I learned a new word today from the Gospel of Luke.

(It’s in Matthew 11:18–19, too, but I somehow missed it.)

Luke 7:

33. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil.
34. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!

Does that remind anyone else of Professor Long’s guide to arguing with libertarians?

Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations (1776) wrote,

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight, appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.

(I take this, by the way, as a comment on the difference between economic capitalism and political capitalism — Wealth of Nations is famously an attack on mercantilism, after all — but I haven’t read the surrounding context.)

Napoleon, who was apparently familiar with Smith’s work, is reported as later using a French version to dismiss England’s preparedness for war against France:

L’Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers.

Napoleon was wrong to equate commerce with weakness, as he would soon learn, but he was hardly the first great leader to make exactly this mistake.

We find this same sentiment expressed thousands of years earlier. Herodotus put it in the mouths of Cyrus the Great and his consiglieri, (ex-)King Croesus (both of whom I introduce to this blog here).

When the Spartans warn Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire, not to mess with the greeks, he replies,

“I have never yet feared any men who have a place in the center of the city set aside for meeting together, swearing false oaths, and cheating one another…” Cyrus thus insulted the Hellenes because of their custom of setting up agoras in their cities for the purpose of buying and selling, which is unknown among the Persians, who do not use markets and, indeed, have no such place as an agora in any of their cities.

(The Landmark Herodotus, 1.153)

These are the Spartans, remember, the people who supposedly devoted their whole life and culture to warfare. I guess Cyrus hadn’t seen 300.

Later, when the conquered Lydians (formerly under King Croesus) rebel against their Persian overlords, Cyrus turns to Croesus, whom he has made his chief advisor, and says,

“It seems as though these Lydians will never cease to cause trouble for themselves and for others. Perhaps it might be best for me to reduce them to complete slavery, for now I feel like someone who has killed the father but spared the children.”

Croesus, trying to spare his former subjects from exile and slavery, answers,

“Sire, what you said makes sense, but do not be so overcome by your anger that you may destroy an ancient city, whose people were guiltless before and are guiltless even now, despite the present situation. For what happened before was my doing, and I bear the guilt for it on my own head. But right now, it is Paktyes [the leader of the Lydian rebellion] who does you wrong; he is the man you left in charge of Sardis. You should make him pay the penalty and pardon the rest of the Lydians.”

And here’s where we get to Napoleon’s equation. Cyrus continues,

“You could prevent them from being rebellious or a threat to you in the future by ordering the following steps: prohibit them from possessing weapons of war, order them to wear tunics under their cloaks and soft boots, instruct them to play the lyre and the harp, and tell them to educate their sons to be shopkeepers. If you do this, you will soon see that they will become women instead of men and thus will then pose no danger or threat to you of any future rebellion.”

Croesus gave this advice to Cyrus because he realized that these conditions would be better for the Lydians than those which they would face if they were enslaved and sold. He knew that if he did not put forth a compelling case, he would not be able to persuade Cyrus to change his mind, and he was worried that even if the Lydians did manage to emerge unharmed from their present danger, they might someday rebel from the Persians again and then they would certainly be destroyed.

(The Landmark Herodotus, 1.155–6)

While discussing my desert-island books with my wife last night, I realized I already carry all those books with me all the time:

You can probably spot Homer and King James there. Mises (and Rothbard) are in Kindle for iPhone (which looks like someone reading under a tree that says “Amazon” dead center).

… to arguing with libertarians:

If they advocate the abolition of some government program from which they personally benefit, call them hypocrites.

If they advocate the abolition of some government program from which they don’t personally benefit, call them selfish.

– austro-athenian empire

Another reason to celebrate homeschooling.

Skip Oliva writes,

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court indicated it would legalize pedophilia in the United States — at least when the pedophiles are government agents calling themselves “school administrators.” The court heard oral arguments over whether it’s constitutionally permissible for a school to forcibly strip a 13-year-old girl because she was accused of illegally possessing ibuprofen. Really, if this doesn’t conclusively demonstrate the depravity of the American state, nothing will.

Sigh. Read the rest.

A lowercase liberty classic (aka rerun):

“Is the western liberal tradition a result of clerical celibacy?”

If I could only have one book on a desert island, I’d have a hard time choosing between Stanley Lombardo’s translation of the Iliad and my leather-bound Iliad & Odyssey, translated by Samuel Butler.

If I could take a second book, I’d probably want a heavily annotated and cross-referenced edition of the King James, but I haven’t found such a thing in print. Does anyone have anything to recommend? It’s hard to imagine how people studied the Bible before there were so many great online tools. I really like this cross-referenced Bible: NewKreation.com/bible/.

If I could take three books, I’d take the scholar’s edition of Human Action. (You might think Rothbard, but Mises is the source.) Of course, I’ve only read the first half of it; maybe it gets awful in the second half. I hope I don’t get shipwrecked before I finish the book and can know for sure.

From Luke 14:

28. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?
29. Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,
30. Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.

(ABCT == “Austrian Business-Cycle Theory”)

A.W.A.D asks, “Why procrastinate when you can perendinate?”

PRONUNCIATION:

(puh-REN-di-nayt)

MEANING:

verb tr. : To put off until the day after tomorrow.

verb intr.: To stay at a college for an extended time.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin perendinare (to defer until the day after tomorrow), from perendie (on the day after tomorrow), from dies (day).

NOTES:

The word procrastinate is from Latin cras (tomorrow). So when you procrastinate, literally speaking, you are putting something off till tomorrow. Mark Twain once said, “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” In other words, why procrastinate when you can perendinate?

I continue to find wonderful (and much less stuffy than you might expect) Bible resources online, e.g.,

www.TheBrickTestament.com

I love the first 12 lines of Mark 12. In it, we have (it seems to me) Jesus summarizing the Gospel of Mark itself:

1. And he began to speak unto them by parables. A certain man planted a vineyard, and set an hedge about it, and digged a place for the winefat, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country.
2. And at the season he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard.
3. And they caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty.
4. And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head, and sent him away shamefully handled.
5. And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some, and killing some.
6. Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also last unto them, saying, They will reverence my son.
7. But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.
8. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard.
9. What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.
10. And have ye not read this scripture; The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner:
11. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
12. And they sought to lay hold on him, but feared the people: for they knew that he had spoken the parable against them: and they left him, and went their way.