StephanKinsella.com

This LightReading article, Video Site Cheat Sheet II, summarizes various video hosting/sharing websites. YouTube and Google Video are not the only ones.

My post on NoodleFood is below in case they delete me:

I have learned a great deal about this topic from some debates among Austrians in the RAE and QJAE, e.g. (all available at www.mises.org if no link provided):

Hoppe: How is Fiat Money Possible?-or, The Devolution of Money and Credit
http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae7_2_3.pdf

Rothbard: Aurophobia: or, Free Banking on What Standard? A Review of Gold, Greenbacks, and the Constitution, by Richard H. Timberlake
http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae6_1_4.pdf

Hulsmann: Free Banking and the Free Bankers http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_1_1.pdf
also: http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/18_3/18_3_3.pdf

Block: Hayek, Business Cycles, and Fractional Reserve Banking: Continuing the De-Homogenization Process
http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_1_3.pdf

and on the other side:
Selgin & White’s In Defense of Fiduciary Media-or, We are Not Devo(lutionists), We are Misesians! http://www.mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_5.pdf

As I mentioned in this thread discussing some Objectivist economic views ( http://blog.mises.org/archives/003091.asp ), unlike Hoppe, Hulsmann, Rothbard, Reisman, et al., I do not see fractional reserve banking as being necessarily *fraudulent*. As I wrote, “If it is disclosed clearly enough, I am not sure I see any fraudulent act being committed. I would need to be persuaded there is a given, concrete person who is a victim of fraud necessarily, due to fractional reserve banking–and a given coherent, precise definition of fraud given.”

That said, I am convinced by the arguments of these writers that fractional reserve banking makes no sense economically and could not work. To me, it is an attempt to get something for nothing; and it makes the mistake of conflating money (and the money supply) with actual wealth (e.g. produced goods). There is a difference between saved money, and invested money. If you want to let 90% of your “deposit” be “loaned out” fine, but then it is really a type of investment, not savings, and cannot be a genuine deposit.

LewRockwell.com, June 6, 2006

Compared to conservatives and liberals, libertarians tend to have more uniform views on a wide array of issues. This is probably because the libertarian view is more coherent and principled–and more correct–than the more ad hoc and ever evolving views of mainstreamers. There are issues where debate remains–anarchy v. minarchy; abortion; vouchers; immigration–but there is large agreement on a host of key political matters.

Another issue that there seems to breed wide disagreement among libertarians is the issue of gay marriage. This seems like a strange matter to have strong disagreement over. I think the first question is, is there a libertarian view on gay marriage, any more than there is a libertarian view on whether capes are good or Beethoven is evil?It seems to me the only truly libertarian view of gay marriage is some kind of idealized standard–that is, what would be the legal status of gay marriage in a minarchy or anarchy. Arguably, in both, there would be no state sanction of marriage at all. Hetero couples would still “marry” and be regarded as such, but it would be a customary, traditional, or religiously-related union, with civil (e.g. contractual, testamentary, and mandatary) effects. In societies and cultures where homosexuality is not seriously scorned and penalized and is somewhat openly practiced by a minority of the populace, some gay couples would no doubt come to be regarded as “partners” as they are today; and perhaps some would try to call themselves “married” and use some kind of ceremony; whether this type of “marriage” would ever be regarded as “fully legitimate” by society at large, who knows.

In any event, the libertarian can say that “the” libertarian view is that the state should get out of the way and out of the business of decreeing marital status, but it that all he can say?

It seems to me that if we want to opine on the libertarianness of certain gay marriage policies or proposals in today’s semi-state-run world, we need to keep in mind a few more or less clear-cut libertarian principles.

First, if the state is going to be in the business of enforcing and recognizing contracts, estate successions, medical power of attorney, and the like, then if a number of individuals–whether it be, as I’ve noted previously, two gays, two siblings, or a rock band–want to form some kind of civil or contractual union giving them certain succession rights, agency powers, and property/contract power/co-ownership rights, then this contractual regime ought to be recognized and enforced. Those conservatives who believe that even civil unions should be outlawed are just unlibertarian. There is no warrant for the state not recognizing the contractual aspects of any civil union.

