Win-Win Gains from a Libertarian Party Cross-Nomination of President Trump

 Dear Mr. President:

Have you thought of negotiating a cross-nomination deal with the Libertarian National Committee?

I am a lifelong supporter of Libertarian Party candidates.  I have since concluded that you can do more to further the cause of freedom than the LP can, so I will support and have been supporting you and the NRCC over the past couple of years.  Why not negotiate the LP's cross nomination of you in 2020?

The following chart shows that the LP won 2.2% to 4.15% in the six battleground states, more than enough to put you well over the top.

Battleground States/ LP Percentage

Florida                    /          2.20%
Wisconsin               /          3.60%
Pennsylvania         /         2.40%
Michigan               /          3.60%
New Hampshire    /         4.15%
Nevada                 /             3.30%

Although I have not been active in the LP since 1983, I can imagine at least two bargaining chips that can result in mutual gains for both parties: first, an agreement to abolish a set of government agencies and programs that you don't mind abolishing (they want to abolish everything) and, second, an offer of placing Libertarians in powerful agency posts in which they can gut government programs.  In exchange, they would throw you the percentages that secure a win.

For example, if you offer to abolish the Department of Education and a list of fluff that Rand Paul or Citizens Against Government Waste provides in exchange for LP support and/or offer them a dozen positions in areas like the NLRB, and EPA, they may be willing to make a deal. You would likely have an additional benefit by having people in positions of power who are hostile to the deep state and have little to lose in attacking it.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Across the Board Cuts Needed to Drain the Swamp

The President

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

This is a letter of support in light of the unfair allegations that Democratic Party and fake media extremists have brought against you.  Fake journalists have made absurd claims about the significance of your conversation with Prime Minister Zelensky, including the fiction that you withheld aid or in some way functioned as a mafia boss.  Seeing the absurd spectacle of Neil Cavuto pretending to be an objective journalist while basing all of his questioning on false assumptions and outright lies isn’t surprising, but it is one more nail in the coffin of the credibility of television news.

The bigger question is how to move forward given that this series of events has revealed deep-seated corruption within the intelligence agencies.  When you were elected, I was skeptical of the expression “deep state.” As a libertarian, I was aware that the state is fundamentally corrupt.  However, I was unaware of the deep partisan infiltration of the intelligence agencies.

When you are elected to a second term, I urge you to follow the libertarian approach of across-the-board budget cuts to agencies.  This is an approach that will be a baby step toward curing the federal deficit but a leap toward draining the swamp.  The concept of corporate culture is that behavior patterns in organizations become ritualized. Cultures are collective mental programming that are next to impossible to change.  This insight was made in the 1950s by the sociologist Philip Selznick in his book Leadership in Administration.  Because you are primarily a real estate developer used to contractual relationships, you seem to have proceeded in your efforts to drain the swamp without addressing the deep cultural impediments.   

The solution that Selznick offers to change cultures is the same that libertarians have urged to cut costs:  sharply cut the staffing.  As well, shuffling personnel and hiring from without will be useful. Director Henry King’s 1949 film 12 O’Clock High depicts the reshuffling and firing approach to culture change.

As you know, the federal debt is at levels that may threaten economic growth in the short run and certainly will do so in the long run.  Across-the-board cuts in federal agencies of, say, 50% of staff in agencies like the CIA, NSA, DOL, and DOE along with reshuffling of assignments of existing staff will shake up the corrupt, deep-state culture if not end it entirely.  Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, the Squad, and the radical steps they are taking may make such a radical approach possible after 2020 because they are losing credibilty.  

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Cc: Neil Cavuto Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Mitch McConnell

Mr. Joseph Maguire

Director, National Intelligence
Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
Washington, DC 20511

Dear Mr. Maguire:

I have written to the president suggesting that radical culture change is needed in the intelligence community. The leaking of a presidential conversation is neither heroic nor legal, and it is not the work of a whistleblower. Rather, it is reflective of an intelligence community that has run amok with partisanship and corruption.

As I mention in the attached letter to the president, the antidote for a corrupt culture is across-the-board firing.  I suggest that half of all intelligence personnel be terminated. They are no longer serving the public, and the culture in the agencies is rotten.  Once half have been fired, the remaining personnel should be reshuffled. New personnel without the taint of the rotten culture that has evolved can then be hired.

This kind of step is unknown in government bureaucracies, but it is evident that it has become necessary.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Letter to Sarah Lawrence College President Cristle Collins Judd in Support of Prof. Samuel Abrams

Dear President Judd:

I attended Sarah Lawrence College for two years, from 1973 to 1975, and I am increasingly ashamed of my association with it.  I read with dismay Professor Abrams’s op-ed in Minding the Campus.  Abrams writes that students are afraid to say not only that they support a Republican or Libertarian candidate but also that they support a left-wing candidate like Hillary Clinton who is not as extreme a leftist as campus bullies would like.  

