John Warner’s Exit Strategy

Guest post:

John Warner (R-Va.) has never been a favorite with real conservatives (here’s why). Now that he tries to exit the Senate as gracelessly as possible, after thirty misspent years, I doubt they’ll change their minds.

There’s nothing worse than an aging politician, facing the prospect of eternity, who thinks that he’ll ease his conscience by becoming a liberal. Actually, he’s been a liberal on many issues over the years. Now he’s just more consistent.

Having opposed costly and intrusive “greenhouse gas” limits as recently as 2005, he suddenly answered the environmentalist altar call and came down on the side of Al Gore. However, he assures us that this is all in the name of national security, since he lies awake at night worrying that the U.S. military might face new climatic threats!

“Patriotism,” as Johnson said, “is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

"Family Values," Liberty, and the State

Among Maverick Philosopher”s answers to Dennis Prager’s 23 questions in “Are You a Liberal?” is this gem:

The State is involved in marriage in order to promote a legitimate common interest, namely, that there be healthy families in which men are tamed, women are protected, and children are socialized. There is no reason to extend these protections to any two people who choose to cohabit.

MP points to a deeper truth, which is that civil society (and thus liberty) depends to a large extent (though not exclusively) on the exaltation of heterosexual marriage and “family values.” As I say here:

Liberty requires a consensus about harms and the boundaries of mutual restraint — the one being the complement of the other. Agreed harms are to be avoided mainly through self-restraint. Societal consensus and mutual restraint must, therefore, go hand in hand.

Looked at in that way, it becomes obvious that liberty is embedded in society and preserved through order. There may be societally forbidden acts that, to an outsider, would seem not to cause harm but which, if permitted within a society, would unravel the mutual restraint upon which ordered liberty depends. . . .

What happens to self-restraint, honesty, and mutual aid outside the emotional and social bonds of family, friendship, community, church, and club can be seen quite readily in the ways in which we treat one another when we are nameless or faceless to each other. Thus we become rude (and worse) as drivers, e-mailers, bloggers, spectators, movie-goers, mass-transit commuters, shoppers, diners-out, and so on. Which is why, in a society much larger than a clan, we must resort to the empowerment of governmental agencies to enforce mutual restraint, mutual defense, and honesty within the society — as well as to protect society from external enemies.

But liberty begins at home. Without the civilizing influence of traditional families, friendships, and social organizations, police and courts would be overwhelmed by chaos. Liberty would be a hollower word than it has become, largely because of the existence of other governmental units that have come to specialize in the imposition of harms on the general public in the pursuit of power and in the service of special interests (which enables the pursuit of power). Those harms have been accomplished in large part by the intrusion of government into matters that had been the province of families, voluntary social organizations, and close-knit communities. . . .

The state has, in the past century, undone much of which society had put in place for its own protection. For example, here’s Arnold Kling, writing about Jennifer Roback Morse’s Love and Economics:

Morse argues that the incentives of government programs, such as Social Security, can have the same [destructive] consequences [as government decrees].

It is convenient for us who are young to forget about old people if their financial needs are taken care of…But elderly people want and need attention from their children and grandchildren…This, then, is the ultimate trouble with the government spending other people’s money for the support of one part of the family. Other people’s money relieves us from some of the personal responsibility for the other members of our family. Parents are less accountable for instilling good work habits, encouraging work effort…Young people are less accountable for the care of particular old people, since they are forcibly taxed to support old people in general. (p. 116-117)

Most Western nations have created a cycle of dependency with respect to single motherhood. Government programs, such as welfare payments or taxpayer-funded child care, are developed to “support” single mothers. This in turn encourages more single motherhood. This enlarges the constituency for such support programs, leading politicians to broaden such programs.

Earlier in the same article, Kling says:

There are a number of issues that provide sources of friction between market libertarianism and “family values” conservatism. They concern personal behavior, morality, and the law.

Should gambling, prostitution, and recreational drugs be legalized? Market libertarianism answers in the affirmative, but “family values” conservatives would disagree.

Another potential source of friction is abortion. It is not a coincidence that the abortion issue became prominent during the sexual revolution of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. That was a period in which social attitudes about sex-without-consequences underwent a reversal. Prior to 1960, sex-without-consequences generally was frowned upon. By 1975, sex-without-consequences was widely applauded. In that context, abortion rights were considered a victory for sexual freedom. Libertarians tend to take the pro-choice side.

Gay marriage is another legacy of the sexual revolution. Again, it tends to divide libertarians from “family values” conservatives.

One compromise, which Morse generally endorses, is to use persuasion rather than government in the family-values struggle. That is a compromise that I would favor, although unlike Morse, I approach the issue primarily as a libertarian.

If one views a strong state and a strong family as incompatible, then a case can be made that taking the state out of issues related to prostitution or abortion or marriage actually helps serve family values. If people know that they cannot rely on the state to arbitrate these issues, then they will turn to families, religious institutions, and other associations within communities to help strengthen our values.

I am unpersuaded, for the simple reason that society cannot rebuild its norms without the state’s help. Having sent the wrong signals about “family values,” in general, and about heterosexual marriage, in particular, the state has wrought much harm; for example:

Abuse risk higher as kids live without two biological parents

Thursday, November 15, 2007

– David Crary, AP National Writer

….[M]any scholars and front-line caseworkers who monitor America’s families see the abusive-boyfriend syndrome as part of a broader trend that deeply worries them. They note an ever-increasing share of America’s children grow up in homes without both biological parents, and say the risk of child abuse is markedly higher in the nontraditional family structures.

“This is the dark underbelly of cohabitation,” said Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. “Cohabitation has become quite common, and most people think, ‘What’s the harm?’ The harm is we’re increasing a pattern of relationships that’s not good for children.”…

[T]here are many…studies that, taken together, reinforce the concerns. Among the findings:

-Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries as children living with two biological parents, according to a study of Missouri abuse reports published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2005.

-Children living in stepfamilies or with single parents are at higher risk of physical or sexual assault than children living with two biological or adoptive parents, according to several studies co-authored by David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.

-Girls whose parents divorce are at significantly higher risk of sexual assault, whether they live with their mother or their father, according to research by Robin Wilson, a family law professor at Washington and Lee University….

Census data leaves no doubt that family patterns have changed dramatically in recent decades as cohabitation and single-parenthood became common. Thirty years ago, nearly 80 percent of America’s children lived with both parents. Now, only two-thirds of them do. Of all families with children, nearly 29 percent are now one-parent families, up from 17 percent in 1977.

The net result is a sharp increase in households with a potential for instability, and the likelihood that adults and children will reside in them who have no biological tie to each other….

“It comes down to the fact they don’t have a relationship established with these kids,” she said. “Their primary interest is really the adult partner, and they may find themselves more irritated when there’s a problem with the children.”

And the beat goes on:

The teen birth rate in the United States rose in 2006 for the first time since 1991, and unmarried childbearing also rose significantly, according to preliminary birth statistics released [December 5, 2007] by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)….

The study also shows unmarried childbearing reached a new record high in 2006. The total number of births to unmarried mothers rose nearly 8 percent to 1,641,700 in 2006. This represents a 20 percent increase from 2002, when the recent upswing in nonmarital births began. The biggest jump was among unmarried women aged 25-29, among whom there was a 10 percent increase between 2005 and 2006.

In addition, the nonmarital birth rate also rose sharply, from 47.5 births per 1,000 unmarried females in 2005 to 50.6 per 1,000 in 2006 — a 7-percent 1-year increase and a 16 percent increase since 2002.

The study also revealed that the percentage of all U.S. births to unmarried mothers increased to 38.5 percent, up from 36.9 percent in 2005.

And on:

An ETS study reported by the NYT finds four family variables–including proportion of single-parent families–explain two-thirds of the variation in school performance.

And on:

[M]arriage qua marriage tends to be a much more important indicator of well-being, both for children and for parents, in the United States than it does in Europe. Perhaps this will not always be so; perhaps the coexistence, in the 1990s and early Oughts, of falling crime and higher rates of out-of-wedlock births are a leading indicator of the Swedenization of American social norms. But I doubt it, not least because the secondary consequences of family breakdown, persistent inequality and social immobility chief among them, appear to have worsened over the last decade….

What the state has sundered, it must mend. With respect to marriage, for example, I have argued that

it is clear that the kind of marriage a free society needs is heterosexual marriage, which…is a primary civilizing force. I now therefore reject the unrealistic (perhaps even ill-considered) position that the state ought to keep its mitts off marriage. I embrace, instead, the realistic, consequentialist position that society — acting through the state — ought to uphold the special status of heterosexual marriage by refusing legal recognition to other forms of marriage. That is, the state should refuse to treat marriage as if it were mainly (or nothing but) an arrangement to acquire certain economic advantages or to legitimate relationships that society, in the main, finds illegitimate.

The alternative is to advance further down the slippery slope toward societal disintegration and into the morass of ills which accompany that disintegration. (We’ve seen enough societal disintegration and costly consequences since the advent of the welfare state to know that the two go hand in hand.) The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state — though innocuous to many, and an article of faith among most libertarians and liberals — is another step down that slope. When the state, through its power to recognize marriage, bestows equal benefits on homosexual marriage, it will next bestow equal benefits on other domestic arrangements that fall short of traditional, heterosexual marriage. And that surely will weaken heterosexual marriage, which is the axis around which the family revolves….

….Although it’s true that traditional, heterosexual unions have their problems, those problems have been made worse, not better, by the intercession of the state. (The loosening of divorce laws, for example, signaled that marriage was to be taken less seriously, and so it has been.) Nevertheless, the state — in its usual perverse wisdom — may create new problems for society by legitimating same-sex marriage, thus signaling that traditional marriage is just another contractual arrangement in which any combination of persons may participate. Heterosexual marriage — as Jennifer Roback Morse explains — is a primary and irreplicable civilizing force. The recognition of homosexual marriage by the state will undermine that civilizing force. The state will be saying, in effect, “Anything goes. Do your thing. The courts, the welfare system, and the taxpayer — above all — will “pick up the pieces.” And so it will go.

Of course, the state not only continues to undermine heterosexual marriage (except where the general will is consulted through referenda), but it also continues to undermine other social norms. There is, for example, the new California statute known as SB777,

a public education bill prohibiting schools and teachers from “reflecting adversely” on gays and lesbians. The Democratic majority in both houses of the California State Legislature supported the bill, which was signed into law by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger [in October 2007]. Meanwhile, pro-family groups are mobilized and will challenge this bill with a petition to force a statewide referendum. The law’s implementation has been postponed by court order until January 1, pending results of statewide signature gathering….

Although the bill adds “sexual orientation” to the list of protected groups in this State, supporters are playing down its significance, calling it instead a safety measure. Meanwhile, critics, including Republican members of the Legislature, all of whom were opposed, regard the legislation as an attack on the family….

On the face of it, the changes are simple and uncomplicated. Existing provisions of the Education Code that prohibit discrimination against members of protected racial, ethnic, national, gender, ancestral and disabled groups have been changed to include “sexual orientation,” which specifically refers to members of homosexual, lesbian and bisexual groups.

Supporters of this change are right in one particular, at least from their point of view: the bill simply “updates” existing law. That is, existing law already gives protected status to members of designated groups. The question has always been whether that effectively denies protection (or provides less) to all not belonging to those groups, including especially white males. This sort of categorizing, critics have argued, puts members of all groups in gender conflict while opening the door to protected status for illegal aliens….

Not surprisingly, SB 777 adds the term “sexual orientation” to the categories of persons protected against “hate crimes,” a concept based on the assumption that a violent crime against a gay or lesbian person is particularly heinous, more so than when committed against others.

The main part of the bill concerns public education. All public school districts will be responsible for forbidding any discrimination and monitoring for compliance. Thus, while religious schools whose tenets conflict with homosexuality and lesbianism are exempted, publicly funded alternative and charter schools are not. The new law specifies that “No teacher shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that reflects adversely upon persons because of [sexual orientation].” (Italics in text.) The same requirement is laid on districts’ adoption or use of textbooks or other instructional materials.

The bill does not define what constitutes adverse reflection. It could mean anything from simple good manners, which is wholly defensible; to failure to “celebrate” the homosexual lifestyle, as prominent writers such as Harvey Mansfield have noted. According to its advocates, diversity comprehends all protected groups. who should be celebrated and not merely tolerated.