Second, it also seems obvious that there is a mixture of motives among advocates of gay marriage. I think two of the primary motivations are (a) to use the power of the state to try to “officially authorize” the “normalcy” and “legitimacy” of homosexuality and homosexual unions, in turn to try to force society at large to see it as normal and acceptable; (b) to take part in various illegitimate welfare rights married couples have access to, like social security; and (c) to legally legitimize homosexuality and gay unions so as to remove one remaining obstacle to including homosexuality as a “protected minority class” who must have affirmative action and anti-discrimination law protection.

All these goals are unlibertarian and illegitimate, in my view. One significant danger, I believe, of the state recognizing gay marriage is the last concern. So long as the state officially is able to discriminate against gays by not letting them be married, it’s difficult for gay advocates to argue that they should be included in anti-discrimination and affirmative action law coverage. After all, sodomy is still illegal in some states, which makes it difficult to argue there is a constitutional right to engage in it or to not be discriminated against because of it.

One other goal for gay marriage is to permit gay couples to easily and efficiently have the contractual aspects of their relationship respected and enforced: so that if one person is sick or incapacitated the other has medical visitation and decision-rights; inheritance rights; property co-ownership rights, and the like. This is about the only goal of the pro-gay marriage types that I think is supportable by libertarians. But for this, we don’t need gay marriage, but only civil unions. My view is that we ought to have civil unions legally recognized, so as to solve the only real, legitimate grip gays have, and to leave the rest exposed as the naked political power grab that they are.

***

In deciding what particular laws or legislation to support or condemn on libertarian grounds, however, we must also take into account various federalism-related issues. I would personally support a state law (or state constitutional amendment, perhaps) that enforced and recognized civil unions. (I would not favor the state’s using the word “marriage” to describe this union, since it adds nothing to the benefits gays are really (libertarianly) entitled to, and threatens to carry out the unlibertarian goals (1)-(3) noted above.)

However, I would not support a federal law recognizing civil unions (except for and to the extent there are federal law aspects to it), or forcing states to do so, for federalist reasons. I would oppose such a law. I would oppose even more strongly a federal law outlawing (at the state level) gay marriage or civil unions. The only federal law I can imagine supporting in this regard would be a law that limits federal judges from interfering with states in this regard.

Some recent thoughts. I have over the years re-thought the coherence of Rand’s argument on rights. (Re Rand’s epistemology–always thought a lot of it made sense, in common-sense, broad outlines, or when she was critiquing others; OTOH I tend to think she greatly distorted Kant.) Much like I’ve re-thought her argument for patents. Both of them seem sensible at first but the more you think about them the more they don’t hang together.

Re rights I think the problem is you really can’t derive an ought from an is. Her flip comment that what a thing’s nature IS determines what it OUGHT to do is a non-sequitur. You have to have a “moral leap,” in my view; which she in a sense agrees iwht, by saying that all ethics is based on the original (and a-moral!) “choice to live”. In my view, likewise, there is no categorical, natural-law “non-aggression rule.” Rather, I think it is the case that those people who do (for whatever reason, or, yes, “whim”) happen to personally value civilization, peace, cooperation, and who therefore seek to justify proposed uses of interpersonal violence–that the non-aggression rule emerges. And the most consistent among them are libertarians. I.e., rihgts are sort of hypothetical. But tha’ts okay. I think many Randians and other libertarians would be reluctant to admit this b/c they want a “drop dead,” “good for all time” argument. But even if you had such an argument: still, people have free will, and some people would choose to act immorally anyway. So there is no “penalty” for admitting civilized ethics are hypothetical; none at all; they are no “stronger” than categorical or natural law ones; and they are easier to justify–you just appeal to the baseline sense of morality that is already adopted by any fellow participant in civilized discourse. And if they are not such people, they are like animals, outlaws, criminals, which exist even if you had a knock-down argument.

