Shaving Leviathan

UK MP Hannan Gets It Right

2011-09-16T08:44:00.001-07:00

Daniel Hannan of the UK tells the House of Commons the truth about the EU - that it's a failure because the ideas on which it is based are false.

Stanford Scientists Create the Future

2011-09-07T13:04:00.001-07:00

Largely out of the public eye, scientists continue to create the future. In this instance, a team at Stanford has discovered some novel and unexpected properties of superconducting materials.

If only we had such an innovative political culture. Imagine the hundreds of new applications for protecting individual rights, voluntary trade, and property in novel ways.

By the way, I'm in Bogota for a few months so anyone one interested in what life is like in Colombia let me know…

The Credit Downgrade That Didn't Happen

2011-08-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

Following is a post by Dr. Burt Folsom, author of New Deal or Raw Deal?* and professor of history at Hillsdale College. It is reprinted in its entirety from Prof. Folsom's blog by his kind permission.

The Credit Downgrade That Didn’t Happen
by Dr. Burt Folsom

Ninety years ago, in 1921, the U. S. was poised for a recession, high unemployment, and a possible credit downgrade.

Why?

Because World War I had ended, the troops had come home, but 11.7% unemployment darkened the country. Our veterans could not find work. To solve these problems, some leaders recommended, in effect, a stimulus package–give the veterans jobs to build roads, bridges, and some buildings.

But President Harding (who died in office) and President Coolidge said no. Instead, these two presidents recommended cutting federal spending and cutting tax rates.

The cutting of federal spending was critical because the U. S. national debt had increased from $1.2 billion to $24.3 billion from 1916 to 1920.

We complain today about 9.1% unemployment and a doubling of our national debt in the last eight years; from 1916 to 1920, however, we had a 20-fold increase in the national debt and 11.7% unemployment.

But in early 1920s, the U.S. never had a credit downgrade or a prolonged recession because the cutting of federal spending and of tax rates jump-started the economy and produced budget surpluses every year during the 1920s.

During that decade we slashed more than one-fourth of our entire national debt, and increased GDP by almost 25%. American entrepreneurs eagerly began producing radios, talking movies, and air conditioning–three inventions, among others, that changed our nation and the world.

What is encouraging here is that Americans can still chart their own future. We did that in 1921, and we can do so today. We are not pre-destined to be a declining nation–we have a choice in that and we will help make that choice as a nation when we vote next year for the leaders who will shape public policy.

If we select someone with Coolidge’s free-market philosophy, then the freedom that comes with that will allow Americans to invent and create more goods and services to provide the jobs and prosperity to get America moving again.

Woodrow Wilson, the president who Harding and Coolidge replaced, promoted the first income tax and under Wilson the top rates went from 7% to 15% to 65%, and finally to 73%.

Under those rates, we were making the decision to chase wealth out of the country and stagnate as a nation. Harding and Coolidge reversed that decision and sent tax rates tumbling to 25% on top incomes.

American entrepreneurs arose and dominated the world. Revenue actually increased and budget surpluses became the hallmark of the 1920s. What choices will we make ninety years later?

*Dr. Folsom is also the author of The Myth of the Robber Barons. He has a new book on FDR during WWII coming out in October!

Obama Once Embraced Fiscal Sanity?

2011-07-28T09:27:00.000-07:00

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies.

Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.'

Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

-- Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

Of course, it's almost a given now that everything Obama says has an expiration date, and this statement was no doubt made then only for the purpose of opposing Republicans. Still, it was true then and it's even more true now.

With 'plans' on the table that actually cut no spending at all - they're all just reductions in projected (i.e. fantasy) spending increases in the future - we'll continue with the status quo... until the whole house of cards collapses in about 10 years.

Coal Mine Owner Shrugs

2011-07-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

A coal mine owner in Alabama has decided to go Galt. He's had enough.

“Nearly every day without fail…men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. They can’t pay their mortgage. They can’t pay their car note. They can’t feed their families. They don’t have health insurance.

And as I stand here today, I just…you know…what’s the use? I got a permit to open up an underground coal mine that would employ probably 125 people.

They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home.

What’s the use? I see these guys—I see them with tears in their eyes—looking for work. And if there’s so much opposition to these guys making a living, I feel like there’s no need in me putting out the effort to provide work for them.

So…basically what I’ve decided is not to open the mine. I’m just quitting. Thank you.”

I applaud his decision. After thinking it over for two years, I've reluctantly concluded that it's time for the entire country to do that. I honestly can not see any other way, short of actual civil war, to get the state and Federal governments to back off.

The latest round of ridiculous 'negotiations' in D.C. was one of the last tumblers to fall into place. I applaud the Republicans for trying, but even the most 'extreme' plans represent at best 1/10th of what needs to happen, economically.

The regulatory burden, many times greater, isn't even being discussed. While I fully expect things to get a whole lot better for a while after January 2013 - if Obama, Reid, and crew haven't completely destroyed any chance of recovery by then - it won't be nearly enough.

No one hopes more than I that I'm wrong, that this is just (temporary) and unfounded pessimism. But I genuinely can not see how you pay down several trillion dollars of debt without serious changes to entitlement programs and even the Republicans are only nibbling at the edges. I can't see how you prevent a continued economic slide without removing vast swaths of irrational regulations. I can't fathom how any of this will even begin without a moral and cultural revolution, which doesn't appear to be in the offing. Even the Tea Party is a very weak brew.

Still, I've been wrong before. Maybe I will be again.

Guest Post - Entitlement Mess: Who's Responsible?

2011-07-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

Following is a guest post by Brad Puryear.

Recently, I received an email from a friend which said, in part:

Isn't Congress just wonderful! Entitlement? I paid cash for my social security insurance!!!! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!

Congressional benefits, aka. free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my retirement, an "entitlement" !!!!!!.....

The outrage is well placed and understandable, but the situation is ENTIRELY the fault of the electorate.

Where was the outrage when Congress voted to adopt baseline budgeting, which had the following effects.

1. All taxes, regardless of what they are called, regardless what their original intent and regardless of any promises past, present or future congresses have made or will make, are simply revenue streams to the government. These taxes all go into one pool and are spent as Congress and the President sees fit to fund any and all programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

2. There is no Social Security Trust Fund. Politicians talk about the trust fund all the time, but it is empty rhetoric devoid of meaning which is designed purely to appeal to the electorate’s base emotions. The Social Security IOU’s are also a joke! They have no meaning in a baseline budgeting system. It has as much meaning as would you were you to over spend the funds in your checking account, writing yourself an IOU to pay yourself back. Silly!

3. Ditto Medicare!

4. If you have failed to plan for your own retirement, both income and medical care, the best you can hope for is politicians who will chose fund these programs before they fund other programs. This will especially become important when the crap hits the proverbial fan and our government is forced to only spend what it takes in.

already ruled

Worse, they ruled that any and all past promises with regard to these two programs carry no legal weight. In essence, none of us who have paid in to these two funds our entire working lives have a "legal" right to benefit from them at any point in our life. In fact, both programs have been entitlements since the day the Feds adopted baseline budgeting.

Those of you who think/thought privatizing the portion of the Social Security tax employees pay is/was a bad idea, what say you now? Would you rather have an account worth half a million dollars at retirement that is in your name and out of the reach of politicians, or an entitlement transfer of wealth payment from the biggest Ponzi scheme ever perpetrated on mankind? (The problem with Ponzi schemes and, yes, Social Security is that eventually you run out of money from rube A to pay rube B!)

What our politicians have done is a moral outrage and were they private citizens doing same, would have found their butts in jail. There is, however, a difference between what is moral and what is legal. I'm sorry to tell you that Congress could vote to stop paying Social Security benefits tomorrow and your only two recourses would be to vote the bastards out of office or pick up arms, march on DC and by force, take back control and hold a Constitutional Convention. Sadly, the courts are not on our side and offer no justice on this front!

Finally, a word about the mentality that brought this about.

In my opinion, anyone who thinks they have a right to someone else’s production is to blame for the mess we are in. If you think the rich don't pay their fair share, you're part of the problem. If you think we are morally obligated to administer welfare programs, you're part of the problem. If you think we are entitled to own homes regardless of our ability to pay for them, you're part of the problem. If you think we are obligated to send money to other governments, you're part of the problem. If you think we are entitled to public education, you're part of the problem. If you think the government should fund research in to anything, regardless what it is, you are part of the problem.

Now that I've likely gored at least one of your sacred cows, let me explain.

It is pretty universally accepted in Western Democracies that slavery is an immoral and unjust system for engaging in commerce. One definition of slavery is person A owning the production of person B’s labor without person B’s consent or agreement. In most cases, especially with state sponsored slavery, slavery leaves the victims virtually defenseless and helpless to do anything about it that wouldn’t likely lead to their death. When person A owns person B’s labor, they in fact own person B’s life energy!

I think we can all agree that this is an immoral system that should not be tolerated?

When you enter into a contract with an employer, you agree to give up some percent of your time for some level of compensation, usually in the form of cash. Your time is an investment of your life energy, which as noted above, no person other you has a right to without your consent. Therefore, the cash you earn is a proxy for your life energy.

When the government takes your cash and transfers it to another, they have in fact transferred some portion of your life energy to another human being without your consent! No matter how uncomfortable you might be feeling right now; this immoral system of transfer of your life energy makes you a slave.

Since we have already established the fact that slavery is immoral and unethical, all of the programs listed above, and most of everything else our government currently engages in is immoral as it is, in fact, slavery.

I know this position won't be popular; if it were we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. That being said, I would gladly entertain any serious challenges to my reasoning.

Comte on Altruism

2011-07-16T15:53:00.000-07:00

Anyone still muddled over the actual nature of altruism would do well to read the man who coined the term.

Here, August Comte makes it completely clear that when he talks about the duty to sacrifice self for the sake of others, he really means it. It's also clear, even from this brief passage, that it is incompatible with liberty.

“[The] social point of view . . . cannot tolerate the notion of rights, for such notion rests on individualism. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries.

After our birth these obligations increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. . . .

This [to live for others], the definitive formula of human morality, gives a direct sanction exclusively to our instincts of benevolence, the common source of happiness and duty. [Man must serve] humanity, whose we are entirely.”
[Catéchisme Positivist, 1852]

Obama Gets It: It's the Morality, Stupid

2011-07-02T15:59:00.000-07:00

One reason Obama, like most shrewd Democrats, usually wipes the floors with Republicans is that he unashamedly defends his positions from a moral point of view.

In another biased editorial masquerading as a news report, the LA Times lays out this gem:

"This is not just a numbers debate," Obama said Thursday in Philadelphia. "This is a values debate."

Would that the Republican leadership understood that – and had the courage to fight back the right way.

Instead of endlessly talking about jobs, haggling over deficit reduction numbers and the like, Republicans should be talking about what the Federal government should and should not be doing.

They'll only make substantial progress when they're willing to declare, as even the generally head-and-shoulders above Rep. Ryan does not, an important moral truth: Social Security and Medicare aren't just absurdly expensive, they're morally wrong.

No rational moral argument could justify taking from some citizens to support others, particularly at the Federal level. No taxpayer in Illinois has the moral obligation to support another in Idaho, no matter how much I might need it.

While they sometimes lose debates over economics, Progressives have been winning the culture war for a long time, and will continue to because of this. Only if — and it's a very big if — Republicans will confidently come out in favor of self-reliance as a moral imperative and charity as a marginal and personal matter, will the welfare state get significantly shrunk.

No, I'm not holding my breath, either.

More Lies From the LA Times

2011-06-27T17:18:00.000-07:00

The headline on Google News reads:

Michele Bachmann confuses John Wayne Gacy with The Duke

I don't even need to read the story to know this is a lie. It's possible, I speculate, that Rep. Bachmann forgot the murderer's real last name. She may have any number of details wrong. But I'd bet the Managing Editor of the LAT dinner at his favorite restaurant that Michelle Bachmann absolutely knows who is the film actor John Wayne and that he is not the infamous murderer.

Which leads me to wonder, as I have so often in the past: Why can't Progressives any longer make up even semi-plausible lies when they try to smear a conservative?

P.S. Ok, I just scanned it. Here's what she said: "Well what I want them to know is just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too," Bachmann told a Fox News reporter.

Here's the LA Times making hay out of the smallest of errors:

One small detail: John Wayne Gacy, the infamous mass murderer is from Waterloo. The Duke, although his parents met in Waterloo, is from Iowa, but from Winterset, nearly three hours away by car.

Shocking!

I'll best she doesn't know the difference between Guiana and Guyana, either. Clearly unfit to be President!

Sheesh.

Don Boudreax's Open Letter to Paul Krugman

2011-06-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek gives an excellent smackdown of Paul Krugman (albeit far more polite than he deserves). Krugman writes:

if you ask a liberal or a saltwater economist, “What would somebody on the other side of this divide say here? What would their version of it be?” A liberal can do that. A liberal can talk coherently about what the conservative view is because people like me actually do listen. We don’t think it’s right, but we pay enough attention to see what the other person is trying to get at.
The reverse is not true. You try to get someone who is fiercely anti-Keynesian to even explain what a Keynesian economic argument is, they can’t do it. They can’t get it remotely right. Or if you ask a conservative,”What do liberals want?”
You get this bizarre stuff – for example, that liberals want everybody to ride trains, because it makes people more susceptible to collectivism. You just have to look at the realities of the way each side talks and what they know. One side of the picture is open-minded and sceptical. We have views that are different, but they’re arrived at through paying attention. The other side has dogmatic views.

To which Dr. Bordeaux replies:

I’d be obliged to conclude that you in fact, contrary your claim, do not carefully engage the works of non-”liberal” scholars if you insist that “liberal” scholarship is ignored by conservative and libertarian thinkers such as James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Ronald Coase, Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, Anna Schwartz, Gary Becker, Vernon Smith, Leland Yeager, Henry Manne, Deirdre McCloskey, Allan Meltzer, Richard Epstein, Tyler Cowen, Arnold Kling, George Selgin, Lawrence H. White, and James Q. Wilson, to name only a few.

The whole thing, while short, is well worth reading in its entirety, as are many of the comments.

The Odious Dr. Liu

2011-06-20T01:00:00.000-07:00

I'm late commenting on it — for reasons I'll explain soon — but we really dodged a bullet when Republicans blocked the nomination of Dr. Gordon Liu for the Ninth Circuit of Appeals. Apart from the damage he would have done there, that job is often considered a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. If you wonder just how big the bullet was, this 2006 quote of his from the Yale Law Journal is enough:

On my account of the Constitution’s citizenship guarantee, federal responsibility logically extends to areas beyond education. Importantly, however, the duty of government cannot be reduced to simply providing the basic necessities of life…

Beyond a minimal safety net, the legislative agenda of equal citizenship should extend to systems of support and opportunity that, like education, provide a foundation for political and economic autonomy and participation. The main pillars of the agenda would include basic employment supports such as expanded health insurance, child care, transportation subsidies, job training, and a robust earned income tax credit.

It's a pity, actually, that Dr. Liu is allowed to teach at U.C. Berkeley's law school, where he may be doing more long-term damage than if he were on the Ninth Circuit.

If we're to reclaim this country from Progressives two things must happen: (1) the State-sponsored educational system must be privatized and returned to reason, and (2) all Progressive judges must be expunged from the courts.

We're still in considerable danger from both those influences, but at least we can claim this one (temporary) victory.

Obama Ignores Inconvenient Laws

2011-06-19T15:54:00.000-07:00

Several pundits have commented recently on Obama's soup-thin rationalization for his illegal war in Libya. I share their disgust but I have to say it's utterly unsurprising.

Time after time, the Rationalizer-in-Chief has shown he's completely comfortable ignoring the law when it opposes his wishes.

Early on there was the violation of the GM bondholder's legal rights, a matter of long-established priority in bankruptcy cases. Then there was Holder's racially-motivated refusal to pursue the thugs of the New Black Panther Party. The HHS has issued hundreds of ObamaCare waivers based chiefly on political payback or the Secretary's whims. Recently, the NRLB — itself an illegitimate agency founded on the basis of an unconstitutional labor law — has tried to dictate where Boeing can locate a plant.

The list goes on and on, in every case showing Obama has exactly zero respect for the law when it would constrain what he wants to do. His actions go far beyond pursuing harmful policy with which a rational person might disagree. The man is a plain criminal with nice manners, and nothing in this country is going to go right again until he and his gang are removed from power.

Chilean Volcano Eruption Photos

2011-06-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

I don't want to post them out of respect for the copyright owner, but check out these amazing photos of the recent (June 4) Puyehue volcano eruption in Chile.

Even more spectacular than the ones of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland last year. The ash cloud from the one in Chile spread south so far and so thick that flights from Australia to New Zealand were grounded, stranding the renowned Peter Cresswell of Not PC fame. (Serves him right for going all that way for a mere sporting event. :)

Introducing the Center for Individual Freedom

2011-06-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

CFIF has some superb writers.

Ashton Ellis has penned a number of fine essays in the past couple of months, and his latest on Rick Perry is in that vein.

But Quin Hillyer's recent discussion of Tim Pawlenty's misstep in not pressing Romney during the recent GOP debates is - to use a word I rarely write - awesome.

And, for a final incentive, I offer CFIF's Question of the Week:

"How many Members of Congress have been expelled from office?"

Sadly, the options from which to choose (9, 20, 52, 103) does not contain the correct answer: Too damn few!

Mill on Personal Freedom

2011-05-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

"The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it." J.S. Mill

I have many objections to Mill's philosophy, and even the quote above is problematic. But one could do worse than brand this view on one's soul. If this aphorism were our current society's watchword, virtually none of the fascism we're currently fighting would even be considered.

Cass Sunstein Outdoes Orwell

2011-05-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

Cass Sunstein unveiled the Federal government's plans for (cough) 'regulatory overhaul'.

Sunstein said that the reform proposals, which are now available for public review as they head to become final rules in roughly 80 days, “underline and italicize the words freedom of choice.” [emphasis added]

Coming from this Administration - and Sunstein in particular - that is a statement I regard as roughly equivalent to the Nazi slogan Arbeit Macht Frei [Work Makes You Free] used at the entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp.

By the way, as of two days ago, none of those sections allegedly designed for public feedback were operational and there were no comments.

P.S. If the partial list provided at AEI is any indication, none of these changes touch anything serious. (Yes, I'm not surprised, either.) For example,

- Creating a system of hazard labels that conforms to “international harmonization.”

- Making sure federal regulatory code doesn’t refer to nations that no longer exist.

