tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-283073992024-03-14T03:31:50.453-07:00Enlightened LaypersonI am in law school, but am not (yet) a lawyer, much less a constitutional scholar. I have read many of this country's founding documents, but am not a historian. I follow current news but have no specialized knownledge of it. I am, in short, an enlightened layperson with a myriad opinions to share. They do not pretend to be more than the opinions of an enlightened laypersonUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger291125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-12197947102928012302014-12-09T21:30:00.003-08:002014-12-09T21:30:55.525-08:00Goldberg, Libertarians, and Law EnforcementJonah Goldberg has written a <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/12/08/rand_paul_is_right_about_eric_garner_124884.html">column</a> on the death of Eric Garner that gives me some insight into the libertarian mindset. He writes to defend Rand Paul's comment on the subject:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I think there’s something bigger than the individual circumstances. . . . I think it’s also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, so that’s driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say, ‘Hey we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.’ . . . For someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians. We put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws.</blockquote>
The choice of words is poor, Goldberg acknowledges, but the point is sound. Because to Goldberg as a libertarian, police killing law breakers is the end point of the law -- any law. That is why we should have as few laws as possible. "The state is about violence. You can talk all day about how 'government is just another word for those things we do together,' but what makes government work is force, not hugs." <br />
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Thus to a libertarian like Goldberg, police-community relations, or deep hostility between police and black communities, or excessive force,or even people being killed by police are not in and of themselves important issues. They are simply inevitable side effects of having a police force at all. This is not to suggest that Goldberg is an anarchist or wants to do away with police forces. He simply considers it inevitable that when they enforce, they will use force, and that when they use force, sometimes it will be excessive, sometimes people will even be killed. The best way to avoid it, from the viewpoint of a libertarian like Goldberg, is to keep our number of laws to the bare minimum necessary so that police will have as few opportunities to use excessive force as possible.<br />
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I can see some problems in that viewpoint. For instance, even a libertarian like Goldberg presumably sees a ban on shoplifting (as was the case in Ferguson) as legitimate. Which would mean that when the Ferguson police shot and killed a shoplifter, a libertarian could only greet it with a shrug. Officer Wilson was upholding a legitimate law against theft. A few incidents like this are simply the price we pay to maintain law and order.<br />
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Well, speaking as a liberal, I disagree. It <i>is</i> possible to enforce the law without resort to excessive force. The amount of force appropriate is and should be proportionate to the crime in question. Why, earlier <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/student-stabbed-chabad-lubavitch-crown-heights-article-1.2038761">today,</a> a deranged man in New York (apparently black) invaded a synagogue, stabbed a student, charged the policeman called to the scene with a knife, and was fatally shot. I have no complaint there. The man attempted murder and was posing a serious threat to people around him. The use of deadly force was entirely appropriate. It is an altogether different matter from killing a shoplifter or a cigarette peddler. And, yes, the poor state of relations between the police department and many black communities is a serious issue, whether one considers any particular regulation legitimate or not.<br />
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It does offer me some insight, though, into why libertarians like Goldberg see the most important issue of freedom and government as confining government within the narrowest possible scope, rather than properly controlling its use of force. They have simply dismissed properly controlling its use of force as a lost cause and therefore confine themselves to minimizing such instances.<br />
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Cross posted at <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/">Essayist-Lawyer</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-70123708290576724632014-12-09T20:42:00.004-08:002014-12-09T20:42:46.560-08:00The Torture ReportAmazing. The Senate's <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/09/senate-torture-report_n_6247726.html">torture report</a> is out and, despite my one-time <a href="http://enlightenedlayperson.blogspot.com/search/label/Torture">obsession</a> with the subject, I feel no urge to post about it. One thing should be kept in mind. Horrifying as this report is, it is only the tip of the iceberg. It addresses torture in secret sites by the CIA. It does not address far more widespread, though probably more amateurish, use of torture by the military (see Abu Graib).<br />
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Maybe if I have a strong stomach, I can get to it later. But 500 pages (to say nothing of 6000!) is formidable.<br />
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Cross-posted at <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/">Essayist-Lawyer.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-91286272191752564432014-12-08T21:21:00.004-08:002014-12-08T21:21:58.333-08:00Failures of Democracy and the Victorious GeneralSo, having taken <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-grass-crown-marius-succumbs-to-dark.html">at least</a> a <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-grass-crown-what-sulla-really-wants.html">look</a> at how the Roman Republic started to come unglued, it is time to consider another factor I did not take into account when I reached my <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/2014/02/i-am-not-ready-yet-to-bring-any.html">preliminary</a> <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/2013/10/afterword-and-foreword.html">hypothoses</a> on how democracies fail -- the role of the victorious general. I did not consider the victorious general because, so far as I can tell, the victorious general has not been particularly dangerous in modern times. Certainly, there have been no shortage of military dictatorships, but so far as I can tell, the charismatic victorious general using his popularity (either with the troops or with the general public) to steamroll accepted procedures has not been all that common. Far more dangerous has been military <i>defeat</i> and brooding resentments over it.<br />
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It is clear, though, that victorious generals could be very dangerous in classical antiquity. I confess, I have now begun <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fortunes-Favorites-Colleen-McCullough/dp/0061582409"><i>Fortune's Favorites</i>,</a> which makes clear that one military dictatorship sets a very bad precedent. As soon as one victorious general marches on Rome and seizes power by force, all the others are tempted to do the same. It was such generals who were the undoing of the Roman Republic. In Greece, victorious generals seizing power took place much earlier on. <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.5.five.html">Aristotle,</a> writing well after such dictatorships had ended, speculated on why dictatorships had become so much less common in his day, attributed it to a separation of civil and military authority:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion. Whereas in our day, when the art of rhetoric has made such progress, the orators lead the people, but their ignorance of military matters prevents them from usurping power; at any rate instances to the contrary are few and slight.</blockquote>
This history was well known by the Founding Fathers when they started this country. Contrary to what I learned in school, they were not in the least bit worried about the U.S. turning into a European-style hereditary monarchy. What they were worried about was a military dictatorship, which they considered worse than a hereditary monarchy. The record of victorious generals in ancient Greece and Rome was not reassuring. Events in France would soon prove that such fears were not idle. At the same time, the Founders knew that victorious generals were not <i>necessarily</i> dangerous. Before the time of Marius and Sulla, Rome had many victorious generals who held high office and respected the Republic. And they had before their own eyes a shining example in the person of George Washington, whose respect for civilian control of the military was beyond dispute. Certainly, in school we learned about Washington's popularity and prestige. Not emphasized was that his popularity and prestige were no different than any other victorious general's. What made him stand out was his refusal to use that popularity and prestige to usurp unconstitutional powers. So, what made George Washington different from Napoleon Bonaparte? Was it simply greater restraint on the part of Washington, or are victorious generals only dangerous under certain conditions?<br />
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Suffice it to say that when Andrew Jackson became President, he had several traits that made people nervous. His populist style was alarming to people who saw populist politicians as the undoing of the Roman Republic. His emphasis on executive power and the President and embodiment of the will of the people smacked of a charismatic dictator. And his war hero status reminded a lot of people more of Bonaparte than Washington. Alexis de Tocqueville, in <i>Democracy in America</i>, rather cynically <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm#link2HCH0041">commented:</a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Americans have no neighbors, and consequently they have no great wars, or financial crises, or inroads, or conquest to dread; they require neither great taxes, nor great armies, nor great generals; and they have nothing to fear from a scourge which is more formidable to republics than all these evils combined, namely, military glory. It is impossible to deny the inconceivable influence which military glory exercises upon the spirit of a nation. General Jackson, whom the Americans have twice elected to the head of their Government, is a man of a violent temper and mediocre talents; no one circumstance in the whole course of his career ever proved that he is qualified to govern a free people, and indeed the majority of the enlightened classes of the Union has always been opposed to him. But he was raised to the Presidency, and has been maintained in that lofty station, solely by the recollection of a victory which he gained twenty years ago under the walls of New Orleans, a victory which was, however, a very ordinary achievement, and which could only be remembered in a country where battles are rare. Now the people which is thus carried away by the illusions of glory is unquestionably the most cold and calculating, the most unmilitary (if I may use the expression), and the most prosaic of all the peoples of the earth.</blockquote>
At the same time, Tocqueville was well <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm#link2HCH0053">aware</a> that there was no danger whatever of Jackson becoming a military dictator:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 1em;">It has been imagined that General Jackson is bent on establishing a dictatorship in America, on introducing a military spirit, and on giving a degree of influence to the central authority which cannot but be dangerous to provincial liberties. But in America the time for similar undertakings, and the age for men of this kind, is not yet come: if General Jackson had he entertained a hope of exercising his authority in this manner, he would infallibly have forfeited his political station, and compromised his life; accordingly he has not been so imprudent as to make any such attempt.</span></blockquote>
He goes on to say that the real danger that Jackson poses is the degree to which he <i>undermined</i> federal authority. <br />
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Following Jackson the U.S. had many other victorious general Presidents. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Harrison">William Henry Harrison</a> (defeated Tecumseh), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Taylor">Zachary Taylor</a> (Mexican American War), and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce">Franklin Pierce</a> (Mexican American War) all ran as victorious generals, as was Pierce's electoral opponent, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winfield_Scott">Winfield Scott.</a> And, of course, there were Ulysses S. Grant (McClellan ran against Lincoln; Sherman could have been elected, but refused), Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Our democracy is none the worse for these. Eisenhower appears to have been our last victorious general President, and our democracy is none the better for it.*<br />
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So clearly there is nothing <i>inherently</i> dangerous about victorious generals; the danger lies in larger body politic. Furthermore, many modern democracies have fallen victim to military coups or dictatorships without any victorious general to lead them. Same point.<br />
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And I really ought to put in a word about Paul von Hindenburg. Hindenburg as (at least purportedly) a victorious general and became a popular hero on that account. He made no secret of the fact that he was a monarchist and did not favor the Republic. But he also respected the rule of law and pledged to take no action against the Republic unless he could persuade it by lawful means to restore the monarchy. He kept his word. That he ended up becoming a sort of semi-dictator had more to do with the economic crisis than any ambition on his part. That he ended up offering the chancellorship to Hitler was more the result of bad policies, bad advisers, and bad judgment than actual evil intent. Ludendorf, of course, was a different matter altogether.<br />
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So why were victorious generals so dangerous in classical times and even as late as the French Revolution, but just not much of a factor in the 20th Century? Of have they been more dangerous than I realize in modern times? Another thing I hope to learn more about.<br />