When Professor Abrams wrote in the Times that the college needs better balance, he and his family received threats and suffered property damage from campus bigots who have been encouraged by a faculty that has apparently lost its way and an administration that apparently likes to run afoul of Section 501(c)(3).  My guess is that if a basic history examination is to be given to the Orwellian-named “Diaspora Coalition,” it would reveal that the majority do not know the basics of history.  Professor Abrams says that this coalition of bigots has intimidated and bullied those who support him.

I want to see such an examination given to the members of the Diaspora Coalition. The scores should be publicly posted.  My null hypothesis is that they are badly educated half literates. 

My question is this: Given that the college increasingly appears to be in the indoctrinating-and-dumbing-down business, exactly why should I offer financial support?

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Why I Support Republicans in 2018 and Trump in 2020, and Why I Oppose Sissified Democrats

Last year Tom Ross wrote a piece in the Examiner in which he quoted William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts and the 2016 Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate, as claiming that data showed that 75% of LP voters would have voted for Trump rather than Clinton.  As a result, Trump would have won a net majority in the absence of minor parties.

I am one of the culprits who did not vote for Trump. Until recently, I tended not to vote in presidential elections. When I did, I supported the Libertarian candidate. However, I served on my county Republican committee, worked for the Republican Party locally, and voted during the three nonpresidential years. I have opposed the evident corruption in the GOP both locally and nationally, but I have also contributed to GOP candidates.

As a libertarian, there were three features of Trump's candidacy that turned me off: his proposed wall, his animus toward immigration, and his suspicions about free trade.  These are anti-libertarian positions, and I still oppose them.

However, there are two areas in which Trump has demonstrated valuable instincts:  his attitudes toward political correctness and the media.  Political correctness is a polite name for the totalitarian control and authoritarianism that have always been associated with socialism, communism, and the left in general. One does not advocate a strong government because one is shy of control; one who desires control is as likely to desire it with respect to civil as well as economic matters.

The left's thoroughgoing and consistent authoritarianism is seen in its rationalization architecture. Scholars like Adorno call all who oppose left-wing authoritarianism "authoritarian"; meanwhile, Herbert Marcuse advocates intolerance.  A movement that claims to be intolerant in the name of opposing authoritarianism is a spinning top capable of anything. Indeed, the left, when it gains power, has accomplished every horror imaginable, beginning with mass murder in the nine digits.

Accelerating left-wing totalitarian patterns have been evident to me since I entered higher education in the early 1990s, and they continued to escalate up to the point when the Obama administration began to prosecute professors for expression of views that had no connection to teaching or the campus.  Laura Kipnis was accused of creating a hostile environment at Northwestern University simply because she wrote two articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

These rules have now changed. The Trump administration is the first in my lifetime to reverse the march toward totalitarianism in American universities. The exclusion of Republicans from leading universities, which I have studied, is symptomatic of Democratic Party-subsidized groupthink. In turn, the subsidization reflects a historical impetus from corporate-linked foundations, which were eager to homogenize education and eject Christianity from American colleges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The media has a similar history.  It was consolidated by investment banking interests, and the centralization and left orientation received subsequent support from the Democratic Party, which censored libertarian positions during the New Deal.  The centralization and homogenization of higher education and journalism converge on the needs of large financial institutions and one of their twin handmaidens, the Democratic Party.

Trump is the first elected official to threaten the status quo. Perhaps this was a ploy to gain votes--but perhaps Trump understands that the media, the universities, the so-called deep state, and especially the Democratic Party have interests that are as really aligned with the interests of ordinary Americans as the interests of Septimius Severus were really aligned with the ordinary Romans who received free bread.

By coincidence I have recently been listening to a lecture series about Roman history, and the thought occurred to me that a parallel might be made between the decline of Rome and the sissification of American culture, especially in the Democratic Party.  I googled a related combination of words and came across a series of news items that tell a story similar to the dumbed-down attacks I have suffered at the hands of the fake-news media.

In 2011 the Italian historian Roberto de Mattei, based on a lifetime of study of Roman history, concluded that the decline of Rome was caused by a parallel process. De Mattei, who was head of the Italian Research Council,  was treated to threats and calls for his sacking by Mussolini's fascio descendants, the Italian left wing.

America's dumbed-down journalists are tools of globalist financiers who delight in American indebtedness, decline, authoritarianism, and socialism.  The delight about the indebtedness part ends when Republicans follow the same destructive policies as the Democrats, but it holds when the Democrats are in office

American journalists worry endlessly about their supposed freedom of the press, which is constrained to the point of zero by centralized credit, centralized financial controls, regulated cable television monopolies, regulated airwaves, and dumbed-down journalists, who are economic and historical illiterates trained by ideological, totalitarian institutions.

The Internet, which was originally thought to be a decentralizing force, is increasingly concentrated on social media that has proven even more authoritarian and subject to centralizing control than television.

Trump's use of Twitter turns this dynamic on its head. Bless him.

