Right Minds

Obama and Race

2009-07-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

When Obama first took office, his poll numbers were sky high. Easily seventy percent of the country was solidly behind him, and even many conservatives were impressed with his post-election performance. (Immediately after Obama’s election, many in the traditional media were absolutely giddy with excitement. I was recently stuck in a waiting room with a copy of a December Time magazine; that issue featured four brief essays for possible Persons of the Year. The choices were Obama, Obama, the American people for electing Obama, and Obama again, but with Michael Phelps second).

Obama has squandered much of that good will. According to the reliable Rasmussen Reports, Obama’s overall approval numbers have plummeted from a high of sixty-nine percent in early January (and sixty-five on the day of his inauguration, with forty-four percent of those strongly approving) to fifty-one percent in the most recent day of polling.

It’s not difficult to find the reason for Obama’s drop in popularity. He has turned out to me more liberal than most (at least those who don’t listen to talk radio) expected. With the passage of the stimulus bill, he committed himself to deficit spending, and with cap-and-trade and health care reform, he has signaled his commitment to expensive and intrusive social programs.

Americans liked the hope and change stuff, but many draw the line here. So many moderates shift from “approve” to “disapprove,” and many more conservative people suddenly strongly disapprove of Obama’s policies.

Not a bad thing, from a conservative point of view. But there’s a catch. People who disagree with another politics can rarely restrain themselves to the issues—rather, the other person’s character and person comes under attack.

A good example of this phenomenon is the liberal response to George W. Bush. They couldn’t accept that Bush happened to support different policies than they did—instead, he was a stupid, uneducated hick controlled by a diabolical Dick Cheney. (This about a man who went to Yale, and whose family has set down some pretty solid roots among the Eastern elite).

It was inevitable that such attacks would crop up among conservatives as well. Most of them are irrelevant but tolerable—the worst of these are the nutty but harmless birth certificate rumors.

There are other, more harmful attacks as well, and unfortunately some of them involve race. One, which I experienced, was a chain email, the gist of which was an unflattering photo of Michelle Obama next to a picture of monkey. Another example was a conversation I had with a conservative stranger; she suggested that Obama’s sterling college record was tainted by affirmative action and summer classes, which in her experience were apparently crutches used by “stupid” blacks to retake hard courses. (Speaking as a college student, taking very difficult courses during the summer isn’t exactly uncommon, nor is it done only by unintelligent people).

Both of these people were quite nice; people who you wouldn’t expect to have a racist bone in their bodies, and indeed probably don’t—in the former case, I am quite sure that distain for Obama won out over good judgment with the “forward” button.

Such tasteless joke probably won’t set the cause of race relations back twenty years, or give the Ku Klux Klan a new lease on life, or anything of that kind. They’re just nasty and tasteless, and hopefully they’ll die out soon. And they aren’t any nastier than thing liberals have been known to say about conservative politicians.

At the same time, while these jokes and attacks may be mostly harmless to society at large, they hurt the Republican party. Puns aren’t the lowest form of humor, racial jokes are, and racial attacks are the nastiest. A party, or a movement, is defined by its base—and what discerning person would want to be part of a movement that thinks insinuating that a black woman looks like a monkey (which Michelle Obama, by the way, really doesn’t) is a hilarious and cutting bit of wit?

The First Black President?

2009-07-16T21:15:00.000-07:00

In the days following Barack Obama’s election, Americans were feeling pretty darned progressive, if they did say so themselves. And they did say so, smugly and often, congratulating themselves on their fundamental human decency for having the grace to elect a black man. Something that would have been unthinkable a generation or two ago had become reality, and Americans basked in self-justified pride.

It’s one of the most common American clichés: anyone, no matter their race, color, class, or creed, can become president. Barack Obama is seen as fulfilling that ideal.

But let’s be realistic. Barack Obama’s blackness is, literally, only skin deep. Culturally, he is very, very white.

Obama’s father was his sole connection with any sort of African heritage. He left Obama’s mother when Barack was two. Four years later, Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, moved to Indonesia with her new husband, where Obama spent the next four years. After age ten, he was raised primarily (and at times exclusively) by his maternal grandparents. From the fifth grade through high school, he attended the Punahou School, an elite prep school.

From there, he went on to the exclusive Occidental College, then transferred to Columbia University. He picked up his law degree at Harvard, where he was editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Those are very strong credentials for president—in fact, looking at them, they are much stronger than those of either John McCain or Sarah Palin. (And yes, there are other considerations than education in the selection of a president, but education is a consideration).

Yet Obama’s experiences are not those of a “typical” black person. He grew up in a white family, and was educated at mostly white universities, and mingled with mostly white people during his formative years. Obama’s connection to Africa lies only in his genes, not his life experiences.

This is not a problem, unless you care about identity politics. Much of Barack Obama’s support arose from the fact that many wanted to be a part of the election of the first black president. But while it is hard to measure “blackness,” a half-Caucasian whose formation arose almost entirely from white culture is scarcely connected with the more general African-American experience.

An Abortion Party

2009-07-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

There’s this column in AlterNet written by Bynard Duncan that’s raising some eyebrows around the conservative side of the Internet. It’s called “My First Abortion Party,” and it’s easy to see why it raised conservative eyebrows. The whole thing is basically pointless—Duncan describes the infamous party, then seems to realize there’s some more space to fill and asks some questions he doesn’t even try to answer (“what are the inherent emotional features of being "male" or "female?”), and then allows for room for anger and disagreement.

Overall, it’s a pretty poorly written piece, but that’s not why conservatives noticed it. The hook, of course, is Duncan’s “first” abortion party, like invitations to such parties are normal and are just pouring in for most people.

Duncan sets up the situation:

"Have you guys heard the news?" Maggie (name changed) unwrapped the scarf from around her neck and patted her flat belly. "Preggers." It was around 30 degrees outside, and her cheeks were splashed pink from the Indiana wind.
She had discovered earlier that week, after missing a period and taking the test. "I kind of knew already. My boobs and my lower back have been killing me for a while."

Yeah, that’s a confirmed feminist all right. You might think that a 22 year-old college senior (as “Maggie” is) might be a little worried, but “Maggie” is just as cool as a cucumber. Because that’s just how modern girls act, or at least how Duncan thinks they should act.

I’m not even sure how he’s supposed to know Maggie, anyway. She’s supposed to be his girlfriend’s best friend, but he looks a lot older than college age in his Facebook picture (the only information I could find about him), and his girlfriend looks even older than he does.

Anyway, Maggie is going to have a party to help raise money for her abortion, which is the part that gets conservatives mad, and hopefully even makes liberals a little uncomfortable. So Duncan and Ali (that’s his girlfriend) walk in, and

we were bludgeoned with a blast of hot air, followed by the tangy stink of dance floor revelry. Someone had taken a red bed sheet and hung it below a light fixture to resemble a giant womb. Every so often, a dancer’s head or arm or dreadlock would brush against one of its smooth folds, creating a rippling effect. "Let’s Go Crazy" by Prince was playing.

Sounds like a pretty crazy party, huh? They even found a red bed sheet, which I didn’t think existed. (I’ve never seen one, at least). And they have a song with an fitting title playing. Sounds like quite the scene of debauchery, huh?

Or not.

I sat down and struck up a conversation with Eli, the three-year-old son of one of the partygoers.

Given that Maggie is supposed to be a college senior, I wonder how many people old enough to have a three year old son she knows well enough to invite to her parties. And honestly, I’d love to have a look at little Eli’s parents. Given the circumstances, I’d guess the poor kid would be surrounded by alcohol and underage drinking, giving him a head start on alcoholism that most drunks only dream about.

Maggie’s boyfriend was also there, though he was “looking uncomfortably alone,” since I guess Maggie’s friends were angry at him for his involvement in the abortion, though I’m not sure what they wanted. Duncan used this fact to raise his questions about differences between male and female, though since he never even tries to answer them they just come off as silly and pointless.

Now, I doubt the abortion party happened as Duncan said. The party seems sometimes to be a shocking scene of debauchery, and then turns out to be pretty family friendly. Maggie’s calmness in the face of her difficult situation is pretty odd. And I find it difficult to think that Maggie’s friends would be angry at her boyfriend for being too involved; rather, I think it’d be more likely the other way around.

There’s a chance “Maggie” read that article, and I can’t believe that Duncan would make the situation so recognizable that her identity would be exposed to any acquaintances reading. So Duncan probably changed enough details to both conceal identities and make the thing more interesting. The real story was probably a lot less shocking, and a lot more boring.

Still, the article reveals something interesting about the pro-choice mentality. The whole first half is nothing more than an attempt (a successful one) to shock pro-lifers, while simultaneously attempting to portray abortion as normal and commonplace. (Remember, this is his “first abortion party, so presumably there will be many more).

This tactic is characteristic of the pro-abortion movement as a whole. Their position—that abortion is moral—is indefensible. (Not that this proves abortion is wrong—but it is impossible, outside the theological sphere, to say when the soul enters the body. And if you don’t believe in the soul, I honestly don’t understand how one could put a value on human life). So if it is very difficult to win converts via logical debate, the next best thing is an appeal to emotion, where abortion is painted as both normal and necessary.

What Will Palin Do Next?

2009-07-07T20:50:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin’s weird resignation is still rocking the political world, especially since the Michael Jackson funeral has driven comparatively unimportant topics such as U.S.-Russia relations well off the radar. (I didn’t plan to watch the Jackson special, but some unexpected events led me to a seat in a McDonald’s under a TV showing it. Al Sharpton—who to my knowledge had absolutely nothing to do with Jackson when he was alive—was speaking, which tells you all you need to know about it). So political news is stuck on the last big story, and every pundit out there is frantically trying to figure why Palin resigned, and where she goes from here.

Such speculation about Palin’s is utterly pointless, of course, since there isn’t anything to go on besides her weird farewell speech, and while it isn’t particularly easy to decipher is clear enough to speak for itself. Palin seems to have quit due to three main reasons—frustration at her limited influence as Alaska’s governor, disgust over the constant media scrutiny of her family, and weariness about the constant and—so far—groundless ethical complaints.

Those reasons aren’t really that compelling. Governor of Alaska might not be the most influential position in politics, but still, it does have some influence, and Palin’s assertion that she is now a “lame duck” because she won’t run for reelection in a year and a half is just strange. Any while the ethics complaints are no doubt annoying, and expensive for Alaska, few if any of them seem to be valid, and they are a part of the job. (Note: if, as some speculate, it turns out Palin resigned due to a ethical or personal scandal, ignore that last sentence).

Palin’s concern for her family is the closest thing she had to a legitimate reason to quit. The attacks on her, and her family, have been really over-the-top and cruel, and there doesn’t seem to have been much fact-checking involved. But she seems to have an intention of staying in politics—she mentioned a “higher calling” and quoted O.P. Smith, saying that she “wasn’t retreating, but advancing in another direction,” and opened a Twitter account.

Palin seems to want a political future. But does she have one? Every cable news pundit has tried to answer that question, and if so, to guess how Palin will try to rebrand herself.

My guess, which is completely unfounded and is almost certainly wrong (but every other blogger is doing the same thing, so can you blame me?), is that Palin is planning a presidential run built solely on a populist platform. Palin doesn’t seem to be particularly popular with the elites in the Republican party, and there can’t be many Washington power brokers who like her. The mainstream media still dislikes her, so creating a favorable image with these handicaps, while stuck as governor of an unimportant and isolated state, may have seemed like too daunting a challenge. Palin is still popular among the conservative rank and file, so she may very well have felt going populist was the way to go.

Now, Palin is free to pull down lots of cash via speaking gigs, and can spend more of her time writing her book. (Or, possibly, supervising her ghostwriter’s work). She will, I think, run for president in 2012, and if she does, she will run only on the cult of personality that is Sarah Palin. She won’t have anything else—expect perhaps for the support of Rush Limbaugh and some of Fox News, which is not inconsiderable. But she will be forced to do without any help from the Republican party or many interest groups, at any rate unless she wins the nomination.

Would a Palin populist platform succeed? It shouldn’t. Palin showed promise as John McCain’s running mate, and didn’t do terribly poorly in a very difficult position, but since then has become a broken record (always whining about media unfairness, and if her complaints are not invalid, they do become tedious), and has acted unpardonably in her resignation. I couldn’t imagine myself voting for her.

I would guess that many Republicans feel the same way. But it doesn’t do to underestimate Sarah Palin. If an unlikely 2012 run succeeded, she would hardly be the first presidential candidate to win on little more than a smile and a speech. (Obama springs to mind, and so does Kennedy). Palin probably won’t ever be president now, and probably won’t ever even come close. But she does have some remarkable talent, and it would be foolish to write her off.

Another note. Some pundits are saying that Palin was foolish to accept McCain’s running mate offer. She might regret it, but politically, it was a smart move to make. She was governor of Alaska, and such offers don’t often come along for people in that position. Accepting McCain’s offer was the wisest course for her.

The Left's War on Science

2009-07-04T10:09:00.000-07:00

During the Bush years, one of the most commonly leveled charges against Bush and conservatives was the “politization of science.” There was more than a little truth to these charges, though Bush did not so much “politicize” science as ignore any undesirable science—Bush probably believed in evolution, but he was sympathetic to intelligent design proponents, and ignored any science proving global warming.

This is, or should be, sort of embarrassing for conservatives. Conservatism prides itself on its strict allegiance to facts (though I guess most political philosophies would do that), and the outright denial of evolution, and the disregard for any evidence of global warming flies in the face of that ethos. Conservatives should do a little self-examination on this issue.

Conservatives should do some self-examination—emphasis on the self part, because they do not need any help from liberals. Liberals are in no position to criticize conservatives for their attitude towards science—their attitude towards science is just as careless and selective as that of conservatives.

Take feminist theory (which isn’t, perhaps, science in the strictest sense, though a bachelors degree in feminist studies is technically a bachelors of science degree, and it does involve sifting evidence and forming hypothesis’s). Feminism is taught in a great many colleges, and is considered—at least on the Left—as a legitimate course of study. Yet the most respected feminist textbooks are full of obviously false “facts.”

In Nancy Lemon’s Domestic Violence Law, Lemon explains that the phrase “rule of thumb” arose from laws in Romulus’ Rome regulating the width of wife-beating rods. She also reveals that between twenty and thirty-five percent of women in emergency rooms are there due to domestic violence, and that women who are domestically abused are twice as likely to suffer miscarriages and birth defects. All these “facts” are completely baseless—yet university professors continue to pass them off as solid truth.

Another example of liberal disregard for science is its attitude towards global warming. Most liberals believe in the existence of man-made global warming, and given that most scientists do too, they are probably right to do so. But their support for climate change regulation too often seems to exist independently of the science of global warming, and they are quite willing to ignore inconvenient truths to advance their agenda.

A while back, environmentalists circulated a poignant picture to bring home to Americans the effects of global warming. It showed two confused looking polar bears stuck on an ice floe, with open water all around them. It was an effective shot—when the iceberg finished melting (thanks to global warming of course), the polar bears would presumably sink to a watery death, all thanks to remorseless Western consumption.

In reality, that sort of thing is quite common, global warming or no global warming. Icebergs exist no matter the earth’s temperature, and polar bears are pretty good swimmers, so they rarely drown, no matter how far they end up drifting.

Japan’s Mount Kilimanjaro is famous for its snowcapped summit. That snow is melting, which was another striking global warming image—until it was revealed that the mountain’s snows had been melting for decades—well before man-made global warming had begun.

Anthropogenic global warming is real, but the proper way to get the public’s attention is not to fabricate scary anecdotes. This sort of thing is every bit as dishonest as those who attempt to disprove global warming using obviously bad science.

It is not only the Right that is guilty of politicizing science. The Left is equally guilty—and sometimes more so. Both sides accept only that science which conforms with their beliefs—and ignores the rest.

Revolution Over

2009-06-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

It looks like Michael Jackson's death has more or less ended the whole Iranian revolution thing. Yeah, there were other factors, such as the Iranian government's crackdown on dissidents, but the MJ saga pushed it off the front page pretty quickly, meaning that the mullahs could get away with murder. (Literally, in some cases). I never thought the revolutionaries had much of chance, but it's sad to see it end.

Michael Jackson R.I.P.

2009-06-27T07:13:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson is dead at fifty. And the reaction to his death is fitting. Every cable news and entertainment channel, and most every radio station, is running (or at least was running—it has been more than twenty-four hours since Jackson died) wall-to-wall coverage of his death. The death of Michael Jackson is a lucrative business—aside from the monster television ratings to be had, Jackson’s albums are selling again—Thriller hit #1 on Amazon.

This orgy of profit is appropriate, given Jackson’s career arc. He was deprived of any sort of childhood by his abusive father, forced to practice singing and not much else. His success as a child star condemned him to a sort of eternal childhood—his handlers injected him with female hormones to preserve his youthful voice, and he was encouraged to live in a Peter Pan, never-grow-up world.

Jackson bore some responsibility for his increasingly eccentric actions—but he never really had a chance. No one could do much given his circumstances—instant fame, but incredible pressure and dreadful and sometimes abusive authority figures. His fame would have nigh-impossible for even the most balanced person to handle. In Michael Jackson’s case, the results were horrible.

He went a little mad, ruining his face with plastic surgeries, allegedly molesting children, and going from riches to rags, dying a poor man. Michael Jackson was an icon, a legend, one of pop music’s greatest figures—but also an American tragedy.

The Big Government Bubble

2009-06-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Over the past seventy years, Americans have seen an incredible growth in their country’s standard of living and position in the world. America is the world’s undisputed superpower, militarily and especially economically. The dollar is the world’s standard currency, and the American economy drives that of the rest of the world.

Americans also live luxuriously. America consumes twenty-five percent of the world’s resources, and only a few countries have a higher standard of living. The American Dream—a house, two cars, and a college education (or well-paying blue collar work) is a widespread reality in America, and America is one of the few countries in which every citizen has a chance at such a lifestyle.

This sort of lifestyle started after the Second World War. True, before that, America was known as a country that offered good living conditions, and played an important part in the world economy, but living conditions in America were not notably better than in Europe, and the richest Europeans probably lived better than the richest Americans.

(Certainly, Western culture was centered in Europe at the time. The magician Harry Houdini, for example, traveled to England to gain legitimacy by wowing English audiences before returning to America a success. Now European stars like Simon Cowell have to impress American audiences to get the highest praise in their home countries.)

After World War II, however, things changed, and American became the superpower it is today. (The Soviet Union offered some competition, but never came anywhere near American living conditions or economic strength, and eventually spectacularly collapsed). So, what changed after World War II to make America to powerful?

To some degree, it was World War II itself, and the subsequent Cold War. War provides the most powerful incentive for innovation and production, and America progressed technologically and economically during the war. (Indeed, the war lifted America out of the Great Depression).

And World War II eliminated some of the competition, too. Most of Europe was trying to rebuild after seven years of total war. America became the world’s economic leader partly because the foundations of the rest of the world had been shaken.

But that doesn’t explain why the U.S. economy kept growing in the seventy years after the war. There must be another explanation for the U.S.’s growth.

I think that that the reason for America’s growth is due, in part, to the federal government’s spending. Education is important. After World War II, the GI Bill provided housing and college education to hundreds of thousands of young Americans. Worries about retirement cause hoarding, which slows spending. But Social Security eased worries about retirement. Housing is expensive—but it’s not so bad when Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac can (indirectly) provide you with a mortgage. Medical care is expensive too—but since only about 10% of Americans pay for their health insurance out of their own pocket, Americans don’t have to worry about that so much.

All those programs are expensive to pay for. So the federal government, displaying real American ingenuity and know-how, devised a clever solution to that problem: it stopped paying for it. The federal debt skyrocketed—but it didn’t affect your average American, and nobody cared.

You might remember the housing bubble, which recently burst and had a lot in common with what we are dealing with today. Housing prices went higher and higher, and people borrowed more and more money on the value of their homes. Then people realized there was a surplus of housing, and the housing market shrank. But since many people had borrowed on their homes, they were forced to default on their loans, which hurt the banks, and threw the whole economy into chaos.

Like the housing market of the Bush years, the government is growing too fast and has too many liabilities built into it. When the government is forced to deal with its debt—and it will be, eventually, it will no longer be able to keep up its lavish welfare system.

And when that happens, the whole system will come crashing down. Americans will be forced to reach into their own pockets to pay for their health care, housing, education, and retirement. The government bubble will burst. And while it’s impossible to predict the precise effect that will have on the economy, it is certain it will not be pretty.

Of course, economics is tricky, even for experts, and maybe none of this will come to pass. But I think it will, though I hope I’m wrong.

Iran and Liberals

2009-06-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

The recent elections in Iran have gotten a great deal of worldwide attention, and rightly so. Iran’s mullah’s handled the election horribly—they chose which candidates would be eligible to run, and of those candidates handpicked Mamoud Ahmadinejad to win. It didn’t do a very good job of doing so, and apparently didn’t anticipate any unrest following the election. These oversights gave the world an excellent glimpse of a brutal dictatorship in action.

Nobody much is defending Iran’s leaders. Conservatives, moderates and liberals are united in their disgust and anger over the brutality of Iran’s ruling class. But America’s newfound distaste for Iran raises some questions of consistency. For example, a year ago many liberals and moderates were saying that Iran was worth talking to, and that its ruling class are rational actors. And while Iran rates condemnatory 24/7 news coverage, other countries, countries that are every bit as dictatorial and brutal as Iran, are allowed to skate by without criticism.

When George W. Bush inserted Iran into his “axis of evil,” many, perhaps most, liberals were horrified. Some, perhaps rightly, pointed out that very publicly singling out three widely separated countries as “evil” might not be smart diplomacy. (And in hindsight, Bush was only able to deal with one of them; the one that was the least dangerous, and allowed the more dangerous two to continue their pursuit of nuclear weapons). But most were outraged that Bush called Iran evil at all, at any time.

These critics thought that Iran, if not a Western style liberal democracy, was essentially a benign country. Matt Yglesias (who is a fairly mainstream liberal, far from the lunatic fringe) wrote blog posts suggesting that any attempts by Iran to appease the United States would be unwise, since the U.S. (this was during the Bush Administration) was run by neocons (with ties to AIPAC) who would be perfectly willing to attack Iran without provocation. Yglesias also penned a surreal post in which he said that Ahmadinejad had a “pretty sweet hipster style” (because he addressed the U.N. General Assembly tieless), and suggested that Bush might want to try some Iran-style diplomacy.

Yglesias is hardly the only liberal writer to have been so ridiculously easy on Iran—such attitudes were the rule rather than the exception on the Left until the Iran elections made Iran persona non grata in the West. But when considering the Left’s angry denunciations of Iran (now, Yglesias goes so far as to compare Admadinejad to Sarah Palin), it should be remembered that until a few weeks ago, most on the Left were making excuses for the same brutal regime.

Everyone condemns Iran’s brutality. But it is far too often forgotten that in most of the world, such violence is the rule, not the exception. Most countries on Earth are dictatorships; few are democracies. But most Americans are content to shut their eyes to that fact, unless the occasional foreign PR disaster ensures that evidence of dictatorship is thrust in their faces.

China’s government, for instance, is far more evil than Iran’s. (China’s one child policy is just one example). But it also has the capacity (achieved by using what often amounts to slave labor) to manufacture goods cheaply and efficiently. So Americans ignore China’s abysmal human rights record, and happily consume Chinese products.

Or take Cuba. Fidel Castro has ruled that country with an iron first for a half century. But he is admired by many on the Left, apparently for no other reason than that he looked cool forty years ago. Or take Saudi Arabia, whose human rights abuses are tolerated because it supplies U.S. demand for oil. Or Libya, whose human rights abuses are ignored because it is obscure and unimportant.

What is going on in Iran is the norm in most of the world. Those who live in the West forget that the rights they enjoy are very uncommon, and rarely found outside of Europe and America. They are the exception—in most places, dictatorship, corruption, and brutality are the norm.

Palin and the Media

2009-06-19T07:03:00.000-07:00

David Letterman’s comments about Sarah Palin’s daughter were undeniably in bad taste. Jokes about fourteen-year-old Willow Palin are clearly outside the pale, and even jokes about eighteen-year-old Bristol, while less offensive, still push the boundaries of taste and decency. While Bristol is of age, and something of a public figure (aside from her mother’s political involvement, she has given speeches and appeared on television), she does not court the spotlight, and hasn’t done anything newsworthy for quite some time.

Everyone knows about Letterman’s joke—that Willow, while in New York, would be propositioned by Eliot Spitzer and seduced by Alex Rodriguez. Letterman says that his intended target was Bristol, and I believe him, since the joke wouldn’t be funny unless it was.

And Palin responded angrily, accusing Letterman of joking about the statutory rape of her daughter and forcing him to apologize twice while leveling veiled accusations of pedophilia. Her outrage was understandable—whatever Letterman’s intentions, his joke ended up being about her young daughter.

Most people have made up their minds about whether Letterman’s joke was unconscionable (it was) and whether Palin’s response was excessive (it was). To me, the most interesting aspect of an overblown and generally unremarkable incident is the media’s attitude towards Palin concerning this incident.

Most would agree that Letterman’s joke was tasteless, and the Palin family was wronged. (Even most liberals seemed to agree with this view). And Palin’s response, if excessive, was at least understandable, given that she was the victimized party.

That wasn’t the media’s view. Palin’s response was worse than the original wrong itself, and served as more proof of her intellectual and moral failings. Andrew Sullivan said, essentially, that Palin had it coming for taking her family on the campaign trail. Keith Olbermann called Letterman “the victim” who “took the high road,” while Palin was “power crazed” and a “delusional lunatic.” Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick allowed that Letterman’s comments were “stupid,” but claimed that Palin’s were “stupider.” All this because Sarah Palin was angered by a vicious and careless joke.

It’s become a conservative cliché to rhetorically wonder what would have happened had a conservative said what Letterman said about a family member of a Democrat. But that misses the point. Letterman would never have made that joke about the daughter of a Democrat. But he also wouldn’t have made the joke about the daughter of any other Republican.

Remember Jenna Bush? She was the target of some late night jokes a few years back, after being arrested for underage drinking and trying to use her grandmother’s ID to buy alcohol. (I wonder how she possibly thought using her grandmother’s ID would work). She came in for her share of jokes—but they stopped quickly, weren’t nearly as cruel or relentless as the jibes about Bristol Palin.

Sarah Palin is different from most Republican politicians. Most Republicans are tolerated by the media, and sometimes even admired (John McCain in 2000 is an example). But liberal media types fear Palin because they think she represents (in a way no other Republican does) the most superstitious, uneducated, and stupid portion of the American people—and they realize that she came very close to becoming the Vice President of the United States.

In the typical liberal mind, Sarah Palin in the Oval Office would be a bad dream come true, as bad as having Rush Limbaugh there. Palin represents liberalism’s worst nightmare: a very conservative politician who is also popular, at least among a niche of the population. They are afraid of the possibility that Palin could win the presidency in 2012, and usher in a new dark age of conservatism. Thus, the wild and hateful comments about Palin. The media doesn’t hate Palin—liberals are afraid of her.

ObamaCare's Fatal Flaw

2009-06-17T21:29:00.001-07:00

Reforming health care is next on Barack Obama’s agenda. Doing so will be difficult—any meaningful health care reform would be a massive project, and would be massively expense. And as Bill and Hillary Clinton found out, health care reform is a tricky thing—attempting to implement universal health care was a disaster that marred Clinton’s first term.

And health care is a very divisive issue, one that not only drives division between parties, but also within them. There have been significant disagreements about the proper health care plan among Democrats, and there is no cohesive outline for the overhaul even within that party. And, of course, Republicans are solidly opposed to any additional public health insurance.

There are many reasons Republicans oppose Obama’s plan. One is the cost—the original plan would have cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years, and while lawmakers are trying to get the cost under a trillion, the price will still be very great. Others oppose the bill for ideological reasons—they believe that the state should minimize its involvement in private life, and government run healthcare would be a too-big intrusion into the private sector.

Another reason to oppose government run healthcare is that it is unnecessary. America is the only developed country in the world without universal health care. Yet American life expectancy is only slightly lower than countries with universal health care. That stat is more impressive when you consider how poor American health habits are—most Americans are overweight (about two thirds), and many smoke (about a quarter) or take drugs. And still, American life expectancy does not differ in any significant way from health rates in other developed countries.

And, of course, even if government run health care was everything its supporters claimed it was, it has drawbacks. If the free market doesn’t run the health care system, then there will be some form of rationing—some treatments will be harder to find, or have longer wait times, than others, regardless of the patients ability to pay.

All those are compelling reasons to oppose government run health care. But there is another reason to stand against it. Assume that Obama’s plan works—it reduces health care costs, it cuts down on insurance premiums, and improves general health and life expectancy. It would still be a bad idea. Because it would only be as strong as the federal government’s balance sheet.

Take Social Security. It’s worked pretty well for a government program—people put in their money, and get it back when they retire. It depends on some dubious assumptions (the largest such assumption being the idea that there will always be more workers entering the workforce than leaving it), but so far there have been no major problems with it. In fact, for a government program, it has run pretty smoothly.

The problem is, it’s not substainable. Experts estimate the Social Security will run out of money around 2040—about thirty years from now. Presumably, the federal government will take some measures to stave off the collapse, but whatever happens there will probably be a great many people who will have to expensively reconsider their retirement plans.

It is much the same situation with Medicare, except the doomsday date is around 2020. Congress is already trying to figure how much of Medicare it can cut, which should probably worry some of those dependant on it.

Supporters of government run health care should consider these cases. If the government is responsible for health care, what happens when the government can’t provide it? The situation would be far worse than before the government stepped in.

Right now, the U.S. nation debt is over 10 trillion dollars. The deficit for this year alone is over one trillion. The U.S. is in danger of losing its AAA credit rating. Given the fact that the federal government can’t pay off the obligations it has, is it wise to saddle it with more of them?

Do Republicans Need to Change?

2009-06-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing that all political observers agree about, it is that if the Republican party is to survive, it must change a great deal. The platform that George Bush ran on, and the ideals of his Republican party, are dead. In 2010 and 2012, Republicans must run on a whole new set of principles, updating and adapting for the 21st century.

The amount the change the party needs is up for debate. Some, such as David Frum, Meghan McCain, and Christopher Buckley, think that the party needs to adapt and try to appeal to younger, more environmentally conscious, more socially liberal voters. These figures don’t get much attention from actual Republicans, but do serve as useful quotes sources for journalists doing pieces about why the GOP must change.

Others, such as Patrick Ruffini, Ross Douthat, and Soren Dayton, think the basic message is good, but the packaging is weak and outdated. For example, Douthat believes that social conservatives’ focus on abortion and gay marriage is limiting and impractical, and does nothing to address the larger issues such as the breakdown of the family. Ruffini points out that the Democrats have a considerable technological edge over the Republicans, and says that Republicans should start networking via blogs and using applications such as Twitter. The attitude of this group can be summed up by a Douthat quote “Reagan was right for his time, but now it’s a different time.” Douthat, Ruffini, and like minded people believe that Republicans should shift their focus to issues such as immigration, energy, and the environment.

There is, to be sure, some truth to both points of view. However, I believe both are wrong. Reagan ran on low taxes and spending, less government involvement in the private sector, a strong military, and an opposition to abortion (and now, gay marriage). Bush ran on much the same issues, with the addition of “compassionate conservatism.” (Basically, the welfare that Republicans deem acceptable). There is no reason to assume that these issues are less effective now than when Reagan used them.

The United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. Social Security and Medicare (the two biggest government intrusions into the private sector) are on the verge of bankruptcy. The national debt is out of control, and probably unpayable.

All these are extremely important issues—and ones that play to traditional Republican strengths. And as Obama expands the government, that growth will give Republicans even more material for attacks.

Many of the reformers see Republican opposition to abortion and gay marriage as real weaknesses, especially with young voters. I have never been able to understand, given that pro-life evangelicals and conservative Catholics form much of the GOP base, why so many believe that Republicans would be better off dropping their opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

True, the Republican stand on those issues probably drives off young voters. But even if the GOP were more socially liberal, are there that many young voters who favor an aggressive military and small government, but draw the line at supporting a party that takes a conservative stand on social issues?

The one area where relatively few conservatives seem to see the need for change is foreign policy. That is odd, considering that most of former president Bush’s unpopularity rose from his handling of the Iraq War. If there is one issue that presents a legitimate weak point for Republicans, it is foreign policy.

Those Republicans who think the party needs to change its focus don’t seem to have considered what sort of voter they actually want. They seem to want voters concerned with gay rights, the environment, energy policy, and immigration. There is a name for that kind of voter: a Democrat. Given that Republicans tend to oppose gay marriage, environmental regulations, alternate energies, and immigration, there really isn’t much room to make these issues the Republicans’ own, at least not without alienating virtually the entire base. And while many Republicans probably wouldn’t mind doing so, that base also happens to be the ones who vote in Republican primaries.

I predict that the next Republican president—whether he is elected in 2012, 2016, or 2020—will run on a platform very similar to that of George W. Bush. Those issues just work—and will as long as Americans groan about taxes, or care to win wars, or worry about the morality of abortion.

Not that winning on Bush’s issues is altogether a good thing. Bush did run on compassionate conservatism, after all, which most conservatives agree wasn’t a very good idea. Republican opposition to gay marriage disturbs me a little, given how unimportant it is compared to other, more pressing issues. And taxes are about as low as they can get, considering the amount of spending by the federal government.