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Cross-posted at <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/">Essayist-Lawyer</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*On the other hand, we have had other generals like MacArthur, Patton, or LeMay who I would not trust anywhere near the Presidency.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-47979498702253117472014-12-07T18:20:00.002-08:002014-12-07T18:20:50.125-08:00What Can I Say For Liberals?I have posted <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/2012/04/in-group-loyalty-darker-side.html">before</a> on what I think it is to be liberal. At the time, I said it was to place (or aspire to place) universal justice over in-group loyalty. Another way to put it would be that there is a trade-off between breadth and depth of our social ties and (generally speaking) a liberal is one who favors breadth and a conservative is one who favors depth. Or, most simply put. a liberal is one who seeks to broaden social ties, or to broaden the circle of people we are willing to take into account. To be conservative (I suppose) would be to seek deeper and tighter social ties, among a more narrow circle. And to be anti-liberal is to resent liberal for seeking draw the circle too widely.<br />
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All of this came to mind after reading these <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/privilege-grad-school-mehra-eric-garner/">recent</a> <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/swpl-eric-garner/">posts</a> mocking liberals for their concern about the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/dec/04/i-cant-breathe-eric-garner-chokehold-death-video">Eric Garner killing.</a> The basic criticism of white liberals who are offended by police killing black men is (perhaps predictably) that they are phony, shallow, superficial, and inauthentic. After all, you are professing empathy and solidarity with people you don't really know or understand. It comes across as smug, superior and patronizing. It is an attempt by people living in comfort and safety to appropriate for themselves someone else's trauma in order to have more excitement in their lives and to show moral superiority to the blue collar cops, or to people who don't care. <br />
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And, yes, I think there is some truth to these accusations. Some of it is just an attempt to be trendy like boycotting GMO and keeping up with the latest food fashions. Empathy for people you do not know, who are outside your experience <i>is</i> bound to be more superficial than for people you really do know and understand. Such attempts <i>do</i> often mean projecting one's own interests and desires onto other people and, as such, comes across as offensively patronizing. Worse, it can mean trying to force the purported targets of one's sympathy to meet one's own preconceived notions, a thing that can be more intrusive and offensive than simple, outright hostility, let long simple indifference.<br />
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So, as a liberal, what do I say in our defense? I suppose that I would say that the liberal approach for all its flaws, is still better than the alternative. The alternative, after all, is to say, why should I care, it doesn't affect me or anyone I know. And I will grant, such a response is genuine. It is sincere. It is authentic. But all that proves in the end is that genuineness and sincerity and authenticity don't count for much, in an of themselves.<br />
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Cross-posted at <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/">Essayist-Lawyer</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-86938413229202717212014-12-07T17:25:00.001-08:002014-12-07T17:25:11.271-08:00Wow! It appears that this blog has taken off -- about three years after I stopped posting on it. Maybe I should start cross-posting with my new blog to see what happens.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-52590452156534059332011-09-28T22:31:00.001-07:002011-09-28T22:33:39.221-07:00The End and the BeginningWell, I was sworn in as a lawyer on Monday. That means I am no longer and Enlightened Layperson (at least on legal issues). But if any of my readers are still out there, you can continue to follow me at <a href="http://essayistlawyer.blogspot.com/">Essayist-Lawyer.</a> (So I will still be EL). First post is now up.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-70168965803681072612011-09-23T20:27:00.000-07:002011-09-24T10:34:01.842-07:00Liberty and FolkwaysI highly recommend <a href="http://www.frumforum.com/the-road-to-treadmill-serfdom">this excellent piece by David Fum</a> on how most people define liberty. Frum points out that when people talk about their rights and freedom they are generally not talking about anything so abstract as the rights set forth in the Bill of Rights or any other universal concept. What they mean, ultimately, is their accepted folkways.<br /><br />The occasion of the post was the City of Chicago attempting to save money on its employee health insurance costs by charging an extra $50 per month unless they engaged in a regular exercise program. On the one hand he found the outraged reaction, treating this as a totalitarian nightmare amusing. On the other hand, he said, there is a serious insight here. When these people say freedom, they don’t mean, say, the criminal procedure protections offered by the Bill of Rights. After all, what are the chances they will ever actually be charged with a crime? Freedom to them means the right to their favored lifestyle, unhindered. And, although he does not add this, probably unchallenged.<br /><br />On the one hand, I suppose I’ve known this all along. On the other hand, having it put in such stark relief explains a lot.<br /><br />It’s easiest to understand when the coercive power of the state is implicated. After all, one of the commenters on the thread pointed out, any number of corporate employers do the same thing. And insurance companies may offer discounts for healthy lifestyles. But these meet with less resistance because, after all, you can always find another job or another insurer. But then again, no one forces city employees to work for the city; they are free to take another job, too. It explains the NRA crowd who seem utterly unconcerned about any part of the Constitution except the Second Amendment – nothing else infringes on their folkways. It explains the sense that freedom is being threatened even when the state coercion is very slight – use of taxpayer dollars to build trains and other public transportation, discussion of relaxing zoning laws to allow higher density housing, requiring posting of calorie and nutrition information in restaurants, and so forth. To people who identify a personal car with freedom, who like the quiet and roominess of the suburbs, who don’t want to be nagged about their food, these things feel intrusive even if there is no force involved.* People’s favored lifestyles are being criticized and officially disapproved of. That is intrusion enough.<br /><br />It may explain part of what is behind Jonah Goldberg’s <em>Liberal Fascism</em>. In interviews he has argued that nothing Republicans do is as intrusive as, say, a ban on smoking in bars because they don’t seek to impose a lifestyle. (As the Religious Right influence in the Republican Party continues to grow, it will be harder and harder for Goldberg to deny that conservatives, too, seek to impose a lifestyle). It explains the reviewer who said the very embodiment of liberal fascism was Jimmy Carter going on TV in a sweater urging people to turn the thermostat down.<br /><br />It also explains the hostility and that the sense that freedom is being threatened ever when the coercive power of the state is not implicated – switchboards that say, “For English, press one,” fast food restaurants offering healthy alternatives, store clerks who say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and,, of course, any visible (or invisible) presence of Islam. The state is not involved in any of these, and the greatest coercion at stake is having to press one to get English. People make up elaborate PC conspiracies (presumably abetted by the state), but what is really happening, for the most part is that familiar folkways are being challenged and criticized. That feels intrusive enough.<br /><br />Fum does not explore why this rage over a threat to one’s folkways is so much a right wing phenomenon. Why don’t you year it on our side? Right wingers I assume would say the answer is simple – ours is the officially favored lifestyle and theirs is the one under siege. I think there is something to this. In particular, our side has been highly successful getting part of its agenda, in the form of abortion and gay rights, enacted by the courts. What right wing lifestyle concern (other than gun ownership) has ever been constitutioalized? And our side is, after all, the beneficiary of building trains, nutrition labels, smoking bans, and so forth. But is it all as one-sided as right wingers often think? Their side has been the beneficiary of road building to accommodate more automobile traffic, density restrictions on housing, separate residential and commercial zoning, loopholes in fuel efficiency standards for SUV’s, various privileges given to churches, abstinence education, and so forth. The War on Drugs is a whole lot more intrusive expression of disapproval of a lifestyle than most conservatives will ever know.<br /><br />I am inclined to think that our side’s reaction is not rage because instead we prefer condescension. We don’t so much reject any other lifestyle as illegitimate as feel smugly superior to anyone who doesn’t share it. And we do treat other lifestyles, such as suburban sprawl and heavy car traffic as social ills to be overcome. I think our side would do well to overcome its self-righteousness and acknowledge that yes, some people like living in suburbs, sprawl and all, and some people equate private cars with freedom and some people feel really threatened when you speak of their favored lifestyle as a social ill to be overcome. Try to imagine how it would feel if someone talked that way (in similarly smug and patronizing tones) about your favored lifestyle. And stop equating your consumer choices as marks of moral superiority instead of, you know, consumer choices.<br /><br />This being said, not all folkways are worthy. Some really do have to be changed. Frum offers the example of outlawing thatched roofs in Boston in the 1630’s (a fire hazard) and building sewers in New York in the 1840’s (this encountered a lot of resistence!) And, although he does not mention it, a much less benign and amusing example was the resistance to desegregation, often expressed in terms of a threat to liberty. Even unhealthy lifestyles are not purely a matter of personal choice if they raise everyone’s insurance rates (much less are taxpayer subsidized though Medicare). But we are well-advised to keep in mind the extent to which most people do equate freedom with preservation of their folkways – and be sensitive to this before rushing to be too judgmental.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-89888384091287892092011-09-22T21:21:00.000-07:002011-09-23T20:23:59.691-07:00The Real Dispute on CharityHT <a href="http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/09/the-governments-compassion.html">Andrew Sullivan,</a> here quite an interesting link (no longer accessible, alas) to libertarian Doug Mataconi challenging liberal assumptions on the true nature of compassion. Specifically, he says that liberals want the fake compassion of government programs and libertarians want the real compassion of voluntary giving. He also complains that in discussing the subject liberals and conservatives/libertarians are talking past each other, and that the liberal view of compassion as government programs has become so dominant in discourse as to drown out alternatives.<br /><br />Certainly every time I read conservative critiques of government social programs (either by libertarians or by Evangelicals), I do indeed come away with the impression that we are talking past each other, though perhaps not for the same reasons he does. To me it all comes down to a book I read by a rabbi about contrasting Christian and Jewish views of charity. Both religions, he commented, emphasize the importance of charitable giving. Both see it as having two purposes, to provide for the poor, and to teach us to be generous. But Jews focus more on providing for the poor and Christians focus more on teaching people to be generous.<br /><br />This has some important implications. If the focus is on teaching people to be generous, then charity has to be voluntary; to coerce it defeats its entire purpose. If people’s voluntary donations do not adequately provide for the poor, then the remedy is to teach generosity better. Since generosity comes from the heart, it is a deeply personal matter that cannot be coerced. The focus is on the rights of the giver. In the Jewish view, by contrast, a mandatory tax does make sense.* Since the purpose is to provide for the por, ensuring sufficient resources to see to it that the poor are adequately provided for takes priority. By all means, let’s do better at teaching people to be generous, but in the mean time, the poor have to be provided for. The focus is on the needs of the recipient.<br /><br />This, I would say, is the real difference in viewpoints. Evangelical Christians say that how charitable they wish to be is a private matter that the government has no business dictating. Libertarians say that being taxed for anything beyond essential core functions of government is a violation of their rights. Both denounce any taxpayer funded social services as socialism. I would say that socialism is the view that only the needs of the recipient matter, and that the rights of the giver have no legitimate place in public discourse, the Jewish view taken to its illogical conclusion. But the view I hear from libertarians is the opposite – that only the rights of the giver matter, and that the needs of the recipient have no legitimate place in public discourse. The absolutism of this view is alarming. I prefer a less absolutist view – that the proper balance between the rights of the giver and the needs of the recipient is a proper subject of public discourse.<br /><br />To be fair to Mataconi, he does not appear to take the absolutist libertarian viewpoint. He acknowledges at least some scope for a taxpayer funded safety net and criticizes governmental social programs at least partly based on their effectiveness. But he offers two links (inaccessible because I cannot access the original) that do come much closer to the absolutist libertarian view. The first concedes that there might be room to disagree on whether private efforts would be sufficient, but then moves on to more important matters -- there is nothing compassionate about robbing people of their hard-earned money and theatening them with prison cells for tax evasion. Clearly, the adequacy of private efforts are a minor matter easily brushed aside; the important thing is the coercive and illegitimate nature of taxation. Still, ultimately he fails to address what to do if private contributions are not sufficient. The second, by contrast, does. He argues at length that we should learn to distinguish between society and that state. Society has legitimate business providing for the poor and the sick; the state does not. Society should not let the uninsured die for lack of coverage; the state should. And there’s the answer. If voluntary giving is not enough to pay for medical case, better for the uninsured to be left to die than for taxpayers to be forced to foot the bill.