Mike Rappaport at The Right Coast says this about Alan Keyes’s conversion on reparations:
I don’t favor reparations, but Keyes’s proposal does show that reparations need not be unduly statist. Reparations in the form of exemptions from taxes would be a lot better than reparations in the form of a government welfare program.
Yes, and being punched in the gut is a lot better than being shot in the gut, but a punch in the gut is still a brutal assault.
Headline: 9/11 Commission Formally Disbands. Good. Now the commissioners can go back to doing something less useless than second-guessing and imparting fatuous advice.
Many liberals have stopped calling themselves “liberal” in favor of “progressive” — a term that hasn’t yet become a vile epithet. Let’s help it along.
A “liberal” is a person who is liberal with others’ money and liberal in the use of the law to tell others how to live their lives.
A “progressive” is a person who believes in progressively raising taxes, as an excuse for spending others’ money, and who believes in progressively broadening the power of government to tell others how to live their lives.
How’s that for a start?
There has been a brisk exchange of views about the respective responsibilities of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches for determining the constitutionality of laws. It all began with Jonathan Adler’s piece at National Review Online about “Suicidal Folly”. Some recent entries in the debate can be found here and here. This is my take:
1. Congress enacts laws for whatever reasons it will. Members of Congress may have stirring debates about the constitutionality of a particular law, but in the end Congress will do what it will do. It’s true that Congress should enact only constitutional laws, but that’s like saying children who live in a match factory shouldn’t play with matches.
2. If the executive doesn’t like a particular law for any reason (one of which may be his opinion that the law is unconstitutional) he may veto the law. If his veto is overridden, the law is the law.
3. In the absence of a specific judicial decision nullifying a specific law, the executive is bound to enforce that law. That is what the Constitution contemplates: The legislature legislates and the executive executes. There’s nothing mysterious or arcane about that.
4. If a party with standing challenges a law, it’s up to the courts to decide whether or not it’s a constitutional law. As it says in Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution:
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States….
Which means, as far as I’m concerned, that the executive must defer to judicial decisions about the application of a specific law.
That should do it. Why make it needlessly complicated when we have the structure and words of the Constitution to guide us?
Liberals want to regulate everything because they don’t trust other people to do the right thing for themselves or for others. Why don’t they trust other people? What do they know about human nature that I don’t know? Well, they know their own nature, that’s for sure. I must conclude, therefore, that liberals want to regulate everything because they don’t trust themselves to do the right thing for themselves or for others.
(Of course, there’s also noblesse oblige and guilt.)
…is no secret. But I couldn’t resist linking to this commentary about it at Tech Central Station (which today has more than its usual number of good reads). Here’s Joshua Elder, writing about “Liberal Noblesse Oblige”:
…[A]s Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the left-wing British newspaper The Independent, put it after being viciously beaten by a group of thugs at the height of the recent Afghan War: “I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.”
It’s a rare man (heck, a rare masochist) who can receive a savage, unprovoked beating and come to the conclusion that he probably deserved it. I attended a lecture by this unique individual two years ago at Northwestern University and took the opportunity to ask him if he would still consider the attack justified had the roles been reversed — if it had been an Arab journalist attacked by a group of grieving American relatives of those who died in the World Trade Center. He told me no, that Americans were too educated and too civilized to ever do something like that.
And there you have it. Americans (and Brits like Fisk, presumably) have agency. They are in control of their own destinies and can be held morally accountable for their own actions. Afghans, Pakistanis and all the other poor, brown-skinned people from that part of the world, however, simply cannot. They aren’t like us, you see. Nor do they matter except for the way that their failures reflect negatively upon us. Their failures are our failures and therefore our responsibility.
Unsurprisingly, the French have a term for this; they call it noblesse oblige. Defined as “the inferred obligation of people of high rank or social position to behave nobly or kindly toward others,” it is the philosophical cornerstone of the entire modern liberal project — at home as well as abroad. Leftists are self-anointed saviors, enlightened elites that will bring about a new golden age for mankind if only the American people will embrace their ideas and vote their candidates into office….
Add guilt for being wealthy, stir well, and you have a Hollywood liberal.
Dominic Basulto writes about “The Brain Gain” at Tech Central Station. He makes this point: “Only by keeping its doors open to talented immigrants can the U.S. hope to maintain its competitive advantage over the nations of Southeast Asia.”
A much deeper point is overlooked by Basulto, and almost everyone else: The U.S. doesn’t need a competitive advantage. International trade isn’t — or shouldn’t be — a contest in which there are winners and losers. International trade is simply an increasingly significant component of cooperative economic activity in which international borders are becoming less and less relevant.
