Many issues of the late, great libertarian magazine Libertarian Review are now available online. The magazine was published from 1972 to 1981, first as a newsletter of book reviews and then as a glossy monthly magazine edited by Roy A. Childs, Jr. It made quite a splash during those years, and Childs became one of the most visible and controversial libertarian intellectuals. After the magazine folded, as so many intellectual magazines do, he spent almost a decade as editorial director and chief book reviewer for Laissez Faire Books. He had read everything, and he knew everyone in the libertarian movement. He got lots of prominent people — including Murray Rothbard, John Hospers, Thomas Szasz, Roger Lea MacBride, and Charles Koch — to write for the magazine. And he discovered and nurtured plenty of younger writers.



Libertarian Review featured

• news coverage and analysis of inflation, the energy crisis, economic reform in China, the 1979 Libertarian Party convention and the subsequent Clark for President campaign, the Proposition 13 tax-slashing victory, the rise of the religious right, the emergence of Solidarity, Jerry Brown, Three Mile Island, and the return of draft registration.
• classic essays like Jeff Riggenbach on “The Politics of Aquarius” and “In Praise of Decadence,” Joan Kennedy Taylor on Betty Friedan, Rothbard on “Carter’s Energy Fascism.”
• interviews with F. A. Hayek, Howard Jarvis, Paul Gann, Henry Hazlitt, John Holt, and Robert Nozick.
• and especially Roy Childs: on William Simon’s A Time for Truth, on Irving Kristol, on the rise of Reagan, on drugs and crime, on the hot spots of Iran, Afghanistan, and El Salvador.

As Tom G. Palmer put it in a letter published in The New Republic of August 3, 1992, just after Roy died, “Roy Childs was one of the finer members of a generation of radical thinkers who worked successfully to revive the tradition of classical liberalism — or libertarianism — after its long dormancy, and who dared to launch a frontal challenge to the twentieth-century welfare state. An autodidact who knew more about the subjects on which he wrote than most so-called ‘experts’, his writings exercised a powerful influence on a generation of young classical liberal thinkers.”



Check it out.

On Labor Day, President Obama announced his plan for an additional $50 billion in spending, mostly on transportation. An area Obama specifically mentioned was more spending for bridges, playing on the widely held perception that America’s bridging are falling apart. While clearly there are bridges that are greatly in need of repair and represent a threat to passenger safety, what has been the overall trend in bridge quality? In one word: improving.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics only about 1 in ten bridges today can be characterized as “structurally deficient”, this is, in need of serious repair. This may sound high, but it is down from 1 in four back in 1990. As one can tell from the accompanying chart, the percent of deficient bridges has been on a steady decline over the last two decades.

It is also worth noting that over 80 percent of the deficient bridges in the U.S. are in rural areas, and subject to much less passenger traffic. Many of these bridges likely see little, if any, traffic. 

Perhaps more important from the perspective of “economic stimulus” is that additional bridge construction and repair would take years to have any real impact on employment. Rather than coming up with policies designed with solely political appeal in mind, the President and Congress should focus on broad policies that allow the private sector to determine what investment needs should be addressed.

This morning, in a column for National Review Online, I criticized a number of Democrats and Republicans who voted against Obamacare but had not signed a discharge petition that would force a floor vote on repealing the new health care law. One of the Republicans I singled out was Rep. Castle of Delaware, who is now seeking the GOP nomination for US Senate. This afternoon, Rep. Castle’s staff informed me that he intends to sign that petition as soon as he returns to Washington after the recess. That leaves five Republicans who have not signed. For the record, they are: Mark Kirk of Illinois, Joseph Cao and Charles Boustany of Louisiana, David Reichert of Washington, and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.

On September 18, 2,447 candidates, including 386 women, will compete for 249 seats in Afghanistan’s Lower House of Parliament (Wolesi Jirga). Afghans courageous enough to go out and vote certainly have my respect, but for U.S. officials and policymakers, at least three delegitimizing issues should be cause for concern:

(1) the very nature of the electoral process;

(2) parliament’s governing parameters vis-à-vis the President; and

(3) the potential for widespread violence on election day.

