The liberal mindset can be summed up as “no trust, no respect, no responsibility”:
It’s a blend of superiority and condescension that seeks to suppress individuality and self-reliance in the name of “rationality” and “compassion”.
Just a bit of bomb-throwing for a quiet evening:
1. When it comes to intelligence, people aren’t created equal.
2. People of lower intelligence tend to pursue instant gratification in favor of long-term rewards.
3. Therefore, democracy undermines liberty because:
a. Those who seek instant gratification have inordinate influence over the outcome of elections.
b. Those who seek political power can gain it by appealing to those who seek instant gratification.
c. This confluence of interests eats away the constraints on government that are the bulwark of liberty.
UPDATED – 10/11/04
A few posts ago I quoted QD at Southern Appeal:
So in spite of the fact that Kerry promises to “kill” the terrorists, it seems much more plausible to think that he’ll instead tack toward the French and German strategy of using intelligence and legal means to disrupt terrorist plans while carefully avoiding acts which might “inflame” potential adversaries. In other words, he’ll revert to a pre-Sept. 11th strategy. What makes the Kerry supporters think I’m wrong here?
My comment:
QD is quite right. Character shows up early in adult life and sticks with you, unless you experience what QD calls a deep psychological crisis. James David Barber’s classic book, Presidential Character: Predicting Performance In The White House, amply documents the persistence of long-held character traits into the White House years of American presidents.
But what about Bush, the erstwhile playboy, alcoholic, and drug-taker? Bush, unlike Kerry, forced a psychological crisis upon himself. He is not the same person he was in his wanton days. He has evolved into a hard-nosed realist who will kill terrorists.
Now, thanks to pointers from all over the blogosphere, I find the following in today’s New York Times:
When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. “We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” Kerry said. “As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”
What a dunce! The only way to get back to where we were — if we can — is to wage an all-out war on terror by constantly disrupting terrorists’ plans and destroying terrorists wherever we can, with every means at our disposal: legal, financial, diplomatic, and military. Suggesting that we might tolerate terrorists as a “nuisance” — like hookers on a street corner or back-room gamblers — is a perfect illustration of Kerry’s legalistic view of the problem.
We’re in a war, dammit — not a fight to reduce the incidence of graffiti. And we’ll be in a war until the terrorist bastards are less than a nuisance.
UPDATE 1:
Lileks, as usual, says it better:
But that’s not the key phrase. This matters: We have to get back to the place we were.
But when we were there we were blind. When we were there we losing. When we were there we died. We have to get back to the place we were. We have to get back to 9/10? We have to get back to the place we were. So we can go through it all again? We have to get back to the place we were. And forget all we’ve learned and done? We have to get back to the place we were. No. I don’t want to go back there. Planes into towers. That changed the terms. I am remarkably disinterested in returning to a place where such things are unimaginable. Where our nighmares are their dreams.
We have to get back to the place we were.
No. We have to go the place where they are.
UPDATE 2:
Filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi (daughter of Big Democrat Nancy Pelosi and a Democrat herself), made a ripple a few years ago with her documentary about Bush’s 2000 campaign. Now she’s back with another campaign documentary and some telling insights about Bush and Kerry (from an AP story, via the Austin American-Statesman, registration required):
…Pelosi’s documentary “Journeys with George,” which made a splash at the 2002 South by Southwest Film Festival, depicted a goofy but endearing George W. Bush in backstage moments during the 2000 presidential campaign.
Fortunately, Pelosi wasn’t looking for the star of a sequel. She went back to the campaign trail more to expose a dysfunctional process than a candidate. The quickly edited film “Diary of a Political Tourist” premieres tonight at 7 on HBO.
The documentary opens nostalgically with Bush holding a barbecue for members of Congress on the White House lawn (Pelosi is the daughter of House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi) and good-naturedly teasing Alexandra.
“How much money did you make off of me?” the president asks.
“I’m going to be a beneficiary of your tax cut,” she replies.
By contrast, the man who’s looking to replace him exposes virtually nothing in hours of filming. Kerry is always cautious, always conscious of the camera.
Whatever you think of his politics, Bush is a movie star, Pelosi said. Kerry isn’t.
