Month: July 2019

Timothy Sandefur …

… a faux-libertarian like Will Wilkinson (see this, for example), takes lengthy issue with a commentary by Andrew Hyman. The commentary was sparked by George Will’s use of an argument advanced by Sandefur to the effect that the Declaration of Independence is the “conscience” of the Constitution; that is, it explicates the liberty that the Constitution, supposedly, was meant to perfect.

I am unpersuaded by Sandefur’s legalistic jitterbugging. I am especially unpersuaded by a point, fundamental to Sandefur’s worldview, that he makes (for the umpteenth time) in the his final paragraph:

The most basic premise of the entire American experiment is that truly fundamental matters are not subject to the dictate of either a single king or a majority, but are rather dictated by “the laws of nature and of nature’s god.” That is to say, our rights are inherent in us because of our humanity, and are to be discovered by and respected by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches–not decided by them.

This is utter romantic hogwash. As I say in a long-ago post about Sandefur’s “conscience” thesis,

[t]he Declaration and Constitution are not libertarian manifestos — as Sandefur, in effect, characterizes them [here]. Despite the rhetoric about “We the People,” “inalienable rights,” “liberty,” and the rest of it, the Declaration and Constitution are about who governs, and about the division of rights and powers between “the people” and government.

The essential problem with Sandefur’s analysis lies in his Manichean approach to rights. In his view, they are either inherent in individual persons or they are granted by government. (He denies the second possibility, of course.) There is a third way… The third way is hinted at in the paper by Randy Barnett, “A Law Professor’s Guide to Natural Law and Natural Rights,” to which Sandefur links: “natural rights…. describe how others ought to act towards rights-holders.”

In other words, the thing (for want of a better word) that arises from human nature is not a set of rights that each person “owns”; rather, it is an inclination or imperative to treat others as if they have rights. This idea of being inclined (or compelled) to “act toward” is more plausible than idea that “natural rights” inhere in their holders. It is so because “act toward” suggests that we (most of us) learn that it is a good thing to leave others alone as long as they do no harm to us or mean no harm to us. That is a much more plausible explanation of rights than the claim that rights inhere in individuals as rights-holders.

Given the more plausible view that rights are a matter of “acting toward” others, it should be evident — to all but romanticists of Sandefur’s ilk — that rights are not a priori (“inherent”) but arise from interpersonal bargaining (at best) and governmental edicts (at worst). It cannot be otherwise, for even if human beings are wired to leave others alone as they are left alone, it is evident that they are not wired exclusively in that way. Thus claims about “natural rights” are not only foolish but futile. Rights, inescapably, are a matter of persuasion (at best) and power (at worst, unless the power happens to be on the “right” side).

(See also “Evolution, Human Nature, and ‘Natural Rights’” (in which I take Sandefur head-on), “The Golden Rule as Beneficial Learning“, “Human Nature, Liberty, and Rationalism“, “The Futile Search for ‘Natural Rights’“, and “Natural Law and Natural Rights Revisited“.)

Will Wilkinson

Arnold Kling takes note of this, and concludes with this:

Wilkinson, once with the libertarian Cato Institute, now comes across as a full-fledged partisan Progressive Democrat. In theory, he could argue for his new views from a perspective that respects the ideas he no longer finds congenial. Instead, he has adopted a Krugman-esque approach of painting non-Progressives as cartoon villains. I don’t begrudge him his ideological evolution. But I do fault the manner in which he expresses it.

I’ve been onto Wilkinson for a long time; see, for example:

Political Correctness

Pseudo-Libertarian Sophistry vs. True Libertarianism

More Pseudo-Libertarianism

In Defense of Marriage

Human Nature, Liberty, and Rationalism

Why Stop at the Death Penalty?

Cato, the Kochs, and a Fluke

A Man for No Seasons

The Fallacy of Human Progress

Assuming a Pretzel-Like Shape

Terrorism Isn’t an Accident

And I do begrudge his ideological evolution. Though it is more accurate to say (as I argue in some of the posts linked above) that Wilkinson wasn’t really a libertarian, even when he masqueraded as one. The mask is finally off.

Pardon Me …

… I can’t resist. I post this with apologies to Catholics* who are sensitive to hints of blasphemy.

For decades there was a widely used response to a question the could only be answered in the affirmative:

Q. Would you like some ice cream with your cake?

A. Is the Pope Catholic?

Then along came John Paul II (Karol Józef Wojtyła), and my response became “Is the Pope Polish?”.

