After I posted an email from my friend about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Scott Lahti and David Zemens asked in the comments about the author, David Miller — specifically where they could read more of his prose.

David was the best man at my wedding and the humorless friend I mention in my first piece for LewRockwell.com, "Staw Men & Ham Sandwiches."

He is a poet and a photographer, who works for Associated Press, but unfortunately, despite his insinuation otherwise, David doesn't currently keep a blog. I will encourage him to try again.

In December, during the fortnight around the solstice, my wife and I sip single-malt whisky and take turns each evening, one reading the other a poem about the season. Every year, I include some of David Miller's poetry in my readings. Here's the one I read this year:

"Christmas Shopping"

Our hands slip apart,
I'm castaway.
Bobbing in a pedestrian current
thrown out among the hungry shoppers
of east 59th street.

David?

My name, like me is so small
among these people
as they hunt for symbols,
things to give the sense of
"Lie with me for 12 times 4 years."

She scans full-circle
a lighthouse look,
taking in the street
(its pickpockets,
          vendors,
               beggars innocents.)
in two half circles.

I, a baby boy in a red row boat
lost in the juggling and jostling
     handbags-thighs-knees-shoes.
She picks me out
the child she takes clasping
warm and tight against
the tide
her mother smell sweet,
with a deep hint of woman
                    shuts out the rest.

Lets it be unsaid
that you are my love,
               my jacket,
                    my safety belt
and I will never undo you
or let you come undone.

Email from my friend David Miller:

Well, Benazir Bhutto's political comeback has been cut short by a fusillade of bullets and a suicide bomber. I don't know enough about her political career to know how to interpret the loss to Pakistan. But when I saw the news this morning I thought that this was perhaps the beginning of more and greater suffering.

Bhutto's situation was a difficult one. She wanted to be a politician, but some people who opposed her politically or religiously (it seems there's little difference in fundamentalist religion) were willing to kill her and to sacrifice everyone around her in order to achieve that end. So BB must have known that each time she mounted the rostrum the eyes and hearts of her audience might be torn out by a homemade bomb.

I wonder how she rationalized putting so many people at risk.

Was it that she didn't believe it would ever actually happen? That can't be, since, on the day she returned to Pakistan, a bomb that detonated in the crowd demonstrated just how determined and homicidal some of her opponents were.

Or did she simply assume that the people around her understood the peril they placed themselves in by being near her? "If you support me then you're liable to die with me." It doesn't seem like a very winning platform for a campaign, but it was the truest statement of her political position.

I think perhaps the rationale for exposing her supporters to potential bomb blasts comes in the belief that if people didn't stand with her today then they were likely to die at the hands of fundamentalists on a different day in the near future. I'd like to believe that that dire prediction is what propelled her back to Pakistan and into "public life."

It's not a choice I'd ever want to have to make. Indeed, I don't think I could make it. I don't believe that an individual can become part of a centralized system of government coercion and argue persuasively that others should vote for, much less die for, the cause of one particular boss over another. I don't believe the claim that my mode of coercion is so much less coercive than my political opponent's mode coercion.

Coercion has by definition a binary bluntness to it: either you are forced or you are not. Rothbard makes some interesting comments about Hayek's notion of coercion in The Ethics of Liberty that essentially say the same thing.

I ask myself if Bhutto as prime minister would use the police and the army against the fundamentalist opposition in coercive ways and I think it likely that she would, though admittedly I have no strong evidence for this evaluation, just a general impression about the type of prime minister she was.

So no, I could not, in good conscience, place a single person in jeopardy in order to further my political aspirations. I imagine that I could be convinced to mount the barricades in a revolution and I suppose if I could be convinced that that is what Bhutto was doing then I'd think very differently about the whole matter.

I'm tempted to post this as a blog entry, but not without the picture that came across the news feed this morning. It was from the blast site. I'd like to use it, but of course I don't want to be guilty of leaking that photo to the world without paying the proper fees or giving the appropriate credit. If I did show the photo I'd have to own up to where I got it, which would probably lead to my getting fired in which case no more photos or blog posts with AP photos. And I couldn't in good conscience post it without credits. Someone (B.K. Bangash) risked life and limb for that picture; the viewers ought to know whom to revere. Then again, perhaps they wouldn't thank Bangash: it's a horrible picture, the foreground is filled with the abject despair of a corpse, which only a moment before was a person with a name; a person who might make you laugh with a joke or a well-timed wink; a person who you might have shared a meal with; a person who might have laughed with you about how after only two glasses of wine the world looked one hundred times rosier; a person you might have confided in about some desire still not come to fruition — "still I love her" — "I've never said to him…"; a person, the person standing next to you on the subway train or in line at the grocery store. Now that person is just so much meat, raw material for nature's composting and human grief. Yes, it's a horrible picture, but in a way I want everyone to see it, so that they have a chance of feeling the precarious nature of being a human in society with other humans. It isn't all ice cream and sitcoms. Some of human existence is so very desperate and beautiful because it thrives in the face of its desperate circumstances.