According to press reports, only in September did State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, the bill’s main sponsor, remove language that would have forbidden in public schools the use of “mom,” “dad,” “husband” and “wife.” It is a fair question whether removing those terms has changed the intent or effect of this legislation.

This latest development in the so-called “culture wars” once again raises the question whether it is a zero-sum game in which, in this case, the protection against adverse reflection on gays and lesbians necessarily entails a rejection of traditional morality and even human categories. Many do not believe so. Time will tell whether this is part of a slippery slope or merely equal justice. Still, one wonders when the straighforward concept of protection takes the broader form of not “reflecting adversely,” that the object is not tolerance but privilege.

I have no doubt that the object is privilege. The effect of SB777, should it become law, will be to suppress and further denigrate heterosexual marriage and all that it stands for. On that point, WND quotes Meredith Turney, the legislative liaison for Capitol Resource Institute:

[State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack] O’Connell, the bill’s author Sen. Sheila Kuehl and Gov. Schwarzenegger have all maintained the party line that SB 777 merely “streamlines” existing anti-discrimination laws. However, these attempts to discredit the public outcry against SB 777’s policies are disingenuous and misleading. In fact, SB 777 goes far beyond implementing anti-discrimination and harassment policies for public schools.

The new law states that “No teacher shall give instruction nor shall a school district sponsor any activity that promotes a discriminatory bias because of’ … (homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexual or transgender status). Including instruction and activities in the anti-discrimination law goes much further than ‘streamlining.” This incremental and deceitful approach to achieving their goals is a favorite and effective tactic of liberals. Expanding the law is not ‘streamlining’ the law.

Mr. O’Connell’s doublespeak reveals his – and his peers’ – arrogant attitude toward their “gullible” constituents. In fact, parents are not stupid and they recognize that their authority is being undermined by such subversive school policies. This is nothing less than an attempt to confuse the public about the true intention of SB 777.

The terms “mom and dad” or “husband and wife” could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured.

Parents want the assurance that when their children go to school they will learn the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic – not social indoctrination regarding alternative sexual lifestyles. Now that SB 777 is law, schools will in fact become indoctrination centers for sexual experimentation.

Just as taxpayer-funded universities have become indoctrination centers for political correctness and other Leftist dogmas.

Yesteryear’s rebels (the “kids” of the ’60s and ’70s) didn’t get everything they wanted through their protests and riots. So they found a more effective way to destroy the social fabric, which — being perpetual adolescents — they despise. The more effective way was to seize the levers of power in academia and government, and thence to dissolve the social cohesion upon which liberty depends.

No, the answer isn’t to take the state out of the “family values” business. The answer is for social and fiscal conservatives to recapture the levers of power and undo the damage that the state has done to liberty over the past century.

There will always be a state. The real issues are these: Who will control the state, and to what ends?

A Century of Progress?
Feminist Balderdash
Libertarianism, Marriage, and the True Meaning of Family Values
The Left, Abortion, and Adolescence
Consider the Children
Same-Sex Marriage
“Equal Protection” and Homosexual Marriage
Marriage and Children
Abortion and the Slippery Slope
Equal Time: The Sequel
The Adolescent Rebellion Syndrome
Social Norms and Liberty
Parenting, Religion, Culture, and Liberty
A “Person” or a “Life”?
The Case against Genetic Engineering
How Much Jail Time?
The Political Case for Traditional Morality
Anarchy, Minarchy, and Liberty
Parents and the State
Academic Bias
Ahead of His Time

Culture Watch: Whoopi vs. Sherri

Guest post:

One has to be even-handed in passing out the dunce awards to two wannabe pundits: Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd. The media has, predictably, jumped all over Shepherd’s historical howlers in a debate with Whoopi Goldberg on The View.

It began with Joy Behard referring to the philosophies of pagan Greece. Shepherd felt obliged to point out that Christians predated the ancient Greeks, and even the Hebrews. Earlier this year she admitted that she didn’t know if the world was flat or round (see related story).

I suppose this will “prove” to militant Christian-bashers what idiots believers really are. Actually it proves to me just how unqualified most celebrities are to discuss anything, from foreign policy to ecology. I almost suspect ABC, which hosts the show, of putting up an inept, if well-meaning, dupe to represent the “conservative Christian” perspective. Ann Coulter, she ain’t.

Theologically speaking, the incident confirms what I’ve believed all along—that dumbed-down religion of the Elmer Gantry/tent revival variety is not representative of serious Christian belief. Shepherd’s personal conduct and comportment are as frivolous as her metaphysics.

But we shouldn’t let Shepherd’s sparring partner off the hook either. Just a few weeks earlier on The View, Goldberg made the remarkable observation that America is “not as free as it was when I was a kid” (when segregation was still in effect). Maybe Ms. Goldberg thinks she’s reprising her role as the superhuman Guinan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But, if you ask me, it’s just the leftwing equivalent of flat-earthism.

The Economic Divide on the Right: Distributists vs. Capitalists

Guest post:

Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.—G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton probably never realized how close to the truth he really came, and it’s unfortunate that this flash of paradox did not enlighten his views on economics in general. He was an advocate of distributism. This is a “third way” economic school popular in certain traditional conservative and Catholic circles. However, it also has its conservative (and Catholic) critics.

I note this as an ex-distributist who admits to the validity of some of Hilaire Belloc’s insights in his foundational distributist tome, The Servile State, without agreeing to its solution. Belloc’s main grievance is what he sees as the collusion of big government and big business in the creation of economic monopolies; a fact also lamented by the free-market theorist Friedrich Hayek who spoke positively of aspects of Belloc’s work in The Road to Serfdom. Seen in that light, the problem is not that there is too much capitalism, but that there isn’t enough. The roadblock to economic independence is heavy taxation and regulation, which ultimately weigh heavier on the small entrepreneur than on the big capitalist. The latter has the clout necessary to get around such problems or even turn them to his own advantage. Unfortunately, distributism takes many anti-capitalist myths at face value and tries to bring about greater property ownership (a noble goal) through yet more regulation, seeking a redistribution of wealth that is hardly distinguishable from socialism.

My own disenchantment with distributists initially had more to do with their methods than their ideas. They often advanced their position as a point of political (and theological) correctness; this despite the fact that very few advocates of that system have a solid grounding in economic theory. For that reason, I am pleased to see that Catholic libertarian Tom Woods (writing with Marcus Epstein and Walter Block) in The Independent Review, offers a perceptive and generally fair critique of the concept. The essay takes into account the good intentions of Belloc and his friend Chesterton (men who made invaluable contributions in so many other areas). But in the end, sincerity cannot make up for flawed reasoning. As the article states,

the creation and maintenance of a distributist economy would have required state action on a scale that, given Chesterton’s and Belloc’s arguments against socialism, would have violated their own principles. Moreover, the distributist argument, although superficially plausible, advanced a number of key claims in a manner that suggested they were beyond debate, when in fact they were quite debatable—and in some cases flatly false. An enormous body of scholarly work published since the time Chesterton and Belloc wrote has undermined their narrative in virtually every particular. (“Chesterton and Belloc: A Critique,” The Independent Review, Spring 2007).

This is more than editorializing here. Hard economic and historical facts are cited by the authors. So please take the time to read it if you’re unconvinced.

N.B. While I don’t agree with The Independent Review that the market paradigm can be applied to all instances of human activity, free trade can still do much good if left to operate in a sensible and just manner.

I Am Happy to Report…

…that I am not a “liberal” (i.e., a statist).

Maverick Philosopher answers “no” to every one of the 23 questions asked by Dennis Prager in “Are You a Liberal?” As do I.

That makes me — most decidedly — an”un-liberal.”

Mike Huckabee and the View from Planet Rockwell

Guest post:

In my Buchananite days I avidly read Lew Rockwell (anarcho-capitalist protégé of the late Murray Rothbard). But one of the things that gradually turned me off was his gratuitous antagonism towards all politicians except those who fit his very narrow, Jansenist-like, political philosophy. Only a few are saved, sola anarchia, while the rest of the unenlightened belong to the massa damnata.

So I’m hardly surprised that Rockwell is gunning for Mike Huckabee, a candidate I’ve increasingly learned to admire and respect. Huckabee is an intelligent communicator and a principled man who will state in his campaign ads that “life begins at conception.” Some give him low marks for his economic views, but considering that we haven’t had a real fiscal conservative president in nearly 80 years (Calvin Coolidge, who was in office from 1923-1929) I’m not going to get too worked up. After all, Ronald Reagan was berated for his “voodoo economics.” But then we learned that there was more to conservatism than just economics. There are also foreign policy and social issues.

But others thought Reagan was “basically a cretin.” Who was that? Some splenetic liberal at The Washington Post or The New York Times? No, it was Murray Rothbard writing about “eight dreary, miserable, mind-numbing years, the years of the Age of Reagan” that were coming to an end in 1989. I guess he was piqued that no one had chosen him to lead the Free World. Rothbard presumably could have told everyone that the fall of the Berlin Wall, and subsequent roll back of Communism, was no big deal because Soviet Russia had never been a threat in the first place. Instead, it was his wisdom that disarmament and isolationism would bring world peace. So now we know where Lew Rockwell is coming from when he complains that Huckabee is no more than a backwoods religious zealot who believes in, of all things, the state-sanctioned death-penalty!

Now I realize that conservatives have many opinions on the viability and quality of the Republican candidates out there. They may not share my enthusiasm for Huckabee. But this example (once again) of anarcho-libertarian contrariety makes me wonder why anyone cares what Rockwell has to say about anything.

Season of Our Discontent

Guest post:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
—W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

These lines from Yeats’s apocalyptic poem come to me as I read Citizens, Simon Schama’s definitive study of the French Revolution.

As Schama makes clear, many of the crises that erupted into open sedition under Louis XVI were due more to changing perceptions than actual problems. France of the late 18th century was hardly worse off than any other country, but its national fiber had been undermined by decades of muckraking journalism and excessive criticism of the government (sometimes lewd and pornographic in nature), coupled with a cynical mood in philosophy and morals. Now compare that with the level of obstructionism among certain elements in this country today, not only on the left but increasingly on the far right. Nor is it surprising that the two extremes will frequently combine against the middle, often for no other reason than exploitative publicity seeking rather than hard principles.

The danger is that when you have people who insist there is no chance of political reform, only collapse and radical change, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. In the France of the 1770s and ‘80s there were similar challenges to reform on the part of entrenched vested interests as well as the ideological rebels. Schama makes the daring observation that the revolution originated at the top — from disaffected and self-seeking aristocrats who long had an axe to grind with the crown, who wanted to use the discontent of the lower orders for their own ends. As so often happens in revolutions, that discontent grew out of control and the mob turned on its masters. We know how that happens on the left. But it can also happen when desperate conservatives foolishly attempt to dabble in the volatile mix of crisis politics and heated populism. In 1933 Adolf Hitler exploited “useful idiots” on the right to gain his electoral victory.

Many of the grievances against the French system under Louis XVI were legitimate. But every time the king attempted genuine reform, he was thwarted and eventually blamed for the failure of others. His enemies weren’t interested in making the existing order better. Of course, the biggest challenge for the French monarchy was that (unlike England or the United States) it lacked “voter confidence” because it was wedded to a clumsy and unpopular absolutism. In our own time, the problem is that extremists across the spectrum would undermine the representative, moderate nature of our institutions, resulting in similar levels of disaffection. While no system is perfect, violent polemics exaggerate society’s difficulties while distracting people from long-term, responsible solutions.

History Lessons

The following is adapted from an introduction that I wrote almost three years ago for “The Modern Presidency: A Tour of American History since 1900,” in its original incarnation.

Chief among the lessons of American history since 1900 is the price we have paid for allowing government to become so powerful. Most Americans today take for granted a degree of government involvement in their lives that would have shocked the Americans of 1900. The growth of governmental power has undermined the voluntary social institutions upon which civil society depends for orderly evolution: family, church, club, and community. The results are evident in the incidence of crime, broken homes, and drug use; in the resort to sex, violence, sensationalism, and banality as modes of entertainment; and generally in the social fragmentation and alienation that beset Americans — in spite of their prosperity.

The other edge of the governmental sword is interference in economic affairs through taxation and regulation. Such interference, which has grown exponentially since the early 1900s, has blunted Americans’ incentives to work hard, invent, innovate, and create new businesses. The result is that Americans — as prosperous as they are — are far less prosperous than they would be had they not ceded so much economic power to government.

