Category: Leftism – Statism – Democracy

A Values-Free Government?

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, is quoted in an L.A. Times article* as saying, “We are not to turn the Holy Scriptures of any group into public policy.” That says a lot about the depth of religiosity to be found in an organization like Americans United, which is to the defense of religion as the American Civil Liberties Union is to the defense of liberty.

Now, I wouldn’t expect Americans United to endorse the first four of the Ten Commandments, which are about God, or even numbers 5 (honor parents), 7 (eschew adultery), 9 (don’t lie), or 10 (don’t covet others’ possessions). But you’d think that even Americans United would be in favor of laws that forbid (if not punish) murder (number 6) and outright theft (number 8). I guess not.

Related post: Religion and Liberty (with links to many other related posts)
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* Reguires a free subscription. Or get an e-mail ID and password at bugmenot.com, then search for “Grooming Politicians for Christ” (the title of the article).

What Is the "Living Constitution"?

Dahlia Lithwick of Slate inveighs against opponents of the “Living Constitution” without explaining it. Here’s Dahlia:

To hear Tom DeLay and his cronies tell it, the only alternative to the interpretive theory of “Originalism” or “strict construction” is to have judges swinging like monkeys from the constitutional chandeliers, making up whatever they want, whenever they want. Here’s Jonah Goldberg on the allure of a dead Constitution: “A ‘living Constitution’ denies us our voice in this regard because it basically holds that whatever decisions we make—including the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments—can be thrown out by any five dyspeptic justices on the Supreme Court. In other words, the justices who claim the Constitution is a wild card didn’t take their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution in good faith because they couldn’t know what they were swearing to.”

Goldberg goes on to quote Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in the recent Ten Commandments cases: “What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority, is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle. That is what prevents judges from ruling now this way, now that—thumbs up or thumbs down—as their personal preferences dictate.”

And here is Todd Gaziano from the Heritage Foundation: “If judges can essentially do whatever they want in the guise of updating the [C]onstitution … making it real for today or choosing whatever silly phrase you want, then we might as well have a completely unwritten Constitution.” . . .

A Nexis search for the words “living Constitution” turns up literally dozens of stories by conservatives bashing the premise into a hopeless pulp. But it’s hard to find a creditable recent defense of the Constitution as something greater than the span of its own four corners. And I wonder why.

Is it because the words “living Constitution,” like the words “feminist” or “liberal,” have become wholly appropriated by the Rush Limbaughs of the world? Or is it something deeper—a sense on the part of serious liberal thinkers that Roe v. Wade, with its kabbalistic talk of constitutional penumbras and emanations, really is indefensible? Is it, as I have argued before, that we are all secretly afraid that Scalia is right? That a living Constitution is nothing more than a bunch of monkeys on chandeliers?

Scalia is right. But let’s hear it directly from the Justice:

Well, let me first tell you how we got to the “Living Constitution.” You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand it. The road is not that complicated. Initially, the Court began giving terms in the text of the Constitution a meaning they didn’t have when they were adopted. For example, the First Amendment, which forbids Congress to abridge the freedom of speech. What does the freedom of speech mean? Well, it clearly did not mean that Congress or government could not impose any restrictions upon speech. Libel laws, for example, were clearly constitutional. Nobody thought the First Amendment was carte blanche to libel someone. But in the famous case of New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court said, “But the First Amendment does prevent you from suing for libel if you are a public figure and if the libel was not malicious” — that is, the person, a member of the press or otherwise, thought that what the person said was true. Well, that had never been the law. I mean, it might be a good law. And some states could amend their libel law. . . .

. . . There is no text in the Constitution that you could reinterpret to create a right to abortion. . . . So you need something else. The something else is called the doctrine of “Substantive Due Process.” Only lawyers can walk around talking about substantive process, in as much as it’s a contradiction in terms. . . .

What substantive due process is is quite simple — the Constitution has a Due Process Clause, which says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Now, what does this guarantee? Does it guarantee life, liberty or property? No, indeed! All three can be taken away. You can be fined, you can be incarcerated, you can even be executed, but not without due process of law. It’s a procedural guarantee. . . . [I]n fact the first case to do it was Dred Scott. But it became more popular in the 1920s. The Court said there are some liberties that are so important, that no process will suffice to take them away. Hence, substantive due process.

Now, what liberties are they? The Court will tell you. Be patient. When the doctrine of substantive due process was initially announced, it was limited in this way, the Court said it embraces only those liberties that are fundamental to a democratic society and rooted in the traditions of the American people.

Then . . . that limitation is eliminated. Within the last 20 years, we have found to be covered by due process the right to abortion, which was so little rooted in the traditions of the American people that it was criminal for 200 years; the right to homosexual sodomy, which was so little rooted in the traditions of the American people that it was criminal for 200 years. So it is literally true, and I don’t think this is an exaggeration, that the Court has essentially liberated itself from the text of the Constitution, from the text and even from the traditions of the American people. It is up to the Court to say what is covered by substantive due process.

