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Save the Cato Institute

Posted by David Boaz

No doubt you have read about the lawsuit that Charles and David Koch have filed to give themselves majority control of Cato’s long-dormant shareholder arrangement and therefore control over the Board of Directors, which has heretofore run the Institute for 35 years with no input from the shareholders. Already the Koch forces have managed to put 7 people on the Board.

For now, our friends should know this: We believe this effort is a direct threat to the independence, nonpartisanship, and libertarianism of the Cato Institute. Koch control would destroy 35 years of hard work by our Board, officers, staff, and donors to build the Cato Institute’s brand and reputation. We intend to fight it. And we intend to win and to preserve our independence.

To read more go to SaveCato. And “like” the Facebook page Save the Cato Institute.

There are many links at those sites. But you might be especially interested in Tuesday’s New York Times story. And Steve Chapman’s short item at the Chicago Tribune.

This misguided attempt at corporate control of an independent, nonpartisan think tank is bad for the Cato Institute and bad for the libertarian movement. We hope that everyone will come to see that, soon, before any more damage is done.

A Call to Arms: The War on Sugar

Posted by David Boaz

New York Times columnist Mark Bittman delivered this commentary on Marketplace Radio:

Mark Bittman: Florida state Sen. Rhonda Storms could never be thought of as progressive. But her bill puts her in the same camp as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who suggested something along similar lines, only to have it batted down by federal ag officials, who described it as “too complex.”

Well, what’s not complex is our relationship with sugar. We eat too much of it: half a pound a day per person — and it makes us fat. The processed food industry says sugar is not to blame. A calorie is a calorie, they say. Limit your total calories — regardless of where they come from — and your health will be fine. That’s total nonsense. A calorie of refined sugar is far more likely to cause damage to your body than a calorie of, let’s say, fiber.

With sugar, we’re in a situation where a dangerous substance is perfectly legal and available everywhere. It’s sold without restriction to everyone, and it’s marketed, with billions of dollars, to children before they can even speak, let alone reason… What choice do we have but to regulate it, just as we would — and do — regulate tobacco and alcohol and, for that matter, firearms?

This is so obvious that Florida state senators not known as forward-thinkers can see it, though the Department of Agriculture evidently can’t. But this is precisely what government is for: to protect us from the things from which we cannot protect ourselves. Sugar is not exactly an invading army, but it can be thought of as a hostile force, and the processed food industry has succeeded in getting us to eat way more of it than is good for us. Will power alone isn’t enough to stop that: we need national defense.

Oh, my. First I note the reflexive use of the terms “progressive” and “forward-thinkers” to mean “believing that government should make your decisions for you.” I look forward to a day when it won’t be regarded as progressive to take autonomy away from adults.

Second, note the hysteria and militarism: “a dangerous substance is perfectly legal and available everywhere. It’s sold without restriction…. [like] firearms….Sugar is not exactly an invading army, but it can be thought of as a hostile force….we need national defense.”

Wow. Sugar . . . it’s “the moral equivalent of war.”

Why We Honor George Washington

Posted by David Boaz

Today is some vaguely named “Presidents’ Day,” but Wednesday is the anniversary of George Washington’s birth. So it’s a good day to remember the contribution he made to the American republic. I wrote this several years ago:

George Washington was the man who established the American republic. He led the revolutionary army against the British Empire, he served as the first president, and most importantly he stepped down from power.

John Trumbull, "General George Washington Resigning His Commission"

In an era of brilliant men, Washington was not the deepest thinker. He never wrote a book or even a long essay, unlike George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams. But Washington made the ideas of the American founding real. He incarnated liberal and republican ideas in his own person, and he gave them effect through the Revolution, the Constitution, his successful presidency, and his departure from office.

What’s so great about leaving office? Surely it matters more what a president does in office. But think about other great military commanders and revolutionary leaders before and after Washington—Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin. They all seized the power they had won and held it until death or military defeat.

John Adams said, “He was the best actor of presidency we have ever had.” Indeed, Washington was a person very conscious of his reputation, who worked all his life to develop his character and his image.

In our own time Joshua Micah Marshall writes of America’s first president, “It was all a put-on, an act.” Marshall missed the point. Washington understood that character is something you develop. He learned from Aristotle that good conduct arises from habits that in turn can only be acquired by repeated action and correction – “We are what we repeatedly do.” Indeed, the word “ethics” comes from the Greek word for “habit.” We say something is “second nature” because it’s not actually natural; it’s a habit we’ve developed. From reading the Greek philosophers and the Roman statesmen, Washington developed an understanding of character, in particular the character appropriate to a gentleman in a republic of free citizens.

What values did Washington’s character express? He was a farmer, a businessman, an enthusiast for commerce. As a man of the Enlightenment, he was deeply interested in scientific farming. His letters on running Mount Vernon are longer than letters on running the government. (Of course, in 1795 more people worked at Mount Vernon than in the entire executive branch of the federal government.)

He was also a liberal and tolerant man. In a famous letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, he hailed the “liberal policy” of the United States on religious freedom as worthy of emulation by other countries. He explained, “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

And most notably, he held “republican” values – that is, he believed in a republic of free citizens, with a government based on consent and established to protect the rights of life, liberty, and property.

From his republican values Washington derived his abhorrence of kingship, even for himself. The writer Garry Wills called him “a virtuoso of resignations.” He gave up power not once but twice – at the end of the revolutionary war, when he resigned his military commission and returned to Mount Vernon, and again at the end of his second term as president, when he refused entreaties to seek a third term. In doing so, he set a standard for American presidents that lasted until the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose taste for power was stronger than the 150 years of precedent set by Washington.

Give the last word to Washington’s great adversary, King George III. The king asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what Washington would do after winning independence. West replied, “They say he will return to his farm.”

“If he does that,” the incredulous monarch said, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”