The Problem with the News Biz

Here it is, in the words of a so-called journalist:

“That’s my job. I’m a newsman. That’s what I try to do, is make news. And you try to avoid news. That’s your job.”

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, to former president Bill Clinton. Clinton said Blitzer tried to get him to make news by saying the Iraq war was a mistake.

Well, at least he admits that he wants to “make news” rather (pun) than simply report news. Perhaps now he can begin the twelve-step program for recovering scandalmongers:

Step 1 — Admit to your liberal bias.

Steps 2-11 — Repeat Step 1 until you’ve convinced yourself that you really have a liberal bias.

Step 12 — Get an honest job.

Recent Reading

Recommended:

Garbo Laughs, by Elizabeth Hay

Hay’s second novel is not at all like her first (A Student of Weather), except that it, too, is beautifully written and thoroughly engaging.

The Hot Kid, by Elmore Leonard

Leonard changes his venue (from Detroit and Miami to Oklahoma) and his period (from the present to the 1920s and 1930s), but it’s the same old Elmore. That is to say, a ripping good read.

Lunch at the Picadilly, by Clyde Edgerton

The “dark side” of Clyde. A rather more realistic view of old people than than one gets in Edgerton’s earlier novels (as I remember them).

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson

A funny, sad tale of interlocking mysteries, with a semi-hapless hero and a great supporting cast. Brits do it best.

Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan

Inferior to McEwan’s Atonement, but “inferior” is a relative thing. McEwan is such a good writer that I can still recommend this short romp through London’s music and journalistic scenes.

A Desert in Bohemia, by Jill Paton Walsh

A novel of ideas, which also features compelling characters and dramatic tension. Along the way, Walsh — who may be an idealistic socialist, for all I know — lays bare the hypocrisy and brutality of state socialism as it was practiced behind the Iron Curtain. Yet another brilliant Brit.

What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal), by Zoe Heller

A creepy, clinging narrator and a self-centered protagonist. A match made in a sadist’s heaven. More brilliant Brit prose.

A Non-Paradox for Libertarians

In “A Paradox for Libertarians” I said:

Some aspects of liberty must be circumscribed in order to preserve most aspects of liberty.

That statement pertains to such matters as freedom of speech (which can’t be absolute if society is to defend itself effectively) and the apparent (but debatable) necessity of taxation to defray the cost of defending liberty.

Glen Whitman, writing at Agoraphilia, raises a parallel issue, which I’ll state after quoting Whitman.

[T]ake Alex [Tabarrok]’s hypothetical, posed to him (and Robin Hanson) by a philosopher:

Suppose that you had a million children and you could give each of them a better life but only if one of them had a very, very terrible life. Would you do it?

Alex and Robin, both economists, said “yes” without hesitation. But to the philosopher who posed the question, the intuitively correct answer was clearly “no.” Who’s right? Alex suggests that we should simply overcome our gut intuitions and think logically here, and the logical answer is to favor the greatest good. Will [Wilkinson of The Fly Bottle] and Carina [Cilluffo of An Inclination to Criticize] both correctly reply that Alex, too, is relying on intuition – the utilitarian intuition that we can (in some rough-and-ready way) compare satisfaction across persons. So we can never fully escape the appeal to intuition.

But does that observation dispose of the matter? Can we just pick out our favorite intuition and run with it? Alex is still right that our intuitions are inconsistent. One intuition tells us that individuals have personal claims that should never be violated. Fine. But another intuition tells us it’s absurd to impose monstrous losses for miniscule gains. The lifeboat situation is a classic example of where this alternative intuition kicks in. . . .

Moreover, it turns out the intuition that answers “no” to Alex’s hypothetical is highly dependent on the frame of reference. . . .

. . . Take Alex’s original hypothetical, but add in some extra context:

The million children who stand to gain are the starving and oppressed people of an African nation. The one child who stands to lose is the son of the local tyrant.

Feel free to modify the context to explain why the tyrant’s son’s life will suck after his dad is dethroned. With the context filled in, I suspect most who said “no” before will say “yes” now. Why? Because we no longer think the status quo creates any rightful claims to its continuation. . . .

The parallel issue raised by Whitman is this: What if a society’s transition from a regulatory-welfare regime to a regime of liberty were to result in losers as well as winners? How could one then justify such a transition? Must the justification rest on an intuitive judgment about the superiority of liberty? Might the prospect of creating losers somehow nullify the promse of creating winners?

I argue here that my justification for libertarianism — although it is of the consequentialist-utilitarian variety — rests on a stronger foundation than an intuitive judgment about the superiority of liberty. As I wrote in Part III of “Practical Libertarianism“:

The virtue of libertarianism, as I will discuss in Parts IV and V [and its addendum], is not that it must be taken on faith but that, in practice, it yields superior consequences. Superior consequences for whom, you may ask. And I will answer: for all but those who don’t wish to play by the rules of libertarianism; that is, for all but predators and parasites.

By predators, I mean those who would take liberty from others, either directly (e.g., through murder and theft) or through the coercive power of the state (e.g., through smoking bans and licensing laws). By parasites, I mean those who seek to advance their self-interest through the coercive power of the state rather than through their own efforts (e.g., through corporate welfare and regulatory protection). There is, of course, a lot of collusion between predators and parasites. (See Bruce Yandle’s “Bootleggers and Baptists – The Education of a Regulatory Economist.”)

To borrow from Glen Whitman, why should we favor the status quo in order to give privileged status to predators and parasites? I dismiss them out of hand.

The only potential losers worth thinking about are those seemingly honest, hard-working individuals who might be made worse off by a transition to liberty. But who are those individuals? They are the unwitting predators and parasites who do not actively seek privilege but who nevertheless enjoy it as “free riders” on welfare programs, compulsory unionism, minimum-wage and “living wage” laws, reverse discrimination, special tax exemptions and deductions, tariff protection, and on and on. I dismiss them out of hand because, unwitting as they may be, they are predators and parasites who take from others. (I do not dismiss them out of hand as human beings. I dismiss out of hand any claim that they are privileged by the status quo, which is the product of overt predators and parasites.)

What about those individuals who are neither predators nor parasites but who might be worse off in a state of liberty, in spite of their diligent efforts not to be worse off? I submit that there could be no such individuals because anyone who isn’t a predator or parasite must, perforce, be a victim of predators and parasites.

A transition to liberty, as it turns out would benefit almost eveyone, including most predators and parasites. I say that because the likely gains from liberty are so great. First, as I said in Part IV of “Practical Libertarianism,”

think of yourself as a business. You are good at producing certain things — as a family member, friend, co-worker, employee, or employer — and you know how to go about producing those things. What you don’t know, you can learn through education, experience, and the voluntary counsel of family, friends, co-workers, and employers. But you are unique — no one but you knows your economic and social preferences. If you are left to your own devices you will make the best decisions about how to run the “business” of getting on with your life. When everyone is similarly empowered, a not-so-miraculous thing happens: As each person gets on with the “business” of his or her own of life, each person tends to make choices that others find congenial. As you reward others with what you produce for them, economically and socially, they reward you in return. If they reward you insufficiently, you can give your “business” to those who will reward you more handsomely. But when government meddles in your affairs — except to protect you from actual harm — it damages the network of voluntary associations upon which you depend in order to run your “business” most beneficially to yourself and others. The state can protect your ability to run the “business” of your life, but once you let it tell you how to run your life, you compromise your ability to make choices that are right for you.

In sum, when people are deprived of incentives through taxation, regulation, and welfare, they are less able and willing to strive for themselves. And it is self-striving that leads people to do things that are valued by others. Regulation and welfare impose costs where there otherwise would be no costs, and distort the free-market signals that tell people how they can do better for themselves by doing better for others.

Now, I suppose there are some persons who couldn’t handle liberty and who would want their lives shaped by others. If that’s the way they want to live, fine, just don’t use the state to impose restrictions on the way the rest of us run our lives. There’s no reason, in a state of liberty, that those who crave direction could not buy it from others. Given the economic gains from liberty (which I’m about to summarize), there would be a booming market in personal agents of various kinds, not to mention vastly improved information sources and decision tools for the rest of us.

In addition to the nonquantifiable psychic benefits of running one’s own life, there are quantifiable economic benefits. Here’s the bottom line, drawn from Part V and the addendum to Part V of “Practical Libertarianism”:

In 2004, real GDP (in year 2000 dollars) was about $10.7 trillion.

If government had grown no more meddlesome after 1906, real GDP might have been $18.7 trillion.

That is, real GDP per American would have been about $63,000 (in year 2000 dollars) instead of $36,000.

That’s a loss to the average American of more than 40 percent of the income that he or she might have enjoyed, absent the growth of the regulatory-welfare state in the past 100 years.

That loss is in addition to the 40-50 percent of current output which government drains from the productive sectors of the economy.

