Category: Leftism – Statism – Democracy

Left, Right, What’s the Difference?

Michael Rosen at Tech Central Station writes about Pat Buchanan’s mellowing in “Right From the Beginning, Left at the End”:

Buchanan, variously described as an arch-conservative, a paleoconservative, and a populist conservative, has throughout his career shirked the orthodoxies of the Republican party and the prevailing norms of conservatism. In his magazine, The American Conservative, and in his latest book, Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency…Buchanan presents his case for an “authentic” conservatism that has been infected by radical, Johnny-come-lately variants. Yet many of Buchanan’s positions, most recently on the War on Terror, have placed him and his supporters in ideological company with the left.

Buchanan has moved slowly but steadily out of the Republican mainstream….[I]n 2000, Buchanan broke with the Republican Party, seemingly for good, and assailed Bush from the right under the confines of the Reform Party.

Buchanan’s policies, too, have strayed from popular conservative dogma. To begin with, much ink has been spilled about the alliance between the far left and the far right with regard to immigration and free trade….In a recent interview with Buchanan, Ralph Nader, the country’s best-known leftist politician, made a bid for the “disenfranchised Right” by referring to NAFTA and the World Trade Organization as “sovereignty-shredding” institutions.

Yet it is the Buchananite right’s recent criticisms of the Iraq War, of the Bush administration, and of the fight against global terror as a whole that have captured the most attention and that reflect a closer intellectual propinquity with the left than previously thought….

[T]he Buchanan approach to Israel is of a piece with his general tilt toward the ideas of the left-wing. Much has been written about Buchanan’s views on Israel and its supporters in the U.S. Yet it should be pointed out that he is better depicted not as an opponent of Israel’s right to exist but as a supporter of the Israeli left. Just as parties of a leftist tilt in Israel believe that the Jewish state must make deep-seated compromises to achieve peace with the Arab world, so has Buchanan castigated successive right-of-center Israeli leaders and their American “amen corner” for their “intransigence.”…

Ronald Reagan, the leader to whom Buchanan pays fealty in his latest book and a Democrat in his acting days, famously said that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the party left him. Yet one gets the sense, in Buchanan’s case, that it is he who has abandoned Republican ideology and principles, not the other way around. In comparing Iraqi militants to American revolutionaries, Buchanan is adopting at least the rhetoric of the left. After all, in the breathless words of Bill Maher, “that’s something Michael Moore might say.”

All of which says a lot about the similarities of hard-line leftists and rightists: Both camps are intellectually obtuse — and statists under the skin. To say that Stalin was a leftist and Hitler was a rightist is a supreme mistake: Both were vicious statists who happened to be competitors for power.

A Lefty Offers Advice about Dealing with Terrorism

Jessica Wilson, guest-blogging at The Leiter Reports, instructs us on how to respond to terrorist acts:

I am not a wise person, though I aspire to be. But I know how a wise person responds to aggression. When a wise person faces aggression, they do not immediately and blindly strike back, thus potentially initiating a cycle of endless violence and retribution. Rather, they consider why they have been struck. Have they, perhaps, done something to offend the aggressor? If so, muses the wise person, perhaps they might avoid future aggression by removing the source of the offense.

She isn’t a wise person — that’s for sure. But, at the risk of being offensive, I will recast the rest of her paragraph in terms that she might understand:

I know how a wise woman responds to attempted rape. When a wise woman faces attempted rape, she does not immediately and blindly pull out her pistol and shoot the would-be rapist. Rather, she considers why she is the target of a would-be rapist. Has she, perhaps, done something to offend the aggressor? If so, muses the wise person, perhaps she might avoid future rape attempts by locking herself in her house and leaving the streets to rapists.

That’s the wisdom of the left. The rest of Wilson’s post is just as fatuous, but I’m not going to waste any more time on her musings.