<br /><br />I suppose my answer to all this would be that I am not willing to leave the uninsured to die because voluntary charity <em>should</em> provide for them. People don’t always do what they should. Government has a way of stepping in when they don’t. So sure, I believe that voluntary private charity should be sufficient to provide for the poor and the sick. I also believe that people should refrain from committing crimes, businesses should be scrupulously honest in their dealings, married people should live happily ever after, and all food on the shelves should be clean and safe. I also acknowledge that it doesn’t always work out that way. That’s why we have a criminal justice system, civil courts, divorce courts, and public health inspectors. And since private charity does not, in fact, adequately provide for the poor and the sick we have a social safety net. I would also say that I measure a society’s compassion, not just by how subjectively generous people are in their hearts, but by how objectively well it cares for its weakest members.<br /><br />And that, I believe, is the real dispute over charity -- is its purpose to provide for the poor, or to teach us to be generous. Which matters more, the rights of the giver, or the needs of the recipient? Until we bring these alternate viewpoints into the clear light, the talking past each other will continue.**<br /><br />_____________________________________________________<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">*It is probably impolitic to point out that Islam takes a distinction Jewish view here. Islam favors a mandatory tax to provide for the poor with additional, voluntary donations strongly encouraged.<br />**And what is really interesting is how the same person can flip from one view to another apparently without noticing he difference. Left libertarian </span><a href="http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2011/09/18/13662"><span style="font-size:78%;">Jim Henley</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;"> says that he might have written something like that once. He even says, "I supported the true empathy of unforced charity, worried about government programs 'crowding out' civil society, and believed that the 'coerced' nature of redistributive policies made it impossible to be 'moral' at all, since morality requires affirmative choice." Clearly the focus is on charity as teaching us to be generous and entirely on the rights of the giver. The needs of the recipient are secondary at best. But he explains that he has change his mind. The reasons he gives essentially deal with his severe doubts about the ability of private contributions to do the job – the costs of modern medicine are too great, local communities are easily overwhelmed, and the emotional burden can be just too great outside of the sort of impersonal bureaucratic organization that gives some professional distance. In other words, the needs of the recipient will not be met. Does he not see the basic difference in outlook between these two views? </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-38755349903136406972011-09-21T20:43:00.000-07:002011-09-21T21:40:04.094-07:00Why We Should Abandon the Myth of the Social Security Trust FundFor years, few things have been so sacred to Democrats at the myth of the Social Security trust fund. Working age people pay a regular tax that goes into the trust fund and is invested in U.S. Treasury bonds (the safest investment there is!) and receive their payments back, with interest earned, upon retirement. Democrats would obsessively worry about its health (Reagan is raiding the Social Security Trust fund! ) and urge that it be protected (let’s use the Clinton surpluses to shore up the Social Security trust fund!). Now Rick Perry is leading a whole chorus of Republicans denouncing Social Security as a Ponzi scheme because current retirees are being paid out of current income, and warning that without drastic the system will go broke. The CBO warns that the trust fund will go broke in 2037. And suddenly its defenders are having to explain why Social Security can be simultaneously pay-as-you-go and a trust fund.<br /><br />And really, we had it coming for obscuring the true nature of Social Security. The myth of the Ponzi scheme is simply a variant on the myth of the trust fund – pointing out how poorly the trust fund model applies. But once you drop the trust fund model, and the claim that it is a Ponzi scheme loses its credibility.<br /><br />What is really happening is simple. Social Security is a tax-and-transfer system. People of working age are paying taxes to support retirees. When today’s working people retire, a younger generation of works will be taxed to support them. And so on. So long as everyone pays in and everyone expects to live long enough to benefit, there is little resistance to such a system. All advanced industrial countries in the world have such a system in one form or another.<br /><br />So where does the trust fund come into the picture? Until extremely recently, Social Security ran a surplus, i.e., it took in more than it paid out. And what became of the surplus? It was used to fund other government operations. But the general fund, when it used Social Security funds to run operations, would say that it owed Social Security a certain amount to be paid back in the future. Critics called that raiding the Social Security trust fund. Anti-critics called it investing in U.S. treasury bonds. But raiding the Social Security trust fund and investing it in treasury bonds are <em>exactly the same thing</em>. Either one just means using Social Security tax revenue to fund current operations. The "trust fund" is nothing but an accounting gimmick, a theoretical promise that when Social Security falls into deficit, other taxes will be used to pay the benefits. Talk of the trust fund running out just means that this theoretical promise will expire and the government will no longer be obliged to use non-Social Security taxes to pay Social Security benefits.*<br /><br />I can understand why supporters would want to encourage the myth of the trust fund. Fearing that people would not be willing to pay a tax during their working lives to support current retirees, and that retirees might have misgivings about asking working people to foot the bills for their own retirements, advocates of Social Security proposed the fiction that really people were paying into a trust fund ad receiving their investments back. Such arguments remove the usual resistance to a tax-and-transfer system, but the play into the hands of people who claim it is a fraud or in danger of failing.<br /><br />Why? Well, for one thing, since there <em>isn't</em> an actual trust fund, it is very easy to make the case that no such trust fund exists or, if it does, that it is being egregiously mismanaged. Real trust funds start with a lump sum and have bunch of financial experts looking for the best investments. Real retirement accounts and pension funds have to have actual money and investments to cover future payments. Social Security simply takes the incoming revenues, pays current obligations, and then spends the surplus on other government operations. You would, indeed, never be able to get away with running an actual trust fund that way (hence the accusation that it is fraudulent). All of which is irrelevant once you concede that there is no trust fund, but only a simple tax-and-transfer system.<br /><br />But even more significant is the scary talk of the trust fund running out in 2037 (or whenever). If you treat Social Security as a real trust fund that means (a) that we can keep making payments with no trouble up till then, but then (b) that once the trust fund runs out, Social Security will run out of funding and payments will cease.<br /><br />The real situation is both more and less alarming. It is more alarming in the sense that the shortfall has begun <em>right now</em> and we are <em>already</em> obligated to start cutting into everything else to pay for the gap in Social Security. Maybe the thought that everything but Social Security having its funding cut to pay for Social Security doesn't bother you, but it definitely bothers me. On the other hand, expiring of the trust fund does <em>not</em> mean that all funding will collapse. It means the theoretical oblitgation to strip everything else to pay for Social Security will cease. Revenues will continue to come in. They will merely fall about 25% short of obligations. Cut Social Security obligations by 25% for everyone born after (say) 1956 and the problem will be solved. Or, if you don't like that approach, there are any number of other alternatives to match revenues to obligations.<br /><br />But pretending there is a trust fund in the light of all evidence to the contrary does nothing to protect the program. It simply exposes the embarrassing contradictions.**<br />_________________________________________<br /><span style="font-size:85%;">*So what would have happened if we had followed Bill Clinton's advice and used his surpluses to "shore up the Social Security trust fund"? Assuming the surpluses would have continued and the economy had not crashed (two dubious assumptions), we would have continued to un surpluses until Social Secuity obligations began exceeding revenues. Then the surpluses would gradually have dwindled. This would mean using non-Social Security taxes to pay for Social Secuity benefits, on an indefinite basis. But so what?<br />**And I can't resist a link to </span><a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/cockroach-ideas/"><span style="font-size:85%;">Paul Krugman,</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> bless his heart, defending the concept of a Social Security trust fund. His logic is most unpersuasive (at least to me). He points out that Ronald Reagan cut income taxes while raising Social Security taxes. This had the practical effect of not actually cutting total taxes, but merely making them more regressive, but it sold well as a plan to protect Social Security. "[I]f you say that there is no link between the payroll tax and future Social Security benefits – which is what denying the reality of the trust fund amounts to – then Greenspan and company pulled a fast one back in the 1980s: they sold a regressive tax switch, raising taxes on workers while cutting them on the wealthy, on false pretenses." To which I can only say, "Well, DUH!" I've known that all along.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-90140143464296931992011-09-17T17:41:00.001-07:002011-09-19T21:53:36.210-07:00Slice Four: European Semi-FascistsThis leads to the darkest and ugliest form of right-wing nationalism that both despises the liberal, cosmopolitan Jewish tradition, even as it supports Israel and Zionism – the European anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim parties, which reach degrees of nastiness that in the U.S. would not be tolerated in mainstream religion or politics, but are relegated to the margins.<br /><br />I will admit to not following these European parties much, but they take a growingly nasty, semi-fascist tone. They belong to a longstanding and ugly European traditional of blood and soil nationalism, one that has a deep-seated tradition of anti-Semitism, distrusting the Jew as liberal cosmopolite without national loyalty. The current version is much the same, only it substitutes Muslims for Jews as the internal enemy and passionately supports Israel. The old hatred for the liberal cosmopolitan Jew remains, but with the assurance that they hate liberal, cosmopolitan Jews only because they are liberal and cosmopolitan, not because they are Jewish. The distinction between the good Jew and the bad Jew is made far more explicit than any mainstream politician or religious figure in the United States would dare.<br /><br />To take the most exteme example, consider Anders Breivik. Jews and Zionism were not his primary concern when he opened filre on Norway's Labor Party youth, but the subject did appea in his manifesto. <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/08/04/breivik_and_the_anti-zionist_smear_110833.html">One commentator remarks:</a><br /><br /><br /><blockquote>Breivik's "Zionism" coexists with a virulent brand of selective anti-Semitism -- one that sees Jews as likely carriers of cosmopolitan, nontraditional values and targets liberal Jews for special loathing. In his discussion of Nazism, Breivik agrees that most German and European Jews in the 1930s were "disloyal" -- "similar to the liberal Jews today." Hitler's error, he believes, was to lump the "good" Jews with the "bad," instead of rewarding the former with a Jewish homeland in a Muslim-free Palestine.<br /><br />As for the present, Breivik estimates that about three-quarters of European and American Jews, and about half of Israeli Jews, "support multiculturalism"; he urges fellow nationalists to "embrace the remaining loyal Jews as brothers rather than repeating the mistake of" the Nazis. What to do with today's "disloyal" Jews, he does not say.</blockquote><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/25/norway-shooter-anders-breivik-s-zionism-in-line-with-pro-israel-european-right.html">Another</a> quotes him as saying“[P]lease learn the difference between a nation-wrecking multiculturalist Jew and a conservative Jew…Never target a Jew because he is a Jew, but rather because he is a category A or B traitor.” Both observe that Breivik is by no means alone. The semi-fascist English Defense League harasses Muslims and is led by a Holocaust denier, but engages in pro-Zionist demonstations. ><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/25/norway-shooter-anders-breivik-s-zionism-in-line-with-pro-israel-european-right.html">Meanwhile</a> “a Belgian politician known for his contacts with SS veterans, an Austrian with neo-Nazi ties, and a Swede whose political party has deep roots in Swedish fascism,” met with members of the Israeli Knesset to express solidarity with their stuggle against Arabs.<br /><br />What is going on? The most obvious answer is simply that Muslims have replaced Jews as the accepted scapegoat and since Israel is a Western outpost fighting the Muslim hoards, it must be an ally. Certainly, I think there is a great deal of truth to that, but I do not think it is the whole truth. The other part of it is that nationalists, even as they define themselves by their enemies, often each other, have a strong affinity for each other just beneath the surface.<br /><br />At the risk of offending Godwin’s Law, Europe, say, 1870 to 1940 is a fine example. It was in the later 19th Century that right wing and nationalist became synonymous. * Indeed, the right wing's great claim to legitimacy was that they were more patriotic than their rivals. Right wing nationalists, if ever they seemed intellectually unfashionable, might comfort themselves with the thought that liberals with their belief in universal human rights, and socialists, with their international brotherhood of labor, might talk a good game, but can they be counted on when the chips are really down? When the test comes, we’ll see who really stands by their country in its hour of peril.