I submit that only predators and inveterate parasites could possibly be worse off were per capita GDP to rise by 75 percent (the increase from $36,000 to $63,000), and were government to exact a toll of only 10 percent (instead of 40-50 percent) on those who produce. Most of the poor would be rich, by today’s standards. And those who remain relatively poor or otherwise incapable of meeting their own needs — because of age, infirmity, and so on — would reap voluntary charity from their affluent compatriots. There’s a bit of a judgment call in that last statement, but just a bit.

To put it another way, a transition to liberty might not instantly make everyone better off economically, but everyone could be better off. That’s simply not the case with the regulatory-welfare state, which robs some for the benefit of others, and ends up making almost everyone poorer than they would be in a state of liberty.

Liberty is a win-win proposition for everyone except those who deserve to lose.

Foxhole Rats

Apropos the preceding post, there’s a sizable cheering section for the enemy, right here in the U.S. of A. David Kopel of The Volokh Conspiracy has more:

I just ran “support the Iraqi resistance” through Yahoo, and looked at some of the top hits. Among the supporters of the so-called “resistance” are James Petras (an emeritus professor at the State University of NY), . . . . comedienne Janeane Garafolo analogizing the Iraqi resistance to Americans resisting an illegitimate Russian-Chinese invasion of the United States, and Virginia Rodino (Green Party candidate for U.S. House in Maryland in 2004), who declares herself “in solidarity with the courageous Iraqi resistance.” This is obviously not a comprehensive list, just what was easy to find in a few minutes.

An interesting thread on Democratic Underground shows that among rank and file activists (not the more famous types that Eugene originally asked about), there is a substantial diversity of opinion about whether anti-war activists should support the “resistance.”

There may be a “diversity of opinion” at the Democratic Underground about support for the “resistance,” but one graphic is worth a bunch of words about the allegiance of the post-patriots who lurk in the Underground. Here’s the answer to the question “which country having ‘nukes’ concerns/scares your the most?”:

Poll result (42 votes)
Iran	(3 votes, 7%)
North Korea	(2 votes, 5%)
Pakistan	(1 votes, 2%)
India	(0 votes, 0%)
China	(1 votes, 2%)
France	(0 votes, 0%)
Russia	(0 votes, 0%)
Israel	(1 votes, 2%)
United States	(34 votes, 81%)

What scares me the most is that those people are breathing the same air as I am.

Now, some may say that I’m equating dissent with disloyalty. Not at all. I’m equating decades of anti-defense, anti-war, and sometimes pro-enemy rhetoric with a willingness to abandon the common defense.

You can call it what you like.

Shall We All Hang Separately?

I believe that the willingness of humans to come to each other’s defense has emotional and practical roots:

1. An individual is most willing to defend those who are emotionally closest to him because of love and empathy. (Obvious examples are the parent who risks life in an effort to save a child, and the soldier who throws himself on a grenade to protect his comrades.)

2. An individual is next most willing to defend those who are geographically closest to him because those persons, in turn, are the individual’s nearest allies. (This proposition is illustrated by the Union and the Confederacy in the American Civil War, and by the spirit of “we’re all in this together” that prevailed in the U.S. during World War I and World War II. This proposition is related to but does not depend on the notion that patriotism has evolutionary origins.)

3. If an individual is not willing to defend those who are emotionally or geographically closest to him, he cannot count on their willingness to defend him. In fact, he may be able to count on their enmity. (A case in point is Southerners’ antagonism toward the North for many decades after the Civil War, which arose from Southerners’ resentment toward the “War of Northern Aggresssion” and Reconstruction.)

The Constitution — in its pledge to “provide for the common defence” and its specific language enabling that “defence” — embodies the second and third observations. As Benjamin Franklin said to John Hancock at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” A main impetus for the adoption of the Constitution, to replace the Articles of Confederation that first bound the States, was to ensure that the States and the people could indeed hang together. And so we did, in the main, through World War II (the Civil War being the exception that truly proves the rule about geographic cohesion).

What we have seen since the end of World War II is the dissipation of the spirit that “we’re all in this together.” Every American war has had its domestic opponents, even World War II — at least before America joined it. But the Leftish voices of opposition to war — and to preparedness for war — have become louder and more strident in recent decades.

Republicans who opposed LBJ’s handling of the war in Vietnam opposed it largely because they viewed LBJ’s incrementalism as self-defeating. And they were right. My own contemporary, non-Republican view of the Vietnam War was that it was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, but that we ought to try to win it or simply walk away from it. We did neither, opting instead for virtual defeat. That defeat emboldened and legitimated America’s anti-defense, anti-war Leftists, who came to dominate the Democrat Party even before that Party’s venture in Vietnam had ended in ignominy. And thus it came to pass that the Democrat Party’s presidential nominee in 2004 was a notorious anti-Vietnam War veteran of that war.

Congressional Democrats, who mainly opposed George H.W. Bush’s entry into Gulf War I, weren’t granted enough time in which to beat him about the head with his “mistakes.” The war ended too quickly for that. The senior Bush’s real mistake was to heed the advice of those who wanted to walk away with the job half done, that is, with Saddam Hussein defeated but not unseated.

The many congressional Democrats who ostensibly supported George W. Bush’s entry into Iraq felt they had little choice but to do so in the aftermath of 9/11. But many of them since have followed their instincts (and their constituents’ instincts) and reneged on their initial support of the war. They have reverted to the anti-defense, anti-war posture of the modern Democrat Party, reviling President Bush for his “mistakes” (i.e., lack of 100-percent foresight) and blaming him for a fictitious “climate of oppression” in which voices against the war are stifled. They are so stifled that it is hard to be heard above the din of anti-defense, anti-war talk in the media and on the Web.

The country is divided. An important reason for that division is that half the country is unsure, for good reason, that the other half understands the value of — or even wants — a “common defence.” It is apparent to many Americans that many other Americans (i.e., most Democrats and all unaffiliated Leftists) will not countenance the defense of a fellow American (except perhaps a loved one or a next-door neighbor) unless and until the enemy is within spitting distance — if then.

This isn’t about the Iraq War being “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.” That’s merely the latest excuse for 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. Christopher Chantrill of The American Thinker explains:

Among the many things that our American liberals ask us to swallow in our own best interest is the idea that it is an act of lèse-majesté to call them unpatriotic even though they are utterly embarrassed by patriotism. Who has not heard the liberal across the dinner table dismissing nationalism as dangerous and aggressive? But we are not allowed to call them on it.

This power play began after World War II when it came to public knowledge that a number of people with first names that sounded like last names had been passing government secrets to the Soviet Union. We call this time the McCarthy Era.

The McCarthy Era taught liberals that their ideas of a post-nationalist world did not go down too well with the American people. By the skin of their teeth they managed to swim back into the mainstream through a successful counterattack upon Senator McCarthy. Ever since, when caught in a post-patriotic act, they have waved the bloody shirt of McCarthyism to cow their accusers into silence.

Alger Hiss and Dexter White were unpatriotic and proud of it, and so are today’s liberals — in their hearts. Hiss and White believed in a world higher and better than nation states. From their experience in the 1930s they knew that the age of capitalism and fractious nation states was coming to an end, and they wanted to be part of the exciting and altruistic movement that would create a new world order to replace the old, failed system. There would be no place for atavisms like patriotism in the post-patriotic world that they wanted to build.

And so it goes today.

Well, I wonder how those anti-defense, anti-war, post-patriots would feel if there weren’t some pro-defense, willing-to-go-to-war patriots around to defend them before the enemy is at their throats? Would France save them? How about their precious enemy detainees at Gitmo?

The Left has, by its words and deeds over the decades, seceded from the mutual-defense pact of the Constitution. The Left has served notice that it will do everything in its power to weaken the ability of those Americans who aren’t post-patriotic to prepare for and execute an effective mutual defense.

Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And Lincoln was right, but he was able to reunite the “house” by force. That is not an option now. The Left has more effectively seceded from the Union than did the Confederacy, but the Left’s secession cannot be rectified by force.

And so, those Americans who wish “to provide for the common defence” are forced to share a foxhole with those post-patriots who wish to undermine “the common defence.”

If the Left’s agenda prevails, we shall indeed all hang separately.

Three More Cheers for the Great Political Divide

Remember the famous red-blue charts that appeared in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential election? Here’s one of them:

Shades of purple indicate the spectrum of election preferences within counties. The deeper the shade of purple the higher the proportion of votes cast for Kerry.

But too often overlooked is this companion chart:

Counties shaded pink, red, and purple have the highest population density.

In sum, we already knew about the high correlation of population density (i.e., large cities) with “blueness” (Democrat votes).

Now, an outfit that calls itself the Bay Area Center for Voting Research (BACVR) has published a list of America’s 237 most liberal and conservative cities. Buried in the fine print (in a paper that I didn’t find on the Center’s site), is this description of the Center’s “research method”:

The Bay Area Center for Voting Research identified every American city with a population greater than 100,000 according to the 2000 Census, and obtained the election returns in each of these cities. . . . The votes were tabulated by combining the voting returns from all of the precincts located in a particular city.

