The virtue of a government is inversely proportional to its size

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The Examiner:

David Axelrod: ‘The government is so vast’

On Morning Joe Wednesday, former Obama Senior Strategist David Axelrod essentially pleaded ignorance on behalf of his former boss when MSNBC host Joe Scarborough asked him what he would tell his University of Chicago politics class about the recent IRS scandal.

“Well, look, it’s an interesting case study, right, because if you look at the Inspector General’s report, apparently some folks down in the, bureaucracy, ya know — we have a large government — took it upon themselves to shorthand these applications for tax exempt status in a way that, as I said, was idiotic,” Axelrod began. “Part of being president is, there is so much beneath you that you can’t know, because the government is so vast.”

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More than a few people were surprised to see Obama’s Chief Dog Robber make the case for smaller government.

Ever since FDR took office the trend has been for the growth of a big, centralized federal government. It didn’t happen overnight, and it was done with the best of intentions. And ironically all that growth of the federal bureaucracy did nothing to stop the growth of state and local governments.

When Wall Street melted down in October 2008 (helping Obama to win the election) we heard the term “too big to fail” in reference to some of our nation’s banks. What that expression means is not that big banks can’t fail, it means we can’t allow them to fail. That’s why we had to bail them out.

At the time I said “Any bank that is too big to fail is too damn big”. In that same vein let me say “Any government that is too big to control is too damn big”.

Don’t get me wrong – we need government. But government, like fire, is a poor servant and a terrible master.

To quote Votermom:

The virtue of a government is inversely proportional to its size.

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The Question Of Virtue

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From Walter Russell Mead:

Finally and inescapably, there is the question of virtue. The liberal order of representative democracy depends more on the virtue of its citizens than other forms of government do. If most citizens are tax cheats, most politicians are swindlers, many parents are neglectful and most children are ingrates, democracy cannot last, much less prosper. If everyone is thinking about what they can get from the government and no one is thinking about what they give, and if nobody can be trusted when the lights are out, freedom will shrivel up and die. Our founding fathers were haunted by the example of the fall of the Roman Republic; we need to remember that Rome’s fate could be ours.

There are many forces working against republican virtue in America today. Consumer capitalism, as Daniel Bell and others have taught us, breeds attitudes of narcissism and self indulgence. The crisis affecting mainline Protestant and euro-Catholic congregations and institutions has weakened one of the chief props of the kind of self restraint and self governance that democracies need to survive and it’s not clear what if anything can take their place.

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Virtue is more than just not doing bad things. Civic virtue includes positive actions like serving in the military, giving blood, reporting crimes, paying taxes and showing up for jury duty. It means helping those in need, even if you don’t know them. It means respecting and defending the rights of others, not just your own.

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Entropy, Civilization and the Rule of Law

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Tony Blair:

I think the lessons are really tough, you see, and very difficult and I think the trouble is the lessons themselves are subject to great and heated debate. My view is that in the end the whole of the Middle East and beyond is undergoing this period of huge transition where you have these dictatorial regimes whose time is up you. On the other hand, the battle for the future is between what I would call the modern-minded types of people, the people who took to the streets first in Egypt, who want what we want, but against them are various groups, Islamist groups, that I’m afraid don’t have the same concept, democracy or freedom that we do. If any of them get hold of the potential to engage in mass destruction, we’ve got a huge problem on our hands.

…the fact is this ideology is being pumped around websites, is being encouraged by people in many different parts of the world. and it’s there and it’s very hard for us to deal with. The first obligation of a government is to try to protect its people, but then you’ve got to cast out this ideology. i think this is very similar to the fight we faced in the 20th century against Fascism and Communism, it’s an ideology. It’s not one command and control center. You’re not talking about a country, but you are talking about an ideology based on a perversion of religion which has enormous force. If you don’t deal with this issue, this long-term question, ideology based on the religion of Islam, you are going to end up fighting this for a long time.

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I grew up taking technology for granted. Television, radio, cars, planes, electricity – they’ve been there all my life. But they didn’t just appear out of nowhere. For about 10,000 years men and women gained knowledge, preserved it, built on it, and passed it on. We stand on the shoulders of those people.

But there have also been occasional setbacks – times when knowledge was lost and had to be rediscovered. These times mirrored the fall of past civilizations.

But civilization is a lot like technology – you could call it “political technology”. Many of us take our civilization for granted. But civilization is really just the accumulated knowledge of how humans can live together in peace and prosperity.

Just as we have some Luddites out there who despise technology, there are some people out there who despise civilization. If they had their way we would discard some of our accumulated knowledge and return to earlier times.

There is a term for those earlier times: “dark ages”.

Imagine if we closed all our schools and quit teaching science and technology. We would still have all the current manifestations of that technology, but we could never build more. As things broke down they couldn’t be replaced. Within a few generations we would be savages living in the ruins.

Ever seen a ghost town or an abandoned farm? Once upon a time all the buildings were brand new. But as time passes entropy takes over and everything begins to rust and decay. Eventually only a few traces remain.

The rule of law is one pillar of civilization. It is not the only pillar, but it is an essential one. It must be preserved and improved. That is why I am so anal about this issue.

I don’t want my grandchildren to have to live in a dark age.

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Freedom And Voting With Your Feet

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Some people in Texas (and elsewhere) are less than pleased at the First Amendment freedom exercised by cartoonist Jack Ohman in the Sacramento Bee this week. The term “grave-dancing” is one of the nicer things being said about Mr. Ohman’s editorial cartoon. Unfortunately, living in a free society means putting up with stuff like this, and Mr. Ohman makes a valid point, however callously he expressed it.

But it’s no secret that Texas is one of the most libertarian states in the nation. Texans like their government small, their beer cold and their taxes low. They love football, BBQ and big hats, and hate regulations, unions and California. They take great pride in not being like New York City.