Because of the growth of governmental power, much of the freedom that attends Americans’ prosperity is largely illusory: Americans actually have less freedom than they used to have — and much less freedom than envisioned by the founding generation that fought for America’s independence and wrote its Constitution. I am referring not to the imagined excesses of the current administration, which is vigorously and constitutionally defending American citizens against foreign predators. I am referring to such real things as:

the diminution of free speech in the name of campaign-finance “reform”

the denial of property rights, the right to work, and freedom of association for the sake of racial and sexual “equality”

the seizure of private property for private use in the name of “economic development”

the interference of government in almost every aspect of commerce, from deciding what may and may not be produced to how it must be produced, advertised, and sold — all to ensure that we do not make mistakes from which we can learn and profit

exorbitant taxation at every level of government, which denies those persons who have earned money lawfully the right to decide how to use it lawfully and gives that money, instead, to parasites in and out of government.

Those are the kinds of abuses of governmental power that Americans have acquiesced in — and even clamored for. It is those abuses that should outrage politicians and pundits — and the masses who swallow their distortions and their socialistic agenda.

For a detailed analysis, rich with links to supporting posts and articles, see “A Political Compass: Locating the United States.”

The Modern Presidency: A Tour of American History since 1900

This post traces, through America’s presidencies from the first Roosevelt to the second Bush, the main themes of American history since the turn of the twentieth century. This is a companion-piece to “Presidential Legacies.” The didactic style of the present post reflects its original purpose: to give my grandchildren some insights into American history that aren’t found in standard textbooks.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) was elected Vice President as a Republican in 1900, when William McKinley was elected to a second term as President. Roosevelt became President when McKinley was assassinated in September 1901. Roosevelt was re-elected President in 1904. He served almost two full terms as President, from September 14, 1901, to March 4, 1909. (Before 1937, a President’s term of office began on March 4 of the year following his election to office.)

Roosevelt was an “activist” President. Roosevelt used what he called the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to gain popular support for programs that exceeded the limits set in the Constitution. Roosevelt was especially willing to use the power of government to regulate business and to break up companies that had become successful by offering products that consumers wanted. Roosevelt was typical of politicians who inherited a lot of money and didn’t understand how successful businesses provided jobs and useful products for less-wealthy Americans.

Roosevelt was more like the Democrat Presidents of the Twentieth Century. He did not like the “weak” government envisioned by the authors of the Constitution. The authors of the Constitution designed a government that would allow people to decide how to live their own lives (as long as they didn’t hurt other people) and to run their own businesses as they wished to (as long as they didn’t cheat other people). The authors of the Constitution thought government should exist only to protect people from criminals and foreign enemies.

William Howard Taft (1857-1930), a close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, served as President from March 4, 1909, to March 4, 1913. Taft ran for the presidency as a Republican in 1908 with Roosevelt’s support. But Taft didn’t carry out Roosevelt’s anti-business agenda aggressively enough to suit Roosevelt. So, in 1912, when Taft ran for re-election as a Republican, Roosevelt ran for election as a Progressive (a newly formed political party). Many Republican voters decided to vote for Roosevelt instead of Taft. The result was that a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, won the most electoral votes. Although Taft was defeated for re-election, he later became Chief Justice of the United States, making him the only person ever to have served as head of the executive and judicial branches of the U.S. Government.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) served as President from March 4 1913 to March 4, 1921. (Wilson didn’t use his first name, and was known officially as Woodrow Wilson.) Wilson is the only President to have earned the degree of doctor of philosophy. Wilson’s field of study was political science, and he had many ideas about how to make government “better.” But “better” government, to Wilson, was “strong” government of the kind favored by Theodore Roosevelt.

Wilson was re-elected in 1916 because he promised to keep the United States out of World War I, which had begun in 1914. But Wilson changed his mind in 1917 and asked Congress to declare war on Germany. After the war, Wilson tried to get the United States to join the League of Nations, an international organization that was supposed to prevent future wars by having nations assemble to discuss their differences. The U.S. Senate, which must approve America’s membership in international organizations, refused to join the League of Nations. The League did not succeed in preventing future wars because wars are started by leaders who don’t want to discuss their differences with other nations.

Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865-1923), a Republican, was elected in 1920 and inaugurated on March 4, 1921. Harding asked voters to reject the kind of government favored by Democrats, and voters gave Harding what is known as a “landslide” victory; he received 60 percent of the votes cast in the 1920 election for president, one of the highest percentages ever recorded. Harding’s administration was about to become involved in a major scandal when Harding died suddenly on August 3, 1923, while he was on a trip to the West Coast. The exact cause of Harding’s death is unknown, but he may have had a stroke when he learned of the impending scandal, which involved Albert Fall, Secretary of the Interior. Fall had secretly allowed some of his business associates to lease government land for oil-drilling, in return for personal loans.

There were a few other scandals, but Harding probably had nothing to do with any of them. Because of the scandals, most historians say that they consider Harding to have been a poor President. But that isn’t the real reason for their dislike of Harding. Most historians, like most college professors, favor “strong” government. Historians don’t like Harding because he didn’t use the power of government to interfere in the nation’s economy. An important result of Harding’s policy (called laissez-faire, or “hands off”) was high employment and increasing prosperity during the 1920s.

John Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), who was Harding’s Vice President, became President upon Harding’s death in 1923. (Coolidge didn’t use his first name, and was known as Calvin.) Coolidge was elected President in 1924. He served as President from August 3, 1923, to March 4, 1929. Coolidge continued Harding’s policy of not interfering in the economy, and people continued to become more prosperous as businesses grew and hired more people and paid them higher wages. 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. He continued Harding’s hands-off policy, and the country prospered as a result. Coolidge chose not run for re-election in 1928, even though he was quite popular.

Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964), a Republican who had been Secretary of Commerce under Coolidge, was elected to the presidency in 1928. Hoover won 58 percent of the popular vote, an endorsement of the hands-off policy of Harding and Coolidge. Hoover’s administration is known mostly for the huge drop in the price of stocks (shares of corporations, which are bought and sold in places known as stock exchanges), and for the Great Depression that was caused partly by the “Crash” — as it became known. The rate of unemployment (the percentage of American workers without jobs) rose from 3 percent just before the Crash to 25 percent by 1933, at the depth of the Great Depression.

The Crash had two main causes. First, the prices of shares in businesses (called stocks) began to rise sharply in the late 1920s. That caused many persons to borrow money in order to buy stocks, in the hope that the price of stocks would continue to rise. If the price of stocks continued to rise, buyers could sell their stocks at a profit and repay the money they had borrowed. But when stock prices got very high in the fall of 1929, some buyers began to worry that prices would fall, so they began to sell their stocks. That drove down the price of stocks, and caused more buyers to sell in the hope of getting out of the stock market before prices fell further. But prices went down so quickly that almost everyone who owned stocks lost money. Prices of stocks kept going down. By 1933, many stocks had become worthless and most stocks were selling for only a small fraction of prices that they had sold for before the Crash.

Because so many people had borrowed money to buy stocks, they went broke when stock prices dropped. When they went broke, they were unable to pay their other debts. That had a ripple effect throughout the economy. As people went broke they spent less money and were unable to pay their debts. Banks had less money to lend. Because people were buying less from businesses, and because businesses couldn’t get loans to stay in business, many businesses closed and people lost their jobs. Then the people who lost their jobs had less money to spend, and so more people lost their jobs.

The effects of the Great Depression were felt in other countries because Americans couldn’t afford to buy as much as they used to from other countries. Also, Congress passed a law known as the Smoot-Hawley Tarrif Act, which President Hoover signed. The Smoot-Hawley Act raised tarrifs (taxes) on items imported into the United States, which meant that Americans bought even less from foreign countries. Foreign countries passed similar laws, which meant that foreigners began to buy less from Americans, which put more Americans out of work.

The economy would have recovered quickly, as it had done in the past when stock prices fell and unemployment increased. But the actions of government — raising tarrifs and making loans harder to get — only made things worse. What could have been a brief recession turned into the Great Depression. People were frightened. They blamed President Hoover for their problems, although President Hoover didn’t cause the Crash. Hoover ran for re-election in 1932, but he lost to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), known as FDR, served as President from March 4, 1933 until his death on April 12, 1945, just a month before V-E Day. FDR was elected to the presidency in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944 — the only person elected more than twice. Roosevelt was a very popular President because he served during the Depression and World War II, when most Americans — having lost faith in themselves — sought reassurance that “someone was in charge.” FDR was not universally popular; his share of the popular vote rose from 57 percent in 1932 to 61 percent in 1936, but then dropped to 55 percent in 1940 and 54 percent in 1944. Americans were coming to understand what FDR’s opponents knew at the time, and what objective historians have said since:

FDR’s efforts to bring America out of the Depression only made it worse.

FDR’s leadership during World War II faltered toward the end, when he was gravely ill and allowed the Soviet Union to take over Eastern Europe.

FDR’s program to end the Depression was known as the New Deal. It consisted of welfare programs, which put people to work on government projects instead of making useful things. It also consisted of higher taxes and other restrictions on business, which discouraged people from starting and investing in businesses, which is the cure for unemployment.

Roosevelt did try to face up to the growing threat from Germany and Japan. However, he wasn’t able to do much to prepare America’s defenses because of strong isolationist and anti-war feelings in the country. Those feelings were the result of America’s involvement in World War I. (Similar feelings in Great Britain kept that country from preparing for war with Germany, which encouraged Hitler’s belief that he could easily conquer Europe.)

When America went to war after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt proved to be an able and inspiring commander-in-chief. But toward the end of the war his health was failing and he was influenced by close aides who were pro-communist and sympathetic to the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR). Roosevelt allowed Soviet forces to claim Eastern Europe, including half of Germany. Roosevelt also encouraged the formation of the United Nations, where the Soviet Union (now Russia) has had a strong voice because it was made a permanent member of the Security Council, the policy-making body of the UN. As a member of the Security Council, Russia can obstruct actions proposed by the United States.

Roosevelt’s appeasement of the USSR caused Josef Stalin (the Soviet dictator) to believe that the U.S. had weak leaders who would not challenge the USSR’s efforts to spread Communism. The result was the Cold War, which lasted for 45 years. During the Cold War the USSR developed nuclear weapons, built large military forces, kept a tight rein on countries behind the Iron Curtain (in Eastern Europe), and expanded its influence to other parts of the world.

Stalin’s belief in the weakness of U.S. leaders was largely correct, until Ronald Reagan became President. As I will discuss, Reagan’s policies led to the end of the Cold War.

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), who was FDR’s Vice President, became President upon FDR’s death. Truman was re-elected in 1948, so he served as President from April 12, 1945 until January 20, 1953 — almost two full terms. Truman made one right decision during his presidency. He approved the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. Although hundreds of thousands of Japanese were killed by the bombs, the Japanese soon surrendered. If the Japanese hadn’t surrendered then, U.S. forces would have invaded Japan and millions of Americans and Japanese lives would have been lost in the battles that followed the invasion.

Truman ordered drastic reductions in the defense budget because he thought that Stalin was an ally of the United States. (Truman, like FDR, had advisers who were Communists.) Truman changed his mind about defense budgets, and about Stalin, when Communist North Korea attacked South Korea in 1950. The attack on South Korea came after Truman’s Secretary of State (the man responsible for relations with other countries) made a speech about countries that the United States would defend. South Korea was not one of those countries.

When South Korea was invaded, Truman asked General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to lead the defense of South Korea. MacArthur planned and executed the amphibious landing at Inchon, which turned the war in favor of South Korea and its allies. The allied forces then succeeded in pushing the front line far into North Korea. Communist China then entered the war on the side of North Korea. MacArthur wanted to counterattack Communist Chinese bases and supply lines in Manchuria, but Truman wouldn’t allow that. Truman then “fired” MacArthur because MacArthur spoke publicly about his disagreement with Truman’s decision. The Chinese Communists pushed allied forces back and the Korean War ended in a deadlock, just about where it had begun, near the 38th parallel.

In the meantime, Communist spies had stolen the secret plans for making atomic bombs. They were able to do that because Truman refused to hear the truth about Communist spies who were working inside the government. By the time Truman left office the Soviet Union had manufactured nuclear weapons, had strengthened its grip on Eastern Europe, and was beginning to expand its influence into the Third World (the nations of Africa and the Middle East).