But good for the country or not, traditional Republican issues work. (And the frontrunners for 2012 seem to agree—Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Mitt Romney are all pretty traditional Republicans). These issues have worked in the past—and will probably work in the future.

Extremism In America

2009-06-11T22:39:00.000-07:00

By now, everyone has heard of the white supremist and anti-Semite who went on a shooting spree in the Holocaust Museum, killing one guard and injuring another visitor.

The attack was horrible, and served as a reminder of the need for a reminder of the Holocaust, and of the fact that anti-Semitism is still an issue today. The shooter was a man called James W. von Brunn, an eighty-eight year old white supremist who was convinced that Bush was behind 9/11 and that Obama is a puppet of the Jews. Von Brunn felt the proper response to these facts was violence.

He’s pretty alone in that line of thought. A white supremist group condemned his actions, saying that “the responsible white separatist community condemns this. It makes us look bad.” (Actually, I wasn’t aware that there was a responsible white separatist community, nor that it was possible to make it look any worse). Conservatives were horrified at the blatant and violent anti-Semitism, while liberals alternated between expressing horror and trying to tie the attacks to conservatives. (Because the party that essentially thinks Israel can do no wrong is filled with anti-Semites).

One thing that virtually everyone agrees on is that von Brunn acted more or less alone; that virtually no one actually agrees with him, and such extremism is limited to a few eccentric loners. Most of us in the Western world feel that extremism just isn’t done anymore, that the extremists out there either belong to a different culture (Islam), or a small, creepy cult, or in their basement furiously posting stuff on their favorite forum. But extremism, of any kind, isn’t something that more than a few people could get in to. Most people believe that extremism exists only as an eccentricity, but rarely or never as a movement, at least not in the Western world.

They could be wrong, and in fact I think they are. Scary, extremist movements aren’t nice to think about—they summon up images of Nazi Germany and racist mobs—but they exist. And while predicting the future is difficult, and foolish, I think there is reason to believe they could grow.

Case in point: England. The United Kingdom is very liberal compared to the U.S.—accepted political figures in America like Jim DeMint or Bobby Jindal would be off the political map there. Britain looks down on America as a backwards, conservative country dominated by reactionaries.

So guess which country saw a racist, white supremist party make significant gains in their recent elections?

The British National Party (BNP) is more or less unapologetically fascist—its domestic policies are fairly similar to the British Labour Party, with the caveats that the BNP favors discrimination against gays, immigrants, and blacks. It’s a nasty, unnecessary party. It also won over six percent of the vote in Britain’s recent elections.

There were reasons for that—turnout was low, and many Britons are disgusted over recent expenses scandals in their government. But then, that sort of thing isn’t exactly unprecedented. If all it takes to give an extremist party power is corrupt politicians and low turnout, then the United States is ready for an extremist takeover right now.

That’s hyperbole, maybe, but it’s not as insane as one might think. In America today, both sides see the other as a rational person might see a party like the BNP—as immoral, over-the-edge extremists. Conservatives see themselves as a beleaguered, silent majority, with their rights trampled on by elites in the government and the media. Liberals see conservatives as evil, backwards monsters willing to stop at nothing to achieve their aims.

Both sides try to paint the other as extremists, but the liberal movement takes this demonization the farthest. Take David Letterman’s joke about Bristol Palin getting knocked up at a Mets game, or Leonard Zesnick’s assertion that Sean Hannity gives white supremists “rational justification,” or HuffPo writer Michael Rowe’s (wholly false) claim that Sarah Palin supporters waved watermelon slices and stuffed monkeys at her rallies. These comments are supposed to be taken seriously, yet are total nonsense (or deeply offensive, in Letterman’s case). Yet many people believe them.

You can find similar, though generally not as egregious, comments on the conservative side as well. And this sort of attitude paints the other side as wholly alien and other, and paints the “right” side as the only legitimate ideology. This sort of attitude distorts the middle. For example, Rush Limbaugh and Barack Obama are fine as examples of the right and left in American politics, respectively. But I wouldn’t like to live in an America where either represented the center—in such an America, people like Michael Savage or Michael Moore would represent legitimate viewpoints. And that is not a good thing.

Our current polarization is somewhat inevitable, and neither side really bears the blame for it. Given the wide gap between left and right in this country, reducing the animosity between the two sides is a difficult task. Failing to do so won’t necessarily result in a growth of extremism. But it will give extremism a better chance to thrive.

Conservatives And Hollywood

2009-06-09T21:35:00.000-07:00

Generally, conservatives disapprove of Hollywood, or at least of Hollywood’s liberal values. With good reason, too—it’s common knowledge that prevailing Hollywood values skew heavily liberal, and that conservative beliefs are often demonized and mocked.

For myself, Hollywood’s lack of originality annoys me more than its liberalism—does every movie have to be a reboot of some Eighties franchise? (Star Trek, X-Men, Terminator, Transformers, Watchmen, etc). I would gladly put up with a liberal Hollywood if it were also an inventive, clever Hollywood. But it isn’t, and Hollywood’s liberal bias is evident, and it annoys me.

I don’t know why conservatives can’t seem to infiltrate Hollywood, though I suspect that the reason, whatever it is, is the same as the reason they can’t seem to do much in the mainstream media. Discrimination against conservatives (mostly unconscious, probably, but still discrimination) might play a role, but almost certainly not a major one. And it’s possible that more creative people might also tend to be more naïve and idealistic, making them more sympathetic to liberal views.

And, of course, there is the fact that hard-headed capitalists and enthusiastic soldiers don’t always make for the most sympathetic heroes. A reluctant hero going up against The Man is seen as more exciting than, say, the inner workings of a massive corporation.

Hollywood’s liberal bias is, obviously, not good for conservatives. But there are things conservatives can do to make things in that area better. Two the most obvious are to grow up and man up.

First, conservatives should grow up. It’s possible that they would be more respected (if only marginally more so) if their taste in movies were a bit better. This year, National Review released a list of the Top Twenty-Five Conservative Movies. Number five on the list (and bear in mind, this list only covered movie released after about 1984) was 300, because it is a film about “martial honor, unflinching courage, and the oft-ignored truth that freedom isn’t free.” Translation: a lot of bad guys get killed.

(Although I haven’t watched 300, I am familiar with the basic premise, which is that buff guys in bikinis thrust long, hard objects into other men. Does anyone else see any Freudian overtones there?)

Red Dawn (lots of Communists get killed) and Heartbreak Ridge (ditto) are fifteen and twenty-one, respectively. The conservative message of these three films is that killing bad guys is a great idea. And while that premise isn’t something I would disagree with, are these movies (none of which are considered particularly good by most critics) the best way to get this message across? Conservatives hated anti-war movies like Rendition and In the Valley of Elah (both of which bombed). But compared to, say, Red Dawn, the message in Hollywood’s recent anti-war movies was subtle and understated. It’s okay, even desirable, for conservatives to want to celebrate Americans at war through film. But couldn’t they at least pick good films with which to do so?

The rest of National Review’s list was pretty predictable. The Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight, Braveheart, The Chronicles of Narnia, and We Were Soldiers are films in the Red Dawn/300 category of “war can be good.” Forrest Gump, Ghostbusters, and The Pursuit of Happyness all celebrate small government. The Incredibles and Juno celebrate social conservatism. Somehow, South Park: Team America got onto the list, in the “bashing celebs who bash America” category. 24 isn’t a movie, but God knows conservatives praise it enough, seemingly because of Jack Bauer’s willingness to torture terrorists.

Most of these movies are good, but hardly great films. (The Lord of the Rings probably is a great film, as are Forrest Gump and Groundhog Day). But quality of moviemaking aside, what is striking about these movies is the flimsiness of the conservatism in them. Ghostbusters is on the list only because an comical EPA official releases ghosts on New York. Juno’s pro-life message is tenuous at best. Most of the other movies have similarly flimsy conservative messages.

Can’t conservatives find any better movies to represent their beliefs? Few of the movies here really raise any difficult questions, or provoke much thought. No Country for Old Men examined the essential character of man. Crash looked at racial relations in America. Million Dollar Baby tried to find what love really is. A Beautiful Mind explored insanity and genius. Any of those are good, serious films; films that conservatives can watch. And I picked those just out of Best Picture winners from the last decade. Conservatives, apparently, can’t be bothered to watch those movies—they’d rather watch Red Dawn again.

(Am I being unfair to conservatives here? Maybe a little, since liberals aren’t much more discriminating with their films, and there were some serious films on NR’s list. Still, conservatives will probably find it hard to be taken seriously in Hollywood as long as 300 and an American Carol rank up there in their favorite movies).

Granted, liking better movies isn’t a sure way for conservatives to become more accepted in Hollywood. In fact, there are conservatives in Hollywood, some of whom are quite respected in the industry (at least according to what they write in conservative publications). But no one knows who they are.

Apparently, being openly conservative in Hollywood is bad for one’s career. It’s the ultimate in political uncorrectness there, and few are brave enough to face the criticism. Therefore, Hollywood conservatives tend to remain closeted, and only share their beliefs with close friends.

They shouldn’t. It’s going to be hard for conservatives do much of anything to change Hollywood’s politics if they insist on remaining closeted. Will being openly conservative hurt their careers? Maybe. But if they feel strongly about being censored, they should speak out and let their voices be heard.

If Hollywood conservatives feel that doing so would simply hurt their careers too much, fine, that’s acceptable. But they should shut up about anti-conservative blacklists and witchhunts. In my mind, if you aren’t willing to do something about a problem, you lose the right to complain about it. Conservatives in Hollywood should either put up or shut up.

What Islam Is, and Isn't

2009-06-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

I thought Obama’s Islam speech was pretty good, as are most of his speeches. True, there wasn’t a lot of content there, but those types of speeches rarely have much in the way of substantive policy. The goal of this speech was to tell Islamic nations that the United States is not their enemy, and I think Obama succeeded.

One line in his speech stood out. Obama said “my experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't.” That’s very true—America should know what it is dealing with. It’s also something Obama ignored throughout his speech. In reality, Islam is significantly different from the version present in Obama’s speech.

Obama explained that he knew “civilization’s debt to Islam.” Islam has contributed its share to the West, and the Muslim world was a great center of science at one time, but really, modern civilization doesn’t owe very much at all to Islam. Our modern culture evolved from the Middle Ages and feudalism through the Renaissance and Enlightenment down to the present day. The primary influence during the Middle Ages was Christianity, the primary influences on the Renaissance were ancient Greece and Rome (that’s why they call it the Renaissance; “Renaissance” means “rebirth”), and reason and science were the basis for the Enlightenment.

Islam has made contributions to civilization—most obviously, they call our numbers “Arabic” numerals for a reason. But a glance at the modern word doesn’t really show much in the way of Islamic influence, and the Muslim influence there was essentially died out five hundred years ago.

Obama also made the claim that “America is not at war with Islam.” Let’s face it—it is, or at least Islam is at war with America. Take a look at a map of the Middle East, which is where the vast majority of Muslim countries are. (Two non-Middle East Muslim countries are Indonesia and Albania, neither of which are particularly unfriendly towards America.) The countries that make up the Middle East are: Egypt, Turkey, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine (defined as those states that are independent of Israel but not controlled by another country). Of those, seven (Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Qatar, and Turkey) can be considered friendly towards the United States. The other eight—which include most of the powerful states in the region (the friendly nations, with the exceptions of Pakistan and Turkey, are almost powerless in the region) either have governments that are openly hostile to the United States and Israel or have significant anti-American sentiment among their population.

The most influential Muslim in the world is probably Osama bin Laden. The second is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both are anti-American. The most powerful Islamic countries are probably Iran, Egypt, and Pakistan. Iran is an American enemy, Egypt is neutral but certainly no friend, and Pakistan, while an ally, is at the brink of collapse.

Not all Muslims hate America. But the ones that matter do. Moderate Muslims exist—but they don’t speak out. The men (and it’s only men) who have influence in Muslim countries are anti-America and anti-Israel. If the majority of Muslims do not in fact hate America (and it is very possible that this is the case), then they are a very silent majority. Islamic power, and the most vocal of the Muslim intelligentsia, are solidly against America.

Should Obama have included all this information in his speech? Of course not—it would be stupid to offend the people he is trying to attract. But he should realize what Islam is, and what it is not, and react accordingly.

Obama’s path to popularity in American and Europe has been very easy. But his philosophy may be much less popular in Muslim countries, and he should not count on his charm and biography to carry him through there.

Sotomayor In Context

2009-06-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor said that she “would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” That statement has become one of the centerpieces of the campaign against Sotomayor, with her detractors (Rush Limbaugh being the loudest) accusing her of racism based on this statement. Sotomayor’s defenders claim that Sotomayor was guilty merely of expressing herself poorly.

That explanation really doesn’t work, given that Sotomayor uttered those words in a prepared speech at a UC Berkley event, and the transcript of the speech was published in a law journal. So these weren’t exactly off-the-cuff, impulsive remarks—Sotomayor said exactly what she intended to say. Her words can be taken at face value.

Taking these remarks at face value, many conclude that Sotomayor is a racist, or at least capable of racist remarks. I’m not sure how valid the “racist” accusation is—can you really judge someone’s racial attitudes on the strength of one comment?

According to the American media, you can, and liberals trying to smear conservatives as racist always have one (or two, if they do a lot of research) out-of-context quote that proves beyond all doubt that the conservative in question is a barely closeted racist.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do, so we’ll go along with this theory and assume that Sotomayor’s 2001 comments are enough to make a definite judgment about her racial attitudes.

First, the context in which the speech was made is important. Sotomayor made the speech at an event called “Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation.” Given her audience, it is possible that Sotomayor just wanted to say something nice about Latinos (and Latinas), and threw in something that possibly wasn’t strictly logical but sounded nice. (In fairness, had a Catholic judge said a similar comment about Catholic judges, something along the lines of “our Catholic faith gives us greater perspective from the bench,” I doubt there would be as great a furor over his or her comments).

In addition, this wasn’t Sotomayor’s best speech ever. In it, her audience learned that the year was 2002 (the speech was given in 2001), that Sotomayor apparently doesn’t realize that “woman” isn’t an adjective, and that women are an ethic minority.

Language issues aside, the point of Sotomayor’s speech was that while absolute impartiality among judges is the ideal, the reality is that all judges will find their personal experiences and beliefs inevitably color their decisions. Among Latinos, this bias should be used constructively to bring a different perspective to the mostly white world of the law.

(This point was a little confusing. Sotomayor said she was working towards “transcend[ing] [her] personal sympathies and prejudices,” but also wondered “whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.” I think there is a contradiction there, and if Sotomayor reconciled that discrepancy, I missed it).

This led up to Sotomayor’s now infamous comment: “Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases…I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.” (I quoted this at length to provide context).

At first glance, these words look pretty damning. After all, Sotomayor appears to be saying that Latina women (isn’t that a redundancy?), by virtue of their race, pretty much come with interesting experiences that “white males” don’t have. And if she had indeed been saying that, her statement would have been racist.

However, a look at her whole speech reveals a little more context. The only Latina Sotomayor talked about at any length was herself, and a great part of those comments involved her Latina heritage and upbringing. The only white males she talked about (at least as white males) were Supreme Court justices, particularly those during the civil rights era.

So, if by the “wise Latina”, Sotomayor meant herself, and by “white males” she meant twentieth century Supreme Court justices, her statement begins to make more sense. If one’s experiences do indeed make one a better judge (as Sotomayor believes), then growing up a racial minority in a ghetto would help one make better decisions than someone who has led a bland, ordinary life. That interpretation—and I believe it is the correct one—makes Sotomayor’s remarks much less offensive.

Maybe Sonia Sotomayor’s speech wasn’t racist, but it certainly wasn’t very good. Her “wise Latina” comment, though benign, was incredibly poorly phrased. And her overall line of reasoning is pretty flawed too—if judges are not to have sympathies and prejudices on the bench, perhaps Sotomayor should have talked about the best way to transcend her prejudices. (She might want to consider looking into the principle of charity). Sonia Sotomayor’s speech wasn’t racist—but it was poorly phrased and confusing, and endorsed a flawed argument.

What the Tiller Assassination Means

2009-06-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

I was saddened and appalled, though not really shocked, over the news about the murder of noted abortionist George Tiller. Tiller was one of my least favorite people, and his work providing late term abortions was truly evil, though no worse than any other abortionist. However, slaughtering those who disagree with us on moral issues is both wrong and ineffective, and I, like all pro-lifers, condemn the murder and the man who committed it.

Some wonder why, if abortion is truly murder, it is not moral to kill as many abortionists as possible in order to reduce the number of abortions. (It is mostly, in fact almost exclusively, pro-choicers who pose this question). It is possible that Tiller’s murderer used that reasoning—Tiller was one of few abortionists who did late term abortions, so many of his potential clients will have nowhere else to go for abortions. Pro-lifers condemn the murder of George Tiller—but why, if it prevented murder?

There are, I think, two reasons such actions are wrong. The first is the ineffectiveness of such killings—any drop in the number of abortions as a result of Tiller’s death will probably be more than offset by the ill-will garnered by the pro-life movement as a result of the killing. Assassinations, as Brutus, Booth, and Čabrinović, found out, don’t usually work the way they are intended to.

The second reason is that we live in a democracy, and unless people consent to be governed by the laws made by the majority, democracy is meaningless. If the proper response to disagreement is violence, then democracy is undermined. Everyone owes allegiance to the state and to society, provided that society is just.

If the society is just, of course, rebellion may be a just and moral thing to do—those Germans who conspired against Hitler during World War II were probably justified in doing so. But I think it is hard to argue that contemporary American society is so unjust as to be illegitimate, and violence in this situation is quite wrong. An analogous situation is that of blacks during the forties, fifties, and sixties. The racial prejudice they faced was wrong—but the proper response was not murder. Had Martin Luther King used bullets instead of words, he would be remembered today as the same sort of monster as Scott Roeder, George Tiller’s murderer.

Pro-lifers who commit violence are in the wrong. Every pro-lifer realizes that. But the reaction of much of the media intentionally ignores this fact, and much of the analysis of this crime amounts to what is really nothing more than a smear job against those whom oppose abortion.

Pro-lifers have been protesting Tiller for years. Bill O’Reilly (who, by the way, isn’t pro-life—he supports abortion rights) has devoted a great many shows towards exposing Tiller. The idea is that all that protesting and exposing inspired Roeder to do what he did, making the pro-life movement partially responsible for Tiller’s murder.

This charge is slander, and honestly I cannot see how anyone could make it in good faith. No movement can be held accountable for the actions of everyone who shares its goals, and the pro-life movement is no exception. Roeder is a nut with a history of potential violence (he has been arrested before for having bomb materials in his car), and had little movement (aside from the odd blog comment) with the pro-life movement. Every pro-life group condemns, and has always condemned, violence, and Roeder acted without any encouragement from any pro-life group.

It is not only pro-life extremists who spread violence. Ecoterrorism is relatively common, and anti-war protesters are notorious for vandalism. Monday, a man shot and killed an army recruiter—he was a convert to Islam and his motive was almost certainly dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy, something that most liberals share. Are mainstream, anti-war liberals to be held accountable for the actions of this man?

Of course not, since they have always condemned such violence. Pro-lifers have always condemned such violence too, and bear no responsibility for the death of George Tiller.

Obama's Foreign Policy

2009-05-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

Maybe all the economic news is distracting, but I find it incredible that so many people seem to have forgotten all about the War on Terror. Obama didn’t really run on a strong foreign policy, but he did promise to end the Iraq War, and to talk to our enemies. The talking would be without preconditions, of course, and while that strategy might have its weak points it would have been an interesting change from the Bush policy of alternately completely flattening (Iraq) our enemies and blithely ignoring them (Iran).

But Obama hasn’t done any of that. North Korea seems to have nuclear missiles, and is engaging in some pretty provocative saber rattling. Iran is continuing its quest for nuclear weapons, and Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t behaving either.

Yet Obama hasn’t met with any of them. Okay, he hasn’t been president for very long, but given the gravity of the Iran and (especially) North Korean situations, some preliminary discussions towards that goal might be in order. Instead, Obama is containing Bush’s post-Iraq foreign policy—ignore the problem and hope that it will go away.

The problem with that strategy is that Bush, for all his flaws, had one thing Obama lacks—credibility. He was willing to invade Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there—it was a pretty good bet that if Iran or North Korea went too far, he would stop them (or in Iran’s case, let Israel stop them).

Obama doesn’t have that sort of credibility. Lacking that kind of “nuke-em-if-they-can’t-take-a-joke” diplomatic credibility isn’t necessarily a bad thing—Eisenhower, for example, got mostly good foreign policy results without being too aggressive.

But Obama doesn’t have either sort of diplomatic credibility. He emphasizes his understanding of other countries, which isn’t altogether bad (though his constant apologies for America’s past are). But there has to be at least the threat of force behind Obama’s understanding exterior. And there isn’t.

Iran, if left unchecked, will probably get a nuclear weapon this year. North Korea already (probably) has one, and it is possible (though not, right now, very probable) that it could invade South Korea, or at least very convincingly threaten to do so.

Obama will have to handle those situations somehow, and the threat of force will have to be involved. Obama will have to make such a threat believable. If he can do so while talking to our enemies, well and good—but he will have to do so some way.

One of Obama’s central campaign promises, especially at the beginning of his campaign, was his pledge to quickly wind down the Iraq War.

As the campaign went on, though, Bush finally got his act together and transformed Iraq from a total hellhole to a state approaching order. This took Iraq off the front pages, and unfortunately everyone pretty much forgot about it.

Now, Obama’s plan for Iraq is pretty much identical to Bush’s—have troops start leaving around 2010, and essentially keep a permanent presence there.

Given the Iran situation, having 120,000 troops stationed right next door might not be a bad idea. On the other hand, we are still spending hundreds of millions of dollars over there, and American soldiers are still being killed, and Iraq is on a somewhat stable footing, which means it might be a good idea to speed the withdrawal up just a tad.

And the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, though most Americans took that war off their radar screens years ago.

Iran and North Korea are dangerous threats, and there are other, less obvious dangers out there as well. Yet very few Americans seem very worried. That is reminiscent of another time in the recent past in which few Americans worried overmuch about foreign policy. As a result of that attitude, 3,000 Americans died. I hope that history doesn’t repeat itself—but I’m afraid it will.

A Few Thoughts About Racism

2009-05-28T19:35:00.000-07:00

Racism is second only to pedophilia in the catalogue of socially unacceptable sins, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s obviously wrong, and unnecessary (can a sin be necessary for society? I would argue yes—abortion is necessary for modern society as we know it), and anti-intellectual. Given the gravity of this crime, it’s not surprising that people love to throw around accusations of racism, since being convicted of racism in the court of public opinion can destroy credibility and careers.

Sadly, a lot of people forget (or never knew) what racism really is; they just equate “racist” with “bad person.” The actual dictionary definition defines racism as “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.” Presumably, “superior” and “inferior” refers to moral superiority or inferiority; that people of one race are worth more than a person of another race.

Using this definition, many, perhaps most, accusations of racism can be debunked. One example is the case of the Golf Channel anchor who said that the only way Tiger Woods could be beaten is if his competitors “lynched him in a dark alley.” That comment, while arguably in poor taste, certainly wasn’t racist according to the dictionary definition. (Trent Lott’s Strom Thurmond comments, while also in bad taste, aren’t really racist either).

However, most accusations of racism aren’t like the ones above. Rather, both sides of the political aisle accuse the other of institutional racism. Liberals accuse conservatives of subtle racism evidenced by their opposition to social programs designed to help blacks and other racial minorities. Conservatives accuse liberals of reverse racism—of preferring minorities to whites in retaliation for white bigotry from the past.

The first accusation is easily the most common—it is a central liberal belief that the Republican party’s success is dependant upon pandering to racists. They point to Nixon’s Southern Strategy as evidence of this, ignoring the fact that that strategy attempted to woo voters whom were angry with the Democratic party’s positions on the Vietnam War and social issues, not race. (Of course, many of those voters were angry about the Democrat position on race too, but unfortunately for them Nixon was pretty progressive on race). The Southern Strategy was based on disgust with “amnesty, acid, and abortion,” not integration.

The accusation that conservatives’ opposition to social programs shows that they don’t much care for the problems of black people is also mostly flawed. There is actually a grain of truth to that, I think—blacks seldom vote Republican, so few Republican lawmakers really worry about the problems of that constituency.

But most conservative opposition to social programs arises from libertarian philosophy, which holds that the less government involvement, the better. And the truth of that philosophy has been borne out by the effectiveness of such social programs over time—since the Great Society transformed America into a welfare state, the lot of the poorest people (disproportionately black) has improved little, if at all.

On this issue, conservatives aren’t being racists—they are being realists. Social programs don’t (or at least haven’t) work—and conservatives realize that.

As for the accusation that liberals are reverse racists, there is a grain of truth in that accusation as well. There are some liberals who think that all whites are indelibly stained by their culture’s past racial sins, and are therefore inferior to other, less wicked races. This, of course, is as racist as anything the Ku Klux Klan believes.

However, there aren’t many liberals who think that way. The most common rationale for affirmative action is the idea that generations of racial discrimination have set the black community so far behind the mainstream culture that minorities need some sort of help to succeed. This idea isn’t altogether false—it is undeniable that decades of discrimination haven’t done much for black society—but it ignores that facts that a) giving blacks access to positions they aren’t qualified for won’t help them in the long run, and b) it is unjust to those who do deserve the position. The son shouldn’t suffer for the sins of the father.

However, unjust as affirmative action may be, it is merely racial prejudice, not racism.

Even if neither the right nor the left goes in for racism, that is not to say that our society is free from racism. There is, sadly, a great deal of racism in the black community, where acting “white” is an ultimate insult. And the white world is not as free of racism as it thinks it is—few whites know many blacks, and it is difficult to succeed as a minority in the white world. Overt racism is dead—but mistrust and distain between black and white lives on.

The Sotomayor Nomination

2009-05-27T05:47:00.000-07:00

President Obama announcing his pick for David Souter’s Supreme Court seat today, choosing Sonia Sotomayor for the position. His choice was predictable—Sotomayor was known to be one of the finalists for the job—and the reaction on both sides to the choice was pretty unsurprising as well, as liberals tended to be happy, or at least content, with the pick, while few conservatives saw the Sotomayor pick as a good one.

Sotomayor is a safe pick for Obama—the White House compares her with David Souter, and while few consider Souter a really great justice, he was hardly a major voice on the Court. While Republicans won’t be happy with Sotomayor, they probably won’t (and can’t) go to any great lengths to block her nomination.

Even if Republicans aren’t willing or able to block Sotomayor, she still isn’t a very good pick. She is clearly a liberal judicial activist—she is on record saying that the Court of Appeals is “where policy is made.” According the New Republic’s Jeffery Rosen, her opinions, while decent, are hardly impressive, and she is considered (by some) to be obnoxious on the bench. Some of her decisions don’t look very good in retrospect—in a case involving white firefighters passed over for promotion in favor of less qualified black ones, Sotomayor issued a one paragraph statement that upheld the original decision and ignored any points made by the plaintiffs. (The case is now on its way to the Supreme Court).

Sotomayor’s views on race are another liability—her views come very close to being racist (or since they display a bias against whites, reverse racist). She has said that she “would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life,” which implies that white males can’t have rich experiences as well.

So, Sona Sotomayor is a very liberal judicial activist. Should Republicans fight her nomination? Those who favor opposing the nomination point to her many gaffes as opportunities to damage Obama’s reputation for good judgment, and possibly (with a lot of luck) force Sotomayor to withdraw her nomination, a la Harriet Myers.

On the other hand, others point out that Republicans don’t have the votes to vote the nomination down, and attacking the first Hispanic female nominated to the court could hurt Republicans among Hispanic voters.

I find the last theory unconvincing—if Republicans oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants, which they will for the foreseeable future, they will already have lost most of that portion of the Hispanic vote likely to be angry over their opposition to a Hispanic justice. Some observers think that Sotomayor was picked partially because Obama reasoned that Republicans would be wary of attacking a Hispanic. If so, he shouldn’t have worried, since Republicans would have a difficult time turning the Hispanic community against them any more than it already is.

There are, however, other considerations besides the Hispanic vote. Sotomayor is, at least from a conservative standpoint, an unqualified judge, and Republicans should take care to emphasize this. She should not be given a free pass; Republicans should underline her shortcomings.

However, it would only be counterproductive to expend too much political capital on opposing Sona Sotomayor. Whether or not one agrees with her judicial philosophy, she is an experienced jurist with lots of experience. While she will probably never be a major player on the Court, she will (unlike Harriet Myers) probably not be an embarrassment.

And even if Republicans wanted to oppose her, they don’t have a practical way to do so. By the time the nomination comes to a vote, the Democrats will almost certainly have sixty Senate seats, making a filibuster impossible. Trying to block the nomination would be impossible, and embarrassing in its futility.

If there is any bright side to the Sotomayor nomination, it is this: she just doesn’t seem very smart, at least not for a Supreme Court justice. Her decisions aren’t particularly good, she has a tendency to stupid things, and her personal life is more than a little eccentric—she has no family, so she bonds with her law clerks, hosting card games and movie nights, which seems like something out of The Office.

Barring something unforeseen, Sotomayor will be on the Supreme Court this time next year. Her selection is bad news for conservatives—but probably as good as they could hope for given the president and congress.

What's Going On Here

2009-05-21T21:19:00.001-07:00

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed some changes here over the past six weeks or so. I’m not posting as regularly as I did—I’m around 2-3 posts per week now, down from a good five a week in the past. So my posts, which were never very numerous compared to other blogs, are getting rarer.

There are a few reasons for that. One is that while I enjoy writing, writing about politics constantly is getting a little old. After the tenth post comparing the efficiency of the American and European model health care systems, you start to feel like you’ve just about exhausted the subject. And while every day, Obama gives conservatives something new to complain about, it’s basically the same complaint every day. Obama gave a big speech about terrorism today (well, yesterday; it’s after midnight now)—and while I’m not writing about it (at least right now), I bet you can more or less tell what I’m going to say.

That’s not to say that politics won’t ever become interesting to me again—it’s just that right now, what’s happening in Washington isn’t as interesting as other things I could write about.

Another reason for the decrease in posts is that I don’t get angry about politics anymore. I hope that I was never one of the angry bloggers, the sort who basically fill their posts with angry rants about the other side. But as I have learned more about politics, I have learned (at least, I think this is a valid conclusion) that there are some people who, while they are liars espousing absurd theories, are nonetheless talented communicators who will draw large followers. I don’t like seeing that sort of thing, but I feel that getting angry about it is just counterproductive, since that is what that sort of person wants rational people to do. So when I hear that Michael Moore is releasing another film, this one about the financial crisis, I might cringe a bit, and hope that none of my friends see it so I don’t have to talk about it with them—but I don’t feel any anger or hate for Michael Moore.

Overall, I think that’s a good attitude, at least for me, but it does rob me of a certain impetus to get up and write.

All this stuff might seem a little over explanatory, but I wanted to give some sort of idea of what I’m feeling. Obviously, I’m going to make some changes to this blog. For the time being, those changes are probably going to be what you’ve been seeing—my typical posts, about 2-3 times a week. In the longer term future, I might go back up to four or five posts, or maybe start writing a more typical blog, with more, shorter posts and lots of links to other blogs. I’m not sure, but at this point I just wanted to give those still reading this blog some idea of what to expect.

Also, for those of you are reading this, thanks for taking the time to visit here. I know I rarely respond to comments (I must be the worst commenter in the world—my comments rarely rise above the level of “nice post” for some reason), but I do read them all, and appreciate the visits.

Dan Brown Vs. History

2009-05-20T21:06:00.000-07:00

Ross Douthat is one of my favorite columnists. He is one of the few conservative pundits who can envision a realistic template for a new Republican party that is more responsive to voters’ needs, while retaining its conservative principles. He is unapologetically and rationally pro-life, and orthodox member of the Catholic Church. He’s always a joy to read, and I was extremely happy to see that the New York Times had exhibited some rare good judgment and put him on its editorial page.

His latest column is interesting—it is unassailably correct, as far as it goes, but I can’t help but feel it is missing a part of a larger picture. The column examines the Dan Brown phenomenon, which has produced two monster bestsellers (The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons), and two hit movies.

Brown’s books are, apparently (I haven’t read them), thrillers that revolve around conspiracy theories, but you already knew that, given that almost everyone must have had some contact with the books. Brown acknowledges that his plots are fiction; the conspiracies, he maintains, are based on fact.

The theory in Angels and Demons involves the Illuminati, which in the Brownverse is apparently a secret organization dedicated to fighting religion (which is supposed to hate science) so that science can spread, although the real villain is an archconservative cardinal. The Da Vinci Code’s hook is the idea that Leonardo Da Vinci found out that Mary Magdalene and Jesus had a son, and that that knowledge is only revealed in a code based on Leonardo da Vinci’s works. Both ideas are wholly and obviously false, and no one with any taste or discrimination takes the books seriously. Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of people who lack either, and both books have become huge bestsellers, meaning that millions of people are being few what amounts to anti-Catholic propaganda.