With truly free international trade — no tariffs, no restrictions on imports and exports — and open borders (barring terrorists, of course), it doesn’t matter whether products and services originate in Southeast Asia or beautiful downtown Burbank. I don’t care whether my car is made in Ohio or Tennessee, as long as it’s made by a manufacturer with a record of building reliable cars. Why should I care whether my computer chips are made in California or Taiwan?
Americans will be better off with free trade and open borders, regardless of how many “brains” we attract and keep. It doesn’t matter whether Joe Brain works in Palo Alto or Taipei. Joe Brain should be able to work wherever he wants to, and I should be able to buy his products and services, wherever they originate, with no strings (or tariffs) attached.
Now, if I buy Joe Brain’s products and services, I may stop buying things from some of my countrymen, like Harry Pain. Others may follow suit, and Harry may have to find another line of work. But why should a lot of American consumers pay more for products and services just because Harry lives in the U.S.?
The moral of the story: We don’t have to import “brains” when we can import their products and services.
Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters writes amusingly about “Ted Kennedy — A Danger In The Air?”. Along the way he quotes an Agence France-Press report:
At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, the Massachusetts Democratic senator described having endured weeks of inconvenience after his name ended up on a watch list barring persons deemed to pose a threat to civil aviation or national security from air travel.
Captain Ed also reports this:
TSA confirmed that two incidents occurred where Kennedy had been denied access to board flights, and that only the intervention of higher management had allowed him to travel as planned. TSA insists that the problem was a confusion between the Senator and a real watch-list suspect with a similar name. Kennedy used the experience to challenge DHS Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson and assert that homeland security policies make life too tough on the average citizen.
Ted Kennedy an average citizen? Come on!
Anyway, Paul at Wizbang! has it right when he says that “Kennedy should be on the no-drive list.”
So, Teddy’s a double-threat man: danger in the air and on the road.
I wouldn’t want to be on the same boat with him, either.
UPDATE:
Professor Bainbridge adds: “Well, I suspect he’s killed more people than most folks on that list.” Z-i-i-n-g!!!
It does, if you believe Kenneth Silber’s article, “The Fusionist Path”, at Tech Central Station. Silber almost derails his argument by listing some issues on which most libertarians and conservatives are unalterably opposed: “government spending, faith-based programs, gay marriage, abortion, the Patriot Act, [and] the Iraq War….”
Putting aside government spending as an artifact of government policy, Silber has listed some issues on which there’s a chasm between most libertarians and most conservatives:
Faith-based programs. Most conservatives love it, because “faith” is a key word for them. Libertarians can rightly abhor these programs because, even if they weren’t faith-based, they would inject government into matters outside its legitimate sphere.
Gay marriage. Conservatives hate it. Most libertarians are reflexively for it. Those libertarians who have thought about it say that government should go out of the marriage business.
Abortion. Conservatives hate it. Most libertarians openly favor it. I think they’re wrong, but I’m in the vast minority.
The Patriot Act. Another point of difference, though it hinges on esoteric details.
Iraq war. (Silber should have added preemptive war, just for completeness.) Here, too, I’m in the vast minority of libertarians, who generally oppose the Iraq war and preemptive war.
Throw in issues like flag-burning, prostitution, and drugs and you wonder if there could ever be a libertarian-conservative coalition.
On the other hand, libertarians and conservatives generally see eye-to-eye on so-called social programs, affirmative action, Social Security reform, school vouchers, campaign-finance laws, political correctness, and regulation. Libertarians will never see eye to eye with conservatives on all issues, but it seems to me that they see eye to eye on enough issues to make a political alliance worthwhile.
If libertarians were pragmatic they would adopt this view: An alliance with conservatives is, on balance, more congenial than an alliance with liberals because conservatives are closer to being “right” on more issues, and their theocratic leanings are unlikely to prevail (the social norms of the 1940s and 1950s are gone forever). If libertarians were to approach conservatives en bloc, libertarians might be able to help conservatives advance the causes on which there is agreement. If libertarians were to approach conservatives en bloc, libertarians might be able to trade their support (and the threat of withdrawing it) for influence in the councils of government. Libertarians could use that influence to push conservatives in the right direction on issues where they now differ with conservatives.
Many libertarians will reject such a strategy, but they would be wrong to do so. We will never attain a libertarian nirvana — whatever that is — but we can advance some libertarian causes. We shouldn’t let the “best” be the enemy of the “good”.
