China Ethnic Unrest Resumes

Classical Liberalism and the Fight for Equal Rights

Remembering the forgotten libertarian legacy of American anti-racism

Damon W. Root

In a 1992 speech at Colorado's Metro State College, Columbia University historian Manning Marable praised the black minister and activist Malcolm X for pushing an "uncompromising program which was both antiracist and anticapitalist." As Marable favorably quoted from the former Nation of Islam leader: "You can't have racism without capitalism. If you find antiracists, usually they're socialists or their political philosophy is that of socialism."

Spend time on most college campuses and you're likely to hear something very similar. Progressives and leftists, the conventional narrative goes, fought the good fight while conservatives and libertarians either sat it out or sided with the bad guys. But there's a problem with this simplistic view: It completely ignores the fact that classical liberalism—which centers on individual rights, economic liberty, and limited government—played an indispensable role in the fight for equal rights.

Indeed, from the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who championed the natural rights philosophy of the Declaration of Independence and declared "give the negro fair play and let him alone," to the conservative newspaper magnate R.C. Hoiles (publisher of what is now the Orange County Register), who denounced liberal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's wartime internment of Japanese Americans while most New Dealers (and liberal Supreme Court justices) remained silent, classical liberals have long opposed racism and collectivism in all of its vile forms.

This important yet sadly-neglected history is the subject of Race & Liberty in America (University Press of Kentucky), a superb new anthology edited by Southern Illinois University historian Jonathan Bean, which features carefully selected articles, speeches, book excerpts, newspaper accounts, legal decisions, interviews, and other materials revealing, in Bean's words, that "classical liberals are the invisible men and women of the long civil rights movement." (Full Disclosure: Bean includes one of my articles in a list of recommended readings.)

There's Lysander Spooner, the radical libertarian, legal theorist, and abolitionist who argued that slavery was illegal under both natural law and the U.S. Constitution; Louis Marshall, the "ultraconservative" NAACP attorney and lifelong Republican who won the Supreme Court case Nixon v. Herndon (1927), striking down the "white primaries" favored by racist Southern Democrats; and Zora Neale Hurston, the acclaimed Harlem Renaissance novelist and folklorist who denounced New Deal relief programs as "the biggest weapon ever placed in the hands of those who sought power and votes" and endorsed libertarian Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio) for president in 1952.

As Bean demonstrates, when it comes to the history of civil rights and racial equality, most of us have only heard one part of the story. Take the NAACP, which was arguably the leading civil rights organization of the 20th century. Why, Bean writes, "do we know so much about W.E.B. DuBois [an NAACP activist and editor] but little about super-lawyer Moorfield Storey"? A founder of both the NAACP and the Anti-Imperialist League, Storey championed free trade, liberty of contract, and the gold standard alongside racial equality and non-interventionism. In 1917 he argued and won the NAACP's first major victory before the Supreme Court, Buchanan v. Warley, relying on property rights to strike down a residential segregation law. As George Mason University law professor David Bernstein argues, "Buchanan almost certainly prevented governments from passing far harsher segregation laws [and] prevented residential segregation laws from being the leading edge of broader anti-negro measures." DuBois credited the decision with "the breaking of the backbone of segregation."

Now contrast that with the racial record of a celebrated leftist such as labor leader and Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs. While typically lionized as a champion of the poor and downtrodden, Debs also served as head of the American Railway Union, a discriminatory outfit that banned blacks from its ranks. And while he was apparently personally sympathetic to African Americans, during his 1912 presidential campaign Debs simply declared, "We have nothing special to offer the Negro." Yet this was during the era of lynchings, Jim Crow, and other acts of state criminality that specifically targeted the rights of blacks, a situation classical liberals like Storey clearly understood and effectively challenged.

Along similar lines, Race & Liberty in America includes a fascinating 1924 article from Howard University president Kelly Miller arguing that in the battle between labor and capital, blacks should side with the bosses. "The capitalist stands for an open shop which gives to every man the unhindered right to work according to his ability and skill," Miller wrote. "In this proposition the capitalist and the Negro are as one." Try finding that quote in most standard labor histories!

Taken together, the documents collected in this volume present overwhelming evidence that classical liberalism deserves serious attention in any account of the American struggle for civil rights and a colorblind society. Rather than serving as the villains caricatured by Malcolm X, Manning Marable, and others on the left, classical liberals provided essential intellectual, political, moral, and financial firepower in the battles against slavery, Jim Crow, imperialism, and racial classifications. With Race & Liberty in America, these largely unsung heroes are finally getting some of their due.

