Compassionate conservatism is as insubstantial a notion as the Third Way — a circumlocution to avoid having to choose among conflicting values and competing claims to scarce resources. To talk of a compassionate or caring society is to turn a noble personal virtue into a destructive political affectation.
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We have to tease the “meaning” from this quote. I will try.
Is this a reference to majority-rules reallocation of wealth versus the free market, as alternative means of allocating scarce resources?
Is this a reference to the libertarian idea that altruism should be a personal choice, not a governmental imposition?
It is hard to be sure what this quote means, as it carefully avoids even defining the “compassionate conservatism” that it is attacking. However, I will boldly guess that the quote is a timid attempt to defend libertarian “logic” against the “muddled-thinking” of the semi-free-market-and-welfare-state hybird.
I have two problems with this view (if this is, indeed, the view of the quote).
First, libertarianism can not be justified by pure logic. It relies also on empirical evidence and value judgements. Property rights are not “natural law”. There is no natural law that determines social systems. Humans make conscious choices that determine social systems. Property rights are justified as a practical mechanism that serves the greater good of the society.
If property rights, in practice, resulted in greater unhappiness than “socialism”, then I would be a socialist. (Note that “in practice” refers to empirical evidence, and “unhappiness” refers to my personal value judgements in relation to that evidence.)
Second, income redistribution is an immensely popular idea. Therefore, it is inconceivable that a democratic society will have none of it. This means that the practical advantages of free markets can only be “sold” to a democratic society if free markets are married to some degree of income redistribution.
This is what “compassionate conservatism” attempts to do. Whether it will succeed or not is an open question. However, the abject failure of the “Libertarian Party” is sufficient evidence to me that free markets can not be implemented in a democracy in their “pure” form. The marriage of free markets and a limited welfare state is the only alternative to Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”.
Rick, it probably would have been a good idea if you’d followed the link to Kamm’s blog in your struggle to understand the quote: He is, far from being a libertarian, a leftist commentator.
I will leave those Samizdata commenters who can be bothered to address the comments that resulted from your struggle.
Jackie,
Kamm may be a “leftist commentator”. That is irrelevant. What is relevant is the meaning of the quote that you cited, as it stands in isolation from the totality of all that Kamm has ever said. (If you disagree with that, then why did you post this quote rather than simply announcing that you agree with everything that Kamm has ever said?)
Following your link to Kamm’s blog, I find the following as his elaboration of your selection for the “quote of the day”:
I agree that this shows Kamm is not a libertarian.
It would appear that Kamm believes that governmental redistribution is not “compassionate”, but rather a fair and efficient correction of the failures of free markets.
But Jackie, the isolated passage you cited appeared to be libertarian in its message, and I would have to assume that this is why you cited that portion of Kamm’s blog, and only that portion.
Does your response that Kamm is a leftist mean that you agree with his leftist elaboration of the quote you selected? That is, do you agree that welfare is (or can be) a non-compassionate correction of the objective errors of markets?
What do you think the quote as you posted it means? Is it an argument for leftist views, as your response implies, or is it really an argument for libertarian views?
Also, you failed to comment on my criticism of libertarianism as an alternative to “compassionate conservatism”. Do you have any such comment?
I found the quote far easier to make sense of that your comment, Rick. I for one could care less about the US Libertarian Party and am not all that fussed with the whole ‘libertarian’ label as it encourages strange notion of what ‘folks like me’ think.
Very few useful theories come from logic alone… so what. However reason (rater than just bald logic) is indeed what you need to form a critical preference for (and I will humour you for now) ‘libertarianism’. That democracies are kleptocratic is beyond debate and I often write articles attacking the whole democratic process, so the idea that “income redistribution is an immensely popular idea” is hardly a revelation. But again, so what? I like to think we are more concerned with discovering what is the truth rather than what is popular.
Perry,
I would agree that the quote was more simplistic than my comments. Simplicity is not the same as veracity.
You concede that income redistribution is immensely popular, but retort that democracy is highly flawed. Like a Communist pointing to the problems that occur under a free market, without specifying how Communism would make things better, you cite the imperfections of democracy, without providing an alternative.
Unless you have a better form of government than democracy, then you are forced to compromise. “Compassionate conservatism” is simply a compromise.
Moreover, if you want to ignore political constraints and look for pure “truth”, then the simplistic quote is totally useless. As we have already seen, the source of the quote is a leftist who believes that redistribution is an objective correction of the errors of free markets.
Why do I suspect that you do not agree with Kamm on this view?
And yet, if the simplistic quote can be used to support opposite views, then how does it help us elucidate truth?
“Compassionate conservatism” is, however, a damn sight better than “compassionate socialism”. One step at a time.
