The Texas Marriage Canard

The left-o-sphere has resurrected the canard that the constitution of Texas bans all marriage. This canard rests on an incomplete reading of the following section of the constitution’s bill of rights:

Sec. 32. MARRIAGE. (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.

(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

(Added Nov. 8, 2005.)

The lefties like to pull sub-section (b) out of context and claim that it stands alone. Why? Because section (b), taken out of context, can be used to scare “straights,” who might then agitate for the repeal of section 32. That would open the way for left-wing judges to decree that Texas must allow homosexual “marriage.” (Yes, there are left-wing judges in Texas, which still has a sizable Democrat minority.)

The lefties, in other words, are promoting their agenda through dishonesty. But what else is new?

Here is the correct reading of Section 32: Sub-section (a) defines marriage. Sub-section (b) spells out the implication of (a), which is to prohibit any form of “marriage” or something similar (e.g., “civil union”) that does not accord with the definition given in (a). The word “identical” in (b) should be understood to mean “equivalent,” that is, “having similar or identical effects” with respect to persons of the same sex.

Here is an analogy from mathematics:

(a) Only certain pairs of non-negative integers can be added to get the number 2, specifically: 1,1 and 0, 2.

(b) No other pair or pairs of non-negative integers can be added to get the number 2.

The framers of Section 32 might have chosen a better word than “identical,” but Section 32 clearly means what it was intended to mean: Texas recognizes no form of marriage, by any name, other than the union of one man and one woman.

End of discussion.

Landsburg Is Half-Right

* * *

God does not play dice with the universe. — Albert Einstein

Einstein, stop telling God what to do. — Niels Bohr

* * *

In a post at The Big Questions blog, Steven Landsburg writes:

Richard Dawkins . . . [has] got this God thing all wrong. Here’s some of his latest, from the Wall Street Journal:

Where does [Darwinian evolution] leave God? The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear. Evolution is God’s redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the consideration that he must be at least as complex as the entities he was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.

But Darwinian evolution can’t replace God, because Darwinian evolution (at best) explains life, and explaining life was never the hard part. The Big Question is not: Why is there life? The Big Question is: Why is there anything?

So far, so good. But Landsburg doesn’t quit when he’s ahead:

Ah, says, Dawkins, but there’s no role for God there either:

Making the universe is the one thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an intelligence is complex—statistically improbable —and therefore had to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings

That, however, is just wrong. It is not true that all complex things emerge by gradual degrees from simpler beginnings. In fact, the most complex thing I’m aware of is the system of natural numbers (0,1,2,3, and all the rest of them) together with the laws of arithmetic. That system did not emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings. . . .

Now I happen to agree with Professor Dawkins that God is unnecessary, but I think he’s got the reason precisely backward. God is unnecessary not because complex things require simple antecedents but because they don’t. That allows the natural numbers to exist with no antecedents at all. . . .

What breathtaking displays of arrogance. Dawkins presumes that the only kind of intelligence that can exist is the kind that comes about through evolution. Landsburg wishes us to believe that complex things can exist on their own, without antecedents, which is why there is no God. (He fudges by saying “God is unnecessary” but we know what he really believes, don’t we?)

Landsburg’s “proof” of the non-existence of God is the existence of natural numbers, a “system [that] did not emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings.” Landsburg’s assertion about natural numbers (and the laws of arithmetic) is true only if numbers exist independently of human thought, that is, if they are ideal Platonic forms. But where do ideal Platonic forms come from? And if some complex things don’t require antecedents, how does that rule out the existence of God — who, by definition, embodies all complexity?

More about Paternalism

To complement my earlier post, “Beware of Libertarian Paternalists,” I offer the following links:

Pitfalls of Paternalism (Ilya Somin, The Volokh Conspiracy)

Hayek on the Use of Superior Expert Knowledge as a Justification for Paternalism (Ilya Somin, The Volokh Conspiracy)

The Knowledge Problem of New Paternalism (Mario Rizzo, ThinkMarkets)

Little Brother Is Watching You: The New Paternalism on the Slippery Slopes (Mario Rizzo, ThinkMarkets)

New Paternalism on the Slippery Slopes, Part I (Glen Whitman, Agoraphilia)

Be sure to read the posts and articles linked therein.

Our Sacred Honor?

In “Sizing Up Obama,” I wrote:

On the one hand, we have FDR II, replete with schemes for managing our lives and fortunes.

On the other hand, we have Carter-Clinton II, ready to: kowtow to those who would bury us, create the illusion that peace will reign perforce, and act on that illusion by slashing the defense budget (thereby giving aid and comfort to our enemies).

I have said a lot more about Obama’s schemes for managing our lives and fortunes. (See this, this, this, this, this, and this.) I also have addressed Obama’s apparent willingness to compromise our sacred honor. But it is clear that I have been preoccupied with Obama’s economic agenda, to the neglect of his foreign follies.

While the war in Iraq winds down to a successful conclusion, and the outcome of the war in Afghanistan depends on Obama’s willingness to buck the surrender lobby (of which Obama is a leading member), there is the problem of Iran:

The price of a pre-emptive attack on Iran might be high, but the price of inaction will be even higher. Legitimate U.S. interests in the Middle East (i.e., access to oil) will be threatened by a regime that has proceeded thus far in the face of sanctions and is unlikely to be fazed by more sanctions. The economic hardships caused by the “oil shocks” of the 1970s will be as nothing compared with the hardships caused by Iranian dominance of the Middle East.

Where will Western Europe, Russia, and China be in our hour of need? Western Europe will be busy emulating Vichy France, in the hope that its obseqiousness toward Iran is rewarded by dribbles of oil. Russia and China will actively support Iran (covertly if not overtly), in the expectation of profiting from higher prices on the oil they sell to Western Europe and the United States. Eventually, Russia and China will exploit the inevitable decline of American military power, as our defense budget disappears into the maw of Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other misbegotten ventures.

What has happened since I wrote those words on September 26? Just about what you would expect. Here is Charles Krauthammer, writing on October 16:

And what’s come from Obama’s single most dramatic foreign-policy stroke — the sudden abrogation of missile-defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? . . .

. . . Surely we got something in return for selling out our friends. Some brilliant secret trade-off to get strong Russian support for stopping Iran from going nuclear before it’s too late? . . .

. . . Well, Clinton went to Moscow this week to nail down the deal. What did she get?

“Russia Not Budging on Iran Sanctions: Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart.” Such was the Washington Post headline’s succinct summary of the debacle.

Note how thoroughly Clinton was rebuffed. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov declared that “threats, sanctions, and threats of pressure” are “counterproductive.” Note: It’s not just sanctions that are worse than useless, but even the threat of mere pressure.

It gets worse. Having failed to get any movement from the Russians, Clinton herself moved — to accommodate the Russian position! Sanctions? What sanctions? “We are not at that point yet,” she averred. “That is not a conclusion we have reached. . . . It is our preference that Iran work with the international community.”

But wait a minute. Didn’t Obama say in July that Iran had to show compliance by the G-20 summit in late September? And when that deadline passed, did he not then warn Iran that it would face “sanctions that have bite” and that it would have to take “a new course or face consequences”?

Gone with the wind. It’s the U.S. that’s now retreating from its already flimsy position of just three weeks ago. We’re not doing sanctions now, you see. We’re back to engagement. Just as the Russians suggest.

Henry Kissinger once said that the main job of Anatoly Dobrynin, the perennial Soviet ambassador to Washington, was to tell the Kremlin leadership that whenever they received a proposal from the United States that appeared disadvantageous to the United States, not to assume it was a trick.

No need for a Dobrynin today. The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and “reset” buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever, or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naïveté, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.

And so it goes, in the Orwellian world of Obama, where a temporary illusion of peace is attained through accommodation and surrender.

Health Care “Reform”: The Short of It

Congress and Obama will deliver unto us:

an entitlement program that promises “free” or “inexpensive” access to drugs and medical services;

higher prices for drugs and medical services, fueled by greater demand (thanks to the entitlement program) and shrinking supply (as more providers decline to accept government-set fees and red tape); and, therefore,

more expensive, and rationed, medical care.

The unthinkable alternative — and the only workable one — is to stimulate supply by deregulating the medical professions and the pharmaceutical industry.

In short, Obamacare will not work, unless government (a) nationalizes the drug industry and the medical professions and (b) drafts individuals into the medical professions, Soviet-style. Neither event is unimaginable, as evidenced by the enthusiasm with which politicians have embraced the nationalization and regimentation of American financial institutions.