The Inside Scoop, with a Partisan Twist

Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy posts about an article in the latest issue of Vanity Fair (not available online), in which a group of law clerks who worked on Bush v. Gore give their take on the case. The article, undoubtedly timed to influence this year’s election, “includes considerable speculation as to the improper motives of the Justices who voted” in the majority to stop the Florida recount.

And precisely whose law clerks does the article cite? Kerr describes them as “most” of the clerks who worked for the four Justices in the dissent and the “occasional” clerk who worked for one of the Justices in the majority.” He adds:

The article acknowledges that the clerks’ story is rather skewed, but justifies publishing it on the ground that it’s better than nothing: “[I]f this account may at times be lopsided, partisan, speculative, and incomplete,” the article states, “it’s by far the best and most informative we have.”

Did the clerks violate confidentiality? Kerr seems to think so:

Then there is the question of law clerk confidentiality. The clerks who spoke to Vanity Fair apparently viewed their duty of confidentiality to the Court as subject to waiver when in their judgment the Court has gone badly astray:

To the inevitable charges that they broke their vow of confidentiality, the clerks [who spoke to Vanity Fair] have a ready response: by taking on Bush v. Gore and deciding the case as it did, the Court broke its promise to them. “We feel that something illegitimate was done with the Court’s power, and such an extraordinary situation justifies breaking an obligation we’d otherwise honor,” one clerk says.

Hmmm. Sounds pretty flimsy to me, for obvious reasons.

The obvious reasons are that most of the clerks cited in the article were on the losing side and they’re sore losers with a partisan axe to grind.

Will we hear from the clerks who worked for the majority in Bush v. Gore, or will they respect their vow of confidentiality?

As I Was Saying about Academic Dissent

RETITLED AND UPDATED

In this post I said, “The crushing of dissent is confined almost exclusively to liberal-run academia.” Here’s an attempt to legalize it (from AP via Yahoo! News):

Colo. Officials Fault Free Speech Policy

By STEVEN K. PAULSON, Associated Press Writer

DENVER – A university president and a Democratic state lawmaker said rules put in place this year to protect conservative viewpoints on Colorado campuses have harmed free speech and led to death threats against professors.

Republican lawmakers responded that conservative students are still being harassed and more needs to be done.

The comments came as a handful of college officials and students went before the Legislature’s Joint Education Committee on Thursday to report on efforts to enforce the Academic Bill of Rights. All state-funded colleges adopted the policy this year under pressure from Republican lawmakers.

The measure encourages the schools to review student rights and campus grievance procedures “to ensure that intellectual and political diversity is explicitly recognized and protected and to ensure those rights are adequately publicized to students.”…

Kieft said death threats against a Metro State political science professor have “sent a real chill across the campus.” The professor, Oneida Meranto, said in March she was threatened after a student filed a complaint against her and told lawmakers he had asked to drop her class because she was biased against conservatives.

Meranto responded publicly that the student was failing, prompting the student to accuse her of violating his privacy rights. School officials said the threats originated off campus, and the FBI has said it was investigating.

Sen. John Andrews, a Republican committee member, pointed to three new complaints aired by students at the meeting as evidence that schools need to enforce the policy more strictly.

University of Colorado law student Mario Nicholas said a professor called him a Nazi after Nicholas complained when the professor told the class that “the `R’ in Republican stands for racist.” The professor was chastised by the dean but not suspended.

Metro State student William Pierce said he filed a grievance after a professor accused him of spying on the class for Republicans intent on enforcing the new policy.

Colorado State student Heather Schmidt said she complained because a professor criticized the late President Reagan and drew a caricature of President Bush (news – web sites). She said when she complained, she was told to find another class.

Democratic Sen. Ken Gordon said he called that professor and was told he had been forced out of the classroom by death threats.

“He said he sleeps with a shotgun under his bed,” Gordon told the panel. The professor did not return a call from The Associated Press.

Rep. Lynn Hefley, a Republican, said professors who violate the rules should be suspended.

