confederacy had more “progressive” income tax, and more fiat money inflation than the United States did.
Oh, and the much praised Constitution of the Confederacy clearly allows the Confderate government (not just the State governments) to spend money on various internal improvments – so no great support for liberty there either.
Lastly if Texas (under the treaty of 1845) on any other State wises to leave the Union because the people of that State think that the feds in Washington D.C. take too much money or pass too many regualtions – FINE, I would SUPPORT any such secession.
But any claim that States tried to leave the Union in 1861 because they objected to the 1 or 2 per cent of the economy that was taken by the Feds, is bullshit.
That was a cover story (mostly stressed after they lost), they tried to leave the Union to protect slavery.
IMHO it wasn’t Lincoln who destroyed the concept of Federalism, but the CSA’s seccession. By completely discrediting it.
Furthermore even in the South the CS gouvernement centralized a lot more power unto itself than the pre – war union gouvernement ever did.
Sir – if you haven’t yet, read PJ O’Rourke. He’s the closest thing I know to “pro-freedom, anti-big-gov’t”, and he’s funny too. His work “Parliament of Whores” is the only one I’ve read fully, but I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Aw, crap, I know better than to go here…
If the South cared so deeply about Federalism and State’s Rights, then why did they use Congress to force Pennsylvania[1] to return fugitive slaves?
Calling the US Civil War a mere tax revolt over 1% of GDP sounds and smells like bullshit.
[1] For non-US readers, Penn. was initially settled by Quakers and other religious people who were convinced that slavery was worse than merely being wrong.
Andy:
I suspect, then, that you and I either define “welfare state” or “problem” differently.
JoseAngel:
They may have mis-read things, yes.
The war is a big enough issue, but there’s less of a clear consensus than anybody would like to admit. Sure, there are plenty of people protesting and so on, but there are also plenty of people who strongly believe that we should stay engaged until victory[1] and are voting based upon that.
But I think Americans tend to vote candidate character and domestic issues more than anything else. We’ve had the luxury of sharing borders with two large peaceful countries, neither of which has fought a war with us in well over a century[2], and having two oceans between us and any real problems. As a result, people form isolationist beliefs and don’t even notice the rest of the world.
As a result, when Americans vote based on a single issue, the issue is usually abortion. (Or occasionally guns, although the single-issue anti-gun voter is a rare breed indeed.)
I don’t think “It’s the economy, stupid” worked all that well for Bill Clinton in 1992. What elected Clinton, IMHO, was H. Ross Perot.
[1] Assuming that President Bush can ever get his story straight about what constitutes ‘victory’ and how we’ll recognize it when it happens. Or that the Democrat opposition can ever offer a position besides “The President is wrong! We don’t need to have a serious proposal because Bushitler lied people died!”
[2] Not counting incursions into Texas by people appearing to be Mexican Army.
Of course the official line of the Texans was that if the Mexican constitution had been maintained they would not have revolted.
That is why the banners on the Almo read “1824” (the date of the Mexican Constitution) not “1836”. And it why some hispanics died defending the Almo against the Santa Anna. On his side Santa Anna claimed that slavery was a lot to do with the revolt of the Texans – but he had less reason to claim that than Mr Lincoln did in regard to the Confederacy.
To confuse matters still further – Governor Sam Houston was pro United States in 1861 (perhaps he rembered the bankrupt farce the “Republic of Texas” had been), and the Texans did not arrest him (they sort of pretended he was not there).
Of course the relationship between Anglo Texans and Hispanics has always been complicated and mixed – more “love-hate” (“Tex-Mex” is not just a type of food, but there are real problems as well) than the “hate-hate” relationship that seems to exist in California.
Still these are deep matters – things that are better suited to a long book than an comment.
On the “United States is, rather than the United States are” point – that goes back before Mr Lincoln.
For example, the Supreme Court handed over control of immigration from the States to the Feds in (I think) 1854.
Certainly the Americans of as far back as the war of 1812 regarded themselves as part of a “nation” called the United States – well if they did not at the start of that war, they did by 1815.
Paul Marks..
“Of course the official line of the Texans was that if the Mexican constitution had been maintained they would not have revolted.”