I live out here in Big Smoggy, a couple hours south of Sac’to. We are the antithesis of Texas. We have Big Government, high taxes, lots of regulations, San Francisco, Hollywood and Governor Moonbeam. Both states have the death penalty, but Texas uses it. A lot.

But that’s cool. That’s the beauty of the federal system. Some people like Texas. Some people like California. Some people like cities, others like the boonies. Some people like the ocean, others the mountains or the desert. Some people even like living in the Midwest where He Who Walks Behind The Rows lives.

Right now Texas seems to be pretty popular. U-Haul charges a premium on one-way rentals from California to Texas, but they’ll practically pay you to take one the other way. Texas leads the nation in population growth because people from other states are moving there.

If you live in Texas and you like Big Government, you are free to vote for it. But don’t be surprised when you lose. That’s how democracy works. But there is another option – move to California or some other “blue” state. And vice-versa if you are already in a blue state but want smaller government. That’s called voting with your feet.

But if you live in California you really should STFU about telling Texans how to mind their own affairs. “MYOB” as Ann Landers used to say. We got enough problems right here at home to keep us busy.

BTW – It still hasn’t been determined what caused the explosion in West, Texas last week. We know what exploded, but we don’t the cause of the fire or whether any laws or regulations were broken.

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Consistently Inconsistent

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Victor Davis Hanson:

Graphic language, nudity and sex are now commonplace in movies and on cable television. At the same time, there is now almost no tolerance for casual and slang banter in the media or the workplace. A boss who calls an employee “honey” might face accusations of fostering a hostile work environment, yet a television producer whose program shows an 18-year-old having sex does not. Many colleges offer courses on lurid themes from masturbation to prostitution, even as campus sexual-harassment suits over hurtful language are at an all-time high.

[...]

Our schizophrenic morality also affects the military. When America was a far more traditional society, few seemed to care that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower carried on an unusual relationship at the front in Normandy with his young female chauffeur, Kay Summersby. As the Third Army chased the Germans across France, Gen. George S. Patton was not discreet about his female liaisons. Contrast that live-and-let-live attitude of a supposedly uptight society with our own hip culture’s tabloid interest in Gen. David Petraeus’ career-ending affair with Paula Broadwell, or in the private emails of Gen. John Allen.

What explains these contradictions in our wide-open but prudish society?

Decades after the rise of feminism, popular culture still seems confused by it. If women should be able to approach sexuality like men, does it follow that commentary about sex should follow the same gender-neutral rules? Yet wearing provocative or inappropriate clothing is often considered less offensive than remarking upon it. Calling a near-nude Madonna onstage a “hussy” or “tart” would be considered crudity in a way that her mock crucifixion and simulated sex acts are not.

Criminal sexual activity is sometimes not as professionally injurious as politically incorrect thoughts about sex and gender. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer — found to have hired prostitutes on a number of occasions during his time in office — was given a CNN news show despite the scandal. But when former Miss California Carrie Prejean was asked in the Miss USA Pageant whether she endorsed gay marriage, she said no — and thereby earned nearly as much popular condemnation for her candid defense of traditional marriage as Spitzer had for his purchased affairs.

[...]

Modern society also resorts to empty, symbolic moral action when it cannot deal with real problems. So-called assault weapons account for less than 1 percent of gun deaths in America. But the country whips itself into a frenzy to ban them, apparently to prove that at least it can do something — without wading into the polarized racial and class controversies of going after illegal urban handguns, the real source of the nation’s high gun-related body count.

Not since the late-19th-century juxtaposition of the Wild West with the Victorian East has popular morality been so unbridled and yet so uptight.

In short, we have become a nation of promiscuous prudes.

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Rich kids wearing designer clothes use their iPhones to take pictures of themselves at rallies protesting corporate greed. Progressives fear Big Brother and love Big Government.

If there is anything we are consistent at it is being inconsistent.

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Freedom Isn’t Free

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Well, it happened again. Details are still sketchy but we know that somebody detonated some bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Some people are dead and many more are injured. We don’t yet know who is responsible or what their motives were. Whatever the motives this is another case of terrorism.

The United States has seen terrorism before today and we’ll see it again in the future. While we can take precautions we can’t make life 100% safe. Terrorists aren’t picky about who they kill. Any place where people gather is a potential target. Killing is a matter of will, not technology.

The one thing we should never do is trade our freedom for the illusion of safety. If we do, the terrorists win.

I don’t know about you but the Patriot Act and the TSA grope-a-thons sure didn’t make me feel any safer.

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Mom! He’s got more than me!! That’s not fair!!!

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Riverdaughter:

How wealth is really distributed

Wealth *is* being redistributed in this country. It’s going to the people at the top. ”Oh, sure”, you say, “that’s just statistics and you can make statistics lie and stuff.” Now, you’re beginning to sound like Stephen Colbert.

The point of this video is not to attack wealth. The point is that it is concentrated in the hands of too few people to the detriment of everyone else. A corporate CEO does not work 380X harder than his accountant and even garbagemen deserve a living wage. For too many people, a living wage is not a reality.

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The video makes a very persuasive argument. It is not, however, a logical argument. It is an emotional argument. (Most arguments based on “fairness” usually are.) It is predicated on the idea that we are all entitled to an equal share of the economic pie and the Marxist belief that all wealth comes from stealing.

“The belief that all wealth comes from stealing is popular in prisons and at Harvard.” – George Gilder

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Wealth does not cause poverty. Poverty is a preexisting condition.

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man.” – Robert A. Heinlein

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Riverdaughter reveals her belief that wealth comes from stealing when she says “Wealth *is* being redistributed in this country”. This implies that wealth is being taken from some people and given to others. She follows it up by saying that it’s going to the people at the top, which implies that the wealth is being taken from the rest of us. (I’m assuming that if you are reading this you are not one of the feelthy ricos.)

