Evidence Conservatives Prefer Substance (A Lot Of It) Over Appearance

We're all excited about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Yet another awesome video of him, this time taking on the NJ Supreme Court and New Jersey education.

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Of Wal-Mart, Health Care, & American History

Sometimes I get so burned out from reading talking about nothing but slavery and the poor treatment of Native Americans and women in the American History seminar I teach (I have to stick to the syllabus) that finally reach my limit and lash out.

Mind you, America is not perfect. The aforementioned Big Three sins were real. But they aren't all there is to American History. And it doesn't help that we are teaching practically nothing more than those three plus the British hobby horse (class warfare) to British freshers who hardly even know who George Washington was.

Just in case the supervising professor on my course (or anyone else from my university, for that matter) read this post let me say up front: I don't blame them; this is the state of academia.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, sometimes I reach my limit and go on an I-love-America-liberty-markets-free-trading-are-awesome rant.

Like yesterday. We reviewed a bunch of reading that characterized the increased interdependence, division of labor and specialization of the American economy in post-Reconstruction America as horrible because it made the rich richer and the poor poorer and so on and so forth. One article we read trumpeted "economic independence" as an ideal that was somehow lost or never was or some other such nonsense.

That is, in the New South, capitalists from the North built factories to process raw cotton and tobacco and mine and coal and extract and refine iron (later steel) because it was closer to the source (reducing transportation costs) and laborers in the South were much less likely to unionize, thus resulting in lower labor costs.

And all of this was bad, bad, bad.

Missing is the fact that all of these developments brought jobs to the South (where there had been, prior to the Civil War, a lack of industry) and a higher standard of living. The fact that there were now stores near every railroad depot (another feature of post-Reconstruction America) selling goods people hadn't even imagined before was not a good thing, it was bad because people went into debt to the bad Northern capitalists who produced these goods and duped the stupid poor Southerners into buying them.

The post-Reconstruction period in America is widely considered by economists to be a Golden Age of commerce. Standards of living increased significantly. But the historical narrative is one of worker exploitation, etc. etc.

So I took a moment and tried to teach something about the power of competition and how it both reduces prices and improves quality.

Now the Wal-Mart & Health Care part of the blog post title: Stephen Spruiell made the point last Friday at The Corner that the mere presence of Wal-Mart in the health care industry would improve quality and drive down costs--even for those who never went to Wal-Mart for their open-heart surgery. He's right. This, my friends, is the power of markets in health care.

Because other people would have to compete with Wal-Mart in supplying health services to individuals, the quality would go up (just as there is Nordstrom) and the price would go down (think of the many different price-comparison websites on the internet).

Unlike Europe, we ought not care about the difference in income between the richest and the poorest so long as the poorest can become richer and the richest aren't ensconced, by some government diktat, as the ruling class. Indeed, though the spread between richest and poorest may increase, America remains the country where the most people are able to move between the five infamous quintiles on the income scale. By and large, the poorest do not remain the poorest and the richest die like everyone else.

In Europe, regulation, law, and other preferential treatments have resulted in fairly static class organization. The middle class remain the middle class and the upper class remain in the upper class and this continues on, ad infinitum, generation after generation. The modern European welfare state has created, as I point out to my friends who will listen (or at least act as though they are listening) a permanent underclass. In France, for instance, this underclass is populated mostly by Muslim immigrants who, despite the ever-increasing benefits being thrown their way by the French liberal elite, continue to burn cars.

They burn cars not because they want another 10 Euros a week to pay their mobile phone bill, but because the barriers to getting a job and generally breaking into civilized French society (for instance) are for all intents and purposes, impenetrable.

The same is basically true, to a greater or lesser extent, in every other modern welfare Western European state.

This is essentially what liberal utopia (aka social democracy) looks like. The Great Society largely reversed several generations of gains by African Americans (from the Emancipation Proclamation through the Civil Rights movement). Thomas Sowell has shown how African Americans income, education, standard of living, etc., increased right up until liberal good intentions destroyed the African American family and made them America's permanent under class.

African Americans now vote, practically en masse, for liberal Democrats who, in turn, promise them an expansion of welfare programs which do nothing more than make them, as a people, more dependent on the state and the "good will" of liberal elites.

How to wrap this up? Eric Foner, of all people, wrote about Frederick Douglass's concerns regarding liberal paternalism in his article, "Rights and Black Life in War and Reconstruction."

Frederick Douglass himself had concluded in 1865 that the persistent question "What shall we do with the Negro?" had only one answer: "Do nothing.... Give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!" Douglass realized that the other face of benevolence is often paternalism and that in a society resting, if only rhetorically, on the principle of equality, "special efforts" on the freedmen's behalf might "serve to keep up the very prejudices, which it is so desirable to banish."

America need not make the same mistake as our friends in Europe. Liberty and responsibility are inextricably tied together and our government laws and policies--whether health care or welfare or whatever--ought to reflect that relationship.

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Radical Islamism & American Intelligence

One of the British critiques of American intelligence--specifically the FBI--is that because it focuses on crime--gathering evidence to be used in court--it misses things like, for example, guys who are learning to fly planes, but not land them.

So that's one blind spot. The other is the knee jerk political correctness that hamstrung everyone who should have seen Major Hasan for what he was and is--an Islamic jihadist.

On Monday for the WSJ, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer, wrote the best analysis of American anti-terror efforts--specifically w/re: to Islamist terror--that I have ever read.

