The Myth of the Merchant Guilds

It's been awhile since I've posted anything, but a book I just finished reading on merchant guilds by the Cambridge economic historian, Sheilagh Ogilvie, deserves some attention. With an insipid title like "Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800", one could be forgiven for overlooking such a gem, but don't let this one pass you by. It took me a number of weeks to creep through its pages, not because of its being convoluted, but rather because Ogilvie has provided such overwhelming and thorough historical evidence to support her claim.

What is her claim, exactly? It's that, contrary to popular opinion, merchant guilds were largely inefficient, monopolistic, rent-seeking organizations that only created benefits for its members and the heads of state that empowered them. Guilds often used their political privileges to muscle out or to penalize competitors offering cheaper alternatives or encroaching on a monopolized trade route and guilds would even use their privileges to limit the supply of their monopolized good in order to reap even greater profits at the expense of consumers. Now, I was already aware of the general economic hurt that was often imposed by merchant guilds on the overall economy, but to see such a comprehensive dismantling of a long-cherished, leftist shibboleth, as organized labor has become, left me astonished. This book provides a wealth of humiliating evidence of guild arrogance, ineptitude, and cruelty. Ogilvie impartially analyzes a historical record of roughly 800 years and spanning geographically from Spain to Byzantium to see if merchant guilds were helpful in alleviating six economic problems claimed by various theorists: state extortion, commercial insecurity, contract enforcement, principal-agent relationships, imperfect information, and economic volatility. None of these dilemmas were largely remedied by the merchant guilds. At best, Ogilvie found merchant guilds to be peripheral players in solving these economic problems.

In fact, she sums up the general lousiness of guilds quite nicely early on in the book:

"Merchant guilds secured legal privileges which gave their members the sole right to trade in particular sectors. Merchant guilds excluded most people from membership: they barred trade by women, Jews, immigrants, peasants, the poor, particular ethnic groups, different religions, and people their members simply didn't like. Merchant guilds regulated how their own members could do business, limiting competition, so customers had to pay higher prices. Guilds bribed and lobbied officials and rulers to enforce their privileged position. They engaged in bitter conflict--even violence--against individuals and other guilds who tried to infringe on their trading privileges. Merchant guilds thus had a dark side -- they used their social capital to seek 'rents' (monopoly profits) and distort markets in favour of their members. Monopolies, market distortions, and rent-seeking are not efficient: they reduce aggregate well-being and economic growth. Nor are they socially just: they redistribute resources from outsiders to insiders."(p. 3)

Some have asked why, then, were merchant guilds so prominent for so long if they were so inefficient. It was because the guilds provided kickbacks or offered services to rulers in exchange for privileges. Guilds did everything from giving their rulers cash transfers to assisting the rulers in enforcing and collecting trade taxes. Sometimes guilds provided loans on favorable terms as the Venetian merchants did to acquire their extensive monopoly when they gave the Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I, a tremendous military loan in 1082. The result of that loan was that Venetian merchant colonies were then excused from dealing with customs officials in most Byzantine ports, and thus excused from paying the usual 10% duties that merchants were required to pay.

As mentioned, another benefit that rulers occasionally gained from merchant guilds was military or naval assistance. Ogilvie says quite plainly that "Genoese, Pisan, Venetian, Catalan, Provencal, and Anconitan merchant colonies got monopolies, tax breaks, customs exemptions, trading compounds and other commercial privileges in the ports of Palestine and Syria from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries in return for naval and military assistance to the Crusader authorities."(p. 179).

Of course, a vow of political support was persuasive too. Therefore, merchant guilds were so prominent of an institution throughout the centuries simply because they had a symbiotic relationship with the State, not because they were more efficient than all of the alternative mechanisms.

In maybe the most telling portion of the book, Ogilvie closes by suggesting that particularized institutions, like merchant guilds, did not generate trust between people as has been often assumed by sympathetic theorists. If anything, they they were a conservative hindrance to greater prosperity. It was the generalized institutions like the marketplace or a predictable and just legal framework, applicable to foreigners and locals alike, that led to greater trust amongst strangers and, thus, to the Commercial Revolution.

"This book has found that merchant guilds fostered a particularized, not a generalized, trust in persons. Members of a merchant guild trusted each other and were willing to transact with each other because of the personal attributes associated with membership in that guild, and because the guild itself penalized deviations from corporate norms…As Chapter 6 showed, merchant guilds fostered not only distrust of strangers but violence against them…Merchant guilds thus did not create a generalized trust in persons, encouraging transactions with strangers. If anything, they did the opposite." (p. 430)

So, if you want a book that thoroughly and impartially weighs the evidence concerning the economic and political impact of guilds as well as the history and development of guilds in Europe, then I strongly suggest this book. The material may seem dry but, thankfully, with direct and clear prose, Ogilvie's book has effectively become the new benchmark for guild history and it's one that carries profound implications on contemporary issues like the purported benefits society derives from labor unions. My guess is that those benefits have been grossly exaggerated and likely siphoned off to the union members at the expense of outsiders.

Offal Education

I'm here to declare that public schools are lousy. I recognize that many before me have vividly denigrated public education, but what I'm here to argue is that America needs to be rid of publicly funded education in its entirety and forevermore. For 150 years now, America has offered free education in various forms with the expressed intent of closing the achievement gap between rich and poor, black and white, male and female. The work of Horace Mann was most certainly inspired, but Mann's exalted aspirations for educational equality have failed to manifest. Fifty-five years ago, our schools became desegregated with the great hope that academic achievement would finally become real for all Americans, not just the white and privileged. Ironically, schools today remain segregated not by the old force of law, but voluntarily and under the aegis of a more benevolent government. In my mind, public education is wasteful, dangerous, morally vacuous, and academically ineffective. It is time we end this botched experiment of 150 years and allow the venerable free market to assume control without any of our government's artificial constraints. In this piece, I want to highlight the mounting evidence of public school inferiority, but I also want to discuss how an unencumbered free market would rectify the insufferable shortcomings largely characteristic of public education.

It goes without saying that my desire for the free market to one day supplant the government's hand in education is unpopular. Contrary to my position lie the innumerable education experts who argue that our public system is sound with the exception of only some slight flaws. So-called educational reformers evade the root of public education's inefficacy and instead search fruitlessly for a scapegoat, all of which seem to be ancillary. Such folks are unquestionably industrious and imaginative since nearly all facets of public education have been called into question at one time or another. Some of the more common culprits include insufficient school funding, uninterested parents, disengaged teachers, inadequate teacher salaries, ethnically biased tests, and even large school size just to name a few. Other scholars are so badly stricken with delusion as to suggest that when certain variables are controlled, there exist, on average, no differences between public and private academic performance. Regardless, academic and behavioral problems persist in our public schools with or without the defensive and accusatory rhetoric. So what is to blame for public education's poor standing? According to Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute, there are four characteristics intrinsic to all historically successful school systems, none of which are evident in our own. These four necessary ingredients for a successful educational system include choice, financial responsibility for parents, freedom, and market incentives for educators. Without these, success is ephemeral at best and nonexistent at worst.

So let us begin with an extensive portrait of academic achievement in public and private schools. I combed the most current results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests that provided data for both publicly and privately educated twelfth-graders. I only reviewed twelfth-grade performances, unless otherwise noted, for the obvious reason that senior year is the most important of educational crossroads studied by the NAEP. Ideally, these senior scores should represent the culmination of all previous schooling. I reviewed the scores in Math, Science, US History, Reading, Writing, and Geography and not one of these tests reflected an outright better performance by the public school students. Ockham's razor tells us that for public school advocates to claim supremacy in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence likely signifies error.

In 2000, the NAEP tested twelfth-graders in Science. The average score for public school students was 145 with a standard error of 1.0 while the average private score was 160 with a standard error of 0.9. What's interesting is that I found that the best academic representatives of public education, magnet schools, fared no better. This same Science test also placed the average magnet school score at 145, but with a standard error of 6.1.

The NAEP also tested twelfth-graders in 2000 for Math. Again, the average private score was considerably better at 315 than the average public score of 299 with both having a standard error of 1.1. Although the difference was insignificant, I still found it interesting that scores diminished from 301 in 1996 to 299 in 2000 for public school students, while scores improved from 310 to 315 for private school students. I even looked at the scores of those having taken AP Calculus and AP Statistics for both public and private students and the disparity is still painfully evident. Public school students either having taken or currently taking AP statistics only scored a 302 with a 5.5 standard error. On the other hand, private school students had an average score of 326 with a standard error of 3.2.