Walter Block on Space Capitalism

Walter Block appeared on CSPAN to discuss his new book on space capitalism. Block makes the case that safety, efficiency, and environmental outcomes will improve if what are now considered public goods, such as roads, oceans, and outer space, are privatized.  Libertarian approaches to externalities depend on the creation of liability-and-damage torts.  Could the Apollo moon landing monies have been better spent?  Block thinks so, and he's right.

Block proposes that GDP  be defined as consumption + investment + imports - exports - government spending.

The current definition of GDP adds rather than subtracts government spending.

Block suggests that Elon Musk is a crony capitalist and not a legitimate investor. That's of course true.  I disagree, though, that you can assess whether someone who receives government money is a saint or a sinner.  All government action is coercive, and in our  socialist state all of us receive government subsidization to some degree.  The aim should be to limit government subsidization in general.  There is no good nor bad Elon Musk.

A leading Tesla bull, analyst Romit Shah, just downgraded Tesla, calling it "no longer investible."

Block's characterization of public-private partnerships as fascism is spot on. In Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman argues that interstate highways should be privatized, but city streets should be public because it is difficult to charge for use.  Today, with EZ Pass-like technology, there is no reason for public ownership of roads. The costs should be assigned to users.  If ownership is assigned to a private utility, it will be done more efficiently, with less threat to public safety and less likelihood of state use of public assets to suppress speech and opinion.

Block is an alum of Brooklyn College, where I teach, and he once spoke to my classes.  Bernie Sanders attended Brooklyn for one year with Block, and they were on the track team together in high school.  Block became a libertarian after Ayn Rand spoke at Brooklyn College, at which, along with several elite colleges, she chose to speak in 1960.  John Hospers, the first Libertarian Party presidential candidate, taught at Brooklyn College at that time and also was influenced by meeting Ayn Rand at that talk.

Is there a New Classical Liberal Movement?

Dan Klein forwarded this Politico piece by Phillipe Huguen/Getty.  It suggests that there is a new, emerging  "classical liberal" (as opposed to "conservative,"  "libertarian," "progressive,"  or 1940s "liberal") movement.  Classical liberals favor free speech and limited government. Sounds good to me.  Huguen/Getty suggests that the classical liberal movement may  parallel the conservative movement of the 1950s, which spawned Barry Goldwater's candidacy only a few years after its founding.  

Libertarian Professors Walk a Fine Line

The concept of a libertarian professor is oxymoronic. Higher education would not exist without state support, for it isn't value producing. It is, moreover, a special interest whose justification is inherently ideological and statist. Hence, to be a libertarian academic the professor needs to protest the statist system from which he benefits.

If a professor overtly favors the state-provided benefits he receives, then he is like any other industrialist who claims to favor free enterprise while lobbying for tariffs or bailouts. Such hypocrisy is damaging to professors, part of whose job is to exemplify integrity. Libertarian academics who lobby for public support and curry to their statist colleagues are hypocrites.

Socialism and Militarism Go Hand in Hand

A (hopefully) young Facebook poster just made the claim that America (a) has a free market economy and (b) the free market economy has made America militaristic. Both claims are false. American militarism in the laissez-faire period was limited to westward expansion—manifest destiny—and some creation of overseas outposts to protect trade. Hence, Adams recreated the Navy and Marines to fight the French (and Jefferson used them to stop the Barbary Pirates, who impeded American shipping), and Jefferson established an embargo to curtail British attacks on US ships, and specifically British impressment of US sailors. The Mexican War was also fought for westward expansion. It wasn’t until the age of Progressivism, which arguably began in 1890, that the US became overtly imperialistic. McKinley’s invasion of the Philippines and the Spanish-American War coincided with the beginnings of the Progressive era (as did government-mandated racial or Jim Crow laws).

In the Progressive era America adopted a combination of capitalism and socialism sometimes called "the third way"--neither laissez faire capitalism nor socialism. It was invented in 19th century Germany by the German historical school of economics (led by Knies, Wagner, Schmoller, and Sombart) and then advocated here by academics and wealthy Americans who had studied in Germany, notably Richard T. Ely. It subsequently was popularized by Herbert Croly in his book The Promise of American Life. Progressivism advocated (1) strengthening of the state, (2) government intervention in society, and (3) imperialism.

In its practical applications under Roosevelt and Wilson, it included strengthening of government police powers and the creation of the FBI (in 1908, under Roosevelt). During the Progressive era the failed overt Imperialism of McKinley was carried forward as the (Theodore) Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe doctrine and evolved into dollar diplomacy and soft imperialism. Woodrow Wilson started more wars than any other president, mostly in Latin America.

Progressivism involved a socialistic economic policy that imposed government intervention, which I loosely call socialism, on laissez faire. This was coupled with enhanced federal police power, the Red Scare and deportation of dissidents (under Wilson), and the creation of the FBI (under Theodore Roosevelt) and later the CIA (under Franklin Roosevelt and Truman).