Following the gathering of city voting returns, BACVR analyzed the political leanings of third party candidates who received more than 0.1% of the votes cast in a city so that they could be tabulated as liberal, conservative, or neutral. Cities were ranked based upon the percentage of residents who voted for George Bush and John Kerry, and eligible third party Presidential candidates also had their support tabulated. When analyzing the voting returns, votes for George W. Bush or other third party right-wing presidential candidates contributed to the city’s conservative score, while votes for John Kerry or other left-wing presidential candidates contributed to the city’s liberal score.

In other words, given the paucity of votes for third-party candidates in 2004, BACVR does little more than replicate the red-blue (Republican-Democrat) split, but does so only for cities with a population of more than 100,000. Moreover, BACVR counts votes for the Libertarian Party’s Michael Badnarik as “conservative” votes; Badnarik — a vocally anti-war libertarian — received more than 40 percent of the third-party votes cast in the cities in BACVR’s sample. In sum, BACVR’s “research” subtracts from the sum of human knowledge. But I’ll let BACVR speak for itself:

Being Liberal Now Means Being African American

By Phil Reiff and Jason Alderman

. . . .

New research done by the Bay Area Center for Voting Research (BACVR) reveals who the real liberals in American are and the answer is not the tree-hugging, ponytail wearing ex-hippies you might expect. Instead, the new face of American liberalism is of a decidedly different hue. The nation’s remaining liberals are overwhelming African Americans.

The BACVR study that ranks the political ideology of every major city in the country shows that cities with large black populations dominate the list of liberal communities. The research finds that Detroit is the most liberal city in the United States and has one of the highest concentrations of African American residents of any major city. Over 81% of the population in Detroit is African American, compared to the national average of 12.3%. In fact, the average percentage of African American residents in the 25 most liberal cities in the country is 40.3%, more than three times the national rate.

The list of America’s most liberal cities reads like a who’s who of prominent African American communities. Gary, Washington D.C., Newark, Flint, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Birmingham have long had prominent black populations. While most black voters have consistently supported Democrats since the 1960s, it is the white liberals that have slowly withered away over the decades, leaving African Americans as the sole standard bearers for the left.

Despite being the core of America’s liberal base, a major split exists between who the nation’s liberals are and who leads them politically. White politicians still control the levers of power within the Democratic Party, and black faces are rare around the decision making tables of America’s liberal advocacy groups.

While there are some noteworthy pockets of liberals who are not African American, these places end up being the exceptions. College towns like Berkeley and Cambridge have modest black populations, but remain bastions of upper middle-class, white, intellectual liberalism. These liberal communities, however, are more reminiscent of penguins clustering together around a shrinking iceberg, than of a vibrant growing political movement.

Further reinforcing this racial and ideological divide is BACVR research which shows that the most conservative city in America is the ultra white community of Provo, Utah, where less than 1% of the population is black.

Political pundits have noted the highly polarized nature of the American electorate, postulating that religion, age, education, wealth, and even the love of car racing are at the heart of the schism between liberals and conservatives. While these experts have identified some of the symptoms of our national rift, they have missed the root cause.

BACVR’s research gives us the real answer, disheartening as it may be. The great political divide in America today is not red vs. blue, north vs. south, costal vs. interior, or even rich vs. poor – it is now clearly black vs. white.

It seems to me that the piece should be titled “Being African American or an Academic Means Being a Democrat,” with this subhead: “Blacks Play into the Hands of White Liberal Elites.” But what else is new?

The real story isn’t that “white liberals that have slowly withered away over the decades, leaving African Americans as the sole standard bearers for the left.” The real story (a non-story, actually) is that larger cities have become increasingly black, and blacks have remained true to the Democrat Party. The real story is that blacks, on the whole, are less educated and less affluent than whites and therefore less likely to live in college towns like Berkeley and Cambridge (not to mention Madison and Ann Arbor) or high-tech centers like Provo (and nearby Orem).

Given BACVR’s less-than-candid description of its methods, I wasn’t surprised to read this in today’s Austin American-Statesman:

[BACVR] named Austin the 93rd most liberal city in the land, just slightly bluer on the electoral map than Virginia Beach and Salt Lake City.

Dallas was 32nd, two slots more liberal than Madison, Wis.

The study found that cities with large black populations tended to turn out for liberal candidates. Austin has a relatively small black population.

The rankings threaten to obliterate a tradition of snide remarks about [Austin] from less-liberal burgs such as Plano (fifth most conservative U.S. city, the study says), Abilene (third most conservative) and Lubbock (No. 2, trailing/leading only Provo, Utah).

Thus, the report was immediately dismissed by everyone.

“I would find it hard to believe that Austin is not in the top 25 or 30 liberal cities,” Travis County Republican Party Chairman Alan Sager said, not particularly complimentarily.

The unsurprising news is that the city of Dallas is more “liberal” than Austin because the city of Dallas has a proportionally larger black population. That’s about all there is to it. Metropolitan Dallas is another story. There are, for example, the suburbs and exurbs of Plano (number 5 on the “conservative” list), Arlington (number 10), Garland (number 29), Carrollton (number 34), and Mesquite (number 52).

Consider this map of the cities in the lower 48 States that voted more than 55 percent “conservative” (red) or more than 55 percent “liberal” (blue) in the 2004 presidential election:

What do you see? I see voluntary social, economic, and academic segregation. I see the “rust, snow, and mist belt” of the Northeast, upper Midwest, and Pacific Northwest vs. the “sun and farm belt” of the South (excluding its large cities) and “flyover country.” I see the “have nots” in the older cities (and close-in suburbs), teamed with college-town socialists, vs. the “haves” (but not the super-rich guilty ones) in the newer cities and exurbs. Birds of a feather do tend to flock together.

As I wrote in “The Great Divide Is a Great Thing,” a commentary on another fatuous piece of non-news from the local rag:

The Austin American Statesman, that great proponent of civic morality, has been running an occasional series called “The Great Divide.” It’s about the supposed polarization of American politics and American society. A sample from today’s installment (registration required, not worth the trouble):

In stories published this year, the Statesman has reported that since the late 1970s, Democrats and Republicans have been segregating, as people sift themselves into more politically homogeneous communities. . . .

People are less likely to live and vote among those with different political leanings, and the nation’s politics have grown bitter as a result. “Things get ugly when you have this kind of divergence,” California Institute of Technology political scientist Jonathan Katz says. “Each side thinks the other is wrong.”

Of course “each side thinks the other is wrong,” as the idiot from CalTech so pompously observes. (He probably analyzed a lot of data for a lot of years to figure that out.) It’s always been that way and always will be that way. That’s why the nation’s politics are so “ugly” and “bitter”. Actually they’re no more ugly and bitter than they’ve ever been, we’re just more aware of the ugliness and bitterness because (1) there are more screaming heads on TV and the internet than there used to be and (2) Democrats no longer rule the roost as they used to, which has caused them to scream louder than ever.

All this business with screaming heads just confirms one fact of life: Face-to-face political argument seldom ever changes a person’s mind, it usually hardens it.

So why should people with opposing views live near each other if they’re going to wind up fighting about politics? How many family dinners have been ruined by Uncle Joe called his nephew Fred a pinko, commie, hippie freeloader or a right-wing, fascist, capitalist exploiter of the working classes? Now, if you don’t like your family’s politics you move to where your family ain’t — and to where your can enjoy a peaceful meal with like-minded friends, chuckling over the idiocy of John Kerry or George Bush, as you prefer, without an Uncle Joe to spoil the fun.

The truly bad thing about the great political divide is that most blacks choose to remain with the party whose policies ensure their enslavement to and impoverishment by the welfare state.

Other related posts:
Is There Such a Thing as Legal Discrimination? (09/23/04)
More on the Legality of Discrimination (09/24/04)
Race and Acceptance (09/27/04)
Buckley Cuts Through the Cant (10/26/04)
The Case for Devolved Government (11/17/04)
Let ‘Em Secede (11/22/04)
Rich Voter, Poor Voter, and Academic Liberalism (04/13/05)
Tolerance and Poverty (04/19/05)
Class in America (05/17/05)

Why Not Marry Your Pet?

The “hot” story these days is the impending marriage of two Canadian men. Not because they’re homosexual, but because they’re not:

Two self-professed straight (that is, heterosexual) Canadian men have made public their decision to get ‘married’ to one another. It was only a matter of time, of course.

The Ottawa Citizen reported [. . .] that while sitting in a bar last week it occurred to Bill Dalrymple, 56, and Bryan Pinn, 65, that [. . .] with both of them being single, apparently without any serious opposite-sex marriage prospects on the line, it wouldn’t be such a bad tax-saving idea to get hitched . . . to each other. Thanks to the newly instated civil marriage act, extending “marriage” rights to same-sex couples, that’s not a problem. And since the new act doesn’t include any discriminatory restrictions on ‘sexual preference’ (as if that could be measured anyway) the two thoroughly straight men seem to have a clear path to the altar. . . .