In 2001, US History was assessed by the NAEP and the pattern was persistent. Fortunately, enough data was collected from both public and private schools to arrive at some valid conclusions for the seniors. The average public score was 286 with a standard error of 1.0 while the private score was 299 with a 1.9 standard error. The following US History exam for the NAEP was in 2006, but only public school data was made available. Interestingly, the average public score of 289 with a standard error of 0.7 was still ten points short of the average private score in 2001.

Finally, I wanted to investigate the NAEP scores for Writing. There have been three tests within the past eleven years, one in 1998, another in 2002, and the latest having been administered in 2007. Only in 1998 was there adequate data from both groups. In 1998, the average public score was 148 with a standard error of 0.7. It should be noted that in 1998 private scores were recorded as either "Other Private" or "Catholic". The Other Private group scored a 159 with a 3.0 standard error, while the Catholic group scored an impressive 167 with a 1.9 standard error. Contrast that with the average public score of 146 in 2002 and the subsequent score of 152 in 2007 and it becomes apparent that there was still a significant gap in performance even though 9 years had elapsed.

Lastly, I thought it might be interesting to see how students' scores compared to their self-professed love or recognized ability in a given subject. Using the 2000 Math exam, I compared scores for those whom either agreed or strongly agreed that they were "good at math". In the "strongly agree" category, private students averaged a score of 336 with a standard error of 1.6 while the public students averaged a score of 323 with a 1.8 standard error. Those who merely "agreed" scored a 323 in the private group and 308 in the public group with respective standard errors of 1.2 and 1.3. Also, those who strongly agreed that they "like math" scored 332 in the private group with a standard error of 1.6 and scored 315 in the public group with a standard error of 1.8. Those in the private group that only "agreed" displayed a fifteen point advantage over the public group. A similar pattern emerged on the Science exam. Those in private schools that "liked" science averaged a score twelve points greater than those in public schools. The margin was also twelve points in favor of private schools for those who agreed they were "good" at science. As far as I can tell, this trend can only be interpreted one way and it does not reflect well of public education. My interpretation is that public school students have an inflated sense of their own ability. They are likely very good in comparison to their mediocre classmates and they may strongly agree that they are good at math, but, truth be told, they aren't nearly as good as the private students that respond the same way.

Needless to say, the twelfth-grade NAEP scores depict a seemingly permanent gap between the average public and average private scores. The gap has certainly fluctuated over the years, but it refuses to close entirely. In no situation could I find a single public score that trumped the private score. At best, the statistical insignificance found in the smaller differences reflected some comparability; however, none of the tested variables elicited even an identical score. I'm sure some disparities favorable to the public group exist, but I'm making the point that they are profoundly uncommon.

Let's switch gears to the SAT. How do these two groups compare on the SAT? The average SAT scores in 2009 for public school students were 496 for the critical reading portion, 510 for the math portion, and 487 for the writing portion. Religious schools achieved an average score of 533 for the critical reading portion, 533 for the math portion, and 530 for the writing portion. The independent private schools scored the highest with 550 for the critical reading section, 578 in the math section, and 555 in the writing section. Evidently, comparability in achievement is lacking here as well.

Now I have long heard about the bias of standardized tests against many of those within America's public school system. Nevertheless, in addition to the purportedly biased SAT scores, I've shown that disparities exist in almost any given NAEP exam subject and even among the exemplary students with AP credits who believe themselves to be formidable students. Maybe this testing phenomenon is simply the result of lackadaisical teaching methods or the greater degree of apathy typically encountered in public schools, but those still aren't disproving my point that private schools are definitively better.

Yet, somehow, the naysayers remain. In 2007, the Center on Educational Policy reported that when family background was taken into account then public school students performed as well as their privately educated peers. The report also claimed that in the long-run public school students enjoy their jobs and participate in civic duties just as much as those with a private school education. The four core findings of the report were as follows:

1. Students attending independent private high schools, most types of parochial high schools, and public high schools of choice performed no better on achievement tests in math, reading, science, and history than their counterparts in traditional public high schools. 2. Students who had attended any type of private high school ended up no more likely to attend college than their counterparts at traditional public high schools. 3. Young adults who had attended any type of private high school ended up with no more job satisfaction at age 26 than young adults who had attended traditional public high schools. 4. Young adults who had attended any type of private high school ended up no more engaged in civic activities at age 26 than young adults who had attended traditional public high schools.

The first point has virtually no merit. The public education supporters claim that, all things being equal, public children are just as academically capable as private children. That statement alone is arguable. First off, all things are not equal and never will be equal. In fact there has been research establishing a correlation between socioeconomic status and IQ in that the poor tend to have a lower average IQ than those more affluent. If one believes that there are individual differences in ability and wants then one must believe that not everyone is capable of a perfect GPA, or a six-figure income, or wants to work hard enough to achieve either. As a result, an underclass relative to the high-achievers must exist and this underclass will tend to be academically inferior. As long as free schooling exists to educate the poor, then one should expect test scores to remain stunted in comparison to private scores. Another demographic that comparatively predominates America's public schools are English Language Learners. Roughly 10.3% of public school students are English Language Learners and in 2001 ELLs managed a score 46 points lower than the average twelfth-grade public score for the NAEP's test in US History. Twelfth-grade English Language Learners scored 29 points less than average, non-ELL public school students and 45 points less than private students on the 2000 Math exam. Also in 2000, twelfth-grade ELL students performed 39 points lower than non-ELL public school students on the Science exam. Also, as of 2004, 95.7% of public schools participated in the National School Lunch Program. Of this 95.7%, 41.6% of the public school students from K-12 were approved for free or reduced lunch. In comparison, only 23.5% of private schools participated and of that, only 20.8% of private students were approved. In 2000, the twelfth-grade public students eligible for the National School Lunch Program, which requires free or reduced price lunch to be made available for students living at 185% or less of the Federal poverty line, scored 21 points lower than the public national average. This score placed them 37 points behind the private national average. More could be said about this, but I think the point is clear: point one is a pipe dream.

Point two is also a gross exaggeration. Since there has been convincing evidence that achievement test standards have been reduced in public schools, I wouldn't be surprised if public schools are graduating more students of lower quality. According to a 2006 report published by Policy Analysis for California Education, No Child Left Behind test results led to lower standards by way of reduced cut-off points and inflated test scores:

"Yet we have detailed how state results consistently exaggerate the percentage of fourth-graders deemed proficient or above in reading and math — for any given year and for reported rates of annual progress, compared with NAEP results. For reading, this gulf between the two testing systems has actually grown wider over time. Any analysis conducted over the 1992- 2005 period based solely on state results will exaggerate the true amount of progress made by fourth-graders...Both factors — low cut-points and inflated scores over time — are likely at work in many states"(source).

Furthermore, this study claimed that many of the performance gaps widened between the NAEP scores and the inflated NCLB test scores. Thus, such a conclusion leads one to believe that since proficiency standards in many states are being manipulated downward, then it would only be natural to assume the existence of easier graduation standards. Wouldn't these lax standards also make it more difficult to repeat a grade? Now I understand that public school systems across America are trying to demand more from their graduates, but despite their efforts, many students are now graduating with little more than false senses of security.

Similar discoveries are corroborated elsewhere. Even in Chicago's public schools, where real school reform has supposedly taken place, there have been large score disparities between the state administered ISAT tests and the national NAEP tests. In a June 2009 report published by the Commercial Club of Chicago, it is argued that no demonstrable reform has taken place beyond the lowering of ISAT standards. The report concluded that "Chicago's elementary schools have made enormous progress in the course of the past decade--achieving double-digit increases in all grades and all subjects. This claim jarringly conflicts with the flat trends reported in the high schools and is contrary to the NAEP results. The remarkable apparent progress in the elementary schools appears to be due mostly to changes in the ISAT tests and testing procedures--rather than real improvement in student learning"(source). A plausible, albeit corrupt explanation for this practice would be that schools do it to maintain government funding. If a school performs dismally, then it will be penalized much to the school's chagrin. So, yes public school students may be entering college with a similar frequency as private school students, but some of that success may be solely due to these relaxed standards.