Of course, to suggest that Obamacare could be made to work through nationalization and regimentation is to suggest that nothing works unless it is run from Washington. That is precisely the belief held by Obama, most members of Congress, and far too many Americans.

UPDATE: Nationalization and regimentation will not take place immediately upon the enactment of Obamacare, but in response to its obvious objective: Drive private insurers out of business so that government is “forced” to step in, assume the role of the “single payer,” and effectively ration the delivery of prescription drugs and medical services. For an analysis of the slippery-slope mechanisms by which this will happen, see Mario Rizzo’s “Fast Track to the Single Payer.”

UPDATE 2: The chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services confirms that Obamacare will drive costs up, not down.

Beware the Rare Event

Carl Bialik, “The Numbers Guy” at The Wall Street Journal, notes that

a 1-in-5.2 million shot came through in Bulgaria, as the same six winning numbers turned up in two consecutive drawings. And 18 Bulgarians profited by betting on recent history: They chose the winning combination of numbers from the drawing four days earlier — which hadn’t been selected by anyone the first time around — and split the pot.

The coincidence drew international news coverage and sparked a probe by a government-appointed commission. Bulgarian officials ultimately chalked it up to coincidence. . . .

The general principle . . . is that this would have happened eventually. There are lotteries in dozens of countries, and multiple ones within countries — scores in the U.S. alone. Many of these lotteries have had multiple drawings each week for decades. If there have been, say, a million lottery drawings, then a coincidence as unlikely as this one becomes more of a 1-in-5 yawn. That still means that any one player’s chances of winning the lottery are close to zero.

In short, regardless of less-than-amazing coincidences, it is a rare event to hold the winning number in a lottery.

People are drawn to coincidences of the kind described by Bialik
because the coincidences are rare events, as are celebrity scandals (as opposed to the relatively stable marriages of “ordinary” people), aircraft accidents that take 200 lives (as opposed to myriad uneventful flights), the acts of murderers and other violent criminals (as opposed to the relatively civilized behavior of most people), and so on.

A problem with rare events — “outliers” in the terminology of operations research — is that, despite their rarity, they attract a disproportionate share of public and political attention. They skew our perceptions of normality. A rare but notorious tragedy usually is followed by calls for government to “do something” to prevent future tragedies of similar kinds.

Consider, for example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). All three agencies were established in 1970-72, in the wave of fear-mongering that followed the publication of Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed. All three agencies were inspired by the occurrence of relatively rare events. And those occurrences had been in decline long before the establishment of NHTSA, OSHA, and CPSC.

I introduce in evidence Figures 1 and 2 of “Safety at Any Price?” by W. Kip Viscusi and Ted Gary (Regulation, Fall 2002, pp. 54-63), which indicate that unintentional injury deaths in the United States had been falling steadily, long before the advent of NHTSA, OSHA, and CPSC.* In 1928, the first year treated by the authors, the annual rate of unintentional injury deaths arising from accidents of all kinds was only about 80 per 100,000 persons; that is, about 8/100 of 1 percent of the population died of unintentionally inflicted injuries. By 1960, the rate was only about 5/100 of 1 percent of the population, and by 1990 it was down to 3.5/100 of 1 percent of the population, where it has leveled off.

In other words, the incidence of fatal accidents declined faster before the establishment of NHTSA, OSHA, and CPSC than it has since. NHTSA, OSHA, and CPSC have had no demonstrable effect on the incidence of fatal accidents. Why? Because human beings tend to act responsibly, for the sake of self-preservation. When, on rare occasions, they fail to act responsibly — or their machinery fails them — they can be counted on to learn from their misfortunes and the misfortunes of others. And there is nothing new about learning from experience and applying that learning to improve our material possessions. Just ask a caveman.

What, then, is the role of NHTSA, OSHA, and CPSC? They are like cheerleaders who claim credit for their team’s victories because they cavort on the sidelines for the entertainment of the crowd. Cheerleaders notwithstanding, the team generally does what it was going to do, anyway, except when a cheerleader gets too close to the action and obstructs it. Sometimes a cheerleader’s obstruction accidentally benefits the cheerleader’s team; other times, it hurts the cheerleader’s team. There are three main differences between NHTSA, OSHA, and CPSC and cheerleaders. Cheerleaders (a) aren’t supposed to interfere with the players (and rarely do); (b) they provide their services relatively cheaply or free of charge; and (c) they are more attractive than most bureaucrats.

The occurrence of a rare event should be an occasion for noting that it is a rare event. It should not be an occasion for the creation of a costly, intrusive, and essentially ineffective regulatory agency or a sheaf of misguided regulations.

__________

* Figure 1 seems to show a general rise in the rate of deaths from motor vehicle accidents between 1945 and 1975. That increase is explained by the growing use of automobiles. As shown in Figure 2 of the Viscusi-Gayer article, death rates per vehicle and per vehicle-mile had been dropping steadily until 1960, when those rates rose slightly for a few years before continuing to decline. For more about the long-term trend in deaths from motor-vehicle accidents, see this post, which also includes a discussion of the Peltzman effect: “the hypothesized tendency of people to react to a safety regulation by increasing other risky behavior, offsetting some or all of the benefit of the regulation.” There is more evidence for the Peltzman effect in this article.

More about the Perils of Obamacare

This is an addendum to “The Perils of Nannyism: The Case of Obamacare.”

If you believe that Obamacare is a good idea, read Megan McArdle’s “Controlling Healthcare Costs the American Way: Not Doing It,” Peter Suderman’s “The Lessons of State Health-Care Reforms,” and Mark Perry’s “Cost of Health Care Legislation: $829B? Not Likely.”

If you then still believe in the wisdom of Obamacare, perhaps you would like to buy a piece of land here.

My Nobel Prize

I awoke this morning to the news that I had been awarded the Nobel Prize for the Suppression of Blogospheric Bloviation. Needless to say, the award would not have been possible without the pioneering efforts of the millions of blogospheric bloviators who preceded me.

As for my humble efforts to suppress blogospheric bloviation, the Nobel Committee’s citation reads as follows:

Politics & Prosperity is a blog of some eight months’ standing, with no record of accomplishment in the world of politics. It stands as a feeble symbol of libertarian enlightenment in a blogosphere dominated by the voices of statism. We therefore recognize the author of Politics & Prosperity for his naïve belief that his writings will have the slightest salutary influence on the strident tone of blogospheric discourse.

I have released the following statement to the media:

I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my accomplishments, which are nil, but rather as an affirmation of my foolish belief in the possibility of suppressing blogospheric bloviation.

I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that all non-bloggers want to build — a world that gives life to the promise of the internet to sweep away ugly reality and replace it with an imaginary world of perfection. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action — a call for all bloggers to cease their partisan bickering and bow to my superior wisdom on subjects of which I have no knowledge.

We cannot tolerate a world in which blogospheric bloviation engulfs the internet and intrudes on healthier occupations, such as watching reality TV and getting blitzed every Saturday night. And that’s why I’ve begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without blogospheric bloviation, because all people have the right to think, but not all people have the right to share their thoughts with millions of innocent readers.

We cannot accept the growing threat posed by blogospheric bloviation, which could forever damage the world that we pass on to our children — sowing conflict and confusion; destroying friendships and emptying minds. And that’s why all nations must now accept their share of responsibility for transforming the blogosphere.

We bloggers can’t allow our ideological differences to define the way that we see one another, even though those differences often are fundamental. It is our obligation to pretend that we all love and admire one another, even though most bloggers (especially those on the left) are dangerous ignoramuses.

We can’t accept a blogosphere in which some bloggers thrive while others are neglected. That is why I have made it my goal to ensure that all blog readers are programmed to carry only my blog instead of the blogs requested by subscribers. I understand that such a policy would violate deep constitutional principles, but what the hell. When you want something badly, you don’t let such niceties stand in the way.

The challenge confronting us will not be completed during my time as a blogger. But I know the challenge can be met because, sooner or later, a wise Latina judge will say “screw the Constitution, suppress bloviation.”

And that’s why this award must be shared with everyone who strives for calmness in the blogosphere — all five of you, wherever you are.

Thank you very much.