“I don’t think if I spent six more months on his lap was he going to reveal any more than he did,” she said. “He was who he was. I wasn’t going to crack the code of understanding John Kerry.”
It didn’t happen during the depths of Kerry’s campaign — when Pelosi impudently asked, “Are you a dead man walking?” — or its heights, when the filmmaker tried for weeks to land a one-on-one interview with the presumptive nominee.
When an audience was finally granted, Kerry surrounded himself with young aides and derailed the process by grabbing Pelosi’s camera and turning it on her, just like Bush had four years earlier.
“I never thought I saw one honest moment during the entire campaign,” Pelosi said….
Enough said.
QD at Southern Appeal has this to say about Kerry and the war on terror:
Question for Kerry Supporters: I have a question for those of you who are planning to vote for Sen. Kerry….In your view,where in Kerry’s background, temperament, or ideas do you find assurance that he’ll do a good job in fighting the war on terror?
My experience has been that people mostly don’t change their stripes (absent some deep psychological crisis or religious conversion). Kerry’s entire political career has been oriented, it seems to me, around the opposition to the forceful projection of American military power. With respect to Vietnam, the Cold War, Central America, the first Gulf War, and now the war in Iraq….Now, maybe none of that previous history has anything to do with how he would conduct the war on terror, but, as I said, people don’t often change their character….So in spite of the fact that Kerry promises to “kill” the terrorists, it seems much more plausible to think that he’ll instead tack toward the French and German strategy of using intelligence and legal means to disrupt terrorist plans while carefully avoiding acts which might “inflame” potential adversaries. In other words, he’ll revert to a pre-Sept. 11th strategy. What makes the Kerry supporters think I’m wrong here?
QD is quite right. Character shows up early in adult life and sticks with you, unless you experience what QD calls a deep psychological crisis. James David Barber’s classic book, Presidential Character: Predicting Performance In The White House, amply documents the persistence of long-held character traits into the White House years of American presidents.
But what about Bush, the erstwhile playboy, alcoholic, and drug-taker? Bush, unlike Kerry, forced a psychological crisis upon himself. He is not the same person he was in his wanton days. He has evolved into a hard-nosed realist who will kill terrorists.
Timothy Sandefur at Freespace has a good post about acting in the face of imperfect information. The summation:
Again, the question is not as much whether, knowing what we know now, Iraq was a good idea. The question is what sort of decisions we should make when we don’t know very much — should we wait, and run the risk of letting a disastrous terrorist attack occur — or should we take the risk of acting on imperfect information? In the case of Iraq, the President made the right decision because, in addition to the imperfect information, we at least knew that we would not be doing a bad thing getting rid of Hussein….The question is not whether war is a good thing or a bad thing. The question is not whether the Vice President is part of an evil capitalist conspiracy to exploit the proletarians in Iraq. The question is not even whether Bush’s domestic policies are good for the country, which they almost invariably are not. The question is what sort of mentality should we have toward undeniably dangerous states in the future. The answer to that, I think, is that we should be willing to attack even on the basis of imperfect information regarding a potential threat.
Not to put words in Sandefur’s mouth, but here’s my take: It’s better to be wrong than dead — even at the risk of being proved dead wrong after the fact.
Sometimes economists who blog remind me why hanging around with economists is not good for the soul. Matthew Yglesias, a philosopher, started if off by saying, in connection with some controversy about Al-Zarqawi’s tied to bin Laden:
Maybe the Marginal Revolution guys can shed some light on whether it’s better to be fighting a consolidated jihadi monopoly or several competing terrorist firms.
Unfortunately, the economists rose to the bait. First, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution goes through the usual, “if this, then that” routine before saying:
My guess: In Iraq you would prefer a smaller number of groups, since there is some chance of striking a deal with them. And there we are more worried about the suicide bombers than a loose nuclear device, so economies of scale do not overturn this conclusion. We are less likely to ever “trade” with al Qaeda and its offshoots, so in that case I would prefer splintering. Furthermore al Qaeda has a greater long-run nuclear potential, so it is more important to deny them potential economies of scale. I suspect we do not much mind if western Pakistan becomes a scene for terrorist infighting, whereas such conflicts could scuttle reconstruction in Iraq.