Point three is probably correct, but job satisfaction is not the same as success. I'll gladly admit that job satisfaction is more important overall, but I'd imagine more stressful, high-income jobs belong to those having been educated in private schools.

Finally, we arrive at point four. Simply put, point four is a poor representation of a quality education. Those who vote for most conventional presidential candidates are either poorly informed, or lack a conscience, or they possess a most tragic amalgam of the two. Submitting to compulsory jury duty or "the draft" are not signs of a shining intellect or an impressive moral compass. But is it at all surprising that the educational arm of our federal government would base educational quality on how well people obey their government's demands?

Now that performance differences and the establishment's denials of such differences have been explored ad nauseum, what is often suggested to explain the disparity? Socioeconomic factors are the most common explanation for the achievement gaps. Inadequate school funding and lack of parental involvement are often listed as well. To be clear, parental involvement is undeniably crucial in a child's development and it needs to be rectified in order for more poorer families to become viable, but school funding is a poor excuse for the failings of government schooling.

First of all, I want to briefly assess the impact of socioeconomic status and it's impact on the academic disparities between the two groups. Many would gladly argue that it's the wealth of the family that allows for such a performance gap. While there are far more impoverished students in public schools, there exist plenty of poor families that still prefer private schooling for their children. Not surprisingly, private schools largely seem to be opposed to government programs. Upon reviewing a School and Staffing Report from 2004, I found that only 13.4% of nonsectarian private schools participated in the National School Lunch Program, but of the schools that participated, 35.5% of the students were approved. Non-catholic religious schools only had 11.9% of their schools participating in the program. Of those who did participate, 29% were approved. Alternatively, over 95.7% of public schools participated, while 41.6% of students were poor enough to be approved. Regardless of whose students are poorer, the NAEP tests continue to depict a trend of private academic dominance when the scores for the eligible are reviewed.

Drawing meaningful conclusions for twelfth-grade private schoolers eligible for the NSLP is difficult, so I looked at eighth-grade scores unless otherwise noted. Based upon the 2000 NAEP Math exam, twelfth-grade public students eligible for the National School Lunch Program, achieved a score of 278 with a standard error of 1.1. Private students within the same bracket scored a 286 with a standard error of 3.5. The eligible twelfth-graders also displayed a noticeable gap on the Science exam. The national public score was 124 with a 1.8 standard error while the national private score was 136 with a 3.3 standard error. Based upon the 2001 US History exam for eighth-graders, the national public average score for those eligible was 241 with a 1.3 standard error. The national private average score for those eligible was 268 with a 9.3 standard error. The 2007 NAEP Writing exam also displayed gaps. The national public score for those eligible was 141 with a standard error of 0.3 while the national private score was 155 with a 3.3 standard error. In 2002, Writing was also assessed by the NAEP. The national public score for those eligible was 136 with a standard error of 0.5 while the national private score was 159 with a standard error of 3.9. Finally, I looked at the eighth-grade Science scores from 2000 and found the national public score for those eligible was 127 with a 1.1 standard error while the national private score of those eligible was 143 with a 5.0 standard error. The claim that socioeconomic status is a strong determinant of academic success is true, but the achievements of poor private school students still surpassed the achievements of the poor public school students in almost every field, especially in the eighth and twelfth-grade groups.

Let us now turn our attention to pupil expenditures. In 1970, the annual federal expense per pupil was approximately $4,410, in inflation adjusted dollars, but now the individual price tag currently hovers close to $12,000 (source). Amazingly, the city of Detroit is preparing to spend approximately $13,400 per student this school year, yet it is the worst urban school district in the nation touting only a 25% graduation rate (source). According to a 2009 U.S. Census Bureau report, New York's public school system tops the country in terms of per-pupil spending at a whopping $15,981. Despite such extraordinary expenditures, the public schools of New York City have lost ground in the SAT for four years running now. An article from NBC New York stated that "the city's average score on each 800-point section of the SAT has plunged 18 points in math, to 459, and 13 points in reading, to 435, after reaching a peak in 2005. Scores on the writing component of the test, which began in 2006, fell six points, to 432." In the Digest of Education Statistics, the 2003-2004 expenditure for the instruction of students accounted for only 52.2% of the total public education budget. The instructional slice of the pie diminished further in 2005-2006 to 51.8%(source). Our government has almost tripled public education spending in the last forty years, and yet we have almost no demonstrable improvements to show for such massive spending. To give a rather disheartening example, the average NAEP Reading score for public school seniors, as cited in the NAEP long-term tend report, was 284 in 2008, but it was 284 in 1980 as well. The long-term trends also depict stagnation in math where the 2008 public average of 305 happens to coincide with the 1992 public average of 305 despite massive spending increases in the interim.

Some might think that increasing teachers' salaries would effectively narrow the gaps between public and private education. I'd find that hard to believe especially after having reviewed the numbers. Typically, charges of insufficient pay are lobbed by the teacher unions that believe that as long as teachers are compensated poorly then the students will additionally suffer. The truth of the matter is that the average public school teacher is paid better than most Americans regardless of the profession; never mind the fact that their salaries have soared over the years with minimal effect on improving student achievement. Furthermore, public schools pay their teachers more even though their teachers typically work less hours. Based upon findings in a Manhattan Institute report dated January 2007, full-time public school teachers work only 36.5 hours a week in comparison to the 38.3 hours a week of their private school colleagues(source). More surprisingly still is the fact that public school teachers are paid, on average, 61% more per hour than private school teachers. Less work, more pay, and yet poorer results. Professor Jay Greene of the University of Arkansas wrote in 2005 that "the average public elementary school teacher in the United States earns about $30.75 an hour. The average hourly pay of other public-service employees - such as firefighters ($17.91) or police officers ($22.64) - pales in comparison"(source). What makes this most disappointing is that public education operates monopolistically and lures the most qualified teachers with impressive salaries and yet it produces negligible results despite the teachers possessing greater credentials. In fact, as of 2006, 39.5% of all public school teachers had a Masters degree while only 29.5% of private school teachers possessed the same level of schooling. Of the 45 metropolitan areas surveyed in the Manhattan Institute's study, Detroit topped them all in terms of the hourly wages of public school teachers with a staggering $47.28 an hour. Anyone who has ever been to Detroit knows that the teachers have not merited such lavish pay. If public school teachers blame the lack of progress on inadequate salaries then why are nurses not failing to care for large numbers of patients? Why are firemen not failing to extinguish most building fires? I don't believe I've ever heard much commotion vis-a-vis the establishment of private fire departments. Firemen and nurses have far more demanding jobs without the inflated pay of public educators and yet they have greater success.

Another culprit for the disparity between public and private education is parental involvement. There is an undeniable and intrinsic difference in parental involvement between the two groups. It should be readily assumed that parents with children enrolled in private school would generally be more involved and concerned. This is simply because their child's schooling comes at a price. It has required the parents to forego immediate gratification in hopes of saving enough precious capital to put their child through the school of their choice. For many families, this act of preparation entails intense deliberation; it demands that families without tremendous amounts of disposable income choose the best choice among many for their child. But when something is offered for free and is promised to remain free then that creates a different psychic disposition altogether. When the government pays for the education, ideas like sacrifice and consequence are mitigated. It's more likely that if I worked hard and saved to buy myself a Ferrari that I would take better care of the car than someone who is given one for free and with the promise of free repairs in the future. If one can agree with me there, then how could one not agree that the public system is less capable of developing concerned parents when cost is minimal especially for the poorest parents and choice is generally removed due to zoning ordinances amongst other things?

At this juncture, one may concede that private schools are superior in a variety of ways and circumstances, but how would an unhampered and unencumbered free market do any better? Let's address the likely effect of a fully privatized school system on costly tuition, school safety, and school size.