P.S. I have asked the International Olympic Committee to reject summarily any application from the city of Austin, Texas, to host games. Austin is vastly over-rated — especially by its smug “leaders,” who believe that progress consists of ugly high-rises, congested roads (which are narrowed by little-used bicycle lanes, and often closed for public extravaganzas), and tax breaks for commercial enterprises at the expense of residential property owners. (Contrary to the party line in Austin, it is not the live music capital of the world.) The last thing the over-taxed, silent majority of Austin needs is another disruptive, expensive tribute to the city’s supposed wonderfulness. Rio’s loss is Chicago’s gain.

(The main portion of the “release” is adapted from Obama’s remarks on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The P.S. is inspired by his chauvinistic advancement of Chicago’s application to host the 2016 summer games. The timing of Obama’s Nobel Prize suggests that it was a consolation prize for Chicago’s “loss” to Rio de Janeiro.)

The McNamara Legacy: A Personal Perspective

The death earlier this year of former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara caused me to reflect on my brief time as a “whiz kid” in McNamara’s Systems Analysis office. SA was run by assistant secretary of defense Alain Enthoven, a quintessential whiz kid who was only 30 when he began his eight-year reign as the Pentagon’s “doubting Thomas.”

My own days as a minor whiz kid ran from July 1967 to March 1969, that is, from late in McNamara’s regime (January 21, 1961 – February 29, 1968), through the interregnum of Clark Clifford (March 1, 1968 – January 20, 1969), and into the early months of Nixon’s appointee, Melvin Laird (January 22, 1969 – January 29, 1973). SA’s influence dwindled sharply upon McNamara’s departure from the Pentagon, but SA had been very powerful until then, for three reasons.

First, of course, SA was a key ingredient of McNamara’s management
“revolution,” which came straight from the playbook of RAND — the Air Force’s influential think-tank. McNamara recruited Charles Hitch from RAND to serve as comptroller of the Department of Defense. Hitch — a leading proponent of the use of planning, programming, and budgeting systems (PPBS) and co-author of the “bible” of systems analysis, The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age — brought with him Alain Enthoven, who began as deputy assistant aecretary of defense for systems analysis in 1961 and was elevated to assistant secretary of defense for SA in 1965. (For a recounting of McNamara’s love affair with RAND-ites and their techniques, see “Early RAND and the McNamara Revolution,” which begins on p. 4 of the RAND Review, Fall 1998. A Time magazine piece from 1962 about McNamara’s “whiz kids” profiles five top McNamara aides, including two RAND-ites, Enthoven and Henry Rowen.)

A second, closely related reason for SA’s power was its central position in McNamara’s decision process. SA exercised its power mainly through the so-called draft presidential memorandum (DPM). DPMs, which originated in SA, took the form of lengthy memos from the secretary of defense to the president, none of which — as far as I know — actually went to the president. DPMs were, in fact, vehicles for obtaining and recording McNamara’s decisions on major program issues. Each DPM treated a broad set of issues (e.g., force structure, force mix, manning levels, major procurement programs) in a particular mission area (e.g., strategic forces; tactical air forces, naval forces, and land forces). For each of the dozen or so issues addressed in a DPM (e.g., the number and mix of amphibious ships), the responsible SA analyst(s) would (in about a page) summarize the sponsoring service’s proposed program and the analytical basis for the service’s position, criticize the service’s analysis (usually by focusing on critical but debatable assumptions and the inevitable uncertainty of cost estimates), briefly discuss alternatives (almost always less ambitious and expensive than the service’s proposal), recommend one of them, and give a tabular comparison of the alternatives, using simple figures of merit chosen for the purpose of making the recommended alternative look good. (We called it “tablesmanship.”) The coup de grace often would be a “clinching” reason for approving SA’s recommended (less-expensive) alternative (e.g., the unlikelihood of another amphibious assault on the scale of the landing at Inchon, given the location of approved planning scenarios). DPMs would be sent to the services and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) for comment. After some back and forth, decision versions would go up to McNamara, who almost always chose the alternatives recommended by SA.

In sum, we SA civilians played “gotcha.” We did it because we were encouraged to do it, though not in so many words. And we got away with it, not because we were better analysts — most of our work was simplistic stuff — but because we usually had the last word. (Only an impassioned personal intercession by a service chief might persuade McNamara to go against SA — and the key word is “might.”) The irony of the whole process was that McNamara, in effect, substituted “civilian judgment” for oft-scorned “military judgment.” McNamara revealed his preference for “civilian judgment” by elevating Enthoven and SA a level in the hierarchy, 1965, even though (or perhaps because) the services and JCS had been open in their disdain of SA and its snotty young civilians.

A third reason for SA’s power, and its ability to play “gotcha,” was the essential lack of structure in the Department of Defense’s PPBS. For all of the formality and supposed rigor of the system, it lacked an essential ingredient: budget constraints against which the services could submit realistic program proposals. Budget constraints had existed de facto under Eisenhower and were to exist de jure under Nixon. In fact, Melvin Laird introduced a decision process built around fiscal constraints soon after taking office, on the recommendation of a former subordinate of Enthoven’s who stayed on as acting assistant secretary for about a year into Laird’s regime.

In any event, because McNamara didn’t give the services budget targets, the services were effectively encouraged to ask for a lot more than they could get. That incentive was reinforced by the reorientation of the defense program toward “flexible response” in the 1960s. Each service, naturally, sought a piece of the new action, and — lacking fiscal guidance — each of them did the sensible thing by asking for a lot more than it was likely to get. Under such a system, SA was bound to look good, and SA analysts were bound to make the services look bad by playing “gotcha.” It turns out that I didn’t have the stomach for it, which is why I left SA after 20 increasingly depressing months.

And that brings me to the players and their “tone.” What did the SA staff look like?

– There were a lot of youngish civilians, like me, who were bereft of military service and may never have seen a military unit or military equipment, except in a parade. Many of the young civilians had Harvard MBAs, and they were notorious, even within SA, for their brashness and rudeness.

– There was a smaller cadre of lightly less-young civilians, imported from other parts of DoD and the defense industry. Their SA experience lent them a certain cachet that they could trade on for advancement in government and industry.

– There were many junior officers with ROTC commissions who had deferred their active service to pursue graduate degrees. Because of those degrees, they were snatched up by SA instead of being sent to Vietnam. They were really civilians, at heart, who happened to carry military ranks.

– Most of the major components of SA had one or two “service reps” — senior officers nominated by the services. Some of them were dead-enders with nothing to lose (which worked against their sponsoring services). Others (notably the Navy reps) were rising stars who (a) tried to keep SA “honest” and (b) kept their sponsoring services informed of what SA was up to.

– The higher echelons were populated by “seasoned” civilians, with military analysis experience at places like RAND and the aerospace industry. One such senior civilian exemplified the tone of SA. He wrote a white paper in which he discussed (among other things) the role of amphibious forces in defense strategy. In the course of that discussion, he pointedly and sneeringly referred to amphibious forces as “ambiguous forces.”

In my 20 months at the Pentagon, I came to understand the essential difference between Systems Analysis, as it was in McNamara’s day, and outfits like the Operations Evaluation Group, a Navy-sponsored civilian organization. SA, to put it baldly, existed to work against the services. OEG, by contrast, existed (and exists) to work with a service, to help it make the best use of its forces and systems. There is no doubt in my mind that the contributions of OEG were (and are) far more valuable to the nation’s defense than the “contributions” of SA, which may well have harmed it.

Analysis per se is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It’s like a loaded gun, in that its goodness or badness depends on who wields it and for what purpose.

Anthropogenic Global Warming Is Dead, Just Not Buried Yet

I once wrote a very long post in which I presented some of the evidence against the theory of anthropogenic global warming: “‘Warmism’: The Myth of Anthropogenic Global Warming.” Much has been written since then to further undermine the fanatical and destructive belief that humans are the cause of the sharp rise in Earth’s temperature from the mid-1960s to the late 1990s.

Now comes what may be the coup de grace: a post by Steve McIntyre at his blog, Climate Audit. There, McIntyre offers strong evidence that the tree-ring data on which the infamous “hockey stick” is based were, um, selected for the purpose of creating the “hockey stick” effect.

The jury is still out, but my money is on McIntyre.

P.S. There’s more here and here.

Getting it Wrong and Right about Iran

Jeffrey Miron, an economist who graces the halls of Harvard University and Cato Institute, has a new blog, Libertarianism from A to Z. There, Miron mirrors Cato’s approach to policy issues, taking a free-market line on economic affairs and a knee-jerk isolationist line on defense matters. Consider this passage from Miron’s post, “Iran: Engagement, Sanctions, or Nothing?“:

Let’s take as given that, other things equal, it is in the world’s interest that Iran not possess nuclear weapons. . . . Then the following propositions all seem plausible:

1. Continued engagement just allows Iran to continue developing its nuclear capabilites.

2. Sanctions might slow Iran’s nuclear development a bit, but since both Russia and China are not really on board with sanctions, this effect will be minimal. (UPDATE: Miron, in a later post, has more to say about the essential futility of sanctions.)