[. . .] Bruce Walker, a Toronto area gay and lesbian rights activist, has [criticized Dalrymple and Pinn]. “Generally speaking, marriage should be for love,” he said. “People who don’t marry for love will find themselves in trouble.” . . .

“Marriage”, now, as Canada has defined it and the pro-gay activists have consistently defended it, has absolutely nothing to do with copulation or sexuality or procreation and everything to do with ‘love’—not erotic love, just . . . love, of whatever kind. . . .

Dalrymple and Pinn simply believe in the old-fashioned kind of brotherly love.

Well, why not marry a beloved pet? If you die before the pet does, the pet will inherit your home and have a comfy place in which to live out its days, without going through the fuss and bother of probate.

(Thanks to my son for pointing me to the story about Dalrymple and Pinn.)

Technorati tag: Political Correctness

PC Madness

Coyote Blog points to the NCAA’s latest venture into political correctness:

The presidents and chancellors who serve on the NCAA Executive Committee have adopted a new policy to prohibit NCAA colleges and universities from displaying hostile and abusive racial/ethnic/national origin mascots, nicknames or imagery at any of the 88 NCAA championships.

The Executive Committee, meeting Thursday in Indianapolis, also approved recommended best practices for schools who continue to use Native American mascots, nicknames and imagery in their intercollegiate athletic programs.

“Colleges and universities may adopt any mascot that they wish, as that is an institutional matter,” said Walter Harrison, chair of the Executive Committee and president at the University of Hartford. “But as a national association, we believe that mascots, nicknames or images deemed hostile or abusive in terms of race, ethnicity or national origin should not be visible at the championship events that we control.”

Obviously, no college or university in the U.S. is hostile toward Native Americans or any other group of persons that isn’t white, male, and heterosexual. So what’s the problem?

Why aren’t the Greeks and Turks upset about all those teams of Spartans and Trojans dotted around the country?

If livestock could vote, the NCAA certainly would be riding herd on Mustangs and Broncos, and all of those other rampaging animals. Though I doubt that anyone would stick up for the Mud Hens (the nickname of a minor league baseball team).

Speaking of baseball — my favorite sport — why aren’t New Englanders up in arms about the New York Yankees when most New Englanders (the original Yankees) are fans of the Boston Red Sox.

I guess it’s okay to call a team the Sox (the Red of Boston or White of Chicago) because there are few textile and hosiery manufacturers still operating in the U.S. We still have a lot of mountains, though, so I do have to wonder about the Colorado Rockies.

Why aren’t matched siblings and extra-large persons upset about the Minnesota Twins and San Francisco Giants?

Why aren’t professional groups of various sorts marching against the Houston Astros (for astronauts), Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles (trolley) Dodgers, Milwaukee Brewers, Oakland Athletics, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, and Texas Rangers?

Birds should sue the Baltimore Orioles, St. Louis Cardinals, and Toronto Blue Jays. And there are the beasts of land and sea who must be offended by the likes of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago Cubs, Detroit Tigers, Florida Marlins, and Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Then there are those pesky Native American teams, the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians. Why haven’t they wised up yet?

So we’re right back where we started. I guess what we need are more teams with innocuous names like the New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, and Washington Nationals.

Come to think of it, I doubt that any self-respecting PC policeperson would object to the Cincinnati Reds. I mean, aren’t socialism and communism far more enlightened systems than free-market capitalism?

Technorati tag: Political Correctness

Celebrity Twaddle

Sir (to some) Ian McKellen, interviewed in this week’s Newsweek, has this to say about his “coming out”:

I became a better actor, and my film career took off in a way that I couldn’t have expected. You can’t lie about something so central to yourself without harming yourself. Acting in my case is no longer about disguiseÂit’s about telling the truth, and my truth is that I’m gay. I’m very happy for people to know that, and then I can get on with telling the truth about the character that I’m playing. That’s why I can say to other actors: if you really want to be a good actor and a successful one, and you’re gay, let everybody know it.

It’s lucky for McKellen that he’s instinctively a good actor, for he doesn’t seem to understand what acting is all about. A character in a film or play has no “truth” because a character is, by definition, fictional. The actor’s job is to make the character believable to an audience. An actor can do that successfully and still be a liar, a cheat, a drunkard, a dope addict, or an adulterer (to name only a few traits common to actors) — as generations of actors have proved. Acting is acting. It has nothing to do with one’s “truth.”

But political correctness requires celebrities to utter twaddle such as that uttered by McKellen. One thing’s for sure: Successful acting doesn’t require a very high degree of intelligence, just good acting instincts and good scripts.

Technorati tag: Political Correctness

Defending My Right to Be Bombed

Now we learn this from The Times Online:

Mohammed Atta and three other men who hijacked aircraft on September 11, 2001 were identified by the US Government as possible members of an al-Qaeda cell more than a year before the attacks, it was reported today. . . .

The secret military team, known as Able Danger, recommended that the identities of the four men be shared with the FBI and other parts of the military, but the recommendation was never taken up, according to a Republican Congressman, Curt Weldon, quoted by the newspaper. . . .

The CIA tracked the men through 2000 before passing their information to the FBI in the spring of 2001.

According to Mr Weldon, who said he has tried to share this information since September 2001, when it first came to his notice, the risk posed by Atta and his cohorts never spread through America’a law enforcement agencies because of the uneasy co-operation between the FBI and the military. . . .

The classified military intelligence unit used sophisticated “data mining” techniques, which process huge amounts of data to find patterns, to identify Atta and the three other men as likely members of an al-Qaeda cell within two months of their arrival in America in 2000.

And from The International Herald Tribune:

. . . Able Danger, prepared a chart in the summer of 2000 that included visa photographs of the four men, including the ringleader, Mohammed Atta. The unit recommended to the military’s Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the FBI, the former official and the Republican congressman, Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, said Monday.

The recommendation was rejected, and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Atta and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas.

Under U.S. law, intelligence agencies may not collect intelligence on individual citizens and permanent residents. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Weldon and the former official said it may have reinforced a sense of discomfort[*] common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency.

So we have here two lessons:

Data mining can actually detect bad guys.

Intelligence sharing might well have led to the capture of the bad guys before they did something terribly bad.

But knee-jerk civil libertarians won’t have any of it. They want to defend my right to be bombed.
__________
* There was more than “discomfort” about intelligence-sharing, there was a wall between criminal investigators and intelligence agents.

Technorati tag: Civil Liberties and the War on Terror

Moral Luck

I have just come across the philosophical concept known as moral luck, which is illustrated by this example from Wikipedia:

Suppose there are two truck drivers, Driver A, and Driver B. They are exactly alike in every single way, drive the same exact car, have the same driving schedule, have the same exact reaction time, and so forth. Let’s say that Driver A is driving down a road, following all legal driving requirements, when suddenly, a child runs out in the middle of the road to retrieve a lost ball. Driver A slams the brakes, swerves, in short, does everything to try to avoid hitting the child — alas, the inertia of the truck is too great, and the distance between the truck and the child is too short. Unfortunately, the child is killed as the result of the collision. Driver B, in the meantime, is following the exact same route, doing all the exact same things, and everything is quite exactly the same – except for one important distinction. In his scenario, there is no child that appears on the road as if out of nowhere. He gets to his destination safely, and there no accident occurs.

If a bystander were asked to morally evaluate Drivers A and B, there is very good reason to expect him to say that Driver A is due more moral blame than Driver B. After all, his course of action resulted in the death of a child, whereas the course of action taken by Driver B was quite uneventful. However, there are absolutely no differences in the controllable actions performed by Drivers A and B. The only disparity is that in the case of Driver A, an external uncontrollable event occurred, whereas it did not in the case of Driver B. The external uncontrollable event, of course, is the child appearing on the road. In other words, there is no difference at all in what the two of them could have done – however, one seems clearly more to blame than the other. How does this occur?

This is the problem of moral luck. If we agree that moral responsibility should only be relevant when the agent voluntarily performed or failed to perform some action, we should blame Drivers A and B equally, or praise them equally, as may be the case. At the same time, this seems to be at least intuitively problematic, as — whatever the external circumstances are – one situation resulted in an unfortunate death, and the other did not.

My reaction: The example only shows that moral luck is an artificial philosophical construct. Specifically, Driver B’s experience is irrelevant because Driver B wasn’t placed in the same circumstances as Driver A. The example avoids the real issues, which are these:

Did Driver A in fact drive prudently? That isn’t the same thing as “following all legal driving requirements.” Driver A might have passed a breathalyzer test, but perhaps just barely. Or Driver A might have been talking on his cell phone in a jurisdiction that doesn’t forbid doing so while driving. Or Driver A might not have been paying full attention to his surroundings (an undetectable lapse) because he was thinking about where to make his next turn.

More fundamentally, the example fails to mention the actions of the child and the child’s parents. Was the child of an age to have known better than to dart into the street without looking? Why was the child allowed to play with a ball near the street? Why wasn’t someone keeping an eye on the child? Why hadn’t the child’s parents fenced the front yard and seen to it that the child couldn’t unlatch the gate?