Without question, the most common gripe against private schooling is its being synonymous with elite snobbery in which families view money as no object. As an aside to my argument, I wanted to briefly discuss a curious finding most incongruent with this conventional gripe. What if I told you that the wealthiest families send their children to public schools? According to the US Census Bureau report of 2005, there were roughly 8,000,000 children enrolled in K-12 that were from families earning a yearly income of $100,000 and more. Approximately 6,400,000 of these children attended public school. That's 80%! This idea of the wealthy dominating the private schools is so deeply entrenched that I had to include this bit of contrary information. Now, the elegant remedy for pricy tuition would be to privatize the remaining 75% of schools that are currently public schools. In 1982, Sony released the very first CD player, the CDP-101, and it cost $900 at the time. Sony had no competitors yet and the CDP-101 certainly lacked the frills of our modern players. What's most remarkable is that the $900 in 1982 would be equivalent to $2,012 today. Compare that to the price of a new 300-disc CD player with MP3 capabilities and you could effectively subtract $1,800 from the price. Open competition has driven down the price but provided innovation and luxury that was unimaginable in 1982. Ironically, the average per-pupil expenditure in public education last year was $10,889, which is far more elitist than the far more modestly priced average tuition of $6,600 for private schools. To help drive this point home, I decided to look at fourth-grade Catholic school NAEP performances and compare those to the public averages since, according to the Digest of Educational Statistics, the average school tuition for Catholic elementary school is only $3,533 (source). That's only 32.4% of the average expenditure per-pupil in the public education system and yet based upon my findings the performance gap has remained persistent. For the sake of brevity, it should be known that all of the scores had standard errors ranging from 0.2 to 1.3. In 2009, Catholic fourth-graders scored six points better on the Math exam than public school fourth-graders. In 2007, Catholics performed seven points better. In 2002, Catholic fourth-graders again outperformed public school fourth-graders on the Writing exam by thirteen points. In 1998, the difference was even greater at fifteen points. In 2000, Catholics scored fifteen points higher on the Science exam than public school students and eighteen points higher on the 1996 Science exam. In essence, greater achievement does not have to come at an extraordinary cost. If Catholic elementary schools can effectively teach children how to read, write, and perform long-division on a paltry $3,533 tuition, then why can't public elementary schools produce similar results? So, I ask people two things: to quit blaming the rich for distorting the achievement gap, especially since they seem partial to the public system, and to realize that Catholic schools run circles around public schools despite working on a shoestring budget.

Another thorn in the side of public educators is the relative lack of school safety and discipline in public schools. Here one will find undeniable evidence that public schools are dangerous and more likely to cultivate bad behavior.

In the public system, the blame for disciplinary woes has been pegged on a variety of excuses. Some excuses, such as the prevalence of single parents are valid, while others are merely bogus crutches or distortions. One complaint that falls in the latter camp is the claim of prejudice's crippling effect on minority behavior and achievement. The idea of minority children underperforming or misbehaving due to feelings of low self-esteem and disenfranchisement is a weak excuse. Poverty is undeniably challenging but not insuperable. Success is subjective, but success in any variety usually comes to those with fortitude and courage. It's only when one surrenders that the hurdles become impenetrable walls and one becomes overwrought with frustration.

In a 2008 report entitled "Indicators of School Crime and Safety", violence as well as threats of violence are far more common in public schools than in private schools:

"A greater percentage of public than private school teachers reported being threatened with injury (7 vs. 2 percent) or physically attacked (4 vs. 2 percent) by students in school. Among teachers in city schools, generally, there were at least five times as many public school teachers as private school teachers who reported being threatened with injury (12 vs. 2 percent) and at least four times as many public school teachers as private school teachers who reported being physically attacked (5 vs. 1 percent)(source)."

In recent years, many scholars have enjoyed citing statistics emphasizing the decline of violent incidents in public schools, but such drastic safety improvements have been exaggerated. "According to the April 27 issue of Education Week, a February report by a Cleveland-based firm, National School Safety and Security Services, found 86 percent of the 758 school officers surveyed said crimes at their schools were under-reported. Seventy-eight percent said they had personally taken weapons from students in the past year," wrote the Cato Institute's Neal McCluskey. Another more startling example came from Lisa Snell's report for the Reason Foundation where she described the pitiful standards in reporting violence in America's public schools:

"There were 14 sex offenses, 53 robberies, and 22 assaults with deadly weapons at Los Angeles' Locke High School during the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 school years. In April 2003 there was a lunchtime brawl at the school involving an estimated 300 students. Yet, Locke doesn't qualify as a "persistently dangerous" school by California's standards....In New York, three male high school students forced a girl into a school closet and sexually assaulted her. Another male high school student smashed his ex-girlfriend's head through a school trophy case. The New York Daily News reports that neither incident was counted as "dangerous" by the Education Department (source)."

In a 2009 report by the CDC on school violence, 7.8% of high school students surveyed reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property one or more times in the year preceding the survey. 27.1% of students reported stolen or damaged property in the previous year. Since about 90% of school children attend public schools, it can be safely assumed that relatively few of these incidents occurred in private schools, especially when more than 80% of private schools are religiously affiliated and are bound by strict moral codes. Granted, accounts like Snell's depicted isolated events but the severity of the situations were no less astounding. It would be reasonable to assume that while public schools are probably less dangerous than in the past, they certainly are far more dangerous than private schools. Plus, when inaccurate school safety statistics continue to be cited, it is hard not to remain at least a bit incredulous of public education's purported progress (source). If private education creates safer educational environments, then why not privatize in totality?

Privatization would also create a multitude of schools and, by extension, smaller student bodies and teacher/student ratios. Currently, America has over 98,700 public schools that serve to educate almost 90% of K-12 students. Not surprisingly though is the fact that private schools offer their measly 10% share over 35,000 different schools. As of 2008, the student-teacher ratio was 15.8:1 for public schools and 11.1:1 for private schools. Smaller student bodies confer numerous benefits which all seem to stem from the intimate connection between student and teacher that is often found lacking in public schools.

In summary, public education is trailing in all respects. In actuality, it shouldn't be trailing to private education in any arena. It provides better educated teachers, three times the funding per student, and numerous programs that are aimed to minimize all inequalities and yet it fails to compare to private education in terms of safety or academics. People whine about the cost of tuition but, as I have discussed, tuition would no longer pose a problem in a fully privatized approach. Think of how competitive grocery store chains now offer generic prescriptions for as low as a dollar. And what about the need for equality? Right now, public education is situated on the presupposition that equal opportunity be afforded to all children. Private education is theoretically open to all but only those fitting the school's specifications would be admitted . There must be a criteria. Perfect equality between students is no more achievable just because one wishes it to be so. The irony is that greater equality can be achieved but only by admitting that not all students are of equal ability or possess equal wants. In our public education system, the wants of the individual students are replaced with the educational system's wants. Incidentally, a private system would better address the needs of all children regardless of how they are defined or choose to be defined. To contextualize varied cognitive abilities, especially when race, gender or class is discussed, as somehow being dangerous, unfair, or undemocratic is destructive. To deny a student's ability or inability is oppressive. A generic approach to education stifles the slightly more capable students and frustrates the slightly less capable so as to ultimately cater to the average student. In my framework, a child's educational trajectory should be largely determined by the family. A distant State can never know the child better than the child's guardians and the child itself.

If we could awaken from this forty year slumber of idealistic chicanery peddled by the public school bureaucrats, then maybe there would be hope left for a fully privatized education system. But one thing is certain, until such revelations take place, people will continue to believe that spending is never quite enough, that standardized tests are brutally unfair and poor determinants of ability, and that espousing moral principles risks alienating certain students. Regardless, our public education system is decaying and no amount of internalized finger-pointing will alter its condition. Dramatic change will only ever occur by removing the pecuniary feeding tube and the patchwork of politically correct constructs. Then, and only then, will America reclaim its old hallmark of academic greatness.

Lincoln the Louse

The deference reserved for President Lincoln nowadays is unparalleled. According to the collective unconscious of America, Lincoln, the dignified abolitionist, freed the blacks from their oppressive masters via the noble and necessary War Between the States. Yet, Lincoln was hardly sensitive to the plight of blacks and, no, the war was hardly noble or even legal for that matter. Still, people see Lincoln as some magnanimous giant of a man that deserves to be mythologized. I'm here to say that he was far from being as beneficent and as principled as the Cincinnatus we have made him out to be.

I'll begin by asking Lincoln's defenders one question: How does one man become remembered as the quintessential defender of Freedom, while armed with the record of a despot? I ask this in all seriousness because his methods did nothing but constrain freedom, yet his name has remained pristine after all these years. Maybe he didn't curtail elections during wartime like a full-fledged dictator would have, but he did plenty to convince me that he now deserves the sharpest repudiation.

Under Lincoln, civil liberties were nullified. Freedom of the press was trampled after Lincoln managed to shut down 300 "disloyal" newspapers. Even the telegraph lines were censored by Lincoln and guns forcibly removed from the Border States (source).