With the election of Francis and his subsequent pronouncements about “social justice” and “climate change” I have changed it to “Is the Pope a communist?”.
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* In case it matters to anyone, I am a long-lapsed Catholic and a deist who is agnostic about the Creator’s role in the operation of the universe.

The Essential Declaration of Independence

The core of the Declaration, brought up to date:

To secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the present government of the United States was instituted by the Constitution of 1787. That government has long since become destructive of its legitimate ends, having enacted myriad abuses of its power while often failing to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is therefore the right and duty of the people to alter, abolish, or secede from that government, and to replace it with a new government that strictly adheres to the original Constitution and Amendments I-X, XI-XV, XIX, XX, XXII, XXV, and XXVII.

(See “Constitution: Myths and Realities” for much more, including the legality of secession.)

Trump’s Fourth of July Parade

I admit to profound indifference — and even dislike — of ceremonial occasions and gestures. The vastly expensive Apollo 11 mission seemed to me (even at the time) to be little more than an ego trip for its political sponsors. Half-time shows bore me. I reluctantly attend weddings and funerals. And I have long eschewed parades of all kinds. I certainly will not waste my time in viewing tomorrow’s Salute to America parade in D.C.

But I must say that Trump’s all-out promotion of the parade is a piece of political genius. Trump knew that the left would oppose it vociferously. And in doing so, the left would further underscore its opposition to things traditionally American. That, in turn, tightens Trump’s hold on the vast, silent, non-cosmopolitan swath of the electorate that was responsible for his victory in 2016.

Trump plays with the left like a cat plays with a mouse. I love it.

That “Hurtful” Betsy Ross Flag

Fox News has the latest:

Two Democratic hopefuls have expressed their support for Nike after the sportswear company pulled sneakers featuring the Betsy Ross-designed American flag ahead of the Fourth of July holiday. The company did so after former NFL quarterback and Nike endorser Colin Kaepernick raised concerns about the shoes.

Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro told CBS News on Wednesday that he was “glad to see” Nike remove the shoes from the shelves, comparing the “painful” symbol to the Confederate flag.

“There are a lot of things in our history that are still very painful,” Castro explained. As an example, he cited “the Confederate flag that still flies in some places and is used as a symbol.”\

Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke also approved of Nike’s decision, noting that “white nationalist groups” have “appropriated” the Betsy Ross flag.

“I think its really important to take into account the impression that kind of symbol would have for many of our fellow Americans,” he said,  according to Jewish Insider senior political reporter Ben Jacobs.

As I understand it, the Betsy Ross flag, which became the symbol of the rebellious, united States (i.e., Colonies) in 1777, is “hurtful” because it dates from an era when slavery was legal in what became the United States. How that historical fact is “hurtful” to anyone is beyond me. The fact of slavery is reprehensible, but a flag that merely denotes America’s struggle for independence from Britain really has nothing to do with slavery, except in the slippery way that “social justice” warriors have just invented. (Clearly, they are running low on ideas.)

Well, if the Betsy Ross flag is “hurtful” to professional virtue-signalers and malcontents, it is certainly — and more legitimately — hurtful to me. I am a direct descendant of a man who, with three of his sons (one of whom I am also directly descended from), fought on the British side in the Revolutionary War. They had settled in the Colony of Pennsylvania in the 1750s and, perhaps not unwisely, chose to defend the Crown against presumptuous rebels like George Washington, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and 53 other signatories of the Declaration of Independence — all of whom used to be called patriots. (Washington, Jefferson, and many other signatories owned slaves, but that wasn’t why they rebelled; slavery was then still legal throughout the British Empire.)

In any event, because my ancestors were Loyalists, they fled to Canada at the end of the war. And from then until the birth of my father in the United States more than 130 years later, the ancestors in my paternal line of descent were Canadian and therefore (nominally, at least) subjects of the British monarch.

So if anyone has a right to be offended by the Betsy Ross flag, it is I. But I am not offended by the flag, though I am deeply offended by the useless twits who profess to be offended by it.

Pages Updated

There are new links at the bottom of “Climate Change” and “Intelligence“, and there’s a new entry at the bottom of the latter. Read them da capo if you haven’t been there before.

Consulting

There is a post at Politico about the adventures of McKinsey & Company, a giant consulting firm, in the world of intelligence:

America’s vast spying apparatus was built around a Cold War world of dead drops and double agents. Today, that world has fractured and migrated online, with hackers and rogue terrorist cells, leaving intelligence operatives scrambling to keep up.