I have some draft material on this which I plan to publish whenever I find time to clean it up.

Interesting post: Re-Evaluating Ayn Rand. Also, Scott Ryan tells me that he deals with some of the non-sequiturs and fallacies of Rand’s defense of individual rights in the last couple chapters of his book, Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality: A Critique of the Epistemology of Ayn Rand (PDF), which I have not yet read.

Top 10 Essential Classic Rock Albums–oh really? Not much rock on there–The Who? The Beatles? Rolling Stones? Bob Dylan? The Doors? Soft rock, pop rock, candy rock. Not real rock. Okay, I’ll give ‘im Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and even Hendrix, though that’s more proto-rock. Maybe even Jefferson Airplane, and the annoying Clapton. But where is Rush? Van Halen? Even Metallica is real rock at least.

See also:

• C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” and Misesian Dualism
• The Trouble with Milsted
• Engineers’ Syndrome
• The Problem with Natural Rights and True Believer Activism

My latest LRC piece, here. Some discussion at LRC blog, here.

The Trouble With Libertarian Activism

I recently ran across The Need to be Anarchists, by big-L Libertarian Carl Milsted. The piece provides a good illustration of some of the dangers of relying on utilitarian arguments and being overly focused with “strategy” and tactics. And it demonstrates the importance of relying on principle and carefully distinguishing the pursuit and advocacy of truth and rights from activist concerns.

Milsted, who runs the website “Holistic Politics” (res ipsa loquitur), argues that we libertarians are uncomfortable with government because “Taxation is theft”. On the other hand if we “call[] for no government” we are “subject[ed] to ridicule.” So we libertarians face a dilemma: damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

Apparently, being subjected to ridicule is undesirable — perhaps it is not a good way to “get things done.” (See the activist mindset creeping into a question of what our rights are; whether aggression is justified?) So Milsted wants to cut the Gordian knot by abandoning the ridiculous opposition to theft and state, assuming he can find a way to justify it. Here we have the activist or tactical mindset making Milsted look for a way to justify theft: here is where utilitarianism enters the picture. Both activism and utilitarianism push principle to the side as a nagging inconvenience. There is no room for principle in the ultra-pragmatic ever-shifting weighing and balancing of utilitarianism; and activists want results, and now!, damnit, not principles.

Milsted concludes that we have to “allow some theft to enable the minimal state that maximizes liberty.” He bases this conclusion on the idea that if a given act of theft creates enough surplus value to be able to “adequately compensate” the victim, then it’s worth doing and justified — the victim is made whole, and the rest of society is made better off. For example, in the case of national defense, or “country roads,” because of “economies of scale,” government can do these things more cheaply, so that, if

the majority assesses a tax on everyone to spread the burden of supporting the new defense system. This is theft of the minority. However, suppose that the economies of scale are such that this tax is less than half of what people would have had to pay for defense on their own. Now we have theft with adequate compensation.

Aside: I have long noticed that many brash young libertarians of the activist flavor who are not all that interested in theory and What Has Gone Before are — perhaps influenced by Rand? — often unfamiliar with the great body of libertarian literature and want to reinvent the wheel from a clean slate (many engineers, in my experience, take a similar pragmatic, isolated, almost anti-intellectual approach in their views on politics). Now I don’t know if this observation applies to our current author, but he does seem blithely unaware that his stab at theory is nothing more than a rudimentary version of what utilitarian legal theorist Richard Epstein proposed in his book Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain.

Anyway, Milsted tries to justify his reasoning by appealing to Rothbard:

In the Bible, a thief was supposed to pay double. Should he do that, he can go free. Murray Rothbard called for the same principle in The Ethics of Liberty. In other words, theft is morally acceptable if all victims are paid back double.