According to historian Mark Neelly Jr, 1 of every 1500 Northern citizens was arrested for political dissent while being stripped of their right to due process. Within the first year of the war alone, Neelly concluded that nearly 73% of these arbitrary arrests came from the slave states (source). Most ironic was the unlawful imprisonment of Maryland legislator Frank Key Howard: After Lincoln arrested him without a warrant, he was held without charges at Fort McHenry, the bombardment of which had inspired Howard's grandfather, Francis Scott Key, to write the Star-Spangled Banner. In addition to Howard, dozens of other state legislators in Maryland were imprisoned for considering voting for secession. Lincoln even deported Congressman Vallandigham for speaking in opposition to "King Lincoln" in Ohio and placed a Federal Circuit Court judge, William Matthew Merrick, under house arrest without salary simply for granting habeas corpus. And if it weren't for a mindful federal marshal, Ward Hill Lamon, that convinced Lincoln to desist, Supreme Justice Taney would also have been arrested for his antagonistic ruling on habeas corpus. Arresting dissenters, whether they be commoners or legislators and doing it without a warrant or a right to a fair trial is definitively dictatorial!

Unconstitutionality abounded under Lincoln. Really, one could provide the argument that George W. Bush simply followed in Lincoln's putrescent footsteps. Maybe the most revealing example of the Lincoln administration's unmitigated corruption came when Lincoln's Secretary of State William Seward told British ambassador Lord Lyons, "I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the arrest of a citizen in Ohio. I can touch the bell again and order the arrest of a citizen in New York. Can Queen Victoria do as much?" (source).

While I may simply have a penchant for disassembling treasured political myths, numerous historians have also labelled Honest Abe a dictator as well. The late University of Illinois historian James G. Randall classified Lincoln as a "benevolent dictator". William Archibald Dunning characterized Lincoln's reign as a "temporary dictatorship". James Ford Rhodes reassured us that the power of a dictator had never before "fallen into safer and nobler hands." In his essay, "War and the Constitution: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt", Arthur Schlesinger awkwardly portrays Lincoln's tactics as being despotic but not quite despotic enough to label him a dictator: "Lincoln set in motion a series of drastic though often inept ad hoc actions: martial law and military courts, some far from the fighting fronts; detectives (the twentieth century learned to call them secret police) and paid informers; military arrest and detention of untold thousands of persons; suppression of newspapers; seizure of property; denial of the mails to "treasonable correspondence"... Of course Lincoln was far from a dictator. The mechanisms of accountability---Congress, the courts, free elections, substantial freedoms of speech, press and assembly---all remained in place"(source) . The last bit is where Schlesinger's presumably empathy with Lincoln becomes an unbearable distortion of the truth. In his dutiful respect of Congress, Lincoln ignored the law and decided to wage war for 3 months before finally seeking the approval of Congress. Yes, the congressional mechanism remained "in place" but Lincoln saw himself above Congress, at least initially. The Courts were purposefully deceived by the likes of Secretary of State Seward and threatened with reprisal if they contested Lincoln's policies. So, while not dissolved, the courts were most certainly manipulated with threats by Lincoln's administration. It is also ludicrous to believe that civil liberties remained unimpeded during Lincoln's reign. Schlesinger admits to an apparatus that sounds vaguely similar to Nazi Germany: secret police, paid informants, seizure of property, and arrests without warrants. However, such abuses are not egregious enough to shake Schlesinger free from his conventional adoration of the man. Sure, the freedoms of speech and the press were untethered as long as neither disparaged Lincoln enough to arouse his anger. The shutdown of 300 newspapers and the imprisonment of an estimated 30,000 Northerners provides a gloomy enough portrait for me to conclude that Schlesinger was mistaken in his optimistic appraisal of Lincoln.

For generations now, we have been led to believe that Lincoln was simply an idealist and solely yearned for the black man to be free. However, Lincoln didn't really care about the plight of the slaves as much as he did about increasing his power and prosperity at the expense of others. His true aim can be gleaned from a letter he wrote to the influential abolitionist and editor Horace Greeley on August 22, 1862 which read, "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it." Even current Democratic Senator Jim Webb marginalizes Lincoln's role as abolitionist in his book "Born Fighting: A History of the Scots-Irish in America." In his book he observes that "in virtually every major battle of the Civil War, Confederate soldiers who did not own slaves fought against a proportion of Union Army soldiers who had not been asked to give up theirs." This included folks from the states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. If emancipating the slaves was of primary importance to Lincoln, then why were Union slave owners given a pass?

In actuality, the South decided to secede not in defense of slavery, but as a result of Union protectionism. What merely began as rhetoric in Lincoln's campaign culminated in the imposition of the brutal Morrill tariff. This tariff alone was used to fund 11% of the Union's war effort. The blockade on Southern ports existed solely to forcibly collect such duties.

On April 3, 1861, Lincoln sent a delegate, Allen McGruder, to the Virginia Secession Convention with hopes of keeping them in the Union. Upon arrival, McGruder decided that one representative was to return with him to Washington to speak to Lincoln about the likelihood of secession. The Virginia Convention selected the nascent delegate, Col. John B. Baldwin. In recounting his private exchange with President Lincoln, Baldwin recalls being asked by Lincoln,"But what am I to do in the meantime with those men in Montgomery? Am I to let them go on?" Baldwin replied, "Yes sir, until they can be peacably brought back." Lincoln then divulged his true motive for war when he responded, "And open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten percent tariff. What, then would become of my tariff?" Baldwin's account paints a far different picture of Lincoln than the selfless myth many are familiar with. Furthermore, the British were certainly sympathetic to the Southern plight because they jointly bore the tariff burden with their Confederate brethren.

Even Charles Dickens viewed the Morrill tariff as an inherently inflammatory measure to Southerners, "Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils.… [T]he quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel. But for all of those that choose to toe the line, Karl Marx denied any such claims. He firmly asserted the opposite: "Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress, but, at most, the Morrill tariff went through Congress because secession had taken place." However, the late Harvard economist Frank Taussig saw things more accurately: "The tariff act of 1861 was passed by the House of Representatives in the session of 1859–60, the session preceding the election of President Lincoln."(source) Fortunately, this should come as no surprise, for Marx certainly had a knack for misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

No records delineating the construction of a Confederate Constitution were preserved that would provide definitive proof of the tariff's impact. Regardless, more informal records do exist. Extensive letters written by a Georgia representative of the Provisional Congress, Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, to his wife must be counted as the next best source due to his level of involvement. According to economists Robert A. McGuire and T. Norman Van Cott, Cobb's letters indicate that the tariff was of profound importance to the committee. In a letter dated March 4, 1861, Cobb remarked that "the tariff question is troubling us a good deal. The absolute Free Trade principle is very strongly advocated." Lincoln was adamant in raising tariffs that protected Northern industry, and Southerners knew a tariff would spell the demise of the South. In a New York Times editorial published December 7, 1860, such Southern fears were discussed with undeniable cynicism and hostility: "South Carolina starts upon the assumption that upon ignoring the North, she is going to construct a commercial system of her own; send her products to Europe; bring back the proceeds in her own bottoms and make her cities great depots of commerce rivaling New-York. In this way she is to keep her wealth at home, and throw off a dependence which she asserts has sapped her means, and placed her in a state of humiliating vassalage."(source) To deny the importance of the tariff would be foolhardy. Yet, many prominent historians are still convinced that Lincoln was an emancipator and unifier and he simply did what needed to be done in order to thwart the cruel Confederates and thus reunite the country.

