Today the New York Times has a debate among legal scholars considering whether three years of law school, followed by the bar exam, should be required to enter the legal profession.
The best contribution is from libertarian George Leef, who argues that we should allow anyone to take the bar exam. As he points out, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most lawyers didn’t go to law school at all; they just apprenticed and learned how to practice law by working in a law firm. There’s no reason why this couldn’t be so now — except, of course, that the legal profession has been cartelized by the American Bar Association. Leef’s proposal would be an appropriate first step toward the libertarian ideal, which would not even require a bar exam.
Meanwhile, it’s funny to see law professors try to defend the status quo, arguing, almost in as many words, that students should be thrilled to pay $200,000 for three years of left-wing indoctrination and shouldn’t care so much about whether they’ll be able to practice law afterward — which probably they won’t be able to, at least not at a salary that comes anywhere near those of their privileged professors.
The folks behind the Free State Project in New Hampshire have a massive event every summer called the Porcupine Freedom Festival (better known as “PorcFest“) in Lancaster, New Hampshire.
I’ll be speaking there this year on Saturday, June 25, at 2:00 p.m. on “How Not to Create a Libertarian Society.” I look forward to visiting New Hampshire for the first time and, more importantly, to meeting the Free Staters and other libertarians.
Tomorrow, Ron Paul is having a “moneybomb” fundraiser on the anniversary of the U.S. government’s prohibition of gold ownership in 1933.
At the same time, the moneybomb’s organizers are holding an internet radio marathon from 9 a.m. to midnight Eastern on the moneybomb’s official website.
I’ll be on at 3:30 p.m. with host Jason Rink. Rink’s two-hour segment will also feature the heroic Adam Kokesh at 3:00 p.m., Peter Schiff at 4:00 p.m., and Charles Goyette at 4:30 p.m.
You can also hear other great libertarians throughout the day, including Karen Kwiatowski at 10:00 a.m., Walter Block at 12:30 p.m., Ron Paul himself at 6:00 p.m., Dan McCarthy at 7:00 p.m., Butler Shaffer at 8:00 p.m., and Anthony Gregory at 10:30 p.m.
The idea that you’re “innocent until proven guilty” is already a joke, since the deck is stacked against criminal defendants and the government can lock you up before trial.
Now, though, it’s even worse, if you’re a doctor or other healthcare professional in Illinois.
Under a new measure just passed by the state legislature, health workers who are charged with a sex crime, criminal battery against a patient, or a forcible felony will be immediately punished upon being charged. Simply because they have been charged, they won’t be allowed to see patients anymore except in the presence of another health worker, which presumably will render many or most people who are charged instantly unemployable. (And even if you’re eventually found not guilty, good luck explaining to your next would-be employer why you left your last job.) Doctors’ patients will also receive a letter from the government notifying them of the charges — but reminding them that the doctor is innocent until proven guilty, which I guess is supposed to make all of this okay even as it ruins good people’s careers.
Of course this all amounts to a huge grant of power to prosecutors who are already much too powerful. Now they can instantly ruin the career of anyone they choose in the medical field. Other professions will follow, I’m sure, and eventually it will be all of us.
At the Mises Circle in Chicago earlier this month, I not only gave a speech, but I also had the honor of participating on a panel with the other speakers, Walter Block, Douglas French, Roderick Long, and Yuri Maltsev.
We addressed audience members’ questions on a variety of topics, but you may be especially interested in the discussion of immigration that begins at the 10:45 mark.
Laurence M. Vance has kind words for Libertarianism Today in the April 2011 issue of Freedom Daily. The review isn’t online and probably won’t be for a while [UPDATE: now it is], but for now I can tell you that he says that it’s “the best introduction to libertarianism on the market.” And here’s how he concludes:
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Libertarianism Today is the most important book on libertarianism since Rothbard’s For a New Liberty. Not only does it stand in the Rothbardian tradition, it is a principled, uncompromising, iconoclastic, consistent, and unvarnished defense of libertarianism that Rothbard would be proud of.
by Jacob Huebert on April 21, 2011 in Police State
Leave it to Fox News to use the occasion of the royal wedding to advocate the police state.
This article informs us that for the royal wedding, the U.K. will be using security measures — including random stops and searches, warrantless arrests, and a ban on uploading iphone photos — that would “never fly” in the U.S.
You see, former CIA agent and current security firm owner Mike Baker explains, “there’s a more mature acceptance in the U.K. of the tradeoff between civil liberties and security.” They’re not like those whiny Americans, who think they can do as they please with their own property: “You’re going to tell them what they can and can’t do with their iPhone? That would drive people nuts.” Some Americans even have the nerve to complain “about having to take their shoes off at the airport.” Such children!
But Fox News is nothing if not fair and balanced, so they brought in a second expert, former NYPD detective and current security firm owner Pat Brosnan — who also says Americans need to grow up and accept the total state: “There’s a number of different measures that should be implemented [in the U.S.] in the face of the reality that we now have. Our biggest threat is homegrown extremism. How do you get control of that? It’s tough, very tough, and people have forgotten.”
In all of this, there’s no mention of any past conflicts between Brits and Americans over issues of search and seizure, nor is there any suggestion that any constitutional provisions might stand in the way of imposing these things in the U.S.