These are not contested pieces of information except by people who don't learn history. What is contested is whether the socialistic interventions associated with police power and militarism were in the interest of capitalistic enterprise or were in the interest of the public. New Left and libertarian historians such as Gabriel Kolko, Allan Appleman Williams, and Murray Rothbard have shown that the socialistic interventions favored big business owners, notably Rockefeller, Morgan, Kuhn Loeb, and other Wall Street interests.

The historian Martin J. Sklar, in his book The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916, argues that Roosevelt was socialistic, specifically in his (failed) intentions for the Federal Trade Commission and that his conflict with William Howard Taft was over how to enforce the Sherman Anti-trust Act. Taft favored a less interventionist litigation approach to anti-trust enforcement while Roosevelt, advocate of carrying a big stick, favored direct socialization.

Thus, from the days of Theodore Roosevelt, American socialism has been associated with militarism. Ronald Radosh and Murray Rothbard detail the link between socialization of the economy and war in  their book A New History of Leviathan.

The (hopefully) young Facebook poster’s claim that militarism is due to laissez faire capitalism thus lacks both historical and logical foundation. Historically, the growth of state police and military power was advocated by and occurred under the Progressives, opponents of laissez faire. As well, laissez faire capitalism favors limitations on state power, including police and military power. The natural rights doctrine was the foundation of the laissez faire political system, and no socialist country has ever recognized rights to freedom from the state to the degree that laissez faire capitalist countries have. Because laissez faire capitalism advocates limitations on the state, it is illogical to claim that the expansion of the state that militarism and police power require is related to laissez faire capitlism. Only socialists can favor expansive police powers precisely because police powers are associated with state power. Historically, the most extreme applications of state and military power have been in socialist states: National Socialist Germany, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Republic of Cuba, and so on.

Wes Benedict Responds Concerning Racism in the Libertarian Party

I was pleased to receive an email from Wes Benedict, executive director of the Libertarian Party, indicating that the LP has become concerned about infiltration by racists and has issued a formal statement.  I have copied his email, which includes a link to the statement, and part of the statement:

From: Wes Benedict

Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 7:08 PM

To: Mitchell Langbert

Subject: Re: Anti-Semitism, Racism, and the LP

Hi Mr. Langbert,

Did you see the piece I put out last week?

https://www.lp.org/libertarians-condemn-bigotry-irrational-repugnant/

I think that makes it clear we're aware of some racists and anti-Semitism in and close to the Libertarian Party and we are driving them out.

Thanks for your support.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director

The statement starts as follows:

The Libertarian Party condemns bigotry as irrational and repugnant, and offers its condolences to the family of the woman killed in Charlottesville, Va.

There is no room for racists and bigots in the Libertarian Party. If there are white nationalists who — inappropriately — are members of the Libertarian Party, I ask them to submit their resignations today. We don’t want them to associate with the Libertarian Party, and we don’t want their money. I’m not expecting many resignations, because our membership already knows this well.

The Libertarian Party Platform states, “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government should neither deny nor abridge any individual’s human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference, or sexual orientation.”

The Libertarian Party is tolerant and accepting, supporting civil liberties, gay marriage, and freedom of religion for all, including Jews, Muslims, Christians, and atheists. The Libertarian Party supports open borders, civil liberties, racial diversity, and free trade — things that white nationalists abhor.

I think many people in America are worried about jobs and security, and feel compelled to do something about it. Years of inflammatory messaging from Republican and Democratic leadership have poisoned the well of civil discourse, and unfortunately, much of what the extremists on both the left and right are asking for will make matters worse.

Republican leaders have demonized immigrants and free trade, and have scared people into thinking that free trade and immigration will cost current citizens their jobs and their standard of living. Yet countries with free trade and immigration have the highest standards of living in the world, and those without freedom of movement and exchange have the lowest. If politicians are truly interested in improving American prosperity, they need to brush up on their understanding of “gains from trade” and “comparative advantage,” then stop goading their supporters into supporting counterproductive policies. Protectionist policies are irrational and cowardly, and will make America weaker.

The LP Must Come Clean

 PO Box 130

West Shokan, NY 12494

August 19, 2017

Wes Benedict

Executive Director
Libertarian Party

1444 Duke Street

Alexandria Virginia 22314-3403

Sent via US Mail and Email

Dear Mr. Benedict:

I joined the Libertarian Party in 1977, and I was active in the New York chapter, at that time called the Free Libertarian Party, for several years.  I stopped being active, but I have contributed to the LP and the campaigns of Gary Johnson.  Part of the reason I stopped being active in the 1980s was an apparent anti-Israel tendency in the LP.  As well, I have repeatedly detected anti-Semitism not only in association with the LP but also, and more emphatically, with the Ron Paul movement.  Because of recent events in Charlottesville, this issue has come to a head.  