“It seems to me you need to take swift action,” she told the university presidents.

Larry Penley, chancellor of the Colorado State University System, CU President Elizabeth Hoffman and University of Northern Colorado President Kay Norton told legislators they are enforcing the policy.

And there’s more, from The Washington Times:

Academic bias cited at Colorado schools

By Valerie Richardson

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

DENVER — Four Colorado university presidents testified yesterday that their institutions are making progress in protecting students from academic bias, but several students said otherwise.

In a hearing before the General Assembly’s Joint Education Committee, students testified or submitted statements about recent incidents in which professors vilified Republicans, called conservative students “Nazis” and other names, and even implied that students’ grades would be affected by their political views.

Their testimony came as presidents at the four main state universities told the committee they were working to comply with the March “memorandum of understanding” in which they pledged to protect students from academic discrimination.

State Senate Majority Leader John Andrews said he was pleased by their progress, but emphasized that recent events show conservative students are still subject to academic bias.

“I’ve had three unsolicited complaints in the last 30 days,” said Mr. Andrews. “They’re indicative of a climate and culture where a lot of faculty feel free to demean personally and intellectually bully conservative and Republican students in a way they would never do to students in protected classes.”…

There’s a simple solution, though it requires some discipline on the part of professors: Stick to teaching and drop the propagandizing and name-calling. Some might call it self-censorship. I would call it doing the job they’re paid to do.

I will begin to sympathize with college teachers when they begin to respect their students’ points of view — all points of view, not just those they agree with.

An Orwellian Perspective on Pacificism

This speaks for itself:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States…

George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism,” 1945

(Thanks to my son for finding this.)

But What About Kerry’s Voting Record?

Jimmy Carter, in a letter to Zell Miller, dances around the core of Miller’s speech before the Republican convention, which was Kerry’s record on defense issues:

You seem to have forgotten that loyal Democrats elected you as mayor and as state senator. Loyal Democrats, including members of my family and me, elected you as lieutenant governor and as governor. It was a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in the state government when you were out of office. It was a loyal Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. Senator when you were out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust.

Great Georgia Democrats who served in the past, including Walter George, Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge, and Sam Nunn disagreed strongly with the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and me, but they remained loyal to the party in which they gained their public office. Other Democrats, because of philosophical differences or the race issue, like Bo Callaway and Strom Thurmond, at least had the decency to become Republicans.

Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.

Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush campaign’s personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you described previously as “one of this nation’s authentic heroes, one of this party’s best-known and greatest leaders — and a good friend.”)

I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way. I don’t believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacificist.

Zell, I have known you for forty-two years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend. But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause. These are not the characteristics of great Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited. [From Talking Points Memo]

No further comment is necessary.

Too Much Time in Space

John Glenn, who logged 218 hours in space as an astronaut, and later served in the Senate as a Democrat from Ohio, sizes up the Bush strategy:

Former senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) took the defense a step further by comparing the Republicans’ misleading statements to those of Nazi Germany. “You’ve just got to separate out fact from fiction….Too often, too often, in this country, if you hear something repeated, it’s the old Hitler business — if you hear something repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, you start to believe it,” he said. [washingtonpost.com]

Not John Glenn, of course, because he’s a Democrat. And too dumb to come up with a new cliché.

I’d Rather Have Divisiveness

Some bloggers — most notably Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice and Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine — are touting political moderation or, as Jarvis calls it, “the militant middle”. Gandelman links to a post that links to a site called Centrist Coalition. Here’s a sample of what the coalition has on its mind:

On the one hand, we embrace an economic agenda focused on growth and fiscal responsibility. We believe in free trade, fair competition, and limited government.

On the other hand, we embrace an inclusive social agenda that celebrates the rich diversity of American life, and seeks to avoid imposing one person’s choices on another. We are pro-choice and pro-civil rights.