Color me underwhelmed.

[Update] IBD does a good job of showing why, even if Sunstein and crew were sincere, this would still be a drop in a leaky bucket.

Caving to the Left

2011-05-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

Since the publication of William Voegeli's book, Never Enough a few conservatives have signed on to the idea that the welfare state is ineradicable. They propose that we 'accept reality', compromise, and call a truce with Progressives (or at least moderates). They suggest, in essence, that we lie back and enjoy it, hoping for at least a little petroleum jelly to ease the pain.

What they are suggesting is not a truce but a suicide pact.

Every aspect of the welfare state is immoral, impractical, and unconstitutional, and therefore completely illegitimate. It violates everyone's rights, including the recipients, to steal from Peter to pay Paul. Calling it "charity" or "good citizenship" or any other pleasant sounding description only adds insult to injury.

It's hardly a metaphysical given that welfare programs - along with every other Progressive policy - can not be eliminated. Progressives are influential - because of their outsized representation in education and the media - but they still number only about 20% of the population.

Persuade the other 50%+ not yet clear on the issue, those who don't yet realize how destructive to their own long-term interests the welfare state is, and we'll have won the intellectual battle, and therefore avoided any necessity for a physical one.

Now is no time to preemptively surrender. Progressives are on the ropes. Keep up the blows for another 10 years and this country might actually survive in some recognizable form.

Alternatively, accept an Obama-like return to America's '1967 borders' as the best you can do and you have agreed to jump off the cliff into a full European social democracy. Become Denmark circa 1990? No thanks. Even the Danes have backed away from that precipice. That road leads to Spain circa 2010.

The welfare state can not be saved by compromise, nor should it. Whether it will fade or consume us, time will tell. One thing is for sure; we should never cease to oppose it with vigor.

David Brooks, Liberal Fascist

2011-05-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

The following was quoted by Ed Crane of Cato, talking about David Brooks:

Neoconservative superstar David Brooks wrote in the New York Times just this past March, "Citizenship, after all, is built on an awareness that we are not all that special but are, instead, enmeshed in a common enterprise.

Our lives are given meaning by the service we supply to the nation. I wonder if Americans are unwilling to support the sacrifices that will be required to avert fiscal catastrophe in part because they are less conscious of themselves as components of a national project."

I long ago took the measure of David Brooks, but this revolting statement surprised even me.

If Brooks believes one's life gains meaning only through service to the nation, he should make clear he speaks for himself. Thankfully, there are still a fair number of individualist Americans for whom that idea is anathema.

Clearly, the man is a thoroughgoing collectivist of the Nationalist variety. There's a term for that but Godwin's Law forbids me to use it.

Small wonder the Times keeps him on.

Heading to London

2011-05-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

I'm off to London for a long-overdue vacation starting in early June. I'll be there about a week. Anyone know of a superior used book store in the city?

Conversations with Progressives, Part 36

2011-05-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

Most of the time I refrain from engaging Progressives. They're so dishonest, not just in content but in method, that I judge it a waste of time to try to reason with them. However, from time to time, I respond if I think the audience might find what I have to say useful.

This is one example.

Progressive: Any attempts at repeal [of ObamaCare] with [sic] negatively affect almost 50 million Americans and I'm sure a good number of these citizens do vote. Repeal is a no go and that is a good thing. Denying care to clients because of lack of money and/or insurance is never a good thing or haven't any of you figured this out or do you even care?

Me: You can't back up those numbers, but that's a side issue.

Denying care to clients because of lack of money or insurance is both moral and practical. Most businesses deny service to clients for lack of money. It's called voluntary trade. Nothing in life is free. Forcing you to pay for my health care is immoral and impractical.

Attempting to do so only distorts price signals even further and undermines the market system that makes supplying health care services possible. Not least, it's unconstitutional from start to finish. It violates the rights of free trade and individual sovereignty as guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

If you wish to engage in private charity, by all means devote your resources to supplying health care to anyone you wish. Coercing others to do so is wrong in every way.

I'm a middle-aged self-employed writer with less than stellar health who makes an absurdly low annual income. I choose not to pay for health insurance and accept the responsibility if my health goes south.

But whether I suffer through my choices or through no fault of my own, you have no moral or Constitutional obligation to pay for my health care or to provide me health insurance. Your money does not belong to me.

As to the question "how do you handle that problem?" it's no one's problem to handle but mine. I don't owe you any support and you do not owe me any.

Life is not free. It costs money to sustain. Those who can not afford it must rely on voluntary charity.

Even if one granted that government had a role to play in that charity, there's no valid argument whatever for the Federal government to play that role. All American citizens live in some state (or territory). What justification can there be for the taxpayers of Illinois to pay for the health insurance of a resident of Idaho?

Goldberg Chastises Krugman

2011-05-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

... but for the wrong thing.

Jonah Goldberg joins the chorus of those chastising some liberal for his 'elitism'.

Populist conservatives should give the 'elite' charge a rest. There's nothing wrong with being a "member of the elite" if you actually are superior at something worthwhile.

Einstein was near the top of the elite in physics. James Madison was a superior political philosopher. Admiral McRaven is an elite military man.

The problem in Krugman's case is (a) the Nobel Prize for Economics is a joke, nowhere near as worthwhile as the one in, say, Chemistry; (b) Krugman's economic theories are all completely false and even a modestly well-educated person can know this; (c) Krugman himself has no superior personal attributes, morally or intellectually and; (d) he works for a company - the New York Times - that is itself laughable in every way: as a business, in its political point of view, and even on the basic scale of honesty and competence.

If Krugman were anything remotely like, say, Peter Ferrara, I would have no trouble whatever applauding him for being 'elite', because he would have earned that description.

To be opposed to anything 'elite' is at best to misuse language and at worst to oppose excellence and invite another French Revolution among the mob.

Cartoon Character to Become Defense Secretary

2011-04-27T07:10:00.000-07:00

Oy vey!

Obama is expected this week to name Leon E. Panetta, the director of central intelligence, as defense secretary.

Why not Mickey Mouse? Or, Daffy Duck? Or, if you insist on someone metaphysically real, how about the editor of Al Jazeera TV? Any of them will do as much to safeguard Americans.

Gates was bad enough, but as usual Obama will always find a way to make things worse. I'm just surprised it took him two years to get around to it.

Atlas Shrugged, the Movie - A Review by Michael Moeller

2011-04-21T15:54:00.000-07:00

Atlas Shrugged: The Movie -- Draining the Motive Power from the Novel

by

Michael Moeller

Over fifty years after Atlas Shrugged was published, and more then thirty years since work began on the first film script, I felt Etta James’ song “At Last” playing in my head as I drove to the theater. I was abuzz with excitement at the possibility of finding a “thrill to press my cheek to.” But alas, as the movie unfolded, my cheek felt an icy touch as the lifeblood drained from its dramatic body.

On the philosophical level, the moral outlook of the book was not comprised in any significant way. Hank Rearden states, unapologetically, that his “only goal is to make money”. The filmmakers did not turn the movie into a utilitarian apologia that self-interest also serves the common good. Or worse, with Oliver Stone once-rumored as expressing interest in making the film, one could imagine the protagonists serving up paeans to the “public welfare”. I came away satisfied that the philosophy was not corrupted.

On the artistic level, however, the film fails substantially as a drama. As Rand wrote in The Art of Fiction, a plot is a “purposeful progression of events” where each event is logically connected to the preceding event leading up to the climax. The events are not mere exposition, but ideas dramatized in action where the actions leave the reader wondering what will happen next. I.e., they create suspense.

Unfortunately, the movie’s progression of events lacks purpose and a coherent direction. The choice of scenes appears scattershot, thus draining the drama and suspense from the novel.

For instance, the screenwriters decided to include the subplot involving John Galt’s motor. Here, though, Rearden discovers the mysterious motor through (off-screen) investigation, in advance of his car trip with Dagny. Later in the film Rearden and Dagny examine the factory and the motor in-person. This is followed by scenes of them meeting with Ivy Starnes, Eugene Lawson, and William Hastings’ wife, which include multiple superfluous scenes of car traveling back-and-forth on desolate valley roads.

Not only has the fortuitous discovery of the motor been preempted by Rearden’s preliminary investigation, but the scenes tracking down the motor’s owner add nothing to the back-story of the motor. The viewer knows as much about the motor at the end of their trip as he does after Rearden’s initial investigation. Those scenes simply fill precious screen time.

Instead, those scenes could have been cut. The dramatic struggle to get the John Galt Line built could have been given more emphasis, which was purportedly the focus of this movie. Instead, the effects of the looters’ polices on the John Galt Line, and the protagonists’ struggles to overcome them, are imbibed along with exposition while critical scenes to the main storyline are cut.

For instance, as Rearden and Dagny are standing before the tattered old bridge, Dagny states she could use a new one, but doesn’t have the time to build one with only six months left. Rearden responds that she could build a new one with Rearden Metal in only 3 months, and she responds: “Let me check my budget.” She needed it, Rearden says he can do it, and then it appears during the run of the John Galt Line. That’s it.

This is merely one example of including superfluous scenes while shortchanging the supposed focus of the film: the struggle to build the John Galt Line. We have the Reardens’ anniversary party with no clue as to why it is important, and the bracelet exchange was drained of emotive impact. The viewer gets a brief glimpse of characters before they disappear, such as Owen Kellogg and Robert McNamara, with no background (besides brief narrative) as to why they are important, nor does one see the impact their loss has on the operations of Taggart Transcontinental.

No Dan Conway and his refusal to sell the rail to James Taggart. No dramatization of Dagny’s struggles to find signals, railroad spikes, locomotives, her work crew abandoning her, etc. No effect of Ben Nealy replacing Robert McNamara. No Eureka! moment from Rearden when he makes the bridge feasible with a radical new innovation – right when his business is being destroyed by the passage of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill, and yet still able to provide a beacon of strength for Dagny. Just to name of few.

Thus, the prudence, foresight, and ingenuity of Rearden and Dagny are sucked dry from the building of the John Galt Line, and from their characters.

Many have probably seen the trailer of Dagny’s confrontation with the union boss who refuses to let his members work on the John Galt Line. After this scene, the movie then cuts to Rearden and Dagny boarding the train and the running of the John Galt Line. The emotive impact of Dagny’s success is lessened by not showing her small triumph when all the Taggart workers volunteer against the wishes of the union boss, so much so that they need a lottery to pick the train crew.

Imagine signing up for a sightseeing tour of New York City, and being sped through the city on a train running at two hundred miles an hour while the window shades move up-and-down at random. That’s the feel of the pace and one’s grasp of what is happening and why. In this excellent review, the author provides a much more logical and cogent progression of events that develops the main plot and subplots within a reasonable timeframe, and in a manner that adds drama and suspense.

In The Art of Fiction, Rand also emphasizes bringing the abstraction that is a character to life via concrete actions and dialogue. The characters motives are teased out by these means. And, since art is selectivity, everything said and done denotes something significant about that character that the author thinks is important to convey.

Now consider the first brush with Ellis Wyatt in the movie, which shows him in Dagny’s office with his feet up on the desk while reading a newspaper. As Dagny enters, he throws the newspaper aside, waves his arms awkwardly as if trying to balance himself on a beam, and then begins to rail against the demise of Dan Conway and this “Anti-dog-eat-dog bullshit.”

Is this dynamic entrepreneur from the novel — who had a look of “violence” and such a ruthless integrity that he would rather burn down his empire than let it be taken over by the looters? No, his mannerisms and dialogue have all the attributes of a petulant middle-manager who has not gotten his way and feels the need to ream out an underling — right after his coffee break.

Or consider the filmmakers’ portrayal of James Taggart. He appears in the movie as young, handsome, and well-dressed. In the novel, we first see Taggart with a contorted posture, balding, and the look of middle-age while in his mid-thirties. Miscasting a character based on physical appearance is not a game-breaker and can be redeemed if the essence of the character is skillfully concretized in words and action.

In the novel, however, Rand portrays Taggart as fundamentally weak, constantly evading the necessity to think, and helpless in the face of looming crises, especially when confronted by Dagny. In the movie, the viewer sees a rather poised Taggart that often overshadows a soft-spoken Dagny, played by Taylor Schilling. Dagny’s lack of onscreen presence, of gravitas, does not help the contrast. (If there's a doubt about Schilling’s performance, I urge the viewer to consider whether this Dagny would say as a young woman at a ball: “What men? There wasn’t a man there I couldn’t squash ten of.”)

But more so than the actor’s onscreen presence, the depth of Taggart’s character is victimized by scene selection. The movie shows the boardroom scene where Taggart takes credit for Dagny pulling all assets from the San Sebastian Line before the Mexican government nationalizes it. However, the movie cut the prior scene with Taggart and his girlfriend, Betty Pope. In that scene, Taggart and Pope express mutual contempt for each other after just having had sex. Taggart begins that scene lethargic and mentally unfocused, but comes to life at the prospect of undermining his sister before the Board. His self-satisfaction is quickly deflated when he receives a phone call telling him the San Sebastian Railroad has been nationalized, and then we next see him praising his own foresight before the Board.

This scene also provides a stark contrast to the sex scene with Rearden and Dagny after the John Galt Line run. Sex expressing the celebration of life, as opposed to mutual contempt and futility.

Instead of the Betty Pope scene, the movie depicts the nationalization of the San Sebastian Railroad in a news clip stating that the line has been nationalized and showing soldiers marching under some building with a Mexican flag on top of it. A scene that powerfully conveys Taggart’s motives and goals is replaced with cheap narrative. The net effect on the character of James Taggart is that he is transformed from metaphysically impotent man into a simple Hollywood cutout of a conniving backroom dealer.

By the same methods, the movie trims down the depth of each character, including the two protagonists. The greatest loss, perhaps, is to Francisco d’Anconia, whom I regard as one of the most compelling characters in all literature.

The viewer first catches glimpses of Francisco appearing at bars/parties surrounded by an entourage of beautiful women, sometimes with cameras flashing. He has a scruffy three-day beard and semi-shaggy hair down to his eyebrows — the “cool” look one sees displayed on the cover of GQ. In his first encounter with Dagny after the nationalization of the San Sebastian mines, Dagny begins the scene by throwing a drink in his face. Francisco chuckles and flippantly says: “That’s refreshing”.

This is how the audience is introduced to the aristocratic-looking character described as “the climax of the d’Anconia’s” who’s talents had been “sifted through a fine mesh” from generations of mastery of production. Does this properly capture the man to whom it is impossible “to stand still or move aimlessly?” Is this the man who, as a twelve year old boy, used rudimentary calculus to erect a system of pulleys to hoist an elevator to the top of a rock? Or the man who began as a furnace boy at the age of sixteen and ended owning the factory by age twenty, while educating himself on the stock market to finance the venture?

Without any of Francisco’s back-story in the movie, nor any display of his unmatched ability, the viewer doesn't experience the disconnect between the productive genius and the playboy now throwing extravagant parties for the brain dead. The air of mystery surrounding his conversion has vanquished. The movie version of Francisco really could be a pop star from the cover of GQ. He certainly looks the part.

When Francisco confronts Rearden at his anniversary party, one gets the impression he was transported from another film. Not only is the dialogue awkward and stilted, as if parts were pieced together with Scotch tape after the novel’s conversation was put through a paper shredder, but his character appears jarring and incongruous because there has been no buildup illustrating his intellectual perspicacity.

Amateurism permeates even small touches of detail. The car crisscrossing the country in search of the motor’s mystery is a…Toyota Camry? In the book, it's a sleek Hammond coupe. The producers couldn't rent something like a Bentley Azure or Maserati Gran Tourismo to illustrate the heights Dagny and Rearden have reached?

Sadly, this encapsulates the movie versus the book. Under Rand’s artistic guidance, one feels the dramatic motor roar to life on each page, yet the progression is expertly controlled. Hairpin plot turns on the cliff’s edge are skillfully navigated, yet invite challenge, thrill, and a suspenseful outcome. In the hands of the filmmakers, the viewer is taken on an ordinary ride from point A to point B, often getting lost along the way.

My song had changed on the ride home from the theater. Resonating in my soul were B.B. King’s words: “The thrill is gone, the thrill is gone away.”

Obama's Approval Dips... Finally!

2011-04-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

In the utterly dismal environment that constitutes contemporary politics, there is one small crumb of good: Obama's approval ratings are falling.

The latest Gallup Daily tracking three-day average shows 41% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing. That ties his low as president, which he registered three times previously -- twice in August 2010 and once in October 2010.

Apparently, even the Democrats are miffed at the atrocious CR budget compromise.

It's far too little – his approval should be in the 20% range, about equal to the number of immovable Progressives — and who knows if it's too late. And, it's shocking that there are still a large percentage of Americans who do NOT yet believe that Obama is even worse than Wilson and only slightly better than Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Though not for lack of trying to be both. (So, far as I know Wilson never committed treason). But, in the present circumstances, it's healthy to be grateful for even small favors.

Andrew McCarthy on Libya, All You Need to Know

2011-03-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

Andrew McCarthy, nearly alone among conservatives, vehemently opposes the ~~war~~ time-and-scope-limited kinetic action in Libya for all the right reasons.

It was too tough to pull a useful delimited quote from his extremely well reasoned essay, so I recommend reading it in full. You'll get more education on Libya in ten minutes than you would reading a hundred news stories or blog posts from lesser men.

[On a side note, it's a real pity that McCarthy isn't the head of the DoJ, or Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, or even just the Secretary of Defense. The U.S. would look very different if he were.]

In Honor of Madison's Birthday

2011-03-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

James Madison's birthday is always a good occasion to offer yet another quote from the country's greatest political philosopher.

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands.

They may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads.

In short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare."

On the Cod Fishery Bill, granting Bounties. 2/3/1792

When we once again have politicians who will stand up in Congress and say this, our major troubles will be at an end.

A Glass Stronger Than Steel

2011-03-04T20:17:00.000-08:00

Doubly amazing.

"What we did here is find a very, very tough marginal glass made of palladium with small fractions of metalloids like phosphorus, silicon, and germanium, which yielded one-millimeter-thick samples. And we just said, let's add very little of something that will make it bulk without making it brittle," says Demetriou.

By adding 3.5 percent silver to this marginal glass, Demetriou was able to increase the thickness to six millimeters while maintaining its toughness.

Bravo, Dr. Demetriou of Cal Tech.

Eye-Controlled Laptop Debuts

2011-03-04T01:55:00.000-08:00

Amazing.

"A Swedish technology company unveiled the world's first laptop computer controlled by the human eye, Swedish news website The Local reported Wednesday.