Douthat argues that Brown’s themes advocate a sort of do-it-yourself, nondemanding religion; the sort of spirituality practiced by those people who say that they’re spiritual, but not religious,” which is true. Douthat also argues that Brown’s books incite these kinds of beliefs, which is more debatable.

There are two sorts of people who read Brown’s books for their theology or history—people wishing for “comfort reading” in books that confirm what they already know (in much the same way especially hawkish conservatives watch Red Dawn for footage of Communists being massacred), and people who are intellectual lost causes who will believe anything they hear.

Brown isn’t driving either sort from traditional Christianity. The first kind would leave anyway—they boost Brown’s sales figures but in these cases he is simply preaching to the converted. The second sort would fall for conspiracy theories regardless of what Brown writes—if anything, if is fortunate that they fall for such easily and widely debunked ones.

Dan Brown’s works are indicators of American society’s attitudes towards religion—but they don’t shape it much. If they aren’t doing religion much good, they aren’t doing it very much in the way of real harm either. They attract only the already converted and the historically illiterate.

Brown’s books do as much or more damage, I think, to real history and art as they do religion. Of all the fascinating things to be found in the world of art, the Brown’s readers (and there are a lot of them) only learn about inane conspiracy theories.

And Brown’s writings are anti-intellectual as well—they ask readers to unquestioningly swallow ideas that ten minutes on Wikipedia would utterly debunk. The books are utterly irrational—yet Brown attempts to persuade his readers that the work done by legitimate historians is flawed, while the stuff dreamed up by conspiracy theorists is hard fact.

Dan Brown’s books might lead some people away from traditional Christianity—but they almost certainly lead many more away from legitimate history. The study of history might not be as important as the study of God—but it is still worth condemning Dan Brown’s abuses on this front.

Obama, Notre Dame, and Abortion

2009-05-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

A great many conservative Catholics were very upset about the fact that Barack Obama was asked to give the commencement address at Notre Dame’s graduation, and was given an honorary degree by the university. U.S. Catholic bishops have decreed that Catholic institutions should not honor anyone who supports abortion, and Obama is as pro-abortion as it is possible to be in American politics. A conservative friend summed up the feelings of many in his Facebook status—that he was going to boycott everything Notre Dame—alumni, sports, everything.

I’d consider a boycott too, but I don’t know anyone who goes there, and the only contact I have with the university’s sports teams is watching Notre Dame get crushed by USC every year. The fact that Notre Dame is a liberal institution, and one not altogether in step with Rome, is something that is pretty well known. The fact that Notre Dame invited Obama to give its commencement address, while symptomic of the university’s attitude towards Catholic teaching, is hardly unexpected nor especially revealing.

What are revealing are Obama’s remarks at the event, which are a perfect example of his movement’s inability to understand the other sides’ argument. Obama made two real points about abortion in his speech, a) that abortion is a “heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually, [and] it has both moral and spiritual dimensions,” and b) that when considering the abortion issue, it is important to reach for common ground.

Taking the first observation first, it might be worth noting that while the decision to have an abortion is no doubt “heart-wrenching,” the decision to have an abortion seems usually to be driven by economics. According to the website abortionno.org, over eighty-five percent of abortions are carried out on women making less than $60,000 a year, 80% are unmarried, and 52% are under the age of twenty-five. 93% of abortions are performed for social reasons, as opposed to rape or incest to for health considerations.

It would be a stretch to say that the decision to have an abortion is decided “casually,” but then, I think it also a stretch to say that all, or even most, women having abortions really consider the “moral and spiritual dimensions.” Given the statistics regarding the age, martial status, and income levels of most women who have abortions, it seems reasonable to infer that most abortions are the result of panic and the desperation that comes with the knowledge that one faces a nigh-impossible challenge. Morality tends to be pushed aside by such factors.

Obama’s second point is just stupid. He calls for finding middle ground, and working to together to resolve the abortion dilemma. But you can’t have a middle ground between two absolutes. Either abortion is, generally, permissible, or it is an awful crime. It isn’t both, and there is no real middle ground. Working together to prevent unplanned pregnancies is a worthy goal, and so is improving social conditions so that fewer women are faced with the challenge of raising a child without the handicaps of youth, illegitimacy, or poverty. The Democrats’ vision of an America of a nation where abortion is “safe, legal, and rare” is not acceptable from a pro-life standpoint, but it would be preferable to the one we have.

Such a situation would be better than the status quo—but abortion would still be, at least from a Catholic point of view, an intrinsically immoral act, and the fact that there were fewer of them performed would not make the crime of abortion any less great. It is this that Obama fails to understand.

Abortion, for those on both sides, is not a political issue, where compromise is necessary and admirable, but a moral one, with an objective answer. That answer differs with one’s moral beliefs—but both pro-life and pro-choice people believe there is one. Obama doesn’t understand this—and sadly, it seems those who run Notre Dame don’t either.

Talk Radio As Marketing

2009-05-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

After the Republican party’s election embarrassment, there has been a dispute over the coming direction of the party. At present, talk radio in general, and Rush Limbaugh in particular, wields most of the power in what is left of the conservative movement. But many people feel that that is a bad thing; that talk radio is useful only for inflaming the base and useless, and indeed counterproductive, apart from that.

These people usually believe that talk radio is a least common denominator sort of activity, and that few if any talk radio hosts attempt to logically persuade the other side or engage in intellectual arguments. Rather, they see Rush Limbaugh and his ilk as rabblerousers, irresponsibly inflaming the passions of the base rather than engaging in sophisticated, rational arguments. We need more William F. Buckleys, this line of thinking goes, and fewer Rush Limbaughs.

Of course, this ignores the fact that Buckley was a big fan of Limbaugh, and Limbaugh admired Buckley immensely. But this thinking does hit upon a difference between the two styles. Buckley and his emulators engaged in debate, in which the two sides took turns alternately making their points while finding the weak points in those of their opponents. And seen as a debate show, The Rush Limbaugh Show, and most other talk radio programs, isn’t very good. There is an occasional bit of real debate to be found, but most talk radio is far from being real debate.

But Rush Limbaugh isn’t into debate. Seen a debate show, his show is pretty poor. But seen as advertising, his show is absolutely brilliant. It is literally impossible to imagine a better way of marketing conservatism to the largest possible audience. Rush Limbaugh’s, and talk radio’s role isn’t debate—its marketing.

Consider a talk radio show—say Sean Hannity’s, because he is the best illustration of talk radio as pure political advertising. He’s an attractive person with a good radio (and TV) presence, and a strong, trustworthy voice. He delivers the same messages over and over (and over and over) in an interesting, entertaining way. He even has callers who attest to the brilliance of his product, and the occasional liberal who gets on his show invariably loses (invariably, since Hannity doesn’t play fair when he argues) to Hannity’s reasoning. So the audience member is left with a) a favorable image of conservative thought, b) the knowledge that many other people share conservative views, and c) the perception that the liberal counterarguments have been utterly destroyed by Sean Hannity. As marketing, it’s brilliant.

Not all radio hosts are like Sean Hannity, of course. Some, like Rush Limbaugh, do inject a great deal of interesting thought and insight into their show, while others are extremists (Michael Savage; while it was quite wrong of Britain to ban him from the country, I couldn’t help feeling a bit envious of them) who do the conservative movement more harm than good. But generally, Sean Hannity is a good template for talk radio as marketing.

This fact is no slight on talk radio—after all, the art of oratory has been used for persuasive purposes for a long time, and talk radio has a lot in common with, for example, Mark Anthony’s speech from Julius Caesar. Marketing is a legitimate job, and a tough one, Republicans should be glad that they have such talented people backing them up.

Nor is it a bad thing for conservatism to have its leader come from the ranks of talk radio; if Rush Limbaugh leads the movement, that’s not a bad thing. If anything, it is beneficial that the man who sells the conservative movement should also be one of those most influential in shaping it.

But if talk radio is good for the Republican party, then it doesn’t follow that debate isn’t beneficial as well. It is, and it is necessary. At present, there are few if any radio or television shows that provide rational, ordered debate, rather, most so-called “debates” consist of angry pundits flinging insults at each other across the studio, or increasingly (as in the case of Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann), across networks. Talk radio’s template is a good one—but debate is important too, and is too often neglected by conservatives.

Rush's Longevity

2009-05-12T19:55:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about my college semester ending is the opportunity to listen to Rush Limbaugh again. It wasn’t impossible for me to listen to his show during the school year, but it was inconvenient, and I fell out of the habit of listening to Rush. (It didn’t help that Limbaugh is the only talk radio host I enjoy, as the rest of talk radio combines paranoia with echo chamber repetitiveness). But since classes have ended, I’ve had the opportunity to experience Rush Limbaugh again.

I mostly stopped listening to Rush in August, when his influence was at its lowest ebb. The Republican party was more or less clearly doomed to defeat, and it had picked the nominee he had most detested and one he could barely bring himself to support. None of the possible Republican candidates had met with his seal of approval, and the national media had last paid him attention during his ambitious and daring, but rather pathetic, Operation Chaos stunt.

When I started listening again, over the last few weeks, Rush had somehow become the de facto leader of the Republican party, and the most powerful media figure in America. This change in status was partly due to the lack of any other viable Republican figure, but also in large part due to Rush Limbaugh’s amazing capacity for self-promotion.

This talent explains how Rush has managed to stay both relevant and wildly popular for twenty years. Staying relevant that long is incredibly rare. Limbaugh started national syndication in 1988. A lot has changed since then.

In 1988, CNN was the only cable news channel. Now, it is one of three, and is in a weak second place to Fox News.

Mikhail Gorbachev, as leader of the Soviet Union, was probably the second most powerful man in the world, and was Time magazine’s Man of the Decade. Now, he’s a bit less powerful—his statement on the 2008 Russia-Georgia war was ignored, and he was last seen touring Eureka College, Ronald Reagan’s alma mater.

Cher won the 1988 Oscar for Best Actress for the movie Moonstruck. Now, she performs at the Colosseum casino in Las Vegas.

Michael Douglas won the Best Actor Award that year for Wall Street. His big movie of 2009 was Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, which scored a poor 31% on Rotten Tomatoes. He hopes to reprise his famous Gordon Gecko character in Wall Street 2, currently in pre-production.

The Grammy for Best Record was taken by Paul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel), for Graceland. He released his last album in 2006. It got good but not great reviews, but limited commercial success. Now, he spends most of his time touring.

The Emmy winner for Best Drama Series was thirtysomethings. Now, that show isn’t even shown on reruns. The leading actor of that show, Ken Olin, now occasionally stars in a show called Brothers & Sisters, which airs on Sunday nights on ABC.

The Tony Award for Best Musical was given to The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Now, that musical is still loved, and Webber is still quite popular.

Very few of those people or institutions most powerful and influential twenty years ago have retained their popular weight. (Granted, the examples I picked were from the year Rush was ascending, while these people were in the prime of their careers, but looking at the same things from, say, 1992 doesn’t change things much). Rush Limbaugh has. His show was a hit from the beginning, but he came into his own in 1993, when National Review called him the “Leader of the Opposition.” Now, sixteen years later, he is the leader of the opposition again. To retain that much influence over that period of time is staggering.

DeMint Was Right

2009-05-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

Senator Jim DeMint created a lot of controversy when he said that he “would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs.” Liberals pointed to this comment as proof that the Republican party is effectively marginalized, while conservatives sighed sadly and tried to distance themselves from DeMint. Virtually no one agreed with him.

They should have. Because he’s right.

Everyone, at least everyone outside the conservative movement, thinks that the best way for the GOP to become relevant again is to expand the party’s base to make it attractive to every voter. The defection of Arlen Specter is seen as a major problem for the party—if moderates like Specter continue to leave, the thinking goes, who will be left?

One problem with this line of thought—it ignores the fact that not so long ago the Republican party was in a situation very close to the one DeMint rejected. The Republican party didn’t have sixty Senators, but it did have fifty-five, and while those Senators were not wholly without principles, they didn’t have very many.

That didn’t work out. The Republican government was fairly moderate—they threw the occasional bone to their conservative base, but mostly spent their time on moderate projects that weren’t so different from what the Democrats would support.

And they got voted out. Moderation wasn’t the only reason the GOP lost Congress, and later the presidency. Corruption was an issue, and President Bush was oddly incapable of effectively communicating his plan for Iraq. And Republican fatigue was an issue too—after ten years of Republicans running the government, many voters wanted something new.

But a large part of the GOP’s decline arose because it didn’t have any real message. You can’t play the social conservative card forever, especially when you deliver as little in the way of results as the GOP did. And Bush’s confusing management and constantly shifting rationale for the Iraq War negated foreign policy as a viable issue for Republicans. Bush’s huge deficit meant that fiscal issues weren’t an option. The Republican party sold its soul for immediate electoral success—and it hurt them in the end.

Right now, the GOP’s situation is very close to the first one described by DeMint—they have more than 30 Senators, but not many more. And they have two possible ways of staging their comeback. The first is the popular choice, that they need to open the party up and make it attractive to the sort of voters who vote for Arlen Specter. The second is to try to build a strong foundation for the party on solid conservative principles.

American politics are usually pretty cyclical, so either strategy would probably work eventually. The question is which one would build a stronger, more enduring base for the party. And I think it obvious that the second option—using a small, ideologically consistent base to form the new shape of the party—would be healthier for the party in the long term.

That doesn’t mean that every Republican candidate has to be at least as conservative as (and preferably more conservative than) Rush Limbaugh. Moderates should have their place in the party. For example, Tom Ridge and Charlie Christ (both very moderate) will probably run for office again soon; both men are useful and should be encouraged. But Republicans should try to find strong conservatives to run whenever possible, and make it clear that the Republican party exists to advance conservative principles.

This approach will be difficult, and will require that the GOP change its basic way of thinking. It will also lose some voters, but will hopefully gain many more. If the Republican party doesn’t follow this prescription, they will become little more than Democrats Lite, and if they do that, they are ultimately doomed to irrelevancy.

Conservative Radicals

2009-05-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

In our modern politics, the labels of each side are pretty well understood. Liberals are those who want to move the culture and government towards something new, and change the world. Conservatives are those who want to keep things the way they are, and even move back towards a more traditional culture. William F. Buckley summed this view up by saying that conservatism is “standing atwart history, yelling ‘stop.’” The root of the word “conservatism,” of course, is “conserve,” and that is how most conservatives see their movement’s goal—to conserve the past.

That’s a bad goal, and one conservatives should move away from. In order to have a really conservative society, it will be necessary to attain at least the same amount of societal change that liberals try to achieve. “Conservatism” should be about conserving—its goal should be to try to incite an entire cultural revolution.

Conservatives spend a great deal of time wishing for the “old days,” and bemoaning change. (Or “yelling stop,” if you will). But they rarely consider precisely what decade they would choose if given the choice. The fifties? The period of McCarthyism, Jim Crow, and the beginning of the welfare state? Or the thirties, during the New Deal? Maybe the twenties, during Prohibition (an incredibly intrusive act of government) and the beginnings of the collapse of the traditional family, or the teens, where the federal government was passing constitutional amendments giving it increasingly broad powers?

Conservatives are over-affected by nostalgia, and nostalgia is all to often unsupported by fact. The past wasn’t really all that great, and it’s hard to imagine a point where yelling “stop” would have been worthwhile.

In fact, throughout the past century of American history, there has been one dominant theme: liberalism has advanced while conservatism has retreated. (Actually, that holds true for most of American history). Given that that is the case, why should conservatives feel nostalgic for the past?

Right now, abortion is recognized by most people as a legal right, if not a moral one. Aside from pro-lifers, there aren’t many who want to change the status quo. The welfare state, too, is now part of American government, and has been for some time. Most Americans literally can’t imagine changing Social Security or Medicare in any meaningful way. And Americans have gotten used to high levels of government spending—any attempt to slash the federal budget would be met with stunned disbelief by the American people.

From a conservative point of view, all these things are unsustainable, and must be reversed. But they won’t be reversed by calling on the traditions of the past. It was the past that got us to where we are today. Trying to return to some past utopia is pointless.

Rather, conservatives must attempt to totally remake society in a conservative image, moving on from America’s liberal premises. (Not that all of the premises that shape American culture are liberal, but many are). It is conservatives who are (or should be) the true radicals in today’s culture—their mission should be to wholly change the American landscape.

This will necessarily be a difficult challenge, maybe an impossible one. Social revolutions are hard to pull off. American liberals tried during the sixties, and succeeded in pushing through some legislative successes and pushing American culture to the left, but they failed in their larger goal of creating a really liberal society.

Conservatives have had their share of victories as well. But they want anything more, and want to really make America into a conservative nation, they will have to overcome their fascination for a past that never existed and try to claim the future of America.

Two Year Anniversary

2009-05-04T20:37:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, I don't have a post to celebrate, but this is my two year blogging anniversary. It's been fun. There won't be a post today (finals week). Still, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to thank all you people who read my blog.

Is Torture Justified?

2009-05-02T08:12:00.001-07:00

Since Obama’s release of Bush Administration memos, there has been a great deal of debate about torture—its place in our society, and what penalties (if any) should be dealt out to those Bush Administration officials who performed torture. There is no doubt that the United States performed torture (if you count waterboarding as torture, and most do), and very little doubt that that torture worked, and that information was extracted that saved lives. The question is: was that torture acceptable, and if not, should anyone be punished for it?

There can be little doubt that torture works, if “works” is defined as “getting information from detainees that would not otherwise have been acquired.” Virtually every country and culture across history has engaged in torture at some point, which is a clue as to its effectiveness. And the CIA claims that waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced information that prevented terrorist attacks, potentially saving many innocent lives.

The catch is, most people agree that, generally, torture is immoral and wrong. So, given that a) torture saves lives, and b) torture is wrong, was the United States justified in using torture?

No. If torture is wrong, then performing it is always unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances. It’s a cliché, but the end does not justify the means. Even if the act of torture produces a good (saving lives), the act is not any less evil.

Some consider that argument unconvincing, arguing that the greatest good of the greatest number is the primary concern here and that it would be immoral not to use torture if circumstances required it. But consider a (imperfect) parallel. Suppose the government developed of a method of brainwashing people so that the idea of crime was repugnant to them, a la A Clockwork Orange. Such a measure, if employed against dangerous criminals, would undoubtedly save lives. But such an act violates the inherent dignity of the human person, and most moral people would, I think, reject it. The case of waterboarding is similar to this hypothetical case.

And those people who find that ethical argument unconvincing might wish to consider that torture can lead to other, worse thing; that a government that rejects such ethical mores as a resistance to torture might later reject rights that hit closer to home. Torture does not directly affect the vast majority of Americans—but it might lead to precedents that do.

But right or wrong, the United States did perform torture. What should happen to those who did?

It would be very difficult to justify prosecuting those who actually did torture under orders. (The Abu Ghraib torturers are another story; they weren’t actually under orders and seemed to torture simply for sadistic fun). “Just following orders” doesn’t excuse all crimes, but torture resides in enough of a gray area that it works here. Some have suggested prosecuting those Bush Administration lawyers whom produced the legal justification for torture, but there is no crime to prosecute them for—can one be prosecuted for writing a legal opinion? In addition, doing so would probably be a case of an ex post facto law, and would set a dangerous precedent for any future presidents who want to go after the previous administration.

If you can’t prosecute those who actually waterboarded, nor the ones who provided the legal justification for it, who is left? Only those who approved it, and in this case those people are George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and other top Bush officials. So should they be prosecuted?

No, for two reasons. The first is that trying to prosecute a former president would tear the country apart like nothing else since the Civil War, and would set a destructive precedent for future presidents. Under that sort of precedent, opponents of the current president aren’t just obstructionists—they may also be lawbreakers.

The second reason is that while Bush and company are the ones who authorized torture, they were hardly the only ones who knew about it. The Democratic congressional leadership was briefed about torture, and those who weren’t could easily have found out about it. But they remained silent, and tacitly supported torture. They are as guilty as Bush is.

Stupid Media Misconceptions

2009-04-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

The worst thing by far about the current political situation is the quality of the political analysis. It’s not all poor, of course, but about ninety percent of it is, and that ninety percent includes most of the mainstream media (and I include outlets like talk radio and conservative columnists in the term “mainstream media”). The lines of political commentary are drawn within a set of preconceived ideas, a distressingly large number of which have no basis in fact.

The Republican Party Is Dead

The GOP might not be permanently dead, but the convention wisdom is that it is comatose for the foreseeable future. The GOP’s two consecutive bad elections, and gloomy demographic projections (the older white voters who make up the party’s base are dying off) mean that the Republican party as we know it is dead. It will only return after a long period of self-examination, and a complete makeover.

The defection of Arlen Spector the Democrat party is touted as a example of this phenomenon. Because if the Republican party can’t keep a very liberal senator whom conservatives have hated for years and is facing a tough primary challenge within its ranks, who can it keep?

The people who support this theory—practically everyone, as even most conservatives think the Republican party must be wholly redefined—ignore the fact that the Democrat party four years ago was supposed to be just as dead as the Republican party is now. They didn’t really change anything (though the conventional wisdom at the time was that the Democrat party would have to adapt to “values voters” in order to stay relevant), and won the next election two years later.

So many veteran columnists, with years of experience behind them, seem to forget that the political scene changes. Issues that aren’t important in the least one year are vitally important the next. In 2004, “security moms” and “values voters” drove the GOP to victory; four years later, the important issues were getting out of Iraq and the economic crisis.

The Republican Party Must Move On From Traditional Conservatism

The idea that the “new conservatives,” like David Frum and Meghan McCain are the new face of the Republican party is ubiquitous. Liberals cheer this change, since it would move the Republican party much closer to their beliefs, while conservatives fear it for the same reason. No one ever seems to notice that Frum, McCain, and the rest don’t seem to have many followers.

In fact, they don’t really seem to have any. David Frum, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, and others have soapboxes, but the only people listening are those who disagree with them, either liberals who want them to join the Democrat party or conservatives who vow to never let their ideas infect the Republican party. Few of their followers actually seem to agree with them. There certainly aren’t enough to form a grassroots movement to remake the party. The rank and file of the GOP still listens to Rush Limbaugh, and without them the “New Republicans” don’t have a chance of doing anything to really change the GOP.

Barack Obama Is the Greatest President Ever (So Far)

This idea is mostly held by liberals invested in Obama’s success. Not surprisingly, given that his party controls the House and Senate, Obama has gotten much of his agenda through. His supporters point to that fact as evidence of his success.

Unfortunately for them, Obama will only be successful if his policies work. And it’s impossible to tell whether they will or not after only one hundred days. But there are signs, at least, that his presidency won’t be the triumph his supporters think it already is. Obama has quadrupled the deficit, the economy shows few signs of improving, and his administration has not yet proven itself to be very competent, as demonstrated by Obama’s difficulty in filling his cabinet, and the embarrassing New York City flyover scare. In addition, Obama’s approval ratings, while still high, are lower than those of other presidents at the same point in their presidencies, and have come back to earth.

Obama’s presidency may be a resounding success. But there isn’t any evidence to support that claim, and can’t be till much later in his presidency.

Barack Obama Is the Worst President Ever

This is the conservative flip side of the “best president ever” meme. It’s just as stupid, too, and for the same reason—it’s only been one hundred days. It is far too early to make any judgments about the course of Obama’s presidency. So far, Obama has acted like a typical Democrat—high taxes, high spending, lots of regulation. That’s bad news for conservatives, but many voters like that sort of thing, and Obama certainly isn’t doing anything that you wouldn’t see Hillary Clinton, or John Edwards doing.

Earth Day Reflections

2009-04-22T20:51:00.001-07:00

Wednesday was Earth Day, which is perhaps the least observed event on the calendar. It is supposed to be a call for action, an alarm reminding us that our Earth is delicate, sustainability is good, and all the rest of the environmentalist clichés. In reality, the only people who celebrate it are eccentric environmentalists and people who look at their calendar, say “hey, it’s Earth Day!” and then forget about it.

Even if no one pays attention to Earth Day, though, it’s lessons are still worth thinking about. Earth Day is a holiday invented and promoted by environmentalists, and the loaded label “environmentalist” sometimes obscures the substance of what they say. Conservatives usually oppose environmentalism, while liberals usually support it, both sides almost always without thinking.

The most pressing issue for environmentalists, of course, is global warming. Liberals, proving that perhaps Al Gore’s infamous condescension may be justified at times, simply accept that man made global warming is a threat, and that something must be done immediately. Most of them are willing to wait for government regulations, while the more enthusiastic and asinine try to “do their part” by performing useless penances like recycling or taking cold showers.

Conservatives, on the other hand, reject global warming as impulsively as liberals embrace it. To them, climate change is a hoax designed to let the government into their wallets and lives.

Conservatives are partially right, but mostly wrong here. Global warming is real, and humanity is causing it. Virtually every climate scientist agrees that that is true. Unless there is some massive conspiracy to promote global warming, or the science is incredibly wrong, global warming does exist.

How to stop it is the tricky part. In 1998, almost every industrialized country—with the rather notable exception of the United States—signed the Kyoto Protocols, which put limits on carbon emissions. Then all those countries ignored the Protocols and emitted as much carbon as they wanted.

The industrialized world couldn’t implement the Kyoto Protocols. It would take twenty-five Kyoto Protocols to make a significant dent in carbon emissions. If humanity can’t be bound by the rules it has now, could it ever hope to follow rules twenty-five times as stringent?

Even if it could, it wouldn’t matter anyway. China didn’t sign the Kyoto Protocols either, and their economy is a) growing rapidly, and b) based largely on coal burning plants. China would never dream of slowing its economy for environmental reasons, and won’t reach a stage where they could consider going carbon neutral for several decades yet. If the Western world decides to sabotage their economies in order to save the earth, other countries will pick up the slack. (India hasn’t signed the Protocols either).

Barack Obama wants to make the United States do its part by implementing a cap and trade plan where companies and individuals can buy and trade carbon credits. This plan will fail. It would severely hurt the economy (everyone agrees that you simply don’t raise taxes in a recession), would destroy what is left of American manufacturing, and wouldn’t help the earth much anyway because China and India would keep pumping out carbon dioxide.

The Maldives are a tiny island nation that will be one of the first affected by global warming. They are barely above sea level, and any change in sea levels would flood them. The Maldives’ president, Mohamed Nasheed, has announced that he will set aside an investment fund, so that his nation can buy a new country if the worst happens.

That kind of thinking should be America’s answer to climate change too. Global warming is happening, and there is no practical way to stop it. The U.S. should invest its resources in preparing for a warmer world, not in futilely trying to prevent the inevitable.

Meghan McCain as Paris Hilton

2009-04-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

John McCain was a loser in the last presidential election. His daughter Meghan was a winner. Meghan McCain shot to stardom during the presidential campaign, starting a blog and campaigning hard for her father. After the election, she used her newfound fame to get a writing job at the website The Daily Beast, where she has used her platform to promote her vision for a renewal of the Republican party.

Meghan is the “reformer” camp, and thinks that the Republican party needs to fundamentally change its message in order to appeal to younger voters. Inevitably, some prominent conservatives have disapproved, and her writings have become the subject of a great deal of debate.

Before analyzing Meghan’s ideas, it’s worth noting that she is not a good writer. She’s not a bad writer—her stuff is readable—but she’s certainly not up to columnist par. Her usage is suspect sometimes, and so is her vocabulary. And her points are sometimes a little confusing, like criticizing Karl Rove for following her on Twitter, or for touting Aaron Schock as a potential party leader on the strength of his rock hard abs.

As for McCain’s ideas, they seem to be inspired mostly by embarrassment at being apparently the only Republican at Columbia University. All her ideas are based around the idea that the Republican party would prosper if only its ideas were a bit more attractive to young people.

Hence McCain’s support for gay marriage, global warming, and stem cell research, and her constant reassurances that she is totally cool and hip and stuff. Her speech to the Log Cabin Republicans, during which she reminded her audience that she likes black, punk rock, and gays is both revealing and pathetic, like she’s a high school freshman trying to get in with the cool kids by exhibiting the same interests. (And was her best example of a gay friend really her hairdresser? I’m surprised she didn’t drag an interior designer and struggling poet out there to complete the gay stereotype trifecta).

Unfortunately, she’s almost certainly doomed to fail, because the Republican party, quite simply, is not built to be cool. People think that the Republican party is the party of older people, and they think that because it’s true.

Young people have never been enthusiastic about the Republican party, and there is no reason to expect that to change. Churchill was right—anyone who is twenty and not a liberal has no heart; anyone forty and not a conservative has no brains. You can’t take that axiom too seriously (unless I am truly heartless, because I’m nineteen and not a liberal), but it does sum up how most young people feel about politics.

I’m a young conservative too. I suppose I’m a minority among my peers, though I go to a relatively conservative college, and my father is not a Republican senator, so my experiences have been nothing like what Meghan’s must have been. Still, I recognize that conservatism isn’t considered cool, and am content to accept that fact instead of pathetically reminding people of my body art and how much I love punk rock.

Meghan McCain disagrees, apparently, but doesn’t propose any solutions. She thinks she knows what’s wrong with the GOP (opposition to gay marriage, Ann Coulter, uncoolness), but can’t present her vision of what the party should look like, outside of more gays and more sixpack abs.

I feel slightly guilty criticizing Meghan McCain, since she obviously means well, and diverse points of view are always desirable. (But then, Meghan is attractive and rich, so I think she can handle the criticism). But her profile is so high, and her points both so lame and so undeservedly regarded, that I think some analysis is useful.

McCain has become the Paris Hilton of conservative bloggers—she is known because of her last name, got famous because of something mildly outrageous though predicable (attacking Ann Coulter isn’t quite as shocking as a sex tape, but still), and hasn’t really done anything useful since. Unlike Hilton, Meghan has a useful life ahead of her, but is a bit of an embarrassment right now, and probably will be till she gets tired of blogging.

Krugman and the Tea Parties

2009-04-17T19:51:00.000-07:00

The Tea Parties, and Tax Day, came and went Wednesday. The Tea Parties were reasonably well attended, with something like 250,000 protesters showing up across the nation. Protests aren’t my thing (I can think of many more useful ways of spending my time), and the only way I’d go to one of these protests would be out of curiosity on a day in which I had nothing else to do (those days are rare), but those who did go seemed satisfied.

The conservative media gave the Tea Parties lots of praise, just as one would expect. Predictably, Fox News gave the protests positive coverage, while CNN and MSNBC provided negative coverage. The worst were the “teabagging” jokes (a reference to a sexual act) on CNN and MSNBC, which are really staggeringly unfunny. All that was exactly what you would expect.

What was unexpected, at least to me, was the reaction of prominent liberals. No one could expect that they would like or approve of the protests. But the typical liberal reaction was much more vehement, and much more worried, than I expected them to be. They seemed almost…afraid.

One example of this is Paul Krugman. Krugman is the farthest thing from a hack, or an extremist. He has won a Nobel Prize, and is a respected columnist for the New York Times. He’s a scholar—other economists take his work seriously.

But his pre-Tea Parties column was just stupid. Some of his points are, in my opinion, wrong, but definitely debatable, so I’ll grant that saying that the only true policy debates are within the Democratic Party, that the Tea Parties are embarrassing and fit for mockery, and that the GOP “looked as crazy 10 or 15 years ago as it does now” are points that are at least arguable. And while Krugman is unfair in picking out isolated examples of unadulterated craziness (Obama birth certificate Truthers) in order to smear the whole movement, that “guilt by association” strategy is merely unfair, not stupid.

But without including all that, there is still plenty of stupidity in Krugman’s article. He tries to link those isolated idiots who are convinced that Obama is ineligible for the presidency with the mainstream of the Republican party, providing a convoluted parallel which compares the birth certificate people to Vince Foster conspiracy theorists, and the Vince Foster theorists to Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh once (irresponsibly) suggested that possibly the theories surrounding Foster’s death had some truth, which in Krugman’s mind apparently translates into Limbaugh relentlessly pushing those theories.

Krugman expanded on his anti-Rush theme, comparing the apologies he has extracted from those Republicans foolish enough to criticize him to Stalinist show trials, which is unfair on many levels. He says that while it is “new to have a talk show host in that role” (apparently, no editors at the New York Times noticed that “that role” was never defined), such party discipline is nothing new. Apparently, Stalinist show trials are business as usual for Republicans.

The rest is more of the same—Krugman rambles on about evolution, Astroturfing (which Krugman defines are “fake grass roots events,” although the Tea Parties seemed as genuine was any grass root event, and anyway I don’t see that it matters who, if anyone, was behind them), Fox News, and the 2000 presidential election, all of which he relates somehow to the Tea Parties. (Some Tea Partiers protest evolution too, Fox News gave the events favorable coverage, etc).

Krugman’s point, as far as he has one, is that the Republican party needs to grow up and move on. (Actually, he is right, though for none of the reasons he cites in his column). But the fact that the only evidence he presents are some slightly silly but harmless protests, and every liberal talking point used against conservatives sounds inconsistent. His argument would be a lot more persuasive if he moved on (to borrow a phrase) and stopped spreading liberal paranoia about Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and any gathering of conservatives with more than three people.

Random Thoughts

2009-04-15T20:30:00.001-07:00

Just a few random thoughts…

Rod Blagojevichis all set to appear on a reality show, provided a federal judge gives permission. Blago’s gone down in the world—but not as far down as the people who watch that show. (For the record, it’s called "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!", in case you want to check it out). How boring must your life be if you find watching Rod Blagojevich the most interesting thing you can do?