The first set of ideas in unexceptionable — though “limited government” is inconsistent with the second set of ideas, which seeks “an inclusive social agenda” by enabling legal murder and fostering racial quotas, the code words for which are “pro-choice” and “pro-civil rights”.

The coalition “endorse[s] candidates with a bold mix of views consistent with this vision of a prosperous and inclusive America.” Such a candidate is Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.):

He has a particularly bold record — solid in embracing pro-growth economic policies, but also strong on government reform issues. He was the chief Republican sponsor of the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill, an initiative that ultimately succeeded in bringing fundamental reform to the electoral process.

On the one hand, Rep. Shays embraces a variety of conservative fiscal and economic policies, including free trade, welfare reform, partial privatization of Social Security, and bankruptcy reform. He favors tax cuts on capital gains, small businesses, and eliminating the estate tax.

On the other hand, he is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, and has a strong environmental record, to go along with his passionate advocacy of campaign finance reform.

The coalition doesn’t want to impose one person’s views on others, but it is willing to abide restrictions on freedom of speech through campaign-finance “reform”. Then there is the obligatory bow to “choice” (legal murder), “gay rights” (don’t gays already have the right to own property and vote?), and “the environment” (a sign that these centrists have fallen under the spell of the hysterics and know-nothings in charge of environmentalism).

That’s too much moderation for me. I’ll take good old-fashioned divisiveness over wishy-washy, mindless compromise — any day.

Here Comes "Scandal"

Democrat “strategist” Susan Estrich — infamous for her success as Michael Dukakis’s campaign manager in 1988 — has called for an all out sleaze attack on Bush. So here’s Kitty Kelly, via Mirror.co.uk, with the first salvo in the Democrats’ last-ditch effort to find some mud that will stick to Bush:

BUSH ‘TOOK COCAINE AT CAMP DAVID’

Sep 6 2004

And wife Laura liked dope, says book

By Emma Pryer

GEORGE W Bush snorted cocaine at Camp David, a new book claims.

His wife Laura also allegedly tried cannabis in her youth.

Author Kitty Kelley says in her biography, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, that the US President first used coke at university in the mid-1960s.

She quotes his former sister-in-law Sharon Bush who claims: “Bush did coke at Camp David when his father was President, and not just once either.”…

Other acquaintances allege that as a 26-year-old National Guard, Bush “liked to sneak out back for a joint or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine”.

Even if it’s true — which seems doubtful, given the source — it’s hardly relevant in the way that Kerry’s voting record on defense and foreign policy is relevant. And since when have Democrats been against a bit of snorting and toking?

A Very Politically Incorrect Labor Day Post

Labor Day gives most workers a day off. That’s good because an extra day off now and then is a pause that refreshes. A longish trek to a park or a beach on a hot day with a car full of kids isn’t a refreshing way to spend Labor Day, but those workers who spend the day at home, perhaps reading a book and listening to music, will find their souls somewhat restored.

Now let us consider the significance of Labor Day as a holiday. According to Wikipedia:

The origins of Labor Day can be traced back to the Knights of Labor in the United States, and a parade organized by them at that time on September 5, 1882 in New York City. In 1884 another parade was held, and the Knights passed resolutions to make this an annual event. Other labour organizations (and there were many), but notably the affiliates of the International Workingmen’s Association who were seen as a hotbed of socialists and anarchists, favoured a May 1 holiday. With the event of Chicago’s Haymarket riots in early May of 1886, president Grover Cleveland believed that a May 1 holiday could become an opportunity to commemorate the riots. But fearing it may strengthen the socialist movement, he quickly moved in 1887 to support the position of the Knights of Labor and their date for Labor Day. The date was adopted in Canada in 1894 by the government of Prime Minister John Thompson, although the concept of a Labour Day actually originated with marches in both Toronto and Ottawa in 1872. On the other hand, socialist delegates in Paris in 1889 appointed May 1 as the official International Labour Day.