What are the arguments usually made in favor of the Living Constitution? . . . The major argument is the Constitution is a living organism, it has to grow with the society that it governs or it will become brittle and snap.

This is . . . an anthropomorphism equivalent to what you hear from your stockbroker, when he tells you that the stock market is resting for an assault on the 11,000 level. The stock market panting at some base camp. The stock market is not a mountain climber and the Constitution is not a living organism for Pete’s sake; it’s a legal document, and like all legal documents, it says some things, and it doesn’t say other things. And if you think that the aficionados of the Living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again.

My Constitution is a very flexible Constitution. You think the death penalty is a good idea — persuade your fellow citizens and adopt it. You think it’s a bad idea — persuade them the other way and eliminate it. You want a right to abortion — create it the way most rights are created in a democratic society, persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and enact it. You want the opposite — persuade them the other way. That’s flexibility. . . .

Some people are in favor of the Living Constitution because they think it always leads to greater freedom — there’s just nothing to lose, the evolving Constitution will always provide greater and greater freedom, more and more rights. Why would you think that? It’s a two-way street. And indeed, under the aegis of the Living Constitution, some freedoms have been taken away.

Recently, last term, we reversed a 15-year-old decision of the Court, which had held that the Confrontation Clause — which couldn’t be clearer, it says, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right … to be confronted with the witness against him.” But a Living Constitution Court held that all that was necessary to comply with the Confrontation Clause was that the hearsay evidence which is introduced — hearsay evidence means you can’t cross-examine the person who said it because he’s not in the court — the hearsay evidence has to bear indicia of reliability. I’m happy to say that we reversed it last term with the votes of the two originalists on the Court. And the opinion said that the only indicium of reliability that the Confrontation Clause acknowledges is confrontation. You bring the witness in to testify and to be cross-examined. That’s just one example, there are others, of eliminating liberties.

So, I think another example is the right to jury trial. In a series of cases, the Court had seemingly acknowledged that you didn’t have to have trial by jury of the facts that increase your sentence. You can make the increased sentence a “sentencing factor” — you get 30 years for burglary, but if the burglary is committed with a gun, as a sentencing factor the judge can give you another 10 years. And the judge will decide whether you used a gun. And he will decide it, not beyond a reasonable doubt, but whether it’s more likely than not. Well, we held recently, I’m happy to say, that this violates the right to a trial by jury. The Living Constitution would not have produced that result. The Living Constitution, like the legislatures that enacted these laws would have allowed sentencing factors to be determined by the judge because all the Living Constitution assures you is that what will happen is what the majority wants to happen. And that’s not the purpose of constitutional guarantees.

Well, I’ve talked about some of the false virtues of the Living Constitution, let me tell you what I consider its principle vices are. Surely the greatest — you should always begin with principle — its greatest vice is its illegitimacy. The only reason federal courts sit in judgment of the constitutionality of federal legislation is not because they are explicitly authorized to do so in the Constitution. Some modern constitutions give the constitutional court explicit authority to review German legislation or French legislation for its constitutionality, our Constitution doesn’t say anything like that. But John Marshall says in Marbury v. Madison: Look, this is lawyers’ work. What you have here is an apparent conflict between the Constitution and the statute. And, all the time, lawyers and judges have to reconcile these conflicts — they try to read the two to comport with each other. If they can’t, it’s judges’ work to decide which ones prevail. When there are two statutes, the more recent one prevails. It implicitly repeals the older one. But when the Constitution is at issue, the Constitution prevails because it is a “superstatute.” I mean, that’s what Marshall says: It’s judges’ work. . . .

. . . If you don’t believe in originalism, then you need some other principle of interpretation. Being a non-originalist is not enough. You see, I have my rules that confine me. I know what I’m looking for. When I find it — the original meaning of the Constitution — I am handcuffed. If I believe that the First Amendment meant when it was adopted that you are entitled to burn the American flag, I have to come out that way even though I don’t like to come out that way. When I find that the original meaning of the jury trial guarantee is that any additional time you spend in prison which depends upon a fact must depend upon a fact found by a jury — once I find that’s what the jury trial guarantee means, I am handcuffed. Though I’m a law-and-order type, I cannot do all the mean conservative things I would like to do to this society. You got me.

Now, if you’re not going to control your judges that way, what other criterion are you going to place before them? What is the criterion that governs the Living Constitutional judge? What can you possibly use, besides original meaning? Think about that. Natural law? We all agree on that, don’t we? The philosophy of John Rawls? That’s easy. There really is nothing else. You either tell your judges, “Look, this is a law, like all laws, give it the meaning it had when it was adopted.” Or, you tell your judges, “Govern us. You tell us whether people under 18, who committed their crimes when they were under 18, should be executed. You tell us whether there ought to be an unlimited right to abortion or a partial right to abortion. You make these decisions for us.” I have put this question — you know I speak at law schools with some frequency just to make trouble — and I put this question to the faculty all the time, or incite the students to ask their Living Constitutional professors: “Okay professor, you are not an originalist, what is your criterion?” There is none other.