Riverdaughter doesn’t offer a solution but it is safe to assume that she wants the government to go all Robbing Hood on the rich and give to the poor. There are various ways to accomplish that, including taxes and forcing employers to provide higher salaries and benefits.

What is missing from her argument is any logical or legal basis for the government to redistribute wealth.

Rather than pontificate further I will throw it to you. Under what circumstances may the government redistribute wealth? Not how, but why? I’m not talking about taking money for the common good, like infrastructure or military defense, I am talking about taking money from one group and giving it to another.

Be prepared to defend your answers.

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It’s Different When We Do It

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Garance Franke-Ruta at Slate:

It seems to me–and I touched on this a bit a 2009 Slate piece–that a simple distinction between the two worlds in which women today operate can help us think about this: They are the system of beauty, and the system of power.

The system of beauty is what preceded women’s entry into the paid workforce in a bid to achieve economic equality and professional fulfillment. It operates everywhere in the world, according to regionally variable standards, but goes a little something like this: Women are a natural resource, a form of wealth that men can acquire. Beauty and, to a lesser extent, fertility, are the coinage in this system of value. In contemporary America, women can choose the extent to which they wish to engage with this system of power, but there’s no question that it remains extant, and that in many ways the most economically successful women are those who use it best to their advantage–actresses, models, musicians, and the like. Beauty is a system of power, deeply rooted, preceding all others, richly rewarded. We pay homage to it, still, and young women as they face the world can make a choice to live a life–even a career–within it, just as they can choose to go to law or medical school or contend in any other way for standing and earning capacity in the world.

That is, they can enter the system of power. Power as the acquisition of status, capital, position, knowledge, property. And for a reason other than the exploitation of the resource of the physical self. The fight of feminism was the fight of women for entry into the system of power from the system of beauty. The fight in the workplace for women very often is to create a space for themselves within the system of power while continuing to operate within the system of beauty in their private lives. And the struggle of feminism has often been to acknowledge that the system of beauty is irrevocable and cannot be expunged by protest or discourse or time. To be an educated professional woman in contemporary America is to know that you operate–and often, must operate–within both systems. It’s why beautiful and extremely capable women are often valued above their less glamorous or less fit peers–they are triumphs in two systems of value, double-threats.

Harris, like Michelle Obama, is a triumph in the system of beauty as well as the system of power. But President Obama’s remark mistook the setting. Just as it’s perfectly appropriate to tell a colleague she looks gorgeous when she’s dressed to the nines for some black tie work event, it would be inappropriate to refer to her as “gorgeous over there” during a work meeting. Doing so takes her out of the system of power and puts her into the system of beauty in a setting in which power is the value that’s brought her to the table. And that, dear readers, is a gaffe.

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A gaffe?

gaffe
noun \ˈgaf\
Definition of GAFFE
1: a social or diplomatic blunder
2: a noticeable mistake

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Actually, I’m surprised they even called it a gaffe. But inconsistency seems to be a hallmark of modern feminism. Maybe it always was.

The women in this country spend billions of dollars every year on clothes, shoes, make up hair and medical treatments designed to make them look good. But us men aren’t supposed to notice (let alone comment on) their appearance. Unless they want us to. But if we misread some signals it is OUR fault.

Kate Upton makes a lot of money posing in little bits of fabric. If men look at her pictures then they are pigs But God forbid we should express disapproval because that would be slut-shaming. But if some high school kid decides to invite her to his prom that is practically rape.

Apparently the only hard and fast rule of modern feminism is “Men are bad.” Unless that man is Obama.

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The Vile Prog Aristocrats

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Victor Davis Hanson:

There is a liberal coastal aristocrat, but he is really not very liberal, at least in the sense of his regressive life not matching his progressive rhetoric. His views are mostly conditioned on his education, salary, and material circumstances. Put the coastal aristocrat in charge of a 7-Eleven in Stockton, and his therapeutic view would turn tragic quite quickly. And that fear is why he rarely goes to either a 7-Eleven or Stockton.

Let me give a few examples.

Fracking is seen as mostly bad, not because of any firsthand knowledge, any in-depth reading of the literature, any quid pro quo, or any cost/benefit analysis of the effect of more oil and gas production on the lives of the poor, but largely because the coastal aristocrat senses that he 1) has quite enough money and job security to ignore the price of gas, 2) does not drive all that much in comparison to the red-state interior Neanderthal, and 3) receives enormous psychological comfort and social acceptance from the fact that he is opposed to carbon emissions. Why, he wonders, do the poor on the way to work drive those gas-guzzling used Yukons, when a second-hand Prius would work just as well?

Illegal immigration? The Palo Alto aristocrat’s position is predicated on two realities: his hardworking nanny, yardman, and cook are often rather recent arrivals from Mexico, and he most certainly does not wish his children to attend school anywhere near Redwood City. Thus he is for “comprehensive immigration reform,” with the understanding that the benefits are his, and for others the downside.

Taxes? They are the cost of a utopian worldview, a mordida necessary to live in Cambridge or Santa Monica. For the aristocrat making over $500,000 a year, a few extra thousand dollars a year is a price worth paying, at least for the psychological guarantee that the distant food-stamp recipients, who mostly go to Safeway rather than Ralphs or Whole Foods, are content to live their happy lives as they do. Pay up the penance and be done with the guilt is the creed.

Guns? For the coastal elite, who do not hunt, who do not live in a dangerous neighborhood, and who believe the Bill of Rights are sacrosanct to the degree they support progressive change and fluid when they do not, guns more or less should just go away. Of course, the celebrity, the CEO, and the politician may need “security,” but no one much asks what hides inside the coats of the husky men at their sides.