Governor Rick Perry of Texas suggested that Texas could secede from the Union if it wanted to. Didn’t we fight a war about that issue? I know he wanted to rally the base, but I think he could have chosen a less controversial way of doing so.

The big mega-Tea Party was today. Meh.

How did Joe Biden donate less than two thousand dollars out of over $250,000 earned to charity? Far be it for me to criticize him for greediness (let he who is without sin…), but honestly, you’d expect him to donate at least one percent to charity.

Barack Obama hasn’t been able to find a new church yet. It must be harder to find another church run by a racist lunatic than he thought. Given that Obama claims to be quite religious, it’s surprising that he hasn’t attended church even once since becoming president.

Meghan McCain has been spending her time since the campaign ended trying to make a name for herself as a conservative pundit. She bills herself as a reformer trying to woo younger voters, but unfortunately she has spent most of her time sparring with Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter. Coulter should be attacked as often as possible, but given that McCain only joined the GOP after her father starting running for president, I’m not sure she’s the best person to reinvent the party.

Also, McCain seems sensitive about the lack of younger voters who are Republicans. Frankly, I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about them—young people probably won’t start voting Republican in very large numbers anytime soon. I’m reminded of Churchill’s quote: “Anyone who is twenty and not a liberal has no heart; anyone who is forty and not a conservative has no brains.”

I’m nineteen. What does that say about me?

I know that my blogging hasn’t been very good over the last few weeks. What can I say—I’m really busy, I’m taking 19 credit hours this semester (I’m a college student, if you didn’t know), and I’m getting close to finals. I’ll keep blogging, but I probably won’t hit my target of five posts per week. I know that it’s boring reading a blog that isn’t update often, but I’ll try to at least make the posts I do get done quality posts.

Gay Marriage and Conservatives

2009-04-14T21:06:00.000-07:00

In 2004, opponents of gay marriage rallied to vote for a large number of state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. In 2008, California voters voted down Proposition 8, which would have legitimized same-sex marriages in that state. Gay marriage activists were stunned and upset. It hadn’t been a good half-decade for gay marriage advocates—after years of hard work trying to build support for gay marriage, only two states (Massachusetts and Connecticut) recognized same-sex marriages at the beginning of this year.

However, it appears that perhaps their work is starting to pay off. Recently, the Iowa Supreme Court decreed that the Iowa state Constitution supported the recognition of gay unions. And the Vermont legislature passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriages.

Demographically, the situation looks encouraging for gay marriage supporters. Polls show that a majority of young people support gay marriage, and the fastest growing demographic segments mostly support gay marriage. (Of course, those things can change. A generation ago, young people seemed to spend all their time on anti-war protests and sit-ins, while now they all work in offices and vote Republican. And a generation ago, Catholics were a solidly Democratic voting bloc, while now they are more evenly split between the two parties).

These facts have generated a great deal of fuzzy logic and bad reasoning on both sides. Liberals, who tend to support gay marriage, chastise the United States for being so far behind the rest of the world on the subject of gay rights. Conservatives, on the other hand, see the advance of gay marriage as an unprecedented assault on traditional values.

Conservatives who make the latter case are partly right. Liberals who make the former case are wrong. The United States doesn’t recognize gay marriage. Neither do most countries. Great Britain doesn’t permit gay marriage. Neither do Australia, France, Portugal, Brazil, Switzerland, or any other country other than Belgium, Norway, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Spain. Apart from those seven countries, gay marriage isn’t recognized anywhere.

(Lending some credence to the liberal point, however, is the fact that many other countries do include a form of civil union for same-sex or unmarried opposite couples, a measure that strikes me as sensible and worth considering for the U.S.).

In fact, given that four states currently allow same-sex marriage, America is actually a bit more liberal towards same-sex couples than other countries. A gay couple living in Ohio can move to Massachusetts and get married, which is more than that a couple in England can do.

True, most states don’t recognize gay marriage, and neither does the federal government. But that doesn’t make the U.S. much different from most other countries, and the fact remains that it is easier for a gay couple to get married in America than in France.

Conservatives see gay marriage as a great threat, striking at the heart of all tradition moral norms. They see permitting gay marriages as making the institution of marriage meaningless, divorcing it from its traditional meaning, as well as from childbearing.

They are right, to an extent. But the advent of gay marriage is a symptom, not a disease. If gay marriage is recognized, then it is so because the institution of marriage is already meaningless. About fifty percent of heterosexual marriages end in divorce; cohabitation and illegitimate pregnancies are universally accepted. If marriage is supposed to be a permanent union, or supposed to exist for the purpose of providing a stable, loving home for children, then marriage as the Western world knows it has no meaning at all. Gay marriage isn’t a threat to traditional marriage—you can’t threaten something that doesn’t exist.

Conservatives can go ahead and protest gay marriage, and pass constitutional amendments and lobby state supreme courts all they want to. But their efforts will be in vain unless American (and Western) society returns to a more traditional view of marriage, in which marriage is viewed as permanent and the only acceptable way to raise a family. Until then, trying to fight gay marriage is, in the long run pointless.

The Tea Party Protests--Pros and Cons

2009-04-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

A lot of conservatives are very excited about the Tea Party movement. The idea behind the tea parties is that conservatives should take a page out of the liberal playbook, and stage sizeable demonstrations to protest high taxes and spending, while waving around tea bags to remind people of the Boston Tea Party. The Tea Party label was chosen, of course, in order that people would identify them with the historical tea party.

The Tea Parties have been reasonably successful, especially considering that the first one the brainchild of lone conservative blogger, and the idea snowballed from there. They’ve gotten decent turnout (though not what your average antiwar protest would get), and they’ve gotten a great deal of coverage in the conservative media, and a significant amount of attention in the media in general. There should be a lot more attention on April 15, on that day, there are over a thousand Tea Parties planned across the country, expected to involve hundreds of thousands of people.

Many, many conservatives consider the Tea Party movement a good thing. But it has some pretty significant weaknesses, which the conservative movement would do well to consider.

First, of course, there is the fact that the modern Tea Parties and the original Tea Party had very different goals. The original Tea Party protested taxation without representation, while the modern Tea Party generally stands against higher taxes. The modern Tea Parties are similar in name only to the original, and their label is merely an attempt to cash in on the Tea Party name. This disconnect makes the Tea Party organizers look calculating and misleading.

Another reason to be wary of such protests is the fact that such protests backfire as often as they succeed. There was a Tea Party in my hometown of Cincinnati. I didn’t go, but it did give me the chance to see local coverage of the protest. According to several local news sources, their reporters felt unsafe at the demonstration. That isn’t exactly the press conservatives need.

(The Tea Party organizer, in a Facebook message, didn’t deny that the reporters concerned might have been threatened, but complained that there wasn’t any proof outside of their unsupported testimony, which makes for a very feeble defense).

And any missteps by Tea Party participants will become known. Most of the mainstream media is hostile to conservatives, and anything negative about these demonstrations will certainly become widely disseminated. And protests tend to be votile places—it is easy to imagine a protest spiraling out of control.

A final reason that conservatives shouldn’t become too attached to the idea of mass protests. Protests are blatant appeals to emotion. During a protest, there is no other message involved other than “look, thousands of other people agree with me.” There is no logic, no reasoning, nothing other than an appeal to emotion.

The conservative movement has had more than enough appeals to emotion in the past months. Joe the Plumber was, initially, a useful archetype of the common man. But his effective shelf life was about a week, and the McCain campaign made him a centerpiece of their campaign far past his expiration date. And by the end of the presidential campaign, Sarah Palin had dropped almost all substance from her stump speech, instead emphasizing that she was a) a hockey mom, b) a maverick, and c) opposed to earmarks.

The Tea Party demonstrations are not without value. They inspire the base, and can serve as a first step into the world of conservative grassroots. And they do inspire media coverage, much of it positive.

But protests are no substitute for ideas and organization. The Tea Parties can be an effective gimmick—but they are only a gimmick. They should play only a very secondary role in the conservative arsenal.

Democracy In Action

2009-04-08T16:14:00.000-07:00

It seems that the election of Al Franken to the U.S. Senate is basically a fait accompli. This is a little embarrassing for America—Franken’s books had little in the way of serious political thought, and were poorly researched and unfair. I believe—and this is mere conjecture, and time may prove it unfair to Franken—that future generations will see the election of Al Franken as similar to the elections of Bella Abzurg or Dennis Kucinich (his first election)—as shameful, never to be repeated mistakes.

(What was Kucinich’s first election? Some people have forgotten, but his first prominent government job was as mayor of Cleveland, elected at the age of thirty-one. His performance was about as strong as you would expect, although he was slated for a mob hit, which was only lifted when the city fell into default).

But whether or not Franken is a competent Senator, his election is worrisome, and those worries arise from fears that are far more important than the quality of Franken’s political brain. Because the 2008 Minnesota Senate was a travesty, and should never happen again, anywhere, or at least not too many more times.

Franken will, eventually, become Minnesota’s junior Senator. Coleman will be the loser. But it is impossible to say with certainty which man deserves to win or lose. The vote counting in Minnesota was plagued with irregularities and mistakes. Franken will win—but it is impossible to say with any conviction that he was the candidate with the most votes.

After the initial count—which showed Coleman ahead—absentee ballots came flowing in, from unusual places. Some were found in poll workers cars, others were recounted or discounted because of mistakes made during the first count.

A recount began, and both sides started flying in lawyers to make sure that no legal stone was left unturned. Both sides started challenging every possible ballot (particularly absentee ballots, which have more rules attached to them), even if the voter’s intent was obvious. Some of these challenges were upheld, others were rejected; in the end, over twelve thousand absentee ballots were rejected, out of over two hundred eighty thousand cast.

By all accounts, Coleman’s team of lawyers did a very poor job—they were outhustled and outmaneuvered by Franken’s team. And the Coleman camp still maintains that different Minnesota counties apply the rules for absentee ballots inconsistently, and that Democrat counties tend to be slack, while Republican counties are more stringent.

Coleman’s biggest mistake was his campaign’s reaction to a Minnesota Supreme Court decision that held that previously rejected absentee ballots should be included in the final count, provided that both sides agreed. Coleman allowed 933 ballots to be counted—without first getting a guarantee of uniform treatment of all absentee ballots. The 933 ballots increased Franken’s lead, and Coleman was unable to get enough addition absentee ballots counted to take the lead. Coleman was plagued by poor legal advice throughout the legal battle.

Franken won the election fair and square—the recount process was even-handed, and his lawyers were much better. He did not steal the election. But nobody, even Franken, could say with any degree of certainty that he got the largest number of legitimate votes. Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t. But he was victorious mostly due to the skill and experience of his lawyers.

That sort of thing can be fatal for a democracy. If voters cannot trust that their votes will be counted, they lose confidence in the democratic system. And if that confidence is lost, democracy cannot work. This is hardly the first time this has happened—George W. Bush won Florida in 2000 in much the same way that Franken won Minnesota—but it should be the last. If elections are decided by lawyers, and not votes, then democracy is meaningless.

Patriotic Grace

2009-04-07T07:11:00.001-07:00

According to a recent Pew poll, Barack Obama is the most divisive president in a half century. The partisan gap in approval rating between Republicans and Democrats is the largest it has been in decades. The gap is 61% now; just forty years ago, in 1969, the partisan gap regarding Richard Nixon’s performance at the same time in his presidency was a mere 29%. The gap has increased for every president since, with only two exceptions (Carter and George H.W. Bush).

The trend towards divisiveness seems to have started with Reagan. The gap with Nixon was 29%; the gap with Carter was 25%. When Reagan was elected, the partisan approval gap shot up to 46%. Reagan inspired many people, and established the foundation for modern conservatism (small government, less regulation, strong military). He was also the antithesis of modern liberalism. This meant that nearly all liberals disapproved of him, while virtually the entire conservative movement gave him their support.

Reagan forced the Republican party to the right, which widened the ideological gap between the two parties. (Today, a moderate like Nelson Rockefeller would have no shot at all at the Republican nomination). Politics became more polarized, and political strategists used that to their candidate’s advantage.

Political attacks became more personal—Republicans loathed the very idea of Bill Clinton, seeing him as a sort of Machiavellian genius for his talent in dodging the Monica Lewinsky scandal, while liberals considered Bush a mad dictator who had stolen the election.

During the most recent election, many Democrats considered John McCain a warmongering, far right extremist (and if there is anything John McCain is not, it is an extremist), while many conservatives still consider Barack Obama a Muslim, terrorist supporting snake in the grass.

(True story: I was talking to a conservative friend recently, and he claimed that he would root for UNC to win the NCAA tournament, except that Obama picked them. A perfect example of polarization).

This polarization is ubiquitous—and unhealthy. Just prior to the election, Peggy Noonan wrote an overlooked little book called Patriotic Grace. In this book, she argued that no matter which presidential candidate won, Americans, for the good of the country, must rally around him.

Noonan fears that America will soon some difficult challenges. Her fear is of a terrorist attack, but her book was written before the full scope of the financial collapse was known, and the financial crisis, if it continues as it is, could be an equally traumatic disaster.

If the country is not united, then Noonan fears that it will collapse under the strain. She is right. If the president cannot implement his agenda without the absolute, uncompromising disapproval of half the country, then it will be almost impossible to solve any of the country’ problems. This could be seen in Bush’s handling of Iraq—while he made more than his share of unforced errors, Democratic opposition definitely made his job harder. And I believe that Obama will experience much the
same thing, as congressional Republicans oppose his economic plans.

As Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided cannot long stand. America, of course, is nowhere near as divided as it was in Lincoln’s time, and secession is not something that America needs to worry about. But it is divided enough to make any attempts by the government to do anything productive enormously difficult, and to ensure that there is a great deal of waste and gridlock in Washington.

As we grow farther apart, I think that both parties will become more and more desperate in their attempts to woo voters, and grow farther and farther apart. The Republicans will attempt to energize their base by pushing tax cuts and war when in power, while the Democrats will fight for increased welfare programs. Neither side will care much for pragmatism and compromise. Since the liberal and conservative goals are mutually exclusive (you can’t have both low taxes and a large welfare state), this will have a horrible effect on the health of our country.

Liberty Versus Security

2009-04-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

Friday, a gunman stormed into a New York immigration class, slaughtering thirteen people before killing himself. It’s the fifth mass shooting in the U.S. during this month alone, shootings that have left 44 people dead.

It’s inevitable that the usual suspects will use this tragedy as evidence that increased gun control is necessary, just as they did after Columbine, Virginia Tech, and every other newsworthy massacre. Their arguments haven’t changed much over the years—gun violence is a major problem in the United States, and one that can only be solved by aggressive gun control.

Assume that they are correct. Assume that if stringent gun control laws were passed, violent crime would drop precipitously. Imagine that more controls on gun ownership could make shooting sprees like the one in New York a thing of the past, and would make every American’s life much safer. The only drawback would be that many Americans would be forced to surrender their guns. Would such a measure be worth it?

(Of course, gun control has not had a very good record—countries such as Great Britain, which have virtually no guns, are still plagued with high crime rates.)

Some people would say “yes,” that any law that makes citizens safer is a just and worthy law. And there is something to be said for that argument—it is one of the primary duties of any government to keep its citizens protected. And guns serve no other purpose than to kill, and most guns are made for the purpose of killing human beings.

But there is another side to this argument, that I think trumps the pro-gun control viewpoint. The framers of America’s Constitution included the Second Amendment for reason. They felt that the right to bear arms to defend oneself was an important human right, one worth guaranteeing in the nation’s founding document. (Although actually, the Founders probably included the Second Amendment more to ensure that a militia was always available than to make sure that citizens could shoot intruders. Still, the point stands that they considered the right to bear arms a right of every citizen).

It is rarely a good practice to do an evil so that a good may result. And that is why I think that it is wrong to violate a constitutional right in the name of law and order. Sometimes it is not possible to fully guarantee one right (the right to life and property) without violating another (the right to bear arms). Many people fail to consider this.

It is the same with health care. If a European style nationalized system would work—if it would make health care more efficient and more affordable, there would still be a strong case to be made that moving in that direction would be inadvisable. Because it would put the most important thing any of us have—our health—into the hands of the government. Maybe the government would be a good steward of the public health. But maybe it would not. Health care is a very important thing—too important, I think, for the individual to surrender his autonomy in this matter to the state.

America was built around the ideals of liberty, and the individual. Absolute liberty is obviously impossible—one’s liberty does not allow one to infringe on the rights of others. And absolute individualism is likewise impossible—every society requires mutual cooperation.

But if absolute liberty and individualism are not possible, it is still best, I think, to maximize both as far as possible. Because the very foundation of our democracy is liberty, and any attempt to limit it undercuts our democracy. Sometimes, perhaps, we must make sacrifices for liberty—but they are worth making.

Accepting Global Warming

2009-04-02T21:29:00.001-07:00

If there is one thing that all conservatives agree on, it is that the theory of manmade global warming is a myth. It’s all hype perpetuated by overzealous environmentalists who want to impose their nigh religious environmental hysteria on everyone. All the scientific claims supporting global warming are part of a giant hoax to spread fear about the health of the earth. But conservatives are not fooled.

In reality, they are fooling themselves. Global warming is happening, and people are responsible. (Not solely responsible, of course, but humanity’s actions have a large impact). Whatever conservatives believe about global warming (their narrative varies) is wrong.

Conservatives can’t seem to keep their story straight regarding global warming. Sometimes it’s that the earth isn’t warming at all (“it hasn’t warmed in ten years!”), other times it’s that it is but we aren’t responsible (“natural cycles”), and sometimes that humanity’s carbon emissions are insignificant compared to other sources of carbon dioxide (“cows/volcanoes/some other non-manmade cause emits way more carbon dioxide than humans do”!).

This inability to decide on a narrative doesn’t say much for the scientific rigor of the anti-global warming side. Those who disagree with the theory of global warming seem willing to seize on any possible interpretation of the available data, as long as it fits one of their theories. Even if the theories contradict each other (the earth’s temperatures can’t be holding steady and rising due to global warming at the same time), climate change deniers just try to accept both.

The “natural cycles” theory is the most common among global warming opponents, since it’s pretty clear that the earth has been warming and if humans are causing global warming, worrying about alternate sources of carbon dioxide emissions (like volcanoes or cows) is beside the point.

The natural cycles theory has two very large weak points. The first is that even if we are in a natural warming cycle, human activity could still have a hand in global warming. Human activity could very well be warming the earth, even if it is already in a warming cycle.

Also, there isn’t really any real evidence to suggest that we are in a warming cycle. It’s a possibility, but simply proposing alternate hypotheses doesn’t prove anything at all. There has to be some evidence backing it up, and there is precious little evidence to back up this theory.

The rest of the anti-global warming arguments are even worse. The weakest goes that since some scientists predicted global cooling during the seventies, and were wrong then, then all those scientists predicting global warming must be wrong now. This is pretty flimsy reasoning, especially since there were very few scientists at any time who seriously suggested that the planet was cooling.

Another idea is that since so many global warming advocates undeniably see preventing climate change as more of a religion than anything else, then climate change must be wrong. Of course, this doesn’t alter the scientific arguments at all, and is a simple ad hominem attack.

The case for global warming is simple, and logical. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which means it traps heat from the sun. Human activity has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by a significant amount since the Industrial Revolution. Over that time, earth’s temperatures have risen. The reasoning seems conclusive.

Most scientists agree, since there really is a consensus about global warming. Ever wonder why anti-global warming people advertise every single scientist that agrees with them, no matter how sketchy his credentials (does the founder of Weather Channel really qualify as an expert on climate?), while those who believe in climate change seem to have every scientist in the world on their side?

That’s because almost every scientist believes, to some degree or another, in manmade global warming. And unless there is a massive conspiracy to promote global warming, or every scrap of scientific data is being reading wholly incorrectly, then the scientific world’s belief in climate change is an indicator of whom the science favors in this argument.

If people are causing global warming, that fact doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone must wholly agree with Al Gore on everything. For myself, I believe that global warming is an inevitable part of human development, and that we would be better served by planning for a world in which global warming is a reality, instead of futilely trying to prevent it. But wherever one stands on this issue, ignoring the science and clinging to a ridiculous idea that global warming isn’t happening serves no one.

How Influential Is Jon Stewart?

2009-04-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

There are some notions and memes that are extremely widespread, but exist without a shred of supporting evidence. The greatness of John F. Kennedy’s presidency is one such meme; another is the idea that pork king Robert Byrd represents the “conscience of the Senate.” (Although given the corruption to be found in the Senate, maybe he is). And there is another such impression that is wholly absurd, and dismayingly ubiquitous—that Jon Stewart is a hard-hitting interviewer on television, speaking truth to power and covering stories no one else dare cover.

I’ll accept that Jon Stewart is a very funny person, though I’ve never found him very amusing. (In fairness, I haven’t watched much Stewart. And my sense of humor might differ from that of others). But that’s all he is. He’s not the oracle of the younger generation, and he isn’t Edward R. Murrow. He is only a comedian.

It is often claimed that Stewart controls the news consumption of America’s youth; that most of the under-thirty set get their news chiefly from Stewart’s Daily Show. Many do, and the Daily Show’s audience consists primarily of young people, but unless there are only about 1.6 million young people, the Daily Show only reaches a tiny proportion of them. Jon Stewart has done an impressive job of growing his audience (he’s tripled it since taking over in 1999), but it’s still small—Stewart’s reach is about as large as that of Greta Van Susteren’s.

But the size of one’s audience doesn’t always correspond to the amount of influence one has—after all, William Buckley didn’t reach many people directly through Firing Line and National Review, but he wielded a great deal of influence just the same. Is this the case with Stewart?

One of Stewart’s first triumphs was his feud with the CNN show Crossfire, and with Crossfire host Tucker Carlson. Stewart appeared on the show to promote his latest book—instead, he took the opportunity to criticize the show, saying that it reduced the news to talking points and engaged in “partisan hackery.” Three months later, Crossfire was cancelled.

Impressive, until you consider the circumstances surrounding the cancellation. Crossfire had just been reduced from an hour to a half hour, and moved from primetime to an afternoon slot. The show only averaged about 600,000 viewers an episode, which is a low figure for a channel like CNN. And if Stewart hoped to end cable news’ “partisan hackery,” he failed—cable news is as acrimonious as ever.

Stewart’s Crossfire feud may have been entertaining, and did show that Jon Stewart was a force to be reckoned with. But Stewart merely dealt a death blow to a dying show—he hardly forced Crossfire into cancellation by himself.

Stewart’s latest exploit was his feud with Jim Cramer, in the course of which he pointed out that Cramer’s stock predictions have frequently been wrong and accussed Cramer of being remiss in not warning of the stock collapse. I was a bit surprised that Stewart felt the need to point out the first part of his accusation—I had assumed that most people had long ago realized that listening to Jim Cramer was not a guaranteed path to wealth. And the idea that Cramer could have done anything to warn of or prevent the stock market collapse is just silly—Cramer gave stock tips, not detailed economic analysis’.

So Stewart embarrassed Cramer a bit by playing clips of some Cramer’s less impressive moments. But oddly, the rest of media jumped on this story like it was the modern version of the Frost/Nixon interviews. This was ridiculous for two reasons.

The first was that while Jim Cramer is well known, he’s not very influential—more people probably saw his cameo in Iron Man than watch his show in a year. Even if Cramer had seen the collapse coming, he couldn’t have done anything to slow it—he just doesn’t have the clout.

And the second reason, as noted above, is that even if Jim Cramer did have the influence to have done something about the financial crisis, he is the last person one would expect to play Jeremiah. Cramer’s show exists only because of Cramer’s ridiculous antics—were it not for them, Jim Cramer would be unknown. Stewart seems to have Jim Cramer confused with Alan Greenspan.

Jon Stewart is talented, and is not without influence. But his influence is very much exaggerated—he is not the conscience of the media, nor is he the voice of America’s youth. He is a comedian—and that’s all he wants to be.

This Isn't Socialism

2009-03-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

Wherever one looks in the conservative media, Obama’s economic plans are invariably referred to as “socialistic.” Glenn Beck frequently refers to Obama’s policies as “socialist,” and National Review editor Rich Lowry suggested that Obama is charting a “socialized course.” Both John Boehner and Jim DeMint have referred to Obama’s policies as “socialist.” It is inevitable that the charge of “socialism” will be a central feature of the GOP message for the 2010 midterms.

Many liberals (though not the ones in charge of Democratic party strategy) agree—Newsweek recently ran a cover proclaiming that we are all socialists now. Huffington Post blogger Robert Scheer agrees that the United States is now socialist, or nearly so, though he doesn’t think the US has gone far enough to the left.

It is incredible that all these voices cry “socialism,” without, apparently, knowing what socialism actually is. Socialism is harmful and intrusive from a conservative point of view. So are Obama’s policies. But socialism and what Obama advocates are far from the same thing.

Wikipedia defines socialism as a “set of economic theories of social organization advocating public or state ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equality for all individuals, with a fair or egalitarian method of compensation.” Does that sound like what Obama is attempting to do?

It shouldn’t, because Obama isn’t trying to accomplish any of that. True, the banking system, and much of the auto industry, is nationalized and government-controlled, which sounds like a socialist thing to do. But there are two important differences here, which separate Obama’s policy from socialism.

First, all this nationalization is temporary and limited—the plan is that eventually GM, Chrysler, and the banking system will become private and autonomous again. The current system is meant to be only temporary. And the government’s power over these companies, while considerable, is still limited—the nationalized companies still have a say in how they are run.

The second difference is that these nationalizations were more or less voluntary; the corporations here surrendered their independence to the government in return for government assistance. The federal government didn’t forcibly take over these companies—they asked to be taken over.

If Obama’s policies really were socialist, he would have taken these corporations by force, put government agents in charge, and the corporations would have remained in that condition in perpetuality. Instead, these nationalized companies will eventually regain their independence, after first getting billions in taxpayer dollars, which is a good deal if you can get it.

Conservatives point to other Obama policies, such as cap-and-trade, higher taxes, and increased government regulations. It may be that none of these things are desirable. But neither are they socialistic. Socialism is an economic policy.

What Obama is really pushing is a statist version of the Third Way (or a mixed economy), which is a sort of combination of capitalism and socialism, in which the private sector is free to set its own course within the bounds of government regulation. (Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were prominent Third Way proponents). The market is allowed to work—but its first allegiance is to the state. There are different versions of this philosophy—it’s the dominant philosophy in Europe, and in less benign countries is usually called fascism. (Fascism emphasizes nationalism and militarism, which separates the third way from fascism).

In Obama’s version of this philosophy, government doesn’t take over big business—it complements it. The good news: that isn’t socialism. The bad news: it’s worse, since it combines the intrusiveness of socialism with the greed found in capitalism.

Why is this distinction important? Two reasons. The first is that words mean things, and it’s important to get labels right, if for no other reason than because misusing simple terms makes one look silly. The other is that if conservatives wish to oppose what Obama is doing, then they should know what it is they are fighting. In any conflict, the first rule is to know your enemy.

Scattered Thoughts

2009-03-27T03:27:00.001-07:00

Just a few random thoughts…

There was a time when it seemed that America would never get tired of Barack Obama—he seemed a mythic president, like Lincoln or Kennedy. He’s come back to earth now—it feels like people are getting tired of his constant television appearances, his approval ratings are starting to fall back to earth. That was to be expected—no one could live up to Obama’s expectations—but it has come much quicker than anyone would have anticipated.

Nobody thinks Timothy Geinther is doing a good job as Treasury Secretary—but cut him a little slack. There still haven’t been any other treasury officials confirmed. It’s been two months, and the treasury is an important position. It’s unbelievable that these spots haven’t been filled.

Why is Senator Judd Gregg the only senator warning of America’s debt level? He pointed out in an MSNBC interview that America couldn’t join the European Union if it wanted to because of its crushing debt. How come more Republicans aren’t making this point? And how is it possible that Europe is more fiscally responsible than the United States?

Congress is considering regulating the way the BCS selects bowl teams. There’s probably room for improvement—but how can Congress possibly justify forcing college football to change the way it decides its champion? And even if Congress could justify this, aren’t there a few more important things to do?

Even more depressing—Orrin Hatch is one of those actively pushing this bill. Seems that Utah hasn’t forgotten their championship game snub, so Hatch is giving them some help.

Senator Benjamin Cardin has proposed a newspaper bailout bill, which has some obvious flaws. But pretend, for the moment, that there wouldn’t be any sort of conflict of interest there, with newspapers being forced to report on the very entity that owns them. The deeper question is: is there any business left in America that isn’t eligible for a bailout? For all the stereotypes about Republicans being tools of Big Business, Democrats are doing more for business than Republicans ever did.

Some Swiss banks are banning their employees from traveling abroad over fears that they will be detained and questioned about bank secrecy. That fear seems to be much more similar to something found in a fascist state than anything Bush did.

I always find worries that America’s best days are behind it silly and premature—after all, conditions in America have seemed bleak at many times in our nation’s history, yet America has always prevailed. But such fears now seem less silly than they did in the past—Obama has apparently given up any notion of a manageable national debt, given his plan to triple the debt in ten years. And Obama seems overwhelmed by the very difficult problems he faces—his economic stimulus plan wasn’t an example of strong leadership, and he seems unsure of himself on foreign policy. It doesn’t see as though America has the will to fight through this—as though American’s have lost confidence in their nation.

Foreign policy has never been one of Obama’s strengths. During the campaign, he touted his opposition to the Iraq War a great deal, and promised to withdraw U.S. troops quickly. Then, as soon as he was elected president, he discarded that particular policy. North Korea’s upcoming missile launch seems an example of the president’s foreign policy paralysis—he just doesn’t seem to know what to do. Talking to one’s adversaries is fine—but you have to have something to say.

Apparently, Eric Cantor courted a small amount of controversy by not correcting a C-SPAN caller who called Obama’s policies fascist. This is hyperbole, especially considering that the word “fascist” now means “someone who disagrees with me.” But if fascism is the combination of big business and big government—well, that seems to be happening now. America is nowhere near fascism—but fascistic elements do seem to be creeping into our government.

Blaming AIG

2009-03-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

“Get the bonus, we will get your children.”

“I don't hope that bad things happen to the recipients of those bonuses. I really hope that bad things happen to the children and grandchildren of them! Whatever hurts them the most!!”

“You f***ing suck. Paying bonuses to the d*****s that made bad bets losing your company billions of dollars. I want to f***ing puke. Publish the list of those yankee scumbags so some good old southern boys can take care of them.”

These emails are just a sample of the hate mail that AIG has gotten in the wake of the AIG bonus controversy. Granted, many of these writers are just cranks (the sort of people who post nasty comments in blog comment threads), but some aren’t—AIG CEO Edward Liddy feared to release the names of the AIG employees who received bonuses out of fear for their safety, and many AIG employees have hired security firms to protect their homes.

The attitudes in these letters are extreme—but they are simply lunatic fringe expressions of attitudes that are shared by many, many people, both average citizens and politicians. And this is worrisome.

Andrew Cuomo is waging a war to try to get the AIG bonuses back, and will apparently do whatever it takes to do so. He’s trying to find a way to take back the bonuses of British AIG employees, in spite of the fact that a) those employees were entitled to them, and b), he doesn’t have any jurisdiction in Britain. (Cuomo allowed that he had a “very aggressive theory about our jurisdiction, but we don’t have a theory that gets us to London yet.” He is, however, looking for a way in)

Thuggishly, Cuomo is threatening to release the names of those employees who refused to return their bonuses. However, regarding those who did return their bonuses, Cuomo said “I don’t believe there’s a public interest in releasing their names.” The message is clear: return your bonuses, or face public humiliation—or worse.

Cuomo is hardly alone in his attitude—he just presents a convenient example. There are plenty of other examples: Michael Moore accusing the rich of staging a coup, Barney Frank calling the bonuses “extortion,” or Obama saying that the financial crisis was caused by “Wall Street greed.” (The financial crisis was caused partly by “greed,” but that explanation is incredibly inadequate, and imprecise. It’s like saying that since money was involved in the collapse, the crash can be traced back to money).

This attitude is pervasive—and worrisome. Not just for its effects on these particular AIG workers (in the long run, they’ll be okay), but for our society at large.

This stance many seem to be taking against the business class (the banking class in particular) seems to me to be perilously close to class warfare. It’s true that Wall Street bears a great deal of blame for the predicament that we are in. But so does Washington. And so do all those hundreds of thousands of people who abused their credit. This crash was a long time coming, and its causes extend far, far beyond Wall Street greed.

Wall Street makes a convenient scapegoat, since it produces nothing tangible and relatively few people work there. But scapegoating Wall Street is both wrong and dangerous—wrong, because our economic problems go far beyond anything Wall Street could do, and dangerous, because it divides Americans, and sets one group apart as villains destroying the American way of life.

This blame game is destructive, if for no other reason that it is impossible to know who will be next. Maybe it will be doctors being blamed for our health care system, or maybe auto workers being demonized for the plight of General Motors and Chrysler. It’s unfair to blame any one group for our country’s problems—but it is convenient to try.

AIG Fascism

2009-03-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

There’s been a lot of careless talk, on both sides of the political aisle, warning that the other political party will transform the United States into a totalitarian state. Most of such talk can be safely ignored; nothing Bush did could have turned America into Mussolini’s Italy, and Barack Obama’s economic policies, while excessively overreaching and aggressive, aren’t out of the Lenin playbook.