. . . What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you’d like it to mean? There is no such thing as a moderate interpretation of the text. Would you ask a lawyer, “Draw me a moderate contract?” The only way the word has any meaning is if you are looking for someone to write a law, to write a constitution, rather than to interpret one. The moderate judge is the one who will devise the new constitution that most people would approve of. So, for example, we had a suicide case some terms ago, and the Court refused to hold that there is a constitutional right to assisted suicide. We said, “We’re not yet ready to say that. Stay tuned, in a few years, the time may come, but we’re not yet ready.” And that was a moderate decision, because I think most people would not want — if we had gone, looked into that and created a national right to assisted suicide, that would have been an immoderate and extremist decision.

[W]here we have arrived — [is] at the point of selecting [judges] to write a constitution, rather than [judges] to give us the fair meaning of one that has been democratically adopted. And when that happens, when the Senate interrogates nominees to the Supreme Court, or to the lower courts — you know, “Judge so-and-so, do you think there is a right to this in the Constitution? You don’t? Well, my constituents think there ought to be, and I’m not going to appoint to the court someone who is not going to find that” — when we are in that mode, you realize, we have rendered the Constitution useless, because the Constitution will mean what the majority wants it to mean. The senators are representing the majority, and they will be selecting justices who will devise a constitution that the majority wants. And that, of course, deprives the Constitution of its principle utility. The Bill of Rights is devised to protect you and me against, who do you think? The majority. My most important function on the Supreme Court is to tell the majority to take a walk. And the notion that the justices ought to be selected because of the positions that they will take, that are favored by the majority, is a recipe for destruction of what we have had for 200 years.

Give ’em hell, Nino.

You can’t always have all the rights you want; there’s nothing “natural” about rights. Sometimes you must fight for the rights you want, which, in this post-Revolutionary era, means — or should mean — fighting to have the Constitution amended or fighting to have legislatures adopt constitutional laws. As Justice Scalia says so eloquently, the “Living Constitution” isn’t about rights, it’s about the ability of the majority to impose its will on the minority, without going to the trouble of amending the Constitution or effecting constitutional legislation.

Foxhole Rats, Redux

In “Shall We All Hang Separately?” I observed that

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.”

I was referring to the “post-patriots” on the American Left who openly side with the so-called insurgents in Iraq. In”Foxhole Rats” I said a bit about the not-quite-enemy in our midst. Now, from Wizbang, I offer you this:

Did you know that back in June of this year a “world tribunal” was held to put the United States and its allies in Iraq on trial for their actions in that country? . . .

You know what one of their findings were? That the terrorist insurgency in Iraq was and is justified in its murder of Iraqi civilians and coalition troops.

It was finding number eleven in the tribunal’s “overview of findings:”

11. There is widespread opposition to the occupation. Political, social, and civil resistance through peaceful means is subjected to repression by the occupying forces. It is the occupation and its brutality that has provoked a strong armed resistance and certain acts of desperation. By the principles embodied in the UN Charter and in international law, the popular national resistance to the occupation is legitimate and justified. It deserves the support of people everywhere who care for justice and freedom.

. . . .

And guess who was behind this tribunal and these findings? More than a few prominent U.S. anti-war groups, among them:

The Campus Anti-War Network

Code Pink (A group with close ties to Congressional Democrats and Cindy Sheehan)

International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Who’s founder is one of Saddam’s lawyers)

And a host of others.

These people are actively supporting the enemy, not to mention terrorism. These people are also behind most of the anti-war rallies and protests we hear about in the media. They are the loudest voices in the anti-war movement. Collectively, they garner more attention to the anti-war cause than anyone else.

And, collectively, they are on the other side.

As I wrote in “Foxhole Rats,” I’m not equating dissent with disloyalty but I am

equating decades of anti-defense, anti-war, and sometimes pro-enemy rhetoric with a willingness to abandon the common defense.

As the author of the Wizbang post says, in closing:

Reasoned opposition to America’s foreign policies decision with regard to the middle east are one thing, but openly supporting the enemy is quite another. And that is, without equivocation, what these people are doing.

Related posts:

Getting It Wrong: Civil Libertarians and the War on Terror (A Case Study) (05/18/04)
The Illogic of Knee-Jerk Privacy Adocates (10/06/04)
Treasonous Blogging? (03/05/05)
Absolutism (03/25/05)
Shall We All Hang Separately? (08/13/05)
Foxhole Rats (08/14/05)
Treasonous Speech? (08/18/05)

Another Thought about Libertarian Paternalism

Every individual possesses a complex and unique, but ever-changing, set of tastes and preferences. The individual seeks to strike a balance among those tastes and preferences in a way that, very roughly, maximizes personal satisfaction (utility). The outcome of the balancing act depends on:

  • ability to acquire and evaluate information
  • cost of making and changing decisions
  • constraints of income and wealth (anticipated as well as current)
  • binding commitments from the past that may limit freedom of action (or which may be changed or abrogated at some psychic or pecuniary cost)
  • laws and social norms that may do the same (or which we may choose to flout, at some cost)

Paternalists — “libertarian” or otherwise — who claim that they want to improve the lot of their fellow humans, choose to do so in a peculiar way. They seek to further constrain personal choice through the adoption of policies that ignore the complex and evolving tastes and preferences of individuals. Those policies focus, instead, on a particular desideratum, such as wealth-maximization or the “well being” that arises from enjoying certain benefits (e.g., 6 weeks of vacation or “free” child care).

