Veteran political columnist Robert D. Novak, 78, died today of a brain tumor at his home in Washington DC.

Odd that the self-described Prince of Darkness was one of the nicest persons I’ve ever known. Unlike many here in Babylon-by-the-Potomac, Bob became less enamored of the Establishment the longer he was here. He believed in liberty and was a great friend of the Cato Institute.

He will be sorely missed.

No, not these kind. Instead, I’m in Stockholm for a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, and this gathering of classical liberals (i.e., the Adam Smith types that believe in freedom, not the modern liberals that favor collectivism) has featured some discussion of the Scandinavian social welfare state — often referred to as the Swedish Model.

What is particularly interesting is that Sweden is not the left-wing paradise that some imagine. Yes, government is far too big, consuming about 50 percent of economic output. But Sweden also has an extensive system of school choice. Equally remarkable, Sweden has a system of personal retirement accounts. Indeed, if one removed fiscal policy variables from the ratings, Sweden would be more free market than the United States in the Economic Freedom of the World rankings.

But even in the area of fiscal policy, Sweden is making progress. In recent years, policy makers have abolished both the death tax and the wealth tax. And the corporate tax rate has been reduced significantly below the U.S. level.

Sweden often is cited as an example of a nation that proves a big welfare state is not an obstacle to being a rich society. But as I wrote in my study comparing the United States and the Nordic nations:

Many prosperous nations in Western Europe have large welfare states. This leads unsophisticated observers to sometimes assume that high tax rates and high levels of government spending do not hinder growth. Indeed, they sometimes even conclude that bigger government somehow facilitates growth. …This analysis puts the cart before the horse. It is possible for a nation to become rich and then adopt a welfare state. …A poor nation that adopts the welfare state, however, is unlikely to ever become rich. Before the 1960s, Nordic nations had modest levels of taxation and spending. They also enjoyed—and still enjoy—laissez-faire policies and open markets in other areas. These are the policies that enabled Nordic nations to prosper for much of the 20th century. Once their countries became rich, politicians in Nordic nations focused on how to redistribute the wealth that was generated by private-sector activity. This sequence is important. Nordic nations became rich, and then government expanded. This expansion of government has slowed growth, but slow growth for a rich nation is much less of a burden than slow growth in a poor nation.

Marcus Winters offers a clever new national standards proposal in the current Education Week: reward states whose students do well on their own standards _and_ whose standards prove challenging to students from other states. Winters suggests administering each state’s standardized tests to random, nationally representative samples of students to determine how challenging they are. The federal government would then give the greatest amount of funding to states whose students perform well on tests that prove challenging to kids around the country.

This system would be gamed. The way to “win” would be to develop highly detailed, easy, obscure standards. Literature would consist of detailed analysis of the early works of Nathanial Hawthorne, math would focus on theorems not normally covered but not overly challenging, history would focus on seldom-told tales of the host state or the nation or world. The host state would then teach intensely to these specialized standards, knowing that its own students could master them and students in other states — receiving a completely different curriculum — would perform poorly. It would be neither a “race to the top” nor a “race to the bottom,” but rather a “race to the trivial.”

This proposal also suffers the same problem that a single set of national standards would suffer: it would force all students of a given age to march through their state’s curriculum at the same pace, denying the obvious reality that kids of the same age learn the various subjects at different paces. Shackling them together into a scholastic chain-gang is not sound pedagogy.

What is encouraging about this proposal, though, is that it attempts to marshal both competition and incentives in pursuit of improved performance. Clearly, it’s on the right track. But why reinvent the wheel? We already HAVE a system that has proven, over centuries, to be able to effectively combine competition, freedom, and incentives in pursuit of innovation and excellence: the free enterprise system.

School systems organized along free market lines dramatically outperform all others – especially those which are most closely overseen, and run, by the state. We just need to figure out how to bring a free and competitive education marketplace within reach of all students.

Liam Julian used to work for the Evil Empire: the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, leader of the freedom-crushing, national-curricular-standards movement. (Actually, Fordham’s not really evil, supporting much school choice, but I’m determined to use this metaphor.) But in grand, Soviet-dissident style, Julian has turned against his former masters. The co-editor of Fordham’s 2006 report To Dream the Impossible Dream: Four Approaches to National Standards and Tests for America’s Schools, Julian has since become the managing editor at Policy Review, and in a recent Weekly Standard article made clear that he’s seen the light on national standards. Sounding a lot like, well, me, Julian wrote:

America’s current system of state-based educational standards isn’t great–far from it. But the very factors that contribute to the shoddiness of so many state standards are compounded at the national level, where every interest group from the textbook manufacturers to the national teachers’ unions to the Springfield Elementary School Herodotus Society will want to have its say.

Needless to say, this turn of events hasn’t made the Fordham folks very happy. But sooner or later, just like communism, an idea clearly divorced from reality simply cannot be sustained.

And so I say: Welcome to the (educationally) free world, Liam Julian! We’re glad to have you with us!

The Washington Post reports that despite reports of widespread violence and human rights abuses since Mexico increased its fight against the drug trade, the U.S. government is considering pumping more money to their failing efforts:

The Obama administration has concluded that Mexico is working hard to protect human rights while its army and police battle the drug cartels, paving the way for the release of millions of dollars in additional federal aid.