Education? Public unions are saintly. Charter schools and vouchers are satanic. But the aristocrat, who knows best what is good for the masses, prefers and can afford the private school, and feels no guilt in his choice because his version is liberal while the more low-brow alternative is often crappy and not that much better than the public offering. (E.g., if you wish to duck out of the public school system, at least have the class to do it with style rather than on the cheap: a Castilleja or Andover rather than First Christian Academy.)

In lieu of the traditional aristocrat estate, peerage, or title, the outward manifestation of aristocracy is an Ivy League brand or a West Coast Stanford version. The proper campus is one’s lifelong entrée. The right quad is where your kids meet the right mate and receive a bumper sticker that opens the right doors. Such university snobbery is inconsistent with classical liberalism, but not with liberal aristocratic values, which are based on exclusionary criteria. For the NBC anchor, or the Massachusetts senator, or the Google executive, the key is to get your kid into the right prep school, as requisite for the even more correct Ivy League, where the perfect spouse and Facebook founders-like coterie are found. It is not just that junior will emerge with correct ideas about gay marriage, abortion, green power, the U.S. role abroad, and the poor, but that he will be seen, by virtue of his degree, as having the right ideas.

Apartheid is the unifying theme of coastal aristocracy. Without it, reality would disabuse the grandee of his worldview. Take any tenured Berkeley professor of environmental studies and make his existence hinge on squeezing a daily profit out of a Selma Stop-N-Go, and this gentle brontosaurus would turn into a Tyrannosaurus rex in a nanosecond. Therefore exclusion of all sorts from the underbelly of America is an essential.

One associates with mostly fellow one percenters. One picks and chooses friends on the basis of where they work and where they were educated and the views they hold. A Chevron field job, a University of Idaho degree in sports journalism, a strong aversion to abortion — all this is impermissible. In some Frankenstein-like laboratory, an evil genius cooked up Sarah Palin, whose looks, accent, background, views, and style were designed to enrage the coastal aristocracy.

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The people Hanson is talking about would deny that they are aristocrats. They would tell you (and themselves) that they are the elite members of a meritocracy. Maybe not in those actual words, but that is essentially what they believe.

In support of this belief they would point out that membership in their club is not exclusive – anyone can potentially join. All you need is enough money or the right diploma (preferably both). They ignore the fact that the vast majority of them were born into their elite status. In the words of Ann Richards, they were born on third and think they hit a triple.

The world is what it is but it’s not fair. In a true meritocracy our station in life would be determined solely by a combination of our talent and effort. But if that were the case our children would have to compete on equal terms with all the other kids – identical school and career opportunities. We wouldn’t be allowed to give them an extra boost via better schools or job connections.

The redeeming characteristic in our nation is liberty. We are free to seek our dreams, we’re just not guaranteed we will ever realize them. Our aristocrats can lose their status due to things like laziness or dissolution. Our proletarians can aspire to higher station and reach it through talent, effort and/or luck.

It’s not a perfect system. It’s just better than any other system ever devised.

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Matt’s Myth of Ownership and a Strawmen

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Little Mattie Yglesias:

The concept of "redistribution" falsely implies that the existence of property is prior to the existence of the state. #mythofownership—
Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) September 18, 2012

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and:

On The Distribution Of Income

As there’s some considerable conservative interest in my views on so-called “income redistribution” (and conversely always a lively chorus of leftwingers upset about “neoliberalism”) so I thought perhaps a little random Saturday political theory.

[...]

Obviously there’s lots of other stuff people disagree about—health care and education, importantly—but this is the banal core. Unfettered markets are fine except for activities that might involve the transportation or production of goods, the production or transmission of electricity or scientific knowledge, or access to the financial system. So actually when you think about it, that’s basically everything. The basic economic foundations of industrial capitalism as we’ve known them for the past 150 years or so have an activist state at their core. Building political institutions capable of doing these things properly is really difficult, and one of the main things that separates more prosperous places from less prosperous ones is that the more prosperous places have done a better job of building said institutions. There’s also the minor matter of creating effective and non-corrupt law enforcement and judicial agencies that can protect people’s property rights and enforce contracts.

The point is, it takes an awful lot of politics to get an advanced capitalist economy up and running and generating wealth. A lot of active political decisions need to be made to grow that pie. So why would you want to do all that? Presumably because pie is delicious. But if you build a bunch of political institutions with the intention of creating large quantities of pie, it’s obviously important that people actually get their hands on some pie. In other words, you go through the trouble of creating advanced industrial capitalism because that’s a good way to create a lot of goods and services. But the creation of goods and services would be pointless unless it served the larger cause of human welfare. Collecting taxes and giving stuff to people is every bit as much a part of advancing that cause as creating the set of institutions that allows for the wealth-creation in the first place.

The specifics of how best to do this all are (to say the least) contentious and not amenable to resolution by blog-length noodling. But the intuition that there’s some coherent account of what the “market distribution” would be absent public policy is mistaken. You have policy choices all the way down.

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A couple problems here. In one sense Mattie is correct – without the existence of some kind of government legal concepts like property rights and ownership cannot exist. But people have been asserting dominance and control over real and personal property since long before the existence of government. As a matter of fact, real estate existed before humans came along, and other animals fought over it. Some animals (like squirrels) build nests and store food in them. If other squirrels try to invade the nest or steal the stored food they will fight to defend “their property”.

Mattie uses a cute little strawman argument regarding the need for government. With the exception of a few radical libertarians and anarchists there is no one arguing that we don’t need government. The issue is what is the proper size, shape and scope of government.

Modern industrial capitalism requires certain prerequisites to function. It needs a political/legal system that is conducive to free trade. It also needs a stable monetary system, as well as a banking system.