If I am to be supportive of the LP in the future, I need to have a clear accounting of the degree to which racists and anti-Semites have infiltrated  it.  I also need to have a clear picture of what you and the LP are doing to rid it of the infiltration.  If you wish to reply that it doesn’t exist or that you will do nothing, my support for the LP will end, and I hereby request that you remove me from your mailing list. What I need to know for my support to continue is what the LP is doing to establish a litmus test that excludes anti-Semites and racists.  If the answer is nothing, then please remove me from your mailing list.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

My Afternoon at Lafayette College

Professor Brandon Van Dyck and his student Abdul invited me to speak at Lafayette College as part of their Mill lecture series.   About fifty students and several faculty members attended my talk, and students both in favor of and opposed to political correctness were in the room and spoke reasonably and frankly.   It is to  Lafayette’s credit that it has allowed Professor Van Dyck to initiate the program, although I am told that some of the faculty have attacked it.  One of the points that Professor Van Dyck and others made during the discussion is that some professors at Lafayette have criticized the program and its speakers without attending any of the lectures.        

My topic covered a combination of the Langbert, Quain, and Klein article “Faculty Voter Registration in Economics, History, Journalism, Law, and Psychology,”  which appeared in Econ Journal Watch last year, as well as some recent findings on which I’ve been working.  The recent findings concern liberal arts colleges, which I’m starting to conclude have more variance in their partisanship than do research institutions but for the most part are as one sided as the social science departments of research institutions.

I found it gratifying to meet a number of conservative students at Lafayette who question the left orientation of their education, but I found it even more gratifying that several left-oriented students attended the talk and were willing to debate with me and with Professor Van Dyck.

Students who defended colleges’ left orientation raised these points:

                1. In research on faculty voter registration, nearly half the population is either not registered or not affiliated with a party, so nonresponse threatens the validity of the Langbert, Quain, and Klein findings.

                2. Students who protested Charles Murray’s appearance and other conservative speakers’ appearances at Middlebury College and elsewhere have the right to protest their institutions’ allowing such speakers to appear because the institutions are private, and the students have the right to see that their tuition money is used in ways of which they approve.  Moreover, Herrnstein and Murray’s book The Bell Curve is racist.

                3. The one-sidedness of faculty voter registration does not matter because left-oriented professors can fairly depict both sides.

                4. Republicans are often opposed to science, and many question the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

Nonregistration as a Threat to Validity

First, although the research I’m doing is archival and not survey based, the problem of nonregistration parallels that of survey nonresponse. 

As this article by the American Academy of Political and Social Science says, nonresponse threatens the validity of most social science survey work. As I pointed out to the student,   left-oriented observers raise this issue with respect to this research more frequently than they do with studies done byNeil Gross, studies done to support left-oriented positions, or neutral studies, such as those of the US Census.  I have never heard a news reporter comment on the nonresponse rate for the unemployment statistic survey, which in most years is four or five times greater than the unemployment rate.  The nonresgistration rate in our research is less than the proportion that we have found to be registered.

That said, since all social science survey research is threatened by nonresponse, it is important to triangulate or to find multiple methods of measuring the same variable.  Studies of the left orientation of faculty have included opinion surveys, which of course also suffer from nonresponse but a different kind of nonresponse.  As well, both opinion surveys and voter registration studies of faculty political affiliation are being done on multiple kinds of samples.  The different forms of studies do not find appreciably different results. 

As results from different kinds of studies and from different kinds of samples accumulate, the results become more certain and better understood.  My point is that virtually no survey work ever done does not suffer from nonresponse, and nonresponse is important only if it correlates with the findings. If there is no correlation between nonresponse and partisan affiliation, then nonresponse has no importance to the study.  If there is a correlation that is strong enough to change the findings, then we may fairly ask why the findings do not appreciably change when different populations are surveyed and different methods are used.

Charles Murray

With respect to the second point, which concerns Charles Murray’s not being allowed to speak, colleges should be forums for open debate.  They are not ideological or political advocacy organizations that permit only one viewpoint.  The left protested the McCarthyism of conservative politicians because McCarthyism did not permit the views of communists to be openly expressed. It is telling that now left academics and students advocate that views of conservatives should not be allowed to be openly expressed. 

Religious institutions that permit only one religion to be advocated openly state that the religion is fundamental to their mission, but secular colleges do not claim to be political advocacy organizations in part because Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code predicates institutional tax exemption on not engaging in lobbying or ideological advocacy.  Political organizations are not entitled to tax exemptions.  Hence, if students wish to claim that their institutions are at root political advocacy organizations, they will need to pony up the difference in tuition cost between exempt and nonexempt institutions.

More importantly, the purpose of universities should be to teach citizenship, rational debate, and learning rather than closed minded advocacy.  If Middlebury and other colleges teach advocacy instead, then public support for them should be revisited.

I read Herrnstein and Murray twenty years ago. I do not recall any racist claims in their book, although I was once called to the carpet of a departmental chair because of a student’s claim that Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is racist. (I recount the incident here.) My recollection of Herrnstein and Murray is that they make the general point that IQ is important to a wide range of public policy issues.  In my own field, human resource management, IQ has been repeatedly shown to be a valid predictor of job performance.  