Some have rightfully asked why Lincoln never achieved a policy of "compensated emancipation" outside of Washington, D.C. There and only there did he pay $300 a slave to effectively end the local institution of slavery. It's hard to say how the Spanish, British, French and Dutch Empires all successfully implemented "compensated emancipation" without tremendous bloodshed. I'd be curious to study further the economic legacy resting behind such efforts. Lincoln tried desperately to sell the idea of compensated emancipation by claiming that all of the slaves of Missouri, Delaware, Kentucky, Washington. D.C., and Maryland would cost only $173,048,800 which would still be cheaper than 87 days of war priced at $174,000,000. But some found such sums of money impossible to finance without applying extreme tax burdens on their constituents. According to a message from a collective of Border State congressmen dated July 14, 1862, compensated emancipation would have destroyed the South's economy with insurmountably crippling debt: "Many of us doubted the constitutional power of this government to make appropriations of money for the object designated; and all of us, thought our finances were in no condition to bear the immense outlay which its adoption and faithful execution, would impose upon the National Treasury. If we pause but for a moment to think of the debt its acceptance would have entailed, we are appalled by its magnitude. The proposition was addressed to all the States, and embraced the whole number of slaves. According to the Census of 1860, there were then very nearly four millions of slaves in the country; from natural increase they exceed that number now. At even the low average of $300, — the price fixed by the emancipation Act, for the slaves of this District, and greatly below their real worth, — their value runs up to the enormous sum of Twelve Hundred Million of dollars; and if to that be added the cost of deportation and colonization, at $100 each, which is but a fraction more than is actually paid by the Maryland Colonization Society, we have four hundred millions more! We were not willing to impose a tax on our people sufficient to pay the interest on that sum, in addition to the vast and daily increasing debt already fixed upon them by the exigencies of the War; and if we had been willing, the country could not bear it.We were not willing to impose a tax on our people sufficient to pay the interest on that sum, in addition to the vast and daily increasing debt already fixed upon them by the exigencies of the War; and if we had been willing, the country could not bear it. Stated in this form, the proposition is nothing less than the deportation from the country of sixteen hundred million dollars' worth of producing labor, and the substitution in its place of an interest bearing debt of the same amount!"(source). If such calculations are correct, then it would truly be an impossible burden on the South if slaves were purchased by the government, i.e. taxpayer, and deported as suggested. How can anyone be surprised that legislators decried Lincoln's efforts and refused to abandon slavery?

Nowadays, people often say that Lincoln tried a peaceful route and failed and thus was left with no other viable option but war. This is patently false. He could have removed the damaging tariff and allowed the South to trade with Britain as it had in the past. The South only purchased certain goods overseas because the North's alternatives were too expensive and of cheaper quality. In other words, if the North wanted to become economically dominant, it would have needed to make goods better and cheaper than Britain. If this peaceful, free-market route had been pursued, instead of the protectionist path, then it's likely that the South would have rejoined the Union or, at worst, remained separate yet stable trade partners without war.

And while slavery will forever remain a despicable institution, eventually, the institution of slavery would have deteriorated due to an increased reliance on machinery in favor of inefficient human labor. Why continue to hold someone captive that requires food, medical care, and lodging when you could eventually acquire enough capital to replace him with incentivized hired labor and more efficient machinery that needn't be forcibly corralled? Everyone should read economist Gordon Tullock's succinct libertarian classic, "The Economics of Slavery", to get a better understanding of slave labor's defining characteristics (source) Just think of the modern automotive industry and its reliance on robotic assembly lines. Now juxtapose that with the image of the Studebaker brothers toiling at the foundry, working at a lugubrious pace on a wagon wheel. Contrast that further with an unmotivated workforce constituted of slaves constructing that said wagon wheel. The process becomes slower due to the lack of incentives for the labor and yet it's just as costly because one has to ensure that the slaves don't flee or revolt in the meantime. A necessary criterion of a unhampered free market is that inefficient, labor-intensive methods are phased out in favor of more efficient, cost-effective methods. We all want the greatest return with the least amount of effort. But to uproot the Southern economy instantaneously and deport its labor force before the necessary capital could be acquired to hire labor and build machinery of such magnitude would lead to utter destitution. Who would consent to that when it's not necessary? At least in war, the South had the potential to emerge victorious by defending their property as they rightfully should have.

Once the states had seceded, Lincoln and staff then embarked on a deceitful ploy to lure the South into firing the first shot. The war was initiated over Lincoln's desire to provide reinforcements to Union officer Major Anderson at Fort Sumter. Initially, Lincoln sought Major Anderson's abandonment of Fort Sumter and the Confederacy agreed to do no harm during the evacuation.

On April 1, 1861, Justice John Campbell met with Secretary of State Seward to confirm the abandonment of Fort Sumter. He left that meeting feeling as though Lincoln was venturing down a different and more treacherous path. Seward claimed that the President now wanted to send ships stocked only with food and provisions to Major Anderson's troops so as to relieve their torturous hunger. Yet, the men could not have been been hungry, because the city of Charleston was already feeding them until April 7th when it was confirmed that Union provisions would be arriving by April 12th at the latest. It seemed as if vilifying the brutish and insensitive Confederates was just a means to emotionalize the need for war in the North. Still, Seward placated Justice Campbell by reaffirming that Sumter's evacuation would happen soon enough.

The Confederacy only received notice of impending war when the mail was collected on April 7th. On April 7th, Major Anderson received a letter from Lincoln that notified Anderson that Lincoln was actually sending troops to reinforce Fort Sumter. Of course, this was not agreed upon by the Confederacy and was an act of pure deception on Lincoln's part. In the confiscated mail was a letter addressed to Lincoln from Major Anderson which read, "We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced." Such a revelation certainly must have startled those that read Anderson's letter. On April 12th, Major Anderson was asked to evacuate or be subject to attack. He refused to leave and bombardment commenced later that day. In his book "The Coming Fury", noted civil war historian Bruce Catton describes how Lincoln manipulated the South into making the first move: ["Lincoln had been plainly warned by Lamon and by Hurlbut that a ship taking provisions to Fort Sumter would be fired on. Now he was sending the ship, with advance notice to the men who had the guns. He was sending war ships and soldiers as well, but they would remain in the background; if there was going to be a war it would begin over a boat load of salt pork and crackers---over that, and the infinite overtones which by now were involved. Not for nothing did Captain Fox remark afterward that it seemed very important to Lincoln that South Carolina "should stand before the world as having fired upon bread."] Justice Campbell vocalized his profound disappointment with the administration by writing Seward: "I think no candid man who will read what I have written and consider for a moment what is going on at Sumter but will agree that the equivocating conduct of the Administration, as measured and interpreted in connection with these promises, is the proximate cause of the great calamity." Further evidence of Lincoln's deception comes from Lincoln's personal secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay. In their biography of Lincoln, they penned this telling passage: "President Lincoln in deciding the Sumter question had adopted a simple but effective policy. To use his own words, he determined to "send bread to Anderson"; if the rebels fired on that, they would not be able to convince the world that he had begun civil war. All danger of misapprehension, all accusations of "invasion" and "subjugation," would fall to the ground before that paramount duty not only to the nation, but to humanity."(source). This provides the starkest evidence of manipulation. The Confederacy either had to submit and be conquered by the Union or they could do the honorable thing and fight for their homes, despite risking complete vilification for having thwarted the feeding of starving men. At which point, the Union would use such "inhumane" action as a means to obliterate the South. What options!

Still, there is further evidence of malfeasance recorded by Lincoln's close friend Senator Orville Browning. On July 3, 1861, the night before Lincoln decided to acquire the consent of Congress, Lincoln met with Senator Browning in private to discuss the address Lincoln had prepared to deliver Congress the following day. Afterwards, Browning made it a point to detail the conversation in his personal diary. In it he wrote: "He told me that the very first thing placed in his hands after his inauguration was a letter from Major Anderson announcing the impossibility of defending or relieving Sumter. That he called the cabinet together and consulted General Scott---that Scott concurred with Anderson, and the cabinet with the exception of PM General Blair were for evacuating the Fort, and all the troubles and anxieties of his life had not equalled those which intervened between this time and the fall of Sumter. He himself conceived the idea, and proposed sending supplies, without an attempt to reinforce giving notice of the fact that Governor Pickens of S.C. The plan succeeded. They [the Confederates] attacked Sumter--it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could."(source).

According to Browning, Lincoln's cabinet largely opposed the maneuver and yet the near-unilateral plan was still put into action. Some historians such as Charles W. Ramsdell treat such an account as evidence too, while others remain less convinced. The late historian Allan Nevins was of the belief that Browning's words "cannot be regarded as literally accurate." I'd say that his documenting the event on the very day it happened makes it more likely to be accurate than not. Still, others such as the Southern historian, David M. Potter, pondered whether Browning even heard the President correctly. I suppose that's possible, but in regards to the Nicolay and Hay passage and Lincoln's laundry list of abuses of executive power, I'd say, again, that it's far more likely that he heard him well enough.