Milsted’s “in other words” does not follow from Rothbard’s reasoning, nor is it correct. Rothbard was merely arguing for a certain standard for restitution after a crime has happened. As should be quite obvious, specifying the standard for damages payable for a crime most certainly does not mean the crime is “morally acceptable.” If it did, this would imply that if someone is trying to take my property I have to let them if they offer me enough money. But this is untrue. The standards for what can be done to stop a crime and what should or may be done after it is too late to stop it are different. If someone tries to take my car, I may use force against them to stop them; I would argue it is justified to kill them, if necessary, to prevent the crime. After the crime is committed, however, killing the criminal won’t prevent it, so, arguably, the only remedy left is some form of restitution. This does not mean that the restitution justifies the crime, however.

In fact, if theft is morally acceptable if enough restitution is paid, the same reasoning would apply to all crimes, including murder, rape, and torture. By this reasoning, if a billionaire can pay your heirs millions of dollars in compensation for torturing you to death against your will, his act of murder is morally acceptable.

Here Milsted perhaps unwittingly takes utilitarianism to a reductio ad absurdum, saving his critics the trouble. As has been pointed out many times, the utilitarian standard would permit, for example, a very desperate rapist to rape a woman of loose morals, since the damage to her is arguably small (by utilitarian standards) and the benefit to him great, providing a net benefit to society; or a rich man to be taxed to support the poor, since the money means so much more to the destitute than to the one rich man. And so on. Utilitarians usually deny the aptness of such reductios, but Milsted here seems to embrace it.

In my view, our author’s argument here demonstrates the perils of thinking in utilitarian terms — you start thinking that an act of crime is okay so long as some people benefit from the crime more than the victim suffers. The focus on individual rights is lost, as is the distinction between victim and aggressor.

In any event, the appeal to utilitarianism is problematic on several fronts. It is, first and foremost, ethically bankrupt because it is an unproven, and indeed, false, assertion that it is justifiable to rob one man if the robbery benefits others. It is also economically incoherent because the subjective and ordinal nature of value makes it impossible even in principle to ever determine whether a given invasive action results in a “net” benefit or “surplus” (see on this Rothbard’s Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics).

Moreover, even if we assume away the ethical and methodological problems with using a utilitarian standard, it would be completely unworkable in practice, given the corrupt nature of government; and indeed, as with the utilitarian case for intellectual property, those who assert this or that measure is a “net benefit” don’t ever make a serious attempt to show that it really is. Instead, they say, “defense” is “obviously” a public good, and satisfies the test; “roads” are “easy cases”; and so on. They can never tell you in dollar or util terms what the alleged surplus is; they just know there is one. And they never make a serious attempt to take into account all the costs. For example, even if utilitarianism made sense, and even if we assume that national defense and public roads led to surpluses that could be used to compensate the victims (Epstein analogizes this to measures that increase the “size of the pie”), why assume that the state, once given the power to engage in wealth transfers, will restrict itself only to “efficient” takings? Surely there is a real risk — even inevitability — that the state will not restrict itself to the few things it “ought” to be doing.

Additionally, even if the state engages only in “efficient” activities, what about mushrooming costs of these activities? Let’s say national defense benefits citizens more than the taxes to pay for it cost them (and that it would be more expensive to buy defense on the free market). Does this still hold true a decade down the road, when the state decides to use its restless army for imperialist ambitions? Or when the use of the army provokes a war, which leads to the state imposing conscription? And so on.

In other words, utilitarianism is both ethically bankrupt as well as economically incoherent (see pp. 12—15 of this article for further references). It cannot serve to justify theft.

The focus on tactics and strategy also leads to confusion about libertarian principles. Writes our author,

Libertarians have a serious dilemma. Either we make a Machiavelli [sic] trade-off and allow some theft to enable the minimal state that maximizes liberty, or we plunge ahead calling for no government and hope for the best, based on some daring theoretical extrapolations. The former makes us uneasy. The latter subjects us to ridicule. 99+% of the people consider anarchy to be too risky to be attempted.