Merriam-Webster defines bigot as follows:

A person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially :  one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

         

Although the racial variety is the most common application, one can be a bigot in a variety of ways, and students who, in the face of science, violently object to well-reasoned, scientifically supported findings because of obstinate commitment to their own prejudices are themselves bigots. Middlebury and all other educational institutions should encourage students to think scientifically and reasonably and to abhor bigotry of all kinds.

Teaching Both Sides

With respect to the third point, the ability of faculty to teach both sides of a question, I have worked in higher education for 26 years, and I have never had a departmental colleague who could give a fair exegesis of libertarian economic theories like those of Hayek and von Mises.  I have no doubt that many economists can, but many cannot.  The same is true of classical liberal ideas. The most influential economic writer was Adam Smith, but I have repeatedly heard his statement, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices,” misinterpreted to mean that Smith supported economic regulation.  The statement is made at the end of a chapter in Wealth of Nations that criticizes gilds and argues that regulation does not work.

A good example of the incompetence of many left-oriented academics with respect to (Lockean) liberal thinkers is a book I reviewed in 2012 for Frontpagemag, my Brooklyn College colleague Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. Robin misunderstands, misconstrues, and appears not to have read the von Mises material that he claims to critique.  If a left-oriented professor like Robin who claims to be able to write a book on conservatism botches his understanding of von Mises, I doubt that many left faculty can do a good job. 

Global Warming

With respect to the last point, I am not enough of an expert in geology to comment on climate change, but I did say that the claim that “science is settled” is profoundly anti science.  As Popper points out in his Logic of Scientific Discovery, theories are never proven; they are only disproven or falsified. As I pointed out to the student who raised this point, those in the church who believed that the science was settled imprisoned Galileo.  The politicization of science, as the Democrats have done with respect to global warming theory, is more profoundly anti science than the doubts raised by global warming skeptics.  

                

One of the few professors in the room was a science professor who rejoined that he was a global warming denier.  He said that the evidence is not nearly strong enough to have policy implications. Amen. 

Congress Should Defund Colleges with Diversity Oaths

My good friend George Leef wrote a piece about a new trend in higher education:  Some universities now require professors to take diversity oaths, loyalty oaths about their commitment to diversity ideology. That is neofascism. I contacted Republican congressman John Faso, who represents my district. I am going to a breakfast with him on April 13 in Kingston, NY, and I am hoping to bring this up if I have the opportunity.

American universities have been indoctrinating college students in far-left ideologies for decades. I have been reviewing websites of leading liberal arts colleges for the past few weeks, and the absurdity of the course offerings at places like Amherst has gotten me to thinking that it is time that tax exemption for liberal arts was brought to an end. I do not see a good reason for subsidization of the blatant ideology that masquerades as education at many of the leading liberal arts colleges. They are engaging in fraud and indoctrination--not education.

Meanwhile, I have written the following letter to President Donald Trump.

Dear President Trump:

The James G. Martin Center has this morning published an article by George Leef concerning the recent adoption of diversity oaths, similar to loyalty oaths of the 1940s, at Carnegie Mellon, the University of California, and Virginia Tech. Whereas the campus left objected to loyalty oaths to the United States, they have no trouble with ideological loyalty oaths. Leef’s article is based on a piece that was written by a member of the Oregon Association of Scholars.

According to Leef:

In 2015, Oregon State instituted a required statement from faculty on their “contributions to equity, inclusion, and diversity.” Among other things, individuals are expected to discuss their plans to spend time “advocating for normative and policy change.” The message delivered is quite clear: show that you are an enthusiastic diversity supporter if you value your job.

At Portland State, the school’s Diversity Action Council has a list of 44 questions that are to be asked of faculty applicants including “the role of diversity in shaping your social style,” and how he or she will combat “the pervasive belief that diversity and excellence are somehow in conflict.” Obviously, any candidate who answers that diversity and excellence actually can conflict has painted a target on his back.

The purpose of these statements is to exclude from university faculties Republican scholars and anyone else who is unwilling to conform to left-wing ideologies. I’m certain that these are only the beginning, and eventually the amorphous supposed ethical dimension in the diversity oaths will evolve into oaths of loyalty to procrustean principles of equality. These institutions aim to ban from teaching any of your supporters, any Republican, any libertarian, and anyone who believes in liberalism.

Isn’t it time to end the anti-intellectual intolerance at Carnegie Mellon, UC, Portland State, Oregon State, and Virginia Tech?

Leef suggests an idea that I have advocated since the election of the Republican Congress: The National Association of Scholars, led by Peter Wood, has proposed freedom-to-learn amendments to the Higher Education Act, which require that the First Amendment apply to all universities that sup at the federal trough. The bill requires universities to file First Amendment reports. They also require that rights of invited speakers must be respected. I have personally witnessed the violation of such rights.

I do not see how students taught to be intolerant of those with whom they disagree can participate in democratic processes. Funding to Carnegie Mellon, UC, Virginia Tech, Portland State, Oregon State, and all other institutions with ideological oaths should be brought to a screeching halt.