I understand why individuals who are deluded by the allure of a “free lunch” (e.g., a mandatory 6-week vacation) will demand paternalistic schemes. But I am here to tell you the following:

Do not presume to know what makes me happy. Do not seek to impose on me your scheme for maximizing my wealth or well-being. You don’t know and can never know what makes me tick. When I was 22 I wasn’t interested in accumulating wealth, I was interested in paying my bills. When I turned 24 I became interested in accumulating wealth, but I didn’t pursue it vigorously until I turned 38. In the meantime, I wasted some wealth in the pursuit of a dream; out of that pursuit came a lesson in how to run a business. But if I had wanted to convert that lesson into wealth maximization, I wouldn’t have chosen to return to the quasi-public sector and, eventually, to retire early. And if I had been forced to take six weeks’ vacation a year, I couldn’t have retired early.

I’m unique only in that my particular story is unique. We are all unique. None of us deserves paternalism — “libertarian” or otherwise.

Related posts:

The Rationality Fallacy (08/16/04)
Socialist Calculation and the Turing Test (02/12/05)
Libertarian Paternalism (04/24/05)
A Libertarian Paternalist’s Dream World (05/23/05)
The Short Answer to Libertarian Paternalism (06/24/05)
Second-Guessing, Paternalism, Parentalism, and Choice (07/13/05)

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)

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

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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.

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Case Dismissed

Mike Renzulli tries to make a case that libertarians should join forces with the Democrat Party:

[T]he Democratic Party still considers Thomas Jefferson…to be their [sic] founder.

That’s nice, but what have you done for me lately? Oh, this:

There have been libertarian traditions within the Democratic Party…. The Cleveland Democrats (a.k.a. “Gold Democrats”), beginning with the leaders of the Free Trade, anti-Tariff, hard Gold movement from the 1870’s through the early 1930’s, were a dominant group within the Democratic Party….The Cleveland Democrats were the last significant libertarian force within the Democratic Party. Their final major accomplishments were the anti-Prohibitionist movement in the 1920’s and the 1932 Democratic Party Platform, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt infamously ran on–and promptly forgot once he was elected….

So much for the long-defunct (and hardly libertarian) Cleveland Democrats. Instead we got FDR’s New Deal (a.k.a. fascism in America) and, later, LBJ’s Great Society (a.k.a. socialism in America). (Read this to understand the immense cost of those ventures.) I have seen no evidence that today’s Democrats are any less committed to the “ideals” of the New Deal and Great Society than were Democrats of the 1930s and 1960s.

I thought Renzulli was trying to woo libertarians, but he switches gears:

There have been conservative Democrats which were fairly pro-freedom, but they mostly died out in the 1950’s. Nevada Senator Pat McCarran (McCarran Airport in Las Vegas is named after him) was, what would be called in today’s terminology, a paleoconservative. He was pretty closely connected with Senator Joseph McCarthy in his anti-communist crusade, as were other conservative and states-rights Democrats.

But the Demos still have Bobby Byrd. I guess that ought to attract a lot of libertarians.

Oh, here’s the argument for libertarians:

It was not the Republican Party who [sic] has been the libertarian political party in American politics, it was the Demcorats.

The Republican Party of the 1920s through 1960s was far closer to being libertarian than was the Democrat Party of the same era. Since then, of course, the GOP has had a taste of power and has compromised its old limited-government principles to hold onto that power. But regardless of the GOP’s sins, the Dems’ sins are greater. The GOP is still “home” for conservatives who adhere to the principle of limited government. Where are the Democrats on limited government? Nowhere, unless you count the Dems rather adolescent posturing on abortion and support of “progressive” eugenics.

What about those newly profligate Republicans?

With the recent budget being proposed by Bush and Congress, admittedly Republicans and Democrats, to spend $3 TRILLION….It is abundantly clear that in recent years the leadership of the Republican and Libertarian Parties are not interested in upholding the Jeffersonian ideals of simple, frugal government as much as the present leadership of the Democrats.

Renzulli admits that the Democrats are party to the present reign of profligacy in Washington, as they are — willingly. But Renzulli then tries to suggest that the Dems’ present leadership is interested in “simple, frugal” government. Hah! The Dems pay lip service to a balanced budget, not because they want to cut spending but because they want to raise taxes in order to finance latter-day versions of the New Deal and Great Society.

The Dems are more likely to be anti-war and against war-related “infringements” of civil liberties (e.g., peeking at your reading list if you otherwise seem to be engaged in suspicious behavior). But being anti-war isn’t the same as being pro-liberty, unless you adhere to the idiotic, paleolibertarian dogma of last-ditch self defense. (Aha! Maybe Renzulli is appealing to paleos. Good luck.) As for civil liberties, would you rather have the federal government peeking at your reading list or regimenting your entire life through regulation and taxation? The latter, of course, is what happens when Dems are in charge.