If Driver A drove prudently, no blame can attach to Driver A. The blame, if any, must attach to the child or the child’s parents, an option that the example omits.

Wikipedia continues:

Moral luck entails two extreme outcomes, both of which seem intuitively unacceptable.

If, one hand, we accept moral luck as a real phenomenon and accept it as a valid restriction on personal responsibility (and, consequently, the assign[ment] of moral blame or praise), it is difficult to identify a situation where moral luck does not affect an event or an individual. Many, if not all, of the moral judgments that we engage in daily seem to become problematic, since any single action can be defended as having been affected by moral luck. Constitutive moral luck [pertaining to the personal character of the moral agent] especially highlights this problem – after all, it is perfectly valid to argue that every single thing that we do relates in some way to our personal character disposition, and is not one hundred percent voluntary. Thus, if we do stick by our requirement of moral responsibility as needing complete volition, we cannot validly morally assess any action performed by an individual. As Nagel himself points out, if moral luck is accepted as a valid premise, the area of individual moral responsibility seems to “shrink . . . to an extensionless point.”

On the other hand, if we deny the influence of moral luck and refuse to accept that it has anything to do with moral evaluation (as Kant most certainly would, for example), we are left with a single unappealing option: we are responsible for everything that we do, whether voluntarily or not, and for all the consequences, no matter how unforeseen or unlikely, that our actions entail. By this logic, the unlucky Driver A from our earlier example can take no solace in the fact that there was nothing he could have done to prevent the death of the child as the result of the accident – he deserves the full amount of moral blame that can be assigned for such an outcome.

That is, moral luck either (1) negates personal responsibility or (2) places all responsibility on the individual actor to whom things happen. I reject the first premise because we have free will or must act as if we have it. (See this post.) I reject the second premise because, as I argued above, it fails to account for the freely chosen actions of others.

The concept of moral luck strikes me as useless philosophical casuistry. I’m sorry it came to my attention. I will now try to forget it.

Technorati tag: Philosophy

The Consequences and Causes of Abstinence

A few weeks ago, in a comment thread at Catallarchy, I made this observation:

Less teen sex = less disease + fewer unwanted children + fewer early (and often unhappy) marriages

Parents who want to protect their children therefore try to teach them to eschew sex because of its potential consequences. Abstinence — by definition — works better than prophylaxis and contraception.

That evoked a response in a later comment thread that I had “list[ed] only the harm caused by sex and not the benefit.” Well, there were plenty of hedonistic voices arguing the benefit side. What was needed was someone to argue the cost side, and that’s what I did. Moreover, my point — which seems to have been missed in all the shouting — was about the responsibility of parents to teach their children about the cost side.

The usual argument goes like this: Kids will do it anyway. Well, kids are less likely to do it “anyway” if they’re brought up to believe that they shouldn’t do it “anyway.” And the bringing-up isn’t done in public schools, it’s done in the home by parents who teach their children not only about sex but also about responsible (i.e., moral) behavior.

The critics of abstinence education focus on the results of studies (e.g., here and here) about the sexual practices of groups of public-school students. They conclude that abstinence education in public schools is ineffective and perhaps even counterproductive in its effects on teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. But such studies aren’t above criticism; see this, from The Heritage Foundation, for instance. Moreover, what those studies don’t tell us is what happens to teens who are predisposed (by their parents) to eschew sex. Here’s one bit of relevant information (from a research paper published by The Heritage Foundation):

[T]aking a virginity pledge in adolescence…is associated with a substantial decline in STD rates in young adult years. Across a broad array of analysis, virginity pledging was found to be a better predictor of STD reduction than was condom use. Individuals who took a virginity pledge in adolescence are some 25 percent less likely to have an STD as young adults, when compared with non-pledgers who are identical in race, gender, and family background.

More tellingly, there’s this, from the National Institutes of Health:

Teens — particularly girls — with strong religious views are less likely to have sex than are less religious teens, largely because their religious views lead them to view the consequences of having sex negatively. According to a recent analysis of the NICHD-funded Add Health Survey, religion reduces the likelihood of adolescents engaging in early sex by shaping their attitudes and beliefs about sexual activity . . . .

Sexual intercourse places teens at risk for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, and unintended pregnancy. The information provided by the study may prove important for health researchers and planners devising programs that help prevent teens from engaging in sexual activity.

Hmm . . . isn’t that what I said at the outset?

I now turn to this story about a letter published in the British Medical Journal (available only by subscription):

A letter by Australian bioethicist Dr. Amin Abboud published in the July 30 edition of the British Medical Journal notes that “A regression analysis done on the HIV situation in Africa indicates that the greater the percentage of Catholics in any country, the lower the level of HIV.”

Dr. Abboud’s letter comes in response to an article published in the journal’s June 4 issue which wonders if newly elected Pope Benedict XVI will alter the Church’s teaching on condoms in light of the burgeoning HIV/AIDS epidemic. Abboud asserts that “On the basis of statistical evidence it would seem detrimental to the HIV situation in Africa if he did authorise such a change.”

“On the basis of data from the World Health Organization,” reports Abboud, “in Swaziland where 42.6% have HIV, only 5% of the population is Catholic. In Botswana, where 37% of the adult population is HIV infected, only 4% of the population is Catholic. In South Africa, 22% of the population is HIV infected, and only 6% is Catholic. In Uganda, with 43% of the population Catholic, the proportion of HIV infected adults is 4%.” . . .

Abboud concludes his letter stating, “The causes of the HIV crisis in Africa need to be found elsewhere. The solutions must go beyond latex. If anything, the holistic approach to sexuality that Catholicism advocates, based on the evidence at hand, seems to save lives. I would welcome an editorial on that or, as a minimum, some evidence based advice on HIV.”

It all boils down to personal responsibility, which is taught by parents (especially those who bring up their children in a traditional religion) and undermined by government programs. I thought libertarianism was all about personal responsibility, but for many libertarians it seems to be all about hedonism.

Technorati tag: Abstinence

Conservatism, Libertarianism, Socialism, and Democracy

Libertarians have much company in the struggle against socialism. From Ten Books That Shaped America’s Conservative Renaissance:

George H. Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 is the authoritative study on conservatism’s intellectual renaissance. In it, Nash outlines an American conservative movement that was forged, at times uneasily, from three intellectual groups: libertarians, anti-Communists, and traditionalists. . . .

After the 1964 election, and especially after the implementation of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs, the conservative movement welcomed what was to become the fourth component of its intellectual coalition. Popularly known as “neoconservatives,” this group of disillusioned liberals, claiming, as one of them put it, to have been “mugged by reality,” migrated to the conservative cause. Reacting in part to the social uprisings of the 60s, in part to the isolationism and perceived “anti-Americanism” ofthe New Left, and in part to the consequences of liberal activism in government, these gifted newcomers came to realize that good intentions do not guarantee good or effective government.

Let’s hear it for the libertarians:

Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, conservatives of all stripes have denounced the growth of the American welfare state. After World War II in particular, many conservatives were alarmed at the decrease of economic freedom at home and the rise of collectivism overseas. The growth of the omnipotent state was leading to a degree of cultural deterioration that alarmed many thoughtful people.

It was the so-called “libertarians” who responded first to the unwelcome changes that were wrought by this new American “superstate.” The libertarians were attracted to the economic an political teachings of classical, nineteenth century individualists. The principles libertarians believed should guide government were free markets, private property, individualism, and limited government, in short, laissez-faire. The 1930s, the decade of the New Deal, had been uncongenial years for devotees of economic and personal liberty, and it wasn’t until after the war that these libertarian ideas gained a sympathetic hearing.

As has been suggested by a number of scholars, post-war libertarians were buttressed theoretically and philosophically from their association with members of the Austrian School of economics. Since the late-nineteenth century, economists associated with the Austrian School have been forceful critics of all variants of anti-capitalism and collectivism. The most famous of these Austrian economists is Friedrich von Hayek, whose 1944 book The Road to Serfdom was central to the early definition of the conservative movement. It was Hayek’s contention that “[a]lthough we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism.” The purpose of his book was to explain “why and how certain kinds of economic controls tend to paralyze the driving forces of a free society.”. . . For Hayek, the socialists, under the guise of equality, were setting us back on the road to serfdom—that is, back to a condition ofpolitical and economic servitude and away from the ideal of a free society….

[Ludwig von Mises’s] book Socialism, [a] work that considerably influenced early conservative thinking, powerfully challenged socialist economics as being not only inherently flawed because they are unable to allocate scarce resources efficiently, but contrary to the very nature of the individual as well. Collectivist economics does not recognize the central role played by the entrepreneur in ordinary economic and social organization. For Mises, socialism was far from being a humane alternative to the free market. Rather, at bottom, it was contrary to human nature itself. By denying the human aspect—the role each individual plays in communicating vital economic information—socialism, according to Mises, was doomed to fail.