The laptop was developed by Stockholm-based Tobii Technology, whose CEO, Henrick Eskilsson, said it marked an important step in bringing eye-tracking gadgets to consumer products."

Bravo, Mr. Eskilsson (and the engineers who designed it)!

Rearden Koch Speaks Out

2011-03-03T01:20:00.000-08:00

Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, tells it like it is.

In spite of looming bankruptcy, President Obama and many in Congress have tiptoed around the issue of overspending by suggesting relatively minor cuts in mostly discretionary items. There have been few serious proposals for necessary cuts in military and entitlement programs, even though these account for about three-fourths of all federal spending.

Yes, some House leaders have suggested cutting spending to 2008 levels. But getting back to a balanced budget would mean a return to at least 2003 spending levels—and would still leave us with the problem of paying off our enormous debts.

Federal data indicate how urgently we need reform: The unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid already exceed $106 trillion. That's well over $300,000 for every man, woman and child in America (and exceeds the combined value of every U.S. bank account, stock certificate, building and piece of personal or public property).

The Congressional Budget Office has warned that the interest on our federal debt is "poised to skyrocket." Even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is sounding alarms. Yet the White House insists that substantial spending cuts would hurt the economy and increase unemployment.

Plenty of compelling examples indicate just the opposite. When Canada recently reduced its federal spending to 11.3% of GDP from 17.5% eight years earlier, the economy rebounded and unemployment dropped. By comparison, our federal spending is 25% of GDP.

Government spending on business only aggravates the problem. Too many businesses have successfully lobbied for special favors and treatment by seeking mandates for their products, subsidies (in the form of cash payments from the government), and regulations or tariffs to keep more efficient competitors at bay.

Crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market. But it erodes our overall standard of living and stifles entrepreneurs by rewarding the politically favored rather than those who provide what consumers want.

The purpose of business is to efficiently convert resources into products and services that make people's lives better. Businesses that fail to do so should be allowed to go bankrupt rather than be bailed out.

If you want to read as close to Henry Rearden as you're likely to find today, read the whole thing.

Bravo, Mr. Koch!

Obama Ignores Inconvenient Laws

2011-03-02T01:15:00.000-08:00

Unsurprisingly, the ~~gangster government~~ Administration continues to ignore legal rulings contrary to its policies.

The DoJ abandoning a slam dunk case against the New Black Panther Party's voter intimidation is well known. The Interior Department continues to refuse to grant drilling permits* in the Gulf, despite two court orders knocking down their precipitous moratoria.

Now we find that, even after Judge Vinson's ruling against ObamaCare, Sebelius, et al plan to plow ahead. What's worse, if it could be worse, is the selective enforcement. The waiver count is over 700. Not to worry, though. They're only "temporary."

Well, that's a relief.

Also, according to an HHS spokesman, who said after the the granting of 500 new ones, "It's more than a handful, but not a big number." Of course, 500 counts of conspiracy would be considered a big number in criminal proceedings, but it's nothing when you're above the law.

[Update:] Looks like the bastards finally gave in to ~~reality~~ political pressure. One company has received a permit. Others are expected in "the coming weeks and months."

Pestritto Reviews Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism"

2011-03-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

It's three years old, but this review of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism by Dr. Ronald J. Pestritto is well worth reading. It is reprinted here in full by kind permission of Kathleen Arn, Associate Editor of the superb Claremont Review of Books.

A Nicer Form of Tyranny

A review of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, by Jonah Goldberg

By Ronald J. Pestritto
Posted May 19, 2008

(This article appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.)

When she was asked in one of last fall's presidential debates whether she still considered herself a liberal, Hillary Clinton sidestepped the question. She called herself, instead, a "proud, modern, American progressive," and boasted that her "progressive vision" for the country had roots going all the way back to "the Progressive Era, at the beginning of the twentieth century."

Modern, big-government liberalism has come home. The Progressives were the first generation of Americans to criticize the United States Constitution, especially for its limits on government's scope and ambition. They rejected the American Founders' classical or natural rights liberalism, offering instead a vision of the modern state as a kind of god with almost limitless power to achieve "social justice."

When modern liberals like Senator Clinton call themselves progressives, therefore, they are telling the truth, even if their audiences don't fully understand the implications.

How gratifying it is then to have Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, to pursue these half-forgotten, if not exactly secret, implications.

Although liberals throw around the term "fascist" to abuse conservatives (just as they do "racist"), Goldberg, the editor-at-large for National Review Online, persuasively shows that today's progressives are fascism's true descendents, embracing the statism at the heart of the 20th-century's most notorious outlaw regimes.

What's more, for all the past century's liberal hand-wringing over the supposedly impending right-wing takeover of America, Goldberg maintains that the country has already suffered a quasi-dictator or two, but historians have looked the other way because these strongmen — Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt — are certified heroes of the Left.

No wonder that liberals often have such a blinkered interest in their own intellectual heritage. Reviewing this book, for example, Michael Mann in the Washington Post, Michael Tomasky in the New Republic, and David Neiwert in the American Prospect so badly confuse classical liberalism and modern liberalism (by equating them!) that they can make little sense of Goldberg's account, dismissing it as "Bizarro history," "ignorant nonsense," and an attempt to shock readers and sell books. Neiwert even writes, missing the irony, that it is "the consensus of historical understanding that anti-intellectualism is an essential trait of fascism."

But Goldberg's charge is no mere exercise in name-calling. He takes his title from H.G. Wells, the eminent liberal essayist and science fiction writer who coined the term "liberal fascism," or as he also called it, "enlightened Nazism." It was common at the time for progressive intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to see Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler as kindred reforming spirits, struggling to find a third way forward between the extremes of capitalist individualism and Communist collectivism.

Mann believes this connection merely proves that "fascism contained elements that were in the mainstream of 20th-century politics," as much for Democrats and Republicans at home as for fascists and social democrats abroad. But Goldberg is getting at something deeper: he is trying to trace the quiet revolution that took place throughout modern thought when politicians of all stripes, led by the Progressives, were wooed by the power of a limitless State.

To his credit, he stresses right from the start that he is not accusing American progressives, past or present, of being the kind of moral monsters associated with European fascism. Still, at some level the family resemblance asserts itself. As Goldberg aptly puts it, Progressivism "may have replaced the fist with the hug, but an unwanted embrace from which you cannot escape is just a nicer form of tyranny." (Hence the book's stark cover featuring a smiley face with the Hitler mustache.)

In his account of fascism, Goldberg even shows how some fairly prominent American liberals expressed real admiration for Mussolini, whom they saw in the 1920s as a kind of hero sticking up for "the little guy."

Indeed, the Italian fascist movement, far from being a mere appendage to German Nazism, actually predated it and had a serious course of development all its own. Goldberg does well to set the record straight on this score, contending that fascism grew out of il Duce's left-wing statism. The first World War seems to have been decisive in this respect, teaching him that his radical socialist inclinations could profitably tap into both populism and nationalism as a means of becoming a major force in Italy.

Goldberg moves from his account of European fascism to the origins of modern liberalism in America, and suggests that the two movements, for a time at least, tracked one another in their development.

* * *
In America, the origins of modern liberalism lie at the end of the 19th century, when Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, John Dewey, Herbert Croly, and a host of others argued that the Constitution was outdated, that it was incompetent to deal with contemporary economic and social ills, and that, if applied at all, it ought to be applied as a "living" document.

This notion of a "living" constitution — a pillar of modern liberalism — comes out of the doctrine of progress and, as the more honest Progressives admitted, the historicism of German political philosophy. Almost all of the leading Progressive intellectuals had been educated in Germany or had teachers who were. A sea change had taken place in American higher education in the second half of the 19th century. Most Americans at that time who wanted an advanced degree went to Europe for it, and by 1900 the faculties of America's colleges and universities were teeming with European Ph.D.s. Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, was established for the express purpose of bringing German education to the United States, and produced several prominent Progressives, including Wilson, Dewey, and Frederick Jackson Turner.

Like their European counterparts, American Progressives championed der Staat over the individual, seeking to redistribute wealth and use the national government to superintend the economy and society. This agenda was at odds with the founders' natural rights principles and the Constitution's limited government, but as Teddy Roosevelt is said to have quipped when challenged about his intrusion on private property rights during the 1902 coal strike: "To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!" Even if the remark is apocryphal, it captures Roosevelt's animus.

The best example may be his 1910 speech on the New Nationalism, which subsequently became the foundation for his insurgent run for the presidency. Private property rights, which had been serving as a brake on the more aggressive Progressive policy proposals, were to be respected, T.R. argued, only insofar as the government approved of the property's social utility:

"We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary."

Although the Progressives differed among themselves on the means of achieving reform, there was little disagreement on the fundamental questions of state power and the place of individual liberty. As Frank Goodnow, the American Political Science Association's founding president and one of the modern administrative state's chief architects, put it, natural rights simply could not be allowed to stand in the way of the state's attempt to remedy any perceived social ill:

"The rights which he possesses are...conferred upon [the individual], not by his Creator, but rather by the society to which he belongs. What they are is to be determined by the legislative authority in view of the needs of that society. Social expediency, rather than natural right, is thus to determine the sphere of individual freedom of action."

The young Woodrow Wilson, writing in 1889, put this view of state power even more concisely: "Government does now whatever experience permits or the times demand."

It is good to see Goldberg single out Wilson for a special dose of blame in Liberal Fascism, lamenting that "[i]n America we've chosen not to discuss the madness our Republic endured at Wilson's hands."

Goldberg also appreciates the important role religion played for many (although not all) Progressives, who saw in history's supposed advance the will of God at work. For the Social Gospel movement, "the state was the right arm of God and was the means by which the whole nation and world would be redeemed." In fact, "Onward, Christian Soldiers" was the unofficial anthem of the Progressive Party convention in 1912, sung until the rafters shook.

European-style statism took greater hold over the country through FDR's New Deal. Roosevelt was no intellectual but he relied on his progressive and fascist predecessors for the model of state power that animated his programs. And Goldberg observes that although today's liberals may be in love with Jack Kennedy, they govern like Lyndon Johnson, whose Great Society further expanded progressive liberalism's influence. "[I]t's telling," writes Goldberg, "that Democrats wish to preserve the substance of the Great Society while maintaining the mythology of Camelot." The Great Society provides the framework for programmatic liberalism right down to the present day.

Goldberg is certainly right when he says that most academics have willfully ignored modern liberalism's progressive-fascist roots, although scholars such as James Ceaser, John Marini, and others (including me) have in fact been calling attention to the progressive origins of modern liberalism for the past 20 years.

Liberal Fascism clearly draws from these works but makes surprisingly little reference to them, even in a few instances when the book's observations sound awfully familiar. Yet if Goldberg proceeds, in some respects, down a path blazed by others, he does so with the kind of terrific writing and energy that is certain to make the connection between modern liberalism and its statist ancestors a more prominent factor in America's political battles and debates.

* * *
In making his case, Goldberg does tend to conflate fascism and socialism. He wants to show that fascism, far from having been a "right-wing" ideology, actually was a movement of the Left (he calls Hitler a "man of the Left") and that its main characteristics were socialist. This point — perfectly valid — helps make the case that today's liberals are fascism's true inheritors.

Goldberg has a deep, thoughtful chapter on Mussolini and another on Hitler to bolster this argument. And he is right that both fascism and socialism are statist — they rest on what he calls "statolatry" or "state worship," the principle that, in Wilson's words, "all idea of a limitation of public authority by individual rights [should] be put out of view," and "that no line can be drawn between private and public affairs which the State may not cross at will."

But at least two distinct forms of statism came out of the 19th century.

Nazism in particular owed much to Friedrich Nietzsche's disdain for egalitarian, mass-based movements (e.g., Progressivism) that celebrated human fraternity and dignity. Although he was a great advocate of state power and thought individual rights a joke, Nietzsche's passion was for the rule of the strong over the weak — a love of inequality, enforced by the will to power.

From Nietzsche's point of view, both the Soviet and the Anglo-American versions of egalitarianism were abhorrent. Nietzsche's disciple, Martin Heidegger, described the Soviets and the Americans as metaphysically the same, and Heidegger himself was sympathetic to the Nazi cause.

Goldberg tries to show that Nazism was a mass-based movement of the Left, and he is persuasive that it attracted the lower classes in Germany more than it did the middle class. But he underplays the extent to which Nazism fed off a desire to reassert the perceived greatness and power of a particular people or race, as over against everyone else, in a manner that, say, American liberalism never did.

Goldberg's argument might have been clearer if he focused less on specific fascist regimes from the 1930s, and more on the roots of fascism itself (and Progressivism, and modern liberalism) in 19th-century German state theory. This is the common thread that would help Goldberg tie together fascism and socialism: both come from the historicism of philosophers like Hegel, both are antithetical to the natural rights-based liberalism of the American Founding, and both show why true constitutionalists ought to resist modern liberalism.

By the 1930s, this 19th-century statism has evolved in many different directions — e.g., fascism, Nazism, several flavors of democratic socialism, the Communist International, and America's own welfare state liberalism. Tying these together becomes a tough and unnecessarily complicated chore. Instead of highlighting liberal "fascism," Goldberg's case might have been stronger, or at least sharper, if he had concentrated on liberal "statism."

After all, if fascism and modern liberalism are joined together by all-powerful government as the potential solution to every human problem, aren't there many self-styled conservatives who might fall under the same indictment?

Far from thinking "fascism is strictly a Democratic disease," as David Oshinsky charged in his review for the New York Times, Goldberg tackles this question head-on in a superb Afterword in which he criticizes right-wing American statism as "me-too conservatism," identifying it squarely with the Progressive movement.

For example, he describes George W. Bush as "strongly sympathetic to progressive-style intrusions into civil society" and spies the "ghost of the Social Gospel" in his big-government conservatism. Goldberg bolsters his case with some choice quotations from former Bush advisor Michael Gerson, an architect of "compassionate conservatism" and as his own recent book, Heroic Conservatism, makes plain, no fan of limited, constitutional government.

Goldberg's Afterword is so good, in fact, that one hopes for a book on the problem of conservative statism from this excellent writer. In order to defeat liberal fascism, American conservatives will need to awaken their own ranks from the progressive spell. With his new book, Jonah Goldberg has renewed for them, and for all friends of constitutional government, a vital argument for the political battles ahead.

About the Author

Ronald Pestritto holds the Charles and Lucia Shipley Chair in the American Constitution at Hillsdale College and is a senior fellow of the College's Kirby Center. He teaches political philosophy, American political thought, and American politics.

Copyright © 2002-2009 The Claremont Institute.

Dr. Pestritto is also the author of Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, as well as the highly useful sourcebook American Progressivism: A Reader. Both are highly recommended for anyone wanting to know how we got where we are today.

Suddenly, Obama Cares About Constitution

2011-02-28T11:29:00.000-08:00

Right.

Obama, Holder Call 1996 Defense of Marriage Act Unconstitutional

BusinessWeek - Joel Rosenblatt

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration said it will no longer oppose court challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages for purposes of taxes, ...

Now, NOW they're worried about the Constitution?

Sheesh. Frankly, I don't care who marries whom. It's none of my business, nor anyone else's but the parties involved. My amateur opinion is that all the voter referenda restricting marriage between consenting adults are illegal. Individual rights are not up for a vote. But this is un-effing-believable. These guys - Holder and Obama - have more chutzpah than Qaddafi and Achmed-squiggle.

Worried about BP Oil Spill? Don't Be

2011-02-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

Bacteria eat Gulf Oil methane.

"According to the new study, bacteria took fewer than four months to finish off the methane, and it appears that at no time did oxygen levels in the area the team studied fall to levels dangerous to marine organisms there."

According to the report, some scientists dispute the finding. And, in other news, water is wet.

New Court Jester Same as the Old

2011-02-16T13:22:00.000-08:00

In his debut as Obama's new Press Secretary, Jim Carney maintains the standard by magnificently lying his head off.

“We need to get to a place — and [Obama’s] budget absolutely does this — where we are no longer spending more than we’re taking in,” he said.

Too harsh? See my previous post.

Federal Budget Follies

2011-02-16T09:09:00.000-08:00

Once again Peter Ferrara does yeoman's work in shredding Obama's pretenses, this time on the ludicrous budget.

"Obama's budget projects that this deficit will be cut in half by 2013. But in last year's budget, Obama projected that this year's deficit would be $1.227 trillion, more than $400 billion less than Obama says it will be today.
...
[H]is actual deficit for this year of $1.645 trillion is again the highest in world history! The deficit for 2008, by the way, was $458 billion.
...
Even with these tax increases and phantom budget savings, the national debt held by the public will soar to $19 trillion by 2021, more than triple that national debt total of $5.8 trillion in 2008"

And Obama promises, before the ink has even been applied, to veto the proposed GOP budget that makes a modest start on cutting Federal spending. Centrist, my ass.

Lying Muslims and Useful Idiots

2011-02-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

Some Muslim Brotherhood spokesman named Abdel Moneim Abou el-Fotouh has been given a megaphone by The Washington Post to ~~lie magnificently~~ declare:

"For Muslims, ideological differences with others are taught not to be the root cause of violence and bloodshed because a human being's freedom to decide how to lead his or her personal life is an inviolable right found in basic Islamic tenets."

Uh, huh. Tell that to the relatives of the dead 14-year old in Bangladesh who was whipped to death by authorities for the crime of being raped. Oh, wait. They won't care, because it was one of their own who perpetrated the crime, then informed the authorities about her 'sin'.

The heroic Andrew C. McCarthy tells the story as an example of how sharia operates in the real world, no matter what its apologists might say.

In Bangladesh a 14-year-old girl named Hena was raped by a 40-year-old man, Mahbub, who is described in a report as her “relative.” Apparently — the report is not clear on how this happened — the matter was brought to the attention of the sharia authorities in her village of Shariatpur.

You’d think this was a good thing … except, in Islam, rape cannot be proved absent four witnesses — i.e., it’s virtually impossible to establish that what happened happened. That’s a dangerous thing for the victim — deadly dangerous in this instance — because if she has had sexual relations outside marriage but cannot prove she has been raped, she is deemed to have committed a grave sin.

In Hena’s case, the sharia authorities ordered that she be given 100 lashes. The young girl never made it through 80; she fell unconscious and died from the whipping.

Sure, it would be easy to dismiss this incident as just another savage act by the savages who occupy an unfortunate amount of land in the world. That's not the point, at least not the main one. The point is that there is a deep – but by now very obvious — connection between those acts and their ideology.