But government did not create capitalism. When capitalism first started the political/legal system was geared towards feudalism. It was because of the success of capitalism at creating prosperity that the political/legal system changed to its current form. Capitalism and democracy are symbiotes – they exist together in a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Too little government is bad for capitalism. But so is too much. Reasonable people can disagree about how much government is just right. On the other hand government does not exist solely to support capitalism. It has other necessary functions like promoting the general welfare and providing for the common defense.

This raises another issue – how to pay for the necessary functions of government; specifically who should pay and how much. Once again, this is an issue upon which reasonable people can disagree.

Mattie’s basic premise is that since capitalism cannot function without government then government is justified in extracting a larger share of the profits. You could call this the “Teeter-Totter Fallacy”. You need two people to make a teeter-totter work. Neither one can function without the other. They are both indispensable.

But if one of them is too heavy the teeter-totter still won’t work.

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The More Things Change . . .

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Walter Russell Mead:

Ever since the long death spiral began, Detroit has relied on periodic bond sales to keep its bills paid. The thinking was clear: borrow now, pay it back later when the city’s finances recover. Of course, Detroit’s finances never recovered, and now it’s on the hook for much of this borrowing, in addition to the fees that these banks charged.

And these are serious fees. Bloomberg reports that since 2005, Wall Street banks have charged the city a whopping $474 million. As a comparison, that’s about as much as the city’s current entire police and fire budget for this year:

“The banks promise to get you the money and say you can pay later,” said Greg Bowens, spokesman for Stand Up For Democracy, a Lansing group that campaigned last year to repeal the law allowing appointment of a financial manager. “They get their fees off the top, and you trust that they’re doing what’s in your taxpayers’ best interest.”

As Detroit is learning now, in many cases they weren’t. And Detroit is not alone: In city after city, struggling pension funds have turned to exotic Wall Street investments claiming high returns and minimal risks. In some cases this is working out, in many more it isn’t, but either way, Wall Street is collecting its fees and leaving taxpayers and pensioners to pick up the pieces when it falls apart.

Democrats are shocked, shocked by the news that there is gambling going on in America’s blue cities. They do their best to avert their eyes from the close political ties between corrupt urban political machines and exploitative Wall Street banks. In the lame progressive mindset that characterizes these decadent times, Wall Street is bad, and urban politicians are good. There can’t possibly be some sort of symbiotic relationship between them. How could something so good, so honest, so dedicated to serving the poor as the Detroit Democratic machine be engaged in a vicious conspiracy with Wall Street to bleed the poor and suck the city dry?

Some Democrats don’t like this kind of talk because they are cynical and others don’t like it because they are naive. The cynics are either in the game themselves or knowingly agree to look the other way because they value the support of political allies and don’t care how much those allies bleed the poor. The naive ones, and there are lots of starry eyed intellectuals in this country who don’t know a hawk from a handsaw, think that because many of these urban thugs are African-American, and because they advocate for more government programs to help the poor, they must obviously be sincere and be part of a general wave of good progressive people fighting to make this world a better place. Surely nobody is so cynical as to lobby for government programs because they plan to cream off the money?

Others have an uneasy sense that something is amiss, but a combination of historical ignorance and race sensitivity strikes them dumb. They look around America and see a number of urban areas with predominantly African-American populations. They see that many (not all) of these cities are run by incompetent, race-baiting hacks and criminals who use identity politics to bond themselves to the voters they exploit.

Because they don’t understand that corruption and identity politics have been the hallmark of American municipal government since the 1830s and 184os, they think the ghastly spectacle of demagogic corruption ruining our cities today is somehow a racial phenomenon. The racists among us see that picture and want to draw racist conclusions about African-American capacity for self governance; most of the rest of us are made so uncomfortable by the whole topic that we let the subject slide.

But thieves like the despicable Kwame Kilpatrick in Detroit are anything but a racial phenomenon. There were Irish, Jewish, Italian, Polish and Greek Kilpatricks in their day. We can confidently expect a wave of Latino Kilpatricks as Latino voting power pushes African-American machines aside in more urban areas.

And there’s another thing American history teaches: unscrupulous politicians will find unscrupulous bankers who will float them abusive loans in exchange for fat fees.

If our so-called ‘progressives’ today weren’t so intellectually decadent and, well, historically challenged, they would be leading the charge to clean up American cities. Instead they are mostly silent — and sometimes even defend the machines.

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Our Founding Fathers understood that power corrupts. History is rife with examples of people winning their freedom by overthrowing a corrupt tyrant and then ceding power to a beneficent and wise leader who is followed eventually by a corrupt tyrant.

If you can’t stop corruption and abuse of power from happening, you try to mitigate the harm they cause. One of the best ways to mitigate corruption and abuse is to limit power. That is exactly what the federal system and separation of powers is intended to do.

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Random thoughts:

Did you ever notice that government regulations don’t regulate government?

I find it amusing that the very people who fear “Big Brother” the most are the same people who want to create him.

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A Blast From The Past

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This post by Ace at Ace of Spades HQ was originally posted on August 2, 2007:

The Toxic Self-Delusions of the Liberal Psychology

[...]

To bring this ’round to current politics: Liberals, of course, also have a great deal of distance between their own capacities for unfairness, nastiness, dishonesty, and hypocrisy than they believe they do. Again, their sense of self depends heavily on the proposition that they are superior, if not superlative, in their fairness, civility, honesty, and integrity; they have great difficulties admitting deficiencies (beyond a fairly trivial sort) in any of these virtues.

Now, I don’t believe that either group, liberals or conservatives, has a particular monopoly on virtue. Individual people, obviously, may be more virtuous than others, but when it comes to large groups, I tend to imagine that all the usual sins are spread, collectively, about equally over both.

However — I strongly believe that the liberals have a far less realistic self-assessment as regards their own, and their political brethren’s, scores on these virtues.

I don’t believe conservatives or liberals are more honest, generally, than the other.