So how did Lincoln get away with such abuse and yet remain unscathed? He won. It's as simple as that. If the South had emerged victorious then Lincoln would have likely been impeached and hung for propagating such unconstitutional and wanton destruction. Nixon's presidency would be reappraised as being innocuous in comparison to the era of that tryant Lincoln. And he would have been rightfully tossed into the dustbin of history. People need to reflect on his record and not the mythos that bears no likeness to the truth of the matter. If a liberal comes away from my analysis without vacillation then I'd say he was a hypocrite.

One cannot condemn Bush's suspension of habeas corpus or his defiant assertion of executive privilege during wartime and not condemn Lincoln as well. Yes, times were different. Yes, Lincoln's dilemma was far more grave. Still, Bush apologists could counter by saying that our modern enemies, with their modern weaponry, require far greater vigilance than was required during Lincoln's day. The elegant response is to decry the methods of both. Their tactics can be seen in the very least, to borrow Schlesinger's description of Lincoln's policies, as "quasi-dictatorial". Still, that's too dictatorial to deserve my unflinching adulation.

The Lesser of Two Evils

One of my heroes is the sadly underappreciated Old Right essayist, Frank Chodorov. He wrote a particularly comforting essay entitled, "On Underwriting an Evil." In it he explains why he has refused to vote for the previous 50 years (mind you, it was published in 1962) and it illustrates many of the very reasons why I believe most candidates are unworthy of the title of President. I want to begin by stating that all candidates are admittedly flawed which is even conceded by their staunchest supporters. Still, many people simply vote for the candidate that represents the "lesser of two evils". However, by voting this way, one is merely underwriting an evil, or supporting one evil instead of another, or supporting one candidate's lesser collective evil instead of his opponent's greater collective evil. To me and the late Mr. Chodorov, this denotes a profound lack of moral fortitude in the voter. Frank said it best when he wrote, "If I were to vote for the "lesser of two evils" I would in fact be subscribing to whatever that "evil" does in office. He could claim a mandate for his official acts, a sort of blank check, with my signature, into which he could enter his performances. My vote is indeed a moral sanction, upon which the official depends for support of his acts, and without which he would feel rather naked." I'm repeatedly at a loss as to why people vote for someone who is at least partly evil. Though we may be imperfect, maybe we could collectively become better people ourselves if we demand that only the finest representatives of humanity hold public office. Libertines of the likes of John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Lyndon Johnson simply wouldn't have a chance to lord over us. What readily alarms me is the belief held by the "big party" acolytes that they employed steady reason to arrive at their voting decision. I now want to put such silliness to the test by scrutinizing some of the more contentious elements in Bush's presidency and see how they have fared under Obama's rule.

Let's start big. How about America's war efforts. Bush began the War on Terror by confronting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq back in 2001. However, Obama is still perpetuating the war effort and is looking to raze Iran and Pakistan as well. To be more accurate, Obama has already permitted the strategic bombing of Pakistan(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/24/pakistan-barack-obama-air-strike). Yet, Cindy Sheehan is now having an extraordinarily tough time finding people on the Left to protest the same wars that left them rabid during the Bush years (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/What-happened-to-the-antiwar-movement--Cindy-Sheehan-responds-53628177.html). And what about Bush's dismantling of habeas corpus? Well, Obama is now fighting to preserve that unconstitutional precedent set by his predecessor (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/11/bagram/). I could delve much deeper into the similarity of the rhetoric but that seems superfluous for even a lofty blog entry such as this. The important fact is that Obama is just as adamant about war as his predecessor and as loony as Sheehan can seem, I admire her for going it alone these days.

Another tremendous flaw that the Left rightfully found in the Bush administration was his support of illegal wiretappings and his concomitant telecom immunity rulings. Yet, we are hard pressed to find much difference in Obama's position. In fact, let's look at the words of the respective presidents. In defense of his decision, Bush commented, "This vital intelligence bill will allow our national security professionals to quickly and effectively monitor the plans of terrorists outside the United States, while respecting the liberties of the American people." With eerie similarity, Obama made these remarks, "Given the grave threats our national security agencies must have the capability to gather and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people." Again, this was a nettle in the hearts of liberals when Bush was in command, but this continued offense on civil liberties has been viewed in far softer light with Obama now in office.

The Patriot Act. It once gave shivers to all on the Left. Now, Bush's much derided and soon-to-be expired Patriot Act has just been extended by Obama. Without a doubt, some of the most bellicose rants from the Left targeted the unconstitutionality of the Patriot Act. Yet, the Democrats have scarcely made a whimper about it. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090915/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_patriot_act

Another obvious similarity is their mutual support of bailing out businesses "too big to fail". It shouldn't then surprise anyone that Obama voted for 19 of Bush's lavish spending bills. Both undeniably love big government in all of its forms. In addendum, I think it's worth noting that on Obama's website, he juxtaposes his vision of economic reform against McCain's vision by saying that McCain's plan would tack on an additional $3.4 trillion to the national debt. What's funny is that Obama's reforms have been tabulated by the CBO to likely add $9.1 trillion to our deficit within the next 10 years. Ironically, he states on his website, "John McCain's plan of giving tax cuts to the wealthy and to Big Business will add $3.4 trillion to the national debt, bankrupting America." If McCain's $3.4 trillion will definitively bankrupt America, what will $9.1 trillion do within the next 10 years? http://www.barackobama.com/issues/index_campaign.php

And what about trade policy? In this realm, Bush will largely be remembered by his protectionist blunders. In 2002, he enacted a 30% tariff on imported steel as well as a farm bill robust with all sorts of market-distorting subsidies. Fast forward to the present and we now have another protectionist president in Barack Obama. His recent 35% tariff on Chinese tires is certainly not the way into the heart of America's largest debt holder. In fact, China responded by imposing their own tariffs on American cars and chickens. Tariffs always feel like a slap to the face and we're picking a fight with the wrong people. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/business/global/14trade.html

How about their respective positions on Big Pharma? In an article by Robert Reich on Salon.com, Reich seems to see a frustrating lack of difference between Bush and Obama concerning the power of Big Pharma, "Last week, after being reported in the Los Angeles Times, the White House confirmed it has promised Big Pharma that any healthcare legislation will bar the government from using its huge purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. That's basically the same deal George W. Bush struck in getting the Medicare drug benefit, and it's proven a bonanza for the drug industry...Let me remind you: Any bonanza for the drug industry means higher healthcare costs for the rest of us, which is one reason why critics of the emerging healthcare plans, including the Congressional Budget Office, are so worried about their failure to adequately stem future healthcare costs." So, change comes in the form of more back room dealings with the Big Pharma leviathan. More price distortions and less medication for those who need it. That's not change. That's more of the same.

Capital punishment will always be a political lightning rod. Interestingly enough, Bush's support of capital punishment was castigated by the Left at the time, namely for the fact that he hailed from the capital punishment Mecca. But, Obama is a proponent of capital punishment too. In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama ruminates about which crimes deserve death, he concludes that they must be "so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment."

Although this entry may come across as a pedantic exercise, I feel that one must be pretty damn thorough to convince anyone of anything. Although I'm only looking at the current political hypocrisies, I feel as though I may be looking at any sequence of presidencies that denote political change. People become so emotionally invested in the process thinking that though "their" man may not be perfect, he is still a hell of a lot better than the OTHER guy. But I'm curious to hear how these similarities will be explained away. Bush had his irrational hawkish cheerleaders that were deservedly mocked by the leftist intelligentsia. However, the tide has changed, though not really. These folks on the Left are currently playing from the same, tired playbook. Regretfully, they fawn over their dreamboat candidate, naive to his horrid faults or purposefully plugging their ears. I don't know which they are doing, maybe a mixture of both, but don't tell me that because I don't vote that I'm the pusillanimous one, because it's not a sign that I'm a part of the perfunctoriness of my apathetic generation, but a sign that I refuse to vote for any demonstrable evil whatsoever.

Free

Do people truly believe that health care can be offered for free? Or anything for that matter?Surely these folks understand that nothing is truly free, no matter what the situation may be. There is always an exchange of some sort based upon the participating individuals' personal valuations, even during charitable circumstances. For instance, you may help an elderly neighbor fix her flat tire for free. But it's still not free, not even then. You do it for the psychic revenue, for the gratifying feeling that you've done something honorable for your fellow man. For most, though, that's not enough, because you can't pay bills with psychic revenue no matter how honorable it may be. According to the late Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard, the cost of any decision can be defined as the next highest utility that must be forgone because of one's decision. If one decides to work instead of relax, one values work at least slightly more than leisure. Therefore, the laborer has decided to bear the cost of forgone leisure. But what does this mean in regards to our nation's runaway deficit and the institution of drastic health care reform?