So long as useful idiots like those at the Washington Post continue to provide a neutral platform for these thugs, and for both parties to be allowed to pretend we all just have reasonable differences of opinion, this sort of thing will continue to plague those far outside Bangladesh.

On Egypt

2011-01-31T06:21:00.000-08:00

My explanation for all the brouhaha: it's just a slow news week and the major dailies have nothing better to talk about just now. (See, I got sucked into it, too.)

If there's an op-ed explaining why we should care what happens in Egypt I haven't seen it yet, and I read 12 major publications daily.

They have little oil and no nuclear weapons. They haven't been a friend of the U.S. when it counts for many years, if ever. (Even granting the dubious proposition that countries can have 'friends' rather than just strategic, and ever-shifting, alliances.)

What's the worst that could happen? Are they going to export still more jihad to the U.S. or Afghanistan or Iraq? As if Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan don't already have that covered? Could even an Islamic theocracy block the Suez Canal for more than a day, without the government being blasted to rubble?

(Aside: by international treaty the Canal is open to all in peace and war and the other thugs in the region use it, too. And if they did block it, wouldn't that be a great excuse to blast an Islamic theocracy away? Not that we would do it, but the Russkies would, without hesitation.)

Sincere best of luck to those in Egypt who want freedom, all five of them. The rest are no concern of ours.

[Update 2/2/2011]

Daniel Pipes, who knows a thing or two about the Middle East, offers some helpful background and perspective.

P.S. Kind of interesting how Obama did nothing whatever to support the clear call for freedom in Iran when the moment came. Now, when no one knows what the hell the Egyptian people want, but an Islamic theocracy is the odds on favorite, he's all over it. The guy is a true Anti.

P.P.S. Happy to eat my words if someone can clue me in why all this is important.

Thomas Sowell Shreds Frances Piven in 1980

2011-01-26T14:43:00.000-08:00

Statist Frances Fox Piven, much in the news lately for recent foolish remarks drawn straight out of Marxist revolutionary anno 1968, is given her comeuppance by the incomparable Thomas Sowell.

Having watched the clip, though, I'm reminded once again how useless it is to debate Progressives. There might be some value in the discussion, since it might help tip others to one side or the other. But Progressives, in my view, are simply beyond redemption. When you are as committed to egalitarianism, Comtean altruism, and statism as is this creature, there's just no reaching her.

The clip is interesting for another reason. See how many of the standard Progressive cliches, countless times disproved, you can count. Some examples as hints (paraphrasing slightly): "Capitalism enslaves the poor," "Capitalists use government force to rob them," "We must use government to guarantee minimum sustenance and services or equality of opportunity becomes a sham..." and so forth.

When you're counting, keep in mind this was 1980. Progressives had already learned well by then how to use the language of capitalism to destroy it.

I keep wondering when those who defend capitalism are going to learn to use morality to defend capitalism. I wonder if they'll ever come out and say, unapologetically: "Individual freedom is a sacred value no matter what happens to the old, the sick, the poor, or any other favored Progressive needy group du jour." In other words, defending freedom chiefly on utilitarian grounds is a losing proposition.

The Virtues Required for Freedom

2011-01-19T12:00:00.000-08:00

I'm not in general a fan of Friedrich Hayek. I think he surrenders far too much to Progressives. But he had some things of value to say. In particular, this gem from The Road to Serfdom:

There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel.

The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority.

The cultural decay represented by the withering of those virtues is almost as true of America today as it was of Britain in the 1950s. (That latter makes it all the more remarkable that Hayek saw this in 1944.)

We won't come back unless those virtues again become dominant and are as celebrated as they were a hundred years ago.

Still, I'm not completely pessimistic. If anyone can restore them to popularity, it would be the American people. After all, Progressives may currently dominate all but two of the major cultural transmission belts, but are in fact a small percentage of the population. So was the aristocracy of Britain (and their sycophants) in the 18th century and we managed to rid ourselves of them. Maybe we'll do so again with the current crop who believe themselves anointed to rule us.

Martin Luther King, Progressive Racist

2011-01-17T20:19:00.000-08:00

“We feel we have much to learn from Scandinavia’s democratic socialist tradition . . .”
[Martin Luther King, Jr. during his visit to Sweden to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.]

This and many similar comments demonstrate that King favored Progressivism - both in economics and as social policy.

It's for this reason that he deserves exactly none of the praise he has received over the years and this latest round of conservative gushing is particularly galling.

To be opposed to racism is the bare minimum to expect of any civilized person. It is not some great achievement. But King did more - and worse - than that. He explicitly viewed all American blacks as "brothers and sisters." In short, he was a standard (reverse) racist, judging individuals not by their character but by the color of their skin, contrary to his high-flown rhetoric.

He was not a great man, nor a great thinker. He was just another Progressive leader, and therefore wholly undeserving of praise.

How to Eliminate "Inflammatory Right-Wing Rhetoric"

2011-01-10T12:27:00.000-08:00

At Breitbart's Big Government, I offer a few words on the Left's attempt to connect the shootings in Arizona with 'right-wing' political activism.

It begins:

Many commentators almost as mad as Loughner have attempted to connect this lunatic’s actions to “inflammatory right-wing rhetoric.” I won’t go into here the long list of inflammatory left-wing rhetoric (and actions) that spill over into open violence. (Michelle Malkin has a good summary — with detailed proof — if you’re interested.)

Instead, I’ll make a suggestion.

If the Left wants to eliminate at a stroke the vast majority of heated, hated right-wing rhetoric there’s a very simple way to do that: give up. ...

Read the rest here.

The History of the Yo-Yo

2011-01-05T10:13:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite pastimes is reading about inventions. About.com has a good, short article on the surprisingly long and colorful history of the Yo-Yo. Enjoy!

They have been around for over twenty-five hundred years... Around 1800, the yoyo moved into Europe from the Orient.
...
It is a Tagalog word, the native language of the Philippines, and means "come back". In the Philippines, the yoyo was used as a weapon for over 400 hundred years. Their version was large with sharp edges and studs and attached to thick twenty-foot ropes for flinging at enemies or prey.
...
[Modern inventor Donald] Duncan's first contribution to yo-yo technology was the slip string, consisting of a sliding loop around the axle instead of a knot. With this revolutionary improvement, the yo-yo could do a trick called "sleep" for the first time.

Cool.

More Gangster Government

2010-12-29T14:20:00.000-08:00

One of the distinctive characteristics of gangster "business operations" is to make up the rules as they go along. Gangster government does something similar when they ignore the courts and Congress and simply go on as if no one had said anything.

One more instance in a long line of that occurred with the recent FCC declaration of the Orwellian-named "net neutrality" rules. I wrote an article some time ago about how any such rules necessarily violate property rights and the right of free trade. Peter Ferrara demonstrates in an American Spectator essay how Obama's thugs are proceeding Chavez-like to demonstrate how much they truly don't care about that.

On April 6, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Comcast Corp. v. Federal Communications Commission that the FCC does not have the power to issue net neutrality regulation.
...
Rejecting that reasoning in an opinion written by one of the Circuit's more liberal Judges, David Tatel, the Court had to remind the FCC that "administrative agencies may act only pursuant to authority delegated to them by Congress."

The Court said regarding the FCC's reasoning, "if accepted it would virtually free the Commission from its congressional tether." The Court added that "without reference to the provisions of the [FCC's governing] Act directly governing broadcasting, the Commission's ancillary jurisdiction would be unbounded."

Indeed, the FCC's lawyers suggested to the Court in oral argument that in the agency's view it already has the power to impose price controls and rate regulation on Internet service providers and broadband operators.

Yet, the FCC just flouts this decision in going ahead and issuing its net neutrality regulations by rulemaking last week.

If there is any good option at this stage for businessmen — and us, who trade with them — other than simply ignoring the law, I can't think what it might be. It's that, or passive acquiescence to tyranny. We are now ruled, in fact, by petty dictators unbounded by anything but resource limitations in enforcing their Progressive whims.

Should Congress Be Outlawed?

2010-12-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

Lame duck Democrats are making passage of the so-called Tax Compromise bill a tough slough. It's a piece of crap legislation, so I don't really care about that one way or the other. But the following from NRO makes me wonder if we should even have a Congress.

"House Dems Pull tax Deal from Floor
December 16, 2010 12:54 P.M.
By Daniel Foster

UPDATED 2:03 PM

In the middle of debate on the Obama-McConnell tax deal, House Democrats abruptly pulled the “rule” for the bill from the House floor, moving on to consideration of a purely technical bankruptcy bill.

The move probably (probably) signals that the Democrats are short on votes to pass the rule — and hence the bill — and are now scrambling to find them.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Okay. Here’s what happened. Recall that the Democrats are moving the tax compromise inside the hollowed out shell of a Senate aviation bill in order to deny Republicans the procedural opportunity to offer their own alternative. Yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds — Speaker-Designate memorably dubbed the strategy “chicken crap.”

But now the Democrats are being hoisted by their own petard. In order to proceed as they’d like, Democrats planned on holding two votes — one on the Pomeroy amendment, which would raise the estate tax from the compromise levels, and one on the overall Senate bill. But the way the rule is written, voting ‘yea’ on the Pomeroy estate tax hike would constitute a vote for the rest of Senate bill. That is, if the Democrats have 218 votes to pass Pomeroy (an open question), the rest of the deal would pass automatically. Only if Pomeroy comes up short would there be a separate vote on the overall bill. (Take a deep breath.)

But rank-and-file liberals want to be able to support the estate tax hike while going on record against things like the extension of current tax rates for top earners.

So in the middle of debate, Rep. Gene Taylor, lame-duck Democrat of Mississippi, made a privileged motion to adjourn, and Democratic leadership used the time bought by the vote on that motion to have a huge powwow on the House floor — Hoyer, the Congressional Black Caucus, the progressives, the House parliamentarian, all were in attendance — to figure out how to proceed. When the adjournment vote ended, the Democrats pulled the tax bill from the floor, a clear sign they are short on votes."

Forget the fact that this is politicians behaving like they do, and that the Democrats are worse than the Republicans in most cases.

Clearly, we are relying on people to behave honorably, when the rules should simply make this utterly and blatantly illegal and the people who do it should be charged with fraud, violation of their oath of office, and then go to jail. One good 'sting' would put an end to this crap for a long, long time.

Yeah, I know, but it's a good day for fantasizing.

Hindraker Nails Democrat Energy 'Policy'

2010-12-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

John Hindraker of Powerline wrote a brilliant blog post on the Democratic energy policy. If he has a copyright beef, he can ask me to remove it so my half-dozen regular readers don't cannibalize his page view count, but it's just too perfect to excerpt.

The U.S. is the only country in the world that, as a matter of policy, does not develop its own energy reserves. It is hard to see a rational basis for that policy. Energy is an important component in every physical object that is manufactured and shipped. If a country is not competitive in energy, it is not competitive, period. A Facebook friend writes:

PETROBRAS BRAZIL DISCOVERS TRILLION-DOLLAR CRUDE OIL FIND. AND AMERICA IS F****** AROUND WITH USELESS BATTERY-POWERED GOLF-CART CHEVY VOLTS?

Well, yes. The difference is that Brazil wants to become richer and more powerful. I think there are many in the Obama administration who think it is unjust that we are richer and more powerful than Brazil and many other countries. So they design policies that are intended to retard our progress so that others can catch up. If you think this makes any kind of sense, you are undoubtedly a Democrat.

Punditry just doesn't get any clearer, or more true, than that.

The Obama Doomsday Machine Rumbles On

2010-12-09T13:06:00.000-08:00

Peter Ferrara, one of the most accurate writers in the country on economics, states in a recent American Spectator essay:

Last week, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a 7 year moratorium on oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and up the east coast. They need that time to further study the BP oil spill and implement a "more stringent regulatory regime," Salazar transparently prevaricated.

Salazar is consequently depriving America of 7.5 billion barrels of oil and 60 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. To ensure their access to a reliable supply of oil at the time, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. That's shows what a serious attack on the American people this policy is. [emphasis added]

Meanwhile, EPA Director Lisa Jackson is imposing cap and trade by regulatory decree, despite its thorough democratic rejection by a Democrat-controlled Congress and the American people in 2010.

Frankly, I don't fully understand why the oil companies don't simply, at this point, start breaking the law. Surely they could never be subject to legal punishment if they chose to fight. The American people would riot on their behalf.

I can only assume that, since having low-price oil and gas doesn't really affect the executives very much, they simply choose not to endure the hassle. Can't say I entirely blame them, but it's a real shame for the rest of us.

Where is Hank Rearden when you need him?

Brooks v Ryan Debate - No Winner, We All Lose

2010-12-04T13:27:00.000-08:00

Paul Ryan recently had a public debate with David Brooks and, not surprisingly, it was a total waste of time. Both parties agree on so many fundamentals there wasn't much to debate. Ryan avers that, contrary to the beliefs of some, he does not favor eliminating the social safety net (i.e. Social Security and Medicare).

That's a pity, because he surely knows that it's not only impractical in it's present form (which he wants to change), but immoral and unconstitutional in any form.

There are a dozen arguments I might make to support that claim. But, even accepting for argument's sake a government role in charity, I have to wonder why no one ever says it should be limited to the local or, at most, State level. Still, in this political climate, I could hardly expect Ryan to say otherwise.

There was one interesting result, though. David Brooks revealed himself to be just what I have long claimed he was: a Fascist. He said,

The argument he then put forth related to what he termed "narrative." He likes the Ryan-Rivlin plan. What he is concerned about is how Republicans have framed the argument: big vs. little government.

Instead, he wants to talk about culture, specifically whether government does things to enhance the public culture (e.g. encouraging independence and literacy) or undermine culture.

He thinks Republicans are too alarmist about the debt and too eager to draw lines in the sand that will lead to gridlock.

The Obama officials, he assured the group, aren't European welfare state proponents, they are just liberals who want a little more redistribution.

Set aside the obvious falsehood — or, in Brooks case it might be unconquerable stupidity — that Obama and his cronies aren't seeking to establish a European social democracy; Obama's every utterance makes it clear that's exactly what he wants.

Brooks made it clear – though he probably isn't aware of it — that Fascism is precisely what he favors. Anyone who believes it's a proper role of the Federal Government to "enhance the public culture" is either a communist or a fascist, and I don't believe Brooks is a communist.

That's the real problem here. Only a narrow sliver on the right believe there is absolutely no legitimate reason the Federal Government should be 'directing' the country, economically or — revolting thought — culturally. And that's why the debate was a waste of time.

Obama Plays Basketball, Ball Wins

2010-11-26T13:48:00.000-08:00

According to a Bloomberg headline, "Obama Gets 12 Stitches in Lip After Basketball Mishap"

Excellent. Maybe he'll shut up for a day or two and the economy will markedly improve. Cheap shot? Sure, but a guy can have his fantasies, can't he?

Update: Elbow, not ball, did the good deed. And from a man who should probably now be honored by celebrating his birthday as a national holiday. (Although, if he's he "director of programs" for something called "the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute," he's unquestionably a collectivist and probably a Progressive, so scratch that. Anyway, he did us a good deed, even if by accident, so here's to ya, Mr. Decerega!) [Hat Tip: Robert Costa, NRO]

The White House announced the culprit who elbowed Obama in the lip earlier today: Rey Decerega, who is the director of programs for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.

Decerega said in a statement that the game was all in good fun (and didn’t apologize)

Didn't apologize! Excellent.

A Thanksgiving Lesson in Political Philosophy

2010-11-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

Possibly you've read the story of how the Jamestown pilgrims nearly starved their first two years in America, and what saved them. In 1620, half the population of the Plymouth Colony died during its first harsh winter. The second half was close do doing so but...

the fall of 1623 marked the end of Plymouth’s debilitating food shortages.
For the last two planting seasons, the Pilgrims had grown crops communally – the approach first used at Jamestown and other English settlements. But as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something drastic needed to be done to increase the annual yield.
In April, [William] Bradford [leader of the Plymouth colony] had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before.
In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. “The women now went willingly into the field,” Bradford wrote, “and took their little ones with them to set corn.” The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.

It's only one data point, but a characteristic one. The pattern has been repeated countless times in dozens of countries over centuries now. Yet, almost 400 years later, we're still debating Progressives about the practicality of Capitalism vs [Communism/Socialism/Social Democracy/You-name-it-ism].

Clearly, economic facts alone are not going to decide the issue. Progressives are immune. Time to ramp up the moral crusade. Time to declare that even if, contrary to all history, Paul Poorguy winds up much poorer than Peter Privileged, it's still wrong to force Peter to support Paul.

When we start to make progress on that front, I'll be truly thankful.

[Hat tip: Daniel Griswold of Cato for the selection from "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathanial Philbrick."]

What Will Obama Learn?

2010-11-23T16:06:00.000-08:00

RCP links to a Huffington Post story with the headline: "What Obama '10 Can Learn From Obama '08."

Since it's on the HuffPost I can't be bothered to read it; I can imagine well enough the advice offered. But, no matter, it's pointless.

Better we should ask: what will Obama '12 learn from election '10? To which the answer is: not a damn thing.

If the debacles and blatant illegality of his policies of the past two years haven't taught him anything by now, they never will. You can't teach a man closed to all fact and logical argument.

P.S. I did skim the story just now and I'm glad to report my imagination is still working just fine.

Harsanyi Nails It On GM IPO

2010-11-19T13:40:00.000-08:00

David Harsanyi writes a brilliant column on the recent GM IPO, touted by Obama as a "success." To co-opt a phrase, I guess it depends on what you mean by "success."

He concludes:

"But when we undermine the rule of law, ignore property rights, create moral hazards and destroy organic job growth to save a company that had been terribly managed long before the recession, no one should be bragging about success."

I couldn't have said it better.

Conservatives Misread Lomberg's "Cool It"

2010-11-19T13:30:00.000-08:00

Several recent conservative commentaries offer a sympathetic review of Bjorn Lomberg's global warming documentary "Cool It."

These well-meaning individuals have been snookered. Bjorn Lomberg is more dangerous than Al Gore precisely because he appears (and is) more reasonable. Obvious con men like Gore expose their own racket before long. It's those who are more apparently reasonable - but still opposed to freedom - who do most of the damage in the world.

According to the Spectator story, "Mr. Lomborg's thesis is straightforward: Global warming is real and humanity needs to do something about it."

Its well known that that thesis has been radically undermined in the past two years.

Moreover, the idea that "we" should do anything about it - beyond leaving individuals free to adapt to any changes that occur - is the fatal flaw in Dr. Lomberg's argument.