So intelligence agencies did what countless other government offices have done: They brought in a consultant. For the past four years, the powerhouse firm McKinsey and Co., has helped restructure the country’s spying bureaucracy, aiming to improve response time and smooth communication.

Instead, according to nearly a dozen current and former officials who either witnessed the restructuring firsthand or are familiar with the project, the multimillion dollar overhaul has left many within the country’s intelligence agencies demoralized and less effective.

These insiders said the efforts have hindered decision-making at key agencies — including the CIA, National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

They said McKinsey helped complicate a well-established linear chain of command, slowing down projects and turnaround time, and applied cookie-cutter solutions to agencies with unique cultures. In the process, numerous employees have become dismayed, saying the efforts have at best been a waste of money and, at worst, made their jobs more difficult. It’s unclear how much McKinsey was paid in that stretch, but according to news reports and people familiar with the effort, the total exceeded $10 million.

Consulting to U.S.-government agencies on a grand scale grew out of the perceived successes in World War II of civilian analysts who were embedded in military organizations. To the extent that the civilian analysts were actually helpful*, it was because they focused on specific operations, such as methods of searching for enemy submarines. In such cases, the government client can benefit from an outside look at the effectiveness of the operations, the identification of failure points, and suggestions for changes in weapons and tactics that are informed by first-hand observation of military operations.

Beyond that, however, outsiders are of little help, and may be a hindrance, as in the case cited above. Outsiders can’t really grasp the dynamics and unwritten rules of organizational cultures that embed decades of learning and adaptation.

The consulting game is now (and has been for decades) an invasive species. It is a perverse outgrowth of operations research as it was developed in World War II. Too much of a “good thing” is a bad thing — as I saw for myself many years ago.
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* The success of the U.S. Navy’s antisubmarine warfare (ASW) operations had been for decades ascribed to the pioneering civilian organization known as the Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG). However, with the publication of The Ultra Secret in 1974 (and subsequent revelations), it became known that code-breaking may have contributed greatly to the success of various operations against enemy forces, including ASW.

The New York Times Crossword: Leftism Never Sleeps

I have been doing it online since February, and have completed 135 puzzles — a goodly sample. Contrary to what the Times says, I find the Sunday puzzle to be the hardest one, not the Saturday puzzle. My average time to complete a puzzle rises from Monday through Sunday, with a sharp jump from Wednesday to Thursday.

Further, my best time for each day almost follows the same pattern, though Saturday is slightly better than Friday. Sunday’s best time is markedly higher than the best time for any other day of the week.

According to the Times,

Mondays have the most straightforward clues and Saturday clues are the hardest, or involve the most wordplay. Contrary to popular belief, the Sunday puzzles are midweek difficulty, not the hardest. They’re just bigger.

But bigger takes more time. The Sunday puzzle is therefore harder to complete.

The Times, in typical leftist fashion, prefers a “gut” judgement — the Saturday puzzle is harder than the Sunday puzzle because we say so — to a factual assessment — the Saturday puzzle is easier than the Sunday puzzle because it routinely takes less time to solve. It’s of a piece with global warming hysteria, hysteria about Trump’s “collusion” with Russia, and many other things.

What Ike Also Said

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his farewell address on January, 17, 1961, warned famously that

we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

Later in the same speech he also issued a warning that has been largely forgotten:

[I]n holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

The scientific-technological “elite” insidiously regulates almost every aspect of our lives — if not directly, then through the choices we are allowed to make in our purchases of items ranging from homes to can-openers, from travel to medications, from schooling options to vacation choices, and on and on and on. The same “elite” is responsible for foisting upon Americans and much of the Western world the immensely costly fraud known as “climate change”. The same “elite”, operating under the unwarranted protection of the First Amendment, is responsible for stifling facts and ideas that are inimical to its agenda.

Given that America is slipping toward second-class status as a military power, Ike’s first warning — to the extent that it was heeded — proved counterproductive. Sadly, his second warning was ignored until recently — and it may be too late to stem the tide against the scientific-technological “elite”.

Organized?

I see ads on TV (with sound muted), at shopping website, and in periodicals for organizing systems and services. And I wonder who buys such things. It can’t be persons who are organized; they don’t need them. So it must be persons who are disorganized, and who benefit from them briefly and then go back to their old ways.

Sort of related, and worth a visit if you like trivia, is a post of mine from two years ago: “You Can Look That Up in Your Funk & Wagnall’s“.