Here we have Iran, warning of a preemptive strike on U.S. forces in Iraq. According to the linked news story, Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani warns that Iran might launch a preemptive strike against U.S. forces in Iraq to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities. Shamkhani also makes the usual belligerent statements about Israel.
Here’s the first question. Suppose we have good intelligence and warnings that Iran is about to launch a preemptive strike, either against U.S. forces or Israel. Should we preempt Iran’s preemption? I say yes. Why should we wait to be attacked? Where’s the sense in that? If someone is going to die, it should be our enemies, not Americans or our friends in Israel.
Now, let’s make it harder. What about attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities if we have good intelligence that those facilities are in fact ready to produce nuclear weapons. Again, I say yes. Iran is clearly belligerent to the U.S. and Israel. Why wait until Iran can produce weapons that might be used against U.S. forces or Israel? I say it again: If someone is going to die, it should be our enemies, not our Americans or our friends in Israel.
What’s so hard about that?
All the premature hysteria about balloting in Florida leads, inevitably, to a discussion of the Florida results of 2000. Richard A. Baehr of The American Thinker addresses some of the premature hysteria, after having dealt a death blow to “The Myth of the Stolen Election”. Dave Kopel at Independent Institute, in this section of a piece on “Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11”, also puts the myth of the stolen election to rest (for those who are open to reason).
What needs to be said, once more with vehemence, is that it is the voter’s responsibility to cast a ballot correctly. Chads don’t hang unless voters allow them to hang. Touch screens don’t record votes incorrectly unless voters are careless about using them and fail to review their selections before pressing the “vote” icon. And so on.
When election results are contested this year — as they surely will be — the main cause of controversy will be voter error. Remember that in the hysteria that ensues November 2.
The New York Times reports:
Kerry Criticizes President’s Troop Plan
By JODI WILGOREN
Published: August 19, 2004CINCINNATI, Aug. 18 – With repeated references to his own service in Vietnam, Senator John Kerry told fellow members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars here on Wednesday that President Bush’s plan to move 70,000 troops out of Europe and Asia was vague and ill-advised in view of the North Korean nuclear threat….
Ground forces aren’t a counter to a nuclear threat. For that we have intercontinental ballistic missiles, sea-launched ballistic missiles, and long-range bombers with cruise missiles — none of them based in Korea. The only thing Kerry learned in Vietnam was the location of the Cambodian border. Nope, not even that.
The Washington Times reports:
Jew can distribute fliers on campus
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMESThe University of New Orleans has settled a yearlong First Amendment lawsuit by allowing a Messianic Jew to distribute pamphlets on campus that contain the words: “Jews should believe in Jesus.”
The lawsuit was filed last summer on behalf of Michelle Beadle, a missionary with a group that seeks Jewish converts to Christianity, after she was told by a university official that she could not hand out the pamphlets because of their “offensive” language….
In a telephone interview yesterday, [Miss Beadle’s attorney] said the university’s decision to reject Miss Beadle’s request was “flawed.” Pointing out that the university is a public institution, he said, “It is not the government’s job to decide what is offensive … the speech in that pamphlet is protected, and its content cannot be censored by a government entity. The First Amendment protects individuals against government intrusion.”…
That was a close call, but don’t worry, McCain-Feingold will be expanded to prohibit offensive political speech. Things like, BUSH LIED!!! KERRY FLIP-FLOPS!!! Might hurt someone’s feelings, you know.
Tim Sandefur at Freespace objects to the implication that as a libertarian he is merely a “Republican without morals” and a “self-indulgent, narcissistic heathen,” who “pay[s] lip service to religion” — in the words of “Feddie” (Steve Dillard) at Southern Appeal. The proximate cause of Dillard’s first jibe was a post by sort-of-libertarian Will Baude at Crescat Sententia, in which Baude takes exception to an anti-abortion statement by Alan Keyes.
I’m not sure where Sandefur stands on abortion, but he implies that he’s for legal abortion when he says “I believe that it is immoral for one person to force others to do with their lives what he thinks is right.” If he’s talking about abortion, I must differ, on libertarian grounds. As a libertarian I can conscionably oppose abortion (and take a few other stands that don’t seem to be typical of libertarians), for reasons stated here and here.
In response to Sandefur’s objection, “Feddie” says,
And while many [l]ibertarians are thoughtful people who have carefully formed their views within the confines of respectable moral parameters (e.g., Sandefur, Crescast [sic], and Volokhs), it has been my experience that this is the exception rather than the rule. There is a cruder form of [l]ibertarianism bubbling up from our societal fabric, and it is not one premised on the writings of John Stuart Mill, but is instead anchored upon a radical individualism with no moral compass.