Lomberg may sound more reasonable than many, but he is still committed to Comtean altruism, Roussean collectivism, and garden-variety statism, and still touts a highly dubious hypothesis to justify them. Running around Africa crying over the poor doesn't change any of that.

Scientists Trap Antimatter Atoms For First Time

2010-11-18T14:18:00.000-08:00

It won't affect the price of tea in China, or even create a new superbomb, but it's pretty cool nonetheless.

Yes, I'd like to see them do it with no government funding. Yes, it has no practical applications (yet). But there's just something that grabs me personally to see scientists still able to pull off feats of great engineering.

And, who knows, some interesting physics might come from it. We might someday learn why there's so little antimatter in the universe, and why antimatter atoms are rarely found. Will that have any practical application? I have no idea.

Headlines Tell It All

2010-11-11T15:26:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, you don't even need to read news stories to get a feel for the nature of the Federal government today. This list of sidebar stories on RCP tell you pretty much what you need to know about the disaster that is Barack Obama.

China's Hu Rebuffs Obama on Yuan
South Korea Trade Deal Stalls
Obama Talks Tough on North Korea
American Middle Class Downsizes as its Jobs Vanish, Move Away
WH Opposes Top Rate Extension
RCP Video Cashin: QE2 Looks Like Titanic

And the more he reveals himself as a loser, the more his punctured, cream-filled ego oozes out and makes an even bigger mess for the rest of us.

Jonah Goldberg on C-SPAN

2010-11-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

I haven't watched it yet, but 3 hours with Jonah Goldberg should be on everyone's list of must-see TV.

Big Govt: Which Way Now, America?

2010-11-06T12:29:00.001-07:00

At Big Government, I offer a few words on the implications of the recent election results for the future of freedom in America.

There’s much good news from the elections, but first let me wet blanket some of the fires of enthusiasm. Republican majority or Democrat, it remains the case that so long as the Dept of Health and Human Services, the EPA, the Federal Reserve, and the like still exist the Federal government will continue to do great harm. That will still be true even if a better-than-Reagan Republican wins in 2012.

Now, for the election analysis — including lots of good news from the events of Nov. 2.

There’s no doubt the American electorate in many, many places rejected the Obama-Pelosi-Reid anti-Constitutional approach to government, i.e. Progressivism.

That’s clear, even though the Republican pickup in the Senate was disappointing, especially with the re-election of Harry Reid. Take a look at Republican gains in the State legislatures: 650-700 seats, compared to 505 in 1994. That’s huge.

There’s bad news to be sure...

Read the rest here...

P.S. I also highly recommend Dr. Paul Hsieh's article at Pajamas Media: GOP, Dance With the One Who Brung You.

As Dr. Hsieh makes starkly clear, it will be vital for the Republicans to follow up on their (admittedly, weak-tea) promises to enlarge freedom in America. That's vital both for their viability as an alternative political party, and our futures, if we're to have one as free citizens.

Thanks!

Jeff

Ouch! Fed to Spend $600 Billion More to 'Boost' Economy

2010-11-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

More like goose the economy, and rectal probes are never any fun.

"The Federal Reserve launched a controversial new policy on Wednesday, committing to buy $600 billion more in government bonds by the middle of next year in an attempt to breathe new life into a struggling U.S. economy.

The decision, which takes the Fed into largely uncharted waters, is aimed at further lowering borrowing costs for consumers and businesses still suffering in the aftermath of the worst recession since the Great Depression."

Oh, dear lord.

Just as two side questions as we observe this train wreck in the offing: How can you lower borrowing costs when interest rates are virtually zero now? Moreover, why would you want to when the country is drowning in debt already?

Not for nothing did I recently name Ben Bernanke one of the six most dangerous Federal employees in the country (along with Obama, Reid, HHS Sec. Sebelius, EPA head Lisa Jackson, and any swing vote on the Supreme Court).

For anyone interested in Helicopter Ben's rationalization, you can read that here.

Central bankers around the world, less foolish than the ones in the U.S. lately, are not pleased.

Thailand said its central bank is already in talks with neighbours to devise a joint protection policy.

Brazil's central bank chief Henrique Mereilles said the US move had created "excessive dollar liquidity which we are absorbing," forcing his country to restrict inflows. Mexico's finance minister warned of "more bubbles."

I can't say I'm surprised, though. There were only three ways the Feds could get out of their fiscal mess: raise taxes, borrow even more, inflate. The first has been politically not viable since day one and two is about exhausted. Inflation is the most underhanded, the least visibly painful since it's gradual and most people can't connect the dots back to the Feds.

As I said recently, while I'm mostly pleased about the election results, so long as the HHS, the Federal Reserve, and the like continue to exist, the Federal government will continue to do great harm, no matter who is in the majority. (Obama, for example, has recently hinted that he will use the EPA to accomplish what he couldn't get done by now-stalled Cap-and-Tax legislation.)

Clearly, Nov. 2, 2010 was just the first small step in overthrowing the tyrants doing their best to destroy American prosperity.

How to (Re)Create a Free Country

2010-11-03T15:26:00.000-07:00

In Dennis Praeger's latest column, he explains why he's voting Nov. 2 for a party, not an individual candidate. His reasons are mostly sound. He recognizes that (a) the Democrat party is a lost cause (that's been true since McGovern ran), and (b) Republicans, imperfect as they are, are our only hope, politically speaking.

But it's those last two words (mine, not his) that are important. He says,

"It is probably accurate to say that no country in the world has less government intervention in the lives of its citizens than America does,"

on his way to making an accurate point about the Democratic Party being indistinguishable from a garden-variety European Social Democrat one.

The latter point is true, the first not fully accurate. Sadly, "less government intervention" is not nearly so true as it used to be.

In 1859 it was rare for an individual to have any contact with the Federal government at all, or to be much influenced by its actions. (Read Vilhelm Moberg's Swedish immigrant epic, The Immigrants).

Even by 1890 this was still a free country. There was graft and corruption, but it was limited mostly to the transportation system. Individual citizens paid no income tax. There was no EPA to tell farmers they couldn't drain a mud puddle. You could erect a barn without a permit containing 'guidelines' dictated by the DoE.

By 1912, all that was rapidly beginning to change in significant ways. The establishment of the Federal Reserve and the passage of the 16th Amendment were sharp bends in the curve that graphs the path to totalitarianism.

By 1940 the die was all but cast, despite the Supreme Court rolling back a lot of FDR's dictatorial policies. With Social Security, farm subsidies made permanent, and the alphabet soup of Federal agencies, government 'management' of the private lives of citizens became the norm.

But the real throttling of freedom in America came in the mid-1960s when the country was finally swamped philosophically by Progressivism in its deepest cultural forms. Medicare was just one political expression of that.

Reagan held the line for a little while, and rolled back some onerous taxes and regulations. But it was a blip in the overall trend. Today, you can't watch a TV ad, catch a current movie, or even walk into a grocery store without seeing the evidence of that period's nihilism.

To really become a free country again, the Federal leviathan will have to be pared back a century's worth of intrusions, at least. That means eliminating the Dept of Ed, HHS, the Federal Reserve, the DoE, and a good deal more. It will mean making illegal the spoils system that has allowed Congressmen to act as distributors of Federal money to constituents back home. It will mean, especially, paring back the Executive branch to its original purposes.

But beyond the political changes, we'll never recreate America as the land of the free until we make radical improvements to the culture that perpetuates our present political system. That starts with radical changes to education, including privatizing the school system and flushing out the Progressivism oozing from its every pore.

That's a very big set of very difficult tasks, to be sure, but it's the only long-term solution. Americans are used to taking big, bold steps. Time to begin the journey and voting a certain way is only the smallest first step.

De Mint Advises Senate Rookies On Corruption

2010-11-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

One of a small band of heroes in the Senate, Jim De Mint of South Carolina offers some great advice to rookies on how to avoid being corrupted by D.C.:

First, don't request earmarks. If you do, you'll vote for legislation based on what's in it for your state, not what's best for the country. You will lose the ability to criticize wasteful spending. And, if you dare to oppose other pork-barrel projects, the earmarkers will retaliate against you.

In 2005, Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) offered a measure to kill funding for the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere." Before the vote, Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), an appropriator, issued a warning on the Senate floor.

"If we start cutting funding for individual projects, your project may be next," she said.

...

When you are in Washington, remember what the voters back home want: less government and more freedom.[emphasis added]

Millions of people are out of work, the government is going bankrupt and the country is trillions in debt. Americans have watched in disgust as billions of their tax dollars have been wasted on failed jobs plans, bailouts and takeovers. It's up to us to stop the spending spree and make sure we have a government that benefits America instead of being a burden to it.

Amen.

Nevadans Betray Fellow Citizens

2010-11-02T21:56:00.000-07:00

With almost 41% of precincts reporting, Harry Reid leads Sharon Angle by over 30,000 votes, 51% to 45%. Barring a miracle, every single eligible voter who did not fill the bubble for Angle owes the rest of us an apology.

Nevada voters have returned to the Senate, and very likely the Majority Leader job, one of the five most destructive individuals in America.

At least as much as Obama, and on a par with Pelosi, Harry Reid has helped to drive the country to economic ruin. He has helped pass legislation against the will of the people that eliminates their right to freely trade with health care services providers. He has led the most destructive Senate of the past 70 years, violating individual rights with impunity every day of the past four. Harry Reid belongs in jail, and the Nevada voters have instead returned him to head the syndicate.

It's useless to suggest they hang their heads in shame. They have none. The rest of the country should boycott Las Vegas until Harry Reid is no longer in power.

Recessions and Policy Effects, Data For 60 Years

2010-11-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

Peter Ferrara offers a tour de force history of recessions and the policies used to meet them over the past 60 years. Here's just a short sample of the unassailable evidence that Keynesianism doesn't work:

In April 1960, the American economy tumbled into recession again. There was no trillion dollar stimulus package producing record shattering deficits and national debt. Yet, somehow, in February 1961, just 10 months later, the economy was back in recovery mode, again before Barack Obama was even born. Spurred by the across the board Kennedy tax rate cuts, the economy boomed for a then record 106 months.

In December 1969, the U.S. economy cycled into recession once again, in President Nixon's first year in office. Somehow, by November, 1970, just 11 months later, the economy was in recovery once again, even though Barack Obama was only 9 years old.

In November 1973, the worst recession of the entire postwar era up until then began. It took 16 months for the economy to recover, starting in March 1975. Over the next four quarters, the economy came roaring back, with real economic growth of 6.2%. For 1976, the unemployment rate was 7.7%.

"The Failed Economic Policies of the Past"

In July 1981, after President Reagan had been in office just six months, the economy fell into arguably a worse recession than in 1973-75. Yet President Reagan continued to back the strong dollar monetary policies of the Federal Reserve that slew the roaring inflation of the 1970s, caused by the same monetary policy strategy that current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke just announced last week.

In just two years, over 1979 to 1980, prices had risen by 25%. The strict monetary policy Reagan supported cut the annual inflation rate in half by 1982, and in half again by 1983, to just 3.2%. Inflation has not been heard from since.

The data is so clear in its implications, one has to wonder what a Keynesian would say. A pack of obfuscating lies, for sure, but what else?

Take This Culture and Shove It

2010-11-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

Peter Cresswell at Not PC tripped one of my AMAWG (Angry Middle-Aged White Guy) switches today, so buckle your seat belt and prepare for a rant on one of my favorite sore spots: modern culture vs the '50s.

Peter posted a series of ads from days gone by.

Here's a sample, a Chesterfield ad featuring none other than Ronald Reagan enjoying a smoke.

Peter then asked "[B]ut would you really want to live there again?"

My [expanded] answer:

Absolutely. For all its imperfections, by comparison to the moral and aesthetic sewer of today, it was nirvana.

Want a useful mental image to concretize the comparison? See the trailer for the original (1950) "Cheaper By the Dozen," a very mediocre film with Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy, then see the trailer for the 2003 version with Steve Martin.

There's no better example of my point.

The original is treacly and dull. But it's filled with kids who are smart, made so by their father's insistence on developing their minds. (He uses every opportunity to teach them science, history, etc., even going so far as to put a map of the solar system on the dining room wall).

The house is always spotless, kept that way by parents who required their children to behave like civilized human beings. The wife is as smart as the husband, but not depicted as morally superior with a lunkhead husband, as in every sitcom today. She is a professional industrial psychologist like Frank. (The movie is based on a true story about Frank Gilbreth, a time-and-motion studies expert of the early 20th century, and his wife and 12 kids, as written by two of the kids as adults.)

The 21st century version is po-mo vicious, featuring kids who are future drug addicts and muggers-in-training. The Steve Martin trailer opens with a shot of his house in absolute disarray, complete with food and paint splattered everywhere. Steve, as he always does, behaves in a completely irrational manner and is clearly overwhelmed (yet loving it!). His wife is as dull as it's possible for a woman to get. How cute.

Here's another piece of evidence. [Spoilers ahead, which I think are ok here, since the film is two years old.]

I saw the 2008 Iron Man film recently, starring the cow-eyed and perpetually whiny Robert Downey Jr., whom — oddly — many conservatives on Big Hollywood chose to defend. (An actor who projects a more consistently clinically depressed air would be hard to find. To make him the hero tells you something already about the mind of a modern director.)

The movie itself, from the perspectives of plot, production values, and even performance was actually quite good by contemporary standards. Still, it was utterly amoral despite the main character's alleged seeing of the light after a horrific experience in Afghanistan.

It opens with Tony Stark joking it up with a bunch of soldiers in Afghanistan riding in a Humvee, which is shortly blown to smithereens. The film goes downhill from there, with ultra-hedonist Stark ultimately escaping his warlord captors (note they are not jihadists but our 'allies') then manically working in his lab, partying in Dubai, and mostly experimenting with his suit.

A few minutes of plot emerge in the final sequence when we discover, surprise!, that Jeff Bridges' Daddy Warbucks lookalike character ordered him killed in order to take over the company, pissed even before Stark announced he was getting out of the weapons business. (Shades of liberal guilt-ridden foreign policy!)

By contrast, a very stark contrast if you'll pardon the pun, the Iron Man comics, which I read avidly as a teen, portrayed a real hero, one dedicated to fighting injustice, like most superheroes. He was a rich playboy, but that had a somewhat different meaning two generations ago. He didn't whine neurotically about his inner moral conflict. He didn't joke around in every frame. He didn't treat life as if it were a perpetual frat party that happened to include inventing astonishing technology from time to time.

My point is this: even the stuff that was bad (i.e. dull, mediocre, poorly executed) 50 years ago was lightyears ahead morally and artistically of all but the absolute best work of today.

Rose colored glasses? Selection bias? Watch and study enough of the period — apart from living consciously through the past 50 years, I've seen approximately 3,000 American films (90% of them pre-1965) — and any decent, honest person will come to the same inductive conclusion.

There are those who claim, with some justification, that life wasn't really like the movies of 80-40 years ago. Perhaps that's true in many ways. They were movies, after all. But the fact that filmmakers chose to portray those characters in that way, doing those things, signifies a very different ethic and esthetic all by itself.

False alternative? Certainly. There's nothing in reality, including our own nature, that prevents us choosing a future better than anything in the past 2,000 years.

But the '40s and '50s, not to mention the 19th century, actually happened, so we know a relatively clean culture is possible. Rising above that level is a matter of inventing that which has never been seen, a daunting task at minimum. I'd bet it'll be a hundred years before the culture catches up to it again.

Tim Geithner's Plan to Save the World

2010-10-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

A recent headline for a Financial Times story reads: "Geithner Plans to Save the World Economy"*

Uh, I hadn't even read the story and I was already Beelzebub-level scared. Unfortunately, things don't get much better when you read it.

Geithner is credited with pushing the idea to:

broaden the focus from exchange rates. G20 countries, he says, should commit to keep their current accounts – whether deficits or surpluses – within a percentage limit of national output.

Reorienting the discussion towards current accounts makes good sense. They are at the heart of the global imbalances; exchange rates are merely instruments – and far from the only ones – for influencing them. Current account targets would leave open how excessive balances are to be shrunk – through nominal or real exchange rate adjustments or through other policies that affect public or private sector surpluses and deficits.

That's it! Why didn't I think of that? The worlds' economies are going down the tubes because of bad current account targets. We need more central banker intervention! No wonder they call him The Boy Wonder.

*Full disclosure: This was RCP's headline for the story, not the FT's. The former clearly knows a thing or two about generating clicks. The FT has it as: "A walk in the old Bretton Woods"

Radio Interview for The Wells Report Scheduled Oct 28

2010-10-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

As promised, the Jon David Wells radio interview has been rescheduled. Same time, new date.

I'm scheduled to be interviewed on The Wells Report at KSKY radio (660 AM), this Thursday, Oct. 28 at 3:20 pm Pacific (6:20 pm ET, 5:20 pm CT, 4:20 pm MT, 11:20 am NZ). The show broadcasts from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area in Texas.

Here's a link to listen in. I hope you will. [Click the red "Listen Live" button near the top of the main text, roughly in the middle of the screen.]

We'll be talking about my recent Pajamas Media article, Beyond Politics: Removing the Progressive Drag On America, and presumably other things.
It promises to be lively, since I'll no doubt be asked my suggestions for how to straighten out the mess the U.S. is in.

Your suggestions are also welcome.

Thanks,
Jeff

Read FDR's Folly by Jim Powell

2010-10-26T01:00:00.001-07:00

I've recently finished reading FDR's Folly and I'm here to say it's one of the best books on the subject I've read. It's chock full of fact-filled horror stories with a moral: each one tells you exactly what America's first unopposed dictator was up to and what the results were. That is, he was unopposed by all but the Supreme Court of the day.

It's now all-but forgotten, but the Supreme Court — flawed from day one, admittedly — once stood as a bulwark protecting individual rights. They shut down several of FDR's more egregious rapes of liberty. Even when the vote went the wrong way there were some heroic statements made by justices of the time. (This was before they were castrated by FDR's bluff to pack the Court and his subsequent appointments.)

From Chapter 12 comes this one:

Nebbia v New York, 291 U.S. 502 (1934). A Rochester grocer was convicted of selling two bottles of milk for less than the nine cents per quart ordered by the Milk Control Board.

McReynolds, "The Legislature cannot lawfully destroy guaranteed rights of one man with the prime purpose of enriching another, even if, for the moment, this may seem advantageous to the public...