First, the electoral process. In many ways, both domestic and international election-monitoring groups have learned valuable lessons from the fraud-tainted presidential election of last year. Simple methods to tamp down corruption include everything from sticking plastic coverings on completed results sheets at polling stations to improving oversight of the data-entry staff at the tally center in Kabul.

Still, elections won’t be perfect. Due to a flawed voter registry, an estimated 5 million of the 17 million voters are thought to be fraudulent or listed as duplicates. Poor vetting has left warlords on the ballot, which is good or bad depending on how you view the conflict. And reports of vote buying, bribery, and intimidation are rife.

In terms of electoral institutions, the new chairman of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), an Afghan body that oversees election logistics, is generally viewed as more independent than the last chairman, who was accused of being a Karzai loyalist. However, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), the U.N.-backed election watchdog, is disproportionately weighed in favor of Karzai.

Last March, Karzai issued a decree giving him the power to appoint all five commissioners of the ECC. Up to that time, the UN appointed three members, the Supreme Court appointed one, and the IEC appointed another. Under pressure from the international community, Karzai backed down and agreed to allow the UN to appoint two members. As a diplomat in Kabul observed, “the IEC is stronger, but the ECC is weaker.”

A second problem in Afghanistan’s democracy is the Lower House of Parliament’s level of power and influence vis-à-vis the President. During the 2005 parliamentary elections, President Karzai banned increased the hurdles for the registration of political parties, but, as with warlords on the ballot, this could be good or bad. (Update: The system used during Afghanistan’s 2005 parliamentary and provincial elections was the “single non-transferable vote system” (SNT‑V), in which candidates stood as individuals, not as members of a party. This system produced a highly-fragmented national assembly, but did not ban political parties outright.)

Some might argue that a nascent democracy needs to have a strong executive in order to wield its power effectively. That may very well be true. After all, by banning complicating the system involving political parties, Karzai effectively forced candidates to run as independents, a measure undertaken ostensibly to prevent the emergence of a dominant political party that could oppose his relatively weak executive authority. On the flip side, by lowering the chance of potential opposition, Karzai removed democracy’s most significant feature: a formal system of checks and balances. In one respect, this may signal that the Obama administration has jettisoned the lofty rhetoric of building a “flourishing democracy.” Smart move.

As a counterpoint, banning political parties could thwart the potential for ethnic factionalism. But ethnic factionalism exists in other government institutions, and preventing it in parliament seems to do little for tamping down violence. Moreover, the IEC announced that around 13 percent of polling stations will be closed because of security concerns, most of which are located in the Pashtun south and east. That may result in the elections being perceived as illegitimate among the country’s largest ethnic group.

Closely related to that last point, the final issue is that elections will be marred by widespread violence and threats of insecurity. The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA), an amalgamation of various civil society organizations, has long-term observers present in all 34 provincial capitals, as well as volunteer observers at the district level. This summer, FEFA campaign observers reported widespread problems across the country. For example, death threats were exchanged between two candidates in Takhar Province, and a different Takhar candidate promised to distribute guns to voters who swore on the Holy Quran that they would support him on Election Day. And in Ghor, Nangahar, Uruzgan, and Zabul Provinces, Afghan police were either unresponsive to candidate requests for protection or provided security to candidates the security forces favored.

It’s telling that Afghanistan’s 2010 parliamentary elections were already pushed back from last May to this September. But regardless of when they take place, they seem something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, democratic elections provide a constructive outlet in which political differences can be accommodated in a non-violent way. On the other hand, if the mechanisms and institutions underlying the democratic process are widely perceived as fraudulent, unstable, and inefficient, there seem to be few ways to prevent a “free and fair” election from devolving into a stage-managed shell-game.

That’s the question I ask today over at Downsizing Government. President Obama wants to take the country $50 billion deeper into debt in order to finance more public infrastructure projects. I argue that policymakers should instead give the private sector a chance to satisfy our transportation needs.

The latest feature in Venezuela’s road to socialism was introduced yesterday by President Hugo Chávez. It’s the “Good Life Card,” an instrument that, according to the government, will make it easier to buy groceries at government-owned supermarkets.

Even though Chávez denies that the card is a way “to promote communism,” the concept of a government-sponsored card to buy food in a country suffering from acute shortages is well known. They call it a “rationing card” in Cuba.