The full text of the proposals of NAS is at  https://www.nas.org/articles/the_freedom_to_learn_amendments_2.0





Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Dan Klein's "The Joys of Yiddish and Economics"

My coauthor, Daniel B. Klein, is publishing a hilarious piece ( https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers2.cfm?abstract_id=2916854 ) about the libertarian and classical liberal ideas in Leo Rosten's Joys of Yiddish. I laughed out loud about ten times. It's well worth reading.

Commodity Prices to Remain Soft

The Wall Street Journal reports that oil companies are writing down assets and that the SEC is pressuring the companies to reveal how the falling prices will affect their asset values.  News like this may come a little before a bottom, although the Journal also wrote a piece on December 11 suggesting that a bottom is in.  A contrarian attitude toward newspaper reports is often right. It's when the newspapers say that there is no bottom in sight that the bottom is in. Hence, I'm not convinced that a bottom is in.

I pulled out of my MLPs and oil-related holdings in October 2014. My doing so resulted in some issues with my stock broker, so I moved my entire portfolio to TIAA-CREF.  I lost a bit on my investments in MLPs and oil stocks, but I made some back shorting oil at a few points. 

Recently, I attended an alumni meeting of the UCLA business school in New York, and several of the MBA students were interested in oil. In the course of our conversation, one asked me how I knew to pull out of oil at the beginning of the decline. I'm not a technical analyst, but I do subscribe to a technical trading letter, Sunshine Profits, that helps me. My chief interest is in their gold reports by Przemysław Radomski, CFA, but I also get a monthly oil report by Nadia Simmons.  

My overall thinking, though, was influenced by my friend Howard S. Katz, who died in 2011 and was an early advocate of the application of Austrian economics to gold trading. Murray Rothbard once called Howard an "absurd Robespierre" because of  internecine squabbles in the early days of the Free Libertarian Party. (I joined afterwards.)  Howard was a gold standard monomaniac who argued in his book The Paper Aristocracy, published in the late 1970s, that the paper money system was resulting in income inequality.  As a result, gold traders have a moral obligation to advocate the gold standard.  

I was an oddball at UCLA, where many of my fellow students were interested in Wall Street careers, but I was an advocate of policies that would have significantly shrunk Wall Street if not eliminated it entirely.  America would have been much better off  had it done so, but Wall Street's control of political discourse goes back at least to the 1912 presidential campaign, if not earlier. 

Actually, it was earlier, for there were six pivots in the evolution of America's bankocracy.  The first was the establishment of the First Bank of the United States by Alexander Hamilton and his colleagues, which was abolished and then reincarnated as the Second Bank in 1816.  The second pivot was the Civil War, which enabled the passage of the National Banking Act. A third was the establishment of the Fed and World War I.  A fourth was Franklin Roosevelt's first abolition of the gold standard and establishment of the New Deal.  Roosevelt was the nephew of Frederic Adrian Delano, the first vice chairman of the Fed, and the great great grandson of Isaac Roosevelt, cofounder with Alexander Hamilton of the Bank of New York.  In America the bankocracy is partly hereditary as well as economic.  A fifth pivot was Nixon's abolition of the gold standard in 1971.  A sixth was the financial bailout of 2008. 

Notice that each of the pivots was associated with a war.  The First Bank of the United States ensued from the Revolutionary War; its successor, the Second Bank of the United States, ensued from the War of 1812. The National Banking Act ensued from the Civil War.  The Fed preceded World War I by only six months.  The first abolition of the gold standard preceded World War II by four years. (The Gold Reserve Act was passed in 1935 and World War II began in 1939.) Nixon's abolition of the international gold standard occurred during the Vietnam War.  The monetary collapse of 2008 occurred during the Iraqi War. Concerning the relationship between the Fed and World War I, Federal Reserve History.org writes:


[T]he conflict accelerated the evolution of the Federal Reserve into a true central bank by increasing its financial resources and transforming the US dollar into a major international currency. 'The war reshaped the Federal Reserve System in many ways,'  writes economist Allan Meltzer in his landmark work A History of the Federal Reserve.

"Reshaped" is an odd word because the Fed was established during Christmas week of 1913 and World War I began in July 1914, although the US did not enter the war until 1917. Both the establishment of the Fed and the entrance into World War I were under President Woodrow Wilson. JP Morgan (a) knew Wilson from Wilson's days as president of Princeton (for Morgan was a donor), (b) financed the Progressive Party, which was responsible for Wilson's election, and (c) was involved with the drafting of the original Federal Reserve Act bill in the famous Jekyll Island meeting.  In 1936 the Nye Committee in the Senate investigated  JP (Jack) Morgan Jr.'s direct involvement in the entry of the US into World War I, but it did not prove it. 

Each of the pivots was associated with a major financial disruption.  The establishment of the first bank occurred after states' issuance of paper money, hyperinflation, and collapse of the continental.  The National Banking Act was associated with inflation resulting from greenbacks. The establishment of the Fed was followed by a hyperinflation and depression in 1919 and 1920.  The first abolition of the gold standard followed a deflation and a banking collapse. The second abolition of the gold standard was associated with the stagflation of the post-Vietnam War era.  The 2008 financial collapse was associated with the takeover of banks and the tripling of bank credit. 