**<br /><br />Then Hitler invaded, and a funny thing happened. Liberals and socialists patriotically stood up for their countries, while right wing hyper-nationalists all turned out to be a pack of traitors! The remnants (and descendants) of French <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfuss_affair">anti-Dreyfussards,</a> -- who in the 19th Century fiercely protected France from one Jew falsely accused of spying for the Germans -- now collaborated en masse with German occupiers. To this day, French ultra-nationalist Jean Marie Le Pen defends the German occupation as not <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/02/20/france-s-extreme-right-makeover.html">"particularly inhuman."</a> The same pattern held across much of Europe -- the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Cross_Party">Arrow Cross</a> in Hungary, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard">Iron Guard</a> in Romania, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1e">Ustasha</a> in Croatia, Quisling's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usta%C5%A1e">Nasjonal Samling</a> in Norway and an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quisling">impressive host</a> of other ultra-nationalists, who regularly impugned the patriotism of their opponents, showed that they came to powe by opening collaberating with Nazi invaders. Even the extreme Zionist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(group)#Contact_with_Nazi_Germany">Lehi</a> approached the Nazis in 1940 to propose an alliance -- Nazis would sent European Jews to Israel and cooperate with them in expelling the British!<br /><br />Why should this be so? It is easy enough to explain for the liberals – they saw Hitler as an obvious threat to universal human rights. Likewise the Socialists *** saw his hype-nationalism as anathema to an international brotherhood of – well, anything. But why were so many right wing hyper-nationalists the first to cut a deal with the Nazis?<br /><br />The reasons are varied. In some cases, no doubt they acted out of sincerely patriotic motives, believing that resistance was hopeless than their best chance was to cut the best deal possible. But certainly they would have accepted no such excuses if the positions had been reversed, and the liberals or socialists had been the collaborators and the right wing the resistance. Others defined themselves in terms of some enemy other than Germany and were willing to accept German support on the theory that thine enemy’s enemy shall be thy friend. But it must have become apparent before long that Germany was a far worse enemy than – well, whoever else they opposed. I can only assume that in the end, right wing super-nationalists so often turned out to be traitors who collaborated with Hitler because at some level they saw him as a kindred spirit and liked what he stood for.<br /><br />As I say, it's easy to call Godwin on these comments and to accuse me of comparing support for Israel with collaboration with Hitler. That is not what I mean. I mean, rather, that ultra-nationalist cooperation with the Nazis is only the most extreme example of all ultra-nationalists being much alike under the skin. And I am saying that European semi-fascists are fond of Israel’s most hard line Likudniks, not out of any inherent fondness for Israel or Jews, but simply because they respect and admire hard line nationalism in all its forms. They despise liberal, cosmopolitan Jews because they recognize libeal cosmopolitanism, not rival nationalism, is the true opponent of ultra-nationalism. And who knows, maybe if push comes to shove, they will discover that Islamic nationalism, too, is a kindred spirit.<br /><br />__________________________________<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">*It was not always so. More on this in my next post.<br />**Am I being anachronistic here, attributing to late 19th and early 20th Century right wingers the aggrieved resentment at being intellectually unfashionable that obviously so roils the American right today? Mayber, But I am inclined to think that this sort of siege mentality is an important part of right wing authoritarian thinking in any age.<br />***By socialists, I refer mostly to the Social Democrats, who retained enough of Marx to continue believing in an international brotherhood of labor (and to recognize that it could be preserved only by avoiding international wars), but not enough to take the whole revolution and class warfare too seriously. Communists, by contrast, were little more than Soviet agents. They opposed Hitler when they got the order, but no sooner.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-60151458260582987102011-09-11T21:06:00.001-07:002011-09-11T21:29:31.970-07:00A Brief Aside: Mel GibsonAnd on the subject of right-wing anti-Semites who support Jewish nationalism, I suppose I should drop a note on Mel Gibson's latest movie about the Maccabean Revolt. For anyone who doubted that Mel Gibson was an anti-Semite, he <a href="http://www.tmz.com/2006/07/28/gibsons-anti-semitic-tirade-alleged-cover-up/">clarified the issue</a> with his notorious anti-Semitic rant in 2006, which dealt his career a setback. And no, the fact that he was drunk at the time does not absolve him of the remarks. After all, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/mel-gibson-on-judah-maccabee-christopher-hitchens-and-circumcision/244828/">most drunk people, when stopped by the police, don't launch into tirades against Jews.</a> But it turns out he is a great admirer of the the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasmonean_Revolt">Jewish war for independence</a> against the Greek Empire in the 2nd Century B.C.<br /><br />I could see several reasons why this might be so. For one thing, these were pre-Christian Jews, and therefore still the Chosen People and free of the taint of having rejected Jesus. Second, Gibson is a Catholic and therefore learned the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Maccabees">Books</a> of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Maccabees">Maccabees</a> as scripture and not mere apocrypha, or even history. But above all else, it the story is clearly part and parcel with his other movies like <em>Braveheart</em> and <em>The Patriot</em>. This will be his third movie about a nationalistic revolt. Apparently Mel Gibson like nationalistic revolts on general principle.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-39141283593773200172011-09-08T21:14:00.000-07:002011-09-09T22:29:16.721-07:00Pseudo Libertarians and Essential Core FunctionsOf all Lofgren’s <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779">many comments</a> about Republicans, none hit home for me more, or caused me more skepticism than his complaint that, for all their hostility to government:<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>[M]ost Republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of Fourth Amendment protections by the Patriot Act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the United States has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. . . . Instead, they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people.</blockquote>Well, sure, hasn't he ever heard Ronald Reagan's famous quote, that the scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." But Ronald Reagan's hostility to government never stopped him from favoring a huge expansion in privacy invasions and incarceration in his so-called War on Drugs.<br /><br />The whole distinction is key to the entire Republican world view. Did Lofgren seriously work with Republicans for 28 years and never learn the concept of Essential Core Function? Or, as someone else put it, the difference between <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/02/the_enduring_mommy-daddy_political_divide__104598.html">the Mommy Party and the Daddy Party?</a> *<br /><br />Lofgren will never read my blog, but for anyone who does and shares his confusion, let me explain the difference between real libertarians and what I would call pseudo-libertarians. Real libertarians distrust the government in all its aspects, both “mommy” aspects and “daddy” aspects. They differ on which “mommy” functions (if any) are legitimate. As for “daddy” functions (armies, police and prisons), they regard these as more necessary and legitimate than mommy functions, but also more dangerous. Hence real libertarians try to limits daddy functions as well as mommy functions to the minimum necessary. Wars in genuine self defense are acknowledged as necessary, but wars of choice should be avoided. Police are obviously necessary for traditional crimes like murder, rape, theft and so forth, but victimless crimes like gambling, drug trafficking or prostitution should be allowed. That's why real libertarians are big advocates of drug legalization.<br /><br />Pseudo-libertarians, by contrast, essentially divide government into its Essential Core Functions, i.e., daddy functions, and everything else, i.e., mommy functions. Opposition to government and protection of freedom are therefore seen as confining government to its essential core functions. Daddy functions are, by definition, not seen as threats to liberty because they are Essential Core Functions. It is only when government spreads into mommy functions that liberty is in danger because mommy functions mean that government is metastasizing beyond its proper role, and who knows how far it will spread. The same rule applies, by the way, to opposition to government spending. Any spending whatever on mommy functions is an outrageous extravagance that we cannot afford and must be ruthlessly cut. Armies, policy and prisons, by contrast, don’t count as “spending” because they are Essential Core Functions and therefore you don’t have to worry about how to pay for them.<br /><br />Once you understand this distinction, it explains a lot. It explains why wiretapping, indefinite detention, endless war and torture under George Bush were not threatening, and remain unthreatening even when now under the much-feared Obama, but universal health care is the end of all liberty. It explains why the Republican base is completely unconcerned about the possibility that Governor Perry might have executed an innocent man. Executions, far from seeming like the ultimate government intrusion on liberty and therefore to be carefully controlled, are an Essential Core Function and therefore not threatening, even if they get the wrong person sometimes. It explains why pseudo-libertarians seem so unconcerned about the War on Drugs. Focusing on the shocking searches and seizures, police kicking in doors, the SWAT teams, the long prison sentences for minor offenses and so forth doesn’t conjure up loss of liberty to a pseudo libertarian; it merely shows that the Drug War is within the government’s Essential Core Functions and therefore <em>not</em> threatening to liberty. And it explains why a business lobby that <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779#[1]">sponsored Arizona's anti-immigration law</a> as a business opportunity to increase prisoners for the private prison industry could unironically call itself <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741">the conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government group.</a>**<br /><br />The most extreme form I have seen of this was a letter to the editor explaining that government is really just a monopoly on violence and clearly a monopoly on violence has no business providing services. Wrap your head around this if you can. Government is not threatening liberty so long as it is being violent. Only when it does anything that is not violent do we have to start worrying.<br /><br />Back to Lofgren, he discusses Republicans' extreme acts of obstructionism and sabotage in ominous terms, "[L]egislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. " But, he says, Republicans are not just doing this to undermine Democratic adminstations, they are seeking to undermine people's confidence in government itself, because the more people's confidence in government is undermined, the more they will vote for Republicans, the anti-government party. But, once again, their attempt to undermine people's faith in government applies only to government in its mommy functions. Daddy functions are a different matter altogether. And, indeed, polls show that while people's confidence in government in general and Congress in particular falls ever lower, confidence in the military and the police remain high. Certainly, it is important for the public to have confidence in the military and the police. The 60's and '70's were an alarming example of what happens to society when the public does not have confidence in the military and the police.<br /><br />But the military and the police are not just the most essential core functions of the government (although they are that). They are also deeply (and properly) authoritarian organizations that are supposed to be kept under civilian control. But the more the public reveres the military and police and holds civilian authorities in contempt, the harder such civilian control will be to maintain.*** It has long been clear to me that the Republicans aspire to a de facto one party state, somewhat along the lines of Mexico or Japan. What Lofgren seems to be implying is that Republicans are seeking to hollow out our democratic institutions altogether until only the authoritarian ones actually function.<br /><br />That is why the Weimar analogy seems so ominous. The reasons German democracy fell are many and complex. But one of them was that the German people became so disgusted watching the petty bickering and incompetence of their democratic leaders (salted with a hefty dose of obstructionism and sabotage by anti-democratic parties, who were by no means limited to the Nazis) that they longed for a dictatorship to cut through the squabbles and just get things done. It is starting to look familiar.<br /><br />_____________________________________<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">*If you follow the link, by the way, you will see pseudo-libertarian assumptions within it. Mommy nurtures; daddy protects. Daddy can be cold and distant, but mommy can be suffocating. The assumption is that infringements on libety come only from the mommy side and that the only libety problem one might have with daddy is that he allows too much of it. But this is nonesense, of course. Daddy doesn't just protect, he disciplines and punishes. It isn't just that he can be cold and aloof; he can be overly strict, punitive, and even abusive. When daddy infringes on your liberty, it is usually a lot more direct and severe than when mommy does. </span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"></span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">**This was another story I regarded with some skepticism. It sounded too much like some classic left wing conspiracy theory. Still, the story originate with NPR, which is certainly a respectable organization. Reading the story with a cautious eye, what one comes away with is not that the Arizona anti-immigration law was a conspiracy by the private prison industry to increase the number of inmates, but that anti-immigration legislators saw a powerful potential ally in the private prison industry and sought to enlist their help. Such things are normal in the legislative process, though smellier than usual in this case.