Then Glen Whitman at Agoraphilia gets into the act:
In reality, both models apply. Terrorists get money both from sales of other products and from donations, and they commit terrorist acts both for consumption and as a business venture. If it’s true that terrorist organizations are becoming more decentralized and independent, the net gain or loss to the victim-class will depend on which source of funding, sales of illicit services or donor contributions, is more important. My sinking suspicion is that it’s the latter.
For pity’s sake, fellas, it doesn’t matter because we can’t do anything about it, other than figure out where they are and what they’re up to, then stymie their plans and kill them.
Economists often lose sight of the ball. They’re so busy explaining what makes it curve that they’re not ready to swing at it.
All of which reminds me of going to lunch with economists, which I quit doing after a few outings. The idea of going to lunch with colleagues is to have some laughs, some good conversation (not about economics), and a few beers to help you coast through the afternoon. With economists, however, lunch always went something like this: Carping at the waiter about what’s not on the menu, followed by carping at the waiter about whether he brought the right orders to the table, followed by carefully dissecting the bill to ensure that everyone pays for precisely what he ordered, followed by computing the tip down to the last red cent instead of rounding up to the nearest dollar out of consideration for the beleaguered waiter. I’d rather have lunch with undertakers.
That’s the title of a piece by Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker. Some key points:
…America’s strategic vision and will to use force are also hugely important to the tyrants who oppose us. Ask Colonel Gadhafi of Libya, who has voluntarily surrendered his nuclear arms program. Strangely enough, Senator Kerry has nothing to say about this when denouncing Iraq as the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Contrary to what Americans are being told relentlessly, our forces in Iraq are not posted there to serve as targets for Islamist terrorists. Nor are they present in Iraq solely to ensure the transition of that country into a democratic state – a project which will take years, even decades to accomplish fully. That mission is extremely important, to be sure.
The American forces in Iraq are also a forward deployment in the War on Terror – a signal of the utter seriousness placed on removing the bases from which terrorists operate. As President Bush’s re-election is looking more probable, people like Assad are realizing that they are not to be granted relied from this pressure by a verdict of the American electorate….
Students of the history of warfare realize that as the enemy is facing defeat, casualties often mount, as desperation attacks are carried out, in the consciousness that the only alternative is capitulation. In World War II, consider the awful toll in American blood paid in the Battle of the Bulge, the invasion of Okinawa, and in the Kamikaze suicide attacks on American aircraft carriers. The escalation in casualties was not an indicator of defeat or a “quagmire.”…
Determination is what it’s all about. We can stay the course and tighten the noose around the necks of terrorists and their sponsors, or we can retire to the illusory safety of our homeland and allow the enemy to capture the Middle East, make nuclear weapons, and train terrorists with impugnity.
Determination is what wins wars and keeps the peace.
Determination is a character trait. Some have it; many don’t.
I speak from experience. I know the determination it takes to achieve a strategic objective. I succeeded in moving my company out of the second-rate quarters we were forced to take, in a political deal, and into first-rate quarters. It took 12 years, and it happened only because I was determined to make it happen, in spite of considerable internal opposition and diffidence on the part of my CEO.
Determination on the part of Democrats is what changed the dominant economic system in the United States from something like laissez-faire capitalism to something much more like socialism. If only Democrats had the same determination to win the war on terror.
The New York Times has this:
Kerry as the Boss: Always More Questions
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JODI WILGORENPublished: September 26, 2004
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 – For 15 minutes in Milwaukee the other day, Senator John Kerry pummeled his staff with questions about an attack on President Bush, planned for later that morning, that accused the White House of hiding a huge Medicare premium increase.
Talking into a speakerphone in his hotel suite, sitting at a table scattered with the morning newspapers, Mr. Kerry instructed aides in Washington to track down the information he said he needed before he could appear on camera. What could have slowed down the premium increase? How much of it was caused by the addition of a prescription drug benefit? What would the increase cost the average Medicare recipient?
Mr. Kerry got the answers after aides said they spent the morning on the telephone and the Internet, but few of those facts found their way into his blistering attack.
The morning Medicare call was typical of the way Mr. Kerry, a four-term senator with comparatively little management experience, has run his campaign. And, his associates say, it offered a glimpse of an executive style he would almost surely bring to the White House.