Labor Day has been celebrated on the first Monday in September in the United States and Canada since the 1880s. The September date has remained unchanged, even though the two governments were encouraged to adopt May 1 as Labor Day, the date celebrated by the majority of the world. Moving the holiday, in addition to violating U.S. tradition, could have been viewed as aligning U.S. labor movements with internationalist sympathies.

In summary (for those of you who didn’t grow up in the North), Labor Day is an invention of organized labor, and the historical roots of organized labor are socialistic.

Labor Day also serves to remind us of one of the “monuments” of FDR’s New Deal (quoting again from Wikipedia):

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (or Wagner Act) protects the rights of workers in the private sector of the United States to organize unions, to engage in collective bargaining over wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment, and to take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands….

In the first few years of the Wagner Act, however, many employers simply refused to recognize it as law. The United States Supreme Court had already struck down a number of other statutes passed during the New Deal on the grounds that Congress did not have the constitutional authority to enact them under its power to regulate interstate commerce. Most of the initial appellate court decisions reached the same conclusion, finding the Act unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable. It was not until the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute in 1937 in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. that the Wagner Act became law in practical terms as well.

Thus Labor Day, in its way, commemorates legislative and judicial infamy. The Wagner Act, at one stroke, deprived business owners of their property rights and thus discouraged investment and business formation; invalidated the freedom of employers to contract with employees on terms acceptable to employers as well as employees; caused artificially high wages and benefits that harmed American workers by making American industry less and less competitive with foreign industry; and set the stage for the use of the Commerce Clause as an excuse for the federal government’s interference in all aspects of business.

So, if you are a worker, enjoy your Labor Day holiday, but don’t thank organized labor or the New Deal for your material blessings.

Moral Confusion in the British Academy

Novelist and essayist John Banville, writing at books.guardian.co.uk, reviews Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions, by John Gray. Banville notes that Gray

is richly dismissive, for instance, of the Bush administration’s neo-conservatives — “Washington’s new Jacobins”, he calls them — who believe that it is possible to eradicate evil from the world. “The danger of American foreign policy,” he writes, “is not that it is obsessed with evil but that it is based on the belief that evil can be abolished.” Such foolishness, he points out, is far removed from the wisdom of America’s founding fathers, for whom “the purpose of government was not to conduct us to the Promised Land but to stave off the recurrent evils to which human life is naturally prone”.

Why does Gray think that the Founders rejected a promised land? If he would read our Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of our Constitution it would be clear to him that the Founders embraced a secular promised land and established a system of governance that would guide us to that promised land.

As for evil, Gray is merely nit-picking when he contrasts Bush’s supposed fixation on abolishing evil — falsely imputing naïveté to Bush — with the Founders’ view that evil is recurrent. A cheap rhetorical trick.

I am ceaselessly amused — but never amazed — by the depths to which half-baked, left-wing academicians will stoop to score points against their political enemies.

A Reflection on the Greatest Generation

Yesterday I served as a pallbearer at the funeral of my wife’s aunt, who died at the age of 83. Of her four siblings, only my wife’s father survives — hearty and healthy at the age of 85. My wife’s mother was one of eight children, of whom three survive, aged 89, 84, and 80. My father and his sister have passed from the scene. My mother, who was one of 10 children, still lives alone at age 88; her youngest brother is edging toward 82.

That’s it: six survivors from a generation of 25 children born between 1903 and 1924. All of the members of that generation lived through the Great Depression. Half the members of that generation served in World War II. All of them grew up poor — some of them “dirt poor” — but by dint of hard work, all of them went on to live comfortably, if not lavishly.

Like many other members of the Greatest Generation, they tended to spoil their children, many of them born after World War II in the Baby Boom generation. The Greatest tried to compensate for their own privations by giving their children what they, the parents, had never had in the way of material possessions and “fun”. And that is where the Greatest Generation failed its children — especially the Baby Boomers — in large degree. A large proportion of Boomers grew up believing that they should have whatever they want, when they want it, with no strings attached. Thus many of them divorced, drank, and used drugs almost wantonly. Those traits seem to have passed to the next generation (Generation X), but that generation’s children (the Millenials) may be sobering up — without any help from their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents.