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">***Just to be clear, I am not afraid of an outright military dictatorship. I am afraid of a military and police that hold themselves aloof from the wider society and feel superior to it, and civilian authorities too timid to stand up to them. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-43362663276459126102011-09-08T20:08:00.000-07:002011-09-09T21:16:00.900-07:00More Real Than RealityIn one of <em>Star Trek’s </em>decidedly inferior episodes, <a href="http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/The_Savage_Curtain"><em>The Savage Curtain</em></a> the Enterprise approaches a planet and receives a broadcast from Abraham Lincoln, asking to come on board. Lincoln has always been Kirk’s hero, so he agrees and doesn’t know what to make of it. Kirk knows it is impossible for this stranger to actually be Lincoln, yet "his kindness, his gentle wisdom, his humor, everything about him is so right."<br /><br />Of course, it does turn out to be impossible. They are actually part of an elaborate game by rock-like creatures on the planet wanting to stage a battle between good and evil and creating famous historic characters to play the parts. (Lincoln is on the side of good, of course). The less said of the rest of the episode the better. But there is one good line at the end, when Kirk wistfully says that they all seemed so real, especially Lincoln. Spock says that in many ways they were more real than the actual historic characters. “Because they were taken from our impressions of them, how could they be anything but what we expected?”<br /><br />Ghastly as the rest of the episode is, this statement is actually quite profound. If Captain Kirk has stepped through the <a href="http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Guardian_of_Forever">Guardian of Forever</a> and met the real Lincoln, he would no doubt have been disappointed. The real Lincoln would have been a flawed human being with his own quirks and annoying habits, quite incapable of living up to Kirk’s expectations. The false Lincoln, made to match for Kirk’s expectations, was a whole lot more subjectively “real” to Kirk that that objectively real Lincoln could possibly have been.<br /><br />I have taken a lesson from this, not just that anything that seems too good to be true probably is, but that anything that too perfectly fits your prejudices and preconceptions should not be trusted. This impression is strengthened by the book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/They-Never-Said-Misleading-Attributions/dp/0195055411">They Never Said It,</a> a collection of spurious quotes.* The two most common sources of spurious quotes – Lenin, who regularly has people’s worst fears put in his mouth, and (you guessed it) Lincoln, who is made a source of quotes for absolutely everything people want to support.<br /><br /><a href="http://0.tqn.com/d/urbanlegends/1/0/M/y/palin_rifle_bikini.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 604px" alt="" src="http://0.tqn.com/d/urbanlegends/1/0/M/y/palin_rifle_bikini.jpg" border="0" /></a> On the whole this has served me well. For instance, when I saw this picture of Sarah Palin, I immediately spotted it, not so much as a hoax, but more of a spoof, the perfect expression of what Palin's enemies think of her, rather than an actual pictue.<br /><br />All of which is an overly lengthy lead-in to what a lot of liberal blogs have been commenting on – the <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779">recent piece</a> by former Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren his old bosses. Emotionally, it is very appealing, a former Republican expressing exactly all my prejudices and preconceptions about the Republicans, based on inside information. It seems too good to be true. Is it?<br /><br />If it were anonymous, I would assume it was a hoax. But the author published under his own name. <a href="http://www.legistorm.com/person/Michael_S_Lofgren/7777.html">Legistorm on Lofgren</a> confirms that Mike Lofgren really is (was) a Congressional staffer. And <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/05/congressional-staffer-mike-lofgren-turns-on-his-fellow-republicans.html">Michael Tomasky,</a> who shares my concern, is willing to take the word of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/09/a-harsh-case-against-obama-and-his-opponents/244512/">James Fallows,</a> who has plenty of Washington contacts and vouches that Lofgren is for real. (He also comments that Lofgren has worked "mainly" for Republicans).**<br /><br />So apparently this is for real. Substantive comments to follow in my next post.<br /><br />_________________________________________________<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">*And yet it did have quotes that appealed to my preconceptions and I wanted to believe. </span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><br />**Tomasky also asks the question – how did someone like that get to be a Republican in the first place. He answers that Lofgren has been on Capitol Hill for 28 years, and that when he first arrived, it was perfectly normal and acceptable for a Republican to be sane. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-30655000407450408522011-09-04T17:03:00.000-07:002011-09-05T09:14:01.838-07:00Slice Three: Glenn BeckNext, we move from Christian Zionists in general to a particular Mormon Zionist – Glenn Beck. Granted, Beck is not so religiously bigoted as a lot of Evangelical Christian leaders. He belongs to a religion they despise as heretical and makes at least the attempt to be inclusive in religious matters. But (as his detractors are fond of pointing out), he dabbles very heavy in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, without ever quite descending into anti-Semitism.<br /><br />Most notoriously, his <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/201011090036">"expose"</a> of George Soros as the puppet master was rife with anti-Semitic stereotypes. Some, like the Jew as banker and internationalist have at least the advantage of being based in fact and legitimately controversial. Others are longstannding anti-Semitic classics, like the view of Soros as conspirator and puppet master running a shadow government behind the scenes and controlling all world events. All in all, the portrayal was a sot of <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/11/10/glenn-becks-anti-semitic-attack-on-george-soros.html">latter day Protocols of the Zion Elders.</a> Nor does the Soros piece stand alone. He has promoted anti-Semitic sources from <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/201009220060">Eustace Mullins,</a> who as blamed Jews for everything from running to Federal Reserve for their own benefit to 9-11 to concentration camps; to <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/201006070053">Elizabeth Dilling,</a> author of amy anti-Semitic conspiracy screeds and supporter of Nazi Germany, and <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/201010060033">Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed,</a> who blamed Malaysia's economic collapse on a Jewish plot (led by Soros, or course) against a Muslim economy. Beck's <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006070018">defense,</a> when confronted with with these associations, is to explain that he never actually read the books by Mullins and Dilling that he was promoting. And when he set forth the nine most dangerous people, in the present or recent past, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201101140003">eight</a> were Jewish.<br /><br />At the same time, Beck is a passionate supporter of Israel. He reaches out to Orthodox Jews. He held his “Restoring Courage” rally in Jerusalem to express his solidarity with Israel (or at least with the most expansionist elements thereof). He generally lets it be known that he regards Israel as a heroic outpost fighting a lonely battle against Islamic extremism, and that the slightest hestitation in our support will incur the wrath of God.<br /><br />In short, Beck, far more than any mainstream conservative politician or Christian Zionist, makes a clear Good Jew/Bad Jew distinction. In short, Beck sets himself up as <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201011100027">arbiter of Jewish authenticity,</a> with authority to decide who is an is not an Authentic Real Jew. Soros is not an Authentic Real Jew because he is an atheist and does not support Israel. <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102220038">Reform Jews</a> are not Authentic Real Jews because of their association with liberal politics. And Israel's <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0817/Did-Glenn-Beck-just-jump-the-shark-in-Israel">tent city protesters</a> are not Authentic Real Israelis, but puppets of the radical left and militant Islam because, well, because Beck doesn't approve of their politics.<br /><br />And it is this more than anything else, more than Beck's incredibly frivolous Nazi analogies, more than his constant dabbling in anti-Semitic stereotypes, that that has led to conflict between him and the Jewish community, including conservative Jews who would really like to see their fellow Jews move more in Beck's direction. But they are outraged that any goy would presume to have the authority to determine who is an is not a Authentic Real Jew -- especially when his definition is so narrow as to exclude the largest group of practicing Jews in the U.S. and as many as <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/haaretz-poll-netanyahu-losing-public-support-over-handling-of-israeli-housing-protest-1.375244">87% of all Israelis.</a> So he has been forced to walk back his claims that <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102280013">Reform Jews are not Real Jews</a> and that a<a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/201108210001">he has the prerogative of determining what is legitimate in Israeli domestic politics.</a><br /><br />Perhaps Glenn Beck and others like him should consider the possibility that Jewish authenticity may be more broadly defined than they like. The stereotype of the liberal, cosmopolitan Jew is as well established as the stereotype of the Jewish banker and, like so many stereotypes, it persists because <em>there is at least some truth in it</em>. Soros, besides a currency speculato, is a thoroughly international figure who favors international cooperation on many matters that transcend borders. It is not too presumptuous to guess that one reason he has no fondness for Israel is that Israel represents the sort of blood and soil nationalism that he despises and regards as the problem in today's world. This tradition of the Jew as internationalist, as liberal cosmopolite, as critic of nationalism is sufficiently well established that maybe it, too, is <em>part of what it can be to be an Authentic Real Jew.</em><br /><br />I want to address this issue later, but only after looking at the nastiest aspect right wing Jew-hating but Israel loving tendancy -- the European semi-fascist movement.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-39299760219390333632011-09-04T16:17:00.000-07:002011-09-04T17:01:59.789-07:00The Right Wing, Jews, and Zionists:Slice OneNOTE: This was my original post on the subject, but I accidentally deleted it and am trying to reconstruct it from memory.
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<br />Now, if the news will settledown and give me some peace, I would like to write a series on a topic long churning in my head -- the curiously ambivilent relationship between the right wing, Israel and Jews.
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<br />Jews have long been a traditionally liberal constituency, but the right wing sees a winning forumula for gaining Jewish support -- unflagging support for Israel as an ally against the Muslim forces of jihad. So far, rather to their surprise, the tactic has not been successful in gaining much Jewish support. My essential argument is that this is because right wing pro-Zionists, while not in themselves anti-Semitic, follow in a longstanding right wing tradition of anti-Semitism. Their support for Israel or Jews is conditioned on Jew abandoning their liberal tradition and adopting a sort of nationalism much like the right wing's own -- a sort of nationalism many Jews find deeply distasteful.
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<br />I'll begin with the most benign example of this tendancy in the person of Sarah Palin. Or rather, to be fair to Palin, on my unsupported speculation about what she thinks. Sarah Palin is a great supporter of Israel and even wears the Star of David in a gesture of solidarity, but none of this has done much to win her Jewish support. Why not? <a href="http://www.frumforum.com/do-jews-hate-palin">David Frum</a> attempts to explain the hostility in response to a column by <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/why-jews-hate-palin/">Jennifer Rubin</a> gives his opinion. Interestingly enough, he does not believe the source of the hostility is primarily Palin's attitude equating ignorance with virtue.*
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<br /><blockquote>More than any politician in memory, Palin seems to divide her fellow-Americans into first and second class citizens, real Americans and not-so-real Americans. To do her justice, she has never said anything to indicate that Jews fall into the second, less-real class. But Jews do have an intuition that when this sort of line drawing is done, we are likely to find ourselves on the wrong side.</blockquote><a href="http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/jews-who-hate-the-jews-who-hate-palin">Jonathan Chait</a> puts it more directly -- he says that Rubin is playing into a longstanding anti-Semitic stereotype accusing Jews of being too intellectual and too cosmopolitan, lacking national loyalties. Indeed, this stereotype of the Jew as national alien lacking true patriotism dates back at least to the Nineteenth Century, when it replaced to older view of the Jew as religious alien. This tradition is why such talk raises Jewish hackles.
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<br />Without claiming to know what goes on in Sarah Palin's head, my guess would be that she doesn't know about this history. Indulging in further groundless speculation, I would guess that if someone raised it with her she would be outraged. How could anyone think such a thing? <em>Of course</em> she thinks Jews are Authentic Real Americans. At least Authentic Real Jews are. I would further guess that if anyone asked Palin the difference between an Authentic Real Jew and a liberal imitation Jew, she would express it in terms of Orthodox versus non-Orthodox or perhaps religious versus secular. My final guess would be that, if pressed on the subject, it would turn out that Palin does not know the first thing about Orthodox Judaism or the issues that matter to a religious Jew. The real distinction would turn out to be loyal Likudniks versus any Jew who has ever criticized Israel.