To him with less than nine cents it says-- You cannot procure a quart of milk from the grocer although he is anxious to accept what you can pay and the demands of your household are urgent."

The odds of even the allegedly conservative members of today's SCOTUS recognizing that principle are less than 1 in 4. I.e., only Thomas would come close, and then not consistently.

Anyway, the point is, if you have time to read only one book about that period, so supremely relevant to events of today, FDR's Folly by Jim Powell should be the one.

ObamaCare and the Election

2010-10-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

"The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself." Hilaire Belloc

That quote came up in the context of an editorial in the Washington Examiner about Sebelius' bullying of the insurance companies to shut up and get in line, or else.

It's worth a reference here because — with the election only a week away — the repeal of ObamaCare hangs in the balance. If the House and Senate turn Republican in large enough numbers it's possible GOP leaders will grow (at least, temporary) spines and back the effort fully.

Several court cases are winding through the system, but they chiefly involve the individual mandate, which — morally grotesque as it is — really has no teeth. (The IRS is authorized by the bill to deal with refusniks but they have no legal authority in it to exact any punishments.) So, even if when the case(s) finally make it to the Supreme Court and they knock it down, the rest will still stand.

On top of that, even such staunch pro-freedom politicians as Rep. Paul Ryan are not optimistic about any rear-guard effort to defund it. If a guy that committed and knowledgeable says it won't be a slam dunk to starve the beast, I have to give it some weight.

There's another relevant aspect to that Belloc quote: ObamaCare is an attempt to control both wealth and life itself. You don't have to be a paranoid right-winger to believe there will be something like death panels, if ObamaCare stands.

The NHS is Britain already exercises a very similar authority and ObamaCare is much worse than socialized medicine — it's fascist medicine. At least under a socialized system the government is on the hook for providing something. Here, they do nothing but stand on the sidelines and make it near-impossible for health insurers and health care providers to engage in trade.

So, please join the effort this November not only to vote the Democrats out of power, but to prevent Progressive and labor union activists from their usual vote fraud. If any given race is close, they'll stuff ballots like you never saw before, and they have admitted as much openly. (Fronting faux-Tea Party supported candidates to siphon Republican votes is just one of the ways they're doing that, even in advance of the election. Illegally registering thousands of new Democratic voters is another.)

We're in for the fight of the century. It's time to make Progressives around the country even more depressed than they already are.

NPR's Contradictions

2010-10-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

NPR's moral failures go far beyond firing Juan Williams for a politically incorrect remark. It's deeper than being irked over his appearances on allegedly right-wing Fox News.

NPR's CEO, like Progressives everywhere, is caught in the contradictions of subjectivism. Faux liberals that they are, they preach tolerance for everything - because according to their ethical philosophy there are no objective principles of morality - then display intolerance for a remark they regard as "inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices.”

There's no way out of this inconsistency for a faux liberal. It's built into the basic fiber from which the Progressive cloth is cut.

Not content with CEO Schiller's getting herself into hot water by publicly remarking that Williams should've "consulted his psychiatrist" before making the statement, NPR's Ombudsman doubled down on the lunacy.

In a story headlined: "NPR's Firing of Juan Williams Was Poorly Handled" the lying fence-sitter said:

Juan Williams once again got himself into trouble with NPR for comments he made at his other job, at Fox News.

Right. His firing was "poorly handled" but he really did bring it on himself.

She tripled the foolish factor by adding:

Instead, this latest incident with Williams centers around a collision of values: NPR's values emphasizing fact-based, objective journalism versus the tendency in some parts of the news media, notably Fox News, to promote only one side of the ideological spectrum.

That's rich. NPR is objective but Fox is biased. Um, NPR proudly upholds Progressive values (a fact favorably noted by over a third of its listeners as one reason they tune in). Those values are entirely the opposite of fact-based and by definition are not objective. Progressivism's core epistemology comes from Pragmatism, whose central premise is there's no such thing as objective anything.

Apart from all that blatant hypocrisy, the firing of Juan Williams shows that contemporary liberals never mean anything they say about black people.

Here, a black liberal gets fired for making a mild comment about Muslims. (One that even moderate Muslims in this country would agree with if they weren't too scared to speak up, and one he even qualified to nullity later in the same program.) But since blacks no longer have it institutionally bad in this country, they've outlived their usefulness to white race hustlers like Vivian Schiller. So, Muslims are now the au courant 'oppressed' group that faux-liberals can drool all over with their faux sympathy.

If it should come to pass someday that this idiotic series of wars finally comes to an end - contrary to Gen. Petraeus' belief — then Muslims will settle into being just another group whose more vocal self-appointed spokespeople yammer about their victimhood. Then there will no doubt be some new convenient 'oppressed' group that so-called liberals can use to undermine individual freedom.

Of course, the real outrage here is not chiefly the depressingly familiar hypocrisy of yet another Progressive, but that NPR - a (partly) taxpayer funded news and editorial radio program - exists in the first place. Let them compete in the open market and they can be as intolerant - and embrace as many contradictions - as they like.

A Blast From the Past: About Vietnam

2010-10-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

While organizing some old columns and comments I ran across this Feb, 2007 response to Jack Wakefield on the Forum 4 Ayn Rand Fans, produced during a 'conversation' about the effects of the Vietnam War. It has only slight relevance to things that are going on today — in particular the issues of a military effort 'discrediting' a philosophy, and the weariness of the American public after years of war. I'm reproducing it here mostly because I thought the writing and the ideas were worth sharing.

Note to those (most, I presume) who don't know who Jack Wakefield is. He's a nuclear power plant engineer who lives in Chicago and comments occasionally through and for Robert Tracinski's The Intellectual Activist.

Those facts are all the more remarkable because Jack is not a professional pundit, yet he is one of the finest cultural analysts in America. I don't always agree with him, but he always has something worthwhile reading.

Anyway, without further ado, here's me responding to his claims (I summarize) that the American defeat in Vietnam knocked the wind out of America's sails for a while.

On Discrediting

It's often put about in Objectivist circles (and elsewhere) that President Bush's actions have "discredited the effort" against the jihadists – intellectually and morally.

I'm no fan of George Bush in general, but I think this view is wrong for reasons that go far beyond the current president. No action that the American President, or anyone else, can take can discredit an effort which is appropriate. Even if the view is modified to be 'discredited in the eyes of (some) onlookers', this is incorrect in three ways.

(1) Many are still supporting Bush's efforts – there are die-hard faux-conservatives just as there are die-hard faux-liberals.

Some support Bush because he's not a (so-called) liberal — they use him as a philosophical whip to combat larger causes. The die-hard faux-liberals, interestingly, do the same thing. They are not pro anything; they are simply anti-everything the faux-conservatives are for. Other conservatives genuinely believe in what they think he's trying to do, just as the so-called liberals are genuinely opposed.

(Aside: Large and vocal segments of the two main wings of current political non-thought haven't much in the way of ideas at all, other than 'I hate what you stand for'. In the case of the faux-liberals, they happen to hate what the faux-conservatives partially and inconsistently stand for: everything that makes a human life on Earth possible – reason, individual responsibility and effort, political freedom, etc.)

(2) By and large, people have much the same fundamental view they had three and a half years ago (or three and half decades ago): do it, or get out. They are seeing that the President's team isn't doing it, so they're leaning now toward 'get out'.

Be that as it may, whatever the President does or doesn't do, says or doesn't say, everyone who wants to is capable of thinking for himself. That means he can judge that the right thing was done incorrectly, or for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing done for the right motives, but incompetently, or any mixture thereof.

George Bush, for example, can — foolishly — say that 'the primary reason we are going to war in Iraq is the threat of WMD which the Iraqis possess or will soon develop'. (This wasn't his initial argument, but it quickly took center stage. Such is the measure of how easily manipulated by the press he is.)

This is the wrong reason to make war on Iraq, or at least far from the best reason. Nevertheless, it isn't too late even now to say 'No, these are the reasons.' and his story has, in fact, evolved over time — especially since the WMD weren't found in abundance sitting on the porch steps of Hussein's palace.

(3) The point is, whether or not he ever states the correct reasons that would objectively justify the effort, the correct reasons still exist and could be identified and voiced now or after the effort by any right thinking person — no matter the actual outcome. The correct moral case doesn't depend on the President carrying out the enterprise correctly, nor what reasons he gives for undertaking it.

That people will, it's true, be affected by what the President says are the reasons, that some will agree others not, doesn't change that. Unless, we have in mind a very different meaning of the word 'discredit'.

If all that is meant by that is that many will disapprove of the past effort and not want to undertake a similar one in the future, then the word is a paltry thing, because it then just refers to a (potentially large) group of individuals subjective whims.

In the latter case, the only proper response is: 'so what?'.

But, I assert that most people at the start, in the middle, and still today are capable of judging well the effort without the President's interpretation of events — nor that of the New York Times.

Thus, the President isn't necessarily discrediting (or crediting) anything by his actions. Failure doesn't necessarily discredit an effort — it depends on how one analyzes the situation after the fact.

Also, importantly, when asserting that the 'effort is discredited', one has to be very careful about exactly what 'the' is — the Iraq War?, battling the jihadists? Most people are perfectly capable of making the distinction, no matter what the majority of newspapers and magazines would have them believe.

On Vietnam and Its Aftereffects

"Military defeat in Vietnam opened up a hole in the American culture and the New Left dove [sic] a wedge deep into that hole. The defeat influenced good people, undermining their self-confidence and moral assertiveness, causing them to grow silent and withdraw...and evil advanced with little obstruction into the political culture." Jack Wakeland

I disagree from many perspectives with these views.

A military defeat of the sort that occurred in Vietnam can make one angry, sad, (temporarily) depressed, or any number of things. It can not cause good persons' self-confidence or moral assertiveness to waver, in general. Some may, but the majority will go on much as they were before. The American people in the 1970s were not similar to Germans between 1918 and 1935 in this respect.

The American people were, rightly, tired of the debacle in Vietnam — an undertaking which should never have been undertaken and (like so many military efforts begun by Democrats) one in which the U.S. had no self-interest to assert.

Thus, they were largely glad to be out of it. That many had a largely negative view of the military afterwards is a different matter. The press certainly had a field day advertising My Lai, the Tet offensive, the withdrawal, and other actions in which the U.S. allegedly didn't look so good. This has been the bread and butter of U.S. journalism since the 1930s and it accelerated in the 1960s, as so-called leftism became more prominent in American culture.

It took another 15-20 years or so for most people to catch on to the fact that, on the whole, journalists are worse liars than the average politician. (One way they're worse is that one expects politicians to lie, journalists are supposed to tell the truth.)

But that doesn't show that the American people lost 'assertiveness'. It means the media were successful, to a degree, in their (still ongoing) campaign to paint the facts a certain way, in order to achieve their cultural agenda: the permanent alteration of American culture to look like Europe.

The result was not a lack of self-confidence, nor moral assertiveness. It was, as it had been for the period of most of the 20th century, a failure of the majority of Americans to hold their government accountable — a trend which has only been slightly reversed in recent years.

What did happen after Vietnam?

Military

With respect to the majority view of the military, the conclusion is simple. During, and therefore afterward, the majority thought (rightly or wrongly) that the military were doing wrong. They thought the military had no business being there and that while there they did many bad things. My Lai was the poster child, but the general view was pretty much the same before and after that.

(Unfortunately for the military, the average soldier who was there also thought much the same thing. Any 'gung-ho' captain was a good candidate for getting his head blown off by his own men. They had no interest in or intention of dying for what they thought was a ridiculous cause. Such is only one result of the draft.)

That view continued largely intact until the Gulf War. (Though Reagan did make some difference in restoring respect for having a strong military.) When the cause was considered just, the American people were behind it. The military gained swift, sure victories and looked like heroes (as they were). The American people were glued to CNN like it was a Tuesday Movie of the Week.

In this sense, a just cause carried out correctly did 'credit the effort'.

Economics

Economically, the period after the Vietnam war was a disaster for about 10-15 years, it's true. But the Vietnam war didn't cause, nor exacerbate, that situation. It wasn't expensive enough to account for such a major effect, and it didn't cause people to suddenly lose their will or ability to produce. The Vietnam War didn't produce bad economic philosophy or policies.

Culturally

The defeat in Vietnam didn't produce hippies, it didn't produce New Ageism, and it certainly didn't create New Left philosophy, nor give it something to feed on that wasn't there already. The roots of that philosophy, as I'm sure you know, go back much further.

Even looking largely at less fundamental causes, New Left influences were not fed by the defeat in Vietnam. After the war, there weren't large groups, nor influential voices saying, "See we lost the war, so we should do X."

The blatant hostility to science, technology, and civilization that gave growth hormones to the environmental movement didn't grow out of the defeat in Vietnam. The amoralism that took hold of American culture for about 20 years didn't grow out of the defeat in Vietnam. The pragmatism that engulfed American culture wasn't given birth nor fed by the defeat in Vietnam. The egalitarianism, multiculturalism, and puritanism of politically correct thought that came along soon after didn't grow out of the defeat in Vietnam. None of the real-world instances of these abstractions was caused by the Vietnam War, nor America's defeat.

All those things have something in common: they are all 'anti' ideas, anti-actions. I.e. they are not positive ideas or actions undertaken for a positive goal; they are rebellions. That rebellion was extant and grew with the Vietnam War, but wasn't caused nor fed by it. Quite the contrary, to a large degree the defeat in Vietnam was the effect of these things, not their cause.

RESCHEDULED: Dallas Radio Interview Oct. 22

2010-10-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: As often happens with these things, the radio interview is to be rescheduled. Once the publicist for Pajamas Media lets me know, I'll advertise the new date/time.

Thanks to all those who sent congratulatory emails (and all those who didn't, too; I know you're busy).

I'll update you when I know more.

All the Best,

Jeff

-----------
I'm scheduled to be interviewed by Jon David Wells of KSKY radio 660 AM, this Friday, Oct. 22. It broadcasts from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area in Texas.

Sorry for the last minute notice, but the whole thing was arranged very quickly.

We'll be talking about recent Pajamas Media article, Beyond Politics: Removing the Progressive Drag On America, and presumably other things.

It's scheduled to begin at 6:20 pm ET [5:20 pm CT, [4:20 pm MT, 3:20 pm Pacific].

Here's a link to listen in. I hope you will. [Click the red "Listen Live" button near the top of the main text, roughly in the middle of the screen.]

It promises to be lively, since I'll no doubt be asked my suggestions for how to straighten out the mess the U.S. is in.

Your suggestions welcome.

Pajamas Media Article: The Risk of Republican Betrayal

2010-10-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

My new article at Pajamas Media, The Risk of Post-Election Republican Betrayal, is hot off the presses. It begins:

"There’s been a sea change in the country, much quicker and more substantial than liberty lovers might have expected as recently as a year ago. Yet for some of us, it’s hard to escape a nagging question.

What happens after January when the new congressional session begins? ..."

Please read the rest and add your comments.

Thanks,
Jeff

New Article at Big Govt: Obama Headed for Waterloo

2010-10-14T16:10:00.000-07:00

Please head over to Breitbart's Big Government and read my latest article, "Follow Napoleon’s Advice on the Chamber Pot ‘Scandal'," a short commentary on Obama's ill-conceived attack on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Among other things, I point out that:

"[S]omeone might actually take Obama seriously. (Yes, I know that’s increasingly unlikely as each day passes, and not chiefly because of Chamber Pot.) If they do — “they” being, say, some ambitious young lawyer in the DoJ — they might just start looking into all his foreign campaign contributions collected illegally via credit card in mid-2008."

Thanks,
Jeff

Carter v Reagan on Energy Policy, A Review

2010-10-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

Recently, Richard Cohen published an article touting Jimmy Carter's energy policies, and excoriating Ronald Reagan's. This trip down memory lane may be pleasant for Mr. Cohen. And somehow, in his deluded mind, it may help him establish that Mr. Obama, to the extent he is like Carter, is among the angels. But history says otherwise.

According to Cohen,

"Reagan had his virtues, but coming to grips with energy reality was not one of them. In contrast to Carter's scolding approach to energy policy, Reagan simply declared it was morning again in America (his 1984 re-election campaign slogan) -- and left it at that. The wonders of the free enterprise system would provide. God would provide. It was a very Third World approach to a First World problem."

This is the usual (so-called) liberal lie combined with the typical Progressive viewpoint. To such a person, only government can create, business is always parasitic - the exact opposite of reality.

Below are three brief pieces showing clearly that Reagan had a very good grip on "energy reality." He advocated free market solutions, on the whole, and worked to remove barriers built up by the Federal Government for decades prior.

Unfortunately, Congress blocked him at every turn, whenever possible.

Worst of all may be the claim that turning to the free market, rather than central government dictates, for solutions is "Third World." Uh, I don't see a lot of free enterprise in energy production (or anything else) in Guatamala, Cuba, or Venezuela, now or 30 years ago. Ditto, most of Africa, Yemen, or any other Third World country.

But let's leave fantasy aside and turn to actual evidence.

A timeline of Reagan's Policies:

January 28, 1981
President Reagan signs Executive Order 12287, which provides for the decontrol of crude oil and refined petroleum products.

February 25, 1981
Secretary Edwards announces a major reorganization of DOE to improve management and increase emphasis on research, development, and production.

October 8, 1981
The Reagan Administration announces a nuclear energy policy that anticipates the establishment of a facility for the storage of high-level radioactive waste and lifts the ban on commercial reprocessing of nuclear fuel.

April 5, 1982
Secretary Edwards announces placement of the 250-millionth barrel of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

May 24, 1982
President Reagan proposes legislation transferring most responsibilities of DOE to the Department of Commerce. Congress fails to act on the proposal

January 7, 1983
President Reagan signs the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the Nation's first comprehensive nuclear waste legislation.

October 7, 1983
DOE establishes a Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Office.

October 26, 1983
The Senate refuses to continue funding the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, effectively terminating the project.

Reagan on ANWR:

"In 1987, when President Reagan asked Congress to open ANWR along with a required report showing that it could be done safely and help supply 1 million barrels per day, Congress ignored him, and instead expanded the amount of wilderness in the US greatly, taking even more lands away from energy production. Congress did finally pass a bill to open a small piece of ANWR in 1995, but President Clinton vetoed it."