3. Military action to destory the Iranian nuclear capabilities will address the issue in the short term, but Iran will just start over. Plus, such military action might escalate into something far more costly.

Faced with these choices, my vote is to do nothing.

Note the glaring contradiction. Miron postulates that it is not in the world’s interest for Iran to possess nuclear weapons, but he prefers to do nothing about it. If it is not in the world’s interest for Iran to have nuclear weapons, then something ought to be done about it — and I don’t mean having a “serious, meaningful dialogue” with Iran, as our “glorious leader” proposes.

The time to deal with a serious threat is before it becomes an imminent one. So what if Iran might “start over” if we and/or Israel destroy its nuclear capabilities? Here, from DEBKAfile, is a realistic take:

Defense secretary Robert Gates hit the nail on the head when he said Friday: “The reality is there is no military option that does anything more than buy time. The estimates are one to three years or so.” . . .

The answer to this argument is simple: It is exactly this approach which gave Iran 11 quiet years to develop its weapons capacity. For Israel and Middle East, a three-year setback is a very long time, a security boon worth great risk, because a) It would be a happy respite from the dark clouds hanging over the country from Iran and also cut back Hamas and Hizballah terrorist capabilities, and b) In the volatile Middle East anything can happen in 36 months. (Emphasis added.)

What’s missing from Miron’s analysis of the situation is an assessment of the consequences (i.e., costs) of allowing Iran to proceed. That’s a strange omission for an economist, an omission which suggests that Miron, like many another libertarian, “adheres to the [non-aggression] principle with deranged fervor.”

Well, evidently it takes a law professor (Tom Smith of The Right Coast) to get it right:

A nutcase regime in Asia is about to get nuclear weapons and not long after that the missiles to send them to Israel, Europe, Saudi Arabia and after that, who knows. The regime is populated by religious fanatics who deny the Holocaust and profess the desire to wipe Israel off the map in all apparent sincerity. Normally, one could rely on the Israelis to take care of themselves, but in this case, the crazed regime has gotten too powerful for the Israelis to handle. Just to fill out the picture, the folks building the nukes just stole an election and are imprisoning, torturing and killing into silence their domestic critics. These leaders are backed up by a praetorian guard of fanatics, a Waffen-SS if you will, to switch to another entirely appropriate comparison, on whose secret bases (for what is a geopolitical villain without secret bases?) the nuclear weapons are being gestated.

So who ya gonna call? Obviously, patently, indisputably the only people who can stand up to these frightening thugs are us. But as luck would have it, we are presently governed by the party who strategy is to talk to death the people whose idea of dialog is to throw their opponents in prison and beat them with hoses until they change their minds.

What will happen if the U.S. continues to muddle along in a Chamberlainesque fashion? For starters, this:

By now, Iran has used the gift of time to process enough enriched uranium to fuel two nuclear bombs and is able to produce another two per year.

Its advanced medium-range missiles will be ready to deliver nuclear warheads by next year.

Detonators for nuclear bombs are in production at two secret sites.

And finally, a second secret uranium enrichment plant – subject of the stern warning issued collectively in Pittsburgh Friday by Obama, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and British premier Gordon Brown – has come to light, buried under a mountain near Qom. Its discovery doubles – at least – all previous estimates of Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

The price of a pre-emptive attack on Iran might be high, but the price of inaction will be even higher. Legitimate U.S. interests in the Middle East (i.e., access to oil) will be threatened by a regime that has proceeded thus far in the face of sanctions and is unlikely to be fazed by more sanctions. The economic hardships caused by the “oil shocks” of the 1970s will be as nothing compared with the hardships caused by Iranian dominance of the Middle East.

Where will Western Europe, Russia, and China be in our hour of need? Western Europe will be busy emulating Vichy France, in the hope that its obseqiousness toward Iran is rewarded by dribbles of oil. Russia and China will actively support Iran (covertly if not overtly), in the expectation of profiting from higher prices on the oil they sell to Western Europe and the United States. Eventually, Russia and China will exploit the inevitable decline of American military power, as our defense budget disappears into the maw of Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other misbegotten ventures.

It should be clear to anyone who thinks seriously about the state of the world that the time to act against Iran was years ago. That opportunity having passed, now will have to do. The Obama-ish left will cry “no blood for oil,” but the burden should be on the left to offer affordable alternatives to Middle Eastern oil in lieu of war. If the left cannot offer affordable alternatives, the left’s low-to-moderate income constituencies are likely to suffer disproportionately when Iran begins to squeeze the West, and — surely — the elite left does not want that to happen. (Actually, the elite left couldn’t care less about lesser mortals, as long as the elitist agenda of political and environmental correctness becomes writ.)

The rub is that the left cannot offer affordable alternatives without relaxing its embrace of radical environmentalism. The left has thus far decried “dependence” on foreign oil as an excuse to pour money into ethanol, wind power, and solar energy — none of which is a viable alternative to oil. And, of course, the left opposes feasible and relatively efficient alternatives, such as nuclear energy, coal-fired power plants, drilling in ANWR, and additional off-shore drilling. That leaves us with no choice but to import a lot of oil, much of it from the Middle East. But the left is loath to defend our interests there.

The left’s irreconcilable positions with respect to Iran, oil, and the environment — like the left’s positions on so many other issues — epitomize the “unconstrained vision” of which Thomas Sowell writes. The left, like Alice in Wonderland, likes to believe in “six impossible things before breakfast,” and all the rest of the day, as well.

We are now at a point in history similar to that of England in 1935. If England had begun to rearm then, Hitler might have been deterred or — if not deterred — defeated sooner. Doing nothing, as Miron and his libertarian and leftist brethren would prefer, is a prescription for eventual economic disaster or a longer, bloodier war than is necessary.

P.S. Tom Smith says it all, far more vividly and vigorously.

P.P.S. Two relevant items, here and here.

The Folly of Nuclear Disarmament

From the Associated Press:

UNITED NATIONS [September 24, 2009] – With President Barack Obama presiding, the U.N. Security Council on Thursday unanimously endorsed a sweeping strategy aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately eliminating them, to usher in a world with “undiminished security for all.”

“That can be our destiny,” Obama declared after the 15-nation body adopted the historic, U.S.-initiated resolution at an unprecedented summit session. “We will leave this meeting with a renewed determination to achieve this shared goal.”

The lengthy document was aimed, in part, at the widely denounced nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, although they were not named. It also reflected Obama’s ambitious agenda to embrace treaties and other agreements leading toward a nuclear weapon-free world, some of which is expected to encounter political opposition in Washington.

On both counts, Thursday’s 15-0 vote delivered a global consensus — countries ranging from Britain to China to Burkina Faso — that may add political impetus to dealing with nuclear violators, advancing arms control in international forums and winning support in the U.S. Congress.

“This is a historic moment, a moment offering a fresh start toward a new future,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, saluting the first such Security Council gathering of presidents and premiers to deal with nuclear nonproliferation.

Yeah, and “peace for our time,” to you. For the youngsters out there, that’s a reference to Neville Chamberlain’s infamous capitulation to Hitler, whose peace was the peace of his victims’ graves.

Well, today’s charade in New York — like the one in Munich 71 years ago — simply gives the bad guys more time in which to perfect their evil designs. When nuclear weapons are outlawed, only outlaws will have nuclear weapons.

P.S. So, Obama and other Democrats are now talking tough about Iran’s nuclear program. Two questions: Where were those Democrats when Bush called Iran out a couple of years ago? Will Obama back his tough talk with action? Answer to the second question: Not bloody likely.

P.P.S. As I was saying . . . Instead of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, Obama offers Iran “serious, meaningful dialogue.” Gimme a break.

The Incredible Shrinking Obama

“Sizing Up Obama” (April 24, 2009):

On the one hand, we have FDR II, replete with schemes for managing our lives and fortunes.

On the other hand, we have Carter-Clinton II, ready to: kowtow to those who would bury us, create the illusion that peace will reign perforce, and act on that illusion by slashing the defense budget (thereby giving aid and comfort to our enemies).