The Merida Initiative, a three-year, $1.4 billion assistance program passed by Congress to help Mexico fight drug trafficking, requires the State Department to state that the country is taking steps to protect human rights and to punish police officers and soldiers who violate civil guarantees. Congress may withhold 15 percent of the annual funds — about $100 million so far — until the Obama administration offers its seal of approval for Mexico’s reform efforts.

…In recent weeks, after detailed allegations in the media of human rights abuses, the Mexican military said that it has received 1,508 complaints of human rights abuses in 2008 and 2009. It did not say how the cases were resolved, but said that the most serious cases involved forced disappearances, murder, rape, robbery, illegal searches and arbitrary arrests. Human rights groups contend that only a few cases have been successfully prosecuted.

Sending additional anti-drug aid to Mexico is a case of pouring more money into a hopelessly flawed strategy. President Felipe Calderon’s decision to make the military the lead agency in the drug war–a decision the United States backed enthusiastically–has backfired. Not only has that strategy led to a dramatic increase in violence, but contrary to the State Department report, the Mexican military has committed serious human rights abuses. Even worse, the military is now playing a much larger role in the country’s affairs. Until now, Mexico was one of the few nations in Latin America that did not have to worry about the military posing a threat to civilian rule. That can no longer be an automatic assumption.

Washington needs to stop pressuring its neighbor to do the impossible. As long as the United States and other countries foolishly continue the prohibition model with regard to marijuana, cocaine, and other currently illegal drugs, a vast black market premium will exist, and the Mexican drug cartels will grow in power. At a minimum, the United States should encourage Calderon to abandon his disastrous confrontational strategy toward the cartels. Better yet, the United States should take the lead in de-funding the cartels by legalizing drugs and eliminating the multi-billion-dollar black market premium.

The Washington Post offers a brief item this morning on the upcoming Citizens United reargument. Robert Barnes writes, “The court is considering whether to overturn its previous decisions that restrict unions and corporations from using their general treasuries to influence election campaigns.”

Actually, a better description of the case would be: the Supreme Court is considering overturning decisions that restrict corporations from using their general treasuries to try to influence election campaigns.

In the most important decision at issue, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the latter organization wished to run an advertisement naming a candidate and supporting his views on economic policy. That ad may have convinced some voters. It may have repelled others. Many voters would not have been moved at all. Whatever influence the ad might have had would have depended on its reception among the voters.

Many people would like to see Austin affirmed. Absent restrictions on corporate issue spending, they say, business would have too much influence on policymaking. But the Supreme Court said in Buckley v. Valeo (and more recently) that restricting speech in the name of equality violates the First Amendment. Others see corporate spending as a kind of corruption and thus subject to the restrictions of campaign finance law. But if Austin falls, corporations will not be able to give candidates contributions in exchange for favors. They will be able to fund speech independently of campaigns and parties.

In truth, I think many people who support proscribing corporate spending in campaigns believe speech by business is “bad speech” that will make for bad policies. But “prior restraint” of speech clearly violates the First Amendment. Voters, and not censors, are supposed to decide what constitutes “bad speech” and “bad policy.” The fear of corporate speech often reflects a fear that voters will be persuaded by business interests to endorse candidates and policies that are not in the interest of the most voters. But coercion to preclude false consciousness is not compatible with the foundations of a liberal republic, the form of government ordained by the U.S. Constitution.

So the Court may well let corporations and labor unions try to influence elections. Voters will decide whether such organizations actually do influence elections.

Here’s a video produced by Cato’s Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg following the oral argument of Citizens United (and featuring Yours Truly):

Afghanistan is voting for president. Unfortunately, the outcome, even if a fair result, is unlikely to matter much. The war will continue.

In 2008 President Barack Obama was seen as the anti-war candidate. In fact, his reputation reflected his prescient opposition to the Iraq war, but he said little to suggest that he was out of sync with Washington’s interventionist consensus.

We see his status quo foreign policies with his support for continued NATO expansion as well as maintaining American garrisons around the globe, including in South Korea and Japan. But his escalation in Afghanistan most obviously demonstrates that he is a man of the interventionist left.

He is now making it clear that Afghanistan is his war. Reports Reuters:

President Barack Obama will seek to shore up U.S. public support for the war in Afghanistan on Monday just days before an Afghan presidential election widely seen as a major test of his revamped strategy.

Obama will address a military veterans group in Phoenix at a time when U.S. combat deaths are rising amid a troop buildup against a resurgent Taliban, and polls show a softening of public backing for the eight-year-old war.

Hoping to reassure Americans, Obama is expected to sketch out why he believes the Afghanistan policy he unveiled earlier this year is working and why the United States must remain committed to stabilizing the war-ravaged country.

The political risks for him are enormous. Anything bad that happens in Iraq can be blamed on George W. Bush. But any failure in America’s nation-building mission in Afghanistan — and failure is the most likely outcome in any nation-building in Afghanistan — will be seen as his responsibility.

And American and other coalition military personnel, as well as the Afghan people, will pay the price.