Congress’ decision to tax the now infamous AIG bonuses at (or near) 100% is not totalitarianism—it is an understandable, if wholly irrational, response to something that seems (but isn’t) unjust, and something that provides ample ammunition for populists. But it is a fascistic thing to do, and is worrying.

It takes more than one isolated incident to provide proof, or even evidence, that the nation is on its way to fascism. But then, it is equally true that in any totalitarian government, there is one act that is the first step along the road to tyranny.

Congress’ response to the bailouts is undeniably unjust, and hypocritical, and wrong. Levying a tax only on those who received bonus money from AIG is probably an example of an ex post facto law, and represents of the actions of a government who is willing to forcibly take any money it feels is undeserved.

Even if we assume that those AIG employees shouldn’t have received those bonuses, Congress’ actions are no more justified, given that AIG was authorized to hand out those bonuses in the stimulus bill. It is one thing to pass an ex post facto law, but to pass an ex post facto law that reverses a law that you yourself made only a few weeks earlier is the height of chutzpah.

Congress is trying to do what is right here, but they are going about it in very much the wrong way. The end doesn’t justify the means, and creating an unjust law in order to right a perceived wrong is unacceptable. That sort of thing doesn’t belong in a democracy—it works better in totalitarianism.

Congress’ actions here are high-handed, and unjust. Do they mean that the nation is headed for totalitarianism? No. Just like one swallow does not make a spring, one unjust action is not ample evidence for accusations of fascism. But even if Congress’ proposal here isn’t a sign of impending fascism, it’s still worrying.

First, because it sets a dangerous pattern. No one in our government wants to set up a authoritarian regime now. But if some one ever does want to, it’s laws like this one that provide such people with a precedent, and which undercuts justice and the rule of law. Bad laws have consequences.

Second, the popularity of this proposed law (and really, any amount of popularity is too much in this case) says something about our nation. If this law is really unjust, what does it say about our country that nearly everyone is willing to accept it at the very least, and that many people actively support it? When totalitarianism comes, it is seldom the result of a one man power grab. It usually comes because the population prefers security over freedom.

Will that happen here? Eventually, maybe, but probably not now. (And it is possible that it will all be a moot point—most of the AIG employees involved have bowed under the pressure and returned their bonuses, which would make any law unnecessary) But as Jefferson said, “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Anyone, left or right, who loves liberty should oppose this punitive, ex post facto law. It is wrong and dangerous.

The AIG Bonuses: A Bit of Perspective

2009-03-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

Everybody’s outraged at AIG. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that he was outraged at least thirteen times in his Tuesday briefing. Budget director Peter Orszag thought that the “outrage was visceral.” John Boehner agreed that the situation was “outrageous,” and argued that the American people are “justifiably” outraged too.

President Obama is doing everything he can. He gave Timothy Geithner a vote of confidence, saying that he has “been making all the right moves.” He has promised to try to find a way to get the bonus money back, which sounds hard since AIG depends on the federal government for its survival. And the checks have been cashed, which makes getting the money back even harder.

(Amusingly, Obama nobly said “I’ll take responsibility,” immediately before saying “we didn’t grant those contracts.”)

And nobody in the White House seems to know just how those bonuses were awarded, or when the White House became aware of them. Geithner claims to have learned of the bonuses March 10, and says he informed the president March 12. (The bonuses went out the following day). But the Treasury Department was notified ten days before, meaning that Geithner is either incompetent or lying.

And nobody knows exactly why the bonuses were authorized. Chris Dodd admitted (after initially denying it) to inserting language that allowed the payouts into Obama’s stimulus package. But he claimed to have put it in at the request of the Treasury Department.

So according to Dodd, Geithner and the Treasury are the bad guys here. Geithner says that it’s all Dodd’s fault. Whatever the truth, someone is undeniably guilty of…

(stop reading now if you are easily outraged)

…allowing a corporation to pay its own employees. (Shock!!!) AIG did nothing wrong. Giving out those bonuses was the appropriate thing to do—in fact, it was the only right and moral thing to do. It is possible that Dodd’s amendment sets a dangerous precedent—but in the present instance, the effects were perfectly legitimate. Nobody should be apologizing, and Dodd shouldn’t have had to lie.

As far as I can see, the outrage over the bonuses exists solely because AIG is effectively government owned. Apparently, this fact means that underperforming employees contracts become null and void. These bonuses weren’t spur of the moment, unearned giveaways. They were a part of the contracts of the employees concerned. Those bonuses were planned years in advance. Should the government have forced AIG to break its contract with these people and renege on what it owed them?

But assume that the bonuses weren’t planned; that AIG CEO Edward Liddy had just paid them out as a reward for a job well done. Is even that such a bad thing? There are effective workers in every company, even failing ones like AIG. Should the federal government decide not to compensate them?

Pretend that GM was taken over by the government (that’s not exactly hard to imagine). Would the government ever dream of stopping the company from paying bonuses to its auto workers? Of course not, and anyone who even suggested such a measure would be painted as a hard-hearted villain.

The situations are perfectly analogous. The only difference: the AIG people lived in nice apartments instead of small ones, and wore power suits instead of overalls, and listened to The Arcade Fire instead of Bruce Springsteen.

This kind of class warfare is destructive, and should stop. People who work in an official are not morally inferior to people who work in a factory. Wall Street people earn big bonuses because they are, for the most part, worth it. No corporation failed because of big bonuses. This is class warfare, plain and simple.

Republicans shouldn’t have anything to do with it. They will, of course, because most normal Americans are outraged, and want to see heads roll. With luck, Republicans hope to tarnish the Obama Administration, and do their best to ensure that Chris Dodd’s name is mud. They’ve got a good chance of succeeding—all based on outrage over a “crime” that is no crime at all, but perfectly justified and right.

It shouldn’t have come to this.

Changing

2009-03-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

Two observations. First: things are looking up, a little, for the Republican party. Barack Obama’s administration didn’t hit the ground running like he planned—there were a lot of corruption issues, and Obama’s Cabinet is still not filled. (Most glaringly, Timothy Geinther is alone in the Treasury department—Obama hasn’t appointed anyone else to any Treasury positions yet).

And voters aren’t responding to Obama’s economic policy the way he wanted them to. The stimulus package had a lot of supporters, but also a great many detractors, and it represented a big target for anti-pork Republicans. The omnibus bill was even worse—it seemed to exist solely for the purpose of providing pork.

There is evidence that voters are responding to Obama’s mistakes. Recent polls from Rasmussen and Pew show Obama’s approval rating slipping (though it remains high). And a new Rasmussen poll shows Republicans with a small lead on a generic congressional ballot. So if the situation is not quite ideal for the Republican party, it is at least better than it has been for some time.

Second observation: many, probably most, conservative strategists agree that the Republican party needs to rebrand. They agree that too many voters see it as out of touch, corrupt, and without principle, and that in order for the party to remain viable, it must fundamentally change its message.

But it is not inconceivable envision a scenario in which the GOP doesn’t change, and still remains viable. If the economy doesn’t improve, and Obama and the Democratic Congress make a few more missteps, well, it’s not impossible to see a case in which Republicans pick up seats in 2010. It’s even within the realm of possibility that they could pick up a lot of seats. (A slim chance, but still a chance). Such an event would still have to be classified as improbable—but is still very plausible.

The question is: if the Republican party finds itself in a position to win elections, will it still find the will to change? If, as a result of Democrat bungling, the GOP managed to pick up seats in 2010, that wouldn’t mean that any of the criticisms leveled at the party by reform minded Republicans would be any less valid. The problems would only be hidden. Change usually includes some trouble and pain—could the Republican party change to make it stronger in the long term, even if there were some adverse effects in the short term?

Why Bipartisanship Doesn't Work

2009-03-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

During the presidential campaign, both candidates touted the benefits of bipartisanship. John McCain couldn’t talk enough about all the times he “reached across the aisle” to work on legislation with Democrats (though the two most prominent examples, the McCain-Feingold Act and his immigration deal with Ted Kennedy, weren’t exactly rousing successes). And Barack Obama was supposed to represent a “new kind of politics,” where party affiliation took a back seat to what worked. He hadn’t had much experience in bipartisanship, since he never really did much of anything in the Senate, but he did pass this one ethics law with Richard Lugar.

Then Obama was elected, and of course all his bipartisanship talk was quickly discarded. Obama (in what was admittedly a brilliant move) kept Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense, and appointed Illinois Rep. Ray Hood as Transportation Secretary. Another sign of bipartisanship was Obama’s offer of the Secretary of Commerce job to Senator Judd Gregg, and that was tarnished by the fact that Obama would have stripped the Commerce Department of its authority to conduct the census. But apart from those early (and in the case of Gregg, ineffective) gestures, Obama’s administration has been politics as usual: Obama blames Bush for our current economic crisis, and has orchestrated attacks against Rush Limbaugh. The politics of hope seem more like the politics of the status quo.

Of course, you can’t blame Obama for that—that’s just how politics works, and there’s a reason politics works that way. Bipartisanship doesn’t work because it is hard to get productive work done when the other party is doing his best to ensure that you will be out a job next election. This fundamental conflict of interest is a part of all bipartisan dealing, and is the reason why most bipartisan negotiations result in a compromise that neither side likes at all.

Most people, however, wish that things were different; that politicians from both sides of the aisle could join together to find solutions for America. Basically, they hope the Barack Obama’s “Audacity of Hope” might have some reality, and bipartisanship might have a chance.
They shouldn’t. Bipartisanship doesn’t work, at least not in American politics right now. The two parties are far too far apart ideologically for compromise to be a real possibility. It is possible to compromise when the differences are a matter of degree. It is not possible to forge any sort of lasting compromise when the differences are a matter of kind.

Take Obama’s stimulus package. It was a notoriously hard-fought bill; the Republicans fought it every step of the way, and the Democrats fought back just as vigorously. Neither side seriously considered a real compromise. (Although without the GOP resistance, it is very probable that the stimulus would have been much larger, so perhaps the Democrats did compromise, though not very much). But what compromise could have been possible? In conservative ideology, the very existence of the bill is an abomination. The question was not settling the exact dollar amount of the stimulus—the real question was whether the bill should be passed at all. And there is no compromise possible in that kind of either-or situation.

It’s the same sort of deal with most other political issues—abortion, gay marriage, bailouts.
So when politicians do try to compromise, the result is an impossible hybrid that neither side likes. Republicans usually adopt the liberal principle that government action is the answer to any crisis. Democrats allow that any government action should be restrained, and that taxes should remain low. So the U.S. spends money (keeping the Democrats happy), while not spending enough (if we assume that government action can do good), or having any way to compensate for its expenditures (which keeps Republicans content).

In some countries, where both sides have the same goals, but different ways of reaching them, bipartisanship may be a good, even necessary thing. But in a country, like in America, where the parties have radically different goals, bipartisanship is at best a necessary evil. Obama’s dream of genuine bipartisanship will remain unfulfilled—and that’s a good thing.

Two Ways To Handle Recession

2009-03-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

At least there’s some good news. Citibank just announced a profit for the last quarter, and indicated that it would probably not require government aid. GM, too had some good news—it said that it could get through March without $2 billion in government aid after all. The Dow Jones is up above 7,100. Economically, things are looking up a bit—Barack Obama has decided that the economy is “not as bad as we think.”

If we are seeing the signs of recovery (and it’s still far to early to make a judgment on that), then it’s interesting to note that it has nothing to do with anything Obama has done, and really, nothing to do with anything Bush did either. (Bush’s biggest achievement here was passing TARP, and that wasn’t exactly a rousing success). It would be ironic, if precedented, if, for all the urgent rush for government aid, the economy recovered on its own.

Economies can recover without, or in spite of, government intervention, and the fact that such a possibility was never even considered here is a failure for conservatism. There are, (very) broadly speaking, two ways of dealing with an economic crisis—the liberal way, and the conservative way.

The liberal method was what Washington (both the Bush and Obama Administrations) used for our current crisis. (As Peggy Noonan said her in column today, it really does need a name). It calls for massive government intervention till the trouble is quelled—bailouts, stimulus, sometimes even nationalization of private corporations. Basically, this view sees a financial crisis as a war, where the federal government has almost unlimited power to try to solve the problem. Nothing is beyond the pale.

The advantage of this way: when it works, the economic problem is solved quickly, and less painfully than it would have been otherwise. And it’s easier to see what went wrong, and to patch up those problem areas in the future.

Problem: this way usually doesn’t work. The New Deal was a much larger version of what Obama is trying to do. It was totally ineffective—after eight years of Roosevelt, the unemployment rate was twenty percent, down from twenty-five when he took office. It was only the start of World War II that ended the Depression.

And during the severe late-seventies/early-eighties recession, government action couldn’t do much to lift “malaise.” It took tax cuts (and, it must be said, massive government spending) to do that.

In fact, in all our nation’s history, it’s hard to find an example of government intervention lifting the economy out of recession.

The conservative solution: do nothing, and wait for the free market to sort things out. Advantage: it always works. Problem: it takes a while sometimes.

Left to its own devices, the free market will always eventually equalize and get the economy going again. Eventually. It can take quite a while.

Look at what would have happened had the government done nothing when the recession started. The housing market would have crumbled. The stock market would have collapsed, losing over forty percent of its value. Unemployment would have skyrocketed, and American households would have lost over ten trillion dollars. There would have been painful bank failures, which would have lost billions of dollars for American families.

Except all that did happen, and even with government intervention. Of course, possibly things would have been worse were it not for the efforts of Henry Paulson and Barack Obama—but it is equally likely things would have been better. And if recovery would be prolonged by a laissez-faire approach, everyone agrees it will be similarly prolonged with Obama’s recovery plan. The liberal economic vision seems to give the same results that the conservative one does—but at a much higher price tag.

Governing: It's Harder Than It Looks

2009-03-11T21:36:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama’s first month as president hasn’t really been terribly successful. Too many of his Cabinet appointments have been forced to withdraw (Chas Freeman is the latest example. And yes, I’m aware that he wasn’t technically a Cabinet pick—he was set to head the National Intelligence Council). His stimulus package passed, but not without controversy and staunch Republican opposition, and it and the recently passed stimulus bill were full of blatant pork projects. And his overall approval has dropped—as low as 56%, according to one Rasmussen poll, which isn’t particularly strong considering that Obama is still in what should be his honeymoon period.

Camile Paglia thinks she knows where to lay the blame.

[F]ree the president from his flacks, fixers and goons -- his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.

I think (though I’m not good at predictions; last year, I was convinced that we would see a Hillary-Romney presidential matchup) that more and more liberals will latch on to her explanation if (when?) Obama’s policies are proven ineffective.

Basically, Paglia is arguing that Obama has been undone by corrupt, incompetent advisors, that he has been “ill-served by his advisors and staff.” She think that if it were not for the “dazed lost lambs” surrounding him, Obama would be much more effective.

She’s probably right. But what did she expect? Obama came into the presidency without a shred of executive experience, or even much time in the Senate. Ideas alone aren’t enough to make a good president—one must also have the ability to delegate effectively.

While the presidential campaign is underway, there is an odd sort of assumption that the winner will have dictatorial powers, and the ability to get done whatever he pleases. (Particularly in Obama’s case, where his party also controlled both Houses of Congress).

But, of course, the reality is very different. The presidency is a massively complicated and difficult job. It’s impossible for one man to manage everything, or even to oversee everything. That’s why executive experience is such an important attribute in a president—delegation is a very difficult skill to learn.

Assume that Obama is a real visionary politician whose policies represent what it necessary to move the country forward. (They aren’t, but just assume here). All that knowledge is useless without the ability to implement it. And the skills necessary to advance policy are very different from those required to formulate policy. Obama is very good at the latter; so far, he has not been very good at the former.

The most successful presidents have also been the best at delegating. Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln were both very good at getting their goals accomplished. Both were also excellent delegators, very skilled at getting the best from their advisors. (Though oddly enough, neither man’s Cabinet was particularly well-organized—Reagan’s Cabinet was plagued with petty feuds and animosities, and Lincoln’s Cabinet was disorganized and discordant. Apparently, it’s not necessary to have a unified Cabinet—only an efficient one). Obama, so far, hasn’t exhibited that ability.

Of course, another ability shared by great presidents is the ability to adapt, and improve. Lincoln was forced to become a military strategist during the Civil War. Franklin D. Roosevelt had to fight both the Great Depression, and then World War II. (One of those battles was more successful than the other). Perhaps Obama will adjust as well, and improve his management skills. But for the present, his administration is far from the well-oiled, ready-to-go-on-day-one machine Obama hoped it would be.

Obama's Spending In Perspective

2009-03-10T20:26:00.000-07:00

[Note: I haven't been blogging as much I'd like to recently; I've been really busy and simply haven't had the time. I know that in blogging, it's important to post new stuff regularly, but that hasn't been happening recently. Still, I think I'll soldier on-even if my posting isn't as regular as I'd like, well, it's about quality over quanity anyway. And try to bear with me--hopefully, I'll find more time for blogging. But I haven't forgotten everyone who reads this--life has just been getting in the way.]

Barack Obama has been taking a lot of heat for his extravagant spending habits, and with good reason. His stimulus package was massive—nearly a trillion dollars—and even liberal economists allow that it may have not been worth it, as it is both too small and the spending too protracted to achieve its goals. (And, of course, there is the additional consideration that it provided billions in funding for wasteful pork projects). And today, Congress approved a massive $410 billion omnibus bill, which seems to have been passed solely to provide more funds for pork. (In an inspiring exhibition of that responsibility and conscientiousness that has become a hallmark of the Republican party, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell managed to pull down an impressive $76 million dollars worth of pork for his home state of Kentucky.) And the projected deficit for this year is an astonishing 1.8 trillion, which increases the national debt by nearly twenty percent.

And Obama doesn’t seem to be done with his spending plans. He sees an increased government role in health care, which would be very expensive, and proposes a carbon tax-and-trade plan, which would hurt business a great deal. So Obama has hardly been fiscally responsible.

But while Obama’s fiscal skills may be horribly irresponsible, his skills, or lack of them, may not really matter much in the long run. Obama sees our current financial crisis as being so dire that deficits are irrelevant, and he may be right, on the principle that one might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Because the United States is in a very bad fiscal position, and nothing Obama does can really make things much worse.

First, consider the national debt. The national debt is about ten trillion now (about twelve trillion by the end of this year), an almost unimaginably large number. To put that number in perspective, the entire federal budget last year was about three trillion, the nation’s GDP was about thirteen trillion. Were the federal government to keep its current spending levels, but to spend money only on the national debt, it would take over three years to pay it off. And given that the federal government can’t even balance the budget, it doesn’t look like it will start paying off the national debt soon.

And what happens when you can’t pay off your debts? See Fannie Mae. Except nothing can bail out the federal government.

Even if the national debt were to disappear tomorrow, America still wouldn’t be out of the fiscal woods. Because it owes trillions in future obligations, obligations that will be almost impossible to pay.

In the next half century, the United States owes about $60 trillion, for Social Security payments, Medicare payments, and the like. That’s a little over a trillion dollars a year (and that number will only increase), over and above what it would spend already. It’s hard enough to see how it will afford those payments—but Social Security and Medicare (and the rest of the New Deal and Great Society programs) are perpetual—they won’t stop. So even if the U.S. somehow gets through the next fifty years, those obligations won’t go away—it will only be replaced by an even greater crushing weight of debt.

So does fiscal responsibility matter? Yes, because it’s no good making a bad situation worse. But really, Obama’s spending won’t matter so much over the long run—the nation faces much larger budget problems than Obama’s contributions. And sadly, it is hard to see a plausible solution to the problem, especially given that America almost certainly faces at least four more years of a Democratic government.

Conservative Derangement

2009-03-05T20:16:00.001-08:00

After Bush was elected in 2000, many liberals were unhappy. They had two ways to deal with that disappointment—a) accept that they lost and vow to get ‘em next time, or b) embrace paranoia and start accusing Bush of stealing the election and becoming a dictator and lying the country into war and torture and fascism. They chose b.

So we got eight years of Michael Moore suggesting that Bush and bin Laden were playing for the same team, and of Keith Olbermann calling for Bush to resign, and dozens of crazy conspiracy theories about Iraq being a war for oil waged in order to prop up Halliburton.

This phase must have been embarrassing for rational liberals. It’s one thing to disagree with someone, it’s another to be become unhinged over Bush’s existence. But conservatives made hay with all the liberal insanity—they labeled it Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS for short) and used it as proof that liberals weren’t serious about the real problems facing the nation. Among themselves, conservatives swore that no matter how bad things looked, they’d never stoop so low as to engage in Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Then Obama got elected, and they didn’t waste any time. Conservatives managed, for the most part, to avoid the stupid sort of trutherism that said that Obama wasn’t actually a natural born citizen. But the restraint stopped there. Since Obama’s inauguration, the conservative response has been a) tax cuts, b) Rush Limbaugh, c) Atlas Shrugged, and d) accusations of socialism.

Obama’s stimulus package was a flawed bill—incredible amounts of pork, and it meant massive deficits. And it was (and still is) doubtful whether it would even succeed in its stated goal of pushing the economy out of recession.

All devastating points, and the Republicans did use them. But their solution? Tax cuts. Which would have been a great idea, except that Republicans have made tax cuts the centerpiece of their response to every financial crisis since Reagan. And given the size of the deficit (even without Obama’s stimulus package), cutting taxes would simply be irresponsible.

No conservative managed to particularly distinguish himself in the fight over the stimulus bill, so people looking for a leader of the Republican party looked to Rush Limbaugh for inspiration. And that caused a significant controversy, with liberals angrily demanding whether Republicans support Rush, and conservatives divided into pro-Limbaugh and anti-Limbaugh camps; the former considering Rush a real asset and a true conservative leader, and the other vociferously disagreeing.

How about third option: who cares? Well, everyone does now, due to size of the controversy. But it shouldn’t have been a controversy at all. If you like Rush, enjoy him by all means. If not, find a new leader you can get behind. But Rush isn’t going to go away just because some people think he’s too influential.

Some dispirited conservatives are suggesting we live in an “Atlas Shrugged” scenario, where the government will take over the entire economy, and debating whether we should all go “John Galt,” which apparently means stoping producing and hoping that the economy falls apart. Because nothing says “responsible guardians of the economy” by having your supporters run around citing some literary enormity which advocates a stupid, sophomoric philosophy, right?

The whole “Atlas Shrugged” idea brings me to my last point, which is the constant accusations from the Right that Obama advocates socialism. “Socialism” is a serious charge, one that should not be carelessly directed at anyone. So it’s a pity that so many Republicans obviously have no idea what socialism is.

Socialism’s main goal is state control of production and distribution of goods. Seen much of that in the Obama Administration? (There have been some banks nationalized, but that was one of Bush’s plans, not Obama’s) Another goal is a “fair” wage scale. Hasn’t been much regulation of wages either. Obama is simply not a socialist. There are words for what he really is—“statist” is certainly one; “corporatist” is another that seems to fit. You could even make a case (though not a very strong one, in my view) that his program incorporates elements of fascism. But he’s certainly not a Socialist.

So far, conservatives have stayed far away from the level of crazy that many liberals sank to during the dark days of Bush. But still, their performance since Obama’s election has been very poor—they’ve spent most of their time either pushing stupid economic theories or engaging in dumb, counterproductive power struggles. If conservatives haven’t become “deranged”, they still certainly haven’t acted very responsibly.

More About Rush

2009-03-03T21:02:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I wrote about Rush Limbaugh’s role in the Republican party. I said that while Rush makes a very good spokesman for the conservative movement, leadership of the GOP is best left to politicians. Rush should play a William F. Buckley role—lead the movement, not the party.

Given some of the sentiments expressed around the conservative blogosphere on the topic, that isn’t good enough for many conservative pundits. They think that Limbaugh’s brand of conservatism is outdated—angry, exclusive, backwards-looking, and tinged with racism. In this view, Rush Limbaugh, while he may have his uses, should stay well away from any leadership position.

There is, perhaps, some merit to that viewpoint. But those who agree with forget one thing. If Rush Limbaugh speaks for the conservative movement, there is a reason that is so. His ideas resonate with millions of people, and those people are willing to invest time and social capital into listening to him.

So if we assume that Limbaugh makes a poor conservative spokesman, the fault lies with all those millions of conservatives who support him. There are so many conservative leaders who seem to assume that Limbaugh’s ideas weakens the movement. Instead, I think the opposite is true—Limbaugh’s ideas are the movement, in that without the glue his show provides, conservatism would be an abstraction, not a living political faction. (Granted, had Rush never existed, conservatism wouldn’t have withered and died—someone would have picked up the slack, though probably not so well).

So if reformer conservatives don’t like Rush, there’s an easy answer—set up your own alternative. Those right-wingers who point out that Limbaugh can attract maybe thirty percent of voters and scare away the rest miss the fact that their ideas are only popular with a tiny population of political junkies who comment on their websites. David Frum thinks Rush’s popularity doesn’t extend much beyond his twenty million strong audience. But Frum’s popularity doesn’t extend much beyond his relatively small group of Internet fans. Maybe Frum’s (and others; Frum is just a convenient example) ideas are really good and will be a fresh start for the GOP and the conservative movement. But so far, new conservatism has been long on ideas and short (inevitably, given its newness) on results. If Limbaugh is outdated, he has had success. Those who attempt to tear him down don’t seem to have anything to put in his placc.

Understanding Rush

2009-03-03T07:28:00.000-08:00

Michael Steele probably didn’t think his CNN interview would go like that. When asked about Rush Limbaugh’s “want Obama to fail” remarks, Steele disowned Rush, calling him an “entertainer” and his show “ugly” and “incendiary.” Steele also claimed that he, not Limbaugh, was the de facto leader of the Republican party.

Limbaugh, as you might expect, didn’t like that, and hit back. He accused Steele of a) misunderstanding his job, b) ingratitude, and c) incompetence. Steele backed down and allowed that he might have been a “little bit inarticulate.” (A little bit?). According to Steele, the whole incident was a misunderstanding, the result of a verbal slipup. Which is probably true, though Steele’s “inarticulateness” is truly incredible for someone in his position.

But Steele’s gaffe raises an interesting question: where does Rush Limbaugh fit into the conservative movement? Many (including Rush) consider him the de facto leader of the Republican party; certainly, he has been the only person whose criticisms of Barack Obama have landed with any force at all.

Further, talk radio in general, and Limbaugh in particular, are the only Republican voices with any moral authority or effectualness left. The conservative blogosphere still lacks (with a few exceptions) any real influence. Grassroots Republicans are a tiny group of overenthusiastic political junkies. And the Republican establishment (as personified by the Republican National Committee and the Republican remnant in Congress) is so discredited and tarnished that it is almost powerless.

If Rush isn’t the leader of the Republican party, then nobody is. He is certainly conservatism’s most popular and effective spokesman. But not every conservative thinks that’s a good thing.

Many conservative thinkers (particularly among the younger, less traditional set), think that Rush is at worst a bight on the GOP and at best taken only in small doses. The idea is that moderates will see Rush as a hateful bomb thrower, the same moderates see Rush as the spokesman of the Republican party, moderates leave and it’s goodbye Republicans.

At one extreme of this point of view is David Frum, who goes to far as to suggest that Limbaugh wants Republicans to lose in order to amass a larger audience for himself. At the more moderate and reasonable end of the spectrum is Ross Douthat, who writes that the fact that so many conservatives look to him as a conservativee True North, which makes them look like “starstruck fools.”

So if Rush is the leader of the conservative movement, and/or of the Republican party, is that an undesirable thing?

Yes and no. Rush Limbaugh is a very effective spokesman for the conservative movement. He has seniority—it’s hard to think of anyone who has worked in the conservative movement longer. (George Will, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and a few others, but I doubt any these people could rally a movement, nor would they want to). And he as talented a media presence as exists in America—only Oprah Winfrey has comparable talent. Conservatives could (and probably would) do much worse than to let Rush speak for them.

But if Rush Limbaugh can dominate the conservative movement, he would make a poor leader of the Republican party. A political party is different from a political movement—it requires compromise, and openness, two things Limbaugh isn’t known for.

A parallel (though like most parallels it is imperfect) can be drawn to William F. Buckley’s position during the Sixties and Seventies. Buckley was the undisputed leader (even more dominant than Limbaugh) of the conservative movement, and was every bit as contentious and polarizing as Limbaugh. And his leadership of the conservative movement worked.

But while Buckley was the preeminent name of the conservative movement, his position in the Republican party was very different. He led a growing and increasingly important party bloc—but it was only a bloc. Party leaders such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were the leaders of the Republican party. Conservatives were an important part of the party, but hardly the only element.

But will Rush’s polarization and extremism drive off moderate voters? There isn’t any convincing reason to think so. The Republican party has coexisted quite well with Rush for the past twenty years, and there’s no reason to think that now Limbaugh is persona non grata with moderates. Most moderates voted for Barack Obama this time around, but didn’t feel the need to identify with the Michael Moore wing of the Democrat party. There’s no reason to think that the same wouldn’t be true of Republicans.

(Note: When I say Rush Limbaugh “speaks for conservatives,” obviously, that can never be quite true—there will always be conservatives who disagree with him. But the same will be true of any political leader, and by “speak for,” I mean represent a sizable majority of the group.)

Liberals and Terrorism

2009-02-28T07:06:00.000-08:00

Among liberals, there is a widely held belief that says that while 9/11 was a horrible act, and that there is no excuse for those who perpetrated it, the United States is not free of all blame. Those who follow this line of thought think that the 9/11 attacks were a response to America’s foreign policy, and we would be well advised to take a look at those causes. As NIC chairman Chas Freeman said “[A]nd what of America’s lack of introspection about September 11? Instead of asking what might have caused the attack, or questioning the propriety of the national response to it, there is an ugly mood of chauvinism. Before Americans call on others to examine themselves, we should examine ourselves.”

First, it’s worth noting that the idea that 9/11 was motivated by U.S. foreign policy is one of the most blindingly obvious suggestions imaginable. Of course 9/11 was due to anger over American foreign policy—that’s hardly a major revelation. Nobody needs to ask themselves what caused 9/11—it was caused by anger over America’s power and (it must be said) arrogance in foreign policy. (Were there other reasons? Of course, but I think that that one works for a simple analysis).

So most people can agree that America’s foreign policy was responsible, at least in large part, for 9/11. The question is: what should we do with that information?

Most liberals appear to think that America should take this information and alter our foreign policy in response. If we know why terrorists strike, and change in response, terrorism will cease (or at least slow) because the pool of potential terrorists will dry up due to lack of incentive.

Further, this line of thought gives terrorists some degree of moral equivalence with America. After all, America has been guilty of crimes as well—Palestine, Serbia, Iraq. (Are those instances actually examples of American wrongdoing? They are for many liberals, and definitely for radical Muslims). So the difference between 9/11 and U.S. foreign policy is one of degree, but not type. (In fairness, the difference in degree here is incalculably large).

This theory is unsound. Assume, for the moment, that American foreign policy is flawed. Should we really change it as a response to mass murder? That would seem to provide an incentive for terrorists. After all, if a proper response to terrorism is to “examine ourselves” (in the words of Chas Freeman), terrorism would be a pretty effective policy persuasion tool.

Has America always been blameless? No, and Americans should constantly examine their country’s actions. But that examination should be done as a part of the democratic process, and not in response to the murderous actions of terrorists.

But even apart from the incentive factor, changing U.S. policy in response to terrorism serves to legitimatize terrorism. “Chauvinism,” at least to some degree, is the proper response to terrorism. When faced with a terrorist attack, the question should never be “what do they want?” Rather, it should be “how might this sort of thing be prevented?”

Liberals, at least most liberals, seem incapable of understanding that point. They try to assign as little blame as possible on the mindset that caused 9/11. This is probably an example of the intense Amerocentrism common on the Left—the idea that the U.S. is responsible for everything, good or bad, that goes on in the world. Since 9/11 was a major world event, leftists can’t imagine that it could possibly be the result of forces beyond U.S. control.

This attitude towards terrorism is destructive, not to mention stupid. It gives terrorists the two things they want most: power and legitimacy. And that isn’t the foundation for an effective anti-terror policy.

Improve the Message, Not the Messenger

2009-02-26T21:07:00.000-08:00

After the Republican defeats in 2006 and 2008, the GOP came to the realization that it lagged far behind the Democratic party when it came to circulating its message. The Democrats had a well-organized network of online activists and an active blogosphere, which combined to spread Democrat talking points. The Republicans had…not much—a few blogs that had half the audience that the liberal ones had, and that spent as much time attacking Republicans as Democrats.

So Democrats had a clear online advantage. This translated into a powerful edge in the election—Barack Obama got millions more from online donations than John McCain did. Obama’s website was a useful networking site for his supporters, while McCain’s was a typical campaign site.

After the election, Republicans looked at the online situation and decided that things needed to change. So Republican and conservative strategists started planning for online domination—Facebook groups, strategy blogs, protest websites. The idea is that conservatives and Republicans (the two aren’t always mutually inclusive) will have an efficient online network in the Democrat model, making organization and party-building much easier. An added bonus is an expected increase in support from young people.

There are two problems with this strategy. The first: it follows the liberal model too closely. True, the liberal blogosphere has been extremely valuable to the Democratic party (though I think that perhaps its import has been exaggerated), and it’s obvious that the Internet will play an increasingly important role in politics.