Hayek and Mises were right about the inhumane character of socialism, but Mises was wrong about its inevitable failure. The neoconservative Irving Kristol glimpsed the truth of the matter:

[Kristol’s] book On the Democratic Idea in America helped to direct and shape the conservative movement. The subject of the book, in Kristol’s own words, was “the tendency of democratic republics to depart from…their original, animating principles, and as a consequence precipitate grave crises in the moral and political order.” Kristol condemned moral relativism as vigorously as did the traditionalists. As against the libertarians, however, he only gave “two cheers” for capitalism. He noted that while he did “think that, within limits, the notion of the ‘hidden hand’ has its uses in the market place,” he also believed that “the results are disastrous when it is extended to the polity as a whole….” For Kristol, “[s]elf-government, the basic principle of the republic, is inexorably being eroded in favor of self-seeking, self-indulgence, and just plain aggressive selfishness.”

Kristol misunderstands libertarianism if he thinks that it tolerates a form of government which enables some to steal from others. But Kristol is right that (limited) self-government has been replaced by unconstrained self-indulgence, operating through government.

As I have written elsewhere, democracy is an enemy of liberty. What should be private, such as the voluntary exchange of goods and services for mutual gain, “democracy” has made public. The problem isn’t libertarianism or capitalism, it’s state interference in consensual private matters, which diminshes the general good on the pretext of serving the general good. This passage from Jill Paton Walsh’s A Desert in Bohemia captures the socialist mindset, wherever it prevails:

‘You see,’ said Slavomir, swinging in his chair, and twirling a pencil between finger and thumb, ‘this idea that there is a private sphere which is of no concern to the authorities is a very decadent and dangerous one. No-one has an individuality which is not a construction of society, and no-one can have any right to purse conduct which is not for the general good. What do you say to that?’

‘Who decides what is for the general good?’ said Frantsiek.

‘The party,’ said Slavomir, ‘because they are the most enlightened section of society. . . .’

And there you have it. Our counterpart of “the party” — political “leaders,” abetted by the “intelligentsia,” and goaded by the voting masses — cynically imposes its desires in the name of the general good. Limited government, free people, and free markets be damned.

Related post: A Paradox for Libertarians

Technorati tag: Political Philosophy

Now, Let’s Talk About Something Else

UPDATED BELOW

From Richard B. Frank, writing at The Weekly Standard:

The sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima seems to be shaping up as a subdued affair–though not for any lack of significance. A survey of news editors in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, first among the top one hundred stories of the twentieth century. And any thoughtful list of controversies in American history would place it near the top again. It was not always so. In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war. They further believed that those bombs had actually ended the war and saved countless lives. This set of beliefs is now sometimes labeled by academic historians the “traditionalist” view. One unkindly dubbed it the “patriotic orthodoxy.”

But in the 1960s, what were previously modest and scattered challenges of the decision to use the bombs began to crystallize into a rival canon. The challengers were branded “revisionists,” but this is inapt. Any historian who gains possession of significant new evidence has a duty to revise his appreciation of the relevant events. These challengers are better termed critics.

The critics share three fundamental premises. The first is that Japan’s situation in 1945 was catastrophically hopeless. The second is that Japan’s leaders recognized that fact and were seeking to surrender in the summer of 1945. The third is that thanks to decoded Japanese diplomatic messages, American leaders knew that Japan was about to surrender when they unleashed needless nuclear devastation. The critics divide over what prompted the decision to drop the bombs in spite of the impending surrender, with the most provocative arguments focusing on Washington’s desire to intimidate the Kremlin. Among an important stratum of American society–and still more perhaps abroad–the critics’ interpretation displaced the traditionalist view….

[I]t is clear [from a review of the evidence now available] that all three of the critics’ central premises are wrong. The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood–as one analytical piece in the “Magic” Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts–that “until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies.” This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.

UPDATE: See also this piece by Victor Davis Hanson.

Technorati tag: The Decision to Drop the Bomb

A Paradox for Libertarians

Libertarians, by definition, believe in the superiority of liberty: the negative right to be left alone — in one’s person, pursuits, and property — as long as one leaves others alone. Libertarians therefore believe in the illegitimacy of state-enforced values (e.g., income redistribution, censorship, punishment of “victimless” crimes) because they are inimical to liberty.

Some libertarians (minarchists, such as I) nevertheless believe in the necessity of a state, as long as the state’s role is restricted to the protection of liberty. Other libertarians (anarcho-capitalists) argue that the state itself is illegitimate because the existence of a state necessarily compromises liberty. I have dealt elsewhere with the anarcho-capitalist position, and have found it wanting. (See “But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?” and the posts linked to at the bottom of that post.)

Let’s nevertheless imagine a pure anarcho-capitalist society whose members agree voluntarily to leave each other alone. All social and economic transactions are voluntary. Contracts and disputes are enforced through arbitration, to which all parties agree to submit and by the results of which all parties agree to abide. A private agency enforces contractual obligations and adherence to the outcomes of arbitration. (You know that this anarcho-capitalist society is pure fantasy because a private agency with such power is a de facto state. And competing private agencies, each of which may represent a party to a dispute are de facto warlords. But I digress.)

Now, for the members of this fantasyland to enjoy liberty implies, among other things, absolute freedom of speech, except for speech that amounts to harassment, slander, or libel (which are forms of aggression that deprive others of liberty). But what about speech that would sunder the society into libertarian and non-libertarian factions? Suppose that a persuasive orator were to convince a potentially dominant faction of the society of the following proposition: The older members of society should be supported by the younger members, all of whom must “contribute” to the support of the elders, like it or not. Suppose further that the potentially dominant faction heeds the persuasive orator and forces everyone to “contribute” to the support of elders.

Note that our little society’s prior agreement to let everyone live in peace wouldn’t survive persuasive oratory (just as America’s relatively libertarian economic order didn’t survive FDR, the Constitution notwithstanding). Perhaps our little society should therefore adopt this restraint on liberty: No one may advocate or conspire in the coercion of the populace, for any end other than defense of the society.

Why an exception for defense? Imagine the long-term consequences for our little society if it were to dither as a marauding band approached, or if too few members of the society were to volunteer the resources needed to defeat the marauding band. What’s the good of the society’s commitment to liberty if it leads to the society’s demise?

Now, the restraint on speech and the exception for defense couldn’t be self-enforcing. There would have to a single agency empowered to enforce such things. That agency might as well be called the state.

Here, then, is the paradox for libertarians: Some aspects of liberty must be circumscribed in order to preserve most aspects of liberty.

Note: My free-speech example is just that, an example. I’m not proposing any further restrictions on freedom of speech in the United States, which already has been restricted too much, notably in the realms of commercial and political speech.

This post is also available at Blogger News Network.

Technorati tag: Libertariansim

Continuation of "Sorting Out Libertarian Hawks and Doves"

This is a continuation of a post at Liberty Corner.

I commented on Micha Ghertner’s post, “Moral Relativism Isn’t What You Think It Is,” at Catallarchy. Joe Miller’s comment on my comment led me to follow up with a hypothetical and some related questions. Joe Miller replied thoroughly and thoughtfully to those questions. I reproduce below my hypothetical and the related questions (flush left), Joe Miller’s replies to those questions (indented and set in italics), and my response to Joe Miller’s replies (double-indented and set in bold).

The hypothetical:

1. In Country A (just as in Country B), the armed forces are controlled by the state. (I don’t want to get off onto the tangent of whether war is more or less likely if defense is provided by private agencies.)

2. The only restriction on the liberty of Country A’s citizens is that they must pay taxes to support their armed forces. Country B’s citizens own no property; their jobs are dictated by the state; their income is dictated by the state; and all aspects of their lives are regimented by state decrees.

3. Though Country A’s armed forces are underwritten by taxes, the members of the armed forces are volunteers. The members of Country B’s armed forces are conscripts, and Country B’s armed forces are, in effect, supplied and equipped by slave labor.

4. Country A would liberate Country B’s citizens, if it could. Country B would subjugate or kill Country A’s citizens, if it could.

The questions (all of which I answer “yes”):

1. If Country B attacks Country A, what limits (if any) would you place on the measures Country A might take in its defense? Specifically:

a. Are civilian casualties in Country B acceptable at all?

1. a. Yes, provided that Country A doesn’t directly intend those casualties, that it takes pains to minimize such casualties, and that it ensures that said casualties are proportional to military gains.

I don’t know how to evaluate proportionality. Perhaps an empathetic decision-maker might make a seat-of-the-pants judgment that “enough is enough” or “the particular objective isn’t worth the cost in human life.” Do you have a more precise metric in mind?

b. Are civilian casualties in Country B acceptable if they’re the result of mistakes on Country A’s part or the unavoidable result of Country A’s attacks on Country B’s armed forces and infrastructure?

1. b. Yes, but see 1a. for caveats.

See my comment on your answer to 1.a.

c. Is the deliberate infliction by Country A of civilian casualties in Country B acceptable as long as Country A’s leaders reasonably believe that the infliction of those casualties – and nothing else – will bring about the defeat of Country B? (Assume, here, that Country A’s leaders try to inflict only the number of casualties deemed necessary to the objective.)