Mr. Kerry is a meticulous, deliberative decision maker, always demanding more information, calling around for advice, reading another document – acting, in short, as if he were still the Massachusetts prosecutor boning up for a case. He stayed up late Sunday night with aides at his home in Beacon Hill, rewriting – and rearguing – major passages of his latest Iraq speech, a ritual that aides say occurs even with routine remarks….
In interviews, associates repeatedly described Mr. Kerry as uncommonly bright, informed and curious. But the downside to his deliberative executive style, they said, is a campaign that has often moved slowly against a swift opponent, and a candidate who has struggled to synthesize the information he sweeps up into a clear, concise case against Mr. Bush.
Even his aides concede that Mr. Kerry can be slow in taking action, bogged down in the very details he is so intent on collecting, as suggested by the fact that he never even used the Medicare information he sent his staff chasing….
Unlike Mr. Bush, who was a governor and a business executive before he ran for president, Mr. Kerry – who has spent the past 20 years as a legislator, with a staff of perhaps 60 – has little experience in managing any kind of large operation….
The difference between Kerry and Bush isn’t experience, it’s temperament. I worked for a Kerry-like CEO — always asking questions, probing answers, asking more questions, ad infinitum. He always postponed decisions as long as possible, not because he lacked the facts but because he had confused himself with the facts. He sought facts for their own sake, not because they would help him plot the best path toward a specific goal. He was almost purely inductive, hoping to find his principles in a morass of information.
That’s how Kerry, with his limitless flip-flopping, has struck me — a man without principles who hopes to discover them in the next piece of information that he receives. The Times article confirms that view.
To change metaphors: You don’t advance the ball down the field by counting the laces on it. You advance the ball down the field by knowing where the goal is and then choosing the plays that will help you reach it. Kerry knows how many laces there are. Bush figures out where to throw the ball, and all Kerry knows how to do is carp like an armchair quarterback when some of the passes aren’t caught.
Two new books are refurbishing U.S. Grant’s reputation, according to a review by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. The books are Ulysses S. Grant, by Josiah Bunting III, and Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero, by Michael Korda. Yardley quotes Bunting on Grant:
He was hugely but modestly self-reliant; he was accustomed to making do with what he was given, without asking for more; he defined himself in action, not talk; he was dutiful, intensely loyal to superiors and friends, brave in the way that Tacitus called Agricola brave: unconsciously so.
And Korda:
Grant had that rare quality among professional soldiers, even at the very beginning of his career, of feeling deeply for the wounded and dead of both sides. It was not weakness — it was that he spared himself nothing. Grant saw what happened in war, swallowed his revulsion, pity and disgust, and went on.
A general for all seasons.
Yardley reminds us that Grant’s heroism extended beyond the battlefield:
The end of Grant’s life was both sad and noble. An investment firm to which he had foolishly committed such fortune as he had was undone by its founder’s dishonesty, and Grant was bankrupt. At about the same time he learned that he had terminal throat cancer. Desperate to assure [his wife] Julia’s financial security after his death, he overcame his qualms and agreed to write his memoirs. He completed them barely hours before his death, his final bequest to the country he had served so nobly: a literary masterpiece, two volumes in which the stamp of his greatness is on every page.
Terry Eagleton, writing at New Statesman, reviews Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? by Frank Furedi. Eagleton’s review is rife with trenchant observations. Here’s a sampling:
…We inherit the idea of the intellectual from the 18th-century Enlightenment, which valued truth, universality and objectivity – all highly suspect notions in a postmodern age. As Furedi points out, these ideas used to be savaged by the political right, as they undercut appeals to prejudice, hierarchy and custom. Nowadays, in a choice historical irony, they are under assault from the cultural left.
In the age of Sontag, Said, Williams and Chomsky, whole sectors of the left behave as though these men and women were no longer possible. Soon, no doubt, they will take to imitating the nervous tic by which the right ritually inserts the expression “so-called” before the word “intellectual”. Right-wingers do this because they imagine that “intellectual” means “frightfully clever”, a compliment they are naturally reluctant to pay to their opponents. In fact, there are dim-witted intellectuals just as there are incompetent chefs. The word “intellectual” is a job description, not a commendation….
