ONE IF BY LAND, TWO IF BY SEA. "Here the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world."

THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION. Further changes at The Command Post, with separate coverage of Iraq, North Korea, Global Terror, and Commentary.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER. Unfortunately, the day this parody of a grading policy becomes a grading policy it's insensitive to parody may be approaching. (Via SCSU Scholars.)

TOUGH QUIZ I'm not enough of a map junkie to be able to complete this (via A Small Victory.)

GETTING THE INSTITUTIONS RIGHT. Glenn Reynolds and Michael Barone note that oil wealth does not have to hamper economic development (compare Saudi Arabia and South Korea from 1954 to the present.) Derrick Z. Jackson (requires registration) takes the dissenting view, noting, "Three of the top five nations the United States currently imports its oil from are Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria. All have either major environmental problems from oil, political turmoil or both." (Jackson's main point appears to be to sneer at auto racing fans, but stay with me here.) Getting the institutions right matters: the Alaska trust fund is one possibility. What does the U.K. or Norway do with their North Sea oil revenues?

NOT IN YOUR NAME. Bitter Sanity is not happy with local war protesters.

GET THE CHEESE FROM WISCONSIN. French wine exports slumping, notes Midwest Conservative Journal.

QUI CUSTODE CUSTODIS? Glenn Reynolds looks at the downside of the continuing war on terror. Enumerated and limited powers for government matter. However, that doesn't stop the Senate from interfering with our right to a speedy trial, according to John Fund.

EVERY MAN A KING. Lengthy Richard Florida article available as a treat from The Washington Monthly. Its thesis: creative destruction is entering a new phase, in which having control over your work can be more important than pay or benefits. The article is somewhat pathbreaking by Washington Monthly standards, admitting of the possibility of spontaneous order, and invoking libertarian themes including entrepreneurship and creative destruction. It also raises the possibility that both major political parties are advocating outdated and ineffective economic policies. Alas, it falls a bit short on recommendations. Take schooling (please.) The author asserts, "Only a national strategy can repair the now broken connection between good local schools and regional prosperity," only to describe a number of adaptations that cannot be anticipated in a hearing room, let alone written into a universal national policy. Perhaps it is time to unbundle School from State. And catch the logical error here (the special pleading is obvious): "[P]erhaps the nonprofit sector can play an expanded role in our creative economy. Nonprofit organizations--like most basic-research labs, and like the magazine you're reading--give people chances to be creative, free from the market's pressure to maximize investor returns. Are there any creative ideas on how to instigate more of this sort of thing, and more broadly?" Isn't the whole point of investor returns to identify precisely those forms of creativity that are also useful? The author does not make much of a case for expanding, let alone using tax dollars to support, non-profits. Sounds too much like "picking winners" to me. Read the article anyway, there's some interesting analysis that stands on its own, independent of the advocacy.

THE FALLACY OF INSUFFICIENT OPTIONS. Tapped discovers Political Aims (guess Princeton hasn't found the permalinks yet), a weblog that commends an E. J. Dionne column "because it does a better job of exploring the role of the state in maintaining social order and making space for rights than many of the sometimes obtuse theory readings I've been slogging through this year. And's it a nice "take that" to all of the ridiculous anti-government folks who happily benefit from government investments in infrastructure and security each and every day." I'll grant that journalists have better incentives to write clearly than do academicians, particularly when it comes to writing for the university presses that provide graduate social science anthologies. Here's Dionne: "The lesson the looters teach is basic, and it is usually ignored: The alternative to tyranny is not the abolition of government. Absent a government committed to the protection of rights, there are no rights. Without government, individuals have no way to vindicate their rights to property, to basic personal liberty, to life itself." Exactly. "To fecure thefe Rights, Governments are created among Men, Deriving their Juft Powers from the Confent of the Governed." (Isn't there something about enumerating and limiting those powers? Yup, but not in Dionne's world.)

"What these groups never talk about, because it would wreck their story line, is the extent to which our personal and collective prosperity as a property-owning, enterprising people depends on strong and effective government. No government, no property. No government, no security from looting, theft or violence. No government, no national defense. No government, no social stability. No government, no securities law. No government, no food inspections, no consumer and environmental protection, no safeguards for workplace rights, no social insurance." No disagreement with inventory items 1, 2, and 3. (I have yet to find a strong libertarian, let alone a Randian, who denies 1 and 2; many will argue that efforts to provide 3 foster conflict.) Item 4 is dubious. To the extent that government becomes the arbiter of the content of schools, the nature of contractual relations among people, or the provider of resources for particular content or particular contracts, its activities become destabilizing, not stabilizing. (Think carefully about abortion, school choice, religious observation or not in schools, zoning codes, affirmative action, open housing, speed limits, or the drinking age, and ask whether or not less governmental supervision, federal, state, or local, would provide more stability.) On item 5, isn't "securities law" an amalgamation of basic fraud provisions with restrictions on ownership or using local knowledge? Item 6 is also an amalgamation of the simple with the messy, the effective with the ineffective, the productivity-enhancing with the productivity destroying. For another take on proposed government actions that are socially destabilizing, see Rep. Jackson's laundry list at Fraters Libertas. (But then, if you're limited to so many column inches, you might have to put a little straw in your tin man to meet the deadline, right, Mr. Dionne?)

CAN'T LIVE WITH THE SHAME? Unconfirmed reports that Baghdad Bob is at the end of his rope. (Via Mean Mr. Mustard.)

WORDS MEAN THINGS. Jonah Goldberg reminds that "decimate" means "remove the tenth part" and struggles with modern Internetese, which reads like a strange dialect of railroad telegraphese.

DON'T YOU HAVE TO DEFINE PROGRESS FIRST? Interesting thought question at Winds of Change: "Classical conservatives publicly despair of progress, but in their hearts they secretly believe in it. The Left seemingly talks of nothing else but progress, but will go to nearly any lengths rather than believe in it." One of the great conjuring tricks of the early 20th Century was the application of the term "progressive" to ideas that seemed appealing, or new, or might even make sense. In retrospect, many of these have been anything but progress.

THEFT AMNESTIES ARE SOMETIMES INCENTIVE COMPATIBLE: Via Winds of Change, some analysis of strategies that encourage the return, rather than the destruction, of artifacts. For more on the theory of theft amnesty, see E. Katz and J. Rosenberg, "Property Rights, Theft, Amnesty and Efficiency," European Journal of Law and Economics, in press.

UPDATE: Buy it back, suggests Mark Kleiman.

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER'S DAY?

(From Mader Blog, with more details.)

POSITIONAL ARMS RACES. Jay Mathews on moving from the wait-list to the admitted list. (Via Newmark's Door.) Must be a whole different universe. I still recall overhearing conversations among the popular set in my high school over which of the below-mid-major state colleges were the best choice for social activities.

HOW TO LIE WITH STATISTICS, public health case study.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS. Your job description just changed!

WHY IS THIS NIGHT DIFFERENT FROM OTHER NIGHTS? Ten contemporary plagues, plus seders in Baghdad and other suburbs of Babylon.

NEUTRAL AS TO TRANSFERS. Jonathan Foreman on the root causes of looting. How does one say "beriozka" in Arabic? I suppose it should be no surprise that a Socialist Party would have special stores and clinics for its nomenklatura. Steven Landsburg sees a deferred tax rebate. Ranting Screeds is less impressed. InstaPundit and Betsy's Page provide the sources.