Truman was very unpopular by 1952. As a result he chose not to run for re-election, even though he could have done so. (The “Lame Duck” amendment to the Constitution, which bars a person from serving as President for more than six years was adopted while Truman was President, but it didn’t apply to him.)

Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969), a Republican, served as President from January 20, 1953 to January 20, 1961. Eisenhower (also known by his nickname, “Ike”) received 55 percent of the popular vote in 1952 and 57 percent in 1956; his Democrat opponent in both elections was Adlai Stevenson. The Republican Party chose Eisenhower as a candidate mainly because he had become famous as a general during World War II. Republican leaders thought that by nominating Eisenhower they could end the Democrats’ twenty-year hold on the presidency. The Republican leaders were right about that, but in choosing Eisenhower as a candidate they rejected the Republican Party’s traditional stand in favor of small government.

Eisenhower was a “moderate” Republican. He was not a “big spender” but he did not try to undo all of the new government programs that had been started by FDR and Truman. Traditional Republicans eventually fought back and, in 1964, nominated a small-government candidate named Barry Goldwater. I will discuss him when I get to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Eisenhower was a popular President, and he was a good manager, but he gave the impression of being “laid back” and not “in charge” of things. The news media had led Americans to believe that “activist” Presidents are better than laissez-faire Presidents, and so there was by 1960 a lot of talk about “getting the country moving again” — as if it was the job of the President to “run” the country.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963), a Democrat, was elected in 1960 to succeed President Eisenhower. Kennedy, who became known as JFK, served from January 20, 1961, until November 22, 1963, when he was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. JFK was elected narrowly (he received just 50 percent of the popular vote), but one reason that he won was his image of “vigorous youth” (he was 27 years younger than Eisenhower). In fact, JFK had been in bad health for most of his life. He seemed to be healthy only because he used a lot of medications. Those medications probably impaired his judgment and would have caused him to die at a relatively early age if he hadn’t been assassinated.

Late in Eisenhower’s administration a Communist named Fidel Castro had taken over Cuba, which is only 90 miles south of Florida. The Central Intelligence Agency then began to work with anti-Communist exiles from Cuba. The exiles were going to attempt an invasion of Cuba at a place called the Bay of Pigs. In addition to providing the necessary military equipment, the U.S. was also going to provide air support during the invasion.

JFK succeeded Eisenhower before the invasion took place, in April 1961. JFK approved changes in the invasion plan that resulted in the failure of the invasion. The most important change was to discontinue air support for the invading forces. The exiles were defeated, and Castro has remained firmly in control of Cuba.

The failed invasion caused Castro to turn to the USSR for military and economic assistance. In exchange for that assistance, Castro agreed to allow the USSR to install medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. That led to the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Many historians give Kennedy credit for resolving the crisis and avoiding a nuclear war with the USSR. The Russians withdrew their missiles from Cuba, but JFK had to agree to withdraw American missiles from bases in Turkey.

The myth that Kennedy had stood up to the Russians made him more popular in the U.S. His major accomplishment, which Democrats today like to ignore, was to initiate tax cuts, which became law after his assassination. The Kennedy tax cuts helped to make America more prosperous during the 1960s by giving people more money to spend, and by encouraging businesses to expand and create jobs.

The assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963, in Dallas was a shocking event. It also led many Americans to believe that JFK would have become a great President if he had lived and been re-elected to a second term. There is little evidence that JFK would have become a great President. His record in Cuba suggests that he would not have done a good job of defending the country.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973), also known as LBJ, was Kennedy’s Vice President and became President upon Kennedy’s assassination. LBJ was re-elected in 1964; he served as President from November 22, 1963 to January 20, 1969. LBJ’s Republican opponent in 1964 was Barry Goldwater, who was an old-style Republican conservative, in favor of limited government and a strong defense. LBJ portrayed Goldwater as a threat to America’s prosperity and safety, when it was LBJ who was the real threat. Americans were still in shock about JFK’s assassination, and so they rallied around LBJ, who won 61 percent of the popular vote.

LBJ is known mainly for two things: his “Great Society” program and the war in Vietnam. The Great Society program was an expansion of FDR’s New Deal. It included such things as the creation of Medicare, which is medical care for retired persons that is paid for by taxes. Medicare is an example of a “welfare” program. Welfare programs take money from people who earn it and give money to people who don’t earn it. The Great Society also included many other welfare programs, such as more benefits for persons who are unemployed. The stated purpose of the expansion of welfare programs under the Great Society was to end poverty in America, but that didn’t happen. The reason it didn’t happen is that when people receive welfare they don’t work as hard to take care of themselves and their families, and they don’t save enough money for their retirement. Welfare actually makes people worse off in the long run.

America’s involvement in Vietnam began in the 1950s, when Eisenhower was President. South Vietnam was under attack by Communist guerrillas, who were sponsored by North Vietnam. Small numbers of U.S. forces were sent to South Vietnam to train and advise South Vietnamese forces. More U.S. advisers were sent by JFK, but within a few years after LBJ became President he had turned the war into an American-led defense of South Vietnam against Communist guerrillas and regular North Vietnamese forces. LBJ decided that it was important for the U.S. to defeat a Communist country and stop Communism from spreading in Southeast Asia.

However, LBJ was never willing to commit enough forces in order to win the war. He allowed air attacks on North Vietnam, for example, but he wouldn’t invade North Vietnam because he was afraid that the Chinese Communists might enter the war. In other words, like Truman in Korea, LBJ was unwilling to do what it would take to win the war decisively. Progress was slow and there were a lot of American casualties from the fighting in South Vietnam. American newspapers and TV began to focus attention on the casualties and portray the war as a losing effort. That led a lot of Americans to turn against the war, and college students began to protest the war (because they didn’t want to be drafted). Attention shifted from the war to the protests, giving the world the impression that America had lost its resolve. And it had.

LBJ had become so unpopular because of the war in Vietnam that he decided not to run for President in 1968. Most of the candidates for President campaigned by saying that they would end the war. In effect, the United States had announced to North Vietnam that it would not fight the war to win. The inevitable outcome was the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, which finally happened in 1973, under LBJ’s successor, Richard Nixon. South Vietnam was left on its own, and it fell to North Vietnam in 1975.

Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-1994) was a Republican. He won the election of 1968 by beating the Democrat candidate, Hubert H. Humphrey (who had been LBJ’s Vice President), and a third-party candidate, George C. Wallace. Nixon and Humphrey each received 43 percent of the popular vote; Wallace received 14 percent. If Wallace had not been a candidate, most of the votes cast for him probably would have been cast for Nixon.

Even though Nixon received less than half of the popular vote, he won the election because he received a majority of electoral votes. Electoral votes are awarded to the winner of each State’s popular vote. Nixon won a lot more States than Humphrey and Wallace, so Nixon became President.

Nixon won re-election in 1972, with 61 percent of the popular vote, by beating a Democrat (George McGovern) who would have expanded LBJ’s Great Society and cut America’s armed forces even more than they were cut after the Vietnam War ended. Nixon’s victory was more a repudiation of McGovern than it was an endorsement of Nixon. His second term ended in disgrace when he resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974.

Nixon called himself a conservative, but he did nothing during his presidency to curb the power of government. He did not cut back on the Great Society. He spent a lot of time on foreign policy. But Nixon’s diplomatic efforts did nothing to make the USSR and Communist China friendlier to the United States. Nixon had shown that he was essentially a weak President by allowing U.S. forces to withdraw from Vietnam. Dictatorial rulers like do not respect countries that display weakness.

Nixon was the first (and only) President who resigned from office. He resigned because the House of Representatives was ready to impeach him. An impeachment is like a criminal indictment; it is a set of charges against the holder of a public office. If Nixon had been impeached by the House of Representatives, he would have been tried by the Senate. If two-thirds of the Senators had voted to convict him he would have been removed from office. Nixon knew that he would be impeached and convicted, so he resigned.

The main charge against Nixon was that he ordered his staff to cover up his involvement in a crime that happened in 1972, when Nixon was running for re-election. The crime was a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic Party in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the break-in was to obtain documents that might help Nixon’s re-election effort. The men who participated in the break-in were hired by aides to Nixon, and Nixon himself probably authorized the break-in. Nixon certainly authorized the effort to cover up the involvement of his aides in the break-in. All of the details about the break-in and Nixon’s involvement were revealed as a result of investigations by Congress, which were helped by reporters who were doing their own investigative work. Because the Democratic Party’s headquarters was located in the Watergate Building in Washington, D.C., this episode became known as the Watergate Scandal.

Gerald Rudolph Ford (1913 – ), who was Nixon’s Vice President at the time Nixon resigned, became President on August 9, 1974 and served until January 20, 1977. Ford succeeded Spiro T. Agnew, who had been Nixon’s Vice President until October 10, 1973, when he resigned because he had been taking bribes while he was Governor of Maryland (the job he had before becoming Vice President).

Ford became the first Vice President chosen in accordance with the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. That amendment spells out procedures for filling vacancies in the presidency and vice presidency. When Vice President Agnew resigned, President Nixon nominated Ford as Vice President, and the nomination was approved by a majority vote of the House and Senate. Then, when Ford became President, he nominated Nelson Rockefeller to fill the vice presidency, and Rockefeller was elected Vice President by the House and Senate.

Ford ran for re-election in 1976, but he was defeated by James Earl Carter, mainly because of the Watergate Scandal. Ford was not involved in the scandal, but voters often cast votes for silly reasons. Carter’s election was a rejection of Richard Nixon, who had left office two years earlier, not a vote of confidence in Carter.

James Earl (“Jimmy”) Carter (1924 – ), a Democrat who had been Governor of Georgia, received only 50 percent of the popular vote. He was defeated for re-election in 1980, so he served as President from January 20, 1977 to January 20, 1981.

Carter was an ineffective President who failed at the most important duty of a President, which is to protect Americans from foreign enemies. His failure came late in his term of office, during the Iran Hostage Crisis. The Shah of Iran had ruled the country for 38 years. He was overthrown in 1979 by a group of Muslim clerics (religious men) who disliked the Shah’s pro-American policies. In November 1979 a group of students loyal to the new Muslim government of Iran invaded the American embassy in Tehran (Iran’s capital city) and took 66 hostages. Carter approved rescue efforts, but they were poorly planned. The hostages were still captive by the time of the presidential election in 1980. Carter lost the election largely because of his feeble rescue efforts.

In recent years Carter has become an outspoken critic of America’s foreign policy. Carter is sympathetic to America’s enemies and he opposes strong military action in defense of America.

Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004), a Republican, succeeded Jimmy Carter as President. Reagan won 51 percent of the popular vote in 1980. Reagan would have received more votes, but a former Republican (John Anderson) ran as a third-party candidate and took 7 percent of the popular vote. Reagan was re-elected in 1984 with 59 percent of the popular vote. He served as President from January 20, 1981, until January 20, 1989.

Reagan had two goals as President: to reduce the size of government and to increase America’s military strength. He was unable to reduce the size of government because, for most of his eight years in office, Democrats were in control of Congress. But Reagan was able to get Congress to approve large reductions in income-tax rates. Those reductions led to more spending on consumer goods and more investment in the creation of new businesses. As a result, Americans had more jobs and higher incomes.

Reagan succeeded in rebuilding America’s military strength. He knew that the only way to defeat the USSR, without going to war, was to show the USSR that the United States was stronger. A lot of people in the United States opposed spending more on military forces; they though that it would cause the USSR to spend more. They also thought that a war between the U.S. and USSR would result. Reagan knew better. He knew that the USSR could not afford to keep up with the United States. Reagan was right. Not long after the end of his presidency the countries of Eastern Europe saw that the USSR was really a weak country, and they began to break away from the USSR. Residents of Berlin demolished the Berlin Wall, which the USSR had erected in 1961 to keep East Berliners from crossing over into West Berlin. East Germany was freed from Communist rule, and it reunited with West Germany. The USSR collapsed, and many of the countries that had been part of the USSR became independent. We owe the end of the Soviet Union and its influence President Reagan’s determination to defeat the threat posed by the Soviet Union.

George Herbert Walker Bush (1924 – ), a Republican, was Reagan’s Vice President. He won 54 percent of the popular vote when he defeated his Democrat opponent, Michael Dukakis, in the election of 1988. Bush lost the election of 1992. He served as President from January 20, 1989 to January 20, 1993.

