# Posted 9:29 AM by Patrick Belton  

KLEINFELDS ON A ROLL: A couple of days ago over on Volokh, I was pointing out my mother-in-law's new book on the significance of frontiers in American culture. Well, now I'll be darned if they haven't got a dern good piece out on Iraq, too. Wow - my in-laws are writing more than me, and they've got real jobs! Not too shabby!

A few morsels, to provide a taste of their argument:

As we try to institutionalize democracy and freedom in Iraq, we need to take a clear-eyed look at what makes them stick. Externally imposed institutions, like constitutions and systems of law, are necessary but not sufficient. What makes freedom put down roots is culture. The world is littered with tyrannies calling themselves democracies with paper constitutions like our own. As the great Judge Learned Hand put it, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it . . . While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no court, no law to save it."

What can be transferred to Iraq are institutions that may go some distance in fostering a freedom-loving culture. Chief among these is the free-enterprise system, which creates economic incentives to protect private property, spurs individuality and creativity, and — of no small importance — fosters anti-authoritarian childrearing practices to adapt children to succeed in an entrepreneurial environment. Free enterprise would be greatly assisted by something like the Alaska Permanent Fund, so that a portion of the oil money goes from the oil companies to the people, instead of from the oil companies to the government. Not only is it absurd for the people to be so poor in one of the richest oil states in the world, but the money excessively concentrates power in the government. If more people have money, more will have an interest in personal freedom, in being left alone by the government, and people with money will furnish power centers independent of each other and government.

Federalism, as well as separation of powers in the national government, promotes freedom, by creating independent, competing centers of power. It is a natural fit with Iraq's existing cultural divisions. Americans can support and encourage an Iraqi culture of democracy and freedom by supporting Iraqi artists and intellectuals who celebrate individual liberty grounded in indigenous cultural traditions. We did this successfully in Europe after World War II, such as by funding publications where freedom-minded authors unwelcome in the Communist magazines could publish. Iraq needs its own free, individualistic heroes. Much of our own socialization into a culture of freedom comes from the stories, music, movies, and heroic romances we grew up with, celebrating strong individuals doing the right thing, and doing their own thing.

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