As of right now, both President Obama and Senator Baucus have proposed expensive solutions in a a feeble effort to redesign our undeniably cancerous health care system. Both proposals are looking to cost somewhere around $900 billion over the next 10 years. Baucus is confident that his plan would reduce the federal budget deficit by $23 billion. However, the national debt is currently at $11.8 trillion and has risen $3.78 billion a day since September of 2007. In fact, it it currently takes only about 3-4 seconds to add an additional $100,000 to our deficit. If you really want to be nauseated then I suggest you visit the online debt clock (http://www.usdebtclock.org/). There you get a dreadful sense that our economy is in the process of radioactive decay. So, Baucus's plan would cut the deficit by about 6 days worth of bloated government spending. That's a proverbial drop in the bucket if there ever was one. I suspect that Obama's plan will provide similar savings, if you really want to call them that. Well, then what's the solution?

For one, the idea that you can fix the economy by piling on more debt is ludicrous. There's a reason that banks don't like to loan money to folks with a poor credit history and an abysmal income. It's risky for them and thus the interest rates should be high in order to compensate. By artificially lowering interest rates to keep credit flowing against the market's wishes is insanity. It only perpetuates the reckless policy of easy credit that created the housing bubble. Foreclosures are now so astronomically high because people received easy credit when they shouldn't have qualified for a loan in the first place. The original blame should be cast on the Federal Reserve's massive credit expansion efforts. To make matters worse, places like China and Japan hold sizable portions of our debt via US bonds. Right now China alone holds about $800 billion of US debt. This means that our economic stature is ultimately determined by those that hold these US assets. If we devalue the dollar by printing a trillion new greenbacks then China is that much closer to dumping the dollar in search of a sturdier currency. That results in hyperinflation. That means we'll be burning dollars to stay warm in the winter. One needn't look any further than the inflated fiat currency of the Weimar Republic just before Hitler rose to power. Hopefully, you see why adding $900 billion to our debt in 10 years, only to pay it down by $23 billion is laughable. Ideally, the government shouldn't spend a dime instituting programs that they can't truly pay for. But our system still needs to be fixed, right?

Absolutely. Health care is currently defective but it's not due to the supposed free-market failures. It's entirely due to extensive government interference. The list of foolish things is almost without end. To start, guaranteed issue policies are one reason why health care costs are so distorted. These force insurance companies to cover all comers even those with pre-existing conditions. Currently, 42 states allow guaranteed issue health coverage to varying degrees, while 8 states require ALL to be covered regardless of their medical history. To be brutally honest, people with a litany of problems must pay more than the healthy person. The problem is that it's agreeable to those benefitting from the handout, but not to those that are forced to bear the costs and pay higher premiums as a result. You accept enough of the infirm, then the twenty-something is strangled by the rising costs. This is similar to the banking crisis. The folks with loads of debt should be expected to have higher interest payments due to the risk involved. Instead, the mismanagement of funds by the lenders and the borrowers leaves the honest savers with an economic disaster to pick up afterwards. Another reason for pricy healthcare are things called "Community Ratings". These are often used in conjunction with guaranteed issue policies and are responsible for equalizing premiums regardless of one's health. The young pay the same as the old. Obviously, this will lead to cheaper premiums for the elderly and infirm but will dramatically raise premiums for the healthy 21 year old. Theoretically, the premiums could become so high that they could make health care virtually unaffordable for some. Some costly measures are spurred on by advocacy groups. In some of these cases, states with government-mandated coverage might also demand that you pay for alcoholism coverage or drug-addiction coverage. Still, the list continues. State governments demand that citizens only purchase insurance in state. This provides an impediment to market entry by limiting the buyer's choices. Less competition means higher prices due to the law of supply and demand. Another costly variable in this equation is the existence of medical licensing boards like the AMA. The AMA formed in 1847 in an effort to push out the charlatans and impose some standards in medical practice. Undoubtedly, the AMA's efforts were unnecessary but left the lovely unintended consequence of creating a limited supply of doctors. In a free market, the quacks would be held accountable by fraud and negligence laws, but people would still be free to visit whomever they trusted. Today, the AMA is alive and well, but it still creates a scarcity where there needn't be one. Ok, but what about those nasty HMOs that Michael Moore loves to talk about?

The case of HMOs is maybe the most ironic argument used by advocates of nationalized health care. Some people want to believe that today's HMO juggernauts originated in the free market, but in reality they were nothing more than a contrivance by the federal government. With the passing of the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, government grants and loans have since been used to plan, start, or expand HMOs. Also, HMO's achieved monopoly status when it was demanded that all companies with at least 25 employees had to offer federally certified HMO options. The power of our insurance companies was granted NOT because they rightfully ascended the ranks by offering the most affordable and efficient services, but because the federal government waved their wand and made it so.

Finally, people need to accept that suing doctors for malpractice is in most cases absurd. In actuality, most malpractice lawsuits have more to do with "customer dissatisfaction" than irreparable damage being done by the doctor. I wouldn't sue Parks and Recreation if I decided to mountain climb without a harness and was maimed as a result of my poor decision. Yet some people would and they should be lambasted for being vindictive and doing what ultimately amounts to fraud. Another complication is that conditions such as osteoporosis and osteopenia have been deemed "diseases"when in fact they're just the normal side-effects of aging. Yet, old ladies want a pill to fix their bones or costly hormone replacement therapy to falsely maintain a vestige of youth. Even more clamber for such things when they are covered by Medicare. They then become litigious if they develop a deep vein thrombosis or cancer from their dangerous treatment course because they ignored the potential cost of reclaiming their youth with such silly methods. Defensive medicine is a term that's been circulating for a few years and it's also driving up costs. This means that doctors would rather order that expensive CAT scan just to cover their bases than run the risk of getting sued by a vindictive and unhappy patient. As a result, malpractice insurance is becoming more expensive in order to absorb the frivolous lawsuits and so doctors must demand higher premiums.

Costs are unavoidable and therefore healthcare is no different. With our federal government wanting to spend nearly a trillion dollars in 10 years to fix the damage created by it's very self, faith in our bureaucrats must be lost and their debilitating measures repudiated. A free-market option has not existed in well over a century. To return to such halcyon days would require that we dismantle the superfluous legislation that allows price fixing and forces limited competition. It also requires that people have the freedom to act as they see fit without the infantilizing financial aid of the government. Some will fall and will fall hard, but it's ultimately up to them as to whether they learn from their mistakes and learn to save, produce, and become reasonable. Until then, America will be perennially cruising for a bruising and, believe me, we look battered enough as is.

Who is the Forgotten Man?

Quite frankly, the Forgotten Man is every one of us who feels they are acting rightly yet are enjoying less freedom due to the indiscretions of their peers and elected officials. The idea is based upon the brilliant essay, "On the Case of a Certain Man Who Is Never Thought Of," by the late American sociologist William Graham Sumner. In abstract terms, Sumner defined the Forgotten Man as item C in the following scenario: A and B work together to decide what C should do for the benefit of D. C is the Forgotten Man because he is utilized and also penalized without his consent. Sumner used the example of conscientious teetotalers serving as items A and B and passing legislation(or advocating that laws be passed) for the sake of the poor drunkard, D. However, C is the assiduous, upstanding citizen that bothers no one and asks for nothing but does enjoy some good scotch now and again. Still, a law is a law and even C must comply or face the consequences. So, he is most certainly not considered by the teetotalers and is in fact penalized by them merely because of the weak-willed drunkard. This illustration is undeniably quaint considering it was originally crafted back in 1883, yet it can easily be adapted to current dilemmas. Issues ranging from universal health care to the current wars in the Middle East create a veritable horde of Forgotten Men. Even going as far back as the Revolutionary War, war has been waged via direct taxation as well as the insidious and indirect tax, inflation. War-mongering nations have had currencies become debased to the point of ruin and the livelihood of it's people tragically languish right along along with them. This blog defends the C, the folks who, as Sumner said, behave themselves, fulfill their contracts and never ask for a thing. It is meant to shine light on that bureaucratic dung heap that is Capitol Hill and to provide a rational firewall against the encroaching miasma of moral relativism, political correctness, and the nanny state.