All thoughtful libertarians don’t premise their views on John Stuart Mill’s writings, but other than that, “Feddie” is right. I’ve come across many a so-called libertarian blog that is premised on unalloyed self-indulgence and is as rational as a toddler’s tantrums.
UPDATE:
Sandefur, in an update, says in further reply to “Feddie”:
Objectivism, of which I believe I am the most prominent blogging practitoner [sic], imposes a remarkably severe moral code, which has earned us a reputation among many other libertarians as serious killjoys.
The link leads to a short piece by Ayn Rand, in which she summarizes Objectivism. She says, among other things,
The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders…[emphasis added].
I wonder what this “remarkably severe moral code” has to say about abortion and pre-emptive war. I don’t find abortion (and its companion, involuntary euthanasia) to be particularly moral, even by Rand’s stringent code, which claims to forgo physical force, except in self-defense. Nor do I find it particularly moral to acquiesce in the deaths of fellow citizens rather than trying (if not always successfully) to reach abroad and tear down the infrastructure of terrorism.
Virginia Postrel points to this NYT graphic. She notes that it’s part of a media campaign, led by The Washington Post, to discredit Bush’s record on regulation. But, as she says, “this latest media campaign offers an answer to an oft-asked question: Why on earth would a libertarian vote for George W. Bush?” Click the link to see why.
…to the problem of murder. Making guns harder to get doesn’t prevent murder. The murderous simply turn to other weapons, as noted in this article from WHDH-TV. The headline is “Police See Surge In Gang Attacks Using Machetes”. Now, if machetes are banned, murderous thugs will simply turn to other weapons, such as Chinese throwing stars and Japanese metal chain whips. (Mmmm….no racist remarks, please.) And if those weapons are banned, thugs will simply turn to baseball bats, then to fists and feet.
You know what that means. Procreation will have to be banned in order to prevent the production of any more fists and feet. After all, the weapons-control freaks will say, guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Now, where have I heard that one?
Doug Kern’s piece, A Real Story of Two Americas, at Tech Central Station is worth a look. Some key points:
One America is safe. One America is not.
Government statistics confirm that the average victim of crime tends to be young (under 24), black, male, single, urban, and poor. Crime is predominantly a problem for the struggling and marginalized….
Poverty can be resolved through individual effort; crime cannot….For the crimes that afflict the poor, our society has only one approved solution: stop being poor, so you can move somewhere safe. Some solution.
Worse, crime corrodes the very ability of the poor to improve their own situation….The poor need investment opportunities more than anyone else — but who wants to build anything in communities that aren’t safe at night?…
Whatever the long-term solution to crime may be, the short-term solutions are simple, obvious, and expensive. We need more: more prosecutors, more public defenders, more judges, more investigators, and more local jail space, to ensure that more criminals learn early and often that their crimes will be justly punished….
In recent years, federal legislation has subsidized the hiring of more police officers. That’s terrific, but what can the police accomplish if the bad guys get off with a slap on the wrist and a suspended sentence, once arrested and convicted? Rare is the jurisdiction in which misdemeanor property theft or damage results in jail time — and yet such small-scale crimes are the very offenses that make life intolerable for America’s poorest citizens. Too often, jail is not an option for misdemeanor-level offenses, as local jails overflow with probation violators and felons awaiting trial. The low-income localities that suffer most greatly from small-scale crimes often lack the resources to punish the criminals who torment them. Those places simply need more money to find, prosecute, and incarcerate criminals.
We should give it to them.
Of course, there are federalism issues and questions about where the money would come from. But a way should be found to make it happen. Protecting the public from crime is the libertarian thing to do, and what Kern proposes would have the added benefit of helping people build productive, welfare-free lives.
Oddly enough, those who view global warming as a man-made problem (if it is a problem) also tend to exclaim “We’re running out of oil” (nuclear power isn’t an option for them, of course). See how easy it is to be a knee-jerk liberal doom-sayer: Just keep repeating contradictory things.
I’m sorry to spoil their self-inflicted misery, but — as rational people have been saying all along — there’s always science and technology. And sure enough:
‘Cool’ fuel cells could revolutionize Earth’s energy resources
UH researchers developing efficient, practical power source alternativesHOUSTON, July 22, 2004 — As temperatures soar this summer, so do electric bills. Researchers at the University of Houston are striving toward decreasing those costs with the next revolution in power generation.