The main event of Bush’s presidency was the Gulf War of 1990-1991. Iraq, whose ruler was Saddam Hussein, invaded the small neighboring country of Kuwait. Kuwait produces and exports a lot of oil. The occupation of Kuwait by Iraq meant that Saddam Hussein might have been able to control the amount of oil shipped to other countries, including Europe and the United States. If Hussein had been allowed to control Kuwait, he might have moved on to Saudi Arabia, which produces much more oil than Kuwait. President Bush asked Congress to approve military action against Iraq. Congress approved the action, although most Democrats voted against giving President Bush authority to defend Kuwait. The war ended in a quick defeat for Iraq’s armed forces. But President Bush decided not to allow U.S. forces to finish the job and end Saddam Hussein’s reign as ruler of Iraq.

Bush’s other major blunder was to raise taxes, which helped to cause a recession. The country was recovering from the recession in 1992, when Bush ran for re-election, but his opponents were able to convince voters that Bush hadn’t done enough to end the recession. In spite of his quick (but incomplete) victory in the Persian Gulf War, Bush lost his bid for re-election because voters were concerned about the state of the economy.

William Jefferson Clinton (1946 – ), a Democrat, defeated George H.W. Bush in the 1992 election by gaining a majority of the electoral vote. But Clinton won only 43 percent of the popular vote. Bush won 37 percent, and 19 percent went to H. Ross Perot. Perot, a third-party candidate, who received many votes that probably would have been cast for Bush.

Clinton’s presidency got off to a bad start when he sent to Congress a proposal that would have put health care under government control. Congress rejected the plan, and a year later (in 1994) voters went to the polls in large number to elect Republican majorities to the House and Senate.

Clinton was able to win re-election in 1996, but he received only 49 percent of the popular vote. He was re-elected mainly because fewer Americans were out of work and incomes were rising. This economic “boom” was a continuation of the recovery that began under President Reagan. Clinton got credit for the “boom” of the 1990s, which occurred in spite of tax increases passed by Congress while it was still controlled by Democrats.

Clinton was perceived as a “moderate” Democrat because he tried to balance the government’s budget; that is, he tried not to spend more money than the government was receiving in taxes. He was eventually able to balance the budget, but only because he cut defense spending. In addition to that, Clinton made several bad decisions about defense issues. In 1993 he withdrew American troops from Somalia, instead of continuing with the military mission there after some troops were captured and killed by natives. In 1994 he signed an agreement with North Korea that was supposed to keep North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, but the North Koreans continued to work on building nuclear weapons because they had fooled Clinton. By 1998 Clinton knew that al Qaeda had become a major threat when terrorists bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa, but Clinton failed to go to war against al Qaeda. Only after terrorists struck a Navy ship, the USS Cole, in 2000 did Clinton declare terrorism to be a major threat. By then, his term of office was almost over.

Clinton was the second President to be impeached. The House of Representatives impeached him in 1998. He was charged with perjury (lying under oath) when he was the defendant (the person being charged with wrong-doing) in a law suit. The Senate didn’t convict Clinton because every Democrat senator refused to vote for conviction, in spite of overwhelming evidence that Clinton was guilty. The day before Clinton left office he acknowledged his guilt by agreeing to a five-year suspension of his law license. A federal judge later found Clinton guilty of contempt of court for his misleading testimony and fined him $90,000.

Clinton was involved in other scandals during his presidency, but he remains popular with many people because he is good at giving the false impression that he is a nice, humble person.

Clinton’s scandals had more effect on his Vice President, Al Gore, who ran for President as the nominee of the Democrat Party in 2000. His main opponent was George W. Bush, a Republican. A third-party candidate named Ralph Nader also received a lot of votes. The election of 2000 was the closest presidential election since 1876. Bush and Gore each won 48 percent of the popular vote; Nader won 3 percent. The winner of the election was decided by outcome of the vote in Florida. That outcome was the subject of legal proceedings for six weeks. It had to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Initial returns in Florida gave that State’s electoral votes to Bush, which meant that he would become President. But the Supreme Court of Florida decided that election officials should violate Florida’s election laws and keep recounting the ballots in certain counties. Those counties were selected because they had more Democrats than Republicans, and so it was likely that recounts would favor Gore, the Democrat. The case finally went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided that the Florida Supreme Court was wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered an end to the recounts, and Bush was declared the winner of Florida’s electoral votes.

George Walker Bush (1946 – ), a Republican, is the second son of a President to become President. (The first was John Quincy Adams, the sixth President, whose father, John Adams, was the second President. Also, Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President, was the grandson of William Henry Harrison, the ninth President.) Bush won re-election in 2004, with 51 percent of the popular vote. He has served as President since January 20, 2001.

President Bush’s major accomplishment before September 11, 2001, was to get Congress to cut taxes. The tax cuts were necessary because the economy had been in a recession since 2000. The tax cuts gave people more money to spend and encouraged businesses to expand and create new jobs. The economy has improved a lot because of President Bush’s tax cuts.

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, caused President Bush to give most of his time and attention to the War on Terror. The invasion of Afghanistan, late in 2001, was part of a larger campaign to disrupt terrorist activities. Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban, a group that gave support and shelter to al Qaeda terrorists. The U.S. quickly defeated the Taliban and destroyed al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan.

The invasion of Iraq, which took place in 2003, was also intended to combat al Qaeda, but in a different way. Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, had been an enemy of the U.S. since the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991. Hussein was trying to acquire deadly weapons to use against the U.S. and its allies. Hussein was also giving money to terrorists and sheltering them in Iraq. The defeat of Hussein, which came quickly after the invasion of Iraq, was intended to establish a stable, friendly government in the Middle East. It would serve as a base from which U.S. forces could operate against Middle Eastern government that shelter terrorists, and it would serve as a model for other Middle Eastern countries, many of which are dictatorships.

The invasion of Iraq has produced some of the intended results, but there is much unrest there because of long-standing animosity between Sunni Muslims and Shi’a Muslims. There is also much defeatist talk about Iraq — especially by Democrats and the media. That defeatist talk helps to encourage those who are creating unrest in Iraq. It gives them hope that the U.S. will abandon Iraq, just as it abandoned Vietnam more than 30 years earlier.

UPDATE (12/02/07): The final three paragraphs about the War in Iraq are slightly dated, though their thrust is correct. For further reading about Saddam’s aims and his ties to Al Qaeda, go to my “Resources” page and scroll to the the heading “War and Peace.”

Regarding defeatist talk by Democrats and the media, I note especially a recent post at Wolf Howling, “Have Our Copperheads Found Their McClellan in Retired LTG Sanchez?” The author writes:

Several commentators have noted the similarity between our modern day Democrats and the Copperheads of the Civil War. The Copperheads were the virulently anti-war wing that took control of the Democratic party in the 1860’s. Their rhetoric of the day reads like a modern press release from our Democratic Party leadership. Their central meme was that the Civil War was unwinnable and should be concluded….

At the[ir] convention [in 1864], the Democrats nominated retired General George B. McClellan for President. Lincoln had chosen McClellan to command the Union Army in 1861 and then assigned him to command the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln subsuqently relieved McClellan of command in 1862 for his less than stellar performance on the battlefield. McClellan became a bitter and vocal opponent of Lincoln, harshly critical of Lincoln’s prosecution of the war. McClellan and the Copperheads maintained that meme even as the facts on the ground changed drastically with victories by General Sherman in Atlanta and General Sheridan in Shenandoah Valley.

Thus it is not hard to see in McClellan many parallels to retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the one time top commander in Iraq. Sanchez held the top military position in Iraq during the year after the fall of the Hussein regime, when the insurgency took root and the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light. His was not a successful command and his remarks since show a bitter man.

There’s more about contemporary Copperheads in these posts:

Shall We All Hang Separately?
Foxhole Rats
Foxhole Rats, Redux
Know Thine Enemy
The Faces of Appeasement
Whose Liberties Are We Fighting For?
Words for the Unwise
More Foxhole Rats
Moussaoui and “White Guilt”
The New York Times: A Hot-Bed of Post-Americanism
Post-Americans and Their Progeny
“Peace for Our Time”
Anti-Bush or Pro-Treason?
Parsing Peace

Republicans Are Happier Than Democrats

This content of this post is now incorporated in “Intelligence, Personality, Politics, and Happiness.”

A Wrong-Headed Take on Abortion

Sigrid Fry-Revere opines:

I take issue with Radley Balko’s characterization of the abortion debate in “Getting Beyond Roe”…as being about “setting community standards” and that issues such as abortion “are best dealt with in those diverse laboratories of democracy, the states.” Abortion should no more be a question for local politics than slavery.

Does she mean to equate slavery and the bearing of a child conceived as a result of a consensual sex (which it almost always is)? Yes, as we shall see.

Fry-Revere continues:

The right to have an abortion per se is not the issue, but the right to self-determination, the right not to be used as a means to an end against one’s will, the right not to be considered a communal resource — in short, the right for women to have the same control over their own bodies and their own fates as men.

But don’t women have “control over their own bodies” when they agree to engage in an act that might well result in pregnancy? By what standard would the outlawing of abortion cause women to be treated as a “communal resource”? Does the illegality of murder make a “communal resource” of murderers? Are unaborted children forced to repair public highways when they come of age? What the hell is a “communal resource” and what does it have to do with abortion?

Let’s give Fry-Revere another chance:

I believe abortion is morally wrong, but I also believe that in a conflict between mother and fetus, a woman’s right must always take precedence.

What does she mean by “conflict”? Abortion seldom is the result of a conflict, other than the conflict between a woman’s and/or her mate’s convenience and the life of the child they conceived.

Fry-Revere suggests that a fetus has fewer rights than an adult because:

A human being’s rights under the law increase with maturity.

I have never heard of such a thing. If it were true, the murder of a new-born child, a one-year-old child, or a 50-year-old adult would be treated as a lesser crime than, say, the murder of a 90-year-old person.

Fry-Revere concludes:

Fetuses are potential children, not full grown adults, and women are full grown adults, not children. It is time we start treating each with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Fry-Revere’s reference to fetuses as “potential children” is just another way of saying that fetuses have no rights. But where does she actually talk about the “respect and dignity” a fetus deserves? Nowhere. It’s all about what women want, about the false equivalence of pregnancy and slavery, and about the wacky theory that rights somehow accumulate with age (but only from birth, not from conception).

The title of Fry-Revere’s post (“What about Fetal Rights?”) is supremely ironic. The content is supremely cynical.

Paleocons and the Legacy of Samuel Francis

My thanks to Liberty Corner for allowing me to guest-post.

I voted for Pat Buchanan in 2000, and so long as paleoconservatism spent its time critiquing mainstream conservatism for its compromises, it had my sympathy. But old-rightists have increasingly called for political separatism which seems helpful only to the polarizing forces of extremism. In such cases, the left will always benefit more than the “right.” Perhaps no better illustration of this was the encomiums lavished on the late Samuel Francis, exponent of American ethno-nationalism.

The sad thing was that commentators offered glowing praise of Francis’s journalism while overlooking some major intellectual blemishes. Others were less restrained, as for example the anti-immigration group VDARE which opined that: “With the end of the Cold War, [Francis] emerged as a type of white nationalist, defending the interests of the community upon which the historic United States was, as a matter of fact, built….”

Francis first got into hot water for his Washington Times column from July 27, 1995 in which he berated the opportunism of various religious groups—in this case the Southern Baptists—for their “apologies for slavery.” Most conservatives would agree that this was shameless political posturing. But Francis went further.

If the sin is hatred or exploitation, they may be on solid ground, but neither “slavery” nor “racism” as an institution is a sin…. Not until the Enlightenment of the 18th century did a bastardized version of Christian ethics condemn slavery. Today we know that version under the label of “liberalism,” or its more extreme cousin, communism.

Whatever his other talents, Francis’ dearth of historical and theological expertise is staggering. It’s true (though not a popular view) that there are worse things than slavery—abortion or mass murder for instance. Bur it’s simply wrong to imply that only some sort of later-day, liberalized Christianity condemned slavery. In 1462, Pope Pius II called slavery a “great crime” and Catholic leaders opposed the revival of a practice which had been so successfully stamped out in the Middle Ages.