Alas, I'm an inveterate individualist. I start by writing about a political assassination — by definition a matter of state — but what affects me is the loss of a person. Ah well, sometimes I fear I have gone too far from my enthusiastically leftist upbringing. I don't believe in sacrificing the one for the many. I believe that the one makes the many meaningful. A woman died today by gunshot wound or shrapnel (it doesn't really matter which, but in the early news coverage there were gaps of air time that the networks filled with speculation on this point). She was a mother, a lover, a wife. She loved pretty things, especially scarves. She thought that her place was as a leader of the country she could not stay away from. She was willing to die rather than be denied the opportunity to live in her country on her terms. That is quite enough tragedy for a Thursday. Whether it is part of something larger is a separate and secondary matter, but I fear that it is. I fear it's the beginning of real instability in a country with nuclear capability.

Ian Bernard, host of the internationally syndicated radio show and podcast "Free Talk Live" has produced a free audiobook of Linda and Morris Tannehill's The Market for Liberty (print version available here).

Here is Bernard's introduction to the audiobook:

Government: An Unnecessary Evil

There was once a time when it was widely believed the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. Now we know better and most reasonable people have rejected these ideas. Similarly, most people have rejected the once widely accepted idea of slavery, and rightfully so. If you're like most people, your government high school history classes probably taught you that slavery was abolished years ago. Government people wouldn't lie to you, would they?

The book you are about to listen to explodes the myths of government. Its message is simple:

"Government is an unnecessary evil and freedom is the best and most practical way of life."

Spread this idea, and we can change the world. That is why I've taken the time to create this audio book. These days, many people do not have time to read and it would be a shame to allow such a brilliant work to continue to gather dust on the shelves of history.

Morris and Linda Tannehill's iconoclastic The Market for Liberty is one of the most important books of our time. Written originally in 1970, it is even more relevant now as I record it as an audio book at the end of 2007. The Market for Liberty is the antidote to years of government indoctrination, lies, and misinformation.

Unless you already consider yourself a voluntaryist, anarcho-capitalist, or free marketeer, prepare yourself for a major paradigm shift.

Well over a quarter century old, The Market for Liberty stands up well to the test of time. There are only a few places where the book dates itself, like any reference to prices, considering the federal government has substantially inflated the money supply since it was written. There are also a few dated historical references particularly in chapters 15 and 16 as since this book's publishing the Soviet Union has been broken up, the draft has been suspended, Americans are now able to own gold, and the US dollar has no more metal backing.

$18

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. Please don't keep it to yourself. Please spread these audio files far and wide.

In the final part of the book, the Tannehills point out that the two variables factoring into how soon a laissez-faire society can be established are, "the rapidity with which the idea of freedom can be spread and how much longer our economy can withstand the effects of governmental meddling." Certainly no one can predict the latter but in this information age, the rapidity factor has been virtually eliminated.

Thanks to the proliferation of the Internet and personal audio players, this brilliant work can finally get the attention it deserves.

Download and listen to this great book now at http://book.freekeene.com/.

Ian Bernard is the host of the internationally syndicated radio show and podcast, Free Talk Live. Send him mail. Comment on the Mises blog.

In a recent post, I link to "The Economics of Santa's Workshop" and "Scrooge Defended," both classics from Mises.org.

I didn't link to Mises.org's "Christmas Movies and Bad Economics", which deals, in part, with Frank Capra's warped holiday smear against capitalism (when it's his hero, George Bailey, who explains and legitimizes fractional-reserve banking to a frightened crowd ready to start a bank run, calming them and convincing them — and us — to trust the criminal FRB scam just a little while longer).

While our hero is the handsome, idealistic, small-town fractional-reserve banker, the grumpy old villain, Mr. Potter, is a profit-grubbing slumlord.