The Greatest Generation — having grown up believing that FDR was a secular messiah, and having learned comradeship in World War II — also bequeathed us governmental self-indulgence in the form of the welfare-regulatory state. Meddling in others’ affairs seems to be a predilection of the Greatest Generation, a predilection that the Millenials may be shrugging off.

We owe the Greatest Generation a great debt for its service during World War II. We also owe the Greatest Generation a reprimand for the way it raised its children and kowtowed to government. Respect forbids me from delivering the reprimand, but I record it here, for the benefit of anyone who has unduly romanticized the Greatest Generation.

Rational Irrationality

From fight aging!:

We humans are downright irrational beings – witness the fact that the possibility of a cure for baldness arising from stem cell based regenerative medicine garners just as much interest as a cure for heart disease using the same technology.

Let me guess: There are a lot more bald people than there are people with heart disease. So, where’s the irrationality? Oh, not everyone shares the website’s agenda. Tut, tut!

Proof That "Smart" Economists Can Be Stupid

Ten recipients of the Nobel prize for economics have signed an open letter in support of John Kerry’s candidacy for president. These geniuses have resorted to the usual arguments of the economically illiterate: those big, bad tax cuts for the “rich”; those big, bad deficits underwritten by foreign investors; rising income inequality; and the rising costs of health care. Their views, in other words, are a combination of wrong-headedness, xenophobia, and welfare-statism.

Kerry, of course, is going to do things right because he’ll restore fiscal responsibility. I guess they missed The Washington Post‘s analysis of Kerry’s proposals, which shows that Kerry’s ideas, if enacted, would add more than $2 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years.

On top of that Kerry will “do something” about health-care costs. What, repeal the laws of supply and demand? Nationalize medical care so that Americans can go to Mexico for better treatment?

Well, what do you expect from a bunch of lefties like Paul Samuelson who can explain economic principles without understanding them? They simply don’t trust free people and free markets, because they (the lefties) are smarter than the rest of us. Just ask them.

Here’s a Bait-and-Switch Opportunity

Joanna Glasner at Wired News reports on this year’s vote-swapping schemes:

Supporters of third-party candidates, be they save-the-spotted-owl Greens or trim-the-government Libertarians, are finding themselves in a similar quandary this presidential election year.

They dislike both George W. Bush and John Kerry, but not equally. The dilemma: By casting a vote for a third candidate, they fear they’ll inadvertently boost the campaign of the major-party candidate they despise most.

Help is on the way. While their methodologies may not be legal or even tested, a number of websites are cropping up to allow backers of presidential wannabes from alternate parties to vote their conscience without draining support for a preferred major-party candidate in a crucial swing state.

So-called vote-swapping, or vote-pairing, efforts under way for November’s election largely mimic those that cropped up in 2000 to minimize the impact of Ralph Nader on Democrat Al Gore’s chances of victory. Through such websites as like VoteSwap2000, Votexchange2000 and Nadertrader.org, Nader supporters in swing states agreed to vote for Gore if a voter in a solidly pro-Bush or pro-Gore state agreed to vote for Nader in their stead.

This year, with fewer votes expected to go to Nader, some want to make it more comfortable for voters of all stripes to withhold support for the Democratic and Republican candidates….

Who’s more gullible, Nader supporters, Bush supporters or Kerry supporters? Let’s put it to the test. I live in Texas, a sure win for Bush. I’ll honor the request of the first person who asks me to vote for Nader, under two conditions: (1) That person must live in a state in which the Bush-Kerry race is very tight. (2) That person must agree to vote for Bush. Come on, let’s hear from you gullible Naderites out there.