For the FBI, religion remains a much too sensitive subject, much more so than the threatening ideologies of yesteryear. Imagine if Maj. Hasan had been an officer during the Cold War, regularly expressing his sympathy for the Soviet Union and American criminality against the working man. Imagine him writing to a KGB front organization espousing socialist solidarity. The major would have been surrounded by counterintelligence officers.

A law-enforcement agency par excellence, the FBI reflects American legal ethics. Because the FBI is always thinking about criminal prosecutions and admissible evidence, its intelligence-collecting inevitably gets defined by its judicial procedures. Good counterintelligence curiosity—that must come into play before any crime is committed—is at odds with a G-man's raison d'être. And much more so than local police departments—which are grounded to the unpleasantness of daily life—it is highly susceptible to politically correct behavior.

Powerfully intertwined in all of this is liberal America's reluctance to discuss Islam, Islamic militancy, jihadism, or anything that might be construed as invidious to Muslims. The Obama administration obviously doesn't want to get tagged with an Islamist terrorist strike in the U.S.—the first since 9/11. The Muslim-sensitive 9/11 Commission Report, which unambiguously named the enemy as "Islamist terrorism," now seems distinctly passé.

Thoughtful men should certainly not want to see a U.S. president propel a "clash of civilizations" with devout Muslims. However, clash-avoidance shouldn't lead us into a philosophical cul-de-sac. The stakes are so enormous—jihadists would if they could let loose a weapon of mass destruction in a Western city—that we should not prevaricate out of politeness, or deceive ourselves into believing that a debate between Muslims and non-Muslims can only be counterproductive.

Political correctness is not a principle--like liberty & freedom--for which guilty liberals should be willing sacrifice the lives of others.

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David Harsanyi On Sarah Palin & Her New Book

From the Denver Post via the WSJ:

These days, where you fall on the crucial issue of Sarah Palin tells the rest of us all we need to know about your character. You’re either a:

A) Scum-sucking, terror-loving elitist, or a

B) Radical, tea-bag-loving simpleton.

Yet, believe it or not, one can (as I do) admire Palin’s charisma and roots, appreciate her dissent on the policy experiments brainy folks in Washington are cooking up and at the same time believe she has no business running for president in 2012.

In fact, all you haters out there force me to root for her.

There’s nothing wrong, for instance, with The Associated Press assigning a crack team of investigative journalists to sift through every word of Palin’s book, “Going Rogue” (HarperCollins, November 2009) for inaccuracies. You only wish similarly methodical muckraking was applied to President Barack Obama’s two self-aggrandizing tomes—or even the health care or cap and trade bills, for that matter.

Comparing Sarah Palin to Barack Obama is the perfect case study of the different treatment given by the liberal media to conservative vs. liberal personalities. Palin goes through the ringer and Obama gets a pass.

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Leftists Say We're Crazy Lunatics For Thinking The Country Is Headed In A Socialist, Freedom Reducing Direction (UPDATED)

But then they write health care "reform" legislation that will throw people in jail for not purchasing insurance. Something that wasn't "illegal" behavior has suddenly become something punishable with prison time.

Stone: Do you think it’s fair to send people to jail who don’t buy health insurance?

Pelosi: … The legislation is very fair in this respect.

Look, folks, there are different paths to collectivist, socialist, repressive, Orwellian states, just because the United States isn't on the exact same one as, say, the former Soviet Union, doesn't mean that what the current group of leftists (including our President) is doing isn't of a piece with what was done elsewhere to limit the freedom of individual Americans.

This is how it's done in Nanny States. 20 years ago, the social democracies of Western Europe (including the UK) didn't look like they do now. Now, per the Telegraph, new environmental regulation could result in carbon rationing cards for subjects of the crown (remember, they're not citizens).

An Environment Agency spokesman said only those with "extravagant lifestyles" would be affected by the carbon allowances.

He said: "A lot of people who cycle will get money back. It will probably only be bankers and those with extravagant lifestyles who would lose out."

However, some have criticised the move as "Orwellian" and say it will have a detrimental impact on business.

Ruth Lea, an economist from Arbuthnot Banking Group, told the Daily Mail: "This is all about control of the individual and you begin to wonder whether this is what the green agenda has always been about. It's Orwellian. This will be an enormous tax on business."

Under the Climate Change Act, Britain is obliged to cut its emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050. This means annual CO2 emissions per person will have to fall from about 9 tonnes to only 2 tonnes.

Do you have an "extravagant lifestyle" as defined by the Holy Church of the Environment & Mother Gaia?

Prepare to have your unrighteous behavior curbed.

My friends here in the UK don't even know to be upset about most of these things. Like a frog in a pot of water, with the temperature slowly increasing, they're lives are managed and regulated to the Nth degree and they don't even know it.

President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid 2009 alone have shown their government control-loving, liberty-reducing in just the last 10 months. Card check to take away the secret ballot and sneak unionize wherever they can. Cap & trade to regulate 1/6th of the economy. Health "reform" to control another 1/5th or so. Takeover of domestic automakers. Takeover and regulation of the financial sector. Am I missing anything? I feel like I'm missing something.

The shocking thing about this is that I had no idea how wide reaching their grasp for power was until I started typing it all into this blog post.

My liberal-leftist friends are always convinced of the power of ever-greater reform and policy tweaking and technology and other knowledge advancement to bring efficiency to the inherently inefficient government bureaucracy.