China Ethnic Unrest Resumes

Alcoa Is Fashionably Late

Stocks End Mixed as Oil Skids

Stocks edned narrowly mixed as a new earnings season approached and crude-oil prices continued to fall.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 14.81 points, or 0.2%, to 8178.41 after its 161-point slide Tuesday. Component Alcoa rose 0.5% ahead of its second-quarter report. After the bell, the aluminum maker announced a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss. Intel, which will be the new Dow component to report earnings next week, slid 1.9%.

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The S&P 500-stock index fell 1.47 point, or 0.2%, to 879.56 as its financial sector sank 1.7%. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose one point, or 0.1%, to 1747.17. The Russell 2000 fell 4.57 points, or 0.9%, to 479.68.

Alcoa's release marks the symbolic start of the broader reporting season, which is likely to be lackluster. Wall Street is expecting an eighth straight quarter of declining profits in the S&P 500, led by raw-materials producers, whose year-ago numbers will be tough to beat after the bursting of a multi-year commodity bubble last summer.

The broad Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index fell 2.6%, off more than 50% from its record set more than a year ago. Oil futures, which have been under particularly heavy pressure lately, sank $2.79 to settle at $60.14 a barrel after a weekly report showed a build in U.S. fuel inventories. Oil has fallen six straight days, tumbling 16% over that span.

How the stock market, which has suffered a correction in recent weeks after a springtime rally, will weather a grim profit season is also a key question. Some analysts and traders are guardedly optimistic, hoping that much of the bad news has been factored into stock prices during recent bouts of selling like the one on Tuesday.

Bloomberg News/Landov

Commodity futures and options traders work on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday. Oil futures have been under pressure.

"A little bit of trepidation ahead of earnings season is usually a good thing," said strategist Jeffrey Kleintop, of LPL Financial Services in Boston. "People are looking for businesses to say that they saw some improvement in their businesses during the quarter. The ones who don't say that will be penalized, but there's also room now for the ones who do say it to be rewarded."

According to Thomson Reuters, analysts expect the S&P 500's components to show a decline of about 36% in second-quarter earnings.

Ashwani Kaul, global head of research at Thomson Reuters, said the index's profits could "surprise" about four percentage points above the expectations, with Alcoa's report likely to play a more important tone than usual in setting the tone for the broader reporting season.

The aluminum maker is traditionally the first Dow component to report its results -- a distinction that traders in recent years have found less and less important. But under the current circumstances, Mr. Kaul said Alcoa could offer an important window onto the state of U.S. housing and manufacturing, key areas that will need to revive for there to be an end to the recession.

Treasury prices surged as investors sought safe harbor. The 10-year Treasury note climbed 1-9/32 to yield 3.301%. The dollar fell against the yen and rose against the euro.

G-8 and Developing Nations Differ Over Emissions Cuts

JONATHAN WEISMAN

AFP/Getty Images

President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke during the G-8 summit in L'Aquila on Wednesday.

L'AQUILA, Italy -- The leaders of the Group of Eight leading nations agreed Wednesday to slash emissions of heat-trapping gases by 80% by 2050 and to hold global warming to less than two degrees Celsius.

But the G-8's failure to agree on shorter-term emissions-cutting targets and a firm amount of aid for developing countries led a larger group of nations to decide to drop numerical targets.

The leaders of the 17-nation Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, chaired by U.S. President Barack Obama, will also acknowledge Thursday the "broad scientific view" that global warming must not be allowed to exceed two degrees Celsius, according to European negotiators and a person close to the talks. But the forum is expected to delay an agreement on hard caps until a December climate-change conference in Copenhagen, these officials said.

Nevertheless, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the G-8 decision a "historic agreement" and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was "a clear step forward," the Associated Press reported.

Inside the G-8 Summit

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Associated Press

President Obama on Wednesday greeted European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, left, as world leaders looked on at the G-8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy.

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"After a long struggle, all of the G-8 nations have finally accepted the two degree goal. From the United States of America to Japan and Europe, everyone will work on this goal," Ms. Merkel told reporters.

A draft climate-change statement from the Major Economies Forum had promised a global 50% reduction in the emissions that cause global warming by 2050, with the developed nations promising an 80% cut by then. While G-8 leaders agreed to such cuts, developing countries such as India and China balked, worrying that Europe, North America and Japan weren't serious about meeting their commitments, these officials added.

That worry was fueled by continuing disagreement over how much developed economies will pledge in aid to help poorer countries' transition from polluting energy sources, such as coal. The draft statement promised $400 million to the effort, but it still didn't have a sign-off, a day before the forum was to meet.