Nailing the Nanny State

Occam’s Carbuncle — operating in high-irony mode — has the perfect prescription for the nanny state:

Ban danger and unpredictability. Ban cars. Ban alcohol. Ban cigarettes. Ban harm. Ban guns. Ban variability. Ban bodychecks. Ban slingshots. Ban mean people. Ban sex. Ban hate. Ban religion. Ban disagreement. Ban boxing. Ban bicycles. Ban Alberta. Ban hurting. Ban straight pins. Ban sewing needles. Ban shouting. Ban whispering. Ban being born without a helmet. Ban birth. Ban tripping and falling down. Ban elastic bands. Ban scissors. Ban mortality. Ban fallibility. Ban indigestion.

The proprietor of Occam’s Carbuncle is Canadian. Thus “Ban Alberta.” What he has for or against Alberta, I don’t know. But I’m sure he has a good reason for it.

UPDATE: From the proprietor himself, “I love Alberta and all things Albertan (well, actually I’m not a huge fan of Anne McLellan). My attempt at irony might have had one too many layers.” But it’s great irony, nevertheless.

The Doctor Diagnoses Another Case of Simplistic Socialism

Dr. Henry I. Miller is a physician and a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was an FDA official from 1979 to 1994. And he understands economics. It’s too bad that most other medical insiders aren’t as savvy as Dr. Miller. Writing today at Tech Central Station he delivers a deadly diagnosis of Dr. Marcia Angell’s The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About, a compendium of simplistic, socialistic nostrums. Miller’s bottom line about Angell’s book:

Dr. Angell’s proposals to, in effect, nationalize the American system of drug development reflect almost inconceivable naiveté. They are reminiscent of economist Milton Friedman’s example of a flawed syllogism: Capitalism has worked everywhere it has been tried; socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried; therefore, let us try socialism.

A spirited diatribe can educate and entertain, but in The Truth About the Drug Companies, Dr. Angell does neither. Her diagnoses are wrong, and her remedies — which are reminiscent of the government controls and centralized planning of the old Soviet Union — are far worse than the disease.

Don’t bother to read the book, but do take the time to read Dr. Miller’s article, and anything else by him that pops up on the web.

Psychoanalyzing Peace Protesters

NYTimes.com headline: “Hundreds Are Arrested as Protests Escalate”

Scene: A psychiatrist’s office in Manhattan

Patient: Please tell me, Dr. Spielvogel, why do I become so violent when I protest for peace?

Shrink: Vy not? Unlike zose against whom you protest, you haff no responsibility for defending ze nation. You are venting your feelings of powerlessness.

Patient: But vy — why — do I become violent when I vent?

Shrink: Vell, ven you vere an adolescent, and you rebelled against your parents, you had to do it by nonviolent means because you depended on zem for your bed and board.

Patient: So, you think I’m really acting out my adolescent rebellion against my parents?

Shrink: Vell, zince you are only capable of shouting mindless slogans — ven you aren’t doing zomesing violent — it is clear to me zat you haven’t advanced beyond adolescence. In fact, I sink you have regressed into childhood.

Patient: I’m not going to take this lying down.

Shrink: Lying down, zitting up, makes no difference to me. Zat will be $200. And no protesting or I’ll cut off your prescription of Thorazine. Next patient…

Al Franken — leftwing nutjob, alleged comedian, and front man for Error America — sharing his wit and wisdom with a political opponent, at the Republican National Convention.

In the "It Could Be Worse" Department

UPDATED BELOW

Yesterday I attacked FCC commissioner Michael Copps, in particular, and the federal government, in general, for paternalistically and unnecessarily regulating the airwaves. Thanks to a tip from the proprietor of Occam’s Carbuncle, a Canadian blog, I’ve learned how much worse it is in Canada. As he says:

Copps would feel right at home in Canada, where our FCC equivalent, the CRTC, routinely sticks its nose in where it doesn’t belong. One of our better blogs, Trudeaupia, has been all over this issue.