But here's the thing, you cannot efficient-ize the government enough to make up for the concurrent loss of liberty.

UPDATE 14 November 6:17p BST: Ryan Decker's comment from the Facebook thread:

You could have ended the sentence thus: "you cannot efficient-ize the government." Even if the liberty/efficiency tradeoff did exist the point would be moot because government is not capable of increasing efficiency. Policymakers simply face the wrong incentives, lack the competence, and cannot process the information required to increase the efficiency of anything.

So there's no trade-off in which government policy could somehow increase efficiency at the cost of liberty. If they're taking your liberty, they're doing it inefficiently.

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Irving Kristol, RIP

The Wall Street Journal ran a bunch of his best quotes (he had many). Here's one:

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling," wrote Oscar Wilde, and I would like to suggest that the same can be said for bad politics. . . .

It seems to me that the politics of liberal reform, in recent years, shows many of the same characteristics as amateur poetry. It has been more concerned with the kind of symbolic action that gratifies the passions of the reformer rather than with the efficacy of the reforms themselves. Indeed, the outstanding characteristic of what we call "the New Politics" is precisely its insistence on the overwhelming importance of revealing, in the public realm, one's intense feelings—we must "care," we must "be concerned," we must be "committed." Unsurprisingly, this goes along with an immense indifference to consequences, to positive results or the lack thereof.

The Conservative Prospect, June 13, 1975

He wrote that in 1975.

Might as well have written it this year.

For more on Kristol, see here and here.

h/t Scott L.

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Ted Kennedy, RIP

It's too bad Mary Jo Kopechne didn't live to see 77.

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Compare & Contrast: Democrat Treatment Of Sonia Sotomayor & Miguel Estrada

You may have already read this meme elsewhere in the conservative blogosphere: Democrats rejected Miguel Estrada, a supremely qualified, hispanic jurist, as an Appeals Court nominee in 2001, because they didn't want Republicans being the first party to nominate a hispanic to the Supreme Court. Their treatment of Estrada was of a piece with their treatment of Clarence Thomas when he was nominated for the Supreme Court.

Though both men are racial minorities, they happen to be conservative minorities and as a result, incurred the wrath of liberals.

All of this brings me to one of my favorite games to play with the Democrat party--compare & contrast. Jansen G. emailed me an analysis of this hypocrisy that is better & clearer than any I've read elsewhere:

Does the name Miguel Estrada ring a bell? I came across this insightful article discussing the Democrats voracious opposition to confirming Estrada, a Hispanic lawyer, to the Federal Court of Appeals in 2001. The Democrats opposition was uncharacteristically strong, lasting 28 months and including a 6 month filibuster. As one would expect, part of the issue had to do with Estrada's conservatism. What's so relevant about this story, however, is that Estrada had an even greater rags-to-riches tale than Sotomayor. The irony here is tangible: many of the same Democrats that currently find Sotomayor's tale so compelling, belligerently fought against an equally qualified hispanic nominee with as compelling of a story (and no red flags). Of course, the reasoning for such strong opposition, as the article points out, is that the Democrats wanted to deny the GOP the potential political sway it would recieve among Hispanic voters for placing a Latino on the bench. The point I exrapolate from these two stories is that the Democrats are far more excited about retaining their Hispanic constituents than they're genuinely intrigue by Sotomayor's story. Politics can unfortuantely be so sobering, can't it?

Democrats response to both nominees reflects their opinion of minorities: They are for you so long as you embrace liberal politics. Reject their accepted wisdom and they will reject you--no matter how qualified you may be.

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Hyperinflation, The Politics Of Personal Destruction, &c. (UPDATED)

This article was emailed to me by Dan K. I would have preferred that he write it up & just let me link to his blog but oh well.

As Dan pointed out to me, it's by "John Taylor, a respected Stanford economist." So there you go, his bona fides are established.

I believe the risk posed by this debt is systemic and could do more damage to the economy than the recent financial crisis. To understand the size of the risk, take a look at the numbers that Standard and Poor’s considers. The deficit in 2019 is expected by the CBO to be $1,200bn (€859bn, £754bn). Income tax revenues are expected to be about $2,000bn that year, so a permanent 60 per cent across-the-board tax increase would be required to balance the budget. Clearly this will not and should not happen. So how else can debt service payments be brought down as a share of GDP?

The mistake Taylor and other responsible economic types make with regards to Obama and his policy is that they believe that he is a responsible actor. To believe this, they have to ignore the whole of what he has done and said he intends to do.

He effectively runs America's financial sector. He wants a 'systemic risk regulator' or some other such. He runs GM and Chrysler. He wants to run the whole of American health care. He wants to establish a cap & trade system which will create a whole new regulatory apparatus to, again, allow him to run that aspect of the American economy too.

He does not care what all of this might cost or how it puts the most successful economy in world history at risk. And when I say at risk, I mean of ever being what it once was. It is part of his overarching plan to remake America into a liberal utopia that all of these things happen.

Radical levels of inflation and other economic woes simply give the man pretext to control more and more.

For those of us who do not like the direction this country is going, we can at least enjoy one delicious little irony (I read this somewhere but I can't remember where to give credit): One of the chief criticisms of the Bush administration was that he used "fear" as a way to push through a conservative agenda. (Nevermind that many Democrats--including current leadership--collaborated and voted on things like the Patriot Act, authorization and funding for Iraq, Afghanistan, wiretapping, military courts, etc. You'll also have to forget that, of course, Obama has continued all of these Bush Admin. policies.)

