I've previously mentioned Caplan's work. Here's a profile from Louis Menand in the latest New Yorker. Menand goes great work, so I'm sure it's worth reading. (See also The Metaphysical Club.)

Bryan Caplan, an economist who teaches at George Mason University, thinks that increasing voter participation is a bad thing. He thinks, in fact, that the present level of voter participation—about fifty per cent of the electorate votes in Presidential elections, a much lower percentage than in most democracies, as Americans are frequently reminded—is a bad thing.

This is a good closer:

A great virtue of democratic polities is stability. The toleration of silly opinions is (to speak like an economist) a small price to pay for it.

Fractured Franchise

On May 26, 2003, L. Paul Bremer declared Iraq “open for business.” Four years on, business is booming, albeit not as the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority intended.

...

In the face of the “creative destruction” wrought by invading forces, regular people articulate alternative paths of “creative destruction” that may express themselves with reference to alternative political and economic projects, or simply arise in the struggle to get by. Absent clear boundaries, strategy is reduced to tactics. The agents of a war economy thus do not necessarily fight to win as such: They are engaged within and act so as to reproduce an emergent, constantly shifting tactical environment. Meanwhile, there will be no single declaration of victory, no event signaling the end of one order and the beginning of a new one. Sadly, the one thing we can be sure of is that Bremer’s cohorts in the political risk business will be there to profit from his mistakes.

On its face, this publication appears questionable, but their background page notes:

According to a leading analyst, Graham Fuller of the Rand Corporation (and co-author of The Zapatista "Social Netwar" in Mexico), "Middle East Report is the single most valuable periodical I receive on Middle East affairs, offering a wealth of material unavailable elsewhere. This outstanding journal provides truly fresh, unconventional, insightful information and views that are still essential to my research even years after publication."

I can't find that quote independently sourced by RAND or Fuller, but presumably he wouldn't let it stand misquoted ...

The War Economy of Iraq

Life on the streets with the anti-narcotics police of Guinea Bissau and Liberia. See the accompanying article.

Cocaine Country - Photo Essays - TIME

The country is at a crossroads, a different kind of place from where we've been before. The special interests seem more reactionary and entrenched than ever, the bureaucracies much larger. We need to marshal the courage to change, and we need to understand what needs changing.

Washington now is like the corrupt Tory England that the Whigs reformed. Whig liberalism brought growth. Our own Jeffersonian forerunners, the Founding Fathers, also rejected the Crown and understood the importance of small government.

Newt Gingrich praises a book which got howls from John Updike:

Where the words “new history” appear, revisionism will follow.

Shlaes’s story line proposes instead that the nineteen-twenties, far from “a period of false growth and low morals,” were “a great decade of true economic gains” whose “faith in laissez-faire” was justified.

Shlaes hails his decision to leave the Presidency after five and a half years (thus ducking the crash and its consequences) as “another of Coolidge’s acts of refraining, his last and greatest.”

Sarkozy's Lesson for America

DNI Mike McConnell lays out his plan.

Sixty years ago, the National Security Act created a U.S. intelligence infrastructure that would help win the Cold War. But on 9/11, the need to reform that system became painfully clear. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is now spearheading efforts to enable the intelligence community to better shield the United States from the new threats it faces.

Here's the wrap:

... the United States ... must not lose sight of the strategic conditions, ... must comprehend the profound threats of the times: terrorists, nuclear proliferators, and rogue and failed states.

It will take years to fully clarify and coordinate the DNI's responsibilities and powers, transform the collection and analysis of intelligence, accelerate information sharing, change institutional cultures, build high-tech capabilities, and boost the acquisition of new technologies. And it will take the patience of the American people and their willingness to lend their talent and expertise to the intelligence community.

Cowboy up! (There might even be some jewelry in it for you.)

Overhauling Intelligence | Foreign Affairs

The drugs business is by far the most profitable illicit global trade, says UNODC, earning some $320 billion annually, compared with estimates of $32 billion for human trafficking and $1 billion for illegal firearms. The runaway Afghan opium trade—worth around $60 billion at street prices in consuming countries—is arguably the hardest problem. Heroin is finding new routes to the consumer, for instance through West Africa to America, and via Pakistan and Central Asia to China.

The opium market puzzles experts. They say there is now an over-supply of opiates, but the price for farmers or drug users has not changed much. UNODC suspects opium is being hoarded, and that traffickers are squeezing their vast profit margins and increasing the purity of heroin doses to maintain stability.

!!! Now that would have been a great plot line for Stringer Bell on "The Wire"!

... Despairing of the failure of the anti-narcotics effort, formally led by Britain, which has focused on seeking alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers, the United States has been pushing for a more aggressive eradication campaign with aerial spraying. Its experts say that incentives alone will never work when farmers can earn eight or nine times more from poppy than from wheat. “You need a stick as well as a carrot,” says one senior American official.

Undersecretary of State John Bolton brushed aside a query about a carrot-and-stick approach to Iran with a subtle "I don't do carrots."

A world awash in heroin

When it comes to comparing Iraq today to the Revolutionary War, well, there's a little something for everyone. If you just keep looking, I'm certain that you, too, can find an analogy that confirms your opinion.

The real inference to be drawn is that the American colonies were as well-fit for a democratic union as any society in human history—and they took more than a decade to get their act together. Today's Iraq enjoys almost none of their advantages, so how long will it take to move down the same path—and how long will we have to stay there to help?

Philadelphia 1787 vs. Baghdad 2005

"This Time, This Place" is many things -- and at times, nothing much -- but it is foremost a historical salvage operation on behalf of that "awesome engine of a man . . . terrifying, kind, hyperenergetic, ruthless, loving." The adjectives keep rolling in until Valenti throws up his hands. "Almost anything you could say about Lyndon Johnson, good or bad, had at least a hint of truth to it."

...

"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

Such over-the-top language may be expected from the man who once declared, "I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently because Lyndon Johnson is my President," and who recalls his first encounter with JFK in this fashion: "He reminded me of a Plantagenet royal, a wise, brave, splendid king who would save a lady in distress." (Wait for it.) "Or a nation."

This hyperbole appears to be the bastard offspring of Lord Macaulay and advertising copy, and yet beneath it lurks a kind of deliberative drabness. Valenti was a lobbyist through and through, and any lobbyist worth his salt knows better than to bite the hand that may one day feed him.

Jack Valenti's Memoir, Rated L for Loyal

Aside from their celebration of endless diversity and tolerance, postmodern elites find it difficult to agree on the substance of the good life to which they aspire in common. What I find fascinating is that, apart from drinking beer and playing soccer (football), Europeans find it hard to define the virtues with which they identify.

Muslims do understand America. That is the problem! Perhaps Americans need to be a little more humble and self-critical. Not all the fruits of freedom are appealing.

We should not think of this realm of soft power in the same way in which we think about military power. The cultural balance of power is not a zero-sum game.

The question is whether there is a way of establishing values through reason and philosophical discourse without reverting to religion.

Fukuyama on the Challenge of Positive Freedom

Let's hear it for Paterson!

Paterson police say they plan to publish the names of the alleged hookers and johns in upcoming editions of The Record and The Herald News.

"We want to send a message that if you come to Paterson looking for sex or drugs, you are going to get arrested. And when you get arrested, we are going to publish your name."

Tom Friedman says, We're all public figures now.

Paterson puts brakes on drive-thru trade