Through the haze of smoke and glare of mirrors I see a youngish president exhorting us to “fear nothing but fear itself” while proclaiming “peace for our time,” as we “follow the yellow-brick road” to impotent serfdom.

The schemes persist, most notoriously (but not exclusively) in health care “reform,” about which Arnold Kling writes today:

What is misleading about statements (a) – (k) [taken from Obama’s speech on September 9] is that each of them referred to a plan that, strictly speaking, does not exist. As far as I know, the Obama Administration never submitted a plan to Congress. . . .

If you are going to repeatedly refer to “my plan” or “this plan” or “the plan I’m proposing,” then unless you have a plan you are lying. The only question is whether it is a little lie or a big one. Obviously, most people think it is only a small lie, or the President would have been called out on it. However, I think that health care policy is an area where there is too much temptation to promise results that are economically impossible to achieve. In that context, my opinion is that giving a speech in favor of a nonexistent plan is a really big lie.

Now — on the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s invasion of Poland — comes Obama’s decision to placate the Russians and insult our allies in Eastern Europe:

President Obama dismayed America’s allies in Europe and angered his political opponents at home today when he formally ditched plans to set up a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The project had been close to the heart of Mr Obama’s predecessor, President Bush, who had argued before leaving office in January that it was needed to defend against long-range ballistic missile attacks from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.

But it had hobbled relations with Russia, which considered it both a security threat and an unnecessary political provocation in its own backyard.

At a White House appearance today, Mr Obama confirmed that the defence shield envisaged by the Bush Administration, involving a radar base in the Czech Republic and interceptor rockets sited in Poland, was being abandoned. . . .

“The decision announced today by the Administration is dangerous and short-sighted,” the No 2 Republican in the Senate, Jon Kyl, said in a statement.

Mr Kyl said that the shift would leave the United States “vulnerable to the growing Iranian long-range missile threat” and would send a chilling message to former Soviet satellites who had braved Moscow’s anger to support the system.

“This will be a bitter disappointment, indeed, even a warning to the people of Eastern Europe,” said Mr Kyl, who pointed out that both Poland and the Czech Republic had sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. “Today the Administration has turned its back on these allies.”

Senator John McCain, Mr Obama’s defeated Republican White House rival in 2008, said he was “disappointed” with the decision and warned it could undermine US standing in Eastern Europe amid worries there of a resurgent Russia.

“Given the serious and growing threats posed by Iran’s missile and nuclear programmes, now is the time when we should look to strengthen our defences, and those of our allies,” he said in a statement.

“Missile defence in Europe has been a key component of this approach. I believe the decision to abandon it unilaterally is seriously misguided.”

The good news is that Americans seem to have wised up to the Obama scam:

Sources: Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll and Health Care Reform Poll. Overall net approval ratings represent the difference in the number of respondents strongly approving and strongly disapproving of Obama (negative numbers mean net disapproval). Health care ratings represent the difference in the number of respondents supporting and opposing Obama’s health care “plan,” or what they take to be his plan.

The mini-wave of approval that followed Obama’s health-care speech on September 9 seems to have dissipated. Obama’s appeasement of Russia, if it becomes widely perceived as such, will only push his numbers further south.

A Hypothetical Question

It is written in the United States Code (Title 18, Part I, Chapter 115, § 2385) that

Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

Now, imagine that the governments of the United States and the various States are in the business of creating and enforcing laws that contravene the Constitution of the United States because federal and State executives and legislatures have violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Imagine, further, that successive decisions by the courts of the United States and the various States — decisions which remain in force — have upheld many of the unconstitutional acts of federal and State executives and legislatures, and generally have created a body of law that contravenes the Constitution.

Given that the first duty of officeholders is to uphold the Constitution, and given that the federal and State governments routinely violate the Constitution, why should it be illegal to suggest the propriety of removing an illicit government and replacing it with one that is dedicated to the defense of the Constitution? Isn’t § 2385 really a kind of job-protection plan for government thugs?

Just asking.

The Price of Government Redux

In “The Price of Government,” I assess the staggering cost of government intervention in economic affairs:

Had the economy of the U.S. not been deflected from its post-Civil War course, GDP would now be more than three times its present level.

I should have referred in “The Price of Government” to an earlier post, “The Laffer Curve, ‘Fiscal Responsibility,’ and Economic Growth,” where I argue that an optimally sized government is one that

divert[s] a minimal fraction of economic output to government (about 15 percent, nowadays), for the purpose of protecting ourselves and our economic activities from predators, foreign and domestic. Any diversion beyond that is pure waste.

Fifteen percent of GDP represents the pre-1929 level (10 percent) plus an allowance for the additional cost of defending the nation in these more perilous times.

I should note that my assessments are consistent with the analysis that is summarized in The Empirical Evidence against Big Government, a presentation of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity. The presentation is based on two Heritage Foundation Papers: “The Impact of Government Spending on Economic Growth” and its “Supplement.”

P.S. In case you’re wondering how government interventions could have cost as much as three-fourths of GDP, consider the cost of just one pending legislative proposal. The cap-and-trade law, aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, would cost between $800 and $3,100 per year, per family. If you think it’s a good idea to impose that cost on your fellow Americans, you have been hoodwinked into believing the myth of man-made global warming, the main supporters of which (surprise! surprise!) are the tax-and-regulate crowd.

Or consider Obamacare, with an advertised cost of about $900 billion over the next 10 years — and that’s before it really starts to get expensive. Moreover, none of the cost estimates for Obamacare reflects an important hidden cost: the damage it would do to the quantity and quality of medical care in the U.S. as drug research diminishes and prospective caregivers seek other, less regulated, occupations.

The Perils of Nannyism: The Case of Obamacare

Nannyism is bad, even when it’s good. Suppose, for example, that Obamacare — as finally enacted by Congress — miraculously obtains the following impossible results:

No one who had insurance before Obamacare will find the cost of his insurance rising because (for example) the law stipulates that insurers must ignore pre-existing conditions and must cover certain previously uninsured conditions.

Moreover, such mandates and other restrictions (e.g., caps on premiums) will not drive insurers out of business and necessitate the establishment of a government-run insurance program, one that would effectively control drug prices, drug research, and fees for various medical services. Nor would the government-run insurance program be subsidized by taxpayers.

Everyone who is forced to buy insurance (or, alternatively, pay a tax penalty) will find that the additional cost is offset by insurance benefits.

The costs of subsidizing those who cannot afford insurance will be defrayed by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” in Medicare, Medicaid, and various other government programs — “waste, fraud, and abuse” that has heretofore been tolerated because it is a natural concomitant of government programs and cannot be eliminated without eliminated the programs themselves.

Insurance subsidies will not be extended to illegal aliens, whose addition to the rolls would burden taxpaying citizens, even though Democrats relish the thought of converting those illegal aliens to Democrat-voting citizens.

The prices of various drugs and medical services will not change by more than they would have in the absence of Obamacare. That is to say, the extra demands generated by government mandates and the addition of some 47 million persons to the insurance rolls will somehow be met with additional supplies of drugs and medical services, despite the disincentives created by government control of drug prices and fees for various medical services (via the government-run insurance program).

There will be no rationing of medical care by government or government-approved bodies — no “death panels” — even though government control of medicine will choke off the provision of non-approved drugs and medical services.

The federal government’s budget deficits will not become larger than they would have been in the absence of Medicare. Nor will federal spending on Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security swell to well more than 50 percent of GDP in a few generations, thus — in combination with necessarily higher taxes and the usual accretion of regulations — giving government almost absolute control of the American economy.

Because the federal government’s deficits will not rise any more than they would have in the absence of Obamacare, further tax hikes (above those already in store) will be unnecessary. It will especially unnecessary to further bleed “the rich,” whose incomes are an especially important source of funding for the business start-ups and capital formation that yield economic growth.

The federal government’s almost-absolute control of the American economy, accompanied inevitably by various social dictates favoring certain groups, will not complete the work of undermining true social cohesion (which is attained through voluntary associations), personal responsibility, and entrepreneurial initiative.

America, in short, will not be driven into the ranks of economically stagnant, morally bankrupt “social democracies” on the European model.

Given that those miracles occur — because Americans who care about such things have been promised (more or less) that they will occur — what could be wrong with Obamacare? Why are tens of thousands of Americans taking to the streets to protest it? Don’t they know a good deal when it’s offered to them?

Could it be that there are still millions of Americans who know instinctively and through observation (if not education) that those miracles will not occur? Could it be that those millions of Americans understand all too well that Obamacare will be just another well-intentioned program that paves our way to financial and bureaucratic hell?