The Sun may burn out and Hell may freeze over, but this libertarian will never join forces with the Demo(n)crats.

See also:

Libertarian Conservative or Conservative Libertarian? (07/29/04)
“The Party of the Little People” ? (08/03/04)
Does Libertarian-Conservative Fusion Have a Future? (08/19/04)
Hobbesian Libertarianism (10/08/04)
What Realignment? (12/05/04)
What’s a Libertarian to Do? (12/05/04)
Libertarianism and Conservatism (12/05/04)
Judeo-Christian Values and Liberty (02/20/05)
Where Conservatism and (Sensible) Libertarianism Come Together (04/14/05)
Conservatism, Libertarianism, and Public Morality (04/25/05)
Redeeming the Promise of Liberty (05/06/05)

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Whose Side Are They On?

NYCLU Calls Decision To Conduct Random Searches Of Individuals On New York’s Subways Unconstitutional

The Left, Abortion, and Adolescence

The Left will bitterly oppose any nominee for the Supreme Court if the Left finds in that nominee a scintilla of opposition to legal abortion.

What I want to know is why that issue is of such great importance to the Left. What is it about abortion (or the “right” to have one) that seizes the passions of the Left? Is it the notion of self-ownership, that is, the “right” to do with “one’s body” as one will? If the Left were consistent about self-ownership it wouldn’t also encourage government to take money from others in order to provide “free” programs, ranging from health care to bike trails.

The Left’s selective embrace of self-ownership indicates that its elevation of abortion to sacramental status has deeper, more psychological roots. The Left is in an arrested state of adolescent rebellion: “Daddy” doesn’t want me to smoke, so I’m going to smoke; “Daddy” doesn’t want me to drink, so I’m going to drink; “Daddy” doesn’t want me to have sex, so I’m going to have sex. But, regardless of my behavior, I expect “Daddy” to give me an allowance, and birthday presents, and cell phones, and so on.

“Daddy,” in the case of abortion, is government, which had banned abortion in many places. If it’s banned, the Left wants it. But the Left — like an adolescent — also expects government to cough up money (others’ money, of course) to quench its material desires.

Persons of the Left simply are simply unthinking, selfish adolescents who want what they want, regardless of the consequences for others. The Left’s stance on abortion should be viewed as just one more adolescent tantrum in a vast repertoire of tantrums.

Second-Guessing, Paternalism, Parentalism, and Choice

You make the best decision you can, at the time you make it, in light of your preferences and knowledge at that time. Then someone (sometimes yourself) comes along to tell you that you would would have made a “more rational” decision if only you had had different knowledge or different preferences at the time you made the decision.

Persons with a compulsion to second-guess the decisions of others are paternalists; they want to use the power of the state to force others to make “rational” (i.e., different) decisions. Persons with a compulsion to second-guess themselves are parentalists; they want the state to make “rational” decisions for them. Paternalism and parentalism have the same effect: loss of liberty.

Glen Whitman explains:

Julian [Sanchez has] written up an excellent piece on “parentalism” – the desire of some people to have their own freedom restricted for their own good. He cites a forthcoming Cato Policy Analysis by yours truly on the subject of “internalities,” a term of art for within-person externalities that people impose on themselves. In so doing, he helpfully saves me the trouble of having to summarize my own argument:

There are plenty of practical problems with the parentalist impulse. As economist Glen Whitman notes in a forthcoming Cato Institute paper, we cannot assume we always help people by giving preference to their “long term” over their “short term” interests. Imagine an aging man in ill-health lamenting his sybaritic youth. We are tempted to say that his younger self, seeing the pleasures immediately available to him and giving short shrift to their long term consequences, exhibited a foolish bias toward the present. But surely it’s also possible that his older self, faced with the proximate pains and inconveniences of poor health, discounts the pleasures past he’d have forsaken had he been more health-conscious. If we’re prone to the first form of cognitive bias, why not the second?

Whitman also argues that, just as simple Pigovian taxes on pollution may be less efficient than allowing market negotiation to determine how much pollution will be produced in what location, sin taxes, smoking bans, and other parentalist attempts to spare our future selves the costs of our present choices may displace a rich variety of mechanisms for self-restraint that would match the rich variety of risk profiles and time-discount rates we find among members of a pluralistic society. And as the young man interviewed by the Village Voice demonstrated, we can be ingenious at outwitting imposed restraints—even those we welcome in principle. We may find ourselves running up bigger credit card bills to buy more sin-taxed Twinkies and cigarettes, or traveling inconvenient distances to find a smoke friendly bar.

So what’s the difference between parentalism and paternalism? Paternalism involves other people favoring restrictions for a person’s own good, whereas parentalism involves people favoring restrictions on themselves. While this distinction is clear in principle, in practice the latter quickly shades into the former. True paternalists will seize upon the (possibly idle) statements of parentalists to justify their favored policies. Indeed, the whole thrust of the “new paternalism” is that restrictions on personal liberty will help people to better achieve their own preferences, not externally imposed preferences. As I put it in my article, “[T]he old paternalism said, ‘We know what’s best for you, and we’ll make you do it.’ The new paternalism says, ‘You know what’s best for you, and we’ll make you do it.’” The problem is that the policymakers, who cannot possibly know the “true” preferences of all those affected by their policies, ultimately have to impose an external set of preferences via their regulatory choices.