[A] snap definition of an intellectual would be “more or less the opposite of an academic”….Literary academics are more likely than insurance brokers to be left-wingers….
University academics are discouraged from fostering adversarial debate, in case it should hurt someone’s feelings….In what one American sociologist has termed the McDonaldisation of the universities, students are redefined as consumers of services rather than junior partners in a public service….
[T]he politics of inclusion…in [Furedi’s] view belittles the capacities of the very people it purports to serve. It implies in its pessimistic way that excellence and popular participation are bound to be opposites….[H]e rejects cultural pessimism, decries the idea of a golden age, and applauds the advances that contemporary culture has made. It is just that he objects to slighting people’s potential for self-transformation under cover of flattering their current identities.
The last paragraph of a piece by Sydney Smith at Tech Central Station nails the character issue:
Does it matter that George Bush is an alcoholic? Would it matter if John Kerry has post-traumatic stress disorder? It depends on how well they handle it. We know that Bush is an alcoholic, he freely admits it. And that admission is the first and foremost step in the successful treatment of any mental illness. We don’t know if John Kerry left Vietnam with lasting psychic wounds. He only evades the question when asked. And that evasion is the most disturbing aspect of the Teresa Heinz-Kerry anecdote [about Kerry’s nightmares]. It suggests that he has yet to come to terms with the question himself.
If you can’t deal with yourself, you’re ill-equipped to deal with the world.
Arnold Kling of EconLog despises happiness research:
My view is that happiness research implies Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. I believe that you do not learn about economic behavior by watching what people say in response to a survey.
Precisely. You learn about economic behavior by watching what people actually do.
Of course, a person’s happiness can’t be reduced to a single number (e.g., disposable income or number of TVs owned). And, even if it could be, it’s impossible to sum the happiness of individuals to arrive at some measure of collective happiness. Are we a happier nation if Joe is “unhappy” and Sadie is “happy” or if Joe is “happy” and Sadie is “unhappy”?
Happiness is a deeply personal thing, as indefinable as consciousness. Some individuals have a sense of happiness and keep it, in spite of adversity. Some individuals rarely have it, in spite of prosperity. Some individuals gain it and lose it with every smile of fortune and blow of fate. Each person is a unique, irreplicable “experiment” in happiness. That’s my take.
Well, let’s give happiness research a chance and see if it has uncovered useful insights. Michael at 2blowhards summarizes the implications of some happiness research:
* If your job isn’t especially rewarding, pursue a hobby you love, one that delivers experiences of “flow.”
* Don’t focus too much on making money and buying things.
* Maintain a wide variety of friendships, and don’t spend too much time alone.
* Cultivate gratitude and forgiveness, including forgiveness towards yourself.
* Don’t try to feel great all the time — that’s not the way life works.
All of which could have been gleaned from introspection and self-help books, and none of which is especially new or particularly helpful:
* Taking up a hobby is old advice.
* Just how much focus on money is too much?
* Friends — I have few and I spend a lot of time alone, and that makes me very happy because I’m a strong introvert.
* I’m very hard on myself, and always have been, but that has made me a happier person because I have fewer faults than I used to have.
* I guess I should try to feel miserable instead of great — that’ll make me happy.
Arnold Kling is right, “happiness research implies Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada.”
In the preceding post I got carried away with my critique of Jeff Jarvis’s post about presidential character. Actually, there’s a classic book on the subject, Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House, by James David Barber. I haven’t read it in years, but I recall finding it quite insightful — well, as insightful as hindsight can be. Barber makes a good case for the influence of a president’s character on his execution of the office.
Anyway, I think Jarvis may have had another point, to which I do subscribe. That is, most of the yelling and screaming that’s associated with political campaigns these days simply does no good. The yellers and screamers are simply convincing themselves, and those who already agree with them, that they’re right. Their main accomplishment is to provide blog-fodder for their political allies and opponents.
Yelling and screaming doesn’t change anyone’s mind. Being yelled and screamed at only makes you hate your political opponents and their politics all the more. Yet, some people do change their minds, in time. Why is that?