Reagan on Oil Price Controls and Taxes:

"At the beginning of his presidency, Reagan ended the price controls on domestic oil which had been started by Richard Nixon; they had contributed to both the 1973 Oil Crisis and the 1979 Energy Crisis.[33][34] The price of oil subsequently dropped, and the 1980s did not see the gasoline lines and fuel shortages that the 1970s had.[34]

Reagan also attempted to make good on his 1980 campaign promise to repeal the "Windfall Profit Tax" that Carter and Congress enacted in 1980 on domestic oil production; he was able to do so in 1988, when Congress agreed that it had increased dependence on foreign oil.[35] The tax was not a tax on profits, but an excise tax on the difference between a statutory "base price" and the market price.[36] Reagen also stopped aggressive pushing of new auto efficiency standard by Carter administration, descended on alternative energy researches started by Carter administration."

As I've said before, these people don't even lie well anymore.

Feds Engage in Insider Trading... And It's Perfectly Legal

2010-10-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

Veronique de Rugy writes at NRO about a Wall Street Journal editorial exposing the practice. She says pretty much everything I would need to. So, without further ado:

Now, this is called insider trading in the private sector, and people are going to jail for it. Whether one thinks that insider trading is a crime that deserves punishment is not even the issue here.

What is stunning is that while insider trading is illegal in the private sector, it is totally legal for government employees to do it, because insider-trading laws don’t apply to Congress. Basically, Congress passed a law making insider trading illegal for the private sector and exempted itself. [emphasis added]

Some lawmakers find the double standard shocking, and a few years back, a few of them proposed a bill that would prevent members and employees of Congress from trading securities based on nonpublic information they obtain. That bill went nowhere.

I'll just add this: That highlighted statement encapsulates everything I've been writing about for months about the Federal rape of the rule of law.

Every single person engaged in this — since they can't be jailed or deported, as they deserve — should be shunned by every person who learns their names. Restaurateurs should refuse to feed them. Gasoline station owners should refuse to sell them gas. Banks should refuse to accept their deposits.

This policy – once in force in many subtle ways in America – is the one, peaceful and unstoppable method of public protest that would truly bring the Federal government to heel. Associate the appropriate consequences once again with immoral behavior and it would taper off to a livable hum, as it was in generations past.

Waiting for Congress to tame itself, no matter who is elected — as the old Samuel Johnson saying goes — represents the triumph of hope over experience.

McDonald’s ObamaCare Deal Violates Rule of Law

2010-10-11T20:21:00.000-07:00

Please pop over to Breitbart's Big Government and read my newest article, a short commentary on McDonald's getting a waiver to avoid some of ObamaCare's required actions.

It starts:

"In a blatantly unconstitutional move, the Feds have let McDonalds off the hook from some of ObamaCare’s requirements. This violation of the Equal Protection clause is just one more reminder, as if we needed it, that D.C. is now completely ignoring the rule of law and deciding issues based on political pressure and pull."

I encourage you to comment, there and here. Especially there.

Thanks,
Jeff

Sebelius Pegs the Irony Meter

2010-10-11T11:24:00.000-07:00

Commissar Kathleen is at it again. Rushing to rationalize her decision to let McDonald's opt out of certain ObamaCare-required actions — violating the Equal Protection clause in the process — she had this to say: "This is a health care model built around the private market," she said. "It might be the salvation of the private market."

I guess she's now joined the George Bush school of capitalism, where you violate it in order to save it.

If nothing else, it demonstrates that Progressives are so far gone, they can't even recognize the distinction between the free market and a fascist one.

Chemistry Nobel Winners Are True Heroes

2010-10-09T15:15:00.000-07:00

To round out my Nobel Prize commentary, I highlight the story of this years winners for Chemistry: Richard Heck, Ei-Ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki "for developing a key synthetic technique to make complex organic molecules used in medicine and electronics."

I can't explain what got into the water in Sweden this year, but handing out the prize for "develop[ing] a key synthetic technique for making complex organic molecules used in medicine, agriculture and electronics" was another stroke of right on.

Similar to the Physics Nobel, the researchers earned the award for investigating carbon bonds. As the LA Times story describes it

Among [Heck's] first feats was joining a short carbon chain to a ring of carbon atoms to produce styrene, the raw material of the now widely used plastic polystyrene.
A similar process is also used in the production of the anti-inflammatory drug naproxen, the asthma drug montelukast and the herbicide prosulfuron.
...
One of the most spectacular feats was the 1994 synthesis of a naturally occurring chemical called palytoxin, which was first isolated from a coral in Hawaii in 1971. Palytoxin contains 129 carbon atoms linked in a precise three-dimensional structure that chemists were able to reproduce using the Suzuki reaction.

What's most interesting about this type of research is how even relatively mundane things like this are still part of leading edge science. We've come a long way, but there is still much to be learned, highlighting the importance of the freedom required to let it continue.

And for anyone who gives all this a big, fat yawn, I'll try to demonstrate its value with a personal anecdote from just this morning.

I made steak last night on my stove top grill. This morning, I sprayed the cast-iron surface with fume-free Easy Off and let it sit, where it didn't stink up the kitchen one bit. Less than an hour later, I rinsed it off, wiped it a couple of times with a sponge (no scouring), and I was done. Safe, effortless, and quick.

Multiply that savings of time and effort by a billion people for fifty years worth of days and you have some idea of just how important even ordinary chemistry truly is.

Now consider this: how many politicians names do you know versus how many chemists'? Yeah, me neither.

Llosa Awarded Literature Nobel

2010-10-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

If Mario Vargas Llosa is everything that's being said about him, it's a complete mystery how he won the Noble Prize for Literature. In the past 76 years, that has invariably gone to writers who are, when they aren't explicitly left wing, at least postmodern Anti(s).

On principle, I'm opposed to giving that prize in the first place, since the Academy employs nothing close to objective criteria for choosing the winner. But, at least it was one of the five listed in Nobel's will, unlike the bogus Economics Prize. (It's also not to his credit that he left out specifying a mathematics prize, but the Fields Medal more than makes up for that.)

Still, if the following quote is any indication, Llosa certainly deserves some kind of a prize:

The liberal I aspire to be considers freedom a core value. Thanks to this freedom, humanity has been able to journey from the primitive cave to the stars and the information revolution, to progress from forms of collectivist and despotic association to representative democracy.

The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights.

According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal. Because freedom has not been understood as such in Latin America, the region has had many failed attempts at democratic rule.

Either because the democracies that began emerging after the dictatorships respected political freedom but rejected economic liberty, which inevitably produced more poverty, inefficiency and corruption, or because they installed authoritarian governments convinced that only a firm hand and a repressive regime could guarantee the functioning of the free market.

Whether or not that has anything to do with writing great literature is, of course, a different matter. Nevertheless, I'd much rather see it go to Llosa than any previous winner I can think of (except Kipling).

2010 Physics Nobel Well Deserved

2010-10-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

The Nobel Prize in Physics is sometimes given for stuff that strikes me as pretty pointless. The Committee too frequently hands them out for things that advance neither theory nor technology.

They're also often influenced heavily by 'science politics' (i.e. popularity and jostling for attention, not the sort of politics in environmental science). But this year the Swedish Academy has really done themselves proud, granting the prize to two University of Manchester researchers (Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov) who did pioneering work on graphene.

Among the many amazing properties of this stuff is:

“[it's] stronger and stiffer than diamond, yet can be stretched by a quarter of its length, like rubber. Its surface area is the largest known for its weight.”
...
[and formed the world's first] "one-nanometer graphene transistor, only one atom thick and ten atoms across."
...
[Not to mention} using carbon nanotubes to create wearable electronics — clothes that can power and charge electrical devices — are beginning to switch to graphene, which is thinner and potentially less expensive to produce.
...
[Also,] strong, flexible, light-sensitive graphene could improve the efficiency of solar cells and LEDs, as well as aiding in the production of next-generation devices like flexible touch screens, photodetectors and ultrafast lasers. In particular, graphene could replace rare and expensive metals like platinum and iridium, performing the same tasks with greater efficiency at a fraction of the cost.

This list goes on for some length. What's most striking about all this is that all these possibilities come from a form of simple carbon, one of the most common elements on the planet. And here we are stupidly burning the stuff to make electricity (producing genuine pollution — like radioactive particles that wind up in your lungs — in the process).

Taxes to Rise, Unless...

2010-10-05T15:04:00.000-07:00

The mighty Veronique de Rugy outlines several taxes that will go up unless the Bush tax cuts of 2001/2003 are extended before January 2011. Among them are:

The estate tax will return to pre-2001 levels, socking estates worth more than $1 million with a 55 percent tax.

The capital gains tax on most assets will jump from 15 percent to 20 percent.

Dividends currently taxed at 15 percent will skyrocket to individual tax rates that go as high as 39.6 percent.

The Making Work Pay tax break will cease to exist.

The Alternative Minimum Tax will hit the middle class for 2010 tax returns.

A slew of tax breaks that expired last year, including credits for research and development expenses and relief for college tuition, will not be available for 2010 tax returns.

The Child Tax Credit will revert from $1,000 to $500.
When combined with inaction on the Bush tax cuts affecting marginal rates, taxpayers would be hit with a tax increase that easily tops $4 trillion over the decade if all the tax issues are untouched. Next year’s increase alone would amount to over $200 billion, according to Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee.

What Ms. de Rugy doesn't ask is: Why weren't these made permanent in the first place? To which the answer is sadly obvious: the Republicans who managed to get them passed didn't have enough guts to go all the way. Let's hope the new crop coming in this January will have more.

Pajamas Media Article: Why the 10:10 Video Is a Distraction

2010-10-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

Please head to Pajamas Media and read my article on Why the 10:10 Video Is a Distraction.

In it, I argue that the real enemy is much more dangerous, because much more benign looking.

Here's how it begins...

A British group called 10:10.org recently released (then quickly pulled) a viro snuff film. In the video, teachers press a red button to explode schoolchildren reluctant to accept the Green dogma of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) and other environmentalist fairy tales.
There's no question that the film is revolting and its producers are vicious, no matter how much they try to claim it was intended as humor. Still, the pundits up in arms over it are making a tactical error.

Your comments are invited.

Read the rest here.

Thanks,

Jeff

The Case for Legalizing Capitalism

2010-10-02T15:38:00.000-07:00

Someone I've never heard of, Kel Kelly, has written a book with the title of the post. (That's not intended as a slam; I'm sure he's never heard of me either.)

I haven't read it - and given the current length of my reading list it will be 10 years before I can even crack its cover - but I have to salute one of the best book titles I've ever seen.

From the review on Mises.org:

He considers every important topic: banking, education, taxation, labor, environment, trade, war and peace, safety, medicine, drugs, and far more. He presents the reader with a basic explanation of how capitalism is supposed to work and how society functions when commerce is free. He then turns to all the areas of life that are distorted and destroyed by the great "helping hand" of government.

Hmmm... maybe I'll bump this up on the list.

Commissar Sebelius Rankles at Free Speech

2010-10-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting little P.S. to my recent rant about Commissar Kathleen. Here, batting way out of her league (not a far stretch, I admit), she expresses her fear of unfettered and anonymous political advertising against things she favors.

The Secretary argued that for voters to determine which campaign advertisers are on their side “is difficult if not impossible right now and I think that is pretty dangerous.”

Well, that should surprise no one, I guess. Not satisfied with ignoring the 4th and 5th Amendments, she naturally now feels compelled to openly attack the 1st. As the old saying goes, "Those who believe absurdities will soon enough commit atrocities." (A variation on an aphorism of Voltaire's.)

Ah, the so-called liberal mind. Always worried about the big bad forces of evil pulling the wool over the eyes of an unsuspecting public. Why, it might even lead to something like the astroturf Tea Party movement! If only we were as smart as the Obamamites. Thank heavens we don't need to be with good Samaritans like Commissar Kathleen watching out for us.

It would be funny if it weren't for the fact that this woman is in the process of becoming Public Enemy #2 as the features of ObamaCare begin to take effect.

Commissar Sebelius To The Rescue!

2010-09-29T10:32:00.000-07:00

The headline in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial reads: "Health insurers finally get some oversight."

The sub-head continues the theme:

"In the past, these companies ran wild with no accountability"

At least, according to Sec. of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, that is.

She must be right. There is no State Insurance Commissioner in every State of the Union. There aren't thousands of regulations dictating prices, terms of coverage, etc., etc. None of that existed until ObamaCare and the mighty Commissar Kathleen rode to the rescue of the proletariat. Missing her own irony, she lists several of them later in the editorial, including herself (as past commissioner in Kansas).

She begins:

In the last two weeks, my department has been accused of "thuggery" (this editorial page) and "Soviet tyranny" (Newt Gingrich). What prompted these accusations? The fact that we told health-insurance companies that, as required by law, we will review large premium increases and identify those that are unreasonable.

Nothing thuggish about violating the 4th and 5th Amendment protections of private property and voluntary trade, the sanctity of contract, et al, of course. But who needs them? It's comforting to know instead that my 'right' to health insurance is being protected by the pure and all-powerful Wizard of Health Care, no longer bound by any such quaint notions.

Can't these idiots at least go back to telling semi-plausible lies? They're making it far too easy on me.

RObama Hood Boasts of Looting the Rich, Poor, And Everyone In-Between

2010-09-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

Naturally, the title reflects my take not his own on Obama's list of 'accomplishments':

When I talk to Democrats around the country, I tell them, “Guys, wake up here. We have accomplished an incredible amount in the most adverse circumstances imaginable.” I came in and had to prevent a Great Depression, restore the financial system so that it functions, and manage two wars.

In the midst of all that, I ended one of those wars, at least in terms of combat operations. We passed historic health care legislation, historic financial regulatory reform and a huge number of legislative victories that people don’t even notice.

We wrestled away billions of dollars of profit that were going to the banks and middlemen through the student-loan program, and now we have tens of billions of dollars that are going directly to students to help them pay for college. We expanded national service more than we ever have before. [emphasis added]

The Recovery Act alone represented the largest investment in research and development in our history, the largest investment in infrastructure since Dwight Eisenhower, the largest investment in education — and that was combined, by the way, with the kind of education reform that we hadn’t seen in this country in 30 years — and the largest investment in clean energy in our history.

As I've written before, Obama is right in a way to boast here; he hasn't lost a major battle yet. That aside, in any society more than half-awake, this list would be seen for what it is: a series of Constitutional rights violations that should see its perpetrator in jail.

How ironic, then, that hard-core Progressives are still whining that he hasn't done enough. They complain that ObamaCare contains no 'public option' (i.e. explicit socialized medicine), that some in the Administration are talking about 'fiscal austerity measures', etc. (Granted, it's only talk.) ~~Goebbel's Stand-In~~ Press Secretary Robert Gibbs spoke the truth for once when he recently called them crazy, that they wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than open communism. (My words, not his.)

As for the remaining sane members of society — and thankfully their numbers are larger than I'd previously thought — we're dissatisfied, too (albeit in a rather different direction). We'll have our say in about a month and be in a position to throw some serious sand in the juggernaut's gears. Still, optimistic caution is in order. As I wrote in that Teflon King piece:

Even with increased Republican resistance after November the trend is likely to continue, sad to say. Republican politicians are still morally weak when it comes to the vulnerability Democrats are expert at exploiting: politicians' faux concern for the welfare of 'the little guy'. Unless the Tea Party sentiments come to dominate the country, men like Boehner and McConnell will always cave in the clutch. They don't have the will or the background to consistently make a principled stand for the rights to private property, voluntary trade, or individual liberty.

After reading The Pledge, I'm sorry to have to say I was more right than I knew.

There are plenty more seriously laughable, and laughably depressing, comments in Obama's Rolling Stone interview, (such as The One laughing off Fox News — after excoriating them elsewhere — since he has "swore to uphold the Constitution, and part of that Constitution is a free press."). So, er, enjoy.

The Pledge to America Is Weak Tea

2010-09-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

[W]hen loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels—and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.

Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual, pg 173.

I had planned to write a 'review' of the Republicans' Pledge to America. After slogging through the whole thing — puffed up by ridiculous photos of 'concerned' politicians meeting with 'ordinary' Americans — I found myself stumped.

It's a very mixed bag — a few good ideas here and there, surrounded by a lot of cream puff. Well-meaning goo, to be sure, but the sort of thing that could've been written by any centrist Democrat. (There are actually a few of them left, such as Idaho's Walt Minnick.)

If it was intended to appeal to the middle — and what Republican proposal does not? — it succeeded. If it was supposed to persuade anyone who sees what the real problems in America are today, it's off by a country mile.

It's a long-sight better than anything the Democrats promise, certainly. But, then, given that the Progressive-dominated Jackass party is only an explicit admission or two away from blatant Corporatism, it could hardly be worse.

Anyway, luckily, I've been saved the heinous pain of writing anything at length, which would require reading it again to pull out quotes. Andy McCarthy has saved me the trouble. I don't share quite his degree of outrage - possibly because my expectations for the Republicans in Congress were so low - but he does capture the gist of my views.

It's so seamlessly written I couldn't find many money quotes, but this will give you a flavor:

Worse, though, the pledge proposes its own irrational (but populist) health-care mandates: “We will make it illegal for an insurance company to deny coverage to someone on the basis of a pre-existing condition, eliminate annual and lifetime spending caps, and prevent insurers from dropping your coverage just because you get sick.”

As the Red State blogger Hogan pointedly asks, how is coercing a private insurer to cover people any better than coercing a private person to buy coverage? The constitutionality clause the Republicans write for that one ought to be interesting.

Furthermore, as Hogan adds, sick people can’t pay for health insurance — if insurers are mandated to cover them outside the terms of their policies, it will be necessary to force healthy people to pay the freight. That is, we’d be in cruise-control toward an individual mandate anyway.

HAPPY 2008!

Far from addressing entitlements and getting the government out of the health-care business, the pledge would leave the welfare state largely intact, content — once you flip past the preamble — to “rein in” but not stop the government’s growth. How? By vowing to roll out-of-control federal spending all the way back to...the out-of-control levels of 2008.

The biggest problem with The Pledge, as McCarthy points out at the outset, is whether anyone can believe any of the used dishwater promises its authors make about curbing the Leviathan's appetite. On that question, I am not immensely hopeful.

In the end, though clearly the mere existence of The Pledge is a consequence of pressure put on the GOP by the Tea Party movement, the response is a disappointingly weak brew.

Communists Represent the Middle Class?

2010-09-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

Daniel Foster at NRO reports on a "confederacy of liberal groups" who plan to hold a rally in response to Glenn Beck's. They claim to represent "America’s embattled middle class.”

There are some mainstream left-leaning groups (the SEUI, the American Federation of Teachers, and others). What's more interesting, though, are the groups the confederacy fails to mention. It reveals this effort as just so much, very stale, communist bombast.