Rick, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that if I do not react to your blatherings, I have “failed” (as you put it) to do my bit. Why you assume that your comments warrant a proper response is beyond me.
So let me simply say this: I do not need to agree with every single thing that Oliver Kamm writes or says in order to agree absolutely with the single quotation I have brought to the attention of Samizdata readers. If you need this explained further, I suggest you do not bet on me being the one to take the time and make the effort to give you that explanation.
You have also made the risible assumption that I am concerned with what is “libertarian in its message,” when such questions matter not a jot. I am not concerned with whether statements are “libertarian” or not: I am concerned with whether or not they are true.
And just a suggestion, but you may want to do a bit of research into the difference between libertarianism and the American Libertarian Party. But before you do that, figure out what definition of libertarianism you are employing, and then be honest enough to admit when your assumptions do not survive collision with reality.
Jackie,
You remind me of Dan Rather, in your propensity to use lots of words to say nothing.
I am particularly intrigued with your statement:
I can understand why you immediately decline to specify what you mean by this, since we have by now established that the quote you cited is intended by its author to to be based on the validity of redistributionist policies as a remedy for the objective errors of free markets. This may, or may not, be what you mean in quoting Kamm, but it is certainly not the only reasonable interpretation of that quote.
Hence, when you say you “absolutely” agree with the quote you cited, the meaning of “absolute” becomes a bit murky, given that the quote has no clear and consistent meaning.
Hence, when you say you “absolutely” agree with the quote you cited, the meaning of “absolute” becomes a bit murky, given that the quote has no clear and consistent meaning.
Rick, I think we all understand that YOU don’t understand the quote. This ain’t anyone’s problem but your own, mate.
Rick: you know very well what she means, stop being so damn pedantic. Why don’t you take her up on her suggestion about research on libertarianism? Or if you think you know it all already (!), then why not prepare for us a detailed philosophical treatise as to why *you* prefer ‘compassionate conservatism’ over some definition or other of ‘libertarianism’. You never know, you might even convince us to join you. At any rate that should keep you busy for a while.
That would be because I was adding a comment, not writing an essay.
In the unlikely event you care enough to bother, just use the search function on this blog to discover the rather large number of times I have discussed the failing of modern democracy and suggested alternative ways of doing things.
Alistair and mike,
Perhaps you have not read through the whole sequence of posts here.
I do not say the passage has no consistent meaning simply because it is a quote from a non-libertarian who means by this passage that re-distribution is objectively justified by free market failures. Rather, I say this because when I first intepreted the quote from the perspective of a libertarian, Jackie (who posted the quote) reprimanded me on the premise that the quote could not be libertarian since it was first enunciated by a non-libertarian leftist.
Only Perry has attempted to refute my original argument that the quote is an invalid attack on compassionate conservatism (and I look forward to his response to my rebuttal).
The rest of you (other than Robert, who appeared to agree with me) seem unwilling to argue the point at all. With the tone of Dan Rather, you denounce me for not understanding the grandeur of your self-evident insight and tell me to study more, for you can not be bothered to argue with such an ignoramus. (Though you do bother to reply, just not to actually argue the point.)
Oh, we may not have been hitting the refresh button on these comments for the last several hours, but I think we’ve read the whole sequence of posts. We still think you’ve got it massively wrong. This may shock you, but you’ll get over it around the same time that you work out that you’re the only one who cares about your poor argument.
And while I may have the tone of Dan Rather, I’d like to think I have the tan of a young George Hamilton…
Perry,
Is your post, “Democrats against Democracy” (August 23) a reasonable representation of your view of what alternative system is better than democracy?
In that article you say,
You are not, here, advocating an alternative to democracy. You are merely specifying that the powers of a democratic government should be much more limited than they are in most (probably all) existing democracies.
The problem I have with this argument is that by conceding any need for democracy, you are really conceding that there must be some government, and that the only reasonable way to run government (however limited) is to let citizens vote.
Once you allow people to vote, then you are forced to accept some compromise.
As I have said before, “compassionate conservatism” is an attempt to compromise, allowing a limited degree of redistribution without marching to full-blown socialism. I think the concept is a reasonable attempt to limit the distance we walk down the road to serfdom.
While there is room for discussion of the ideal, a concept that represents a practical and necessary compromise should not be dismissed as stupid.
Speaking of compromise, I note that your August 23 post also states:
Here I believe you “misunderestimate” American democracy. While it is true that our “winner-take-all” two-party system tends to offer only two choices, each of which aims to position itself very close to the center of electoral opinion, that may be a good thing.
A two-party system requires that each party at least appear to sell a single package of ideas in each election. Thus, each party must try to construct a package that will be preferred by a majority of voters. As a result, each party aims for the middle of the political spectrum, so that the differences between them seem small.