What is not explained — what is never explained about the vindictive tycoons of fiction — is where Potter gets his money. (In the depths of the Depression, he is waited on by liveried servants.) He can't have made a fortune renting a few hovels, and none of the properties he owns will bring in a penny unless they offer something people want. So, although he is shown doing nothing but pushing other people around, Potter must be providing a valuable service or selling something in great demand.

There's also this much longer list of links from Justin Ptak at blog.Mises: "'It's a Wonderful Life"' Deconstructed," including Gary North's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter!" as well as hints at some unscrupulous activity between the left-wing Frank Capra and his right-wing star, Jimmy Stewart. (And his right-wing spymaster, J. Edgar Hoover!) My favorite treatment of It's a Wonderful Life ignores all these emotionally and politically manipulative issues (as, I suspect, do most viewers) and goes to the less ideological heart of the story: "We Need an Angel Like Clarence" by Lew Rockwell

I stumbled on a very interesting Amazon list by a woman who looks to have lots of interesting Amazon lists. This one is called "Best Project Gutenberg History" and is what it sounds like: a list of books available gratis on Project Gutenberg (not all of which are currently available on Amazon as well).

As more and more free resources are available online, it seems an increasingly useful service is just the compiling of useful lists of those resources.

Here's her list sans links:

1. The Histories by Herodotus
2. The History of the Peloponnesian War: Revised Edition by Thucydides
3. Xenophon, III, Anabasis by Xenophon
4. The Jugurthine War / The Conspiracy of Catiline by Sallust
5. Livy: The Early History of Rome, Books I-V by Titus Livy
6. The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
7. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [8 Volumes Complete Book Set]
8. History of the Wars: Books 1-2 by Procopius
9. The Secret History by Procopius
10. A Short History of Monks and Monasteries by Alfred Wesley Wishart
11. Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams, Ralph Adams Cram
12. Manners, Custom And Dress During The Middle Ages And During The Renaissance Period by Paul Lacroix
13. A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
14. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt
15. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry by Walter Pater
16. The Age of Reformation by Preserved Smith
17. History of the Conquest of Mexico by W.H. Prescott
18. History Of The Conquest Of Peru by William Hickling Prescott
19. History of England, Volume 5 by David Hume
20. The Ancien Regime by Charles Kingsley
21. The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle
22. Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
23. The Life of Napoleon I, Including New Materials from the British Official Records: Volume 1 by John Holland Rose
24. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton
25. The History of England by Thomas Babington Macaulay
26. The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels
27. The Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant by Ulysses, S. Grant
28. Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo by Edward Shepherd Creasy
29. The development of the European nations, 1870-1900 by John Holland Rose
30. The People of the Abyss by Jack London
31. The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie
32. The Beards' Basic History Of The United States by Charles A. and Mary R. Beard
33. History of the World War: An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War by Francis A. with Richard J. Beamish Marsh
34. Ten days that Shook the World by John Reed
35. The Second World War by Winston S. Churchill
36. United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches by United States Presidents

I posted this a couple years ago:

Saturday, December 24, 2005 Christmas reading list Let's put the X back in Xmas! from lowercase liberty putting the "chi" back in chiMas from lowercase liberty The Economics of Santa's Workshop from Mises.org Scrooge Defended from Mises.org And the Christmas viewing list grows longer and longer but must always include some historical context. I make my reservations explicit in "Let's put the X back in Xmas!" but I still consider the History Channel's Christmas Unwrapped to be the seasonal must-see. posted by bkmarcus on Saturday, December 24, 2005 (permalink)

And now, to put my HTML where my mouth is, I've created a "Christmas Unwrapped" page to let you see the movie on YouTube:

Christmas Unwrapped: The History of Christmas Part 1 of 5 (~ 10 min) Part 2 of 5 (~ 10 min) Part 3 of 5 (~ 10 min) Part 4 of 5 (~ 10 min) Part 5 of 5 (~  5 min) History Channel Product Page Classroom Questions

From MaybeLogic.com:

Pranks and Prankster, Tricksters & Tricks (with R.U. Sirius
6 week course from February 4 – March 16) -- the brilliant ones open up a space in the world for magic(k), ambiguity, and novelty. They encourage us to Question Authority and better still, they cause us to Question Reality.

In this course, we will discuss the history of pranks and pranksterism in the contemporary world. We will examine mythical and world historic tricksters like Coyote, Bugs Bunny, Crowley, Puck, Heyoka, Papa Legba, Lucifer, and more. And we'll explore and discuss the role pranksters and tricksters play in cultures. I will also discuss some of my own pranks and tricks and try to get some of my more legendary prankster friends in for interviews.