It’s said that people tend to become more politically conservative (or libertarian) with age. If that is so, it’s because age is a proxy for experience. Many people learn, from experience, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that the law of unintended consequences often prevails, that there is no such thing as a free lunch (unless you happen to belong to the right interest group), and that negotiating for peace is a fool’s undertaking.
Experience blindsides people with the truth. Of course, not everyone is susceptible to the truth. Those who have taken a firm, “principled” stand in favor of government intervention in our lives and economic institutions are unlikely to back down from that stand. They have too much ego at stake.
But “average” people — John and Jane Public — can and do learn from experience. That is why I have hope for the future of freedom in the U.S. and for our ultimate victory over Islamism.
That’s the question asked and answered by Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine. Here’s much of what he has to say (my comments are bracketed and bolded):
It’s accepted wisdom that character is an issue in elections, especially Presidential elections. Let’s examine that assumption.
Sure, if you know with good evidence that a candidate is a lying, thieving, stealing, sliming, philadering, cheating, insane idiot and louse — well, then, yes, character is an issue. [In other words, character can never be an issue with Jarvis. Why did he bother to write the rest of this post?]
But when is any human being really so one-dimensionally flawed (and when — since 1933 — are every one of his backers so hypnotized or stupid or corrupt to allow him to get this far in life)? [Hey, Jeff, people like to be on the winning side. A lot of them don’t care what it takes to win. Take Hillary Clinton, for instance. She put up with a guy who hit eight out of nine on your list, above. I don’t think Bill’s insane, but I think he’s got the rest of the bases covered.]
Now I know what some of you are going to say: Aha! You have a problem with character because Kerry’s character is being attacked and you’re likely to vote for him; how friggin’ convenient for you!…[No, I don’t think that. I follow your blog, and I’d say that you’re more likely to vote for Bush than for Kerry. But I still disagree with you about the character issue.]
I find that I have many problems with character as a campaign issue:
1. Character is not a measure of competence. And what I really want in a President is competence. [To what end? To micromanage the economy? Competence at what? Competence, as a word in itself, is meaningless.] Jimmy Carter had character….[Yeah, the character of a sanctimonious, lip-pursing deacon that he is. I saw that in 1976, that’s why I voted against him.] Bill Clinton ended up with a cracked character [To say the least.] but I say he was a good President….[You may say that; I won’t. Clinton was too busy triangulating, ingratiating himself to domestic interest groups, and trying to create a paper legacy for himself to pay attention to what was going on in the world. Look what it got us: 9/11. Yes, I know that you barely survived it. But you’re not the only one and the fact of your near-death doesn’t give you a monopoly on wisdom.]
2. Character is used mostly as an excuse for good old-fashioned political mudslinging….[True. But not exclusively true, as you admit when you say “mostly.”]
3. Character is the argument that will never end. If you don’t like the candidate, you’ll say he has crappy character. If you like the candidate, you’ll defend his character and say that the other side is just a bunch of character assassins. Wheels spin, mud spurts, and we don’t get anywhere. It’s mean-spirited. It’s unproductive. [Actually, I started out not liking Kerry for entirely different reasons. I knew nothing of his character until he began with the flip-flops. The more I learn, the more convinced I am that Kerry’s character makes him unfit to be a president in whom I would repose confidence. How is that mean-spirited or unproductive.]
4. Character cannot truly be measured until it is tested….[Kerry’s character has been tested, amply, since he declared himself as a presidential candidate last year. He has flipped, he has flopped, he has evaded the truth about himself, and he has been hypocritical in the nth degree about the use of character assassination. How’s that for starters?]
5. Character is a distraction from the issues that really matter, the issues a President can influence that, in turn, affect our lives….[The best thing a president can do is to honor his oath of office and uphold the Constitution. Kerry’s character flaws suggest that he will do neither; he will simply do what is politically expedient (much like Clinton) and, in the process, he will drag the country further down the slope of socialism. And, does he really have what it takes to deal with terrorism, or will he be too politically correct and hung up on multilateralism. Based on his character, I fear the latter.]
6. Character is a proxy for morality and morality is a proxy for religion and religion mixed with government always scares me. [It ain’t necessarily so. See my preceding comment.]
None of this is to say that we will not or should not vote on character. [Well, then, why did you bother to write this post?] At the end of the day, unless a candidate has a stand or stands we simply abhor, each of us will inevitably end up judging whether to vote for candidates based on whether we trust or admire or like them. That’s as it should be.