1. c. Maybe. I think that there are two components to supreme emergency. One is that there must be an imminent danger of losing and the second is that losing must be catastrophically evil. Worldwide Stalinism probably would count. I’m not sure, from your quick description of Country B, that it really meets the second part of that criteron.

It would always be a judgment call. I suppose there are many libertarians (not to mention pacifists) who would rule out any deliberate infliction of casualties, even under the circumstances I’ve outlined.

(Assume, for purposes of the next 2 questions, that Country A inflicts casualties on Country B’s civilians only to the extent that those casualties are the result of mistakes or unavoidable collateral damage.)

2. Should Country A attack Country B if Country A concludes (rightly or wrongly, but in good faith) that Country B is about to attack, and if Country B strikes first it is likely to:

a. win a quick victory and subjugate Country A?

2. a. Yes. I’ve no objection to preemptive strikes, provided that it really is the case that Country B is about to attack. If you and I get into a fight, I see no reason that I’m obligated to wait for your first punch to land before I can defend myself. Once I see that you’re going to throw the punch, it’s okay if mine lands first. I can’t see why that ought not apply in war, as well.

b. inflict heavy casualties on Country A’s citizens?

2. b. Yes, again. It’s not the winning or losing or the casualties that matter here. It’s a question of aggression. The scenario you describe makes Country B the aggressor, regardless of who actually fires the first shot. That said, finding real cases of preemption isn’t easy to do. Israel in the Six Day’s War comes closest. (Or is it Seven? Hard to keep up with countries that keep winning wars in less than a week.)

3. Should Country A attack Country B if Country A concludes (rightly or wrongly, but in good faith) that Country B is developing the wherewithal to attack, and if Country B strikes first it is likely to

a. win a quick victory and subjugate Country A?

3. a. Nope. Here’s the analogy I like to use in class. Suppose that you and I really don’t like each other. In fact, we really hate one another. As it happens, right now, I’m stronger than you and know a bit about fighting, so I’m not really in much danger from you in a fight. But now suppose that I see that you’ve taken out a gym membership and signed up for Kung Fu classes at the Y. Am I justified in beating you up now on the grounds that, in a few months, you might possibly decide to beat me up? The same has to hold true for nations, I think. The mere fact that Country B doesn’t like Country A and is arming itself doesn’t imply that Country A will actually attack Country B. After all, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. actively didn’t like one another and actively armed against one another without ever actually directly shooting at one another. Possibility of future attack doesn’t justify preventive war. Imminence of attack does. When Country B makes it clear that they actually mean to attack, then they’ve aggressed against Country A and war is justified.

Assume this situation: Country B is developing a devasting weapon that, if used, would kill half of Country A’s inhabitants. There is no way to defend against the weapon if Country B decides to use it. Country B hasn’t said that it would use the weapon, but the mere existence of the weapon poses a grave threat to Country A’s citizens. Country B has demonstrated through its past behavior that it is unreceptive to pleas, negotiations, and offers of economic “assistance” (i.e., bribes). The only way to ensure that Country B won’t use the weapon when it’s built is to destroy the weapon in a pre-emptive attack, while the weapon is still under development. Country B has deliberately placed the development site so that a pre-emptive attack would result in the deaths of one-half of Country B’s citizens. What would you do? I know what I’d do, given my opening statements about Country A and Country B: I’d launch the pre-emptive attack, as long as it had a reasonable chance of success (say 50%) and as long as I had the wherewithal to launch at least one more equally potent attack.

3.b. inflict heavy casualties on Country A’s citizens?

3. b. Same as 3a.

See my comment on your answer to 3.a.

Sorting Out the Libertarian Hawks and Doves

UPDATED TWICE, BELOW

Paleolibertarians adhere to something they call the non-aggression principle. According to Walter Block, writing at LewRockwell.com (a paleo site):

The non-aggression axiom is the lynchpin of the philosophy of libertarianism. It states, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate (or threaten) violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another.

In another post, Block writes:

The libertarian non-aggression axiom is the essence of libertarianism. Take away this axiom, and libertarianism might as well be libraryism, or vegetarianism. Thus, if a person is to be a libertarian, he must, he absolutely must, in my opinion, be able to distinguish aggression from defense.

Here’s a joke. Do you know the difference between a bathroom and a living room? No? Well, don’t come to my house. In this spirit I ask, do you know the difference between offense and defense? Between aggression and defense against aggression? No? Well, then, don’t call yourself a libertarian.

I can’t read anyone out of the libertarian movement. No one appointed me guardian of this honorific. I am just giving my humble opinion. In like manner, if you couldn’t tell the difference between a hammer and a chisel, I wouldn’t consider you a carpenter. If you couldn’t distinguish between a brush and paint, I wouldn’t consider you a painter. In much the same way, if you can’t tell offense and defense apart, that is, if you believe in pre-emptive strikes against those who are not attacking you, then I can’t consider you a libertarian even if you favor free enterprise and oppose criminalizing voluntary adult conduct.

There are areas in which well meaning and knowledgeable libertarians disagree: minarchism vs. anarchism; immigration; abortion; inalienability; punishment theory. Although I have strong views on all of these, I recognize libertarian arguments on the other side. But not on this issue.

You don’t have to wait until I actually punch you in the nose to take violent action against me. You don’t even have to wait until my fist is within a yard of you, moving in your direction. However, if you haul off and punch me in the nose in a preemptive strike, on the ground that I might punch you in the future, then you are an aggressor.

But what about the in-between case, where you haven’t started your swing but I have good reason to believe that you’re about to do so? Consider the following comment that I posted today at Catallarchy:

I know that life’s not black & white, but a black & white case may help us to clarify the principles that we’re trying to apply to rather messy “real world” situations. Consider this hypothetical:

1. In Country A (just as in Country B), the armed forces are controlled by the state. (I don’t want to get off onto the tangent of whether war is more or less likely if defense is provided by private agencies.)

2. The only restriction on the liberty of Country A’s citizens is that they must pay taxes to support their armed forces. Country B’s citizens own no property; their jobs are dictated by the state; their income is dictated by the state; and all aspects of their lives are regimented by state decrees.

3. Though Country A’s armed forces are underwritten by taxes, the members of the armed forces are volunteers. The members of Country B’s armed forces are conscripts, and Country B’s armed forces are, in effect, supplied and equipped by slave labor.

4. Country A would liberate Country B’s citizens, if it could. Country B would subjugate or kill Country A’s citizens, if it could.

What say you, then, to these questions:

1. If Country B attacks Country A, what limits (if any) would you place on the measures Country A might take in its defense? Specifically:

a. Are civilian casualties in Country B acceptable at all?

b. Are civilian casualties in Country B acceptable if they’re the result of mistakes on Country A’s part or the unavoidable result of Country A’s attacks on Country B’s armed forces and infrastructure?

c. Is the deliberate infliction by Country A of civilian casualties in Country B acceptable as long as Country A’s leaders reasonably believe that the infliction of those casualties — and nothing else — will bring about the defeat of Country B? (Assume, here, that Country A’s leaders try to inflict only the number of casualties deemed necessary to the objective.)

(Assume, for purposes of the next 2 questions, that Country A inflicts casualties on Country B’s civilians only to the extent that those casualties are the result of mistakes or unavoidable collateral damage.)

2. Should Country A attack Country B if Country A concludes (rightly or wrongly, but in good faith) that Country B is about to attack, and if Country B strikes first it is likely to:

a. win a quick victory and subjugate Country A?

b. inflict heavy casualties on Country A’s citizens?

3. Should Country A attack Country B if Country A concludes (rightly or wrongly, but in good faith) that Country B is developing the wherewithal to attack, and if Country B strikes first it is likely to

a. win a quick victory and subjugate Country A?

b. inflict heavy casualties on Country A’s citizens?

What I’m trying to get at is whether we should value non-aggression (which I take to be a means to liberty that’s favored by certain libertarians) over liberty itself (the end upon which all libertarians agree). In light of that distinction, my answers are:

1. a. Yes
1. b. Yes
1. c Yes
2. a. Yes
2. b. Yes
3. a. Yes
3. b. Yes

Over to you.

Let me emphasize the essential question: Should libertarians favor non-aggression — which is really a means to liberty — over liberty itself? Paleos like Block have latched onto non-aggression (which Block, at least, cannot define very well), as if non-aggression were the same thing as liberty. They have mixed up ends and means. Aggression may be necessary to the pursuit of liberty; non-aggression may be inimical to liberty.

Of course, the paleos can always argue that my answers are within the (vague) bounds of non-aggression. And that’s okay with me, as long as they also stop harping about American imperialism.

UPDATE (7:26 pm CT): Joe Miller (not a paleo, in my book) has posted a thorough and thoughtful reply to my comment. I will think it through and respond to him here and at Catallarchy.

UPDATE 2 (4:02 pm CT, 07/28/05): I have continued this post at Liberty Corner II.