But the Internet is constantly changing, constantly evolving. What is cool on the Internet now may be utterly passé in a year. Just four years ago, Republicans had the upper hand in the blogosphere—in well under a year, the balance of power utterly changed. A year ago, the Daily Kos was getting presidential candidates at its yearly convention—now, Time magazine has declared the Daily Kos nothing more than a collection of DNC talking points. Just two years ago, MySpace was the online place to be—now everyone who’s anyone has a Facebook.

So given the rapid pace of change on the Internet, the model the GOP is trying to follow may be totally outdated in just months. Republicans should look to the future for inspiration, instead of the past; they should be trying to adopt the Internet 2.0 as their model, instead of doing what has already been done.

The second reason the Republican online effort is misguided: they are putting the messengers before the message. Imagine that the RNC’s website was just as attractive and useful as the DNC’s is; pretend that Redstate and The Next Right were as attractive and interesting as the Daily Kos; say that there were an abundance of opportunities for Republicans to volunteer and network.

It would all still be totally worthless without a good, strong message. Building a great communications network without a strong message is like sticking a wonderful luxury hotel in Wyoming—there’s just not much you can do with it. And even if Republicans have the best network in the world, the party would be just as moribund as it is now if there isn’t an equally strong message to go with it.

If the message is good, if people respond to it, it will get out somehow. It’s possible to extend the reach of that message through technology, and doing so is important (as the success of the Democratic party has shown). But the strength of the message is the most important factor. As I think it’s hard to say that the decade-old, recycled bromides the Republicans have been spouting since Obama’s election constitutes a good message. And neither does constantly mentioning Joe Plumber. If Republicans want to be taken seriously, they will have to improve the message before enhancing the messenger.

Advancing Conservatism: Is It Possible?

2009-02-25T19:02:00.000-08:00

Imagine, for the moment, the following scenario. It’s 2012. Bobby Jindal has just been elected with 61% of the vote. The Republicans have taken a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, and have a forty seat advantage in the House. Also, assume that all these Republican Congressmen are staunch conservatives—there aren’t any “RINOs” here. (This isn’t a very likely scenario). So Republicans have both a near total control of the government and a national mandate.

What would they do? How would they change the country? I don’t know what they’d do to advance a really conservative agenda. And worse, I can’t even begin to imagine what they could do to advance that agenda. Reform Social Security? Roll back the welfare state? Reduce the ease of abortion? Is there anyone, even the most optimistic conservative, who actually thinks that it would be possible for the Republican party to make a meaningful difference on any of those issues?

If so, they are very wrong, because the GOP has tried to do all of those things in the recent past. In 1996, congressional Republicans—with a great deal of controversy and trouble—managed to pass the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. It was hailed as a great victory for Republicans.

And what did this bill change? Most importantly, it decreed that welfare wasn’t an entitlement program. And it put limits on the amount of federal aid individuals could receive. (No federal aid for more than two consecutive or five total years). And it tried to discourage out-of-wedlock births.

All good things, to be sure. But hardly enough to start rolling back the New Deal or Great Society. This bill didn’t slow down the advance of government in the least—it merely made government welfare smarter and more effective. And while that is good, that sort of thing won’t create a classically conservative nation.

Reform Social Security? George W. Bush pushed for a plan that would give Americans more flexibility regarding Social Security. The plan would have let workers open investment accounts, which would serve as a substitute for Social Security payments. Not drastic stuff (certainly nowhere near ending the program). But voters were horrified, and the notion was quickly dropped.

Ending abortion? Bush appointed constructionist Supreme Court justices, and has appointed mostly conservative judges to the lower courts as well. And Republicans have done what they could to reduce abortion for years—repealing the Mexico City policy and passing parental notification laws. Yet the status of abortion in the United States is nearly identical to what it was forty years ago. The abortion rate is similar, and it is every bit as easy to get an abortion (easier, really) now than it was then.

All three of these efforts weren’t (in the big picture) very effective. But they represented the best the Republican party could do. Why couldn’t the GOP do more to push back liberalism? Quite simply, because liberal (or statist) policies have become so ingrained the U.S. (and all Western democracies) that they now represent the status quo; the default setting for political debate. It would be literally impossible to push them back—about as difficult as it would be to abolish Congress.

But if Social Security, Medicare, and the rest of Big Government aren’t going away, what are conservatives to do? Most conservative thought assumes a universe where, if conservatives work hard and make progress, it would be possible to create a truly conservative (low taxes, low welfare, low regulation) state.

If we assume (and I think it’s a safe assumption) that this isn’t possible, what are conservatives to do? The first option is to keep trying, which is a noble but quixotic policy doomed to failure. The second option is to accept big government as a fait accompli and try to make it work unintrusively and efficiently, which would spell the end of conservatism as we know it. Neither option is good—but conservatives have to choose either one or the other.

And a semantic point: it there a bigger misnomer in politics than “conservatism?” Whatever conservatives are trying to “conserve” passed away before the last World War, if indeed it ever existed, and it probably didn’t. Liberalism is the status quo, and leftists are the true conservatives.

Holder Was Right

2009-02-24T17:06:00.000-08:00

Eric Holder couldn’t have wanted to be involved in a fairly major controversy within a month of his appointment as Attorney General. If he could, he would probably modify his remarks at an African American History Month event, where he said that

“though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. …As a nation we have done a pretty good job in melding the races in the workplace. We work with one another, lunch together and, when the event is at the workplace during work hours or shortly thereafter, we socialize with one another fairly well, irrespective of race. And outside the workplace the situation is even more bleak in that there is almost no significant interaction between us. On Saturdays and Sundays America in the year 2009 does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some fifty years ago. This is truly sad.”

Drudge highlighted the speech, so it got a lot of publicity and came in from criticism from the usual suspects. Jonah Goldberg wrote a column condemning the “nation of cowards” line (though he later revised his criticism after reading the entire text). The conservative blogosphere exploded. Even Maureen Dowd wrote a column criticizing Holder, saying that we “don’t need sermons from liberal virtuecrats, any more than from conservative virtuecrats.”

It’s too bad Holder is coming in for all this criticism, because he happens to be absolutely correct. Racial attitudes in the United States are as bad (or worse) as Holder paints them. Regarding race, America is a nation of cowards, and there are many, many unresolved racial issues in this nation. Holder shouldn’t be condemned—he should be praised for his honest and clear-sighted view of our racial politics.

Is America a racial nation of cowards? Indisputably, yes. The last great racial discussion revolved around the question of whether it was racist for the New York Post to publish a cartoon showing a chimp being shot. Admittedly, a minor controversy (it’ll be forgotten in a month), but it is a good example of America’s racial dialogue.

The last major racial discussion before Chimpgate (the question of whether Obama’s election signaled the advent of a post racial America) started with uncharacteristic intelligence. But that couldn’t last—by the end of the election, Obama supporters were accusing the Republican party in general, and Sarah Palin in particular, of being racist, while conservatives threw the reverse racism tag around every bit as wildly and unfairly as their liberal counterparts.

The last major racial debate before Obama? Don Imus. Before that? Trent Lott.
And neither of this gaffes were the stuff of intelligent racial dialogue—in both cases, Americans were forced to assume outrage at slips of the tongue, if a cruel and insensitive slip in Imus’ case. Holder was generous to call Americans “cowards” when it comes to race—I think “idiots” might work better.

Lost in the furors over Imus and the Post and Lott is the obvious but little spoken truth that America is de facto segregated, and that in practice, racial interaction has changed little in the past fifty years. (Racial attitudes, on the other hand, have changed considerably).

Blacks and whites, for the most apart, live entirely segregated lives. In most places, it is possible tell exactly where the white part of town ends and the black section begins. Blacks and whites listen to different music, speak differently, and rarely intermarry.

In addition, they usually have separate jobs. Blacks tend to hold lower income blue-collar jobs, while whites have jobs across the economic spectrum, but concentrated in middle and upper middle class positions.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that America’s race relations follow a separate but equal policy. African-Americans are free to marry anyone they want, go anywhere they want to, vote, and participate fully in American culture. But they don’t—instead, black culture exists as a subculture sharply segregated from the American mainstream.

The solution to this problem? Holder vaguely mentioned impromptu interracial discussions through artificial opportunities to engage one another, a solution so shallow and ineffective that I can’t believe that even Holder really thinks it would work. (Perhaps he is afraid to suggest anything more controversial—perhaps he can be included in the “nation of cowards”) Others think that that black race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are to blame for America’s voluntary segregation, but it seems unlikely that many people, black or white, take their social cues from Al Sharpton.

The real reason for this phenomenon, I think, is that America has a long history of segregation, and that history cannot be eradicated in one generation, or even many generations. It will be a long time before blacks and whites fulfill Martin Luther King’s dream, if they do, and the sad truth is that there is little either government or societal leaders can do to expedite King’s vision.

On Hiatus

2009-02-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

For the past few weeks, I’ve only been able to write four posts, instead of my usual five. My posts have been shorter, and it’s been hard to find stuff to write about. Usually, finding a topic is the easy part, but lately it’s been a real chore.

I think I’m burned out. I’ve been blogging pretty consistently for almost two years. I’m tired of blogging every day, and I think my writing has suffered because of it. So I’m taking a break. Just a short one, just two weeks, then I’ll start back in. I think this will be a net plus—in the short run, I’ll lose some readers, but I think the break will improve the blog in the long run.

I’ll start blogging again on the 23rd of February. I’ll try to enjoy my break, and come back again better than ever.

Thanks,

Daniel Ruwe

P.S. My email address is danielruwe@yahoo.com. If you email me, I'll send you an email reminding you when I start blogging again.

Did Palin hurt McCain?

2009-02-06T05:31:00.000-08:00

As Obama starts his presidency, people wonder about the fate of the other memorable politician of the 2008 election, Sarah Palin. She divides opinion like no other political figure since Hillary Clinton—liberals see her existence as a symptom of everything wrong with the Republican party, while most conservatives are fiercely protective of her and see Palin as their best hope for the future. But both sides have one thing in common—everyone is trying to understand the phenomenon that is Sarah Palin.

In order to understand Palin, it is crucial to get the facts straight. It seems to now be accepted as incontrovertible fact among liberals that Palin hurt John McCain’s candidacy, and was (and is) a major liability to the Republican party.

First, exit polls indicated that Palin was not a liability for McCain. (Though the accuracy of exit polls is very, very doubtful). About sixty percent of voters said she impacted their decision, and more (though not that many more) of those voters voted for McCain than Barack Obama. So it isn’t as if Sarah Palin drove many voters away from McCain.

The real reason for McCain’s defeat was the economy. (At least, the economy sealed his fate—the election was always an uphill battle for him, and he very well could have lost even in a bull market). The economy started to worsen in the middle of September. John McCain announced that he was suspending his campaign to deal with the economic crisis on September 24th. It was on September 26th that McCain fell out of the margin of error in the Rasmussen tracking poll, and never recovered.

In retrospect, it seems that one of John McCain’s fatal blunders was his decision to suspend his campaign to try to fix the financial mess. When he announced his decision, I wrote that “[s]uspending his campaign is a bold move by McCain; one that will either succeed spectacularly or fail miserably.” It seems safe to say that it failed miserably. John McCain lost because of the economic collapse, not because he picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate.

So why does the media focus on Palin’s role in McCain’s loss? Because Palin’s story was the most (or one of the most) interesting narrative of the election, and too many in the media would rather focus on an interesting story than an accurate one. It is much more interesting to attribute McCain’s loss to his selection of an inexperienced, attractive hockey mom than to boring economic issues.

Governing: It's Harder Than It Looks

2009-02-04T20:18:00.000-08:00

In 2006, Nancy Pelosi promised that the newly elected Democratic Congress would be the “most ethical in history.” It wasn’t. After Pelosi and the Democrats took Congress, Washington corruption didn’t end. William Jefferson became infamous for hiding cash in his freezer. Pork projects continued abated—in fact, the Democrats introduced even more of them.

Likewise, when Barack Obama ran in 2008, he promised that his administration would renounce the corruption and dishonesty he saw in the Bush Administration, and would usher in a new pragmatic, whatever works era of government. (In contrast to George Bush’s “unconscionable ineptitude.”) If Bush represented old Washington politics (greed before accountability, and partisanship before efficiency), Obama represented the new—he was supposed to bring integrity and efficiency to Washington.

Thing is, though, Obama hasn’t been able to bring either quality to government. A simply staggering proportion of his cabinet choices are guilty of some ethical lapse. Obama’s first choice for Secretary of Commerce, Bill Richardson, was forced to step down after being caught up in a “pay-for-play” scandal similar to that of former Illinois Rod Blagovich. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner neglected to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for years. Tom Daschle managed to “forget” to pay over $100,000 worth of taxes on a limo service, which forced him to withdraw his nomination. (And made Obama admit he “screwed up.”) And his proposed chief performance officer, Nancy Killefer, was also forced to withdraw her candidacy after embarrassing tax issues came to light.

(And, of course, there is the issue of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Her work with her husband’s foundation would seem to indicate some severe conflicts of interest—but after years of Clinton corruption, Congress seems to have thrown up its hands and simply nominated her without a fight).

Sometimes it seems as though Obama didn’t even bother to vet these candidates. But he did—he must have. (Although given that his goal was to hit the ground running with his Cabinet already assembled, his vetting must have been rushed.) But governing is harder than it looks—and corrupt politicians are good at getting away with dishonesty. Obama didn’t want to nominate dishonest people for his cabinet, and the fact he did was due more to inexcusable, if inevitable, human error than calculated malfeasance. But Obama promised more than that—he promised a totally open, honest administration—and he has been unable to deliver.

Similarly, Obama hasn’t been able to deliver on his promises of a competent, efficient government. One of the reasons he tried to rush his Cabinet nominees through was so that he could hit the ground running and pass a stimulus bill quickly. (In fact, there was some hope that Congress could have a bill ready for him to sign his first day in office). Obama made passing his stimulus bill quickly a priority. And he has utterly failed.

In Keynesian economics, the fact that money is spent at all during hard times is much more important than where the money goes. (Keynes even went so far as to declare that it is better for the government to waste money during recessions than to not spend it.) But Obama got a little carried away, or rather let his allies in Congress get carried away. Spending $hundreds of million on new roads is something most Americans can support. Spending that money on contraception funding, however…not so much.

What does Obama’s failure tell us? That governing is hard. The opposition party has no executive responsibilities, meaning that it can stonewall and agitate without having to come up with its own solutions. (Think the Republicans would be so strongly opposed to the stimulus if they were the ones in power?). In addition to placating the Republicans, Obama must also satisfy his own Democrats. And of course he has also got to keep the base enthusiastic, the middle content, and the opposition placated. It’s not an easy job. And so far, Obama hasn’t been very good at it.

The Man of Steele

2009-02-04T05:01:00.000-08:00

Last Monday, Michael Steele was elected chairman of the Republican National Committee. Most of the media attention focused on his race (black), with a lot of comparisons being made with Barack Obama’s election of President of the United State. And as with Obama, it’s hard not to be at least a little inspired that the leaders of both major political parties are black men; men who only sixty years ago would have had trouble simply voting.

But Michael Steele is more than just a black face. His vision of the RNC is fundamentally different from that of former chairmen. Mike Duncan, Steele’s predecessor, saw raising money as his primary goal. Directing the ideology and strategy of the Republican party came second.

Not so with Steele. He sees himself as the public face (or at least one of the major public faces), of the Republican party. He means to shape the party over the course of his tenure—emphasize winning issues and candidates, and weed out those issues and candidates that aren’t attracting voters. Steele will do his best to remake the Republican party.

Is this is a good thing? It can be. Putting men like Steele in positions of power is a high risk, high reward gamble. If Steele’s ideas work, the Republican party will be incalculably stronger. But if they don’t—if he turns voters off and can’t rally the Republican base—his tenure will be a disaster.

Mike Duncan was a safe pick—he was very good at fundraising, but stayed in the background and didn’t rock the boat much. Steele isn’t as safe. But given where the Republican party is politically, I think picking someone like Steele is the way to go. And given Steele’s past record, his chances of success are reasonably good.

Yelling "Stop"

2009-02-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

As Barack Obama begins his occupancy of the White House, conservatives are rallying around and attempting to heed William F. Buckley’s example and “stand athwart history yelling ‘stop’.” They are seeking to stop Obama from instituting a sort of European style quasisocialism, and to prevent liberal style collectivist values from becoming entrenched in law.

That’s a worthy goal. But also one that is, in the long run, futile. Eventually, leftism must prevail. Conservatism as we know it cannot hold it back forever.

The reason for this is that all (or virtually all; the exceptions are few enough to be ignored) people do believe that greed is good. People want money: the most money for the least amount of work. And it is a whole lot easier to just vote yourself money instead of going to all the trouble to work for it. That explains why government programs are so popular. They might not be particularly efficient. But it is quite often more efficient to get an inferior product for free than to have to pay for a superior one.

(And yes, government programs are free. Unless you happen to be in the top, say, five percent of wage earners, you’re probably not paying for any significant chunk of government aid. The wealthiest one percent alone account for about a third of tax revenues—the average taxpayer’s dollars are a drop in the bucket).

The history of the United States bears this fact out. The Founding Fathers were the quintessential small-government libertarians—they were afraid that giving the federal government an army would give it too much power. So they designed a government to make it nearly impossible for the federal government to get too much control.

The Articles of Confederation didn’t work so well. So they tried again, and gave the federal government a bit more power with the Constitution. Although the federal government had much more power under the new model, it was still pretty limited. But as soon as it was enacted, the federal government started growing. In the beginning, the federal government didn’t even have a navy. Next thing you know, it’s fighting the Barbary pirates and starting a national bank and regulating commerce and ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment and declaring a military draft and the next thing you know, the Great Depression starts. And then government really took off.

During the Depression, the government started managing the economy and retirement. And to pay for all that, it raised tax rates to a nigh-confiscatory level (especially after World War II). Then came the Great Society, where the federal government set its eye on eradicating poverty, and set about reforming healthcare. And then…you get the idea.

The point of all this is that all of these expansions of government were driven by one common factor: the will of the voters. The common people wanted a national bank, and Social Security, and Medicare. These things weren’t forced on them overnight—people asked for them. The most popular presidents have been those who expanded government the most. (Hebert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge are not remembered as particularly good presidents. Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt are. Guess which ones expanded government more.) Big government is a key tenet of liberalism—but is driven by the demands of the common man.

And no one wants to lose anything coming to him. That’s why conservatives have been so completely incapable of rolling back any welfare programs. The people want their free money—and they won’t stand for anyone taking it from them.

Most people, nowadays, assume that democracy is the perfect form of government and to suggest otherwise is simple lunacy. (Personally, I agree with Winston Churchill: democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others). But many philosophers have pointed out that in a democracy, there is little or nothing to prevent the people from voting themselves whatever they wish. And that is a weakness of democracy—the American democratic experiment is a perfect example of this.

Conservatism has been defined as “standing athwart history yelling ‘stop’”. But history doesn’t stop. It is possible to slow it down—conservatives have done an excellent job of doing so over the past half century. But in the end, all their efforts are ultimately doomed to failure.

More About Torture

2009-01-31T09:30:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, I wrote a post about the morality of torture, and the feasibility of prosecuting former Bush officials who may have tortured Al-Qaeda detainees. Any questions regarding torture are inevitably difficult, and the answer depends in large part on one’s personal moral views. So liberals and conservatives disagree on this issue, and while there is a right answer (unless you believe that morality is relative), there is no easy one.

Liberals (who usually believe that torture is always wrong) are actually closer to the truth on this issue (in my opinion) than conservatives (who typically think torture can be justified). They are quite correct in pointing out that the ends do not justify the means, and that torture is an immoral means. So the Left has it right on this issue, at least regarding the big picture.

It’s the Left’s application of this principle that is a little disturbing. In the eyes of many liberals, torture is perhaps the worst crime imaginable. Keith Olbermann has called on Barack Obama to prosecute Bush for torture, comparing the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed with slavery, Jim Crow, and McCarthyism. And while many people laugh at Keith Olbermann, it’s worth remembering that he is taken quite seriously in liberal circles.

The liberal megablog the Huffington Post has eighteen pages of posts tagged with the word “torture.” It has fourteen pages for “abortion”. “Rush Limbaugh” gets thirteen pages, while “stimulus” gets just four pages. Even “US economy” (which has got to be the broadest possible category) gets only twenty-four pages, just six more than “torture.” Most of what the stuff HuffPo’s writers have to say about torture (it’s horrible, we’re losing face with the rest of the world, Bush should be impeached/prosecuted) isn’t that remarkable—but they can’t stop writing about it.

It’s easy to find more examples of the Left’s fixation with torture—it’s one of the most commonly discussed topics on any liberal forum or blog. And this obsession is a bit perplexing.

Part of it, of course, stems from the natural desire to score political points. Torture is not something most people like to think about, and it represents an easy way to make George W. Bush look bad. And allegations that the Bush Administration violated the Geneva Conventions are embarrassing to Republicans, if untrue (whatever happened in Guantanamo Bay, it wasn’t a violation of the Geneva Conventions—Al-Qaeda detainees do not fulfill the criteria for prisoners of war). So some of the Democrat obsession with torture arises from simple partisan politics.

But a part, I think, comes from something a bit deeper. Liberals don’t like the idea of torturing radical Muslim terrorists, but they hate the idea as much because of the treatment of radical Muslims as for the moral dimension of torture. It would be a stretch to say that liberals (some, of course, not all) root for the terrorists—but then, it would be equally difficult to say that those liberals root for the U.S.

This moral ambivalence doesn’t come from hatred of America, but rather from guilt. These liberals have an intensely Amerocentric view of the world, in which everything that happens—good or bad—stems directly from U.S. action. So these people think that, if terrorism exists, the U.S. must some how be responsible. So in this view of torture, torturing Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed was, in effect, punishing someone else for our mistakes.

It’s this attitude towards America that explains why liberals see mistreating Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed as something unimaginably evil, while somehow managing to find room for understanding towards Hamas. In this view—not only is the United States to blame for any torture it commits, but also for the necessity of any torture it commits.

Some Questions About Torture

2009-01-29T15:16:00.001-08:00

Since Barack Obama’s inauguration, many have wondered whether he will attempt to prosecute former Bush officials for human rights violation, and what his position on torture will be. Many liberals hope he will prosecute—they claim that only through vigorous investigation and prosecution can the country move on from the Bush Administration’s crimes. The Right disagrees—they claim that too aggressive investigations will hamper agents in the field, and that what the Bush Administration did was justified in order to save lives. Naturally, liberals accuse conservatives of being brutal fascists, while conservatives accuse liberals of being unconcerned with protecting Americans.

The debate comes down to two questions: a) should Obama investigate former Bush officials for human rights violations, and b) how far should interrogators go to extract information—in other words, is torture ever justified?

Answering the first question, I think that prosecuting ex-Bush officials would be a mistake. It’s hard to imagine the records of any interrogation—no matter how innocuous the methods used—could be released to the public, and presenting a case based on classified material would be almost unimaginably difficult.

Further, any prosecutions would be dangerously close to enforcing an ex post facto law. Waterboarding, for example, may be unethical (I’d guess that Obama thinks it is), but its legality was at worst debatable. If the United States was guilty of state-sanctioned torture under Bush, that torture was probably legally defensible. In fact, the real blame for any torture should lie with Congress for not restricting the practice more explicitly.

The answer to the second question (is torture ever justified) is a little more difficult. There’s a pretty sharp partisan divide here, with most conservatives in agreement that some forms of torture (e.g. waterboarding, if we consider waterboarding torture) are acceptable in some situations, while liberals are virtually unanimous that torture is never justified.

First, two misconceptions, one held by liberals and one by conservatives, should be cleared up. Many conservatives think that any torture would take place only in a 24-style ticking bomb scenario, where interrogators have a limited amount of time to extract the truth. This doesn’t happen, according to most experts. And if it did, torture wouldn’t work, since the person being tortured would only have to hold out a relatively short length of time before the “ticking bomb” exploded.

For the liberal’s part, there seems to be some idea that America’s alleged use of torture is a big selling point for Al-Qaeda’s recruiters. That idea isn’t very credible, at least not to me. Radical Muslims were killing American’s long before anyone in the West even suggested that the United States used torture. And anyhow, if torture is moral and effective (and that’s a hypothetical here, not a statement of fact), then should the U.S. stop using it because it provokes radical Muslims? So did the invasion of Afghanistan, and no one thinks that was a mistake.

But misconceptions aside, the question of whether or not torture can be justified is a complex one. Most would agree that torture is not justified as a punitive measure; the United States can’t waterboarding someone simply for being a member of Al-Qaeda. And for the purposes of this post, we’ll assume that torture is effective (many claim it is not), since presumably anyone engaging in torture would believe it is.

The question comes down to: to what extent do the ends (saving lives) justify the means? Would truly barbaric tortures, such as electrodes to the genitals or drilling through the kneecap, be justified in order to save lives? Given 24’s popularity, I suppose that many would say “yes”, but I believe that the correct answer is in the negative. All people, no matter how evil, still retain some rights, and I believe that torture is an intrinsically immoral act that is never justified. (That, I may add, also happens to be the teaching of the Catholic Church). Some good might come out of torture—but some good can out of almost any bad act. But good consequences do not diminish the immorality of a morally wrong act.

Unleashing Rush

2009-01-28T12:09:00.000-08:00

If Rush Limbaugh thrives on criticism, this is one of his best weeks in months. First, President Barack Obama told Congressional Republicans that they’d have to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh for any sort of compromise to be reached. Then, the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee launched an online petition condemning Rush for his now famous “I hope he fails” comments. (The DCCC, by the way, is an official Democratic party organization—Nancy Pelosi personally appoints the chairman of that committee). Finally, Republican Representative Phil Garney suggested that Limbaugh wasn’t aware of the burdens of leadership that people like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell labor under. (Actually, a somewhat fair point, except that it isn’t as if the GOP leadership has produced any results).

It’s hard to imagine what those Democrats who attacked Limbaugh were thinking. Obama seemed to equate “listening to Limbaugh” with “refusal to compromise,” and almost certainly didn’t mean his words to be the personal attack on Rush they turned out to be. The DCCC seems to think that Limbaugh’s “fail” comments were some awful gaffe that would shock the conscience of any reasonable voter, and so should be spread as far as possible. But whatever the intent behind them, both comments are terrible mistakes—and present an opportunity for Republicans.

Of all the Left’s broadcast antagonists, Rush Limbaugh has been around the longest and has the largest audience. It just doesn’t make sense (from a Democratic standpoint) to target him.

First, doing so makes Limbaugh relevant, or rather even more relevant than usual. The President of the United States is the most important political figure in the country. Any criticism of another public figure lowers him to that person’s level. That’s a no-win situation for Obama—if Limbaugh wins this PR war, he’ll be embarrassed, if Obama wins, well, most people expect the president of the United States to be able to hold his own against the media. This Limbaugh-Obama fight isn’t over—but Limbaugh won before it started.

But also, and perhaps more importantly, the Democratic attacks on Limbaugh give him status as the leader of the opposition. If Democrats take the trouble to attack Limbaugh, presumably they are paying attention to what he is saying, and think he is enough of a threat to try to marginalize as an unpatriotic hardliner.

That’s a good strategy, if it works, but Limbaugh’s following is large enough, and he has been through enough controversies, to ensure it won’t. But it does make Limbaugh the focus of the Republican opposition. And given that Rush is indisputably the most effective, successful voice in conservative media, that’s a mistake.

The Democratic party’s inadvertent promotion of Limbaugh represents an opportunity for the Republican party. Most Republican politicians, privately, probably agree with most of Rush says. But because of political concerns (one doesn’t want to seem too extreme, and voters want government money), they feel they can’t follow his advice in practice. However, since the Democrats seem to have him on their minds, and Republicans have their hands tied politically anyway, they can now point to Limbaugh’s prescriptions (which will always sound better than what Obama does; it’s is much easier to criticize than to do) as what they would like to do if the Democrats would just let them, without having to pay the political price of actually making them a reality.

(This, more or less, is what the Democrats did while out of power—they rallied the base by encouraging people like Kos and Michael Moore. Once in power, they didn’t do any of the things the far left wanted them to do, but Kos and company served as useful idiots to rally the Democratic base).

This opportunity is what makes comments like Phil Garney’s so baffling. Rush Limbaugh might be the best spokesman the Republicans have. The GOP should embrace him, not marginalize him.

Tax Cuts

2009-01-26T19:10:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama’s proposed stimulus package puts lawmakers on both sides in a sticky position. Congressional Democrats really don’t need the Republicans to pass the package, unless the Republicans try to filibuster, and it’s hard to see them doing so. But the bill is so big (at least 800 billion dollars), and such a gamble (if it fails, Obama’s, and rest of the Democrat party’s, whole economic plan will be seen as a failure), that some Republican support is necessary, if only to share the blame if it fails. So the Republicans left in Congress have a disproportionate amount of influence on the direction of the stimulus bill.

Some Republicans, such as Mike Pence, claim that the best form of stimulus would be broad based tax cuts. Most Republicans agree. So do many Democrats (at least up to a point), including Obama—tax cuts are a major part of his plan. They aren’t the drastic cuts Pence and his allies want—but they are tax cuts (or more accurately in many cases, tax rebates).

This reliance on tax cuts is in line with standard Keynesian economics. Sort of. Keynesian economics decrees that during over prosperous times, when the economy is growing too fast, government should raise taxes and cut spending, while in leaner times, government should cut taxes and raise spending. (Can you see the flaw here?)

Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Any tax cuts need to be permanent (or at least must exist for the long-term). If they don’t, then people simply hoard the money and save it for a rainy day. According to Joe Biden, forty percent of Obama’s 800 billion dollar stimulus comes in the form of tax cuts. So that’s at least 320 billion dollars simply wasted.

So why not just pass some permanent tax cuts? That’s a popular conservative position—Rush Limbaugh pushes for such a plan nearly every day. Tax cuts are the heart and soul of supply side economics. Republicans don’t have much political capital, but they do have a little, so why not try to spend it on permanent tax cuts which would certainly (according to both supply-side and Keynesian economics) revitalize the economy?

Because an essential element of conservatism is fiscal responsibility. Yes, tax cuts are good things. But deficits are very bad things, and the country really can’t afford them. (It never could, really). And tax cuts, whatever conservatives might say, would mean higher deficits, especially in a poor economy.

The world is about tradeoffs, and the good that would come from tax cuts would be more than offset by the harm coming from high deficits. It’s become instinctive for conservatives to fight for higher taxes, and they are usually right in doing so—but not this time.

Looking For a Comeback

2009-01-23T21:28:00.000-08:00

Rush Limbaugh caused some controversy (as per normal) with his declaration that he hoped Obama wouldn’t succeed. Granted, he qualified his statement by saying that he only wished Obama ill if his politics were liberal, but everyone knows they will be, and the point was clear—Rush Limbaugh is not rooting for Barack Obama.

Most Republicans wouldn’t be caught dead saying that—the official line is that they really hope that Obama’s presidency is a success. And perhaps that’s true in theory. Most conservatives would rather see the country in better shape at the end of Obama’s first term than at the beginning, and hope that his policies will help the nation. (And in fairness, I must confess that most of his cabinet choices have been much better than conservatives could have expected). But most conservatives are certain that Obama’s policies won’t work (and they haven’t shown much promise so far; stimulus packages, which are the centerpiece of Obama’s policy, no matter how big, rarely if ever work), and career Republicans hope Obama fails because otherwise they’ll be out of a job.

These hopes are tempered by the fact that pretty much everyone hates the Republican party right now. Even Republicans. Many political strategists and pundits (on both sides) think that the GOP is in for a long rebuilding period, which will fundamentally transform the party.

Not necessarily. There is ample reason to look for a Republican revival, or more accurately a Democratic failure. This, of course, was the strategy Democrats used in 2006 and 2008—the Republicans made themselves unpopular, and the Democrats cleaned up. Democrats didn’t win those years by reminding people they were Democrats; they won (in large part, at any rate) by telling people they weren’t Republicans. When the Republicans get back into power (and they will, eventually), that is almost certainly how they’ll do it. And there are quite a few chinks in the Democrat armor to exploit.

First, there are the numerous corruption scandals. When Republicans controlled the country, it seemed like every other Republican politician was engaged in scandal. But since most of the most obviously corrupt Republicans were voted out, and there are now many more Democrat leaders, the situation is reversed—now it’s the Democrats who face embarrassing stories of corruption.

Governor Rod Blagovich is the best example, because of his Obama connection and nigh-delusional arrogance. And Charlie Rangel, Chris Dodd, and Barney Frank all have ethical issues of their own, which can be exploited by Republican challengers. Of course, Hillary Clinton, as always, is in a class by herself—the shady dealings of the Clinton Foundation are prime political ammunition.

And now that the Democrat party is firmly entrenched, Republicans have something to fight against. It was always extremely hard for conservative Republicans to argue their case as long as fellow Republican George Bush was in the White House. (And if Bush was no conservative, it is equally true he wasn’t a liberal). Now, if (when) things go bad, Republicans can place the blame squarely on someone else’s shoulders.

And finally, Barack Obama himself, depending on how he governs, is either the Republicans strongest card or greatest threat. If he governs well (or seems to, which is much more important), then Republicans thinking of running for public office might want to think about waiting for 2014. But if not, then his performance will be an invaluable argument for Republicans.