Not surprisingly for a big-L Libertarian, Milsted’s focus is on strategy, tactics, activism, and rhetoric. Such a focus often leads libertarians to confuse “what persuades people” with “what is true.” We principled libertarians have no problem recognizing the difference between what is right and true, with what is likely and what we can get away with. They are different questions. But strategists have trouble seeing past strategy and “what works”. If a principles-based libertarian says, “public education is unjustified and ought to be abolished,” a typical reply of a tactician-activist is “but that is not practical” or “but that is not going to sell with the average person”. In other words, the activist makes the mistake of confusing what will sell with what is true. But the committed activist too often relegates something that will not sell now, today, as useless, and in effect as untrue — or, more to the point, he adopts the view that what is true does not really matter; only results matter. Sure, both inquiries — what is the best strategy to achieve liberty? what is liberty? — have their own value and roles. But they are not the same.

In Milsted’s case, his activist-tactical approach leads him to mistake the nature of anarchism and libertarianism. To be an anarchist is not to “plunge ahead calling for no government and hope for the best, based on some daring theoretical extrapolations.” Only the activist would think this way, since he thinks in terms of things we advocate and try to achieve. But anarchists per se are not “in favor of” some “alternative system.” That’s not what it means to be an anarcho-capitalist.

Rather, as I have pointed out elsewhere, to be an anarcho-capitalist is simply to recognize (a) aggression is unjustified; and (b) even the minarchist state necessarily commits aggression (and is therefore unjustified). It does not mean one predicts such a situation will occur, or “is workable,” etc. It only means that the anarchist libertarian opposes all forms of aggression: both private aggression committed by criminals, and institutionalized aggression the state is able to perpetrate only because a large percentage of the population erroneously regards it as legitimate.

In other words, if one is not an anarchist, this means one either holds that states do not commit aggression, or maintains that aggression is (in some cases) justified. Admirably, Milsted does not try to evade this. He acknowledges that the state commits aggression. It is theft he is trying to justify, after all. He simply thinks aggression in some cases is justified; such a view is also common among socialists and criminals. As I noted above, his reasons in support of justified aggression are confused. On the one hand, his reasoning seems to be based on a desire to avoid being “subjected to ridicule.” This is obviously not a justification for violent invasion of others’ bodies or property. Certainly not one that will satisfy libertarians who oppose aggression as a matter of principle. His argument also relies on utilitarian reasoning, and rests on the false assumption that a crime can be justified ahead of time by the criminal paying the proper toll. (See also this post by Manuel Lora, critiquing Milsted’s political gradualism and anti-radicalism.)

I don’t say Milsted’s attempt to justify a small bit of aggression is evil or insincere. In fact it’s common and probably sincere. I think he would like to reduce aggression, but he is willing to break some eggs to make an omelet. However, if libertarianism is at root about the opposition to aggression and the desire for peace, harmony, and cooperation — as I believe it ought to be — the proposed normalization of theft simply isn’t libertarian.

Steve Nipper recommended Copernic to me as an alternative to Google’s Desktop Search. He’s right–it’s fantastic and much better than the dreadful Google Desktop Search.

Another of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes (partly available here) is from his Narnia book The Silver Chair, when the Emerald Witch has several of the good guys–the Prince; Puddleglum, a Marsh-wiggle; Jill; and Eustace Scrubb–captured underground and under a magical spell. The Witch tries to make them believe there is no Narnia, and no Aslan (the Jesus-figure)–no world above, no sun, no lions.

It did not ablaze much, but a very sweet and drowsy smell came from it. And all through the conversation which followed, that smell grew stronger and filled the room and made it harder to think. Secondly, she took out a musical instrument rather like a mandolin. She began to play it with her fingers — a steady, monotonous thrumming that you didn’t notice after a few minutes. But the less you noticed it, the more it got into your brain and your blood. This also made it hard to think. After she thrummed for a time (and the sweet smell was now strong) she began speaking in a sweet, quiet voice.