Well, now their boy is doing exactly what they accused Bush of doing. Do the hypocrites have a problem with this? Of course not. Because it achieves their policy goals. Winning at any cost is part of the fabric of liberalism. Notice that when Republican presidents (Reagan with Bork; Bush 41 with Thomas; Bush 43 with Roberts & Alito) nominated judges for the Supreme Court, liberal groups full court attacked these men. Nothing was off limits. It was personal and it was nasty.

This is standard operating procedure for liberals. They wouldn't have it any other way. Its why, when they argue with you, and they start to lose (as, inevitably, they will) they begin to attack you personally and question your motives. They are unable to debate an issue on its merits.

Anyway, compare Democrats experience with Republican nominees to Republican treatment of Democrat nominees. Compare Bork, Thomas, et al to what you will soon see with Sotomayor and the Republican Senate. She'll get tough questions, but she won't be subjected to the "politics of personal destruction" or "a high tech lynching."

Back to the earlier point of this post: Every policy put forward by the Obama administration has been about re-shaping this nation and moving it towards a liberal dystopia. Inflation and continued economic turbulence aid him in this process and thus, are actually helpful to his cause.

John Taylor's and others' warnings fall on deaf ears in Washington DC. The only ones with ears to hear are either in the desert politically or forced to fall into line with Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.

UPDATE 29 May 11:21am BST: Ah, division of labor & specialization: Dan didn't write about the original article he sent me, but he did write about some sweet econ stuff--specifically, about his Q&A with the UK head of Islamic finance at PWC:

his explanation of the current financial crisis was the best I've heard yet, and I've heard and read many. No politicizing, no finger-pointing, clear, complete, and understandable. I've heard an interview with a journalist recently and he admitted that he and most journalists/news commentators have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to the matter of economics and finance. But since people are demanding answers, they pretend and make it up as they go. Mohammad Amin knew what he was talking about, and he knew better than most, and I'm not easily impressed.

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On Sonia Sotomayor (UPDATED)

After Obama announced Sotomayor as his Supreme Court nominee, my dad, brother, and I emailed our initial thoughts back and forth. I suggested that,

[good judges] respect the rule of law & [believe] that its enforcement should be blind, rather than actively promoting a person's personal policy preferences.

Matt made a particularly good point, generally, about the divide between liberals & conservatives regarding the role of the judiciary:

I hate that applying the law impartially, without respect for outcomes, is seen as ultraconservative. Shouldn't that actually be considered a moderate approach?

This is something where I don't believe there will ever be reconciliation between conservatives and libs--judicial interpretation.

To which I responded:

Liberals see the courts as a way to advance their agenda--as a great ex post facto leveler & righter of (perceived) wrongs. They view the court as a way of equalizing everyone rather than as everyone being equal before the court.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor ticks all the liberal judicial philosophy boxes:

• In addition to filling racial and gender quotas herself, she rules in favor of them. (h/t Dan K.)
• Like Obama, she believes "empathy" is more important in judicial rulings than blind or impartial application of the law.
• Finally, we know that she believes that courts should make policy. Per John Fund, in today's Political Diary (h/t Scott L.):

The leading piece of evidence against her is a statement made at a conference at Duke University Law School in 2005, in which she said, "The court of appeals is where policy is made."

She is a doctrinaire liberal judicial activist. I'm not going to suggest that Republican Senators or anyone else engage in ad hominem attacks the way liberal Democrats do all the time. But that does not mean she shouldn't answer tough questions about her judicial philosophy.

The American people need to know exactly what kind of judge Obama has nominated and what her activism and wide eyed preferentialism mean for the rule of law on the highest court in the land.

UPDATE 28 May 12:32pm BST: A few of you wrote to say that you thought I was going to easy on Judge Sotomayor. Maybe so. Matt B., specifically, said,

Way too soft on Sotomayor. Regardless of [her] political views or decisions from the bench, she is incredibly incompetent and unqualified.

The criterion used by the Obama administration (indeed, liberals generally) has never had anything whatsoever to do with competence or qualification.

1. Is the judge a liberal activist?
2. Does the judge fit our racialist view of America? (how many boxes can we tick by nominating him or (preferably) her?)

It's patently obvious that the answer to both of those questions is a resounding "Yes." All that remains is to ensure that the nominee doesn't have any (or too many) skeletons in the closet (like tax evasion).

Like Matt B., I view the Supreme Court the same way I view application of the law generally: Who is the most competent, qualified, Constitution-respecting judge available? Nominate that person. The person's race/gender/religion/other-ridiculous-immaterial-superficiality matters to me not one iota.

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'A Heroic Climb': Goldberg & Steyn On The GOP

Continuing the theme from last week, here are a couple of good articles on the state of the Republican party & conservatism generally. I probably just should have referred you all to these pieces in the first part rather than rambling on myself. Oh well.

First, Jonah Goldberg:

The mainstream perception that conservatives are close-minded and dogmatic while liberals are open-minded and free-thinking has it almost exactly backward. Liberal dogma is settled: The government should do good, where it can, whenever it can. That is President Obama’s idea of pragmatism and bipartisanship: He’s open to all ideas, from either side of the aisle, about how best to expand government and get the state more involved in our lives. Meanwhile, conservatism’s dogma remains forever in flux. We constantly debate the trade-offs between freedom and virtue, the conflicts between liberty and order.