It is far, far to early to even make an early judgment as to the effectiveness of Obama’s administration. One thing is for certain, though—there won’t be a honeymoon period. Obama is expected to start on his economic plan immediately, which represents a very difficult task, and has already blown off the Politico and (accidentally) insulted Rush Limbaugh. Nobody really cares about either mistake (and the Politico incident, while Obama doubtless wishes it hadn’t happened, wasn’t anything Obama could have predicted), but it does remind some of the fact that when off script, Obama can deliver gaffes as devastating as anything Joe Biden can come up with.

I hope that Obama leaves the nation in better shape than it was when he found it. I’m almost certain he won’t, and would much rather have a Republican government in 2012. And while things do look bad for the Republican party right now, a quick comeback is well within the realm of possibility.

A Brief Assessment of the Bush Presidency

2009-01-21T20:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, George W. Bush ended his term as president. He left under a cloud—by the end, his own party had little use for him and his final Gallup approval rating put him at thirty-four percent approval. Many believe that he is one of the worst presidents ever; few see him as anything above average.

As with all presidents, it will be decades before one will be able to get a clear-sighted assessment of Bush’s presidency. And any analysis will show he made some awful mistakes—Katrina, federal spending, the Harriet Myers nomination. But the memory of those mistakes will fade with time—nobody remembers whether or not Bill Clinton’s response to the 1993 Mississippi River flood was good or not, and the failed Bork nomination has done little to dim the luster of Reagan’s presidency. Mistakes that loom large now will be forgotten in a few years.

Bush’s record on the economy, for good or ill, won’t be forgotten so quickly. Under his watch, banks and corporations amassed huge quantities of debt. Bush did nothing. Even after it was obvious that the market couldn’t take much more debt, Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson failed to act till it was too late. And the hastily passed 700 billion dollar bailout did little to pour oil on troubled financial waters.

And yet, perhaps there was little Bush could do. The entire economy of Iceland (which was based on banking) has collapsed due the credit crunch, and it is not inconceivable that England could follow. The leaders of neither country did anything to head off collapse. If Bush failed to prevent the credit crisis, so did virtually ever other world leader.

And in any case, Bush hardly shares all the blame for the state of the U.S. banking system. Congressional Democrats encouraged risky lending for years before the crash.

But the economy won’t, in all probability, be Bush’s most lasting legacy. His response to 9/11 will be. And his record there is mixed—and depends a great deal on what happens in the future.

The War in Afghanistan was, by all accounts, reasonably well fought, though the situation there could be (and must become) much better. But the initial invasion was handled well, and Al-Qaeda of Afghanistan was crippled (though not destroyed, since much of its leadership simply moved next door to Pakistan).

However, Bush’s legacy will be decided, in large part, on how future generations view Iraq. It is possible that they will view it as a rousing success, or as a forgettable little war, or as a dismal failure.

If the war is remembered as a success, then Bush’s legacy will look fairly good, and he will be remembered as a brave president who fought an unpopular but necessary war against all odds. If the war is seen as a failure, Bush will too. And if the war is forgotten, and eclipsed by other, more important events, Bush will be remembered as a relatively unimportant president whose main claim to fame was fighting a minor war. (The last is probably the most likely scenario).

But no matter how Iraq turns out, Bush deserves credit for preventing Al-Qaeda from attacking the nation again after 9/11. It’s not clear now how difficult that was (we know little about Al-Qaeda’s effectiveness as a terrorist organization), but we do know that virtually all terrorism experts agreed that America would be hit again sooner or later. But seven years on, there has not been a major attack.

That is impressive, and future events will determine exactly how impressive that is. (If Al-Qaeda were to strike again on Obama’s watch, that would represent a horribly costly endorsement of the effectiveness of the Bush Administration’s anti-terror policy). George Bush has made his share of mistakes, and some of them have been very costly. But on the issue that mattered most to him (preventing another 9/11), he succeeded, though at a very great cost. It will be up to future generations to decide whether or not the cost was worthwhile.

Some Thoughts About Obama's Election

2009-01-20T21:09:00.000-08:00

Today, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. Perhaps no president in recent memory has started his term with greater expectations—many, perhaps most, of his supporters believe that his election is more than an election, but rather an Event of great historical importance. Even his opponents are a bit relieved to see a new face sworn in—President George W. Bush spent the last two years of the his term as a lame duck executive, and hasn’t seemed to be really in control of his own administration, much less the country.

For myself, it is encouraging to see that America has moved past its old prejudices to the point where a black (or really biracial, since Obama is half white) man can be elected president. On the other hand, considering that America is still de facto segregated and black communities are mostly among the nation’s poorest and nobody really cares, Obama’s success should serve as a reminder that while tremendous progress has been made in leveling racial inequality over the last half century, there is still a long way to go.

Inspiring as Obama’s election might be, it is hardly the “historical” event that many of his supporters think it is. In the grand scheme of things, American racism just isn’t that important, and it was quite benign compared to discrimination faced by minorities in other parts of the West. (And while slavery was a horrible evil, it paled in comparison to the colonialism practiced in other parts of the Western world during the same period). Calling Obama’s inauguration “historic” might salve the consciences of guilty (God knows why) white people, but in reality is only shameless hyperbole. (To his credit, Obama himself has mostly shied away from touting himself as “historic”; during the campaign, he mostly campaigned on his ideas and rhetoric).

If Obama’s election isn’t “historic”, it is at least important, since Obama faces challenges equal in magnitude to what the country faced after 9/11. Obama must deal with a collapsing world economy, an economy that is contracting after decades of irresponsible, credit-fueled growth. The philosophy that led to the worldwide recession were held nearly universally—there were very, very few people anywhere who foresaw the credit crisis. Obama will not only have to deal with the recession, he will also be forced to leave behind the ideas that laid the foundation for it.

Will Obama be able to solve this and other problems? His supporters think he can, even if they don’t quite understand the problems themselves. In reality, he probably won’t—an 875 billion dollar stimulus package probably wouldn’t work any better than the 700 billion dollars spent so far, and that sadly seems to be the centerpiece of Obama’s plan.

But to Obama’s supporters, that is beside the point. This important thing is that a liberal, black man has been sworn into office. The Republicans have lost, and George Bush (who they hate for reasons that really don’t hold up to careful scrutiny) is going home, and it will be a while (at least two years) before the Republicans have a chance to get any measure of power back. For many (most?) of Obama’s supporters, Obama’s election is analogous to having one’s football team win the Super Bowl—people care immensely, and have a vague feeling that a win would be a great thing, but if pressed couldn’t really say exactly why or how a win would really make things any better.

Of course, Republicans are no different. Many of them will repair to the citadels of conservative rhetoric, and quickly return with some interesting if irrelevant (and often stupid) attacks on Obama to sustain them while they get ready for next year, or rather the year after next. Whatever Obama does, it will ipso facto be a mistake in the eyes of many (most?) Republicans.

But for all the hyperbole and us/them pettiness, this is still a day to celebrate America. Every American can take pride in the fact that Obama won an election that was, for the most part, clean fought, and that a black man has become president less than forty years after the civil rights movement ended, and that America’s new President is a good and honorable man (albeit one with whom I often disagree). I have my doubts about Obama’s ability to solve our country’s problems—but I hope he will be able to.

What's a "Fair Share" of Taxes?

2009-01-19T22:02:00.000-08:00

One of the key tenets of the Democrat party, and liberalism in general, is the belief that the wealthy should pay their “fair share” of taxes. It has become something of an all purpose defense of liberal tax policy—supply-side economics is a bad idea because the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, tax increases are a good idea because they will force the rich to pay their fair share of taxes, in essence, any tax increase can be justified by the statement that it will make the tax system more fair across class lines.

Certainly, the rich should pay their fair share of taxes—that would be an obvious component of any just society. Deciding what a fair share of taxes is is a much more difficult matter.

Any state requires some taxation. And in any society, the wealthiest will be forced to bear the greatest part of the burden of government, even if tax rates don’t vary by income. And few would argue that it is unjust to require the rich to give a higher than normal percentage of their income to the state—after all, the state needs money (even in the most libertarian countries, the state is responsible for transportation routes and defense, among other things), and it is sensible in most cases to raise rates on the people most able to afford them.

These rates can vary—at times, the needs of the government will require a great deal of money (i.e., during a war), while at other times the government’s needs will be much less (i.e., never, because government expenditures always grow). So there is no set rate with which fairness can be measured—on one side, a fair tax rate, on the other, an unjust one. The parameters of “fair” are always changing.

Some libertarians argue that any tax rate other than a flat tax is inherently unjust. That is, I think, incorrect. It is merely inequitable. It would be better, when necessary, to tax a rich man at a fifty percent rate and a poor man at a fifteen percent rate than to tax both at fifty percent. It is not unjust (by most moral standards) to expect those who can pay more to do so.

The best evaluation of a fair tax rate would be an examination of where the tax dollars spent are going. For example, it is pretty much universally agreed upon that tax dollars spent on national defense are justified—all countries need an army, and it is only just to expect citizens to pay for it, and those that can pay more should. Transportation, too, is a legitimate government responsibility. And welfare, to some extent, is a duty of government—it is an obligation of a just society to help those incapable of helping themselves.

But there are some uses of government money that are very difficult to defend as just. Take universal healthcare, for instance. Leaving aside the open question of whether or not it works, it’s proponents say, basically, that it is a duty of the affluent to pay the health bills of the poor (or irresponsible). Or take foreign aid—does the state have the right to force taxpayers to give money to people in foreign countries, no matter how needy or deserving?

It seems to me that the best measure of a “fair share” of taxes is the way in which the money spent is being used, not the raw numbers involved. If the money being taken is spent justly, then the tax rate is probably fair. (“Probably” because other factors must be taken into account—for example, funding an otherwise just war by taxing only widows and orphans would hardy satisfy “fair share of taxes” requirements). If it isn’t, then the tax rate is certainly not just.

(A note on usage: the concept of “justice” will inevitably vary from person to person. A conservative’s idea of a just government would be a minimalist, libertarian microgovernment, while a liberal’s idea of a just government would be a welfare state.)

George W. Bush: Worst President Ever?

2009-01-15T20:51:00.000-08:00

Next Tuesday, Barack Obama will replace George Bush as president of the United States. Not surprisingly, given Bush’s approval ratings and Obama’s pop culture status, there is a lot of anticipation for the inauguration.

Many people are as eager to see Bush out as they are to see Obama in. Bush is not very popular, and has made his share of serious mistakes. And he’s not a very good communicator. Still, the hatred and disgust directed towards him by so many people is baffling. Bush might not have been a great president—but he is nowhere near the worst president in American history, as many firmly believe. (At least, so far. It takes at least two decades, and probably more, to get the full measure of a presidency).

Bush’s greatest failure is perceived to be the Iraq War. The wisdom of going into Iraq is certainly debatable—Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, and even if he had he simply wasn’t a real threat to America. And Bush mishandled the war—he stuck to his original strategy long after it was clear to nearly everyone else that is wasn’t working. The Iraq War, even if our present success in Iraq continues, will probably be seen as a mistake by future generations.

But not that big a mistake; certainly not large enough to tar a president with the “worst ever” label. The truth is that the Iraq War simply wasn’t that big or important a war. Four thousand American troops have died over nearly seven years. During the Vietnam War, that many men could be lost in a month. And had Bush not embraced the surge and America was forced to withdraw in defeat, the consequences would have been unpleasant (it would have emboldened Muslims around the world), but not that unpleasant—the vast majority of Americans would never have been touched by them. The Iraq War was, perhaps, a mistake—but a relatively minor one.

Another criticism of Bush that is supposed to relegate him to lower echelon of presidents is the alleged loss of U.S. standing around the globe. (Obama is supposed to be the cure for this). It’s true; the U.S. has lost prestige—except in France, which now has a pro-American Prime Minister, and England, whose Prime Minister supported (and supports) the Iraq War (and while Gordon Brown is unpopular, David Cameron, who is probably be the next PM, also supports the Iraq War), and Germany, with pro-American Angela Merkel, and Israel, Kuwait, and Albania, where they love Bush and America, and…really, most of the world doesn’t seem to have much animosity towards America. That seems to be one of those memes which occasionally rise without any real backing in truth.

If one is looking for the worst presidents in American history, it would be wise to look at other presidents than Bush. James Buchanan, for example, did nothing as the Confederate states seceded from the Union, making Abraham Lincoln’s task of fighting the Civil War much harder. Ulysses S. Grant’s Administration was plagued with corruption, and mishandled Reconstruction far worse than Bush mishandled the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussien. Warren Harding’s administration was woefully corrupt, and Harding was dreadfully incompetent. Franklin Roosevelt’s policies may have (actually, it would probably be safe to assert they did) lengthen the Great Depression, and it was only the fortuitous (at least for Roosevelt’s legacy) outbreak of World War II that saved him from being remembered as a disaster. Lyndon Johnson escalated the Vietnam War and bore responsibility for tens of thousands of American dead. Richard Nixon was a lying crook. Jimmy Carter’s domestic and foreign policies were failures. But since George Bush botched some insignificant (relatively) war in the Middle East, he’s one of our worst presidents? To say so is simply politically and historically illiterate.

Liberal versus Conservative Stupidity

2009-01-14T20:40:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin is firmly fixed in the minds of millions of Americans as a mindless bimbo. George Bush is supposed to be a helpless idiot. Dick Cheney is Darth Vader; John McCain a dangerous hyperconservative. Republican voters are supposed to be either mouthbreathing, probably racist rednecks or wealthy plutocrats.

These images are so prevalent mostly because of pop culture—Sarah Palin’s “bimbo” status was confirmed by Tina Fey’s Saturday Night Live impressions, Jon Stewart and Bill Maher push the “Bush is an idiot” meme, and Hollywood almost invariably portrays conservatives unfavorably, while portraying liberals as intelligent and good.

Many, perhaps most, of our opinionmakers see the world the way Hollywood, SNL, et al. see it—conservatives are unsophisticated philistines, while liberals are cultured, with-it bright lights. And this meme spreads—around the globe, and throughout much of America, liberals are considered the good, smart guys, while conservatives are greedy, dumb yokels. It is difficult for many to even imagine that it could be the other way around.

Actually, the liberal view of conservatives is correct, or largely correct. Palin may not be a “bimbo”, but she certainly wasn’t ready (or didn’t appear ready, and appearances were all we had to go on) for the vice presidency. Bush might not be an idiot; Cheney might not be an evil overlord—but they seem to do their best to perpetuate those impressions. And many, many Republicans are mouthbreathing philistines, who are suspicious of learning, join stupid causes, and have little interest in anything that seems to challenge their beliefs.

So liberals are right about conservatives, or at least a fair proportion of them. But they overlook another point—liberals are, as a group, every bit as closed-minded, gullible, and in their own way, provincial as conservatives are.

Most conservatives don’t believe in evolution. Stupid. But most (or at least very many) liberals are firmly convinced that socialism (real socialism, not the watered down kind they have in Europe) has something to teach us; many look at Fidel Castro’s Cuba as something of a noble experiment. Many even have mixed feelings about the Soviet Union—it is difficult to find a liberal who is willing to admit that it was an evil, expansionist empire that threatened Western civilization.

Or to take another example: white guilt. In spite of the fact that institutionalized racism has been dead for nearly half a century, and that millions of welfare dollars have been spent on improving black communities (money, by the way, that I would not grudge, except that it has been mostly ineffective), and that any black who feels discriminated against can sue, virtually all liberals carry a crushing burden of guilt for crimes that they did not commit, and that ended a long time ago. In fact, I’ve had a professor explain that she didn’t identify as white because of white oppression of African-Americans. (Which is, when you think about it, a bit hard on whites with ancestry different from Angelo-Saxon. Polish-Americans, for example, weren’t into racism much).

Between these two ideas (and many others), I think that it is fair to say that liberals display critical thinking skills as poor as those found in any conservative. The Left is just as stupid as the Right—just in a different way.

Liberals pride themselves on their sophistication compared to conservatives. They shouldn’t. Jon Stewart’s job isn’t any different that Rush Limbaugh’s, and his methods aren’t any more cultured. (In fact, I think it safe to say that his act is a bit more juvenile than that found on conservative talk radio). Stewart is considered a Swiftian satirist because he is on the Left; were he a conservative, he would be a racist rabblerouser. Keith Olbermann and Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow aren’t any more intelligent or balanced than their conservative counterparts—liberals only think so because they happen to be liberal. (Of course, the opposite phenomenon can be seen in conservatives; for them, Rush is genius, Olbermann an idiot).

If conservatives are closed-minded idiots, liberals are too—only in a different way. Both sides are rife with stupid theories, appalling gullibility, and absolute closed-mindedness. It simply takes different forms in the competing ideologies.

Conservative Economic Silliness

2009-01-13T20:21:00.001-08:00

The economic crisis has brought out the worst in quite a lot of pundits, both Left and Right. Many liberals think that the country needs a two trillion dollar plus bailout, and that Wall Street is fundamentally evil and to blame for this whole mess. Some, such as Michael Moore, even go so far as to advocate full-blown socialism.

Unfortunately, conservatives are not in a position to criticize, as some of their ideas are every bit as nutty as the very stupidest things the liberals can come up with.

In a December 14 column, Jeff Jacoby proposed completely eliminating all federal taxes for two months—Social Security taxes, income taxes, everything. This scheme caught on—Sean Hannity, Next Gingrich, and Mike Pence, among others, all immediately jumped on board. This plan has become very popular among conservatives.

That’s too bad, because it wouldn’t work. First, the economic irresponsibly of this plan is incredible. The federal budget’s deficit for 2008 is already well over a trillion dollars. Can the government afford to lose a whole sixth of its annual income? Unless the government cuts spending by a sixth (it won’t), the cost of this proposal will only be put off till later. And even if we assume that the plan would stimulate the economy in the short term, it would mean a much higher price in the long run.

Republicans claim to be about fiscal responsibility. Losing a sixth of the nation’s budget (when it is already hard up for money) does not fit that definition.

Anyway, a tax holiday wouldn’t work anyway, for the same reason that stimulus checks don’t. People don’t base their spending habits on the money they have—they base them on the money they are likely to have in the future. So even if Washington did declare a tax holiday, it wouldn’t result in a cornucopia of private spending; instead, consumers would just hoard money for hard times.

Conservatives often complain about unfavorable media coverage portraying them as stupid and economically illiterate. Here’s a suggestion—maybe conservatives should look and see if the media is right. Much of the conservative movement favors an economic plan that is stupid and impractical and wouldn’t work. That doesn’t inspire confidence.

True, the ideas liberals have for the economy aren’t much better. But then, “our ideas might be bad but their plan is even worse” isn’t much of an economic policy.

Atlas Shrugged?

2009-01-12T19:59:00.000-08:00

Stephen Moore recently wrote a Wall Street Journal column comparing our current economic situation to the one described in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. Moore writes that “[t]he current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged… [A]s "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls." This article was quite popular in the conservative blogosphere, and echoed what many conservatives feel about the economic condition.

My feelings about Atlas Shrugged are mixed—I hate the book, and consider it a literary enormity advocating an evil and stupid philosophy. Frankly, I can’t imagine how anyone could admire, or even finish, the book. But evidently there are people who can do both, and many people I admire, such as Rush Limbaugh, Charles Murray, and Clarence Thomas, are among then. So, evidently, the book has some value, though I can’t see it.

But whether or not Atlas Shrugged is worth reading, it is not a fifty-year-old prophecy for the present day. What is happening now is not very desirable—but it’s not socialism either. It is something quite different.

Actually, anyone who seriously thinks that what the federal government is doing right now is really socialism shows how little they understand of socialism. According to Wikipedia, socialism is “a set of economic theories advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and an egalitarian society characterized by equal opportunities for all individuals and a fair or egalitarian distribution of wealth.” The federal government is not guilty of any of these things.

There is no government takeover of production, nor of distribution. There is no “egalitarian distribution of wealth” (or at least no more than usual); on the contrary, President-elect Obama is pushing for tax cuts. So most of the conditions for socialism aren’t even close to being met here.

And more importantly, true socialism can be (very) broadly defined as government taking over business. But here, it’s the opposite (or at least very close to it)—business is taking over government.

For years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac operated under the certain assumption that the federal government would bail them out if necessary, and they were right. All the banks and insurance companies that were bailed out simply asked Washington for the cash—there were few conditions placed upon the money. Even when the federal government partially nationalized nine of the country’s largest banks, the “nationalization” took the form of a massive cash infusion, more a gift than a seizure of assets.

When GM and Chrysler needed money, they jumped aboard the bailout gravy train. Did the government take over these corporations? Did it give them money with strings attached? Did it set rules for the companies to follow? No, it did none of these things. Instead, it forked over thirteen billion dollars essentially unconditionally, even though neither company changed its business habits in the least.

The federal government isn’t taking over private enterprise—if anything, the opposite is true. Big business is taking over, or at least looting, government. The federal government has spent around eight trillion on various bailouts, most of which inject money directly into failing companies. That isn’t socialism.

Of course, just because it isn’t socialism doesn’t mean that it’s desirable. The merger of government and corporations is usually called fascism, but true fascism usually gives the state more influence. (It’s hard to imagine Mussolini, or Franco, simply giving half of their countries GDP to corporations. They would almost certainly demand something in return). A better name, perhaps, would be corporatism, where the government is influenced by large interest groups.

In Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas represents business, and the book revolves around the ways that business leaders fight against socialism. (If that makes the book sound interesting, it isn’t). But in America in 2009, Atlas isn’t shrugging off socialism’s chains—on the contrary, he’s using them to help support his burden.

Corporatism is no better than socialism, but it is different. (Biggest difference: socialism tries to bolster equality, corporatism tries to help the rich). It might not be much comfort to know that the federal government is embracing corporatism instead of socialism—but it is, I think, important to know the difference.

The End of White America

2009-01-08T21:08:00.000-08:00

Demographic experts predict that by 2043, white people will no longer be a majority in America. (Although they will still be the largest racial segment of the population). The reaction to that fact depends, as with most things, on who you talk to—some, (though not all) conservatives seem to feel as though this is a bad thing, while many (though not all) liberals think that, if anything, this is a positive development, with lots of opportunities for diversity.

The perils of a non white majority America are overblown—Irish, Italians, and Chinese are quite different racially and culturally from the Anglo-Saxon men who originally settled America, but they assimilated, and with the possible (and unfair) exception of the Chinese, now make up a great deal of American culture. In fact, of all the immigrant groups to have come to America, African-Americans are the only one not to have assimilated fully into mainstream culture, and it is possible, even probable, that they would have had it not been for Reconstruction.

Irish and Italians (and others) were, when they first emigrated from the Old World, considered not quite equal to the good patriotic WASPs—after all, they had a different religion, and different language, and different customs. The fear that they wouldn’t assimilate with mainstream America and form their own country within a country was very real.

But, of course, it didn’t happen. All the immigrant groups who have come to the United States so far have assimilated quite well. There is no reason to think that it will be different for immigrants who come here today.

In fact, given the ubiquity of American pop culture around the world, assimilating is even easier. In times past, first-generation immigrants were utterly ignorant of America culture. Now, rice farmers from Thailand idolize Britney Spears. In the past, people came to America ignorant of the culture but wanting the economic opportunity. Now they come for both the culture and the money.

What would a non-white majority America look like? Probably not much different from the way it does now. Hispanics and Indians would probably have become more or less accepted as white, pop culture will probably look much the same, but with a some Mexican and Asian influences, and our Judeo-Christian value system will probably look pretty similar to what we have today. (In fact, it would probably be more conservative if anything, given Mexico’s Catholicism).

The liberal view of immigration, simplified, suggests that immigrants shouldn’t try to assimilate and should keep their original national identity and culture. That hasn’t seemed to have caught on very well among most immigrants—it’s all very well to have an unsullied culture, but it’s not (unless you happen to own an ethnic restaurant) very lucrative. It is mostly white intellectuals who seem to favor this strategy (as opposed to actual immigrants) and it’s hard to see it catching on.

Liberals might mean well, but the one way to guarantee complete white control over America is to discard the melting pot. Even if non-whites outnumber whites, that would only mean a nation in which a large, wealthy elite race controls the government and businesses, while the other races get the scraps. If the liberal vision of a “diverse” America ever comes to pass, it won’t be what they expect it to be.

But in the mean time, there is little to worry about. Our current immigration wave will assimilate, our culture will remain intact (if subtly altered), and our society will look much the same. And when (and if, considering the inherent unreliability of demographic predictions) America no longer has a white majority, America will still be America, and stronger for the new blood.

My Top Blog Picks

2009-01-07T20:20:00.000-08:00

The voting for the annual Weblog Awards started yesterday, and I always like voting and seeing the results. There are some good blogs that deserve some votes, so if you get the chance go vote for Ace (Best Conservative Blog), IMAO (Best Humor Blog), Gay Patriot (Best LGBT Blog), Instapundit (Best Major Blog), Ross Douthat (Best Very Large Blog), and Woman Honor Thyself (Best Small Blog).

To mark this occasion, I made a list of my top twenty favorite blogs. Here they are, in somewhat particular order--I wrote them down as I though of them, but I did save my favorites for the top spots.

20. Cracked.com

Maybe not strictly a blog, but it's close enough, and it's funny and surprisingly informative.

19. The Straight Dope

Again, maybe not a blog, but informative. Full of interesting trivia.

18. The Other McCain

Really good analysis and coverage here, and R.S. McCain happens to be the only major blogger who has ever linked one of my posts. (It was the one telling of my experience at a McCain rally). Even when he's not linking to me, he's really good.

17. Daily Dollop

Plebian doesn't update this blog as much as he should, but he gets away with it because he's so hilarious. His political humor is just so-so--his posts about his life are incredibly hilarious. Makes me laugh out loud as much as anyone on the Internet

16. Stuff White People Like

Christian Lander has upper class white culture nailed. Not updated very often, but hilarious when it is.

15. Slate

Not a blog at all, but since it's content is all online I think it's close enough. It's the online version of Time or Newsweek, except more topical and timely, and it more or less admits its bias.

14. IMAO

Would be higher, but Frank J. has really cut down on posting in the last year. Still funny though.

13. NRO's Media Blog

National Review Online has lots of great blogs, and this one keeps up with the media pretty well.

12. 5'3''

Maybe I'm biased since Beth is my oldest blogging friend, but I really enjoy reading her commentary on current events.

11. Science, Pseudoscience, and Irrationalism

Nobody's heard of this blog (or website, if you prefer), but it's the best I've found for debunking pseudoscience and lazy thinking. And the author is a college professor, which proves that not all professors are liberals.

10. Ann Althouse

It seems like Instapundit links to every one of her posts, and I can see why--she's prolific, fun to read, and smart.

9. Doubleplusundead

Sort of an Ace of Spades spinoff, but there's nothing wrong with that, at least when you do it as well as doubleplusundead does. Great lineup of cobloggers.

8. Instapundit

The patriarch of the blogosphere. Best collection of links anywhere.

7. The Next Right

I blog here too, and it's a good site, even if it's maybe a bit "inside baseball" sometimes (I mean, do we need to know every wrinkle of the RNC chairman race). Lots of good ideas here.

6. Hot Air

Great collection of links; great analysis from Allahpundit and Ed Morrisey. One of my favorite sites

5. Iowahawk

The funniest person on the Internet. Every one of his posts makes me laugh out loud. Literally incredibly funny. You have to experience him to appreciate him.

4. National Review Online (main site)

Fantastic collection of columns from the best writers conservatism has. Pretty much the first site I go to.

3. Campaign Spot

Terrific coverage of every bit of campaign news. In the last two months before the election, I don't think I missed a post here--it's that good.

2. Ace of Spades HQ

Funny, sarcastic, insightful--Ace is probably my favorite single blogger. And he has a fantastic group of cobloggers to complement him. Just a wonderful blog.

1. The Corner

About twenty of the best minds conservatism has, blogging on the same blog? It really can't get any better than that.

Disproportionate?

2009-01-06T21:52:00.001-08:00

Right now, Israel is sending ground forces into Gaza in an attempt to root out Hamas. It probably won’t—Hamas is fairly popular in Palestine, and any Israeli collateral damage will serve as a Hamas recruiting tool. (Hamas deserves the blame for the collateral damage—they deliberately position key military centers near civilians, but I doubt that many Palestinians will bother to work that out). But it could cripple Hamas’ guerrilla capabilities, and will ensure that Hamas and Hezbollah realize that they cannot attack Israel without some very unpleasant reprisals. So it’s a good plan.

Except in the minds of most liberals. For some inexplicable reason, nearly all of the Left is solidly opposed to any attempt by Israel to defend itself. The Left doesn’t like war, but this is ridiculous. It’s hard to find another conflict with such black and white, good versus evil opponents. Yet liberals almost universally oppose Israel’s war.

First, it is worth pointing out that Israel rightfully belongs to the Israelis. Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire; when it broke up, Great Britain took over. In 1922, the League of Nations gave Britain a mandate to “secure the establishment of the Jewish national home” in Palestine. Securing the establishment took a while, what with conflicts with Arab natives of Palestine, and Israel was not created until 1948 with the expiration of the British Mandate. But the land comprising Israel was the property of the Ottomans, then the British—it is not as if conniving Jews stole the land from innocent indigenous Arabs.

So if Israel has a right to exist, and is a sovereign country, why isn’t its offensive against Hamas acceptable due to its right to defend itself? Because Israel’s response to savage, unjustified Palestinian terrorism is “disproportionate.”

“Disproportionate,” in this context, can mean anything. It isn’t possible to set a value on human life, and calculating the number of Palestinians Israelis are allowed to kill in retaliation for Islamic terrorism is just stupid. But that doesn’t stop liberals from trying—they reason that since about 500 residents of Gaza have died in the fighting, then Israel (which has lost a measly nine people to Hamas) is acting inappropriately.

Okay, 500 to 9 does look a bit uneven. But when one considers that Hamas’ kills are due to deliberate targeting of civilians, and that it would be much higher (Hamas has fired over 500 rockets into Israel over the last two years) if Hamas wasn’t so bad at fighting, and that all of Israel’s collateral damage is unintentional and it attacks only military targets, that number doesn’t look quite so lopsided.

And when one considers that Hamas positions military targets among civilians, Israel’s response starts to look downright restrained. Some collateral damage is inevitable in a war, no matter how well planned. Hamas’ human shield strategy is designed to maximize civilian deaths—for every military base hit, Hamas gets a PR coup. In order to protect itself, Israel must kill innocent civilians put in its way by Hamas. But the moral responsibly for those deaths should go to Hamas, not Israel.

What is really disproportionate is the response to Israel’s war against terror. According to Wikipedia (which may not be totally accurate but is probably in the right ballpark) over 4200 Palestinians were killed during the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from 2000 to 2006. Over seven thousand people died last year in a civil war in Somalia no one cares about.

Even if we assume that Israel’s strikes against Hamas represents a totally unjustifiable, wholly disproportionate response to years of attacks, aren’t there more pressing issues in the world? In addition to Somalia’s neglected civil war, there are the massacres in Darfur, China’s routine human rights abuses, and the rampant caste discrimination in India, all of which touch far more innocent people than the squabbles over the Holy Land ever could. Worrying about Israel’s use of force is unnecessary (since Israel is justified in attacking Palestine), and stupid, since there are so many other places that could actually use the concern.

The Cold War is Over

2009-01-05T21:05:00.000-08:00

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989. The USSR broke up in 1991. The Cold War has been over for seventeen years. The US military no longer sees Russia as its chief enemy; the concept of the Second World (the Soviet bloc) is obsolete, and the old diplomacy is dead. The Cold War is over for everyone—except the Democrat and Republican parties.

Both parties foreign policies were forged in the heat of the Cold War, and both made their differing foreign policies the centerpieces of their respective platforms. Then the Cold War ended. But both parties liked their platforms the way there were, and didn’t see any need to change. So now both parties feature foreign policy philosophies that are outdated and a bit ridiculous.

The Right was always implacably opposed to Communism, and recognized it as a existential threat to Liberalism (capital L, of course; the Liberalism of the Enlightenment). They favored an aggressive treatment in an attempt to stamp out Communism wherever it was found; hence an aggressive foreign policy against any nation that looked likely to turn Communist.

When the Cold War ended, conservatives still felt hawkish but didn’t know whom to be hawkish towards. And they started seeing any foreign adversary of America, no matter how insignificant, as a deadly threat to the American way of life.

This is how Saddam Hussein, who in retrospect seems a relatively harmless (at least to us) tyrant, became a frightening menace to America, and why conservatives seek to paint Islamic extremists as a truly existential threat to the West. In reality, Islam is no match for the West, even if it gave them a free hand—Osama bin Laden is the only Islamic leader to have actually done any significant damage, and suicide bombings are simply not an effective way of gaining power. Neither are protests—Europe might give in for a while—but once Muslims start demanding things Europeans want for themselves, suddenly their protests won’t be as effective. It’s almost impossible to see a plausible way that Islam could topple Western culture, and impossible to imagine it defeating the United States.

The Right is probably guilty of creating a paper tiger of Islamic fundamentalism. The Left is guilty of doing its best to make that paper tiger real.