Giving the state the power to make your choices for you is like handing the remote control to a stranger who can force you to sit and watch the TV programs he chooses.

Related posts:

The Rationality Fallacy (08/16/04)

Socialist Calculation and the Turing Test (02/13/05)

Libertarian Paternalism (04/24/05)

The Illogical Left, via Leiter

UPDATED BELOW

B. Leiter (blighter) commends a post by one P.Z. Myers, in which Myers says:

But if I…agree that there is a statistical difference in the distribution of the sexes in various occupations which is in some way driven by gender, I would say that it is 100% the product of society and culture, and that it is 100% the product of biological evolution.

[Todd Zywicki of The Volokh Conspiracy is] making the old, tired nature/nurture distinction, and it drives me nuts. It’s a false dichotomy that is perpetuated by an antiquated misconception about how development and biology works. Genes don’t work alone, they always interact with their environment, and the outcome of developmental processes is always contingent upon both genetic and non-genetic factors.

So much for the intellectual superiority of blighter and his ilk. Genes don’t work alone, but nature must precede nurture in any explanation of aptitude. Consider this, for example. I learned to love the game of baseball at an early age (nurture). My love of the game fostered in me a desire to become a major league baseball player (a leaning born of nurture). I could never become a major league baseball player because of my eyesight, which even when corrected is about 20-40 (nature).

In sum: Nature trumps nuture when it comes to having the requisite ability to excel in any occupation that requires a modicum of skill, whether it be playing major league baseball or doing physics.

Glibness and intellectual superiority are not the same thing, as blighter proves whenever he opines or approvingly cites a like-minded Leftist.

UPDATE: Todd Zywicki defends himself rather nicely in the third update to his original post; for example:

In response to PZ Myer’s assertion that evolutionary psychology is “poorly done hokum” and that there is “vigorous disagreement” about the entire field of evolutionary psychology I requested (quite reasonably, I thought) that Myers supply some specific examples of scientific disagreement over many of the core principles of evolutionary psychology, such as Hamilton’s theory of kin selection. He has responded to this request for specifics that would support his claim that the entire field “poorly done hokum”:

That semi-random list of principles is not the same as EP. It’s like saying that because Michael Behe understands and agrees that natural selection has occurred, Intelligent Design is therefore the same as accepted neo-Darwinian theory. Picking a few points of concordance while ignoring the points of divergence between two ideas to imply a unity of support that is not there is, well, dishonest.

Nah, I’m plainspoken. He’s lying. There is substantial disagreement in the biological community on evolutionary psychology, and to imply that this question has been settled in his favor is either gross ignorance on his part or simple fraud. Of course there is currently an ongoing battle over EP; check out the last link in my article.

I’m actually being kind by conceding that there is a legitimate debate on the subject. I know very few scientists who don’t think Pinker is full of shit.

Ah, so now I understand–no need to respond to my request for analysis, because, well, “Pinker is full of shit.” Why attack Pinker out of the blue when I never even mentioned him, rather than addressing the specifics I raised? Is it that Pinker is the only evolutionary psychologist with whom Myers is familiar? Then, falling back (again) on the good old reliable argument from authority, he also links to an interview with philosopher David J. Buller, a critic of evolutionary psychology, who raises doubts about some aspects of the evolutionary psychology research program. Apparently citing an interview with this particular philosopher where he critiques some aspects of the evolutionary psychology research program sufficies to demonstrate that the entire field is “hokum” and that the entire field is open to question (it is not clear whether Buller is one of the scientists, actually he’s a philosopher so he may not be included, who think that “Pinker is full of shit”–if so, that must be in his book because I couldn’t find that particular quote in the interview he links).

If anything, it seems like the argument Myers is making is much closer to the ID argument that he critiques, than the argument I was making. As I understand the ID argument, it picks up on small holes in the theory of evolution or questions around the edges of the theory, and then proceeds to infer that the entire theory is open to question. Similarly, I have enumerated a long list of core (not semi-random at all) evolutionary psychology ideas on which there seems to be a substantial degree of agreement. Indeed, from what I can tell, he does not disagree with my assessment that there is widespread agreement on these concepts, he simply dismisses this agreement as irrelevant under his particular definition of evolutionary psychology. His response, as I understand it, is that this scientific agreement on these many core principles of evolutionary psychology is irrelevant because there are some unsettled questions around the edges of the research program, and so that therefore the whole research program itself is questionable and that there is controversy about the entire field. This seems much more similar to the arguments that I have read by ID theorists critiquing Darwinian theory, rather than the arguments that I was making. For the record, I don’t know whether adherents to intelligent design theory also think that Pinker (or Darwin, for that matter) “is full of shit.”

And so on.