Imagine a power source so small, yet so efficient, that it could make cumbersome power plants virtually obsolete while lowering your electric bill. A breakthrough in thin film solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) is currently being refined in labs at the University of Houston, making that dream a reality….
UPDATE:
Steven den Beste at USS Clueless, who seems to be a competent engineer, says “yes, I have seen the articles about ‘thin film fuel cells’. No, it doesn’t change anything fundamental. It’s a new energy conversion technology, not a new energy source.” That’s not my point. First, whatever it is, it appears to use fuel more efficiently, which is good. Second, the development of SOFCs highlights the continuous — and often unreported — scientific and technological progress that will surely continue to make life better, as has for the past 200 years.
ANOTHER UPDATE:
For a more complete picture of SOFCs and other new ways to generate energy see this post by FuturePundit.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE:
And there’s more from The Ergosphere, who takes den Beste to task for his doom and gloom attitude. The facts seem to be on The Ergosphere‘s side.
How can a libertarian not only support the war in Iraq but also support pre-emptive war? How can a libertarian even contemplate the suspension of civil liberties in wartime? How can a libertarian oppose abortion? Those are reasonable questions. Here are the answers:
I am a libertarian, not an anarchist. A minimal state is necessary in order to preserve liberty, that is, the enjoyment of life to the extent that our mental and material means enable us to enjoy it. Because I am not an anarchist, I am not reflexively against all activities of the state. I am in favor of those activities that protect us from violence, theft, and fraud — provided that such activities conform to the dictates of constitutional laws.
I am against any activity of the state that is not intended — in fact as well as in word — to protect us from violence, theft, and fraud. Such activities include, for example, censoring political speech for any reason, regulating business in any way, subsidizing any person or business for any reason, or providing services other than defense, policing, and courts. I am against such activities for two reasons: (1) they intrude on our ability to decide for ourselves how to enjoy our liberty, and (2) they make our liberty less enjoyable by robbing us of resources and eliminating incentives to work hard and make sound investments.
The activities I endorse and the activities I oppose have the same end: to maximize our enjoyment of life and the acquisition of the things that make it enjoyable, whether those are material or mental. In sum, the state should protect us from others — including the state itself.
I admit that even within my fairly restrictive framework there are gray areas in which the scope of activity permitted to the state is open for debate. When it comes to fighting a determined and elusive enemy, I am willing to err on the side of too much activity by the state rather than too little. Thus, with respect to pre-emptive war and the temporary suspension of civil liberties as a possible necessity of war:
• Pre-emptive action against foreign enemies may well be the most effective way to defend ourselves from them. I think it is, as I will argue at length in a future post.
• The temporary suspension of civil liberties might also prove to be necessary for the protection of Americans’ lives, liberty, and property — though I certainly have nothing in particular in mind. I am confident that any such suspension would be short-lived and that civil liberties would be restored fully, if not expanded, as they were in the aftermath of the Civil War and World War II.
As for abortion, I see it as (1) the taking of innocent lives by force and (2) a step down the slippery slope to the taking of more innocent lives by force. When people acquire a taste for god-like behavior they seek new outlets for it; power corrupts absolutely. Look at the expansion of abortion rights to include the killing of babies at full term and the selective killing of fetuses to avoid carrying more than one to full term. The killing of babies will not stop short of birth. As for the killing of the aged and infirm, it took years to overturn a Virginia law that enabled physicians to allow patients to die against their wishes or the wishes of their families. Unfortunately, that may not be the end of it, in Virginia or elsewhere.
I conclude that my positions on these matters are absolutely consistent with my libertarian principles, which are absolutely within the mainstream of libertarianism.
…I retract my implied praise of Will Wilkinson’s Tech Central Station piece titled “Meritocracy: The Appalling Ideal?”. I wasn’t reading carefully enough to notice that Wilkinson, as he says in a followup post at The Fly Bottle, “didn’t actually defend meritocracy in the TCS piece.” As it turns out, Wilkinson is merely engaged in a meaningless metaphysical dialogue with a Rousseauvian socialist, one Chris Bertram. Wilkinson and his sparring partner are arguing about the degree to which market outcomes reflect economic merit, as if that were a discernible quantity, distinct from market outcomes. Talk about angels dancing on pin-heads.
I don’t retract a word of what I said initially about merit, nor do I retract a word of what I’ve said since about Wilkinson’s opponent. All of my previous posts on these two subjects are here, here, here, here, and here.
Politics and Prosperity 