“Narnia?” she said. “Narnia? . . . There is no land called Narnia.”

“Yes there is, though, Ma’am,” said Puddleglum. “You see, I happen to have lived there all my life.”

“Indeed,” said the Witch. “Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?”

“Up there,” said Puddleglum, stoutly, pointing overhead. “I – I don’t know exactly where.”

“How?” said the Queen, with a kind, soft, musical laugh. “Is there a country up there among the stones and mortar on the roof?”

“No,” said Puddleglum, struggling a little to get his breath. “It’s in Overworld.”

But the witch’s magic eventually dulls their minds:

“No. I suppose that other world must be all a dream.”

“Yes. It is all a dream,” said the Witch, always thrumming.

“Yes, all a dream,” said Jill.

“There never was such a world,” said the Witch.

“No,” said Jill and Scrubb, “never was such a world.”

“There never was any world but mine,” said the Witch.

“There never was any world but yours,” said they.

She has them almost persuaded that they are dreaming up things–making up the “sun” from lights; “lions” from cats; making up an “Overworld”, when there is only one world, the Witch’s underground world–when Puddleglum shoves his bare foot in a fire, so that the pain helps rouse him from the spell:

The Prince and the two children were standing with their heads hung down, their cheeks flushed, their eyes half closed; the strength all gone from them; the enchantment almost complete. But Puddleglum, desperately gathering all his strength, walked over to the fire. Then he did a very brave thing. He knew it wouldn’t hurt him quite as much as it would hurt a human; for his feet (which were bare) were webbed and hard and cold-blooded like a duck’s. But he knew it would hurt him badly enough; and so it did. With his bare foot he stamped on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth. And three things happened at once.

First, the sweet, heavy smell grew very much less. For though the whole fire had not been put out, a good bit of it had, and what remained smelled very largely of burnt Marsh-wiggle, which is not at all an enchanting smell. This instantly made everyone’s brain far clearer. The Prince and the children held up their heads again and opened their eyes.

Secondly, the Witch, in a loud, terrible voice, utterly different from the sweet tones she had been using up till now, called out, “What are you doing? Dare to touch my fire again, mud-filth, and I’ll turn the blood to fire inside your veins.”

Thirdly, the pain itself made Puddleglum’s head for a moment perfectly clear and he knew exactly what he really thought. There is nothing like a good shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic.

Then Puddleglum says this to the Witch:

“One word, Ma’am” he said coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. “One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.

Now this is obviously meant to show how important faith is, among other things. I am not really convinced by it in a theological sense, though it is a good effort. What I like about it is how well it meshes with my view of libertarian ethics, and regular ethics for that matter. I believe there is something to the Humean idea that you can’t derive an ought from an is. All oughts are in a sense hypothetical: based on a choice to be ethical in the first place. The battles over morals are battles between those who have chosen the civilized path, and those who are criminal, animal-like–outlaws. You can’t ask why someone wants to be moral, any more than you can prove that it is moral to choose to live (as Rand argued, the choice to live is amoral; this choice is the foundation of all other morals–so in a sense, Rand’s ethics was hypothetical, as alluded to in Harry Binswanger’s article Life-Based Teleology as the Foundation of Ethics). But the sort of drive or sense of why someone does choose the moral and civilized life, I find expressed and echoed in the Lewis passage above. And either you get it or you don’t.

To me the passage also expresses why God’s existence really cannot matter too much for moral truths; why standards of good and evil are outside God; why the idea that God is a “source” of morals and rights is confused, and just an extension of legal positivism back one level. The legislature cannot by decree make murder evil; nor could God; which is not to impugn God but to declare that some things are objectively evil–are at least, are seen so by those who choose to distinguish between good and evil, by those who prefer peace, cooperation, and civilization, to violence and depradation.