But I do believe liberals are strongly convinced they’re more honest.

I don’t believe conservatives or liberals are more fair, generally, than the other.

But I do believe liberals are strongly convinced they’re fairer.
I don’t believe conservatives or liberals are more civil, generally, than the other.

But I do believe liberals are strongly convinced they’re more civil.
I don’t believe conservatives or liberals have more integrity, generally, than the other.

But I do believe liberals are strongly convinced they have more integrity.

And to toss out the obvious:

I don’t believe conservatives or liberals are more intelligent, generally, than the other.

But I do believe liberals are believe zealously, rabidly that they’re more intelligent.

This lack of accurate self-assessment has caused a great distortion in our current politics. Throughout time, both Republicans and Democrats have resorted to pimping cheap sexual scandals to win elections.

Throughout time, both Republicans and Democrats have resorted to simplistic-to-the-point-of-dishonesty messaging to win elections.

Throughout time, both Republicans and Democrats have engaged in embarrassing hypocrisy in excoriating in the other party what the blithely forgive in their own.

But here’s the thing: Because liberals have far more difficult time admitting to themselves they’re guilty of sins of integrity or honesty or the like, they have convinced themselves that, at least until recently, they’ve been too darn honest, fair, and civil in politics, conducting them with far too much integrity.

Because, you see — it’s only conservatives who’ve been letting down Team America in these areas for the last forty years.

Every election the liberals lose, they claim the same basic reasons for losing: We were too nice. We weren’t “tough enough.” We were too honest. We weren’t willing to go into the gutter like the other guys.

We were too smart for the American people.

However, they’ve been saying this for the last century. And they were wrong: The whole time they imagined they were being too goshdarn good-spirited, civil, fair, substantive, honest, and intelligent to their electoral detriment, they were actually matching conservatives punch-for-punch in meanspiritedness, incivility, empty slogaeering, dishonesty, and outright stupidity.

But now they’ve decided the gloves should finally come off.

Now they’ll really “get tough.”

Now they’ll actually match conservatives in their nastiness.

[...]

They have to be “tough” now, you see. After all, liberals have been far too civil, far too caring, far too honest, and far too kind-hearted for far too-long. Now it’s time to really cut loose — cut loose fairness, cut loose civility, cut loose honesty, cut loose integrity, cut loose simple sanity. Those were all just baggage holding them back, it turns out.

Well, liberals, you’ve remade your party into the phantasmal horror you long imagined the Republican Party to be. Your senators and top-tier presidential candidates are now required to pander to those who believe the US government itself conspired to murder 3000 Americans on 11 September 2001. Because you’ve permitted — or fostered — or encouraged — the seething political psychopathy that self-respecting men and women once shunned.

Are you happy?

And do you imagine this sort of politics-without-frontiers will ultimately prove to be a winning model?

Do you wish to shame yourselves further by continuing down this road?

Or is perhaps about time — maybe for the first time — you took a more realistic assessment of the way you and your political correligionists have been behaving before this new era of shameless, shameful “toughness”?

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There is a bunch more, and you should go over there to read it. If nothing else it is evidence in support of my hypothesis that the average length of blog posts shrinks over time.

I don’t recall when I first ventured into the right side of the blogosphere (aka “Wingnuttia”) but I’m pretty sure that in August 2007 I was still confining my online excursions to the soothing streams of Left Blogistan lest I become tainted by impure ideas. But if I had read this post way back then I surely would have dismissed it out of hand as so much bullshit.

Of course the summer of 2007 was way back before all the unpleasantness took place. The intervening years have been both traumatic and educational. To say that my eyes have been opened is to put it mildly.

I also found this other post to be very interesting:

Why Does John Cole Get Traffic?

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As I have said many times before, back in the days of my innocence blindness I was a regular at John Cole’s blog.

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They LIKE the status quo!

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I thought this comment from our friend HelenK deserved a front page response:

The young republicans got it. They know how to play backtrack’s game. It is driving the dems nuts. Their tactics are no longer working. If the older republicans would stop, look and listen to the young in this case they would be a lot better off

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Helen is right, except for one thing. They LIKE the status quo.

Washington D.C. is literally a swamp. It’s a cesspool of corruption. It pollutes everything it touches. If you put anything clean and pure in there it soon gets covered in toxic sludge. It’s a barrel full of rotten apples.

We don’t have a two party system. What we have is a uni-party system with two wings. Career politicians DO NOT want to reform the system. Each wing would prefer to be on top, but not at the expense of the uniparty losing overall control of government.

There are a whole bunch of people in Washington who have grown fat feeding at the public teat. But they are basically just employees of the uniparty. As long as they remain loyal to the uniparty they are assured of money and privilege, even if they lose an election.

You can’t trust the Democrats. You can’t trust the Republicans either. In fact, you can’t trust anybody in Washington D.C. They may talk about reform, but they don’t mean it. What they want is a large, centralized government, an executive branch that is unhindered by the rule of law and the power to reward friends and punish enemies via taxes, regulations and government spending.

Who runs the uniparty? The answer is easy – just follow the money. Find out who benefits the most from the current system and you’ll find the people running things.

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The Era of Empty Suits

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Walter Russell Mead:

Italian voters don’t have a lot of use for their leaders, and it’s hard to say they are wrong. The left wants to preserve the unsustainable, the right doesn’t have what it takes, and the center is dominated by short term, self centered careerists whizzing through the well oiled revolving doors that connect business with government. But how different are politics elsewhere? Voters ultimately weary of repeat policy failure by the well connected and well educated, and whether you look at Europe, the United States or Japan, the failures of national leadership keep piling up.

Americans often like to believe that our problems are as exceptional as our strengths, but our stale and ineffective political establishment looks a lot like its peers around the world. The American elite is not alone in its inconsequential futility and its lack of strategic vision; world leaders everywhere are falling down on the job.