Thursday's Major Economies Forum is one of a series of meetings planned at the G-8 summit of the eight leading nations.

Michael Froman, the U.S. "sherpa," or aide, at the G-8 summit, said the Major Economies Forum would deal with climate-change targets, mitigation of global warming, adaptation for poor countries and financing.

The draft climate-change statement represents "a significant step forward in terms of adding political momentum" before the Copenhagen meeting, where global leaders hope to reach agreement on a follow-on treaty to the Kyoto Accords, Mr. Froman said. "But there is a lot of work to be done."

Media sesión: el Dow cae un 0,4% y el crudo en 60 dólares

Wall Street cae en el rojo

por F. R. Ch

Las subidas de los primeros minutos de sesión desaparecen ante la presión bajista, que no abandona el parqué de Nueva York a pesar de que el FMI ha mejorado sus previsiones sobre el comportamiento de la economía en la principal potencia mundial. Además, el precio del barril de crudo sigue desinflándose y ya cotiza en los 60 dólares.

Una vez sobrepasado la mitad de la tercera sesión de la semana, el Dow Jones de Industriales cae un 0,54%, hasta los 8.119 puntos, el S&P 500 cede un 0,96%, hasta los 872 puntos y el Nasdaq Composite pierde un 0,78%, hasta los 1.732 puntos.

A pesar de comenzar la jornada con ánimo alcista, los indicadores neoyorquinos vuelven a reincidir en las pérdidas y el rojo domina en el ecuador de la jornada. Las dudas, la indecisión y la prudencia ante la temporada de resultados que iniciará Alcoa al cierre del mercado animan las ventas.

Y eso que el FMI ha aportado una buena noticia a los inversores. Las previsiones del organismo internacional han mejorado las iniciales y ahora estima que el PIB de Estados Unidos caiga un 2,6% en 2009, dos décimas menos que lo previsto en abril.

Esta nueva estimación, que tiene en cuenta los brotes verdes detectados en la economía en los últimos meses, también ha mejorado para el año que viene, ejercicio en el que el FMI espera que la mayor economía del mundo regrese a tasas positivas del 0,8%.

Al mismo tiempo, el fondo ha mejorado su previsión mundial al avanzar que crecerá un 2,5%, debido a una mejora en el sistema financiero y a la moderación de la recesión, mientras que pronostica un declive económico del 1,4% para este año.

El crudo, en 60 dólares
Al mismo tiempo que la corrección bursátil, el precio del petróleo sigue deshinchándose un día más y ya cotiza en la franja de los 60 dólares el barril. En concreto, los contratos de futuros del barril Texas, con vencimiento en el mes de agosto, se intercambian en los 60,65 dólares al bajar más de dos dólares este miércoles.

Todo, después de que las reservas de petróleo hayan caído en 2,9 millones de barriles, ligeramente por encima de lo esperado por los economistas, hasta las 347,3 millones de unidades. Por el contrario, crecieron los inventarios de gasolina y de destilados.

En cuanto al ámbito corporativo, Alcoa reúne todas las miradas del parqué. Una vez eche el cierre la bolsa de Nueva York, el fabricante de aluminio iniciará la temporada de resultados trimestrales. El mercado espera que presente su tercer trimestre consecutivo con pérdidas, y que su bpa se sitúe en un registro negativo de 38 centavos, lastrado por los menores precios del aluminio debidos a la menor demanda por parte de la industria y los fabricantes de automóviles. Sus títulos caen un 2,5% a media sesión.

Otro de los focos del parqué es Google, que está dispuesta a competir con Microsoft en el sector de los sistemas operativos con su nuevo Google Crome OS. Este nuevo programa, que podría estar disponible en la segunda mitad de 2010, será ligero y estará adaptado para los ordenadores notebooks. El mercado aplaude esta política, ya que las acciones del gigante de Internet se anotan un 1,2%.

También destaca la minorista Family Dollar (+10%), después de elevar sus previsiones para el próximo trimestre.

Bancos, telecos y tecnológicas, las más bajistas
Los valores que más pérdidas registran a media sesión son los financieros Bank of America (-6%) y JPMorgan (-1%), las operadoras de telecomunicaciones AT&T (-3%) y Verizon (-3%) y las tecnológicas Intel (-2%), Microsoft (-2%) y Cisco (-1,8%).

En el verde se mueven las farmacéuticas Merck (+2%), Pfizer (+0,6%) y Johnson & Johnson (+1,4%).