In a parting gesture (November 26, 2004), Francis condemned an ad on ABC’s Monday Night Football which featured a risqué situation between a football player and a woman as an “act of moral subversion.” What really rankled him, however, was the fact that the football player was black and the woman was white. His conclusion was that “interracial” sex (rather than mere promiscuity) is the “major weapon of cultural destruction.” But Francis was, after all, an admirer of Nietzsche and an editor of the racial-eugenicist Occidental Quarterly. In conclusion, whatever good Francis might have done was certainly annulled by an atavistic, fringe theorizing that has no relevance to the classic conservative outlook. At any rate, Mr. Francis’s legacy is apt to be a divisive one, if short-lived.

A First Amendment Right to Anonymity?

Orin Kerr reports about such a ruling:

Federal prosecutors have withdrawn a subpoena seeking the identities of thousands of people who bought used books through online retailer Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), newly unsealed court records show.

The withdrawal came after a judge ruled the customers have a First Amendment right to keep their reading habits from the government.

Lest you think that the feds were merely poking around for the fun of it, read on:

Federal prosecutors issued the subpoena last year as part of a grand jury investigation into a former Madison official who was a prolific seller of used books on Amazon.com. They were looking for buyers who could be witnesses in the case.

The official, Robert D’Angelo, was indicted last month on fraud, money laundering and tax evasion charges. Prosecutors said he ran a used book business out of his city office and did not report the income. He has pleaded not guilty.

D’Angelo sold books through the Amazon Marketplace feature, and buyers paid Amazon, which took a commission.

“We didn’t care about the content of what anybody read. We just wanted to know what these business transactions were,” prosecutor Vaudreuil said Tuesday. “These were simply business records we were seeking to prove the case of fraud and tax crimes against Mr. D’Angelo.”

Orin’s comment:

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a First Amendment right to anonymity trumping a grand jury subpoena obtained in a criminal case. The general rule is that if the grand jury issues a subpoena, there’s no third party right to assert a First Amendment interest of others against the grand jury subpoena.

I agree with Orin. In my post, “Privacy: Variations on the Theme of Liberty,” I say:

It is sometimes necessary for government to intrude on privacy for the sake of liberty. If, for example, the punishment of crime fosters the security of life, limb, and property by deterring yet more crime, then liberty is served by certain types of governmental intrusion on privacy (e.g., searches of private property, questioning of suspects and witnesses, and compulsion of testimony in criminal cases).

Those who rush to defend privacy at all costs have put privacy ahead of liberty on their scale of values. (Anarcho-libertarians do much the same thing when they treat the non-aggression principle as the be-all-and-end-all of libertarianism.)

Privacy is important. It is, as I say in “Privacy: Variations on the Theme of Liberty,”

one among many values that liberty should serve. An individual’s desire for privacy is as legitimate as a desire for, say, a Lamborghini, a full head of hair, and perpetual youth. Seriously, privacy is a legitimate pursuit, yet (like a Lamborghini) it cannot an absolute right. For — as I have argued elsewhere — if privacy were an absolute right, it would be possible to get away with murder in one’s home simply by committing murder there.

The judge in the D’Angelo case hasn’t abetted murder, but he may be abetting tax evasion. Thanks a lot, judge.

The Fear of Consequentialism

I like to revisit old issues from time to time. This is one of those times. I have changed the name of the blogger whom I quote throughout this post because the issue isn’t personal, and I don’t want to it to seem personal. I am merely drawing on an old exchange of views for the purpose of expounding on the concept of “natural rights” and its opposite in libertarian theory, which is consequentialism. I enclose “natural rights” in quotation marks because I find the concept invalid, for reasons detailed here.

More than three years ago, Rand (as I will call blogger X), in a post that responds (in part) to a post of mine, wrote the following:

I don’t like consequentialism, because it’s usually an excuse for exchanging principles for popularity. Deducing one’s way from principles of human nature gives a grounding for any policy—that’s the great thing about natural rights theory. But drawing one’s policy conclusions from the opposite pole—from “consequentialism”—means looking to “social welfare” as one’s standard of value, rather than individual welfare. And “social welfare” is practically impossible to measure,… so that one’s consequentialism could easily be a license for any silly thing.

I have two problems with Rand’s dismissal of consequentialism. The first problem is his reliance on “principles of human nature” or “natural rights.” The second problem is his dismissal of consequentialism by invoking “social welfare.”

Before I address the two problems, I should say a bit about the underlying issues, which are captured in these questions:

Is liberty justified because it enables us to exercise our “natural rights,” or is it justified because it produces better outcomes (consequences)?

If the former, what makes “natural rights” natural (i.e., innate in the human condition), what rights are comprised in “natural rights,” and whose judgment delineates “natural rights”?

If the latter, what outcomes are made better, for whom, and in whose judgment?

I believe that liberty is justified by its consequences, and I have given my reasons elsewhere — here, here, and here, for example. But I am compelled to give them again, in different words (with the same result).

What does it matter how liberty is justified? Liberty is liberty, right? Wrong. The “natural rights” theory opens the door to abuses of liberty. Consider, for example, the following passages from Mortimer Adler’s “Natural Needs = Natural Rights“:

But what is a moral right as contradistinguished from a legal right? It is obvious at once that it must be a right that exists without being created by positive law or social custom. What is not the product of legal or social conventions must be a creation of nature, or to state the matter more precisely, it must have its being in the nature of men. Moral rights are natural rights, rights inherent in man’s common or specific nature, just as his natural desires or needs are. Such rights, being antecedent to society and government, may be recognized and enforced by society or they may be transgressed and violated, but they are inalienable in the sense that, not being the gift of legal enactment, they cannot be taken away or annulled by acts of government.

The critical point to observe is that natural rights are correlative with natural needs. I said a moment ago that where one individual has an obligation — legal or moral — to another, it must be in virtue of some right — legal or moral — possessed by that other. There is a deeper and more significant connection between rights and obligations, but one that obtains only in the case of moral rights and moral obligations. I do not have any moral rights vis-a-vis others unless I also have, for each moral right that I claim, a moral obligation to discharge in the sphere of my own private life. Every moral right of mine that imposes a moral duty upon others is inseparable from a moral duty imposed upon me.

For example, if I have a moral — or natural — right to a decent livelihood, that can be the case only because wealth, to a degree that includes amenities as well as bare necessities, is a real good, part of the totum bonum, and thus indispensable to a good life. The fact that it is a real good, together with the fact that I am morally obliged to seek it as part of my moral obligation to make a good life for myself, is inseparable from the fact that I have a natural right to a decent livelihood….

Our basic natural right to the pursuit of happiness, and all the subsidiary rights that it encompasses, impose moral obligations on organized society and its institutions as well as upon other individuals. If another individual is unjust when he does not respect our rights, and so injures us by interfering with or impeding our pursuit of happiness, the institutions of organized society, its laws, and its government, are similarly unjust when they deprive individuals of their natural rights.

Just governments, it has been correctly declared, are instituted to secure these rights. I interpret that statement as going further than the negative injunction not to violate the natural rights of the individual, or deprive him of the things he needs to make a good life for himself. It imposes upon organized society and its government the positive obligation to secure the natural rights of its individuals by doing everything it can to aid and abet them in their efforts to make good lives for themselves — especially helping them to get things they need that are not within their power to get for themselves [emphasis added].

Adler openly admits the essential (if unintended) nature of the “natural rights” doctrine. It is open-ended. In the wrong hands, it becomes an excuse to take from the more-productive members of a society and give to the less-productive members of a society by claiming that there is a “natural right” to a certain level of income — which must be determined arbitrarily, by those who claim that there is such a right. (How convenient.) Worse, perhaps, is that the notion of “natural rights” can justify the unfettered pursuit of “natural desires,” without regard for the cumulative effect of such pursuits on the moral fiber of society.

Do libertarian adherents of “natural rights” really believe that it makes no difference whether they live in a confiscatory and debauched society or in a society that eschews confiscation and debauchery? I doubt it.

We are all consequentialists, at heart. Some of us just like to play with the idea of “natural rights,” in the manner of children who play with matches.

Let us now consider this question:

Are “Natural Rights” Natural?

According to Rand (blogger X), “A right is a moral claim based on the nature of human beings….” But the nature of human beings is complex; there are many “principles” of human nature, aggressiveness being among them. In order to have a conception of rights that is founded on human nature (i.e., natural rights), one must first decide which of the “principles” of human nature one is willing to countenance. It is one thing to assert that we have natural rights; it is another thing, entirely, to reach agreement about what those rights include. Some proponents of natural rights would, for example, have those rights include the right to steal from others, via the state (“for the general welfare,” “for the public good,” “to eradicate poverty,” etc.). Libertarian proponents of natural rights would deny that natural rights encompass legalized theft. In sum, there is nothing “natural” about natural rights.

Rand effectively concedes that point, when he writes:

Our natural rights and our liberty derive from nature, more specifically, from our nature as human beings.

The link leads to the Declaration of Independence, which contains one relevant passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Rand is an ostentatious atheist, who proudly displays this link at the top of his sidebar. When he relies on a political document (which the Declaration of Independence is) to back up his claim that rights (which ones?) are innate in human beings, and when he ignores the plain words of that document, which attribute those rights to a Creator, it is evident that the concept of “natural rights” is arbitrary (i.e., not natural).

If the concept of “natural rights” is not arbitrary, why must Rand spend so much time (as he has) explaining to others why such-and-such is or isn’t a “natural right.” This strikes me as priestly behavior. It certainly belies the naturalness of “natural rights.”

Breathing is natural, in that it is in our nature to breathe in order to live. But that does not rule out suicide, murder, death at the hands of someone acting in self-defense, death by “natural causes,” or anything else that causes the cessation of breathing and life. In sum, breathing is natural, but it is not a “natural right.” Given that, what can be an unqualified “natural right”?

The answer is “nothing,” as explained as Jonathan Wallace explains so well in “Natural Rights Don’t Exist.” This passage captures the essence of Wallace’s long argument (which you should read):

We believe there is a natural right to do anything which we think should be permitted (or mandated) under a human rulebook. Anything which should be forbidden under a human rulebook therefore cannot be a natural right, even if it is physically possible and can be justified by the same arguments used to support the idea of natural rights.

Is There Anything Natural about Rights?

Something that is natural — in the sense that it can arise spontaneously from within us — but which is by no means universal, is the Golden Rule. This is from my post, “The Source of Rights” (September 6, 2006):

Stephan Kinsella of Mises Economics Blog, in a pugnacious and meandering post, finally gets around to naming the source of rights, as he sees it. That source is empathy, which is:

1. Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives. See Synonyms at pity.

2. The attribution of one’s own feelings to an object.

Empathy has something to do with it. But my view is that rights arise from self-interest, best expressed as the Golden Rule….

The Golden Rule implies empathy; that is, the validity of the Golden Rule hinges on the view that others have the same feelings as oneself. But the Golden Rule also 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. (There’s the self-interest.) 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 lesson here is three-fold:

Rights are “natural,” but not in the sense that they are somehow innate in humans. Rather, rights are natural in the sense that they arise from a nearly universal sense of empathy and an experiential belief in the value of mutual forbearance.

Those “natural rights” have no force or effect unless they are generally recognized and enforced through communal action.

Rights may therefore vary from place to place and time to time, according to the mores of the community in which they are recognized and enforced.

That is the natural explanation for rights. They are not universals floating in the air, waiting to be grasped by a priestly caste and handed down to the rest of us (like Kant’s categorical imperative, in its various incarnations). Rights simply are the best bargains that we can make with each other about behavioral norms, to the extent that we have the political freedom to make such bargains. Those bargains will be honored by the unempathic and predatory among us only as the rest of us are able to force them to do so.

The rights that arise from the Golden Rule are bound to have much in common across disparate groups because they arise from the human traits of empathy and self-interestedness. But they are not bound to be identical across disparate groups because of divergences in social evolution.

Rand would now (as he has) resort to a last-ditch defense of “natural rights” by asking this:

If a woman is raped in a forest and nobody hears, are her rights being violated?

Now, there’s a lawyerly question for you. It’s designed to elicit embarrassed agreement. The casual reader will see “woman is raped” and think “of course her rights are being violated” and “I wouldn’t want it to happen to me/my wife/my sister/my mother, etc.” What we have here is evidence of the prevalence of empathy and self-interestedness as human traits, not proof of the immanence of rights. The proper answer to Rand’s question isn’t “yes” or “no”; it is this: Almost everyone — but, unfortunately, not everyone — would condemn the rapist for having done something wrong.