The assumption that the people guiding the destinies of the world’s major powers know what they are doing is a comforting one, but there’s not a lot of evidence to support it. The “pass it to find out what’s in it” health care ‘reform’ in the United States, the vast stinking policy corpse that is European monetary union, the failure of establishments everywhere to figure out the simple arithmetical problems that our welfare states are encountering because of the demographic transition, the metastasizing tumor of corruption also known as the Chinese Communist Party: none of these suggest that the world is being governed with unusual wisdom.

But the problem is bigger than politics; in civil society as well as in government we are in an age of empty suits and stylish haircuts on hollow heads.

The people who run our affairs today come in many shades of bland. There are the elected officials and their direct appointees clinging more or less precariously to their posts. There are the career bureaucracies and civil servants who toil on regardless of the political winds. (This is a group that includes senior staff in national and regional governments and central banks; others in this category work for international organizations like the EU, the UN, the IMF and the World Bank.) In the developed world there are also the serried ranks of the leaders of the imperial non-profits: the heads of foundations, presidents of universities and think tanks, top staff at prominent NGOs. There are the intellectuals and academics whose views influence the decision makers, and there are the press lords—proprietors, editors and writers—who shape public and elite perceptions about what matters. There are the CEOs and financial movers and shakers whose views and deeds can move markets. More influential in some parts of the world than in others, there are the religious and spiritual leaders, officials and opinion makers. There are the cultural powers in Hollywood and elsewhere that both shape and express the zeitgeist.

As individuals, many of these people are outstanding: bright, hardworking, public spirited and dedicated to their jobs. They score well on tests and they get good grades in school. They can navigate the tricky path of advancement in the large and clumsy institutions that are the hallmark of our time. There are a lot of things they do well: they are mostly polite, they pay their bills and are reasonably faithful to their spouses and reasonably mindful of their kids. They are good company at cocktail parties and can at least appear attentive to panel presentations at multiday conferences. Whatever virtues are fashionable they are ready to exhibit, whatever opinions fit them for power they are eager to embrace. They look the part.

But they also have their limits: generally speaking they not only can’t think outside the box, they can’t conceive of a reality beyond the box’s comforting walls. They are bad at estimating probabilities, bad at anticipating consequences, bad at policy design and bad at managing change. Most are technical rather than strategic intellectuals; they often understand their own specialties pretty well, but cannot grasp the big picture. Incremental and cosmetic change they can process; deep change, not so much. They color between the lines and they play well with others, but under their mostly well meaning and eminently consensual direction the world is careening toward chaos.

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During the 20th Century we saw the professionalization of the public sphere take place. “Public Servant” became a profession and “civil service” a career. This includes everyone involved in government, from the elected leaders down to the menial employees like file clerks and janitors.

Don’t get me wrong – in many ways this was both necessary and good. It was a definite improvement over the old patronage systems that it replaced. One example is the creation for uniform standards and training for police officers.

But there are always unintended consequences.

Lawyers tend to think in terms of law. Give them a problem to solve and they’ll come up with “legal” solutions. Business people tend to think in terms of business solutions. That’s because when you spend most of your days doing one thing it tends to affect your perspective.

People who spend their lives in government tend to think in terms of government. They think government is good and their solution to every problem is “more government”. They also tend to be risk-averse.

But the professionalization craze extended beyond government service. It included professions like journalism and business. And the key element to professionalization is education. More and more people went to college and got degrees. This resulted in an explosion of academia. Nowadays every profession has it’s own branch of academia.

In the computer science field there is an old programmer’s acronym – “GIGO” – that stands for “Garbage in, Garbage out.” It basically means that a program is only as good as the data you feed into it.

For several generations we have been feeding the same kind of people into an ossified system. Is it any surprise that we keep getting the same results?

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When Did Wisdom And Virtue Become Bad Things?

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Robert A. Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as “bad luck.”

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Everywhere that capitalism has been tried it has resulted in the the creation of wealth and a rise in the standard of living. Everywhere socialism has been tried it has resulted in widespread poverty. To be fair, the benefits of capitalism have not been shared equally. On the other hand, the negative effects of socialism are more democratic. Either way, the “1%” always enjoy a higher standard of living than the other 99%.

Over several millennia humankind has developed ideas of virtue and morality. Those ideas have changed over time but some have persisted through the ages. If we think in evolutionary terms these virtues increased our chances of survival – not necessarily individually but as a species.

In recent years some members of our society have decided that they are smarter than our ancestors. I too, once used to think that way.

As I get older I appreciate more and more the accumulated wisdom of our elders.

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Signs of the Apocalypse?

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And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. – Joel 2:30

And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. – Mark 13:25

The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell on the third part of the rivers, and on the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. – Revelation 8:8-11

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Kinda sounds like an eyewitness news report, don’t it?

Imagine you lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere along the Nile or Yellow rivers, or on the plains of Mesopotamia or the jungles of Yucatan. There you are, minding your own business, trying to find food without becoming food yourself.

Then suddenly there is a bright light in the sky and an explosion that knocks you right off your feet. Off in the distance you see a smoking crater where a small city used to be.

That kinda shit would sure leave a lasting impression, wouldn’t it? Is it any wonder that the first thing every ancient civilization did was start studying the stars?

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How Do We Reconcile Due Process And Assassination?

No court for drone oversight, says GOP

Senate Republicans on Tuesday ruled out placing armed drone strikes under the authority of a special court, arguing the move would be a dangerous intrusion on presidential power.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last week raised the idea of creating a new oversight court for drones that would be patterned after the checks and balances that govern surveillance.

But senior Republicans in the Senate dismissed that plan as unrealistic, and warned it would undermine critical counterterrorism efforts.

“I think it is a terrible idea,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Hill.