“That is why the banners on the Almo read “1824” (the date of the Mexican Constitution) not “1836”. And it why some hispanics died defending the Almo against the Santa Anna. “On his side Santa Anna claimed that slavery was a lot to do with the revolt of the Texans – but he had less reason to claim that than Mr Lincoln did in regard to the Confederacy.”
I really doubt the 1824 Constitution had anything to do with Texas not revolting.
While nobody really knew what Mexico was in those days, whether it was “Mexico” or “Mejico” or “La Nueva España” as it was still called by the Spanish crown’s loyalists in Mexico City and throughout the territories until they finally got it that the Spanish were long gone and never to come back.
Mexico, or whatever that territory was called, was not even a failed state, but a bunch of territories of small towns and communities with Spanish settlers and indigenous peoples, the Aztec identity had long disappeared, but there were Tlaxcaltecas, Zapotecas, Mayans, Chichimecas, etc, all across the territories called “La Nueva España”, there were several jurisdictions as well, el Nuevo Reino de Leon being one of them, which is now Nuevo Leon, where I am from and where I live (Monterrey).
But the 1824 Mexican Constitution was the beginning of the consummation of Mexico’s aspirations of liberty and independence. It maintained Roman Catholicism as the official religion, adopted a federal republic with popular representation government, divided supreme power in legislative, executive and judicial, etc, etc.
It was the beginning of a dream started by the insurgents Hidalgo and Morelos, the latter calling for a National Constituent Congress of Chilpancingo in 1813, where he delivered his famous “”Sentimientos de la Nación” (Sentiments of the Nation) the first and one of the most important documents in Mexico’s constitutional history.
Mexico, as we know it today, a mix of Spanish and indigenous peoples, catholic, Official Spanish Language., basically started there.
Of course the newly born nation called Mexico was in those years, and would remain so for many years to come, a failed state where many people, including the people in Texas, could never tell what the next constitutional name of the country would be the following year and whether there was a country/president/emperor at all, distances were long and communications poor, organization of the state even worst.
But the 1824 constitution’s served as our declaration of independence from Spain and held the country together in its darkest hours (invasions after invasions from France and the United States and revolts of many states every once in a while) and for many more years until the present because it maintained the spirit of independence from future conquerors, like the French, who tried to subjugate the country in the same century but failed under President Juarez.
And for your information, Santa Anna has never been considered a Mexican hero, but a sorry traitor and a despotic tyrant and his speeches and excuses for assassinating Texans (Hispanics and Anglos the same) had not say or influence in our history.
And Texas was never Mexico either in those days, it was considered a territory, as was Quintana Roo or Baja California Sur, Mexico was only Mexico City and what today is central Mexico. The Yucatan Peninsula also tried to revolt but they didn’t get any outside help and the rebellion was crushed, but still today that part of Mexico is as if it was another country. What is Mexico today has been a long process of integration of many peoples.
JoseAngel.
My apologies – I failed to make myself clear.
The Texans claimed that they revolted because the 1824 Constitution had been violated (by Santa Anna).
As I said Hispanic men died fighting Santa Anna (including defending the Alamo).
I would certainly never claim that this dictator was a Mexican hero.
I again apologize to you if I implied that he was.
Paul Marks…
There is no need to apologize because there was nothing offensive in what you said and of course I was not offended at all and quite the opposite because I truly enjoyed your comments. I am sorry I gave that impression.
As you said correctly, the Texans did revolt; same as Yucatan did, claiming that the federalism of the original 1824 constitution was being replaced by a centralist government with supreme authority over the states. But Yucatan remained Mexican in the end because they had much more to share with the new Mexican nation, in terms of ethnicity, culture, language and history than the Texans did at the time.
By the time the Texans revolted they already had a significant Anglo-American population whose culture, language and religion was in constant conflict with the centralist government and culture and language of the rest of the Mexican territory. They had much more social, economic, cultural, religious, linguistic, ethnic and even family ties with the people of the United States, the very fact that the accounts and testimonies of the Texas revolution are told in English by the Texans who lived through those days tells you that by the time of the events the majority of the people there spoke English and not Spanish, which was supposed to be the official language of the land.
That is why I doubt their claim about the violation of the 1824 constitution to be entirely true, but it was only a personal statement and do not claim to know the truth.
I know for sure the centralist government in Mexico made a big mistake by violating the constitution but I also think there were other more important factors that encouraged Texas to revolt.
JoseAngel
I believe your words on this matter are wise ones.