[Jason Jewell]

According to this story, Social Security began running a deficit last year with no prospect for surpluses in the future: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/03/social-security-runs-permanent-deficits-benefit-cuts-loom/

[Jason Jewell]

In other words, what David is saying is that “This sentence is false” does not qualify as a proposition. It’s categorically the same as Lewis Carroll’s nonsense, “‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wave.” Thus it does not contradict the Law of the Excluded Middle.

[Jason Jewell]

Samgheb, I think your purpose would be served just as well if you could produce authors who were calling for one of the other of these visions as opposed to a third party who says, “See, here are these two irreconcilable visions,” in the way Bagus does.

It shouldn’t be too hard to come up with a bibliography like that because such proposals had been floating around for literally centuries. I recently read Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s proposal for “Perpetual Peace through a Federation of Europe,” for example, which conforms more to the classical liberal model Bagus discusses. Mises himself called for an ultra-liberal regional or global state in “Liberalism,” if I recall correctly. Proposals for a more interventionist union shouldn’t be hard to come up with, I think.

[Jason Jewell]

Slik, the modern state of Israel was formed in 1948 after a decades-long process of preparing the ground through Jewish immigration to what was then (on paper) Ottoman-controlled Palestine. Zionists had been very active in calling for a Jewish state since the late 19th century and had been given a sympathetic hearing by the British government, which was very influential in the region.

Any number of websites can give you the basics of this process. Are you interested in some particular aspect of it?

[Jason Jewell]

Escalon, thanks for pointing these out. I’ll dig out my files on the other computer and see where the errors are.

[Jason Jewell]

The 20th century is not my forte, so I may not be of much help in suggesting topics from that period. I know more about the 19th century but am still not an expert. Having said that, I like all three of these topics. The second may be the most difficult to pull off; as you say, it would be hard to narrow the thesis to something manageable.

For projects like this it’s always best to restrict the potential amount of material you’ll have to sift through. The language issue is also important for certain topics, although if you are Danish you’re probably a lot better off in that area than most English-only Americans.

I would say that if these topics interest you equally or nearly so, go with the one that has the most manageable bibliography and will be the least likely to arouse the animosity of your committee. Your bachelor’s thesis is not your “95 Theses” to nail to the door of the university. It’s to prove you know what you’re doing as a young historian so that graduate schools will consider your application seriously (if your goal is in fact to go on to graduate school).

[Jason Jewell]

I’m sorry to hear that, Rick. I had two online classes canceled this summer after spending my entire Memorial Day weekend working on my course shells. It’s very frustrating, I know. I hope you get another opportunity very soon, and if so, we’ll be here to help.

[Jason Jewell]

Rick, I haven’t forgotten about you (see my “Back in the Saddle” post from earlier today). I will do my best to give you a substantive reply this weekend. Thanks so much for your patience.

[Jason Jewell]

Ray, I had to put it on the back burner temporarily (see my “Back in the Saddle” post from earlier today), but it is still on my to-do list. Thanks for your patience.

[Jason Jewell]

Desmond, welcome! Lane’s book is on my reading list (I have an epub version on my iPad right now), but I can’t comment on her interpretation of these figures at the present time. Maybe someone else who has read the book can weigh in.

[Jason Jewell]

Differences among Christian writers on the war question goes back to the pre-Constantine period. For example, some Church Fathers weighed in on different sides of the question of whether Christians should be soldiers.

Just-war theory receives its first full statement (that I know of) with St. Augustine of Hippo, writing about 100 years after Constantine. So there’s not really a body of primitive doctrine on the question. This makes sense, because Christian writers wouldn’t have had much incentive to make policy recommendations to rulers while they were a persecuted minority.

One of the obvious ways in which the Church changed post-Constantine was in developing a more formal structure modeled on Roman administrative jurisdictions (the diocese). Bishops had been around from early on, but the “institutionalization” of the Church certainly ramps up in the fourth and later centuries.

[Jason Jewell]

I’m very surprised this text doesn’t devote any significant space to the Greeks. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Western Civ text that ignores them. You can do without a lot of attention to the Crusades if your time is limited.

Give me another day or two and I’ll throw some ideas at you. Extremely hectic schedule at the moment.

[Jason Jewell]

Congratulations, Rick!

The textbook’s title is revealing . . . the reference to a civilization as an “experiment” is a sign that it is probably written from a left/progressive viewpoint. Two books on Spartacus (assigned to you for a survey?) seem like overkill as well.

In my experience many survey texts shortchange the Hebrews, so you may need to supplement a bit there.

If you could give the main text a quick skimming upon arrival and let me know your impressions, it would help me figure out what supplemental material to recommend.

[Jason Jewell]

When I wrote that individual liberty wasn’t necessarily prized, I meant that there was no notion of individual autonomy of the kind that many libertarians hold up as the ideal today. Individual autonomy is mostly an Enlightenment idea. Kinship networks imposed many duties on people in medieval Iceland, and individuals were not “free agents” in society like they are today. Of course, there’s nothing un-libertarian about that, but in my experience when someone asks questions like yours he often has some idea of individual autonomy in mind, and I didn’t want to mislead you.

If you’re really interested in Iceland, I’d suggest reading some of the sagas of the period to get an authentic sense of the culture. The sagas had a big influence on J.R.R. Tolkien and a number of other authors.

http://sagadb.org/

If you read them in the original Icelandic, I’ll ask Tom Woods to give you a free one-year extension on your Liberty Classroom subscription!

[Jason Jewell]

One-year terms of consulship in the Roman Republic are not necessarily reasons to expect decivilization through high time preference in the way Hoppe describes, although it’s reasonable that you might come to that conclusion. For one thing, there’s very little capital in ancient societies to start with, so there’s very little decapitalization that could occur in any event.

But to answer your question more directly, the consuls have a stake in preserving propertied interests because they are beholden to the aristocratic Senate to a greater extent than they are to the plebeians until very late in the period of the Republic. There’s no question of wealth redistribution until the late second century B.C. Of course, as you mention, the doctrine of pietas is important as well. Hoppe’s theory of democracy is one that must follow a ceteris paribus construction, so we have to allow for other influences like pietas to influence events.

Great questions!

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