Yup. Conservatives are the dogmatic ones. But wait, there's more:

Also, partisans like to believe that whenever their guy wins, it’s because their ideas have been ratified by the American people, and whenever the other guy loses, they pronounce that the American people have resoundingly rejected this or that idea. Sometimes this is obviously true, but not nearly as often as we like to think. Obama, after all, promised over and over that his administration would provide a “net spending cut.” How’s that going?

When you repeatedly state during your campaign that you want to "cut taxes for 95% of Americans," is that really a mandate to govern as an extreme liberal?

Mark Steyn writes about everything that interests me and does so in the exact manner I would do it--if only I were as witty:

the GOP’s tent has many poles: It has social conservatives, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, national-security hawks. These groups do not always agree: The so-cons resent the libertarians’ insouciance on gay marriage and abortion. The libertarians don’t get the warhawks’ obsession with thankless nation-building in Islamist hellholes. A lot of the hawks can’t see why the fiscal cons are so hung up on footling matters like bloated government spending at a time of war. It requires a lot of effort to align these various poles sufficiently to hold up the big tent. And by the 2006 electoral cycle, between the money-no-object Congress at home and a war that seemed to have dwindled down to an endless, half-hearted, semi-colonial policing operation, the GOP poles were tilting badly. The Republican coalition is like a permanent loveless marriage: There are bad times and worse times. And, while social conservatism and libertarianism can be principled to a fault, the vagaries of electoral politics mean they often wind up being represented in office by either unprincipled opportunists like Arlen Specter or unprincipled squishes like Lincoln Chafee.

In the Democrat party....

Meanwhile, over in the other tent, they celebrate diversity with ruthless singlemindedness: In the Democrats’ parade, whatever your bugbear, government is the answer. Government is the means, government is the end, government is the whole magilla. That gives them a unity of purpose the GOP can never match.

Once the Democrats are ensconced in government glory, the infinity sided caged deathmatch of lobbying, favor giving, spoils dividing, etc., etc., takes place the & winners--as happens when the Democrat party gets its way--are chosen by the government. We've already seen some of this--ACORN payoffs in the 2010 census, the liberal grab bag that was the spendulous, er, stimulus, the Orwellianly-named "Employee Free Choice Act" (Orwellian because it aims to do exactly the opposite of what the name implies), and will continue with the cap & trade that will no doubt put money in the pockets of "green" people (not martians) who helped get Obama elected. Ditto healthcare.

One last quote from Steyn on Colin Powell:

Consider this cooing profile of Secretary Powell from Todd Purdum in the New York Times back in 2002: “Mr. Powell’s approach to almost all issues — foreign or domestic — is pragmatic and nonideological. He is internationalist, multilateralist and moderate. He has supported abortion rights and affirmative action.”

So supporting “internationalism,” “multilateralism,” abortion, and racial quotas means you’re “moderate” and “nonideological”? And anyone who feels differently is an extreme ideologue? Absolutely. The aim of a large swathe of the Left is not to win the debate but to get it canceled before it starts. You can do that in any number of ways: busting up campus appearances by conservatives, “hate speech” prohibitions, activist judges’ more imaginative court decisions, or merely, as the Times does, by declaring your side of every issue to be the “moderate” and “nonideological” position — even when, in many cases, the “extreme” position is supported by a majority of voters. Likewise, to Colin Powell, it’s Ann Coulter who’s “vicious,” not Michael Moore, who compares the jihadists who blow up Western troops in Iraq to America’s Minutemen and gets rewarded with a seat next to Jimmy Carter in the presidential box at the Democratic convention.

Steyn has got some great recommendations on the way forward..... but you're going to have to click the link & read the article to find out.

I'll give you one hint: He's a Happy Warrior; he's optimistic about our chances.

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Miss California Added To Hollywood Blacklist

Fresh off the set of their latest film criticizing HUAC & commie blacklists, Hollywood celebs roundly criticized Miss California, and, in what is fast-becoming their go-to move, blacklisted her for daring to stray from SAG-approved politics.

John Fund in today's Political Diary:

Entertainment blogger Perez Hilton wasn't subtle after Miss California Carrie Prejean said she favored limiting marriage to a man and woman in response to a judge's question about gay marriage at the Miss USA pageant. He called her "a bi[0]tch" and "the [seaward]" on camera afterwards. [ed. note: this is a family blog, after all] She responded merely by saying she felt sorry for him.

In a calmer moment, Mr. Hilton insisted: "Miss USA should represent all Americans, and with her statement she instantly was divisive and alienated millions of gays and lesbians, their families, friends and supporters." Hmmm. It was only five months ago that a majority of California voters voted to limit marriage in just the way Ms. Prejean suggested -- to a man and woman. A national survey by ABC News finds that voters still opposed the concept of gay marriage by 58% to 36%. Sounds to me like Mr. Hilton wants Miss USA pageant winners to only represent his viewpoint. Indeed, Mr. Perez told ABC News that her answer on gay marriage sealed Ms. Prejean's loss of the title: "She lost it because of that question. She was definitely the front-runner before that." Ms. Prejean eventually finished second.

Hollywood has spent more than half a century railing against the anti-Communist blacklists of the 1950s that prevented some people from working in the movie industry. Woody Allen, George Clooney and other celebrities have produced liberal-minded films purporting to show how evil the blacklist was and upbraiding those who were silent while it was imposed.