During the Cold War, the Left saw Communism as something of a kindred ideology; far too extreme, but still something that could be reasoned with. That is one reason the Left opposed Vietnam—not so much because it was an unnecessary and strategically stupid war poorly handled (though that was a reason, and perhaps a good one), but because any war against Communism was ipso facto a bad idea. It would be unfair to say that liberals wanted the Communists to win—but they didn’t much want them to lose either.

And when the Cold War ended, they brought that same pacifistic fervor to the post-War world. For liberals, there were very few good reasons to fight a war, and advancing American foreign policy wasn’t one of them (on most occasions). They viewed every foreign conflict with deep suspicion, even though the U.S. was usually (it may even be safe to say always) fighting dangerous dictators who were, apart from any threat they may have presented to the U.S., had it coming.

So now the Left tries to excuse any crimes committed by radical Muslims, and opposes harsh confrontations with Islamic nations. Liberalism (small l) and radical Islam have nothing in common, leaving liberals defending an ideology that they can’t rationally defend. Most of the Left’s sympathy for radical Islam, I suggest, is borne out of an instinctive sympathy for those on the receiving end of American power.

R.I.P. Donald Westlake

2009-01-01T20:27:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite authors, Donald E. Westlake, passed away today. I enjoy mystery novels a great deal; Westlake's very funny Dortmunder series was one of the first mystery series I read. I'll miss him.

I'd recommend all his books, both those in his own name and in his pen name Richard Stark.

Some New Year's Thoughts

2008-12-30T21:53:00.000-08:00

Some random thoughts…

There are a lot of people predicting a long reign of Democrat dominance due to Republican incompetence and corruption. According to this theory, the GOP will become like the Democrats of 2004 and face a long period in the political wilderness. (Of course, the Democrat party rallied quite well after 2004).

They’re wrong, and Rod Blagovich is a perfect example of the reason why. Power corrupts, and the party in power has many more opportunities for corruption. (As well as more members in positions of power). Democrats are just as susceptible to corruption as Republicans are—and controlling the government will give them ample opportunity to prove it.

An essential part, apparently, of any year in review column is a reference to the incredible inspiration to be found in Barack Obama’s election. Maybe it is, for Democrats and people who voted for him, but he hasn’t actually done anything useful yet (he couldn’t; he hasn’t had the opportunity), and his election proves only that a handsome, eloquent man with good media skills can be elected president, which isn’t exactly a transcendental notion.

Another essential year in review feature—a mention of Sarah Palin’s foolishness. Like someone who went from being a member of the Wasilla school board to a near Vice President could possibly be a bit lacking upstairs.

Another Palin point—Democrats hate and fear her every bit as much as Republicans hate and fear Hillary. I was talking to some very reasonable and sensible Democrats recently. We found common ground on most issues—until I mentioned that I thought Sarah Palin represented the future of the Republican party. They shuddered at the idea in a way that I had previously only seen during the climax of exceptionally scary horror movies.

Of course, if Palin is the future of the Republican party, that isn’t necessarily a good thing. She has a very annoying populist, Joe Sixpack-wannabe streak which sometimes seems to discount the advantages of education and learning. The intelligentsia don’t have all the answers—but they do have valuable knowledge. Palin is throwing the baby out with the bathwater—the fact that intellectual elites are often wrong doesn’t mean that a simple populist appeal is right.

Some in the RNC are proposing having the Committee publically condemn the bailouts of the economy. A nice thought—but isn’t saying, in effect, that about half the Republican party aren’t “true” Republicans a bit counterproductive? After all, the GOP can’t run only wholly conservative candidates for all offices.

Israel seems to be the only state in the world that doesn’t have the right to defend itself, at least according to many leftists. A whole book, or at least a whole blog post, could be written about this phenomenon, but one point seems especially obvious. Assume for a moment that Israel is what its detractors say it is—a bullying nation with a disproportionate response to any provocation by its enemies. Is that really the biggest problem that faces the world? By any rational measure, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest of the anti-Israel part of the Arab world are nasty, violent thugs, and dishonest ones to boot, given that they break nearly every treaty and agreement made. Given the plight of so many totalitarian ruled African countries, China’s and Russia’s civil rights violations, and the social injustice found in India, is there anything Israel could possibly do that could compare?

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

Things Aren't That Bad

2008-12-29T20:57:00.000-08:00

As the year 2008 draws to a close, many are predicting dire things for the years ahead. This line of thought sees this decade as the final period of American hegemony, and as the end of the world as we know it. The American financial system will collapse, the environment will finally get its revenge for years of abuse, and American military dominance will end. Basically, many believe that America faces a Soviet Union-style bust, in which the U.S. loses its superpower status. Granted, the Soviet Union lost a great deal more than its superpower status, but the idea is the same—in a few decades, America’s role in the world will be fundamentally changed.

Things really don’t look good in the short term. The U.S. faces a recession, and probably a long and difficult one. The job market looks bleak, and much of the American auto industry is, in its present form, ruined. Barack Obama’s best hope for recovery is a massive stimulus package, and if it doesn’t work, and it probably won’t because stimulus packages rarely do, then the road to recovery will be very difficult.

So the short-term doesn’t look good. But the long-term looks, if not good, at least not bad. John McCain was right—the fundamentals—the deepest fundamentals—of our economy, and of our country, are still strong. (Although I doubt that McCain carefully considered the health of America’s economic essentials before making that statement; rather, it was probably an attempt at Churchillian confidence that backfired).

Before considering the economy, it’s worth disposing of the idea that climate change will ravage the world, at least in the short term. It’s easy to think of awful natural disasters—Katrina, Gustav, California wildfires, drought, blizzards, and tempting to try to explain them away by citing global warming. (If they are caused by global warming, at least we can do something). Maybe they are, to some degree, but the real reason for the devastation probably lies in the fact that our fastest-growing population centers are locating squarely in prime natural disaster zones. Florida (hurricanes), the Southwest (drought), and California (earthquakes and wildfires) have growing populations; North Dakota and Wyoming do not. But if the situations were reversed, the devastation caused by natural disasters would be much less.

The economy looks much more dire than the environment—after all, natural disasters usually happen to someone else, but a bad economy affects everybody. But while the short-term economy will be rocky, it doesn’t look that bad in the long term. Is doesn’t look particularly good either, but there’s no reason to think that America will lose its status as the world’s preeminent economy.

For one thing, who would replace it? China? Their economy is based, in large part, on making stuff for the United States and Europe. And if demand from the United States ceases, where will they sell their products? The Chinese economy is linked to America’s—if we collapse, so do they.

India? It faces the same obstacles as China, except India must also deal with an unfriendly Pakistan, and social unrest.

Europe? It can’t even reproduce itself, and faces massive unemployment and incredible public debt.

The United States has four percent of the world’s population. It consumes 25 percent of the world’s resources. And the world had better hope it keeps doing so, or the world economy will collapse from lack of demand. For better or worse, the United States still controls the destiny of the world economy, and probably will for the foreseeable future.

Two years ago, the U.S. economy was booming with no end in sight. Now it’s not. Such swings are part of free-market capitalism. There is no reason to think that the U.S. can’t recover from this recession.

Armageddon is not near. The economy will recover (probably; nothing is certain in economics), and we will continue to recover from natural disasters. There will, of course, come a time when the American hegemony will fall—but there is nothing to suggest that this is that time.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Running For the RNC

2008-12-23T21:07:00.000-08:00

On January 9, the 168 RNC members will select the next chairman of the Republican National Committee. It is pretty much universally acknowledged that the Republican party must go in a new direction—the fact that the GOP has fared poorly in the last two elections confirms that notion.

So it’s a surprise to see that current chairman, Mike Duncan, is running for reelection, and by many accounts even has a decent shot of winning. Duncan wasn’t a total disaster as chairman—but the fact that he has even a prayer of winning reelection is an example of much of what is wrong with the Republican party. His performance as chairman has been nowhere near good enough to justify giving him another term.

First, the good about Duncan’s tenure: he raised a lot of money. The RNC consistently outraised the DNC, by significant margins. Raising money is one of the RNC’s most important goals, and Duncan deserves credit here.

Now the bad: during Duncan’s time as chairman, the Republicans were crushed in a disastrous presidential election. In fairness, Duncan didn’t start with a very good hand—the Republican party faced historically low approval ratings, and John McCain wasn’t particularly good as the national face of the party.

But Duncan played his poor hand badly. The Democrat campaign was much more technologically savvy—it used the Internet, networking, and IT to mobilize volunteers. The Republican strategy was much less advanced, and depended on outdated and ineffective (at least compared to the Democrats) techniques.

Liberals don’t like Republicans because they feel they are out of touch with the country. Many conservatives are angry with the GOP because they feel that the party has abandoned its conservative principles. Duncan didn’t really address either problem—the party elite remained rich white men, while the party’s principles were the kind of watered-down, unconservative principles that angered so much of the base.

As noted, Duncan was not put in a very good situation. But he failed to make anything of his situation, the party is still weak, and needs new leadership.

There are, fortunately, plenty of strong candidates. Chip Saltsman did an excellent job of catapulting Mike Huckabee into the national spotlight. Saul Azunis did good work in Michigan as head of the Republican party there. And Katon Dawson exhibited competence in South Carolina.

But two of the strongest RNC chair candidates are Ken Blackwell and Michael Steele, two men with strikingly similar political histories. Both spent time as high-ranking state officials (Blackwell was Ohio’s Secretary of State, Steele was Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor), who ran excellent campaigns for higher office (governor and Senator, respectively) but lost in the 2006 Democratic landslide. Both men are telegenic and smart, have good organizational skills, and have strong opinions about the future of the party. And, of course, both men are black, and while that has no bearing on their competence, it does have some symbolic meaning.

Both men have gotten some impressive endorsements—Blackwell was endorsed by Steve Forbes (who, come to think of it, endorsed Rudy Giuliani in the primaries, so his endorsements haven’t always panned out), while Steele got William Bennett. Both men recognize that the party needs a new direction, and either would be a far better choice for RNC chairman than Mike Duncan.

For the record, I would be more tha

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n happy with either candidate. I have liked Steele for years, and Blackwell is a very smart guy who happens to come from my state of Ohio. Either would make a very good chairman, and I would whole-heartedly support either one.

Don't Count Britain Out

2008-12-22T21:24:00.000-08:00

A lot of conservative pundits spend a lot of time predicting the imminent spiritual demise of Great Britain. Mark Steyn wondered “whether a nation that has "lost the stomach for a fight" has also lost its survival instinct,” pointing out that Great Britain is ignominiously withdrawing from Iraq, with most of its troops leaving before spring.

Theodore Dalrymple, in an article entitled “The Quivering Upper Lip,” writes that “when my mother arrived in England…she found the people admirable, though not without the defects that corresponded to their virtues. By the time she died, two-thirds of a century later, she found them rude, dishonest, and charmless”. And Britain is saddled with dozens of ridiculous laws seemingly designed solely to protect criminals. (For example, a man who held off two robbers with a toy gun was arrested for breaking gun laws; barbed wire is illegal in some parts of England because it’s dangerous to criminals). These laws have a predictable effect, with crime rates skyrocketing in many English cities.

And not only is England dangerous to live in, its culture seems to be coarsening to the point that no one would want to. Binge drinking is, apparently, shockingly prevalent among young people, and the many embrace the “chav” culture. (“Chav” is a British term for a working class hooligan, used in much the way “white trash” is used here).

And British political correctness is infamous. Catholic bishops are discussing modifying Catholic school restrooms to permit Muslim ritual washing—but spend time trying to make doing the “hokey pokey” a hate crime. (The hokey pokey was originally a bit of anti-Catholic doggerel). In England, no effort is spared to promote any culture, belief system, or religion (particularly Muslim)—except anything connected with Western culture.

So it doesn’t look very good for Great Britain—it is losing it’s culture war, it has lost its war on crime, and it has seemingly lost its will to fight abroad. So are Steyn, Dalrymple, and the rest justified in predicting England’s demise?

Maybe. But there are at least a few things in England’s favor, and it would be premature to count Britain out.

First, the Conservatives will almost certainly win the next British general election, making David Cameron the next Prime Minister. Cameron is no Margret Thatcher—but he is no Liberal either. He won’t stop England’s leftward tailspin—but he could slow it significantly.

And Britain’s army is still strong—by all accounts, its problems in Iraq stem from poor leadership. Britain’s individual soldiers did their country proud, and Britain still has a technologically advanced military force.

And England was one of the first to join the “coalition of the willing.” So it hasn’t lost all its martial spirit—just its stamina for war. England hasn’t wholly lost the will to fight—it just doesn’t see what is widely regarded as an American war as worth fighting for.

England’s cultural problems run a bit deeper. Like many liberal-dominated countries, it seems to feel that its culture is something to apologize for, and that every other culture has been so oppressed that it requires massive affirmative action to compensate. And the rule of law is spotty at best—serious criminals get off due to technicalities or absurdly light sentences. And that sort of cultural coma is very difficult to change.

But it can be reversed. During the twenties, Germany was in worse shape than Britain—apathetic and unruly, but with runaway inflation and a weak government. But ten years later, it conquered most of Europe. (Although Germany’s revival came at a horrible cost). And after World War II, both Germany and Japan overcame devastated cities and huge loss of life to become powerful economies.

Britain could see a similar turnaround. A hundred years ago, Britain had the largest empire on earth. It would be foolish to preemptively relegate England to second-class nation status.

Broken Democracy

2008-12-20T10:16:00.000-08:00

It’s a stretch to say that the U.S. electoral system is broken, but it’s hard to argue that it’s running on all cylinders. Democracy only works if the people have confidence in the system’s fairness. So by that standard, American democracy works—but there are some serious cracks in our democratic structure.

For example, consider the Minnesota Senate recount between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. The race was close on Election Day, so a recount was needed. Fair enough. But the recount is still going on, and will continue into the new year.

And sadly, the recount’s length isn’t due to careful, take-your-time thoroughness. It’s length is due to controversy, challenges, and disagreement, which guarantees that the losing party will feel cheated. And it will have reason to—much of the debate revolves around missing ballots, found ballots, and improper ballots; and whatever decisions are made will be very much open to criticism.

Whatever happens, half of the people of Minnesota will feel cheated. And that’s never good for a democracy.

Norm Coleman will probably win (though Franken nurses a slender lead right now). If he does, he will rejoin a Congress in which an increasing number of members seem to be elected either a) because of their last names, b) because of their money, c) because they have incumbency.

George Bush is probably the best example of political nepotism, given that he more or less came out of nowhere to become governor of Texas and then President. Hillary Clinton is another; she would have been wholly unknown had it not been for Bill. Jesse Jackson Jr., Elizabeth Dole, Ted Kennedy, Bob Casey Jr., Jay Rockefeller; individual accomplishments notwithstanding, it was their heritage that was their first qualification.

The “last name” phenomenon is very apparent when one examines the frontrunners for the Senate seats to be vacated by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Hillary may very well be replaced by Caroline Kennedy, whose sole qualification for office seems to be that she’s a Kennedy. Joe Biden’s replacement will probably be a seat warmer so that his son Beau can take over the family seat in 2010. And the frontrunner for Barack Obama’s seat was Jesse Jackson Jr., until the Blagovich scandal erupted.

Those politicians who lack name recognition often compensate by spending massive amounts of their personal fortunes. Mitt Romney (who also has name recognition) is probably the best example of this; John McCain (who married a beer heiress) is another. Barack Obama is too—he made a great deal of money from his writing career.

McCain and Romney are the most spectacular examples, but every major 2008 presidential candidate was rich. (Obama is a millionaire, and he was one of the poorest of the lot). And it’s the same in the Senate—it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find a Senator or Governor who lacks a large private fortune.

Senators have to be rich, due to the limits on private donations required by campaign finance laws. Campaign finance reform was supposed to limit the power of money in politics. Instead, it made it almost impossible for anyone without independent means to win, since anyone who can’t afford to finance at least a portion of his campaign is almost out of the running before he starts, since a few wealthy donors can no longer help finance a campaign. So it falls on the candidate himself to do so (at least until he gets his fundraising machine up and running).

A good name and money are big advantages for getting power, but incumbency is the biggest advantage of all. It’s almost impossible to defeat a member of the House, and difficult to beat a Senator. Even in the Democrat dominated 2008 election, 96% of the House of Representatives kept their seats.

Gerrymandered House districts help incumbents, as do congressional perks. Incumbent Congressmen get public financing equal to about $1.5 million in the form of franked mail and staff support, while challengers must make do on their own.

And their own is none too good, again thanks to campaign finance laws limiting individual donations. This ensures that candidates spend massive amounts of time fundraising, time which an incumbent Congressman can spend doing other things (or increasing his fundraising lead). And since the incumbent always has superior name recognition, a built-in fundraising advantage makes beating an incumbent nearly impossible.

Newer Comment Policy

2008-12-19T07:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've decided to stop screening comments now, since I haven't had to reject any for a few days. But even though comments aren't moderated, please keep the insults and personal attacks to a minimum. Anyway, you can comment away without fear of moderation.

The White Man's Burden

2008-12-18T21:20:00.000-08:00

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child. - Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden, 1899

Those lines haven’t aged very well, both because that style of poetry is outdated and because the sentiments in it are now considered racist and imperialistic. The imperialistic attitudes of Kipling’s era have been utterly rejected since; now, perhaps the greatest crime a nation can commit is invading an innocent, weaker country. Modern people, particularly liberals, claim that they cannot conceive of the mindset behind Kipling’s words. (Few conservatives are really fans of imperialism, either, though some, such as Bill Kristol, seem to think that free countries have an obligation to forcibly export democracy).

Liberals might think that the attitudes of The White Man’s Burden are utterly foreign to them, but they’re wrong. Modern liberalism regards undeveloped foreign countries as “half-devil and half-child”; as entities that require good White aid if they are ever to really succeed. Only the language and methods have changed—instead of using war to better uncivilized countries, activists use money, and they now say market their efforts as a “test of our humanity” (as Bono’s website says) instead of as the “White Man’s Burden”. The face has changed—but underneath, the same old Westerncentric ideas prevail.

Think of the faces behind African aid. There’s the aforementioned Bono, who’s made Third World debt his own private crusade—as if, say, Zimbabwe would be a perfectly functioning country if not for the crushing weight of its national debt. There’s Bill and Melissa Gates, and all the artists who performed at the Live 8 concerts in 2005. Then there are the G8 leaders, who constantly promise increased amounts of aid money to Third World countries (which usually means Africa).

There are almost no African faces behind Western aid, as apparently real live Third Worlders don’t have anything to say. Much of the allure behind foreign aid is not based on good results (of which there are few), but rather because seeming to do something is so appealing. Bono is a good man, and wants an outlet for his better nature. So he pushes for Third World debt relief for the “half-child” poor nations, and feels good about himself. Nobody cares that his efforts don’t actually produce any results.

Meanwhile, people like Ian Khama get no recognition at all. You probably haven’t heard of Ian Khama—he is the current President of Botswana, which is the kind of country most of the rest of Africa hopes to be—peaceful, prosperous, and successful. And it doesn’t rely on foreign aid to thrive.

(Botswana and Zimbabwe, by the way, have nearly identical histories and geographies, which makes Robert Mugabe’s oppression all the more tragic since Botswana is an example of what Zimbabwe could be).

The Botswana model should be considered a blueprint for the Third World. It isn’t. Instead, the Tanzania model is. Tanzania is rich in natural resources, with vast resources of gold, gemstones, and natural gas. But the country’s economy is dependant on foreign aid, and has been for decades. The idea is that the money supplied will be used for investment in industry and infrastructure, producing a working economy. Yet that hope has failed—today, Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world.

It will be very difficult, perhaps impossible, for Africa and the rest of the Third World to join the ranks of industrialized countries. Africa is mostly desert, has few large waterways, and is of little political importance. Tribes still play a powerful role in government, and most African nations are ruled either by oppressive, incompetent dictatorships or weak, corrupt democracies. All of these factors make transforming Africa into a thriving continent very hard.

But if it ever happens, it will happen due to the strength and will of the people of Africa. And excessive foreign aid stifles that strength—it forces Third World economies into an unhealthy dependence on the generosity of foreign countries. And you can’t build a functioning economy on charity.

United Around Corporatism

2008-12-17T20:18:00.000-08:00

For years, people have complained about the polarization of American politics; of the wide expanse between Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal, red and blue. Most voters claim to want politicians who were more into dialogue than diatribe, and willing to make compromises for the sake of unity. They wanted to see all branches of government work together to address the problems facing the country.

Well, all branches of government are working together now. True, there’s the odd difference—Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on the terms for the Big Three bailout, and the incoming Obama Administration doesn’t seem to have much confidence in George W. Bush. But those squabbles are just over details—on the big issues, all three lawmaking bodies and both political parties see eye to eye (on the economic issue, at any rate, and there aren’t any other issues on Congress’ agenda at the moment).

But the government hasn’t embraced either conservatism or liberalism, at least as either are usually understood. (I suppose that there are both some “conservatives” and some “liberals” who each claim that the government’s present course of action is exactly in line with their beliefs). Instead, we’ve been saddled with what is, essentially, a form of corporatism. The federal government and large corporations have united in an attempt to direct the ebb and flow of the economy.

That sounds like the sort of charge that obnoxious far-left conspiracy theorists and Ayn Randian uber-libertarians are always making, so a bit a clarification is necessary. Our current economic plan isn’t some premeditated, Bond Villain attempt to take over the world—in fact, the intentions behind the plan are not nefarious at all. Nor is it premeditated—rather, the recent spate of bailouts came as needed as the economy collapsed. The massive government expansion wasn’t really intended—it was almost an accident; the result of panic. But the fact remains—the American response to the credit crisis has resulted in a dangerous union of big government and big business.

It probably wasn’t supposed to happen this way—originally, Henry Paulson just wanted to buy some bad mortgages—but the TARP Act has become a free money supply for failing businesses. Corporation after corporation has been saved from bankruptcy by a quick infusion of free cash courtesy of the federal government. The government is many things—but it is not a massive insurance agent. (And, of course, I’m fairly sure that the Constitution frowns on the federal government sending out billions of dollars to private businesses).

The bailouts haven’t really worked—the stock market is still down, and the credit situation is just as shaky as before—perhaps worse. But apart from the fact that it hasn’t worked (which is kind of a big problem), the bailouts set a horrible precedent. The federal government has established that it is there whenever a failing corporation needs a quick hit of cash, and business has proved that it is more than willing to grant Washington a bit of control in return for capital.

This situation really isn’t good, and most people don’t really like it—most polls showed that the majority of the American people were not in favor of the bailouts. But people were scared, and didn’t complain (I didn’t), leaving the government with a massive amount of control over business—and business with a massive amount of control over the government. And that situation probably isn’t going to change soon either—politicians like power, and business likes money, and there’s no way Washington—or Wall Street—will give this opportunity up. Americans wanted their politicians to present a united front and try to fix the economic problem together—and they got what they asked for.

The Real Christmas Wars

2008-12-16T21:31:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens, who is (I think) often wrong but always interesting, just wrote a column bashing Christmas, which is apparently an annual practice for him. (Hitchens makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus). I think Hitchens is overreacting a little—Christmas carols are annoying, perhaps, but it’s a stretch to compare their ubiquity to fascist propaganda, or to say that the “United States—a country constitutionally based on a separation between church and state—turns itself into the cultural and commercial equivalent of a one-party state,” like pretty soon they’ll start clapping people who aren’t enthusiastic enough about Christmas into irons and force them to listen to “Jingle Bells" for hours on end.

It’s not really hard to see the weak point in Hitchens’ argument—the government is hardly the primary celebrator of Christmas—rather, Christmas’ massive popularity is more a creation of corporations concocting an excuse for consumers to buy massive amounts of stuff. And any separation of church and state obviously wouldn’t apply to either the “cultural” or “commercial” sectors, which should alleviate fears of a “one-party state.” Anyway, the “separation of church and state” isn’t in the Constitution, so Hitchens can rest easy.

Hysteria aside, though, Hitchens does have a point. Christmas really has become an aesthetic nightmare—awful pop renditions of Christmas carols, the painful commercialization of Christmas, and the constant attempts to extend the holiday beyond Christian consumers combine to make the Christmas season something of a nightmare. Not Hitchens’ fascist orgy, of course. But Christmas has just become tacky.

For a time, it seemed that large stores tried to stay away from religious Christmas songs, preferring to play new covers of “Rudolph” and “Frosty the Snowman.” Of course, these songs were usually terrible—most Christmas carols aren’t improved by being set to pop music. Then people realized that religious songs didn’t really offend anyone—and that was worse. If “Frosty the Snowman” set to a steel guitar is bad, “Silent Night” set to the same instrument is far, far worse.

It’s become a cliché to criticize the commercialization of Christmas, but such complaints are still valid. It’s ironic that the birth of One who advocated poverty and self-restraint should be marked by an orgy of consumption. It’s unavoidable, of course—were Christmas to disappear, sellers would find another excuse for people to shop (maybe Thanksgiving? Give people something to be thankful for?). Still, the irony is there.

But by far the most annoying and tacky element of Christmas is the constant attempts to market the holiday to all cultures. This always fails—on two fronts. First, the generic “holiday” is always represented with traditional Christian elements such as Christmas trees, so I doubt that many of other cultures feel very included. And given that all “holiday” commercials, celebrations, and the like always stop right on Christmas Day, the commitment to other cultures looks pretty shallow.

And the embarrassment about invoking Christianity also rankles. There’s nothing wrong with stores trying to attract a wide range of customers—in fact, that’s a good thing, and they really have to if they want to stay in business. But there does seem to be something amiss when businesses feel that they can’t even mention the word “Christmas,” as though that will drive people away in droves. Over eighty percent of Americans are Christians—saying “Merry Christmas” welcomes a lot more people than it repels.

And if you’re worried that “Merry Christmas” will offend people—if “Merry Christmas” has the power to offend someone, that person probably has problems that require a lot more than “Happy Holidays” to fix.

Worst of all, though, is the awful disrespect towards other cultures that leads people to think that they can group other cultures’ holidays with Christmas. There are two other major holidays near Christmas—Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. And trying to include Jews in a comprehensive “Happy Holidays” is incalculably insulting; trying to include blacks with that phrase is just stupid.

I’m not Jewish, but I know enough about the religion to know that Hanukkah is an important holiday in that tradition—and absolutely nothing like Christmas. Hanukkah is not simply the Jewish version of Christmas, and trying to pass it off as an excuse for Jews to join the Christmas fun is simply insulting.

And Kwanzaa isn’t really a holiday at all—Ron Karenga invented it forty years ago as a black alternative to Christmas. And the notion that blacks need their own special Christmas makes our treatment of Hanukkah look respectful in comparison.

For all its flaws, Christmas is still a wonderful holiday. It may be tacky—but its good points far outweigh the annoying.

Don't Try to Spread Democracy

2008-12-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

Conservatives don’t talk about it much anymore, but there was a time when “spreading democracy” was one of George W. Bush’s highest ambitions. The idea was that peace and democracy were bound together, and that any permanent peace (especially in the Middle East) required the existence of widespread democracy.

In fact, much of Bush’s second inaugural address addressed the vital importance of spreading democracy. He pointed out that “success in our relations [with other governments] will require the decent treatment of their own people" and reminded the nation that “we do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery.” Bush’s quest for worldwide democracy was (and is) inspired by the idea that totalitarianism is unacceptable and that lasting peace cannot occur without democracy.

Conservatives, for the most part, supported (and still support, though they are not nearly as vocal as they once were about it) that idea. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, many Americans congratulated themselves for giving Iraqis the gift of democracy. After the first Iraqi elections, pro-war types made the post-election purple Iraqi fingers a symbol of progress. Even anti-war Democrats jumped on the “spreading democracy” bandwagon; the only debate was over the most effective way to facilitate that goal.

It’s a mystery why so many conservatives jumped on board a cause that is so stupid, futile, and Wilsonian. Not to mention counterproductive. The dream of worldwide democracy is nice to think about. But it’s just that: a dream. There is simply no way it could ever become a reality, and there’s even less chance that deposing dictators by force will advance that cause much.

First, too many people forget that implementing a democracy—even in the most favorable circumstances—is hard. Take America. Our democracy was created by a set of absolutely brilliant men. America was a young land without an embedded ruling class or system of government, and came into existence around the time the Enlightenment vision (which stressed individualism and democracy) was at it’s most influential. And our democracy experiment still nearly failed. Had the Founding Fathers not called a constitutional convention, and had the first election been a power struggle and not a George Washington coronation, American democracy might well have failed.

Democracy nearly failed here in the best possible conditions. How much harder must it be to create a democracy in, say, Iraq, where there is literally no democratic tradition (the Middle East is mostly tribes and dictators), massive internal strife, and the ever present threat of invasion?

And even once the democracy gets off the ground, it isn’t out of the woods yet. Democracy is fragile. Those who count the votes must be honest, those in power must be willing to give it up. If both of these conditions aren’t met, democracy is meaningless. And they aren’t met very often.

And what about those places where democracy does take hold? That’s the tricky thing about democracy—things don’t always work out the way they’re supposed to. Lebanon had some elections a few years back. Hezbollah won. Hezbollah is composed of brutal terrorists—but brutal, elected terrorists. So democracy isn’t a guarantee of peace.

It’s also worth noting that Hitler (along with Stalin, Mussolini, and most of the rest of the twentieth century’s bloodiest men) took power with significant popular support. The weakness of the democratic Weinmar Republic gave Hitler his opening, which led to World War II. However, when Germany was ruled by the Kaiser, well, there was still a world war, but at least there wasn’t any genocide. And France and Great Britain were democracies in World War I—but were every bit as senselessly brutal as the nondemocratic German Empire.

But nondemocratic countries such as Franco’s Spain, Pinochet’s Chile, and Diaz’s Mexico were peaceful places; places where diplomacy could work. It’s clear that democracy and peace don’t correlate.

In practice, of course, Bush’s attempt to advance the cause of democracy was essentially a failure. We will probably succeed in putting in a reasonably stable democracy in Iraq, but I doubt anyone wants to go through that that again. Likewise with Afghanistan: there will probably be democracy there eventually, but at a great cost. Both democracies will be fragile in the extreme, and will probably have short lives. Bush’s democratic adventure didn’t work.

It’s indisputable that democracy is better than dictatorship. But it is also indisputable that not all countries are philosophically and culturally ready for democracy. It seems better to support the next best thing such—such as humane, progressive dictators (think the Shah of Iran)—rather than trying to reach the unachievable goal of creating a full-blown democratic state.

Obama As Bush II

2008-12-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

You have to feel a little sorry for George W. Bush. Right now, his approval ratings hover at around thirty percent (on good days), the Iraq War is nigh universally regarded as a dismal failure, and many believe that he is one of the worst presidents in our history.

Bush is not only regarded as incompetent, but stupid as well. No Bushism is considered too unlikely to be believed, (and while Bush has had his share of awkward moments, the story about Bush waving at Stevie Wonder, among others, can’t possibly be true) and it is impossible to imagine a movie like W. being made about any other political figure (except maybe Sarah Palin). Bush might be the most hated and least loved man in America—conservatives tolerate him without much enthusiasm, while liberals unreservedly loathe the man. Barack Obama ran a winning presidential campaign based largely on the fact that he is different than Bush.

Nobody likes Bush—but Obama seems ready to carry on the policies of the Bush administration during his time in the White House. During the election season, there were two vitally important issues: the War in Iraq and the economy. Both candidates spent a lot of time harshly criticizing the President on his handling of these issues. Yet now that he’s in the White House, Obama’s policies on both issues mirror those of Bush.

After years of condemning Bush for his decisions in Iraq, Obama seems set on concluding the war pretty much exactly as Bush would have. He has inserted pro-war Hillary Clinton as his (future) Secretary of State, and is plans on keeping Robert Gates as his Secretary of Defense. (That means that two of the nation’s most influential foreign policy positions will be filled by people who enthusiastically supported the Iraq War). Obama has ceased talking about withdrawal schedules; instead, he seems confident in Gates’ ability to bring the war to a close. And Gates’ position is, of course, that of the Bush Administration.

On the economy, too, Bush and Obama’s positions seem to overlap. After the economy started it’s meltdown, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson thought the best way to bring the economy back would be to implement a massive rescue package. Obama agreed. Seven trillion dollars later, Obama is still on board with most of Bush’s economic rescue plan. His plan (which he has been quite vocal about) seems to be almost exactly that of President Bush—inject money into failing companies in order to stabilize the credit market. Obama and Bush differ on some details—Obama, for instance, is more enthusiastic about a possible autobailout—but generally, the two sides seem to agree on broad details.

On these two issues, at least, it is not easy (so far) to see a significant difference between Obama and Bush.

Granted, events forced Obama’s hand a bit—the surge, however little Democrats want to admit it, fundamentally altered the Iraq situation and made Obama’s old anti-war position outdated. And Bush’s response to the financial crisis is Keynesian and probably at least somewhat similar to what Obama’s plan would have been anyway. So it is not as if Obama is suddenly experiencing a conservative epiphany. But Bush’s strategy was hardly the only one Obama could have chosen, and Obama seems to be following Bush’s lead on these issues.

No liberal would ever admit it, but perhaps Bush is not as incompetent as many think he is. And for all his talk of “hope” and “change,” perhaps Obama is a great deal more pragmatic than he seems to be. But it is ironic that the man who condemned John McCain for representing “more of the same” is starting his presidential journey by continuing many of Bush’s most controversial policies.