Chicago Democratic Socialists of America
Code Pink
Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Communist Party USA
Democratic Socialists of America
International Socialist Organization

Yawn... It's clear that Progressives are out of ammunition. That won't stop them from initiating kamikaze raids, of course, but they officially now got nothin'. When you align yourself with groups like this, you've lost the middle class for sure.

The Impact of Regulation, Quantified

2010-09-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

One useful measure of the impact of irrational regulation is how long it takes to build large structures. Here are a few blasts from the past:

Empire State Building: 410 days.
The Pentagon: two years.
Gateway Arch: two years.
Golden Gate Bridge: four years.
Hoover Dam: five years.
Rockefeller Center (14 buildings): nine years (of which Radio City Music Hall was done in the first two years and 30 Rock in three).

Some of the additional time required today can be accounted for by increased valid safety measures and higher population in surrounding areas. But that's compensated for to some degree by better machinery and increased experience.

The net difference is attributable to nanny statist measures, Progressive/viro legal maneuvering, and politics. The difference is often not small. That's pretty obvious when you look at things like the former WTC site in Manhattan, which is still far from complete nine years later.

It's less obvious, but even more disturbing when you consider projects that are not even getting off the ground, such as the ten thousand new nuclear power plants the country needs.

Worst of all is the sheer destruction of useful projects torn down as a result of environmentalist activism, such as the many dams they boast of eliminating.

Time for a renaissance, one energized by the idea that Man the Builder is a noble creature, one who's earned the right to hold his head high. As a start, he should stop apologizing for transforming human existence from a life that was "nasty, brutish, and short" to something peaceful, comfortable, and oftimes dazzling. Then He can develop once again the pride that will motivate throwing off the shackles of the envious, the small, the anti-life.

Creative civil engineering isn't merely useful, it's glorious — and one because of the other.

"Lawless Legislators" Published at Pajamas Media

2010-09-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

My article, Lawless Legislators, has been published at Pajamas Media. I hope you'll weigh in with your thoughts on the topic, there and here.

Thanks,

Jeff

No-Longer Great Britain: UK Totalitarianism In Training

2010-09-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

Those wacky Brits just love their statism.

The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.

The proposal by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) stresses the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid.

Currently employers withhold tax and pay the government, providing information at the end of the year, a system know as Pay as You Earn (PAYE). There is no option for those employees to refuse withholding and individually file a tax return at the end of the year.If the real-time information plan works, it further proposes that employers hand over employee salaries to the government first.

“The next step could be to use (real-time) information as the basis for centralizing the calculation and deduction of tax,” HMRC said in a July discussion paper.

So what's holding them back, some lingering respect for liberty, some vague collective memory of the Magna Carta? No, it's just that total confiscation is just too expensive:

"[T]he cost of implementing the new system would be "phenomenal," Bull pointed out."

If the Brits had any balls, they'd do what we did to their government 235 years ago. Then again, if the majority of Americans today had any balls, they'd do it to the American government. We'll see what the testosterone level is come this November.

[Hat Tip Jonah Goldberg at NRO.]

Horror Story of the Day

2010-09-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

The title should actually read, "Horror Story of the Past 43 Years," but that's not quite as snappy and there's no single word for it. But then, there's no single word to describe the combination of sheer, unadulterated chutzpah, foolishness, stupidity, and vice implicitly contained in the graph below:

I'm pretty sure at least a thousand different individuals — many of them living comfortably on fat government pensions — belong in jail as a result of this debacle. Unfortunately, the best we can hope for at present is to replace the current crop of criminals this November, and try to minimize giving the new ones quite so much slack on the leash.

[Hat Tip, Powerline.]

Rajan Fisks Krugman On Frannie Role in Crisis

2010-09-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

Professor of finance at University of Chicago Raghumam Rajan, takes Paul Krugman to task over numerous errors relating to the origins of the financial crisis. Not least is his demonstration of the ways Fannie and Freddie, and the government policies that drove them, were relevant.

This gem, for example, is delicious since it shows Krugman's ongoing intellectual dishonesty, as his explanations shift.

Critics were quick to point out that Krugman had his facts wrong.

As Charles Calomiris and Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute (Wallison is also a member of the financial crisis inquiry commission) explained, “Here Krugman demonstrates confusion about the law (which did not prohibit subprime lending by the GSEs), misunderstands the regulatory regime under which they operated (which did not have the capacity to control their risk-taking), and mismeasures their actual subprime exposures (which he wrongly states were zero).”
...
So, Krugman shifted his emphasis.

In his blog critique of a Financial Times op-ed I wrote in June 2010, Krugman no longer argued that Fannie and Freddie could not buy subprime mortgages. Instead, he emphasized the slightly falling share of Fannie and Freddie’s residential mortgage securitizations in the years 2004 to 2006 as the reason they were not responsible.

Here again he presents a misleading picture. Not only did Fannie and Freddie purchase whole subprime loans that were not securitized (and thus not counted in its share of securitizations), they also bought substantial amounts of private-label mortgage-backed securities issued by others. When taking these into account, Fannie and Freddie’s share of the subprime market financing did increase even in those years.

Rajan goes on to shred Krugman a half-dozen more ways from Sunday. The whole piece is well worth a read.

In the end, as the Grand Poobah says in The Mikado, it's nice to have my opinions confirmed by an expert.

Reynolds Fisks Federal Revenue Claims

2010-09-20T12:32:00.000-07:00

Alan Reynolds, a CATO fellow writing at NRO, offers an effective utilitarian rebuttal to the government's claim that raising taxes on the top 2% would bring in an additional $34 billion in Federal revenue.

Set aside for now that the money belongs to its owners and it's immoral for the Feds to confiscate it. Set aside that utilitarian arguments are not the way to argue about taxes, since they assume social utility is the proper justification for taxation. The analysis is still valuable. An excerpt proves the point:

If anyone could really believe the proposed tax hikes could possibly have no harmful effects on the economy, the $34 billion revenue estimate would still be wildly optimistic.

Why?

Because it also assumes high-income taxpayers make no effort to avoid the added burden. In economic jargon that means assuming an “elasticity of taxable income” of zero, although recent studies put the actual elasticity closer to one.

Evidence from past changes in the highest tax rates suggests affected taxpayers will be able to conceal almost enough incremental income (above the $250,000 threshold) to offset the steep surtaxes tax on such income, leaving even the IRS no better off.
...
More investors would maximize contributions to tax-favored savings plans, or switch to tax-exempt bonds.

The academic evidence is especially clear that a higher tax rate on dividends would dampen investors’ appetite for dividend-paying stocks, and that a higher tax rate on capital gains would reduce the frequency with which investors sell assets and therefore have to pay the tax.

Mr. Reynolds, though, is silent on an even more important point: he assumes Obama believes, or even cares much, whether the $34 billion will be gained or lost.

For the radical egalitarian Obama, taking money from 'the rich' isn't motivated by the need to reduce the deficit. Reynolds points out that it would cover all of nine days, as no doubt Obama either knows or waves away. (The figure is puzzling anyway, since the deficit is larger than $306 billion per annum, but never mind that now.)

No, Obama's decisions here flow from his warped view of "fairness." He said so long before the election and that hasn't changed. The rest is just political rhetoric to accomplish that goal.

More Obama Lawlessness

2010-09-19T11:03:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal has a fine editorial that clearly demonstrates the Obama administration's ongoing willful ignoring of the Constitution. The piece surveys the appointment of Elizabeth Warren to both head and not head the new consumer protection ~~racket~~ agency created by the disastrous Dodd-Frank financial 'reform' legislation.

The WSJ really sums it up well:

Whatever else can be said about this White House, it isn't afraid to poke a stick in the eye of its critics. How else to explain President Obama's decision Friday to put Elizabeth Warren in charge of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while avoiding Senate confirmation and, for that matter, any political supervision.

The chutzpah here is something to behold. The pride of Harvard Law School, Ms. Warren is a hero to the political left for proposing a new bureaucracy to micromanage the services that banks can offer consumers. But she is also so politically controversial that no less a liberal lion than Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd has warned the White House that she probably isn't confirmable.

A President with more political and Constitutional scruple would have nominated someone else. Mr. Obama's choice is to appoint her anyway and dare the Senate to do something about it.

The plan is for Ms. Warren to run the new bureau from an office at the Treasury Department. Instead of calling her the "Director" of the bureau — the statutory title for the organization's boss — Mr. Obama has appointed her an "assistant" to him and a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

It gets worse,

The new bureau was already destined to be a bureaucratic rogue. When Members of Congress objected to it being "independent" in the way Ms. Warren hoped, Mr. Dodd and the Administration cooked up a plan to make it part of the Federal Reserve without actually answering to anyone there.

The bureau has independent rule-making authority and can grant itself an annual budget up to $646 million. It will draw this money from the operations of the Fed, so the bureau needn't deal with the messy intrusions of Congressional appropriators and will therefore receive limited Congressional oversight. [emphasis added]

Ms. Warren's bureau will dictate how credit is allocated throughout the American economy — by banks and financial firms, and also by many small businesses that extend credit to consumers. The bureau's mandate under the new Dodd-Frank law is to ensure that "consumers are protected from unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts and practices and from discrimination."

If those terms sound vague and overbroad now, wait until Ms. Warren's hand-picked staff begins interpreting existing laws on fair lending and writes new rules.

Violation of Article II, Section 2 anyone? Violation of Fifth amendment property right protections anyone? Violation of the Congressional appropriations rules anyone? Barf bag anyone?

As a not entirely side note, I happened to catch Ms. Warren on the News Hour the other night and she reminded me of no one so much as Jimmy Carter. Oozing smiley-faced malice for the finance industry, she waved her hands and bleated on and on about honesty, following the rules, protecting the public, and so forth. The irony — given the method of her appointment and the nature of the agency she helped create — could escape only the most obtuse.

Obama is really giving FDR a run for his money for "most blatantly indifferent to the law" award. I can't wait for him to be neutered in November.

Thoughts for Constitution Day

2010-09-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

Today is Constitution Day, the date in 1787 when our founding document — minus the first 10 amendments (the Bill of Rights) — was completed and presented to the Convention for consideration. It was ratified over the succeeding two years, eight months by the original 13 State legislatures, though only nine were required for acceptance.

I don't believe Jefferson was exaggerating when he wrote to Adams about the men gathered to consider it, saying: "It really is an assembly of demigods."

Anyway, history aside, as an amateur Constitutional scholar — very amateur* — I reject the common false alternative of "originalist" versus "judicial activist" interpretations.

Still, I'm much more sympathetic to the view that the Constitution has a specific meaning in a given context, one generally inline with the original ideas of Madison, and that emphasis should be given to that meaning. I also agree that "judicial activism" is nothing but a Progressive cover for social engineering through legal decisions.

The bottom line for me in Constitutional interpretation is a simple question: "Does a given interpretation protect the individual rights outlined in the document, or does it not?"

That, I believe, is consistent with Madison's vision — which still holds true — and allows for changing social and material circumstances over the ages. Because, though the applications change, the rights we have are constant over millennia, since they're based on human nature and the fundamental requirements of living.

*Side note: In Latin, amateur means "lover" and was originally intended to suggest not someone inadequately competent — which is also true of my Constitutional scholarship — but someone who did something for the love of the doing, not for money. Amateurs were actually viewed as often superior to 'professionals' who engaged in an activity solely for pay.

Words are interesting things, embedding not just individual thoughts but social mores.

McCarthy Exposes Teacher's Islamic Indoctrination

2010-09-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Andy McCarthy does another of his excellent turns at exposing the way Progressive 'educators' are helping the spread of Islamism in the U.S.

For those with a strong stomach, here's part of McCarthy's report:

A sixth-grade class in Wellesley, Massachusetts, was dragged by their teachers to the notorious Roxbury mosque — the $15 million Saudi-funded, minareted Islamic center started by Abdurrahman Alamoudi (now serving a 23-year terrorism sentence) and run by the Muslim American Society (the quasi-official arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States).

Capitalizing on the goo that passes for “social studied” curricula, parents were told the “field trip” was “to learn about the architecture of the mosque and observe a midday prayer service.” One parent was concerned enough to volunteer as a chaperone and bring along a camera.

The result is stunning: an unabashed exercise in Islamic dawa, the “call to Islam” and the manner by which the Brotherhood’s spiritual guide, Yusuf Qaradawi, promises that Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” Qaradawi — wonder of wonders — is a trustee of the Roxbury mosque (although he is banned from the U.S. for sanctioning terrorism).

The indoctrination of anti-American values by teachers is now de rigeur in public schools and every single indoctrinator should be fired, post haste. That wish, of course, is sheer fantasy because those who would fire them are either utter avoid-all-controversy pragmatists or actually agree with the teachers.

The only ultimate solution to horrors like this is to eliminate the public school system, which has always been an immoral and impractical idea. That, too, is fantasizing at least for the next 20 years, probably longer. In the interim, McCarthy is doing the next best thing by exposing it to as wide an audience as possible.

The problem is, will many care? So far, the answer appears to be a resounding "No."

Another Stimulus Failure

2010-09-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

Via Jonah Goldberg at NRO:

The L.A. Comptroller reports what happened to their stimulus money:

"I'm disappointed that we've only created or retained 55 jobs after receiving $111 million," says Wendy Greuel, the city's controller, while releasing an audit report.

Man, does it get boring always repeating "Told ya so." If she's disappointed, imagine how the taxpayers feel seeing their money pissed away in a scheme that never had a chance of working.

Robots to Receive Artificial Skin

2010-09-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

I'm not a fan of UC Berkeley. The town setting is filthy and filled with creatures you'd never want over for dinner. Much of the campus architecture is revoltingly 'modern' and most of the professors — even in the sciences — are so left wing they belong in another country. But on rare occasions, the odor of genius arises from that swamp.

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new technology that may help robots feel, give the sense of touch back to those with prosthetic limbs, and ultimately help robots do the dishes without breaking them (and while they're at it, maybe make a sandwich without turning it into land of the flatlanders).

Amazing.

Also, once they start grafting that stuff onto damaged humans there's just no telling where the future will lead. And that unpredictability about limits is part of the glory of invention.

Pataki Talks Turkey on ObamaCare, Update

2010-09-15T16:49:00.000-07:00

As a follow up to my post on Madison discussing economic uncertainty, here's a good example in how it applies, and from a surprising source. Mr. Pataki made a number of - putting it as generously as possible - dubious moves as Governor of New York. [See, in particular, the paragraph about Cato's 'grade' on his fiscal policy.] Still, what he says here is unassailable.

We were told that most Americans would pay less for their health care. Yet the Obama administration's own Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services just reported that health care costs will instead go up by over $1,000 per year by 2019 for a family of four.

We were told that ObamaCare would drive down the costs of health care. Yet just this week health insurers asked for premium increases of up to 9% solely because of ObamaCare.

We were told — and how many times did the president say this? — that if you were happy with your current coverage, you wouldn't need to change it at all. Yet under rules issued in June, his own administration estimates that 51% of all employees and 66% of workers in small businesses would have their current plan changed within three years as a result of new mandates.

Faced with not only the certainty of higher costs but the uncertainty of new regulations yet to be written by the 157 new bureaucracies of ObamaCare, if I had a business I'd be looking for ways to fire existing staff, not hire more.

If the businessmen in America have any courage at all they'll band together and give a huge middle finger to the Federal Government.

Update [9/17/2010]: The founder of Home Depot just gave Obama and his gang a metaphorical middle finger. Excellent! I predict Home Depot's sales will now rise noticeably. Bravo, Mr. Marcus.

Madison on Economic Uncertainty

2010-09-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

James Madison understood economic uncertainty and its cause long before - and much better than - many today. That's the advantage of focusing one's mind on reality, particularly with regard to human nature. In Federalist 62, he writes:

“What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government?”

If the willfully clueless in D.C. absorbed only this one insight from Madison we would be much further along the road of a long-delayed recovery.

Why I Don't Write About 9/11

2010-09-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

Every year September 11th rolls around and I feel I should write something about 9/11. Every year, I don't. I can't really say why. Even though I lived in California at the time, I felt and feel deeply and very personally about the horror that took place in Manhattan that day.

Maybe that's because I used to live there, and still have friends there. It might be because I've been through the WTC countless times on my way to work and pleasure, and can't fully grasp its being gone.

Or, it could be the outrage I felt then and still feel — not only at the perpetrators and their cohorts, but almost as strongly at the political leaders who've refused to do much of anything about it.

Much of anything? After hundreds of billions spent and thousands of American soldiers' lives sacrificed? Yes. I believe that amounts to not much of anything, at least not by comparison to a real war.

War was never declared. That would be the minimum one could expect from the President and Congress when America was attacked by jihadists supported and goaded by half a dozen Middle Eastern theocracies for the past 30 years.

Worse, although from the first I strongly supported the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq and still do, I always felt it was a second string effort. It always seemed too much like when the government interferes in the economy during a crisis, i.e. mostly to appear to be "doing something."

There was never any hint the U.S. would invade Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, and Lebanon — not to mention Pakistan for good measure.

Iran should have been — and still should be — the main focus of any effort to combat Islam-inspired jihad. It was and remains the ground zero of all such attacks and they won't stop until Iran is neutralized. Yet, even after it was shown six ways from Sunday that Iran was (and is) supporting the jihadists in Iraq, the President largely ignored it.

That neutralization effort would have to go beyond military conquest, too, as we did in Japan after WWII when State Shinto was dismantled in the Japanese culture. That effort, by the way, was done forcefully and without apology, unlike the mealy-mouthed diplomacy we see, for example, in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of whom have constitutions making Sharia their explicit legal foundation. [For an in-depth historical examination of U.S. efforts in Japan, see the work of Dr. John Lewis, particularly No Substitute for Victory and Gifts from Heaven, The Meaning of the American Victory Over Japan, 1945.]

Even at its peak, while our soldiers and Marines and many officers continued to act with unbounded heroism against absurd ROE, the most senior officers and civilian authorities offered tepid political support.

At his most 'cowboy', Bush never came close to emulating Churchill, FDR, or even Thatcher in his will to win the war. That many in Congress opposed him is no excuse. He ignored the pansies when he thought he should, and rightly so. If he had acted more forcefully, the American people would've made it near-impossible for Congress to pull his funding.

So, in the end, like a father whose son's murder is given short shrift by the courts — and like so many Americans I suspect — I'm left with a deep sadness and a great longing for the appropriate level of moral outrage by Washington. That, and an unanswered question about when the casualties of 9/11 will ever get the justice they, and we, deserve.