Well, a new blacklist is being created right now, though few celebrities have dared to deplore it. Last December, Scott Eckern, artistic director of the California Musical Theater in Sacramento, the state's largest nonprofit performing arts company, donated $1,000 to the "Yes on 8" campaign against gay marriage. Protests from the producer of the Broadway musical "Hairspray" and many other show business people soon forced him to resign.

Similarly, Los Angeles Film Festival Director Richard Raddon was forced to step down after it was revealed he had donated $1,500 to "Yes on 8." The festival's organizer put out a statement blandly saying: "Our organization does not police the personal, religious or political choices of any employee, member or filmmaker." Behind the scenes, however, many of the festival's board members pressured Mr. Raddon to resign. "From now on, no one in entertainment is going to feel safe making a donation as measly as $100 to a conservative defense-of-marriage campaign," says Brent Bozell, head of the conservative Media Research Center.

Nor if Ms. Prejean's experience is any guide will many people be willing to exercise their free speech rights if they oppose gay marriage.

I believe this is what the kids call "hypocrisy."


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Walter Lippman On The Warfare Between The Obama Admin & Big Business

History repeats itself, again.

The reason is that there are in fact two main tendencies inside the New Deal, and . . . the President is never able finally to make his choice for the one or the other. Between the conciliatory and irreconcilable New Dealers the crucial difference is . . . that the one group is interested primarily in social reform and the other is interested primarily in the control of the economic system.

Thus the reformers wish to provide relief, to practice conservation, to establish social security, and by law to impose social standards upon business and finance. But in order to do these things, they know that there must be money available, and so . . . they would like to promote recovery, not only for its own sake, but in order to finance the reforms. When they are convinced that a certain tax is "deterrent" to enterprise and investment, they would like to modify it.

The radicals, on the other hand, are . . . primarily interested in reducing the power of corporate business men, and the heart of their program is . . . precisely those deterrent taxes and those restrictive regulations which limit private initiative. . . . they would rather not have recovery if the revival of private initiative means a resumption of private control in the management of corporate business.

Among the radical New Dealers the essence of the New Deal is the reduction of private corporate control by collective bargaining and labor legislation, on the one side, and by restrictive, competitive and deterrent government action on the other side. Thus they cling to taxes which do not come anywhere near to yielding enough revenue to balance the budget because those particular taxes paralyze the financial power of the rich and well-to-do. . . .

This is the issue between the reformers and the radicals. Both believe in spending. . . . [But] [t]he reformers regard the spending as an instrument of recovery and a means for improving the condition of the people. The radicals regard the spending as a substitute for recovery and as a means of altering the balance of social policy.

Throughout history, there have always been people who thought they were better, smarter, & more benevolent than the rest of society and as a result, ought to be running things.

We've called them different things, progressives, New Dealers, liberals, progressives again, and sometimes post-partisans.

They always adopt these new names because gradually, the old names took on a negative connotation as people saw them as they really were: self-righteous, condescending, & power-hungry.

'Leave it to us,' they say, with their positivist understanding of the world, 'and we'll solve the world's ills with our social science.'

Looking for another sign you're about to be, in the words of one friend, "shaboozled" by a liberal Nietzschean Übermensch? Humility is not a defining feature.


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Liberal Sensitivity Training

This is progress. And by "progress," I mean part of the progressive agenda to outlaw anything they don't like--in this case, speech they find offensive.

Mark Steyn & Iowahawk are the two funniest political pundits in the webosphere. This is why I bring you their stuff so frequently.

Here's a bit from Steyn's latest:

Ah, but, as the computer wallahs say, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature. If the pen is mightier than the sword, then criminalizing words is a way of disarming potential opposition, of inculcating a reflexive self-censorship in the citizenry. And, after all, self-suppression is the most cost-effective of tyranny. Political correctness isn’t merely the blasphemy law of our time. It makes communication impossible. It renders a people literally illiterate: The conventions of language used by functioning societies throughout human history - irony, indirect quotation, period evocation, and, yes, even comic stereotype - are all suddenly suspect. What a strange fate to embrace. In London, the Lord Chamberlain’s power to censor West End plays was finally abolished in 1968: It was widely accepted by then that there was something absurd in a palace courtier ruling that your script could have three “Bastards!” but not four, and that two specific references to sodomy had to be replaced with one vague allusion to heavy petting. Yet, four decades on, Britons now think it entirely normal for police constables and timeserving bureaucrats to function as literary critics determining the “intent” behind a throwaway jest.

I see a lot of this in higher ed.

Just the other day my brother and I discussed the ever-changing PC words for various things. Right now, disabled is out as the word of choice for those either physically or mentally, well, disabled.

Before "disabled," we called them handicapped.

Now we call them "special needs." (hell, even special has become a pejorative)

As that takes on the same negative connotation as disabled & handicapped (because people feel bad to acknowledge that there is, in fact, anything wrong), we'll find some new, meaningless PC word to describe them and then cast off once it has worn out its welcome.

In today's society, the focus is not on expressing oneself accurately or well, but on offending the fewest amount of people. This is why 30 Rock got so much mileage out of the "Puerto Rican joke."


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Shelby Steele: The GOP & Minority Outreach

One of the panel discussions I attended at CPAC dealt with creating a conservative Hispanic coalition. Widely discussed were the many commonalities shared by traditional social conservatives and largely Catholic Hispanic minorities. On every issue--life, family, marriage--Hispanic minorities share the values of conservatives everywhere.