To test the robustness of Rand’s technique for identifying “rights” — which is to posit a “right” in opposition to an instance of repulsive behavior — I pose this series of questions:

1. If A premeditatedly kills B, have B’s rights been violated?

2. If C kills D in self defense, have D’s rights been violated?

3. What about D’s rights if, in retrospect, an investigator concludes (by trying to put himself in C’s shoes) that C could have defended himself without killing D?

4. If the state electrocutes A for having premeditatedly killed B, has the state violated A’s “natural rights”?

5. If the state punishes C for having killed D unnecessarily, has the state violated C’s “natural rights” by relying on an investigator’s after-the-fact judgment instead of C’s contemporaneous judgment?

6. If E procures an abortion, have the rights of her fetus (F) been violated?

7. If E kills her infant (G) upon its birth, has she violated G’s rights? What if she waits until G is, say two years old?

8. If the answer to question 6 is “no,” and the answer to at least one part of question 7 is “yes,” when and how does a fetus/child acquire rights?

9. With respect to question 8, who makes the judgment as to when and how a fetus/child acquires rights?

10. Even if the answer to question 6 is “no,” doesn’t the legalization of abortion jeopardize the rights of others by fostering, say, involuntary euthanasia among the conscious, but infirm, elderly persons?

11. H, who lives in squalor and abject poverty, makes far less money than I. Does H have a right to steal from I in order to ameliorate his (H’s) lot?

12. If H doesn’t have a right to steal from I, does the state violate I’s “natural rights” by taxing I in order to ameliorate H’s lot?

Reasonable persons will disagree reasonably about the answers to many of those questions. Which leads me to another series of questions: Would Rand’s answers be superior to the answers of other reasonable persons? In other words, who decides when rights have been violated, and on what basis are such decisions made? Is Rand the sole judge of what constitutes a right, and whether it is a “natural right” or some other kind of right? Does he have, somewhere, a list of rights that we can consult and, having consulted it, make unanimous judgments about the answers to all twelve questions (and others like them)? How did Rand obtain his list? Did he inspect his “human nature” and find written on it a list of “natural rights” and a guide for determining what is or isn’t a right? Or did he make some (undoubtedly reasonable) judgments about what ought to be rights, just as others do (with differing results)? Or, if is he borrowing from others who have made such judgments, how did they arrive at their judgments?

Don’t get me wrong about the role of the state in all of this. I agree wholeheartedly with Rand when he says that “rights exist before the state enforces them.” As I have said before (here, for example),

rights do not necessarily depend on the existence of a state, but do arise from politics because politics “is the process and method of decision-making for groups of human beings…[which] is observed in all human group interactions….” And those “group interactions” began long before the creation of a state.

Therefore, I now return to Rand’s question and restate it in a way that is consistent with human nature and human behavior:

If a woman is raped in a forest and nobody hears her, does she feel harmed? Would other persons, upon learning of the rape, generally agree that she was harmed? Would enough such persons concert to (a) exact justice on the victim’s behalf and (b) ensure (to the extent possible) against the rape of any other person within the territory over which they can exert control?

In sum, rights — when properly understood as man-made bargains — are consequentialist to their core, arising as they do (in part) from empathy and (in part) from self-interestedness.

Consequentialism Is about Norms, Not “Social Welfare”

I turn now to Rand’s dismissal of consequentialism, a dismissal that is justified because (in his view) consequentialism depends on the concept of “social welfare.” That concept (in this context) is a red herring. Consequentialism does not depend on “social welfare” because it cannot do so; there is no such thing as “social welfare.” (See this, for example.) “Social welfare” is not “practically impossible to measure,” as Rand says in the first quotation above; as a nullity, it is impossible to measure.

I am perfectly willing to admit the arbitrariness of consequentialism; arbitrariness in the classification of rights is unavoidable. The best one can hope for is a systematic and generally accepted kind of arbitrariness that tends to limit the harm that predators and parasites do to the rest of us.

In its simplest form, such a system operates like this:

A, B, and C — knowing that each of them has different notions of acceptable behavior toward others — agree that murder (among other things) is a forbidden activity, and that one may not murder another except in self-defense. (They further agree as to the ways and means of enforcing their prohibition of murder, of course.)

That is liberty, for it enables each of them … to “pursue happiness” within their respective means.

But…

What if A and B agree, honorably, not to kill each other, whereas C “leaves his options open”? It then behooves A and B to reach a further agreement, which is that they will defend each other against C. (This is analogous to the decision of the original States to adopt the Constitution because it bound each of them to provide men, matériel, and money for the defense of all of them.) A and B therefore agree to live in liberty (the liberty of self-restraint and mutual defense), whereas C stands outside that agreement. He has forfeited the liberty of self-restraint and mutual self-defense. How so? A and B, knowing that C has “left his options open,” might honorably kill or imprison C when they have good reason to believe that C is planning to kill them or acquire the means to kill them.

In sum, there can be no system makes everyone happy (unless you believe, foolishly, that everyone is of good will). Try to imagine, for example, a metric by which C’s happiness (if he succeeds in his predatory scheme) would offset A and B’s unhappiness (were C successful).

The inescapable fact is that someone must define and enforce norms that rest on consequences (or perceived consequences) of certain behavior. The big questions, as always, are these: Who defines and enforces the norms, and how (if at all) are the deciders and the enforcers constrained in what they do?

Jonathan Wallace says this in “Natural Rights Don’t Exist“:

I prefer this freedom, which seems to me simple and clear: we are all at a table together, deciding which rules to adopt, free from any vague constraints, half-remembered myths, anonymous patriarchal texts and murky concepts of nature. If I propose something you do not like, tell me why it is not practical, or harms somebody, or is counter to some other useful rule; but don’t tell me it offends the universe.

Were that life so simple.

There are, in fact, four basic possibilities (which I explore in “A Political Compass: Locating the United States“), anarchy, libertarianism, communitarianism, and statism:

According to anarchists (or anarcho-libertarians, as I call them), an individual’s freedom of action should be limited only by (a) voluntary observance of social norms and (b) contracts (enforced by third parties) that bind the members of a group to observe certain restraints and to pay certain penalties for failing to observe those restraints….

Rights and liberty, it must be understood, are not Platonic abstractions; they are, rather, social phenomena. They are the best “deal” we can make with those around us — the set of compromises that define acceptable behavior, which is the boundary of liberty. Those compromises are not made by a philosopher-king but through an evolving consensus about harms — a consensus that flows from reason, experience, persuasion, and necessity.

Minarchism is true libertarianism because it provides a minimal state for the protection of the lives, liberty, and property of those who adhere to it; a state that otherwise remains neutral with respect to its adherents’ affairs; a state that does not distort the wisdom embedded in tradition, that is, in voluntarily evolved social norms; a state that is nevertheless sufficiently powerful to protect its willing adherents‘ interests from predators, within and without….

Communitarianism is the regulation by the state of private institutions for the purpose of producing certain outcomes desired by controlling élites (e.g., income redistribution, “protection” from learning by our mistakes, “protection” from things deemed harmful by the worrying classes, and “social (or cosmic) justice“). Such outcomes, contrary to their stated purposes, are unwise, inefficient, and harmful to their intended beneficiaries….

[S]tatism…is outright state control of most social and economic institutions….

Statism may be reached either as an extension of communitarianism or via post-statist anarchy or near-anarchy, as in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, and Mao’s China. We have come to statism via communitarianism, which leads inevitably to statism because the appetite for largesse is insatiable, as is the desire (in certain circles) to foster “social (or cosmic) justice.”

None of the four systems rests on the concept of “social welfare,” regardless of its proponents’ claims. Each system simply offers a different way of defining and enforcing behavioral norms within a polity. Each, in its own way, is consequential. It’s all a matter of consequences for whom.

Where I Stand…

…on the “World’s Smallest Political Quiz.” I am glad to report that I have advanced from the reflexive libertarianism to which I adhered in the early days of this blog. Thus:

ACCORDING TO YOUR ANSWERS,

You fall exactly on the border

of two political philosophies…

CONSERVATIVE

LIBERTARIAN

CONSERVATIVES tend to favor economic freedom, but frequently

support laws to restrict personal behavior that violates “traditional
values.” They oppose excessive government control of business,

while endorsing government action to defend morality and the

traditional family structure. Conservatives usually support a strong

military, oppose bureaucracy and high taxes, favor a free-market

economy, and endorse strong law enforcement.

LIBERTARIANS support maximum liberty in both personal

and economic matters. They advocate a much smaller government;

one that is limited to protecting individuals from coercion

and violence. Libertarians tend to embrace individual

responsibility, oppose government bureaucracy and taxes,

promote private charity, tolerate diverse lifestyles, support the

free market, and defend civil liberties.

The RED DOT on the Chart shows where you fit on the political map.

Your PERSONAL issues Score is 50%.
Your ECONOMIC issues Score is 100%.

Schrödinger’s Cat Returns

Physicist Erwin Schrödinger devised a thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s cat:

It attempts to illustrate what he saw as the problems of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics when it is applied to systems large enough to be seen with the naked eye, and not just to atomic or subatomic systems.

It is accepted that a subatomic particle can exist in a superposition of states, a combination of possible states. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation, the superposition only settles into a definite state upon observation. This is known as collapse or measurement.

Schrödinger proposed his “cat”, after a suggestion of Albert Einstein‘s. Schrödinger states that if a scenario existed where a cat’s state of life or death could be made dependent on the state of a subatomic particle, and also isolated from any possible observation, the state of the cat itself would be a quantum superposition — according to the Copenhagen interpretation, at least.

Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility. Rather he believed the “absurd” conclusion indicated a flawed assumption.

The thought experiment serves to illustrate the strangeness of quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states.

We now read this:

Astronomers may have unwittingly hastened the end of the Universe by simply looking at it, according to a theory reported in the latest edition of New Scientist….

[C]osmologists have discovered that the Universe is still expanding.

And, they believe, a strange, yet-to-be-detected form of energy called dark energy pervades the universe, which would explain why the sum of all the visible sources of energy fall way short of what should be out there.

Dark energy, goes the thinking, is a result of the Big Bang and is accelerating the universe’s expansion.

If so, the universe is not in a nice, stable zero-vacuum state but simply [in a] state that may abruptly…again – and with cataclysmic consequences.

The energy shift from the decay would destroy everything in the universe, “wiping the slate clean,” says Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

The good news is: the longer the universe survives, the better the chance that it will mature into a stable state. We are just beyond the crucial switching point, Mr. Krauss believed.

The bad news is: the quantum effect, a truly weird aspect of physics that says whenever we observe or measure something, we reset its clock.

Mr. Krauss and colleague James Dent pointed to measurements of light from supernovae in 1998 that provided the first evidence of dark energy.

These measurements might have reset the decay clock of the “false vacuum” back to zero, back before the switching point and to a time when the risk of catastrophic decay was greater than now, said Mr. Dent and Mr. Krauss.

“Incredible as it seems, our detection of the dark energy may have reduced the life expectancy of the universe,” said Mr. Krauss.

“We may have snatched away the possibility of long-term survival for our universe and made it more likely it will decay.”

The report says the claim is contested by other astrophysicists and adds reassuringly: “The fact that we are still here means this can’t have happened yet.”

And it ain’t gonna happen. My money is on Schrödinger.

Testing for Steroids, Updated

Here.

In case you missed it, the post is about the top home-run hitters in major league history. It includes some informative charts, which highlight the unusually prolific seasons enjoyed by Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds. Draw your own conclusions.

The "Southern Strategy"

Paul Krugman claims that

the political successes of the G.O.P. since it was taken over by movement conservatives, …had very little to do with public opposition to taxes, moral values, perceived strength on national security, or any of the other explanations usually offered. To an almost embarrassing extent, they all come down to just five words: southern whites starting voting Republican.

Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party’s “loss leader” in 1964 wasn’t a “movement conservative”? Anyway, Krugman’s charge is answered here (by Matt Yglesias), here (by Edward Glaeser), and here and here (by Ross Douthat). Among many telling points Douthat makes in the last-linked item is this one:

Southern whites were, and are, natural conservatives who happened to find themselves in the more liberal of the two parties; once Democrats associated themselves with the civil-rights movement, there wasn’t anywhere else for white Mississippians and Alabamans to go except the GOP.