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<br />In that case, Frum can relax. Although he has moved far to the left on economic issues, he remains a neocon on foreign policy matters. That makes him an Authentic Real Jew, if not an Authentic Real American.**
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<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">*He does, however, offerthe perfect conservative smackdown for the whole anti-intellectual outlook that equates ignorance with virtue. "Igorance is bad. But we all start ignorant. Jews . . . expect their leaders to start early and work hard to remedy their ignorance by learning things."</span>
<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">**Frum can't possibly be an Authentic Real American because he is a Canadian. Besides, he is so blinded by loyalty to the country of his birth that he fails to see that its single payer healthcare system has turned Canada into a nightmare of oppression, if not a Communist dictatorship.</span>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-63216466608510715642011-08-31T19:39:00.000-07:002011-08-31T20:15:44.628-07:00Slice Two: Christian ZionistsMoving from Sarah Palin to people who have actually expressed views on Jews as well as Israel, we have the odd phenomenon of the Christian Zionists. Quite famously, Evangelical Christians combine unwavering support for Israel with a belief that Jews, like anyone who does not take Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior, will go to Hell.
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<br />Critics dismiss such supporters as the <a href="http://www.iraqwar.org/ArmageddonUpdates.htm">Armegeddon Lobby,</a> supporting Israel only because it plays an essential role in their End Times Scenario, which ends with Israel and the Jews being wiped out by the Anti-Christ. But given the extraordinary ability of most people to simultaneously hold contradictory ideas, I am willing to give Christian Zionists the benefit of the doubt here. A lot of what is at work may simply be a general Manichean mindset -- meximum support for Israel because they are Good and on Our Team, standing against the Evil Arabs.*
<br />But that still raises an awkward bit of cognitive dissonance. After all, to a strict Fundamentalist Christian, Jews are just as Hell-bound as Muslims? So how can the epic struggle between Good and Evil be played out between two sets of Hell-bound participants?
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<br />Returning again to the realm of speculation about other people’s motives, is it possible that the whole End Times scenario is largely an attempt rationalize such an outlook? Granted, millenarianism is a long-standing Christian tradition. Granted, all Christian millenarians used the same scriptures to explain the times they live in. But let’s face it. The prophecies are vague enough to mean just about anything. How they are shaped and formed depends a lot on the preconceptions of the person interpreting them. So if you want to give Israel your unqualified support because you see them as the last outpost of Western Civilization against Evil Arab, but run into trouble because, after all, you think Jews are Hell-bound, it can be really convenient to have a lot of prophecies around that give an important role in the End Times to Israel. That overcomes the obstacle of how it can be our sacred duty to support one Hell-bound faction against another.
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<br />But other obstacles remain. The next obstacle is a harder one. According to all traditional rules of Evangelical Christianity, a Christian’s first duty to the Hell-bound is to try to convert them. After all, you never know when someone may be hit by the <a href="http://www.patheos.com/community/slacktivist/2011/08/13/witnessing-tools-and-resentment/#more-3663">hypothetical buls</a> and go to Hell because you failed to bring them to Jesus. But trying to convert Jews to Christianity invariably causes friction with Israel and threatens to undo the alliance. How do you deal with this? One solution is the Jews for Jesus approach, defining Jewishness as tribal membership rather than adherence to a particular religion, and arguing that Laws of Moses still apply to Jews even after they convert (anything Peter and Paul may have said to the contrary!). The trouble with this approach is that most Jews (including the Israeli authorities) just don’t buy it. There can be secular Jews and even atheist Jews, but a Christian Jew is a contradiction in terms, and is basically regarded by most Jews as a traitor. So many Christian Zionists make it part of their prophecy that there will be a miraculous mass conversion of the Jews to Christianity in the near future. This relieves Christians of their duty to evangelize to Jews and removes a major source of conflict between Christian and Jewish Zionists. **
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<br />But even that does not remove all obstacles. One such obstacle is how to get along with Jews who are not Zionists. Reverent John Hagee attracted a lot of attention and outrage by his <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/21/mccain-backer-hagee-said_n_102892.html">statement</a> that Hitler was God’s instrument to force the Jews from Europe to Israel. Most reactions to this statement have been expressions of shock and outrage that he could call Hitler God’s instrument or brush off his crimes so lightly. But let me raises another point. If God was displeased with the Jews for living in Europe because he wants all Jews to go to Israel, then what does that say about American Jews today? Are we also defying God’s will by living in the United States when God really wants us to go to Israel? My guess is that Hagee would manage to fudge this issue, too, and figure out some reason why the United States has God’s special favor and it is therefore acceptable for Jews to live here, too. But at the same time, the Christian Right’s insistence on the U.S. as a Christian country strongly seems to imply that any American who is not an Evangelical Christian is a second class citizen. What does that make Jews? And are any Jews shirking their duty to live in Israel second class Jews as well?
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<br />Then there is the whole question of the idealization of Israel. It’s fair to ask, how much of this idealization is neither millenarian prophecy nor Manichean standing firm against Evil, but a sort of romantic idealization of Israel as a land of bearded men in black coats and broad-brimmed hats, pious and militant, untainted by the decadence and secularism of the United States and Europe? This, too, is speculation about other people’s motives, but I note that <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-18/michele-bachmann-s-hazardous-love-for-israel-jeffrey-goldberg.html">Jeffrey Goldberg</a> has pointed out that Israel is a lot more than bearded men in black coats -- it has many secular residents with the same decadent habits as the rest of the West (including an annual gay pride march).
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<br />But in the end, all of these can be overcome with sufficient mental gymnastics. What can’t be overcome is the unstated condition Christian Zionists place on their support for Israel – maximum belligerence and intransigence. Granted, with the current government in power, this hasn’t been much of an issue. But consider that when Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Gaza and was shortly after paralyzed with a stroke, <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/200601050004">Pat Robertson</a> took it as a sign of God’s displeasure. So what happens if the Israelis decide some time that maximum belligerence is not, in fact, in their interest, and that they want to make some sort of compromise? When Israelis, in other words, stop being Authentic Real Jews.
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<br />Christian Zionists’ relationship with Israel reminds me of nothing so much as this <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/68556/frenemies-2/">book review</a> on "philo-Semitism" (the opposite of anti-Semitism). It cites a Jewish joke, “Q: Which is preferable—the antisemite or the philosemite? A: The antisemite—at least he isn’t lying.” The point behind the joke, the author explains, is that the philo-Semite loves Jews, not as they really are, but as he believes they should be for his own purposes. If Jews refuse to stick to the script, this sort of idealization quickly proves to be a two-edged sword. Let any secular or Jewish Zionist keep this in mind.
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<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">*Something similar happened in the Cold War. Before militant Islam arrived on the scene many Arab countries, though not Communist, were Soviet allies and thus (to a Manichean mindset) proxies of the Evil Empire. </span>
<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">**Any Jew hit by the Hypothetical Bus between now and the anticipated mass conversion is presumably unfortunate collateral damage.
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<br /></span><span style="font-size:78%;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-33097535215939635572011-08-29T21:03:00.000-07:002011-08-29T21:05:56.698-07:00A Few Reflections on Hurricane Irene(1) Isn’t it interesting that with the hurricane threatening all up and down the Eastern Seaboard, what we kept hearing was that it was threatening New York? Kind of tells you where our media capital is. And who is really self-centered.
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<br />(2) FEMA has improved a lot since Katrina. And Obama is terrified of having another Katrina take place on his watch. (And his enemies are basically disappointed that it didn’t).
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<br />(3) Let’s be glad it wasn’t as bad as we feared.
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<br />(4) Even if it had been as bad as we feared, Irene would not have come even close to Katrina on the disaster scale.
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<br />(5) Yes, I agree with people who warn against crying wolf and warning that we are facing another Katrina when we aren’t.
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<br />(6) That being said, ramping up all these possible responses that ultimately were not needed was not a waste of time. It is better seen as preparation. The thing about Katrina-sized disasters is that (fortunately) they aren’t very common. This is good, but it contains a danger – the danger that when one of these mercifully rare disasters does come along, we will be woefully unprepared for it (see Katrina). Since we don’t want major disasters to happen often, but do want to be prepared when one finally does come along, the best way to do that is to test the machinery on lesser disasters. This time, the machinery worked very well – at least for this much lesser hurricane. How it would have worked on a Katrina-scale disaster is anyone’s guess. But dealing with the Irenes of the world is what will prepare us for the Katrinas.
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<br />PS: As for on Paul and his nostalgia for the hurricane that wiped out Galveston, I will make one comment at least partly in his defense. The difference between then and now was not just one of government, but of technology. There were no weather satellites in those days, so there was no way the people of Galveston could have known the hurricane was headed their way until too late. Nowadays, I suppose that even with no government intervention, if the people of Galveston had watched the news and seen the weather report warning of the coming hurricane, they would have known enough to flee the island without any government evacuation order. That being said, I really do think an orderly, government-directed evacuation and assistance in reconstructing is much to be preferred to general, unorganized flight. But let’s all be glad that we now have weather satellites that will give plenty of advance warning, government or no government.
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-67483690822652829312011-08-21T21:21:00.000-07:002011-08-21T21:27:54.566-07:00The Fall of Qaddafi (or is it Gaddafi?)I might as well add my own voice to the reaction to the fall of Qaddafi (Gaddafi). I rejoice as much as the next person, but with a caveat.
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<br />The Libyan tyrant was a curse to his own people and all his neighbors. He went out of his way to make enemies. The world is better off without him. But remember, getting rid of the tyrant is the easy part. The damage to his society remains. And, as a general rule, the worse the tyrant, the worse the damage to clean up and the more difficult the transition. Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq gave a quick and easy victory over a tyrant, and then a growing mess taking his place that became more and more our responsibility.
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<br />Granted, there is a difference here. We have left this war to the Libyans and limited ourselves to air support. That is certainly for the best. But as the "what next" problems begins to grow and become more complicated, let's be very wary about making it our own.
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-5306634247326619882011-08-21T14:17:00.000-07:002011-08-21T14:55:28.745-07:00My Ideal Republican Candidate -- David StockmanI suppose my ideal choice of candidates for this election would be Robert Reich as the Democratic candidate and David Stockman as the Republican. It's pointless to argue that neither one is electable. If they run against each other, one of them would have to win. The problem, of course, is that neither one is running, much less nominatable.
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<br />It's no secret that I would vote for Reich because I would look to him to undertake strong enough fiscal and monetary stimulus to actually revive the economy, and that I think Stockman is dead wrong. So why would I want him for a Republican candidate and be willing to take a chance with him as President?
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<br />For one, thing, because I have no doubt that he is sincere. While I may suspect other Republicans of calling for spending cuts and higher interest rates as sabotage, Stockman really means it, and I would count on him to follow through. Furthermore Stockman holds <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/opinion/24stockman.html?pagewanted=all">no illusions</a> that we can balance the budget without tax cuts or with spending cuts for the poor only. If elected, he would seek to cut middle class entitlements and raise middle class taxes in a serious attempt to bring actual balance to the budget. He would also appoint members to the Federal Reserve who would actually raise interest rates, rather than intimidate the Fed into postponing any attempt to revive the economy until after the election.
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<br />Granted, I think all this would be disasterous, but hey, I could be wrong. And I trust STockman at least not to do anything truly insane like -- well, see <a href="http://enlightenedlayperson.blogspot.com/2011/07/i-could-almost-wish.html">here</a> for where my feverish imagination can take me. And if it does turn out to be as disasterous as I expect, one of two things will happen. (1) Stockman will acknowledge he was wrong and change his policies. (2) Stodkman will insist he is right and his policies are a painful but necessary transition. Democrats will win the next election by a landslide and Robert Reich will be our next President.
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<br />Of course, Stockman could never be nominated by today's Republican Party. Aside from his willingness to raise taxes, he doesn't meet any of their culture war standards (see his Wikipedia entry <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stockman">here</a>). Although born in Texas, he made his fortune on Wall Street. His wife heads Republican Majority for Choice. And I'm going to guess, he regards the whole culture war business as a foolish distraction from the real issues.