Or could it be that millions of Americans value true liberty, the kind of liberty that is assured by the observance of social norms within a framework of government-protected negative rights? Is it possible that millions of Americans value true liberty and all it entails: the opportunity to make one’s own way in life, to make mistakes and learn from them, to choose from among alternative goods and services (including medical ones), and to choose even where the resulting choices may not be the “best” ones according to the calculations or preferences of academicians and bureaucrats?*

There’s the answer: Millions of Americans — even after decades of nannyism — simply want liberty because it is of value to them, in and of itself. (How unimaginably retro!) They prefer to decide for themselves what’s good for them, and are tired of having academicians, politicians, and bureaucrats make those decisions. In a phrase, they prefer liberty to nannyism.

(Related reading about “perfect” government oversight of economic affairs is here, here, and here. )

__________

* It is true, for example, that the portion of GDP going to medical goods and services has been rising, in part, because Americans want, and can afford, more and better medical goods and services. It is also true that prices of medical goods and services have risen, in part, because of government policies: the subsidization of consumption through Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax-favored treatment of employer-paid health insurance; the restriction of supply by the FDA and various licensing agencies, as discussed here, here, and here.)

September 11: A Remembrance

When my wife and I turned on our TV set that morning, the first plane had just struck the World Trade Center. A few minutes later we saw the second plane strike. In that instant what had seemed like a horrible accident became an obvious act of terror.

Then, in the awful silence that had fallen over Arlington, Virginia, we could hear a “whump” as the third plane hit the Pentagon.

Our thoughts for the next several hours were with our daughter, whom we knew was at work in Building Three of the World Financial Center, only a few hundred feet from the World Trade Center’s North Tower. Had her office struck by debris? Had she fled her building only to be struck by or trapped in debris? Had she smothered in the huge cloud of dust that enveloped lower Manhattan as the Twin Towers collapsed? Because the attacks and their aftermath disrupted telephone communications, we didn’t learn for several hours that she had made it home safely.

Our good fortune was not shared by tens of thousands of other persons: the grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, lovers, and good friends of the 3,000 who died that day in Manhattan, the Pentagon, and western Pennsylvania.

Never forgive, never forget, never relent.

Rights, Liberty, the Golden Rule, and the Legitimate State

A right, as opposed to a privilege, is capable of universal application within a polity. The only true rights, therefore, are liberty rights, which are negative rights. So-called positive rights are privileges, not rights.

Liberty rights are represented in the Founders’ trinity of “unalienable Rights“: “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” These really constitute a unitary right, which I simply call liberty. The liberty right is unitary because liberty (as a separate right) is meaningless without life and the ability to pursue happiness. Thus we have this: rights ≡ liberty (rights and liberty are identical). The identity of rights and liberty is consistent with this definition of liberty:

3. A right or immunity to engage in certain actions without control or interference.

In essence, liberty consists of negative rights (the right not be attacked, robbed, etc.). Negative rights are true rights because they are capable of universal application: Leaving others alone (the essence of negative rights) costs each of us nothing and yields liberty for all.

Positive rights (the right to welfare benefits, a job based on one’s color or gender, etc.) are not rights, properly understood, because they are not capable of universal application: Taking from others (the requisite of positive rights) costs some of us something without an offsetting return. (Think, for example, of the redistributional effects of various taxes.) Positive rights cannot be had without engaging in actions that control or interfere with others. Positive rights are anti-libertarian privileges.

Liberty — rightly understood as the universal application of negative rights — is possible only when the Golden Rule is, in fact, the rule. The Golden Rule, which is the quintessential social norm, encapsulates a lesson learned over the eons of human coexistence. That lesson? If I desist from harming others, they (for the most part) will desist from harming me.

In civil society, exceptional behavior is dealt with by criticism and punishment (which may include ostracism). The exceptions usually are dealt with by codifying the myriad instances of the Golden Rule (e.g., do not steal, do not kill) and then enforcing those instances through communal action (i.e., justice and defense).

The exceptions that cannot be dealt with by civil society are the proper concern of the minimal state — one that is dedicated to the defense of its citizens from predators. But the state becomes illegitimate the moment it crosses the line from the enforcement of the Golden Rule (negative rights) to the granting of privileges (positive rights). For when the state does that, it is no longer dedicated to liberty.

Goodbye, Mr. Pitts

When I lived in the D.C. area and subscribed to The Washington Post, I occasionally read a column by Leonard Pitts Jr. This masochistic practice served two purposes. First, it exercised my cardiovascular system (i.e., raised my heart rate and blood pressure). Second, it helped me to keep up with what passes for wisdom among the race-card-playing set.

Mr. Pitts, who is a syndicated columnist operating out of The Miami Herald, comes by his race-card-playing naturally, as a black and — given his age (about 50) — a likely beneficiary of reverse discrimination (a.k.a. affirmative action). I should note that Pitts plays the race-card game clumsily, probably because his mental warehouse is stocked with gross generalizations and logical fallacies.

I was provoked to write this post by a recent Pitts column, to which I will come, where (in passing) he defends the socialization of medicine because other things also have been socialized. By that logic, Pitts would excuse the murder of his wife because millions of murders already have been committed.

* * *

I begin my sampling of Pitts’s pathetic prose with “We’ll go forward from this moment,” of September 12, 2001 (a reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001):

Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless.

No, “we” (the citizens of the United States) are most decidedly not a family, not even a feuding one. If there ever was anything like an American “family,” it existed in the years just after Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese forces. The degree of unity and resolve in the America of 1942-45 makes a mockery of the years following September 2001, during which disunity and irresolution became the standard pose of the media, academia, the Democrat Party, more than a few Republican “moderates,” many isolationist paleo-conservatives, and most libertarians.

Americans, now more than ever, are members of millions of separate families, churches, clubs, neighborhoods, work groups, etc. If there is anything shared by a majority of Americans, it is a taste for food in large quantities, vulgar entertainment, and a chance to feed at the public trough at the expense of other Americans.

The most notable schism in American life is one that has arisen since the onset of the Great Depression. It has come to this: Americans are deeply divided (though not evenly divided) about the rightful power of government in foreign and domestic affairs. There are three main camps. The largest favors surrender abroad and statism at home; the smallest favors surrender abroad and anarchy at home; the one to which I belong favors the full exercise of American might in defense of Americans’ legitimate overseas interest, together with a limited government devoted mainly to the protection of Americans from domestic predators and parasite.

It is obvious in what I have just said that Americans today do not even share a tradition of liberty, which has long vanished from the land. Because of this loss of liberty, Americans have become something less than citizens with a common birthright and something more like hostages in their own land, with little voice and almost no opportunity for exit. Many (perhaps most) Americans like it that way, many others don’t understand what has been lost to them, and some (too few) understand it all too painfully. Pitts and his ilk like it that way because they are in thrall to special-interest politics and cannot see how those politics have abetted our downward spiral into political bondage, social license, and weakness in the face of our foreign and domestic enemies.

* * *

Jumping to September 29, 2003, I find “Faithful often give religion a bad name,” in which Pitts proffers this:

People are always pleased to indulge their religiosity when it allows them to stand in judgment of someone else, licenses them to feel superior to someone else, tells them they are more righteous than someone else.

They are less enthusiastic when religiosity demands that they be compassionate to someone else. That they show charity, service and mercy to everyone else.

Consider that last month thousands of people wept on the steps of an Alabama courthouse in support of a rock bearing the Ten Commandments. And watching, you wondered: What hungry person gets fed because of this? What naked person is clothed, what homeless one housed?

It seemed a fresh reminder that religious people are often the poorest advertisement for religious life.

How much more convincing an advertisement, how much more compelling a testimony, if people of faith were more often caught by news cameras demonstrating against healthcare cuts that fill our streets with the homeless mentally ill. Or confronting the slumlord about the vermin-infested holes he offers as places for families to live. Or crusading to make the sweatshop owner pay a living wage to workers who are treated little better than slaves.

From what well of knowledge does Pitts draw his assertions that people are always pleased to indulge their religiosity when they can stand in judgment of others, but are less enthusiastic when compassion is in order? Does Pitts even know, let alone care, that residents of “Red” States — where religious fundamentalism is more prevalent — are much more generous in their charitable giving than residents of “Blue” States — where secular Europeanism is the norm?