But when we start arguing over such intangible and personal criteria — when we start yelling at other people that they should or should not trust or admire or like someone the way we do — then the argument reaches often absurd and usually useless depths. [Who’s to say what’s relevant or irrelevant in politics? You? McCain and Feingold and the Supreme Court? Where do you come off trying to tell us what’s important and what’s not important? Sure, some of the stuff people are yelling about is absurd. Sure, there’s lots of scurrilous crap floating around in the blogosphere. So what? That’s politics in the U.S. as it has been practiced since the election of 1800. Worry about something that really matters — like John Kerry’s character.]
As a public service, Ohio State University’s Research News warns us:
AGGRESSIVE TENDENCIES MAY BE REVEALED BY ASYMMETRY IN BODY PARTS, STUDY FINDS
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers may get some indication of how aggressively an angry person will react by measuring the size relationship between a person’s ears and other body parts, according to a new study.
Research showed that the farther certain paired body parts were from symmetry – if one ear, index finger or foot was bigger than another, for example – the more likely it is was that a person would show signs of aggression when provoked….
Now you know why Quasimodo and Frankenstein’s monster are so scary.
(Thanks to FuturePundit for the tip.)
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.
MSNBC runs a piece by Jerry Adler of Newsweek International headlined “Mind Reading”. Adler is quick to repeat a common misunderstanding about economics:
For all its intellectual power and its empirical success as a creator of wealth, free-market economics rests on a fallacy, which economists have politely agreed among themselves to overlook. This is the belief that people apply rational calculations to economic decisions, ruling their lives by economic models.
Balderdash and hogwash! Economics says that individuals try to maximize their satisfaction, as they understand it. Maximizing satisfaction isn’t always the same thing as maximizing wealth, which is apparently the measure of rationality being used in the article; viz.:
Economists have many ways of demonstrating the irrationality of their favorite experimental animal, Homo sapiens. One is the “ultimatum game,” which involves two subjects….Subject A gets 10 dollar bills. He can choose to give any number of them to subject B, who can accept or reject the offer. If [B] accepts, they split the money as A proposed; if [B] rejects A’s offer, both get nothing. As predicted by the theories of mathematician John Nash (subject of the movie “A Beautiful Mind”), A makes the most money by offering one dollar to B, keeping nine for himself, and B should accept it, because one dollar is better than none.
But if you ignore the equations and focus on how people actually behave, you see something different….People playing B who receive only one or two dollars overwhelmingly reject the offer. Economists have no better explanation than simple spite over feeling shortchanged. This becomes clear when people play the same game against a computer. They tend to accept whatever they’re offered, because why feel insulted by a machine? By the same token, most normal people playing A offer something close to an even split, averaging about $4. The only category of people who consistently play as game theory dictates, offering the minimum possible amount, are those who don’t take into account the feelings of the other player. They are autistics.
Such experiments may prove something about wealth maximization, but they prove nothing about rationality because they fail to take into account the dynamics of human interaction. Being offered only one of 10 dollars is an insult, and accepting an insult isn’t worth a dollar, to most people. When someone who is holding 10 dollars offers you only one dollar, that person is sending you a signal about your worth in his or her eyes. It’s like approaching a panhandler with a fan of five-dollar bills in your hand and plucking out one of those bills for the panhandler — who might take it, refuse it, spit in your face, or grab all the bills. If your purpose is to give the panhandler five dollars, without insulting the panhandler, you approach the panhandler with a single five-dollar bill in your hand and give that bill to the panhandler — who will accept it with thanks. (By the way, why do some people give money to panhandlers? After all, it’s not a way to maximize one’s wealth. That’s right, it’s a way to maximize one’s satisfaction. Those who give money to panhandlers feel better about themselves.)
There is simply a lot more to maximizing satisfaction than maximizing wealth. That’s why some people choose to have a lot of children, when doing so obviously reduces the amount they can save. That’s why some choose to retire early rather than stay in stressful jobs. Rationality and wealth maximization are two very different things, but a lot of laypersons and too many economists are guilty of equating them.
Politics and Prosperity 