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<br />He has another obvious problem as well. I remember well when he was fired as budget director from the Reagan Administration, a political cartoon of the day said, "There goes the only person in Washington who can add and subtract." Stockman retains his ability to add and subtract to this day, which definitely makes him unelectable under any circumstaces.
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-20229766329357934892011-08-20T20:58:00.000-07:002011-08-20T22:01:42.031-07:00What Is It About Contraception?Although I have been skeptical of <a href="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/">Robert Altmeyer's on-line book on authoritarians,</a> it did raise one interesting point I wished Altmeyer had described in more detail. When authoritarians play the Global Change Game (a complex, multi-player role playing game in which participants play the nations of the world and are supposed to learn of the difficult environmental challenges the world faces), they lacked a capacity for international cooperation, and they refused to curb population growth. Alter describes three authoritarian iterations of the game* in considerable detail and watches three quite different outcomes, but in all cases, they refuse to curb population growth, and in no case does Altmeyer go into detail about how or why this was so. I wish he had, because it might shed some light on conservatives’ determination to defund Planned Parenthood and outrage at insurance companies being required to cover contraceptives for free.
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<br />This is baffling in particular because it is directly opposed to another reason often posed for opposing birth control, the demographic arms race. The demographic arms race viewpoint rests on the assumption that (1) people’s social and political viewpoints are immutable encoded on their genes and can never be changed by education and assimilation, and (2) “they” will continue to breed like rats so “we” have to start having more babies just to keep up. This was the viewpoint Margaret Sanger ran into among eugenicists who were all in favor of providing contraceptives to poor immigrant women, but opposed making them available to native-born American women. It is rampant on the hard right in people like Mark Steyn who say, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Steyn#Eurabia">If you cannot outbreed the enemy, cull 'em."</a> It has been rampant, too, on the hard left, among Third World revolutionaries who denounce birth control as soft genocide and regard a woman’s role as breeding babies for their glorious revolution. It might be called an attitude of “contraception for thee, but not for me.”
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<br />But that is not what is going on here. What we are seeing here is more an attitude of “contraception for me but not for thee.” In other words, a determination to lose the demographic arms race. I’m talking about people like <a href="http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201107200035">Fox New's Greg Gutfeld quipping</a> “Eliminate poverty by eliminating the poor.” (This, too, is an old trope, widely used by the hard left to explain why contraception has no role in fighting poverty). Although I cannot find the link, Glenn Beck denounced an African ecoligically sustainable project (funded by Al Gore and George Soros, of course) as genocidal because African women who participated started using contraception and having fewer children. And the Washington Times' <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/201107220021">Jeffrey Kuhner</a> has openly come out and denounced contraception as unnatural and un-Christian.
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<br />It makes me want to sigh and roll my eyes and ask them, how many children do you have? For <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_beck#Adulthood">Beck</a> the answer is apparently three natural and one adopted. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Gutfeld">Gutfeld,</a> although married, apparently has none. And Kuhner's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Kuhner">Wikipedia entry</a> mentions a wife but no children, although it is brief enough to possibly be omitting them. Is it so far-fetched to assume, then, that all three men practice contraception? And that their righteous indignation is therefore more thatn a little hypocritical? This attitude, too, is nothing new. When Margaret Sanger began her practice among poor immigrant women, a number of birth control devices (such as condoms, diaphragms or cervical caps) had, in fact, been invented. Birth rates among middle class, native born women somehow managed to fall. When she tried to obtain birth control for the poor, she ran into fierce resistance and a campaign to outlaw contraception altogether. But somehow these fierce struggles never seemed to do much to raise birth rates among the middle class.**
<br />
<br />So why are so many people on the right denouncing contracepting for the poor as immoral, while practicing it themselves? I can think of two possible reasons. Some people oppose widespread availability of contraception because they believe it will encourage sex outside of marriage. If every woman could be required to present a marriage certificate as a precondition to getting contraception, they would probably not object. Others really do have religious objections to all contraception as immoral.
<br />
<br />But they run into a problem. Any serious attempt to deny access to contraception to the general public would run into a firestorm of opposition and be quickly defeated, at considerable political cost to the people proposing it. So that rules it out. The best they can hope to do is to deny access to women who are not in a position to resist. Right wing religious groups have been doing that in Republican administrations since Reagan in foreign aid, steering funds to religious organizations that seek to deny birth control to Third World women. And now they are getting bolder and moving on to deny such access to our own poor and powerless women at home.
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<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">*By contrast, players with low authoritarian scores coopeated well. Although Altmeyer does not discuss the reason for their opposition to birth control, it seems unlikely to have been about hostility to casual sex in an political and ecological role playing game. Most likely, the demographic arms race viewpoint was at work.</span>
<br /><span style="font-size:78%;"></span>
<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">**I also got some fascinating lessons on the subject in Constitutional Right when we got to Griswold vs. Connecticut. As late as the 1960’s, Connecticut had anti-contraceptive statutes on the book. (So did Massachusetts). No one had ever been prosecuted under these statues, our professor explained, but that did not mean they were without effect. Connecticut is a very small state geographically, and little more than a suburb of New York City. Women who could afford a private doctor evaded the law by going to a New York doctor for their birth control. But poor women could not afford a private doctor, and the law did succeed in keeping Planned Parenthood from setting up a clinic. The effect was to deny contraception to the poor and only the poor. (He did not discuss what respective birth rates in Connecticut were at the time. Presumably they retained the last resort of sterilization). The struggle over allowing such a clinic, he said, was one between rival elites over whether the poor should be allowed to practice birth control. The poor remained passive and took no part. </span>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-52244459043768399962011-08-17T20:46:00.000-07:002011-09-14T21:42:04.290-07:00Okay, my resolve to avoid discussing the election until the Iowa caucus has lasted about as long as it took Rick Perry to <a href="http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/08/rick-perry-on-ben-bernanke-it-would-be-almost-treasonous-to-print-more-money-between-now-and-the-ele.html">shoot off his mouth.</a><br /><br />Let’s start with the obvious. The implied threat of violence if Bernanke ever visits Texas is just macho posturing. I no more believe the Governor of Texas intends to incite mob violence against the Chairman of the Federal Reserve than that he intends to secede. No point fainting over it.<br /><br />Second, is he advocating tighter money? The general conservative line is that he is dead wrong to call for violence (even if it is just so much hot air), but right to call for tighter money. The view of some <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-rick-perry-vsmilton-friedman/2011/08/16/gIQATx8tIJ_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein">liberals</a> and <a href="http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=10540">monetariests</a> is that he is, indeed, calling for tighter money, and that he is dead wrong about that. I consider myself unconvinced.<br /><br />Put me in the third category, of people who long suspected the Republicans are committing economic sabotage, but never expected them to come right out and admit it. Admittedly, Perry’s statement was somewhat ambiguous. He said:<br /><br /><blockquote>We’ve already tried this. All it’s going to be doing is devaluing the dollar in your ocket and we cannot afford that. We have to learn the lessons of the past three years that they’ve been devastating. The President of the United States has conducted an experiment on the American economy for almost the last three years, and it has gone tragically wrong and we need to send him a clear message in November of 2012 that new leadership is coming.</blockquote>This appears to be a statement that he believes we need tighter money, and that any monetary easing would be economically disasterous. No sign of sabotage there.<br /><br />But he also says, “If this guy prints more money between now and the election -- I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we -- we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous -- or treasonous in my opinion.” And, when asked if he thought the Fed's primary motive was to get Obama reelected, he said, “If they print more money between now and this election, I would suggest that’s exactly what’s going on.” Both these statements sound like an acknowledgment that monetary expansion can improve the economy and is therefore illegitimate because it might help Obama be reelected. In orther words, sabotage.<br /><br />Granted, if I wanted to be charitable, I could square this circle. He could mean that the Fed mistakenly thinks that monetary expansion will help the economy (and, by extension, Obama), but that really it will be harmful. Or he could mean that monetary expansion will temporarily improve the economy just long enough to sway the election, but will do greater damage in the long run. And that latter view could explain why he regards any attempt to revive the economy before the election as illegitimate. But that seems a lot more sophisticated than the general tenure of his remarks, and I am in no mood to be charitable.<br /><br />Although I regard the implied threat of violence as so much hot air, I do regard Perry’s speech as a threat. Originally I took it as a threat to Bernanke that if he tried to revive the economy before the election, he (Perry) would take it as an unfriendly act and refuse to reappoint Bernanke to the Fed after he won the election. It seemed like a hollow threat. Presupposing Perry would win the election is a case of counting your chickens before they are hatched and besides, why would Bernanke want to be reappointed to such a hot seat? But this <a href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/08/you-know-i-arrived-in-washington-in-1993-to-work-for-lloyd-bentsens-treasury-as-part-of-the-sane-technocratic-bipartisan-ce.html#tp">comment</a> convinced me that it was a more immediate and obvious threat. It was a threat that if the Fed does anything to revive the economy before the election, Republicans will regard it as an attempt to sway the outcome and denounce the Fed for being partisan. And there is nothing the Fed dreads more than accusations of partisanship.<br /><br />Of course, allowing the Republicans to sabotage the economy to sway the election their way is equally partisan. And a lot less public spirited.<br /><br /><br />P.S.<br /><br />Incredible! A conservative who actually <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/276940/case-nominal-growth-targeting-joshua-r-hendrickson">gets it:</a> "The idea that Bernanke would be playing politics by printing money between now and the next presidential election suggests that doing so would improve short-term economic growth and improve President Obama’s reelection prospects. However, if a more expansionary monetary policy would help the economy, why would anyone oppose such a policy, let alone call it treason?"<br /><br />Why Perry would oppose it is obvious enough; it hurts his chances of election. Expecting a presidential candidate to want the economy to be revived just in time to undermine his prospects is asking for more public spirit than can be reasonably expected of anyone. But for him to be unable to imagine any reason for Bernanke to want to revive the economy now, as opposed to in 2013 other than a illegitimate attempt to sway the election really is disturbing. It suggests he has no concept of public spirit at all. And it arguably may be taken to imply he considers a Democratic presidency inherently less than legitimate.<br /><br />See also <a href="http://xpostfactoid.blogspot.com/2011/09/party-of-treason-charges.html">this comment</a> that comments like this just might, indeed, make Bernanke want to avoid a Perry presidency.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-81711619032236307272011-08-14T20:06:00.000-07:002011-08-14T21:08:18.249-07:00What if the Republicans Win?I'm going to try to stay away from election until the Iowa caucus. Let's see how well I do. I did think, though, that I might as well put down my reflections on what happens if the Republicans win in 2012. By this I mean win the Presidency, hold onto the House, and get a majority, though not filibuster-proof, in the Senate.
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<br />(1) Senate Republicans, after using the 60-vote filibuster as a matter of routine, will find a way to get rid of it.
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<br />(2) Obamacare and Frank-Dodd will be repealed. I think this will be the end of the line for universal health care, at least for another generation. Up till now, the official Republican position is that health insurance for all, though not all that important, was not per se objectionable, but they didn't like the way the Democrats were going about it. This time they have made clear that they will fight to the death any expansion in the number of people with access to health insurance (and probably favor controlling health care costs by pricing even more people out).
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<br />(3) Having made such a big deal about the importance of spending cuts, I don't see how they can possibly change their minds and decide that big spending is only bad if a Democrat is in the White House. On the other hand, I don't believe that even a President Bachman will find the political nerve to cut spending by 40% overnight. So what we will probably get is significant spending cuts, targeting primarily programs for the poor and assistance to states. There will not, however, be any deficit reduction because all spending cuts will be more than offset by even larger tax cuts, aimed primarily at the top. It is Republican dogma that the harmful effects of deficits do not apply if they are caused by tax cuts.