(CRTC stands for Canadian Radio-television Communications Commission or, in French, Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes.) Anyway, here’s the issue, in the words of CRTC:

In a decision issued today,…CRTC…denies the application…for the renewal of the broadcasting licence for the French-language commercial radio station CHOI-FM Québec….

The Commission considered that offensive comments made by the hosts over the station’s airwaves tended or were likely to expose individuals or groups of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of mental disability, race, ethnic origin, religion, colour or sex. The Commission also considered, among other things, that the station’s hosts were relentless in their use of the public airwaves to insult and ridicule people….

According to CBC Montreal, reporting on August 26:

A federal court has made it official—CHOI-FM can continue broadcasting after its licence expires at the end of this month.

The controversial radio station has reached an agreement with the CRTC to keep broadcasting until a final decision comes down about the fate of the station….

Trudeaupia is skeptical: “Or is this just a delaying action until the protest dies down, then they’ll abruptly close it?”

So, it could be worse here in the U.S. of A. First, we could have to say everything twice: once in English, again in French. Second, we could have to put up with limitations on freedom of speech that dwarf the infamy of McCain-Feingold.

UPDATE:
How could I forget that other bastion of freedom in the English-speaking world, our “mother country”? Well, here’s Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy to remind me (quoting from Bloomberg.com):

Ford Motor Co., the world’s second biggest carmaker, has had a television commercial for its Land Rover brand banned by the U.K. communications regulator after it was judged to “normalize” the use of guns.

The advertisement, which featured a woman brandishing a gun later revealed to be a starting pistol, breached the Advertising Standards Code and must not be shown again, Ofcom said in an e-mailed statement. The regulator received 348 complaints against the ad, many concerned that the commercial glamorized guns and made it “appear that guns are fun and cool.”…

Ofcom said glamorization is “part and parcel” of the advertising process but this commercial “normalized” gun ownership in a domestic setting. The pistol, fired by the woman into the air as a man got into his car, was used in “an apparent casual manner and just for fun,” Ofcom said….

George Orwell, wherever you are, call home.

Broder Boots Another One

David Broder of The Washington Post, called by some the “dean” of Washington pundits, is true to form in this wrong-headed column:

Policing Political Ads

By David S. Broder

Sunday, August 29, 2004; Page B07

…With total reported political contributions for this cycle already past the $1 billion mark — and the heaviest ad buys still to come — the character of the perpetual debate about campaign financing has begun to shift. Instead of focusing on who is giving how much, the argument now seems to be about who has the right to join in the spending spree….

With record sums available to both sides — either through their official committees or through the independent groups supporting them — the real issue is not one of finance but of accountability….

The institutions and individuals with a stake in the presidential election are far more numerous than two parties and two candidates. All sorts of other groups — from left and right, from environmentalists to anti-abortionists — have much riding on the outcome. By what logic are they to be prohibited from running their ads?…

The reality is that, in a nation with our Constitution’s guarantee of free speech and a government whose decisions affect every aspect of life, the flow of money from the private sector into the political world will be almost impossible to control.

What can be disciplined is the tendency of these ads to exaggerate, distort or flat-out lie. And the candidates who benefit from the ads are the ones who have the first responsibility — along with the media — to police them. The candidates ought to be judged by their willingness to tell their supporters when they have crossed the line.

The headline is scary, but it belies the message. Broder was doing well until the last paragraph. Then he booted it.

The only “policing” that’s needed is the policing that citizens do in the privacy of their own minds. It’s impossible to take at face value a candidate’s disavowal or repudiation of ads attacking his opponent. Is the candidate being sincere or merely observing the niceties of political decorum? In the end, citizens are left to make up their own minds about the validity of third-party attack ads, just as they are left to make up their own minds about the validity of candidates’ ads.

But Broder is just being Broder, a paternalistic Washington insider who doesn’t trust “the masses” to think for themselves.