In fact, Hispanic Americans are more socially conservative than their white counterparts (that is, when you consider all white Americans together). Partnerships, at a minimum, based on these principles and shared goals seems like an obvious starting point.

But, of course, immigration raised its ugly head. I won't get into it here--it deserves its own series of posts--but I believe there is a workable solution to this problem, I'm just not entirely sure what it is.

The Conservative argument for resisting minority outreach/appeal is that we don't want to get into the grievance tribalism that afflicts the Left. We are not a party that promises a grab bag of goodies & favors if only your group helps us get elected. We are a party of principles--principles which we believe ought to appeal to people regardless of their race, gender, religion, whatever.

For the record, I believe that, 100%. One of conservatism's great promises is that it promises to view every individual the same way--it seeks the freedom of every individual.

However, within that framework, I believe there is ample room, ample opportunity, to form coalitions that seek common goals. If Hispanics are socially conservative, we can appeal to them with the principles of social conservatism. We cannot assume (wrongly, I believe) that these people somehow know that we see the world the same way they do and seek the same things they seek.

We can appeal to some of these groups without becoming tribal or abandoning our principles. We can and ought to reach out to them by using our principles and showing them how they apply in their lives and are shared by them and us.

In todays WSJ, Shelby Steele examines this question--Why the GOP can't win minorities. It is the most lucid discussion of this topic I have read in a long time. Read it all; here is an excerpt:

When redemption became a term of power, "redemptive liberalism" was born -- a new activist liberalism that gave itself a "redemptive" profile by focusing on social engineering rather than liberalism's classic focus on individual freedom. In the '60s there was no time to allow individual freedom to render up the social good. Redemptive liberalism would proactively engineer the good. Name a good like "integration," and then engineer it into being through a draconian regimen of school busing. If the busing did profound damage to public education in America, it gave liberals the right to say, "At least we did something!" In other words, we are activists

against America's old sin of segregation. Activism is moral authority in redemptive liberalism.

But conservatism sees moral authority more in a discipline of principles than in activism. It sees ideas of the good like "diversity" as mere pretext for the social engineering that always leads to unintended and oppressive consequences. Conservatism would enforce the principles that ensure individual freedom, and then allow "the good" to happen by "invisible hand."

And here is conservatism's great problem with minorities. In an era when even failed moral activism is redemptive -- and thus a source of moral authority and power -- conservatism stands flat-footed with only discipline to offer. It has only an invisible hand to compete with the activism of the left. So conservatism has no way to show itself redeemed of America's bigoted past, no way like the Great Society to engineer a grand display of its innocence, and no way to show deference to minorities for the oppression they endured. Thus it seems to be in league with that oppression.

Socially engineering society in order to assuage one's own guilt does not "redeem" the people you are trying to save (indeed, the unintended consequences of your shiny new program often worsen their condition), it is all about making yourself feel better.

Anyway, read the rest. You'll be pleased to find that Steele does not suggest some convoluted hybrid of leftist tribal politics blended with conservative principle.


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Brits With Backbone

Between time spent at Cambridge & UCL on my MA, I've listened to a lot of liberal elites. They have the same opinions on, well, everything, as the liberal elites in the US.

My flatmates are among what I believe/hope to be a silent majority of Brits in this country who are, you know, sane when it comes to their politics. They love their country & respect the troops who defend their freedom.

I'm not going to repeat the whole story, Ace has got it covered, but there was a Welcome Home parade yesterday for British troops returning from Iraq. The usual, useful idiots--al Qaeda in Iraq & Taliban apologists--were out to embarrass themselves as they tried to shame the troops.

Mission decidedly not accomplished.

Anyway, I wanted to post video footage of the Brits in the street--the ones out to welcome home their heroes--shouting the "protesters" out of the public square. This is the usually silent majority I referred to above.

Note: As with any link to Ace, the usual language warnings apply. Additionally, there may be cursing in the vid, I can't tell; their accents make it hard for me to discern 4-letter words from ones we don't find offensive, but funny. Given the inflamed emotions, I'd imagine a few of the former were thrown around. You've been warned.




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Copying George W. Bush

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

From today's Political Diary, Congressional Quarterly's Carl (Craig?) Crawford:

President Barack Obama's first prime-time press conference was most remarkable for how he borrowed a page from his predecessor, refusing to accept follow-up questions. . . . Until Bush, presidents since Calvin Coolidge had allowed reporters to ask another question based upon the answer to the first question. Often that first answer is a dodge, an attempt to stick to a talking point or a scripted answer. Bush was obsessed with avoiding follow-up questions, knowing that it is an effective tool for getting him off script. In last night's press conference, Obama cut off any attempt by reporters to follow up his answers to their questions. If he intends to maintain this Bush policy, reporters must work together and agree to ask the obvious follow-up to the previous question as they take their turns. Otherwise, these press conferences are nothing but one-sided speeches.

This is a new brand of politics.

And speaking of "post-partisan" politics, the reason they call themselves post-partisans is because they want to be able to label anyone who disagrees with them as partisans. As though partisan were a derogatory term.

Liberals have been playing this game for a long time. They were liberals (completely turning the meaning of the classical liberal on its head--turning it, in fact, so completely on its head that we now have to add the "classical" to liberal) who quit wanting to be liberals because liberal was turned into a bad word.