And what about those persons who “wept on the steps of an Alabama courthouse in support of a rock bearing the Ten Commandments”? What is wrong with protesting the further distancing of government from morality? I suspect that Pitts doesn’t want public officials to be reminded of the Ten Commandments because one of them says “You shall not steal” — and that is precisely what government does when it taxes and regulates us toward poverty, often in the name of “compassion.”

And why would it be a compelling testimony for religion if “people of faith” were more often seen demonstrating against budget cuts that fill our streets with the homeless mentally ill, or confronting slumlords about vermin-infested holes, or crusading to make sweatshop owners pay a “living wage to workers”? Pitts can offer such advice only because he doesn’t understand or care about the implications of such actions: Higher taxes for hard-working families; more homeless persons, as landlords raise rents to defray the costs of improving their properties; more starving poor, as “sweatshop” owners find new locales in which to recruit willing workers who have less exalted ideas than Pitts about what constitutes a “living wage.”

Pitts reveals himself as an ignoramus or a hypocrite — probably both — who is simply pleased to indulge his moral outrage when it allows him to stand in judgment of others.

* * *

Less than a month later (October 20, 2003) Pitts opined that “Race has always benefited whites“; to wit:

As a reader who chose to remain nameless put it, many people wonder if a given black professional “is there because of his/her skills and abilities, or because of affirmative action. Unfortunately, affirmative action policies leave many unanswered questions about a black person’s education and training, as well as skills and abilities. . . . How do we answer these questions?”

I will try my best to answer them with a straight face. It’s going to be difficult.

Because there’s an elephant in this room, isn’t there? It’s huge and noisy and rather smelly, yet none of these good people sees it. The elephant is this simple fact:

White men are the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action this country has ever seen.

That’s not rhetoric or metaphor. It’s only truth.

THE NATION’S CUSTOM

If affirmative action is defined as giving someone an extra boost based on race, it’s hard to see how anyone can argue the point. Slots for academic admission, for employment and promotion, for bank loans and for public office have routinely been set aside for white men. This has always been the nation’s custom. Until the 1960s, it was also the nation’s law. . . .

My correspondents feel they should not be asked to respect the skill or abilities of a black professional who may or may not have benefited from affirmative action. They think such a person should expect to be looked down upon. But black people have spent generations watching white men who were no more talented, and many times downright incompetent, vault to the head of the line based on racial preference.

So, here’s my question:

Would African Americans be justified in looking down on white professionals? In wondering whether they are really smart enough to do the job? In questioning their competence before they had done a thing?

Pitts deploys three shifty debating techniques: He changes the subject; subtly (and inappropriately) redefines a key term; falsely generalizes about a class of persons (white men); and then draws an unsupported conclusion from flawed premises.

The change of subject is obvious. Pitts, instead of addressing the question whether affirmative action leads to the advancement of under-qualified blacks, attacks whites for having been unqualified.

Why were whites unqualified? Because they, too, benefited from something Pitts chooses to call affirmative action, namely, “giving someone an extra boost based on race.” There is a basic problem with Pitts’s shifty redefinition of affirmative action: discrimination against blacks produces different results than discrimination against whites. The real elephant in the room, the one that it is impolite to mention, is that blacks and whites have different skills. And for most jobs, where intelligence matters, there are many more qualified whites than blacks.

It is therefore wrong to paint whites with the same “affirmative action” brush. Despite Pitts’s implication to the contrary, blacks would not have been justified in looking down on white professionals, as a group. But the converse is not true. Certainly, there are and have been superb black doctors and miserably incompetent white ones, but faced with a choice between, say, a white doctor of unknown skill and a black doctor of unknown skill, a person (black or white) would prudently choose the white doctor. The shame, of course, is that in some parts of the United States blacks were not allowed to choose white doctors.

* * *

In “Leave education to the principals, teachers, parents” (November 28, 2007), Pitts subscribes to romantic claptrap:

No one becomes a teacher to get rich. You become a teacher because you want to give back, you want to shape future generations, you want to change the world.

Oh spare me! You become a teacher because

you enjoy teaching, in general

you enjoy teaching a particular subject because you know it well

you enjoy the power of being in charge of a classroom (to the extent that you’re mentally and physically capable of being in charge)

it’s the best job you can get, given your intelligence and particular skills

some or all of the preceding statements apply to you.

Teaching is a job, not a mystical calling.

Pitts is right to say that

much of what ails American schools can be traced to a bureaucracy that: a) doesn’t pay enough; b) does too little to encourage and reward creativity; c) doesn’t give principals authority over who works in their schools; d) makes it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers.

The key word is “bureaucracy.” American schools will not improve until they are privatized, allowed to compete with one another, and allowed to hire teachers who know their subjects as opposed to NEA-approved hacks with “education” degrees. Some schools will be better than others, of course, but that’s true now. What isn’t true — or possible — now is that most schools will improve, or go out of business. (Public schools sometimes are “closed” for conspicuous failure, only to re-open in the same place, and with most of the same students and teachers.)

The problem, for Pitts and other “liberals,” is that it just isn’t “fair” for some children to have access to better schools than others, even though that also is true now, and even though bright children of less-affluent parents undoubtedly would have access to scholarships funded by affluent graduates of better schools. No, in the name of “fairness,” Pitts and his fellow “liberals” would rather hope for a transformation of public schools that will never happen, precisely because public schools are beholden to the NEA, which is nothing more than a union designed to guarantee work for incompetents who cannot master real subjects.

* * *

I come now to the column that touched off this post: “The distance between us” (as titled by the Austin American-Statesman) of August 24, 2009. Though the thread of Pitts’s “logic” is tangled, he his main concern seems to be national unity, or the lack thereof.

He rests his point on the fact that not everyone is happy with the election of Barack Obama or his policies, which he traces to racism or out-and-out nuttiness:

Last year, Barack Obama was elected president, the first American of African heritage ever to reach that office. If this was regarded as a new beginning by most Americans, it was regarded apocalyptically by others who promptly proceeded to lose both their minds and any pretense of enlightenment.

These are the people who immediately declared it their fervent hope that the new presidency fail, the ones who cheered when the governor of Texas raised the specter of secession, the ones who went online to rechristen the executive mansion the “Black” House, and to picture it with a watermelon patch out front.

On tax day they were the ones who, having apparently just discovered the grim tidings April 15 brings us all each year, launched angry, unruly protests. In the debate over health-care reform, they are the ones who have disrupted town hall meetings, shouting about the president’s supposed plan for “death panels” to euthanize the elderly.

Now, they are the ones bringing firearms to places the president is speaking.

The Washington Post tells us at least a dozen individuals have arrived openly — and, yes, legally — strapped at events in Arizona and New Hampshire, including at least one who carried a semiautomatic assault rifle. In case the implied threat is not clear, one of them also brought a sign referencing Thomas Jefferson’s quote about the need to water the tree of liberty with “the blood of … tyrants.”

Is Pitts suggesting that most of the 60,000,000 Americans who voted against Barack Obama (46 percent of those casting a vote in last year’s election) immediately hailed Obama’s election as a “new beginning”? To be sure, there was a honeymoon period around inauguration day, when about two-thirds of voters hopefully approved of Obama and his net approval rating hovered between 25 and 30 percent. But the honeymoon was over almost as soon as it had begun, as Americans began to grasp the bankruptcy (pun intended) of Obama’s policies.

But rather than acknowledge the awakening of most Americans to Obama’s threats to liberty and prosperity, Pitts stoops to barely veiled charges of racism and irrationality. To hope that Obama fails is not to wish ill for the nation; to the contrary, it is to hope that Obama’s policies fail of realization because they are seen (rightly) as inimical to liberty and prosperity. To find racism in talk of secession is a ploy by a columnist who is willing to sell his liberty cheap (or give it away), as long as the president’s skin is of the right color.

Then we have the concatenation of

the ones who went online to rechristen the executive mansion the “Black” House, and to picture it with a watermelon patch out front.

On tax day they were the ones who, having apparently just discovered the grim tidings April 15 brings us all each year, launched angry, unruly protests.

In other words, some racists oppose Obama and his policies; therefore, opposition to Obama and his policies is racist. Pitts evidently failed Logic 101, for he could just as well suggest that some racists (i.e., reverse racists) support Obama and his policies; therefore, support of Obama and his policies is racist.

A relative handful of those publicly protesting Obamacare — themselves a relative handful of the millions who oppose or question it — happen to have carried guns (legally) to the forums at which they (or others) voiced protests. Pitts verges on a Soviet-style declaration that those who oppose the regime are, by definition, mentally ill and must be locked up, for their own safety.