Blighter and his Leftist friends are so unsure of their grasp of truth — or so afraid of the truth — that they simply stoop to scurrilous prose. Dismissiveness is the last refuge of an ignoramus (one of blighter’s favorite terms for those who challenge his pointy-headed blatherings).

P.S. I’m purposely being scurrilous here and in my other posts about blighter because he endorses abusive and offensive blogging. If he says it’s all right, it must be — he knows all.

Brian Leiter Is an Idiot

Brian Leiter,* a lawprof at the University of Texas, writes:

Why is it even remotely relevant what [the] words [of the Constitution] meant when the Constitution was adopted? The right has been pushing this non-sequitur for a couple of decades now, but they still have no answers to the simplest questions about the legal or moral relevance of the “original meaning” or “original intent” of Constitutional provisions. Those who produced the “original” meanings have no claim of democratically sanctioned authority over us.

Hmmm… I recently came upon similar words, in Lysander Spooner’s 1870 essay, “The Constitution of No Authority.” Spooner’s anarchistic thesis is that the Constitution never was and never will be binding because it isn’t a voluntary contract entered into by those presumed to be bound by it. That is, by Spooner’s reckoning, the Constitution was simply imposed on us by Madison and his cronies.

What Leiter the Lefty and Spooner the Anarchist fail to grasp is that the binding nature of the Constitution’s original meaning is implicit in the fact that it can be amended. The Framers’ willingness to submit their work to emendations proves that the Constitution, as it was then understood, was meant to be binding in perpetuity, unless and until those who came later chose to amend it in order to change its meaning. Acceptance is implied consent.

Leiter presumably objects to the notion of implied consent (if it has crossed his mind) because the process of amending the Constitution relies on supermajorities. That’s “undemocratic,” don’t you know? I wonder how Leiter would feel if a mere majority of the Texas legislature were to strip him of his cushy professorship? That would be democratic, after all.

I’m sure that with his professorship at stake Leiter would prove himself a hypocrite about democracy, just as he has proved himself a hypocrite about the concept of original meaning, which he accepts when it suits him:

Suppose the legislature prohibits the killing of “fish”” within 100 miles of the coast, intending quite clearly (as the legislative history reveals) to protect whales, but not realizing that “fish” is a natural kind term that does not include whales within its extension. The new theory of reference tells us that the statute protects sea bass but not whales, yet surely a court that interpreted the statute as also protecting whales would not be making a mistake. Indeed, one might think the reverse is true: for a court not to protect whales would be to contravene the will of the legislature, and thus, indirectly, the will of the people.

Actually, it’s all about original meaning, isn’t it? But Leiter’s views about original meaning seem to depend very much on whose whale is being harpooned.
__________
* Our hero:

"American Exceptionalism," from the Left

Howard Zinn, ranting from the Left, assembles a hodge-podge of non-sequiturs, false premises, and excluded middles in his attack on American exceptionalism (“The Power and the Glory,” Boston Review). Or is it an attack on American self-defense, religion, and G.W. Bush? It’s all of the above, premised on the notion that because America isn’t perfect it must be evil and resisted by the rest of the world. Same to you, Howard.

The Short Answer to Libertarian Paternalism

Here’s the fatal flaw in “libertarian paternalism” and all other forms of statism:

If we are systematically flawed in our efforts to see what is good for ourselves, how much worse must we be at seeing what is good for others, about whom we can know far less and with whose interests we can have at best partial empathy!

— Nick Weininger, writing at Catallarchy

Free Markets, Free People, and Utter Disgust with Government

The societal value of a good or service — its value to persons other than its producer — is neither intrinsic nor determined by, say, the amount of labor that goes into its production. The societal value of a good or service can be determined only when a free market establishes a price for that good or service. This simple assertion, which I will prove below, explains why government intervention in the economy — through spending, redistribution, and regulation — causes the economy to underperform and creates general harm, as I have shown here, for instance.

Consider this: I may labor skillfully for days on end to carve a miniature portrait of John Stuart Mill on the shell of a walnut, but if no one wants to buy that portrait, it has no value to others. Does it still have a value? Well, if I decide — before setting out on my quixotic carving task — that I would want the carving for myself, whether or not anyone will buy it, then I am ascribing a personal value to the work. My personal value is the market value of the labor I forbore to sell to a willing buyer so that I could carve the likeness of John Stuart Mill. But that value is my value, not a societal value, which is zero because I cannot turn around and sell the carving for the value of the labor that I forbore to sell to a willing buyer.

Some will say “So what?” If I derive value from a carving I can’t sell, at least I have something of value to show for my labor. Here’s “what”: Suppose I do nothing with my time but make carvings that no one will buy. Suppose, further, that a powerful clique of persons wants to encourage me in my artistic endeavors and therefore forces others to buy my carvings at a price and frequency that enables me to feed, clothe, and shelter myself. If you are one of the persons who is forced to buy one of my carvings, you receive nothing of value for yourself, but — thanks to the powerful clique — I deprive you of some portion of the food, clothing, or shelter you might have been able to buy from income you earned from willing buyers of your product or service.