Brosnan does say that he doesn’t think Americans would go for the U.K. measures “in a million years.” But given Americans’ willingness to surrender their rights at the airports and their steady diet of propaganda like this, I’m not at all sure he’s right.
In Policy, a magazine published by Australia’s Centre for Independent Studies, Alex Willemyns has a favorable review of Libertarianism Today.
Here’s a sample:
Indeed, although the author could not possibly provide a complete introduction to an ideology as unorthodox and contested as libertarianism in such a short volume, Huebert’s attempt is the most engaging and incisive currently available. Further, its unabashedly radical nature is a welcome surprise for a book that could just as easily have been meandering and equivocal in its case for libertarianism. With an abundance of suggestions for further reading throughout, it should appeal to all readers, from the most well-informed libertarian to those new to the radical theory.
I saw Atlas Shrugged Part I this evening, and I thought it was great. Not a great movie in the usual sense, but a great adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, which is not a great novel in the usual sense.
Yes, it’s low-budget. Yes, the direction is pedestrian. Yes, the dialogue is often clunky. So people who want to whine can whine about those things.
But I see no point in dwelling on the negative. This movie is as true to the book as anyone could desire. The screenwriting isn’t perfect, but neither is Ayn Rand’s novel-writing. The actors probably won’t collect Oscars for their work here, but they are mostly well-cast, and the villains are especially well-cast.
In fact, I don’t think a better Atlas Shrugged movie could ever be made. You can wish the movie had a big budget and better talent, but if you got those things, you would almost certainly lose this movie’s faithfulness to the book’s story and ideas — and the ideas, after all, are the point. Besides, can you imagine an adaptation of Atlas Shrugged — no matter who wrote it, directed it, or starred in it — that wouldn’t have unnatural dialogue, unbelievable characters, and an implausible plot? There is no time period in which you could set this movie — with its train travel, its heroic industrialists who own their own companies, etc. — in which it could seem realistic. So you just have to do what you do with the novel or with any science fiction or fantasy: suspend disbelief and go with it.
I doubt this film will win any new converts to libertarianism or (thankfully) Objectivism; the story has to move forward so quickly that someone who isn’t already familiar with the book may be lost or bored. But it should delight fans of the book who go in with a positive attitude.
I look forward to seeing it again and to seeing Part II.
UPDATE (4.18.11): Some people have written to me (and commented below) assuming that this post was intended as “faint praise” of both the book and the movie. That’s not true at all. Atlas Shrugged is a great novel, and it’s one of my very favorites. It doesn’t satisfy some of the usual criteria for great literature, but that’s okay because it is unique and ingenious and in its own way better than most “great” literature. I wrote about this in my review of Edward Younkins’s volume Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged for the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies. As for the movie, it has some obvious shortcomings because of the limitations the filmmakers faced, but the point of my comments above was to emphasize that the shortcomings are insignificant in light of the film’s virtues. Again, I loved the film, I will see it again, and if you like the book, I would encourage you to see it, too.
Jacob H. Huebert is a public-interest lawyer in Chicago and the author of Libertarianism Today, a new introduction to libertarian ideas and the libertarian movement.
Read more.
"In Libertarianism Today, Jacob Huebert draws on his mastery of libertarian philosophy, Austrian economics, and history to show that limited government and free markets are the only cures for the numerous problems facing our nation. Huebert also provides an excellent introduction to libertarian thought and a concise summary of the history of the libertarian movement. Anyone interested in learning more about the past, present, and future of the liberty movement can benefit from reading this book."
- Congressman Ron Paul
"J.H. Huebert is a scholar who can really write. If you want an unvarnished look at the libertarian movement and care about the future of liberty, read this book."
- Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., founder and chairman, Ludwig von Mises Institute
"Jacob Huebert has written an excellent overview of libertarianism today in his book of the same name. On everything under the sun he persuasively argues the libertarian position."
- Thomas Woods, New York Times bestselling author of Nullification, Meltdown, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
"Jacob Huebert's outstanding survey of libertarianism ranks as the best work of its kind since Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty."
- David Gordon, Mises Review
"Huebert's verbal presentation deserves to rank right up there with the scintillating writing of a Rothbard or a Hazlitt . . . this young man really has a gift for writing clearly and even beautifully." - Walter Block, author of Defending the Undefendable
"The best introduction to libertarianism on the market." - Laurence M. Vance, Freedom Daily
"If you want to undermine statist beliefs, pass this book around." - George C. Leef, The Freeman
"It should appeal to all readers, from the most well-informed libertarian to those new to the radical theory." - Alex Willemyns, Policy
"The best book on the essentials of libertarianism…. It’s wonderfully entertaining, easy to read, and splendidly pithy." - Norman Horn, LibertarianChristians.com
"There should be a guy carrying boxes of this book to every college bookstore in America. Give it out, loan it to your friends. . . . It's awesome." - Scott Horton, Antiwar Radio
"It's really quite excellent. If you know nothing about libertarianism, it's all in there . . . I've got my Christmas shopping taken care of for all my non-libertarian friends!" - Brian Wilson, WSPD Radio
The folks behind the 
Tomorrow, Ron Paul is having a “
I saw Atlas Shrugged Part I this evening, and I thought it was great. Not a great movie in the usual sense, but a great adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, which is not a great novel in the usual sense.