As noted earlier, Pitts is unfazed by the fact “that our libraries, schools, police and fire departments are all ‘socialized’.” If one more thing — namely medical care — is socialized, so what? And, given the number of murders committed every year, if one more person is murdered, so what?

All of that aside, Pitts’s real point has do with the kind of country America will become:

These are strange times. They call to mind what historian Henry Adams said in the mid-1800s: “There are grave doubts at the hugeness of the land and whether one government can comprehend the whole.”

Adams spoke in geographical terms of a nation rapidly expanding toward the Pacific. Our challenge is less geographical than spiritual, less a question of the distance between Honolulu and New York than between you and the person right next to you. . . .

We frame the differences in terms of “conservative” and “liberal,” but these are tired old markers that with overuse and misuse have largely lost whatever meaning they used to have and with it, any ability to explain us to us. This isn’t liberal vs. conservative, it is yesterday vs. tomorrow, the stress of profound cultural and demographic changes that will leave none of us as we were. . . .

Round and round we go and where we stop, nobody knows. And it is an open question, as it was for Henry Adams, what kind of country we’ll have when it’s done.

“Can” one government comprehend the whole? It may be harder to answer now than it was then.

The distances that divide us cannot be measured in miles.

Pitts is right about the distances that divide Americans, but those distances have divided Americans for generations. (I repeat: “We” are not a family.) The only way to reconcile those differences is to restore the basic scheme of of the Constitution, which is to

establish one nation united in common defense,

with open internal borders, and

free movement of goods across those borders, for prosperity’s sake, and

free movement of people between and within the several sovereign States, so that individuals may associate with those whom they find most congenial.

Such a wise scheme will not do for collectivists like Pitts, who cannot abide the thought of a world other than one made to their specifications. If the Pittses persist in their collectivist zeal, America will proceed from a (cold) civil war to secession, a military coup, or even revolution. And the fault will lie with the Pittses, because they are the true enemies of liberty.

* * *

Having reacquainted myself with Mr. Pitts, and having thereby exercised my cardiovascular system, I now bid him adieu — not fondly but forever.

The Devolution of American Politics from Wisdom to Opportunism

The canonization of Ted Kennedy by the American left and its “moderate” dupes — in spite of Kennedy’s tawdry, criminal past — reminds me of the impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton. Clinton’s defense attorney Cheryl Mills said this toward the end of her summation:

[T]his president’s record on civil rights, on women’s rights, on all of our rights is unimpeachable.

In other words, Clinton could lie under oath and obstruct justice because his predatory behavior toward particular women and the criminal acts they led to were excused by his being on the “right side” on the general issue of “women’s rights.” That makes as much sense as allowing a murderer to go free because he believes in capital punishment.

The purpose of this post, however, isn’t to explore the depths of leftist hypocrisy. There is plenty of hypocrisy to go around, and it isn’t found only on the left — just mostly, it seems.

What I want to explore here is the question of “character” and its bearing on governance. I begin with the late James David Barber who, in Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House, looks at America’s presidents through the lens of personality. Barber concocts four broad types:

“active-positive” (high self-esteem, flexible, goal-oriented), “active-negative” (compulsive, power-seeking), “passive-positive” (genial and agreeable but easily wounded) and “passive-negative” (dutiful, withdrawing from political fights).

Barber writes engagingly and almost convincingly, until you understand that what he offers is simplistic, rear-view-mirror nonsense that happens to justify his political preferences.

Barber prefers “active-positive” presidents. Which is to say that Barber, like most liberal-arts academicians, favors “active” presidents — presidents who seek to expand the powers of the presidency and the government beyond their constitutional bounds — as long as their temperaments are “positive” (think FDR and Truman), as opposed to “negative” (think Wilson and Nixon).

Calvin Coolidge, on the other hand, is one of Barber’s “passive-negative” presidents, “sullen and withdrawn, viewing the office as a burden.” Coolidge, though taciturn, was not a sullen person, and he viewed the presidency as a constitutional trust, not a license to reshape the nation and its political institutions to his own liking. As I have said (here and here), Coolidge was

Harding’s dignified, reticent successor. Had Coolidge chosen to run for re-election in 1928 he probably would have won. And if he had won, his inbred conservatism probably would have kept him from trying to “cure” the recession that began in 1929. Thus, we might not have had the Great Depression, FDR, the New Deal, etc., etc., etc.

* * *

Coolidge was known as “Silent Cal” because he was a man of few words. He said only what was necessary for him to say, and he meant what he said. That was in keeping with his approach to the presidency. He was not the “activist” that reporters and historians like to see in the presidency; he simply did the job required of him by the Constitution, which was to execute the laws of the United States.

The contrast between “active-positive” and “passive-negative” points to the real “character issue” in politics: the distinction between opportunistic politicians and wise ones. (Contrast adj. 1 here with adj. 1 here.)

An opportunistic politician disregards or is ignorant of the wisdom embedded in social norms and the laws that derive from them. An opportunistic politician is enamored of change (for change’s sake) — regardless of its costs or consequences — as long as it yields popularity, votes, and power. An opportunistic politician, all rhetoric to the contrary, cares for and caters to only to those who bestow popularity, votes, and power. An opportunistic politician — with the help of dupes in the media, academia, and “progressive” circles — successfully masks his essential ruthlessness behind a reputation for “compassion” and “service.”

A wise politician understands that the first and only duty of government is to defend the negative rights of citizens:

freedom from force and fraud (including the right of self-defense against force)

property ownership (including the right of first possession)

freedom of contract (including contracting to employ/be employed)

freedom of association and movement

restitution or compensation for violations of the foregoing rights.

A wise politician understands how easily government intervention can rend the painstakingly woven fabric of custom — without which humans could not coexist in peace and prosperity — and will seek intervention only where custom tramples negative rights.

Among the most opportunistic politicians of our era have been Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy, but they merely stand out from their peers as being more opportunistic than most. Their spiritual forbears include George Wallace, (who played the race card of a different suit), Huey Long, and the two Roosevelts.

The ranks of wise American politicians (and presidents) are led by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Is it fair to contrast Clinton, Kennedy, and their ilk with Washington and Lincoln? Why not? Washington and Lincoln were made of flesh and blood; they were not perfect as men or presidents. But they rose above their imperfections instead of succumbing to them. They respected humanity and — instead of trying to dominate it — sought to protect it from the arbitrary actions of government. Thus Washington fought British tyranny and resisted its replication on our shores; Lincoln crushed the evil that was slavery, rather than accommodate it.

Our historical distance from the likes of Washington and Lincoln should not lead us to assume that their kind is no longer to be found. It is just that their kind is far less likely to be found in politics these days, the currency of politics having been debased as America has spiraled downward into statism:

As people become accustomed to a certain level of state action, they take that level as a given. Those who question it are labeled “radical thinkers” and “out of the mainstream.” The “mainstream” — having taken it for granted that the state should “do something” — argues mainly about how much more it should do and how it should do it, with cost as an afterthought.

Perhaps the best metaphor for our quandary is the death spiral. Reliance on the state creates more problems than it solves. But, having become accustomed to relying on the state, the polity relies on the state to deal with the problems caused by its previous decisions to rely on the state. That only makes matters worse, which leads to further reliance on the state, etc., etc. etc.

More specifically, unleashing the power of the state to deal with matters best left to private action diminishes the ability of private actors to deal with problems and to make progress, thereby fostering the false perception that state action is inherently superior. At the same time, the accretion of power by the state creates dependencies and constituencies, leading to support for state action in the service of particular interests. Coalitions of such interests resist efforts to diminish state action and support efforts to increase it. Thus the death spiral.

The opportunistic politician — seeking popularity, votes, and power — hastens our descent; the wise one tries to reverse it. Which brings me back to Calvin Coolidge . . . and to his only (somewhat effective) counterpart in recent history: Ronald Reagan.

Coolidge’s presidency, as noted above, earned us a respite from the depradations of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but fate intervened, in the form of the Great Depression, panic, and the opportunism of FDR.

Reagan’s presidency was more a glimmer of hope than a respite. And the glimmer of hope has been extinguished by mediocrity (Bush I), opportunism (Clinton), mediocrity (Bush II), and opportunism (BHO).

It is my belief (and fear) that wisdom can be restored to American politics only by a major crisis, one which can be blamed unambiguously on the machinations of opportunistic politicians.

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