Now, some of them want to be called "progressives," suggesting, obviously, that anyone who opposes them must be regressive or, at a minimum, merely running in place.

The rest call themselves post-partisans, after their messianic leader.

I'm happy with conservative or partisan or, if you prefer, regressive.

(h/t Scott L.)


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Another Democrat With Tax 'Problems'

As you've all heard by now, former Senator Tom Daschle had to pay a bunch of back taxes in order to make the grade as Obama's nominee for HHS. Add him to the list with Tim Geithner and not nominee, but still Democrat, Charlie Rangel. What's with these guys?

The real kicker in all of this is the fact that these guys--the Democrats--are the ones who want to increase taxes and redistribute it to the poor. And yet here we have another one not paying his taxes.

Not only are liberals less generous with their charitable donations and whatnot (as proven by hard evidence here), but they don't even fund their fair share of pat-themselves-on-the-back, government nanny-statism.

They don't want to give any of their money--either through charitable giving or taxes--they want you to fund their programs so they can feel good about themselves.

(Disclaimer: Obviously this stereotype doesn't apply to all liberals. I'm sure there are some out there who walk the walk.)

(thanks to notropis for the image & DrewM @ Ace)


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Sweatshops Are Awesome

What's worse than working in a sweatshop? Try living in a dump.

Hip students who routinely protest Western "imperialism" in Iraq & elsewhere frequently campaign for economic imperialism.

Take, for instance, the protesters outside local low-cost retailer, Primark.

Like so many other liberal causes, their good intentions pave the path to even more suffering by the already-suffering.

Nicholas Kristof, NYT (see, I'm speaking their language), expounds on the manifold goodness of sweatshop jobs in places like Cambodia. There, people aspire to these positions and see them, rightly, as a way out of abject poverty.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

Meanwhile, the self-congratulatory do-gooders protesting in London & elsewhere pressure policy makers to keep these jobs--which people choose to do--away from those who most need them.

Rather than telling other countries and people's what we think is in their best interest--like not working at a sweatshop--we ought to relax trade standards, making trade free-er and let them choose for themselves.

Remember, one 10-year-old boy's sweatshop is another 10-year-old boy's totally awesome way out of living in a friggin' dump.

(thanks to Scott L.)


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More Military Times Poll Goodness (UPDATED)

Found out about this from Ace (who else?) and Hot Air. I have to assume that this bit of info about "don't ask, don't tell" comes from the same poll, but I'm not 100% certain and don't want to take the time to do the research to confirm.

Anyway, the gist of it is this: 10% of active-duty troops have said they would not re-enlist if the policy of "don't ask, don't tell" were stopped. That is, if gays were allowed to be openly gay in the military, 10% of the troops would look for work elsewhere.

Most active-duty service members continue to oppose President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to allow gays to serve openly in the military, a Military Times survey shows.

Moreover, if the policy was repealed, nearly 10 percent of respondents said they would not re-enlist or extend their service, and 14 percent said they would consider terminating their careers after serving their obligated tours.

Why is this significant? Because Obama's press secretary has promised to kill "don't ask, don't tell."

Ace:

A great many progressive liberals find fault with this policy and they desire a military that embraces people's various sexual lifestyles in an open, respectful way. Unfortunately, a great many progressive liberals have absolutely no desire to serve in the military -- whether don't ask, don't tell is the law or not -- which means that the military will continue recruiting from a population which does not share the enlightened, humane, pro-homosexuality goo-goo of the progressive liberals.

Don't ask, don't tell makes military service less attractive to gays and progressive liberals. But they, largely, are not inclined to serve in any event. Repealing the code makes service less attractive to traditionalists and, yes, conservatives (as well as blacks and Hispanics) who tend to be liberal on many issues but not particularly progressive about homosexuality) who actually are inclined to serve.

One can argue about the fairness but those actually willing to join the club ought to have some say in its rules. Those unwilling to join should have far less a say.

If Gleen Grenwald and other humane, compassionate, forward-thinking liberals announce their intention to sign up in great enough numbers to offset the losses among the current cohort of recruits, fine, we can dispense with the issue of how this policy affects the military's actual purpose -- to fight and win wars. And then we can have the debate solely on the grounds the liberals wish to have it on, on the questions of fairness and dignity and openness to diverse sexual orientations. And other gay [stuff] of this nature.

But somehow I doubt that any such large-scale pledge to serve will be forthcoming.

Me too.

13 January 3:44pm BST: Matt P. weighs in with an angle that hadn't occurred to me:

The one thing that hit me right away about this is that repealing don't ask don't tell is just one more way for BHO to reduce defense spending. Not only that, he could point to the decrease in spending being a result of "natural" attrition and possibly not have to pay as much of a political consequence because, "People just aren't willing to sign up like they used to."

I read an article awhile back on the Op-Ed page of the WSJ in which the author argued for Keynesian-style spending on the military. At least, he said, if you're going to spend huge amounts of money, you might as well spend it on things that are useful rather than just making stuff up like, "green jobs." He specifically outlined increasing the military budget to pay for big ticket items--new jet fighters, expensive parts for destroyers and carriers and other things along those lines.

Though the whole Keynesian approach doesn't appeal to me the way it does to (apparently) Obama, I could at least support spending large amounts of money of military modernization projects & recruiting.

I'm afraid, however, that Matt P. is right and the military won't be getting a dime. More "green" jobs!

At this point, I think people would just like "jobs"(!).


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