Finally, we will plan pranks, make pranks, and maybe even leave the course with a dedicated prankster cabal. No fooling.

Course texts:

• Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art by Lewis Hyde
• Pranks 2 by V. Vale

Price: $135.00

My wife just pointed out to me that today is Kropotkin's birthday:

Dec. 21, 1842: Birth of an Anarchist, and Darwin's Detractor

By Tony Long | 12.21.07 | 12:00 AM

1842: Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin, Russian geographer, biologist and anarchist revolutionary, is born.

Kropotkin was the son of Russian nobles but came of age during a period of intellectual upheaval in the country, which had a profound effect on his social and political development. The miserable state of the peasant class especially bothered him, and the failure of the czar to undertake meaningful reforms radicalized him.

At 15, Kropotkin entered the aristocratic Corps des Pages in St. Petersburg, which he disliked, and followed that with a stint in the czarist army, which he disliked even more. But in 1864 the army offered him a chance to join a geographical-survey expedition in Russian Manchuria, which he accepted. It launched Kropotkin's scientific career, which, while distinguished, was overshadowed by his political activities.

His exploration of eastern Asia helped re-draw the maps for the region, and his study of glacial deposits in Finland and Sweden, done on behalf of the Russian Geographical Society, expanded the knowledge of the effects of the Ice Age in Europe and Asia.

All the while, Kropotkin was taking a very keen interest in the theories of Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin.

Kropotkin's Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, published in 1902, is a repudiation of the theory of natural selection and competition. Arguing on factual biological and historical grounds, Kropotkin maintains that humans, being social animals, are more naturally inclined to cooperation than competition, and fare better in that environment.

Mutual Aid was also influenced by Kropotkin's political philosophy, which had matured by the time he wrote the tract. By then, he had rejected the notions of authority and capitalism, and embraced anarchist communism, believing it to be closest to the spirit of human cooperation. (He later rejected the Bolsheviks on the grounds that Lenin applied authoritarian, rather than libertarian, methods to his revolution.)

From Slate via LRC:

There are good reasons for Americans to be interested in the ancient world. Over the last few years, there has been a deluge of American movies, television series, and novels based on antiquity: 300, Alexander, Troy, and Rome on HBO. It's easy to see why these simplified versions of ancient history and classical mythology strike a chord in contemporary America. For obvious reasons, we are interested in stories about the growth and collapse of a great and greedy empire, or about a clash between Western and Eastern civilizations. We are fascinated by tales of war, especially those that present it as glorious, tragic, and a long time ago. Ancient history is always popular when people feel close to an apocalypse: It allows us to face, obliquely, the knowledge that our own culture too will end.

– "The Renaissance of Latin: Why a dead language is becoming popular," by Emily Wilson

More free stuff from Mises.org:

(Or if you want to listen to it on your iPod, you can download it here.)

Worth quoting in full:

Stating the Obvious

Posted in Lapsus Linguae at 10:45 pm by Administrator

Guest Blog by Jennifer McKitrick

Watch news, a talk show, or the like, and notice how many times you hear the word “obviously.”

About the flooding in the Northwest the other day:

“Residents are obviously trapped and obviously in need of supplies.”

Umm … what they were showing was houses with water up to the 2nd floor. Maybe they had been evacuated. Maybe someone had just come by and delivered a boat load of supplies. I don’t know. Neither of those things were obvious.

About “baby Grace,” the dead toddler found off the coast of Texas (before she was identified):

“Her family is obviously very worried about her and loves her very much.”

No one knew who her family was, or if indeed they had been the ones that killed her. In fact, her mother and stepfather are now in custody.

I think the use of “obviously” often corresponds closely with what is usually meant by “presumably.”

If you just take “obviously” out of the sentences in which it appears, oddly what is left is something that the speaker is in no position to assert. But somehow “obviously” qualifies what they say, as if they are taking it as obvious. Since the “news” is so often involved with guesswork and presumption nowadays, it’s no wonder that they would often employ words which hedge what they say. What is a wonder is the irony of using “obviously” to characterize something that is not only not obvious, but not even known to be true.

Either that, or it’s just a verbal tick, like “err” and “ummm.”

Jennifer McKitrick is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, and Vice-President of the Molinari Institute and Molinari Society.

Austro-Athenian Empire