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<br />(4) I don't think they will be able to kill Social Security of Medicare, or turn Social Security into a 401(k). Interestingly, even as they plan to turn programs for the poor into block grants and Medicare into something a lot like Obamacare, they have not even raised the possiblity of turning Social Security into a 401(k). My guess is that this is because the idea was toxic enough when Bush proposed it, and given what has happened to 401(k)'s since, it will be even more toxic now. I don't rule out their getting rid of Medicaid altogether, or at least for people under 65. The elderly vote a lot more than the poor.
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<br />(5) Right now Republicans are very upset at the Fed for its expansionary policies and calling for higher interest rates. A number of commentators have remarked they were singing a different tune when the economy was in recession and Bush was President. But then again, the Fed has become a lot more unconventional since then. So I really have no sense whether they will appoint members who favor tighter monetary policy, or suddenly change their minds once a Republican is in power.
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<br />(6) They will undoubtedly seek to engage in a lot of regulatory rollback, but I have not idea how far it will go. Neither do I have a sense whether they will revive torture as an official policy (probably).
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<br />(7) They will undoubtedly send any future terror suspects to Guantanamo to be held forever without a trial. Let's hope there aren't any.
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<br />If we get a Republican as President and a Democratic majority in either house, I expect utter gridlock and dysfunction. Republicans will be unable to repeal Obamacare or Frank-Dodd, but the President may seek to block enforcement by refusing to appoint any officials. So far as I know, there is no precedent for what happens then.*
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<br />I can't find the link, but I am sure Jonathan Chait ran an aticle speculating that if Mitt Romney won the election, he would convert to understand the need for stimulus (his reelection would depend on reviving the economy, after all) and speculates on whether it would be worth it. His conclusion is probably not because he dislikes too many of Romney's other policies. My conclusion is no, because it would effectively be submitting to blackmail. It would be allowing the Republicans to say, "Give us the presidency, and we'll stay sane. But if you even elect another Democrat, we'll go off our meds and make this country completely ungovernable."
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<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">*Congress has passed </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds"><span style="font-size:78%;">legislation</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;"> forbidding the President from refusing to spend money it has appropriated. This has been </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_v._City_of_New_York"><span style="font-size:78%;">upheld</span></a><span style="font-size:78%;"> by the Supreme Court, but today's Supreme Court might change its mind.</span>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-5999680022799755762011-08-13T15:16:00.000-07:002011-08-13T15:35:59.655-07:00Reflections on the ElectionAs a firm believer in the pathology of the permanent campaign, I try to stay away from the subject of the election until the Iowa Caucus, but this year it appears I will not be able to keep the resolve, so here are my comments.
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<br />Personally, I wish Obama would drop out. He’s shot his bolt. It’s fallen short. Clearly ha has no plan for what to do next. This is not someone I want to give another term. I’d love to see him stop aside in favor of Robert Reich, a serious Keynesian, or <a href="http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/montana-gov-brian-schweitzer-vetoes-">Bria Schweitzer,</a> the Montana governor who vetoed Tea Party legislation with a branding iron – now there is someone who knows how to fight. My ideal candidate, really, would be Bill Clinton. When you want to persuade people to adopt a controversial program, moral authority is everything. And Clinton, though he may be a draft-dodging womanizing sleaze, has tremendous moral authority on economic and budgetary issues. If anyone can convince people to give stimulus one more try, it should be the man who balanced the budget and presided over prosperity of a kind not seen in 30 years. Unfortunately, he is excluded by the 22<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">nd</span> Amendment. What a shame!
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<br />Given, though, that the Spend More Party is looking utterly discredited, I really would like to give the Spend Less Party a chance. If it works, great. If it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">doesn</span>’t the only way to truly discredit austerity is to try it. (Whether austerity takes longer to discredit than expansion remains to be seen). Unfortunately, the Spend Less Party has responded to losing an election by losing its mind, which makes me very uncomfortable about giving them the reins of power. Certainly if Jon Huntsman won the nomination I would vote for him, but that looks about as likely as Brian Schweitzer or Robert Reich wining the Democratic nomination. If Mitt Romney can convince me that insanity is purely an electoral strategy and he will attempt sanity when elected, I might grudgingly consider him. The others are nuts. (Or at least doing their best to impersonate nuts).
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<br />I also want to put in a comment on Rick Perry. Current conventional wisdom is that he is the savior of the Republican Party, that he has the nomination already wrapped up, and that, given, the current state of the economy, Republicans are almost certain to prevail in 2012, so we might as well skip the formality of an election and just inaugurate him now. I think this is a bit of a rush to judgment. One of the statements I have seen is that Rick Perry's speeches to secessionists will play well with the Tea Party, the presumption being that since the Tea Party is the most mobilized faction in American politics right now, winning their vote is all that matters. My own guess is that Perry's flirtation with <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">secessionists</span> will be much used against him by opponents to portray his as a dangerous nut, even in t<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">h</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Republican</span> primary, to say nothing of the general election. It shouldn't be necessary to point out that flirtation with secessionists is a liability in US politics, but apparently it is necessary, so I will point it out. Flirtation with secessionists is a liability in US politics. Presumably Perry's defense will be that he didn't mean it, he was just pandering. (Of course, he will put it more artfully than that). And I'm sure this is true. I do not for one minute believe that the Governor of Texas seriously contemplates secession from the Union. But you can tell a lot about a politician by who he panders to.
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-87195515208760106292011-08-13T13:12:00.000-07:002011-08-13T15:12:36.684-07:00Reflections on the Conservative ApproachIt's very hard for people on my side of the spectrum to tell to what extent Republicans are sincere in believing that immediate, deep spending cuts will be economically beneficial and to what extent they are engaging in deliberate sabotage (consciously or unconsciously). But I will stick to addressing consevatives who are sincere.
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<br />The less sophisticated appear to believe that immediate, deep spending cuts will bring about immediate improvement by freeing up resources for more productive use. The problem, of course, is that a recession by definition means that significant economic resources are going <em>unused</em>. The short-term effects of deep cuts in government spending are that even more resources will be unused. But others, more sophisticated, recognize that cuts will mean short-term pain and argue that short-term pain is worth the cost. That is the argument I want to address -- including why these more sophisticated conservatives are so enthusiastic acout short-term pain.
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<br />Megan McArdle, speaking of Ireland, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/06/american-austerity/58934/">argues</a> that shrinking government spending, despite the painful cuts, depressed economy, and even large deficts that result, is worthwhile to avoid the worse consequences of an outright default, "[F]iscal crises are much, much worse than austerity budgets. Fiscal crisis means that rather than unpleasant cuts, you have sudden, unmanageable collapses in things like public pension plans. The resulting suffering is not unpleasant; it is disastrous."
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<br />To this a liberal critic <a href="http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/austerity-as-insurance-frums-question-and-debt-deflation/">responds</a> that cutting spending to fend off a future default doesn’t work – by shrinking the economy, it depresses tax revenues and thereby increases the deficit. The trouble with this argument is that ultimately cutting <em>ca</em> balance the budget, albeit at geat cost, and some conservatives advocate this approach. Suppose, for instance, that President Bachman actually keeps her promise and refuses to raise the debt ceiling, necessitating an overnight 40% cut in spending. The results would be catastrophic as McArdle herself <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/getting-specific-on-spending/242240/">acknowledges.</a> But the economic contraction is so severe as to cut revenues by two-thirds, the deficit will shrink. It will not disappear because the shinking economy will mean less revenues, necessitating more cuts and continuing the cycle. Eventually, though, an end point will be reached. The budget will balance and the economy will presumably bottom out, albeit at considerable cost, possibly including the collapsing pension plans and disasterous suffering that we are trying to avoid by balancing the budget.
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<br />This is not merely theoretical. Something like it happened to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_depression#Chile">Chile</a> in the Great Depression. Faced with collapsing export prices, the Chileans cut and cut and cut, shrinking their economy by half, but eventually its credit was restored, and it bottomed out and began to recover. The top current examples, much touted as positive models by conservatives, are the Baltics, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. All three countries maintained their currency pegs and balanced their budgets. Not coincidentailly, these three also suffered the worst relative economic declines of any country in the recent crisis, but they did ultimately bottom out and start to recover. Conservatives eagerly call on the rest of us to emulate them.
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<br />The same dynamic applies to mortgage foreclosures. Liberals warn that without some sort of mortgage relief, the market will be flooded with foreclosed houses, further driving down prices. The drop in prices will cause even more homeowners to be under water, leading to more foreclosures, and perpetuating the cycle. But eventually it has to run out of people to foreclose on. Some people, after all, have paid off their mortgages. Others have mortgages close enough to being paid to be worth almost any sacrifice to own the house free and clear. So ultimately the wave of foreclosures will have to cease. Since banks will not be able to sell their homes for more than market price, they will take their losses either way. The difference will be that without debt relief housing prices will fall much lower and many more people will lose their houses without debt relief than with it.
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<br />So it seems fair to ask, given the severity of their downturns, why do conservatives think the Baltics are such wonderful models to follow? And given that it will cause great suffering to home owners, no gains to the banks, and losses to everyone’s property values including their own, why are conservatives so dead set against mortgage relief?
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<br />One reasons, I suspect, is that they believe there is an inevitable bottom we have to hit, and any attempt avoid sinking so low merely prolongs the pain. The faster we bottom out, the quicker we can start recovery. But more than that, I think they regard any suggest that proper intervention may make the bottom less low is cheating and attempting to thwart the will of the free market.
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<br />And that, I think, leads to the deeper answer. They see these as moral issues. Economic conservatives, so far as I can tell, regard the primary moral issues in economics (aside from shrinking government, of course), as paying debts and making sure no one escapes punishment for bad decisions. Human suffeinrg ranks much lower on their scale of moral priorities. And as for collateral damage to the innocent, well <a href="http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/93136/it-takes-balls-execute-innocent-man">it takes balls to execute an innocent man.</a>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28307399.post-41953093702955687172011-08-10T21:26:00.000-07:002011-08-10T21:29:14.780-07:00Counter Cyclical is Counnter IntuitiveIt’s becoming increasingly clear that the problem with being counter-cyclical is that it is counter-intuitive. It meets with fierce popular resistance even though it doesn’t call for any painful measures because it just feels wrong. How can the remedy for a bubble brought on by easy credit be easier credit? How can the remedy for running up too much debt be running up more debt. And it families are having to cut back and make sacrifices, shouldn’t government be doing the same thing? Arguing that the rules that apply to families don’t apply to government just generates resentment – no fair, why doesn’t government have to play by the same rules we do? And stimulus spending invariably distributes benefits unevenly, which increases the resentment.
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<br />There are a lot of fine bumper sticker anti-Keynesian slogan – Government should balance its budget, just like families; if we have to make sacrifices, so should government, you can’t spend your way to prosperity, and, of course, you’re mortgaging our children’s future.
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<br />The responses to these slogans are all too vague and abstract to offer any emotional satisfaction. One response is to talk about just what would have to be cut, which is never very popular. But the response is always, too bad, we can’t afford it. We need a snappy comeback. So what intuitively appealing, emotionally satisfying, bumper sticker slogans are there in favor of Keynes.
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<br />Here are mine:
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<br />I won’t promise services in good times and take them away just when they are needed.
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<br />When half the raft is losing air, the other half has to inflate to keep it afloat.
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<br />As the private sector stands up, government can stand down.
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<br />Unemployment is not cured by layoffs.
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<br />Government spending = teachers and Social Security
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<br />You can’t shrink your way to prosperity.
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<br />(I think the one about not curing unemployment with layoffs works. Not so sure about the others).
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0