Technorati tag: Libertarian Hawks

Saving the Innocent? (Part II)

I ended “Saving the Innocent?” with the following quotation and observation:

The story is told of a Chinese law professor, who was listening to a British lawyer explain that Britons were so enlightened, they believed it was better that ninety-nine guilty men go free than that one innocent man be executed. The Chinese professor thought for a second and asked, “Better for whom?” 238

That’s the question, isn’t it? Better for whom? It’s better for the guilty, who may claim more victims, but certainly not better for those victims.

And in the next post (“Sunday’s Question“), I asked this:

Is a rabid dog any less dangerous because of its brain abnormalities, because it doesn’t know what it’s doing, because it’s not fully grown, or because it’s merely defending its territory?

Now I read this in today’s paper:

[Texas] Gov. Rick Perry changed the 28 sentences to life in prison after the Supreme Court ruled that juveniles cannot be executed because of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

History shows release is possible for some of them.

Death penalties [in Texas] were halted for four years after the 1972 Supreme Court decision in Furman vs. Georgia.

According to state prison records reviewed by The Dallas Morning News, 40 of the 47 Texas inmates who left death row then have been released from prison.

Two died in prison and five remain behind bars.

At least two who were released killed again. One was Kenneth McDuff, who was convicted in 1992 for killing two women. He was executed in 1998.

Of the 40 who were released, 22 committed new offenses ranging from misdemeanors to murder. About half of those paroled returned to prison because of new crimes or violations of parole. Many led quiet lives.

Evidently, in our “enlightened” society, it is better that many innocent persons be victimized so that some murderers can lead “quiet lives.”

Too "Right" for a Leftist

Bob Rowthorn, who professes economics at the University of Cambridge, reviews Paul Ormerod’s Why Most Things Fail:

…Ormerod concentrates on failure and extinction in biology and economics. In the biological sphere, mutations lead to species that out-compete other species which eventually become extinct or retreat to some marginal niche. Extraneous events such as climate change may lead to the same outcome because some species are better able to survive in the new environment than others. Ormerod argues that failure and extinction are also pervasive in the economic sphere. Mutations and external events play a role in business life just as they do in biology. The counterparts to biological mutations are new technologies, new forms of organisation and new types of product….

In the biological sphere, most mutations are harmful and reduce the ability of the organism to survive. Some mutations linger on, but many are driven out entirely by competition from incumbent genes. Many potentially beneficial mutations are also driven out by competition before they have time to establish themselves, or before a complementary mutation occurs which allows them to achieve their full potential. The same is true in the economic sphere. Many innovations are harmful, and even potentially beneficial innovations may fail to establish themselves in the face of competition from powerful incumbents….

Ormerod’s alternative vision of economics lays great stress on social interaction. Individuals and organisations have only a very limited ability to obtain and process information, so they rely heavily on the information they acquire from encounters with those around them. This leads to herd behaviour and unpredictable consequences. It can make it very difficult for firms to plan their investment and innovation strategies because success or failure may depend on huge swings of fortune that are impossible to anticipate.

So far, so good. Ormerod’s not really saying anything new, but perhaps it seems new to Rowthorn, whose weak grasp of economics is reflected in Democracy and Efficiency in the Economic Enterprise, of which he is co-editor. A reading of the sample pages (available at the link) brings Rowthorn’s idealistic socialism into view, as does the rest of Rowthorn’s review of Ormerod; viz.:

Ormerod gives many examples of social interaction leading to outcomes which are impossible to predict. The most striking example is Schelling’s model of residential segregation. In the US, there are few racially mixed communities and most blacks and whites live in neighbourhoods which are populated almost entirely by their own kind. This might suggest that there is a strong antipathy between the two groups. Yet a large amount of evidence suggests that this is not the case. Most blacks and whites would like to live in neighbourhoods where their racial group is in a majority, but they are perfectly happy to have a large minority of people from the other group as neighbours.

In sum, the “fact” that blacks and whites would prefer some degree of residential integration (whose fact?) trumps the reality that blacks and whites segregate themselves. Why?

To explore the implication of such preferences, Schelling ran a number of simulations in which individuals were allowed to move house if they found themselves surrounded by too many of the other racial group. These simulations demonstrated two things. In the course of time, the typical result was that blacks and whites spontaneously relocated themselves into highly segregated neighbourhoods. It was impossible to predict where the boundaries of these neighbourhoods would lie or where any particular individual would end up. But it was a safe bet that the bulk of people would end up surrounded largely by people of their own race. This outcome showed clearly that social interaction may magnify small variations into very large differences. It also showed the limitations of the conventional approach to social phenomena, which assumes that large differences must have large causes.

Schelling’s results simply show that simulation sometimes mimics reality. The results offer no insight into causation. As for the “conventional approach to social phenomena,” I’ve never heard or read anything which suggests “that large differences must have large causes” (terms that are meaninglessly vague). The “conventional approach” is to find relationships in the data, and to let those relationships speak for themselves. Rowthorn goes on to praise Ormerod’s embrace of “non-linearity” as if Ormerod had discovered gravitation. Non-linearity is no news to economists, which tells you something about Rowthorn’s credentials as an economist.

Rowthorn finally unveils his agenda:

Ormerod, despite being a man of the left, is sceptical of human ability to predict and plan. If this is true, what is the role for government? Should it be merely a nightwatchman, defending the polity against internal and external threats, enforcing property rights and preventing crime, or should its role be much wider? Can the state intervene effectively to achieve aims that commend widespread support? Ormerod does not discuss this issue explicitly, although his stress on failure would suggest that most state intervention is pointless. For example, he argues that government attempts to alter the distribution of income have had little long-term impact. Yet surely this is an exaggeration. Human nature and market forces limit what governments can do about inequality, but that does not mean they are powerless. The existence of a strong welfare state in Sweden, for example, clearly helps explain why it is a far more equal society than Brazil. More generally, there are many examples of grand projects which governments have undertaken with conspicuous success, such as the TGV network in France or the D-day landings in the second world war. Ormerod’s book is concerned with failure. But what is surprising is not that governments fail, but how often they succeed. The same goes for large corporations, which also perform amazing feats of planning and co-ordination. Successful planning by large public and private organisations, in tandem with markets, have created an environment that is more stable and predictable for many people in advanced economies than at any time in history.

Rowthorn has his politics mixed up with his economics:

1. Sweden may be a “far more equal society than Brazil” (whatever that means), but the real question is how much better off Swedes might be if they weren’t so blasted “equal” with each other. (It’s a hot topic in Sweden these days.)

2. Yes, it’s true that goverments can do a lot of things, but Rowthorn ignores the crucial considerations: whether those things are worth doing, and whether government can do them best. Governments “succeed” only to the extent that they do something, but not to the extent that they do the right things or do them as well as they would be done by competitive markets.

3. Rowthorn tries to equate large corporations with government, as if government were nothing more than a special type of large corporation. He tellingly omits the point that large corporations — to the extent that they’re not protected from competition by government — must respond to the needs of consumers and the pressures of competition in order to survive and thrive. When’s the last time the government of the United States went out of business? There was a close call in the early 1860s, and that’s about it.

4. Corporatism — “[s]uccessful planning by large public and private organisations, in tandem with markets” — substitutes “stability and predictability” for dynamism and prosperity. It’s the triumph of bureaucracy over humanity.

What I really learned from Rowthorn’s review is that Ormerod — the “man of the left” — is too right (and too “right”) for Rowthorn.

Technorati tag: Economics

Moral Issues

A common complaint from the Left about the Right (especially the religious of the Right) is that the Right seeks to impose its moral values on everyone. I don’t know about that, but I do know that the Left — with help from the Center — has been imposing its moral values on everyone since the 1930s. Among the moral values revealed by the Left’s political successes and present agenda are these:

Murder is wrong, except when it is committed against the unborn, the newborn, and other defenseless persons.

It is better to allow innocent persons to be victimized than to execute dangerous criminals or put them away for good.

Theft is wrong, except when it is committed by the state in the name of “compassion” (i.e., taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive) or for any “public purpose.”

Discrimination is wrong, except when it is committed against white males (soon to be white, heterosexual males).

Two wrongs don’t make a right, except when the aforementioned discrimination is committed in the name of rectifying “injustices” by discriminating against white (heterosexual) males who had no hand in the “injustices.”

People should be free to live their own lives, except that they shouldn’t be able to smoke in “public” places (i.e., privately owned businesses), decide with whom they will do business, decide how to run their own businesses, send their children to schools of their own choosing (unless they pay extra for the privilege), and on and on, into the night.

War is wrong — even though it saved Europe from Hitler — and large defense budgets are wasteful and provocative — even though they brought an end to the Cold War.

Free speech is a paramount value, except when it comes to politics, business, and non-Leftish opinions on campus.

I’ve got mine, now we can impoverish those who don’t have theirs, in the name of environmentalism.

The question for the floor is this: How on earth can the Left and its fellow travelers claim to be offended by the Right’s putative insistence on imposing its morality on everyone else? The Left’s moral obtuseness is of a kind with its refusal to admit “liberal bias” in the media.

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