The same powerful clique might as well force you and others to give me money in exchange for nothing. It would amount to the same thing, inasmuch as no one places any value on my walnut carvings. If it happens that your neighbor comes to acquire a taste for walnut carvings, he may be happy with the exchange. But that does you no good; cost-benefit analysis to the contrary, you neighbor’s happiness and yours are incommensurable. If your neighbor wants walnut carvings, let him buy his own; if he wants to give money to indigent walnut carvers, let him give his own. Why should you help subsidize his acquired taste for walnut carvings?

The powerful clique of my metaphor stands for government, of course. The powerful clique’s decisions are analogous to government spending, redistribution, and regulation, which:

  • Deprive you of a portion of your earnings in order to subsidize the production of government services that you may not want.
  • Force you to donate some of your earnings to persons who produce nothing for the money they receive.
  • Effectively dictate the kinds of goods and services that may or may not be produced. (It is but a small further step to dictate how goods and services must be produced.)

Free markets, by contrast, call forth only those goods and services that are of value to you. Unless you are a net beneficiary of government intervention — and relatively few of us are — the powerful clique that is government invariably makes you worse off through spending, redistribution, and regulation.

But, you may ask, what about providing for the aged, the poor, the handicapped, and the elderly; what about protecting the environment, ensuring the safety of drugs, assuring that medical doctors are properly trained, providing for the common defense, and all the other functions that have been assigned to government?

The short answer is this: Read this blog, starting with this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and following the links and sources cited therein.

The slightly longer answer is this: There is almost nothing government can do for you that you can’t do for yourself, or that you can’t buy in a truly free market, including environmental protection (to name but one supposedly indispensable function of government). With government out of the way we would be so much more prosperous that there would be few needy persons and ample private charity for those who cannot fend for themselves. Asking government to “solve problems” is somewhat like gambling at a casino; the odds are against you because the house takes its cut. But it’s worse than that, because government cannot know what you know about what you want and how to produce what others want. As I wrote here,

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.

The government that forbids you to raise cannabis for your own use and that can seize your property at will is the same government that’s here to “help” you “solve” your problems. It’s “help” like that which makes us less free and less prosperous, day by day.

As the character Howard Beale said in Network, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Well, I won’t take it quietly. In fact, I am close to changing my mind about defense, which I have long argued is a legitimate function of government. Look what happens: We create a government for self-defense and the next thing we know it’s telling us how to run our lives. Enough is more than enough. We are careening down the slippery slope toward serfdom.

The Last Straw?

UPDATED BELOW

This decision, in Kelo v. City of New London, coming on top of the decision in Raich, drives me to the edge of despair:

Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes

WASHINGTON – A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth often is at war with individual property rights.

The 5-4 ruling — assailed by dissenting Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as handing “disproportionate influence and power” to the well-heeled in America — was a defeat for Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They had argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

The state is in the saddle and its steed is trampling liberty with abandon.

UPDATE: Some would blame today’s market drop on the price of crude:

Stocks slump after oil taps $60
Dow posts biggest one-day drop in more than 2 months

But a look at the intraday chart suggests that the selloff began just after the news of the Court’s decision in Kelo. It’s bad for people and bad for business (which also makes it bad for people).

State and local governments now have the power to shut down any business on any pretext that can be labelled a “public purpose.” The regulatory hazards of doing business have just been magnified and the trajectory of economic growth has been pushed downward, again, in yet another blow to liberty. It began, in earnest, about 100 years ago. And there’s no letup in sight.

Sweet Reason from the Left

Reactions to an appearance by George Neumayr, executive editor of The American Spectator on PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, in a segment entitled “Public Broadcasting Under Fire“:

Your whole organization is a sorry pile of manure in the first place but that crap that Neumayr was spreading on tonight’s “NewsHour” was an embarrassment even for a sorry bunch like you.

Christ on a Ritz, could that sorry bastard possibly be the best you could offer to state your warped and perverted view of PBS….

You have overstepped the bounds of free speech this time….

Dick Cheney’s use of F— has liberated me from restraining my vitriol in these circumstances, about the only thing that lying, war/death-profiteering canker’s ever done for the rest of us….

I’m not happy with PBS as I think it lets you people off too lightly when it should expose you as the elitist parasitic vermin you are. But I’m an adult and realize that PBS doesn’t belong to me….

Please tell [Mr. Neumayr] that he needs to have his chin tucked. It’s fat and hangs over his collar. He could also benefit from bigger lips. His oral cavity looks more like a hole than a mouth….

You sicken me….

You should discourage Mr. Neumayr from seeking the camera — he just comes across as the typical twitchy repressed gay Catholic weirdo. Basically, he’s a repulsive pile of pixels on our digital screens. The fact that the cartoon didn’t show the Klan lynching the queer mommies clearly has his goat — and judging by some of the confessions on talk shows recently, conservatives are likely to be jealous of their farm animals….

Just saw your smug little face on PBS — stick it in your [bleep]….

Doesn’t Mr. Neumayr realize the only good conservative is a dead conservative?…

The tolerant, loving Left has spoken.