On an email list I’m on, someone asked:

Tolkien and Chesterton were Catholics. Was Lewis Anglican through his whole life? And who turned whom to what?

Another list member replied:

Lewis went through an atheist/agnostic phase, and Tolkien was one of the contributing forces to moving Lewis back to Christianity. Tolkien later wrote a poem describing, somewhat metaphorically, his conversations with Lewis. (The dedication to “one who said …” refers to Lewis.) But Tolkien always said regretfully that he’d gotten Lewis only “halfway” (i.e. from atheism/agnosticism to Anglicism but not as far as Catholicism.)

My reply:

On 1/6/06, Stephan Kinsella wrote:

Right–Lewis was originally Anglican, went thru an atheist phase when he was very young, then Anglican again, though he was close to Catholic in some ways, according to some things I’ve read. BTW re the recent interest in his Narnia stuff — his “Space Trilogy” (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength) is a more adult set, and better IMO; and his best work of fiction is, I think, his wonderful novel Till We Have Faces, a re-telling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche (reminiscent, to me, of another wonderful book, Mary Renault’s The King Must Die and The Bull From The Sea, a re-telling of the Theseus myth).

Lewis was one of most powerful advocates of Christianity/theism that I have encountered–one of my favorite arguments by him is in this imagery—

“How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself? … And now, another point about wishes. A wish may lead to false beliefs, granted. But what does the existence of the wish suggest? At one time I was much impressed by Arnold’s line ‘Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.’ But surely tho’ it doesn’t prove that one particular man will get food, it does prove that there is such a thing as food! I.e. if we were a species that didn’t normally eat, weren’t designed to eat, would we feel hungry? You say the materialist universe is ‘ugly.’ I wonder how you discovered that! Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there?”

C. S. Lewis, An Anthology (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), p22.
(see a version online here and here).

Recent endorsements of my latest book, International Investment, Political Risk, and Dispute Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide (Oxford/Oceana 2005), co-authored with Noah Rubins (available at http://www.oceanalaw.com/main_product_details.asp?ID=391):

“The book is a tour de force. Rubins & Kinsella have written a first-rate study of one of the most vital areas of international law today. Notwithstanding its subtitle (“A Practitioner’s Guide”), scholars as well as practicing attorneys will find this an invaluable guide to understanding the multifaceted adjudicatory regime for cross-border investment disputes.”

—William W. Park, R. Gordon Butler Scholar in International Law and Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law; General Editor, Arbitration International; Counsel to Ropes & Gray; former Vice-President, London Court of International Arbitration; publications include the casebook International Commercial Arbitration; International Chamber of Commerce Arbitration (3rd ed.); International Forum Selection; Income Tax Treaty Arbitration; and Arbitration of International Business Disputes: Studies in Law and Practice.

“This book is comprehensive, well-written, and balanced. An admirable mixture of learned commentary and primary documents, it is portable, authoritative, and up-to-date. It is a distinctive and well-organized addition to exisiting reference works and will be of great value to practioners and academics who seek a dependable, balanced treatment of a range of legal and practical questions affecting foreign direct investment and dispute resolution.”

—Jack J. Coe, Jr., Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law; author, Protecting Against the Expropriation Risk in Investing Aboard (Matthew Bender 1993); International Commercial Arbitration–American Principles and Practice (1997); NAFTA Chapter 11 Reports (with Brower and Dodge); vice-chairman, International Commercial Arbitration Committee, ABA International Law Section.

“This book provides an excellent account of how legal techniques can be used to provide significant protections to foreign investment. Its comprehensive coverage, clarity of expression, and useful appendices will prove invaluable to the busy lawyer. It is one of those rare books that is valuable not only for practice but also for the law classroom.”

—Dan Sarooshi, Herbert Smith Associate Professor of International Law, University of Oxford; Barrister, London; author of International Organizations And Their Exercise Of Sovereign Powers and The United Nations and the Development of Collective Security: The Delegation by the UN Security Council of Its Chapter VII Powers.

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