There’s much more — in all of the linked items — and all of it is compelling (and not forgiving of GOP race-baiting, to the extent that it occurred).

My purpose here isn’t to rehash Yglesias, Glaeser, and Douthat, but to tell the tale of the numbers. Specifically, I look at the share of popular votes garnered by GOP presidential candidates in the 11 States of the former Confederacy, in relation to the GOP candidates’ shares of the national popular vote. For example, the GOP candidate in 1944 (Thomas E. Dewey) garnered 17 percent of the popular vote in Texas; Dewey’s nationwide popular-vote share in that election was 46 percent. The index for the Texas vote for 1944 is therefore 0.37 (17 percent divided by 46 percent).

Here are the maximum, minimum, and median values for the 11 States, from the election of 1896 through the election of 2004:

As Reconstruction ended in the South, Democrats gradually reasserted political control and began to suppress the black vote, which had been heavily Republican. The suppression of the black vote was, by 1904, as complete as it would be, and the median value of 0.46 reflects that. (The dip in 1912 reflects the siphoning of GOP votes by Teddy Roosevelt’s potent third-party candidacy, which relegated the GOP to an ignominious third place in the popular and electoral vote counts.)

The median value remained at or below 50 percent through 1948, with the exception of 1928, when the Democrat candidate was Al Smith, a Roman Catholic. (The pro-GOP spike in 1928 suggests that about half of the South’s Democrats defected because of Smith’s Catholicism.) The noticeable dip from 1932 through 1944 points to the vein of Southern populism that was exploited by Democrats’ anti-capitalist rhetoric. (See, for example, this post about FDR and this Wikipedia entry about Louisiana’s Huey Long.)

Southern voters began to abandon the Democrat Party in 1948, when Strom Thurmond ran under the banner of the “Dixiecrat” Party. That party (formally, the States’ Rights Democratic Party) arose in response to the national party’s adoption of an anti-segregation plank at its convention. Thurmond was on the ballot in 17 States, but most of his support came from the 11 former Confederate States. He garnered only 2.4 percent of the popular vote, nationwide, but carried four Southern States — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina. Thurmond’s victories there, and his good showing in several other Southern States, came at the expense of the Democrat Party’s nominee, Harry Truman, and do not show up as a gain for the GOP in 1948.

Having nowhere else to turn in 1952, many Southern Democrats defected to the GOP, and continued to do so in 1960, when the Democrat Party chose John F. Kennedy (a Catholic in name) as its presidential candidate.

Before you conclude that the GOP is strong in today’s South because of the events of 1948 and 1960, consider these points:

1.What Krugman conveniently ignores in his anti-Republican screed is the South’s long embrace of the Democrat Party, for blatantly racial reasons. Democrats Woodrow Wilson and FDR — who held the presidency for 20 of the first 45 years of the twentieth century — enjoyed strong support in the South and were, therefore, segregationist in their policies. Southern Democrats disproportionately voted for FDR and his New Deal, about which Krugman’s only complaint could be that it wasn’t socialistic (or fascistic) enough.

2. The South’s defection to the GOP peaked in 1964, the year of Barry Goldwater’s inglorious defeat — another “lost cause” for the South. Goldwater, who was anything but a segregationist, simply had strong views about the proper role of the federal government in relation to the States, namely, that it should butt out of the affairs of individuals and businesses. Such views were then more widely embraced in the South than in the North, and had as much to do with the South’s Jeffersonian tradition as with racial segregation.

3. The GOP’s grip on the South has, if anything, weakened since 1964. Whatever Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan might have done to woo Southern voters did not cause those voters to flock to the Republican Party. Barry Goldwater’s conservatism caused that.

4. What about the sharp drop in Southern support for the GOP in 1968? That drop coincides with George Wallace‘s segregationist, third-party candidacy in 1968. Krugman would say: “Aha! That defection, and the GOP’s recovery from it in 1972 (when Wallace was out of the picture), demonstrates that the GOP depends (or depended) heavily on the Southern racist vote.” Not so fast, Paul: Southern Democrats defected to George Wallace in 1968 at the same rate as Southern Republicans.

5. Why was it legitimate for a super-majority of white Southerners to support the New Deal out of desperation, but illegitimate for many of them (and their children) to turn, years later, to a party more in tune with their conservative inclinations? The South merely has become the North in reverse: strongly Republican (as the North is strongly Democrat) for reasons of ideology, not of race. On that point, here is a harder-to-read but more accurate depiction of the South’s attachment (or lack thereof) to the Republican Party:

In sum, it is plain that the South’s attachment to the GOP since 1964, whatever its racial content, is much weaker than was the South’s attachment to the Democrat Party until 1948, when there was no question that that attachment had a strong (perhaps dominant) racial component.

Krugman’s condemnation of racial politics in a major political party comes 60 years too late, and it’s aimed at the wrong party.

Case closed.

* * *
Krugman’s real complaint, of course, is that Republicans have been winning elections far too often to suit him. His case of Republican Derangement Syndrome is so severe that he can only pin the GOP’s success on racism. I will refrain from references to Freud and Pinocchio and note only that Krugman’s anti-GOP bias seems to have grown as his grasp of economics has shrunk:

Krugman and DeLong: A Prevaricating Pair
Professor Krugman Flunks Economics
Paul Krugman, an Inspiration to Us All
Social Security: Myth and Reality
The Last(?) Word about Income Inequality
Krugman and Monopoly
Rich Voter, Poor Voter: Revisited
Setting the Record Straight about Paul Krugman’s “Who Was Milton Friedman?”
Krugman vs. Krugman

Election 2008: Second Forecast

My eighth forecast is here.

REVISED, 5:05 PM, 11/18/07

The Presidency – Method 1

Intrade posts odds on which party’s nominee will win in each State and, therefore, take each State’s electoral votes. I assign all of a State’s electoral votes to the party that is expected to win that State. Where the odds are 50-50, I split the State’s electoral votes between the two parties.

As of today, the odds point to this result:

Democrat, 302 electoral votes

Republican, 236 electoral votes

(No change since the first forecast, 11/16/07.)

The Presidency – Method 2

I have devised a “secret formula” for estimating the share of electoral votes cast for the winner of the presidential election. (No, it’s not “method 3,” described here.) The formula is based on the 35 presidential elections from 1868 through 2004. The standard error of the estimate is 3.6 percentage points, as against the winner’s average share for the 35 elections, which is 71.7 percent. Here’s how formula-based estimates for the 35 elections compare with the actual results of those elections:

The only “wrong” pick is the one for the election of 1876, which was decided even more crookedly than the 1960 election (see below).

The largest errors (greater than 5 percentage points) occur in these seven instances:

McKinley’s re-election in 1900 — EV share underestimated by 8.2 percentage points, that is, by 37 EVs.

T. Roosevelt’s election in 1904, after having become president following McKinley’s assassination in 1900 — Share overestimated by 5.3 percentage points, 25 EVs.

FDR’s re-election in 1940 — Share underestimated by 5.1 percentage points, 27 EVs.

Truman’s election in 1948, after having become president following FDR’s death in 1945 — Share overestimated by 5.7 percentage points, 30 EVs.

Kennedy’s election in 1960 — Share underestimated by 5.6 percentage points, 30 EVs. (Illinois, thanks to Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, delivered its 27 EVs to Kennedy. Otherwise, the legitimate outcome, 276 EVs for JFK, would have been uncannily close to my estimate of 273 EVs for JFK . I assume, perhaps wrongly, that JFK’s narrow win in Texas, with its 24 EVs was owed to LBJ’s ability to pull in votes as JFK’s running mate, not to LBJ’s ability to rig elections.)

Reagan’s initial election in 1980 — Share underestimated by 8.1 percentage points, 44 EVs.

G.W. Bush’s re-election in 2004 — Share overestimated by 6.1 percentage points, 33 EVs. (By the way, I chose to use a model that’s wide of the mark in 2004, for the sake of getting a better fit across the board. It bothered me, at first, to show a bad estimate at the right-hand edge of the graph, where it looms so obviously. But a statistical model should be chosen for how well it fits all of the observations on which it’s based, not just the outliers — statistical or graphical.)

My formula currently yields these estimates of the outcome of next year’s presidential election (CORRECTED, 12/13/07):

Democrat nominee — 241 to 280 EVs

Republican nominee — 258 to 297 EVs

In sum, the prospect of a Democrat victory isn’t as clearcut as method 1 suggests.

Will method 1 or method 2 prove to be the more accurate one? The answer is less than a year away. Stay tuned.

U.S. House and Senate

Later.

* * *

How did I do in 2004? See this and this.

"The War": Final Grade

See this, this, and this for my reactions to the first six episodes of Ken Burns’s The War.

REVISED, 11/17/07

Having now seen the seventh and final episode of The War, I give the series a grade of “D”; it escapes an “F” only for its willingness to say, hesitantly, that

World War II was, for the United States, a necessary war because of the nature of the enemy. It was, therefore, worth its cost in lives, limbs, and money.

It was, in the end, necessary to drop A-bombs on Japan in order to bring the war to avert an invasion of Japan — an invasion that would have cost the lives of millions of Americans and Japanese.

But we already knew those things, didn’t we?

Like episodes two through six, episode seven suffers from viewpoint confusion. The War makes the points I list above, then — time after time — retracts or undermines them. In episode seven, for example, we hear again from the egregious Paul Fussell (see this), who clearly implies that the war wasn’t worth fighting until the Holocaust came to light, late in the war.

And there is the insistence on presenting “balanced” reactions to the dropping of A-bombs on Japan. One of the “witnesses” who appears throughout the series staunchly defends the act. Another notes its strategic wisdom but still wishes it hadn’t been necessary. But it was necessary — and, really, an act of mercy toward the Japanese as well as to America’s fighting men. Why pander to the nay-sayers, who will go to their graves condemning the act, in spite of its moral necessity?

Burns and company, I fear, simply wanted to make a “blockbuster.” To that end, they chose World War II and the “greatest generation” — subjects guaranteed to elicit sympathy and lull the viewer into agreement with the film’s subtext, which has two main elements.

One element is voiced at the very end of the final episode, in the dedication. It is to those who served in World War II, “that necessary war” (emphasis added), not “a necessary war,” as the first episode has it. The implication is that no later war was or is necessary — certainly not the present one.

The second element of the subtext reinforces the first one, and it is less subtle. That second element is The War‘s insistence on playing up America’s moral failings (as discussed above and in my second and third reactions to The War). The intended message is that because of our moral failings, and because war is hell, World War II was barely worth fighting, although it seemed necessary at the time (even to the Left). Therefore, given the murkiness of our present cause — as proclaimed loudly by the Leftists who have come to dominate the media and academe — the war in Iraq (and perhaps the war on terror) is unjustified because America remains morally imperfect and war remains hellish. The Left proclaims an act of war against anyone but Hitler (not a Hitler, the Hitler) to be an act of hypocrisy and brutality by a morally imperfect nation.

That is Metaethical Moral Relativism (MMR), about which I have written:

It treats different groups as if they had different moral imperatives. By and large, they do not; most groups (or, more exactly, most of their members) have the same moral imperative: The Golden Rule.

There are, of course, groups that seldom if ever observe The Golden Rule. Such groups are ruled by force and fear, and they deny voice and exit to their members. The rulers of such groups are illegitimate because they systematically try to suppress observance of The Golden Rule, which is deep-seated in human nature. Other groups may therefore justly seek to oust and punish those despotic rulers.

I go on to point out that MMR, these days, seems to take this form:

The United States is imperfect. It is, therefore, no better than its enemies.

Such is the relativism we see in those who excuse despotic, murderous regimes and movements because “we asked for it” or “we are no better than they are” or “war is never the answer” or “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” or “terrorists deserve the protections of the Geneva Convention.” That kind of relativism empowers the very despots and terrorists whose existence is an affront to The Golden Rule.

The War is a barely redeemed exercise in Metaethical Moral Relativism. I say that only because its subtext may escape many viewers who are not of the Left. As for the Left, it had embraced MMR long before The War appeared on PBS; The War merely affirms

the American Left’s long-standing allegiance to anti-defense, anti-war dogmas, under which lies the post-patriotic attitude that America is nothing special, just another place to live.

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