These disruptions resulted in secular shifts in the economy: The National Banking Act was associated with expansion of big business and the railroads.  The establishment of the Fed was followed by the stock bubble of the 1920s. The first abolition of the gold standard and its reinstatement in the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement were followed by the post-1945 stock market bubble, the boom in urban redevelopment, the expansion of the suburbs, the creation of interstate highways, the expansion of reliance on the automobile, and the expansion of automotive air pollution. 

Not all of the banking disruptions have been inflationary.  Inflation results from excessive creation of money, but roughly half of the money of the US is held overseas, and it's possible for banks to hold reserves without lending them, and that's happening now. The National Banking Act was followed by inflation as were the establishment of the Fed and Nixon's second abolition of the gold standard, but the inflation of the post-Civil War period was followed by what Milton Friedman called the crime of 1873, the establishment of a strict gold standard with no silver bimetallism, and a consequent deflation; that was also true of the results of bank failures in the 1930s. There's no guarantee that inflation will occur in the short term from printing money--in fact, just the opposite, for there are effects on commodity prices resulting from misallocation or malinvestment that result in short-term deflation. 

Such misallocation has occurred in all current commodity markets.  From a long-term perspective, demand for oil is  greater than it would have been in a free market economy.  From today's short-term perspective, the early stages of a monetary expansion push down interest rates and expand investment in mines, resulting in falling prices. The falling prices are deflationary.  Thus, in the short run monetary expansion can cause deflation or subdue inflation, which occurred during the Greenspan years.  The later stages are usually inflationary, and commodity prices rise because the excessive competition produced by low interest rates causes bankruptcies of mining companies. More money chases fewer goods, and inflation ensues.

The commodity-price-decline cycle that began with the Volker tightening in the early 1980s culminated about twenty years later, and the gold price began to increase early in the millennium. The price peaked in 2011, but the intervening hyper-monetary-expansion of the Bernanke Fed inserted the beginning of a new cycle in 2009. The new cycle was superimposed on the preceding one, so it took a couple of years for gold to peak. We're now riding the Bernanke cycle downward. 

When will the cycle turn around?  I initially thought that the massive monetary increases would result in a brief, several year downturn, but it has extended to four years.  On the other hand, my increasing pessimism may signal a near bottom.  I am skeptical that we have hit bottom just yet, although in the coming year or two we will hit bottom. That point might coincide with economic-and-financial instability and a declining standard of living among Americans.  (That has been occurring for decades now, but the public has been susceptible to media propaganda claiming that "the economy" is improving and that borrowing large sums to buy big houses is a sign of economic health; when Americans have to cut back in basic ways, they may not be susceptible to the caricatures.) At that point, commodities will be important hedges, and prices might climb to the $3,500 level that I claimed for gold during the bull market.  

An important difference between the oil and gold markets is that the oil industry is oligopolistic; in particular, it's dominated by sovereign producers, especially Saudi Arabia.  The 19th century's fears of a private monopoly in oil were misguided.  Standard Oil had steadily reduced costs and increased efficiency throughout the 19th century. In contrast, Saudi Arabia can manipulate the price of oil, although it is sensitive to political pressure.  The political pressure for a transition to alternative energy may be spooking them. Economic theory says that a monopolist will produce to the point where marginal cost equals marginal revenue, but the Saudis' marginal revenue may still be above their marginal cost, which may be as low as $25.  If the Saudis want to dump their oil so that they are the last producer standing (in advance of a transition to green energy), then a $25 bottom is possible.

In the case of gold, the cost of production is unclear. According to Brent Cook's Exploration Insights Barrick Mining's cost of production may be $1,346.  Mining Web.com says that cash costs for 39 major miners average $649. Any number of small producers can be bankrupted, though, before we get to $649.  I had mistakenly bought GDX a couple of times over the past few years. This is the one-year GDX chart: 

How low can it go? There is a floor of demand by Chinese and other sovereign buyers. The Chinese may be interested in having the yuan replace the dollar as the reserve currency, and the Chinese like gold as an investment. As well, India demands gold for cultural reasons.  In October 2015 Bloomberg reported that gold demand in China is at an all-time high in response to the Chinese stock market. That may not, however, compensate for the excessive investment in junior exploration that responded to the low-interest-rate regime.  Notice that in both gold and oil the low-interest-rate regime saw increased production (fracking in the case of oil and gas) and subsequent price declines. 

Thus, I am relying on Przemysław Radomski to guide my gold thinking right now. There is a bottoming process, but I have no conceptual framework for when it can occur. There is going to be a bottom; we may or may not be at the bottom.  My bet is that we have further to go downward.  If oil hits $25, I will buy the leveraged ETF; meanwhile, I'm relying for technical guidance on the price of gold.  If it does not bottom around now or at $900, it can go to $400.