A new court would be “the biggest intrusion … in the history of [this] country” on the president’s authority as commander in chief, Graham said.

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Except for a brief period in the 70′s the government has always had the power to legally kill you in cold blood and with premeditation and malice. It’s called the death penalty. Death is the ultimate sanction, but we reserve it for the most heinous of crimes. Because it is such a harsh penalty we make the government jump through all kinds of hoops before it can be used. We call those hoops “due process”.

The Fifth Amendment states:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

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“No person shall be … deprived of life … without due process of law.” That’s pretty straightforward. (Notice that it says “person” and not “citizen”.)

Typically “due process” includes a criminal trial where the defendant is represented by an attorney and has the opportunity to contest the accusations against him in front of a judge and jury as well as a legal appeals process. These days a lot of people would agree that the law provides defendants with too much due process. (Those people have never been charged with a crime.)

Where Does Authoritarianism Come From?

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John W. Smart writes:

Creepy comments like Rock’s betray a culty authoritarianism – which, while not exclusive to the Left is more unnerving on the Left. Far Right authoritarianism actually emerges from a nightmarish ideology. There is no real ideology in the incipient authoritarianism of comments like Rock’s… expect an increasingly lazy and hazy personality cult liturgy. What Rock means is we ought to listen to the Dad I like because…well… I like him and he’s cool. There’s no principle in play. No ideology to support or refute. I assure you Rock won’t be calling President Rubio, Clinton, or Christie “Mom and Dad” in 4 years.

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Authoritarianism is something I have been interested in for several years now. It started when I read John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience which led me to The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer. Those two works are heavily relied upon by the intelligentsia of Left Blogistan to describe Republicans and other conservatives.

Until 2008 I accepted those books as gospel. Nowadays I’m not so sure.

Lefty canon says that conservatives are all angry white racists. While I am sure that more than a few meet that description that is an overly broad generalization. But we were talking about authoritarians.

Conventional wisdom is that authoritarianism is exclusively a right-wing disease. Most of the studies on authoritarians focused on the Nazis and Italian fascists and were made after World War II. If you are really interested follow the link to Altemeyer’s book (it’s free) and read up on the history. I’m not gonna repeat it all here because, well, . . . I’m lazy. I am also gonna have to disagree with Perfesser Altemeyer somewhat, but I can’t match all his credentials and research data.

(If I was an academic with ambition I would write up a grant proposal and then get some undergrads and grad students to do the grunt work and then publish my own theory. Then I could sell books and go on talk shows.)

My own personal experience the past few years has convinced me that there are definitely left-wing authoritarians. They not only exist but there are a lot of them bastards too. But I don’t think authoritarianism is connected to ideology.

There are two kinds of authoritarians – authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders. The first kind likes to be bossed around and the other likes to boss people around. In other words, they are made for each other. The rest of us like to be left alone and stay out of other people’s business.

Authoritarianism is anathema to libertarian and small-government conservative ideologies. It doesn’t go so well with anarchism either. But it’s tailor-made for modern big-government progressivism. The real issue is control.

BTW: Authoritarianism is NOT the rule of law.

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Sufferin’ Sycophancy!

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The Hammer of Kraut (via Hot Air):

I love to hear the president whine about FOX News and talk radio. I think we ought to be proud of the fact that we annoy him so much. If you look at the line-up on one side, the liberal media, you start with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, MSNBC, the elite newspapers, the one remaining news magazine, the universities, Hollywood — it doesn’t stop anywhere. And on the other side, talk radio, FOX News. And they can’t stand the fact that they no longer have a monopoly.

So, I think it ought to be taken as a compliment. What I’ve always said about Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, their genius was understanding and locating a niche audience in broadcast cable news, which is half the American people. The half that have suffered for decades by the fact you get the news presented from a single perspective over and over again.

Finally, the fact that there is a new perspective, talk radio and FOX, and they can’t stand it. It’s a source of pride, I would say.

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I still remember the heady days of Progressive Blogosphere 1.0 and the Reality Based Community. Left Blogistan stood alone against the Lap Dog Media, bravely speaking truth to power and eschewing groupthink.

Then they were assimilated by the Borg.

Ironically, FOX News has always been the enemy of Left Blogistan – first because they supported a president, then because they didn’t support a different one. But there has always been a small group that never supported either one.

Some history books still teach that the Roman Empire “fell” in 476 A.D. but the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire was a process that took place over several centuries. Nonetheless, in a fairly short time much of Europe went from an extended period of relative prosperity, knowledge and organization to an extended period of poverty, ignorance and chaos.

In my darker moments I fear that we are entering such a slide into disintegration, decline and darkness. It makes me wonder what the Romans of antiquity were thinking back in the early Fifth Century. Was anyone speaking truth to power?

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Klown Musings

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Just a few thoughts about the past few days:

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I was saddened and disappointed by Hillary Clinton’s performance the other day. It reminded me why I am no longer a Democrat. But some of the reactions to her testimony reminded me why I’m not a Republican either.

Hillary Clinton is a high-ranking public servant and quite capable at performing her job. The events in Benghazi called for some intense scrutiny. “Grilling” the Secretary of State is not inherently sexist just because she’s a woman.

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An adverse court ruling is not proof of “high crimes and misdemeanors”.

As long as the Democrats control at least 34 seats in the Senate then impeaching Barack Obama is a waste of time and likely to be counter-productive.

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Principles require consistency. If it’s wrong when they do it, it’s wrong when we do it. Otherwise, you’re just a tribalist.

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We need a mutual cease-fire in the politics of personal destruction. The wrong people are winning and we are depriving ourselves of too many potential leaders.

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Sunlight is a known carcinogen. We all need sunlight to be healthy. Too much or too little is a bad thing. Find the right balance.

This applies to everything.

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