In a multi-party system, each party can gain some power by simply pleasing a small group of like-minded voters. Thus, compromise during the campaign season may seem unnecessary. However, after the multi-party election is over, it is quite possible that no single party will have enough power to govern on its own. Thus, it may be necessary for a coalition of different parties to agree to some compromised package of policies that satisfies their elected representatives, thereby forming a govenment.
Hence, in a two-party system the package of policies must be constructed before the election. In the multi-party system that package is often constructed only after the election, one step removed from the voters.
Clearly, both approaches involve tremendous compromise from the point of view of any individual voter. But in the two-party system, the voter knows the compromise before voting. (I recognize that politicians say one thing and do another in the two-party system, but at least they are more easily called to fault for doing so, as was “Read-my lips” Bush in 1992).
Somebody needs to get laid.
True, what I am arguing for is an alternative to modern democracy as it is practiced today, rather than democracy per se. My ideal would be more akin to how it was practiced 150 years ago (though that is rather a simplification of my position)… Restricting the franchise and the overall scope of what is and is not in the political arena (i.e. a constitution not a million miles from the US and Swiss ones in spirit if not detail).
Indeed, but then I have never taken the full blown anarcho-libertarian position. That may be heaven but we are mortal men and have fallen too far from grace for that 🙂
Clearly, which is why I only find democracy tolerable if it is bound hand and foot and restricted to the people who actually have to pay for it… that way the basis for the compromise can be held within bounds not incompatible with maximising individual liberty.
My main contention is that “Compassionate Conservatism” is not a ‘compromise’, it is abject surrender to the idea of the political state trumping civil society at more or less all turns and a hypocritical surrender at that. If what is being ‘conserved’ is civil society, then there is nothing ‘conservative’ about “compassionate conservatism”… and I find it hard to view taking people’s money by force even if justified as ‘compassion’. My tolerance for the inevitable humbug of politics only extends so far…
Perry,
I appreciate that you are willing to take this discussion seriously.
You say:
At some level I would agree with you, but I need to be more concrete before I can tell whether our positions are similar or miles apart.
In my view, Milton Friedman is a “compassionate conservative” when he advocates school vouchers. Clearly, school vouchers involve a high level of government income redistribution. Nevertheless, relative to the current predominance of schools that are not only funded by government, but are also completely managed by govenment, school vouchers would be a dramatic step in the direction of less government.
Like Friedman, I support the idea of school vouchers. I am even willing to support the more watered-down idea of “charter schools”, not because they are ideal, but because they are a step in the right direction.
I do not know whether Friedman would advocate complete elimination of all governmental involvement in education, including any form of funding or regulation, if he thought it might be politically feasible. (To be honest, I am not certain that I would so advocate without further empirical evidence on the consequences of zero government funding of education. But I spend little time worrying about this issue because I believe that the odds of eliminating all government funding of education in my lifetime are essentially zero.)
Therefore, Friedman may advocate school vouchers only as a “compromise” that moves us in the desired direction. Or he may think that government funding of education is desirable in its own right. Either way, school vouchers involve income redistribution by force and are within my operational definition of “compassionate conservatism”.
If, when you denounce “compassionate conservatism”, you would include yourself as an opponent of school vouchers as an unjustified transfer of income among citizens, then we really do disagree fundamentally on this issue. Otherwise, it may simply be a matter of what each of us really means by “compassionate conservative”.
A step in the right direction is… a step in the right direction. I would not oppose school vouchers if that meant building a constituancy for disassembling the whole infrastructure of state schools by ‘other means’.
That said, I never lose sight of the fact vouchers are at best a measly first step to disagrandising the whole state funded educational establishment. I do not believe in insisting on ‘all or nothing’ though I am inclined to leave those fights to others and content myself with trying to sow the seeds of rather more prickly fruit in the future.
Fair enough.
Can I then conclude that you would not oppose instances of “compassionate conservatism” that constitute a material “step in the right direction”?
My view is that the central planners attempted revolution in Russian, and it failed miserably, albeit only after 70 years of enormous suffering.
By contrast, the central planners in the West have patiently built the authority of the central government in a “step by step” fashion. They have been extremely successful in this approach so far.
Hence, it seems to me essential that proponents of limited government endorse “step by step” reductions in the overweening power of big government, even when a given step is far from ideal. This may involve at least refraining from opposing “compassionate conservatism” when it constitutes a “step in the right direction”.
And some of us might even go so far as to advocate such steps.
The whole problem I have with that is, for example, GW Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” is not a cunning way to gradually roll back the state but rather a way to (successfully) move conservatism in more statist directions. Tell me, who has increased the federal budget more: the detested Clinton or GWB? Feel free to factor out increases in military expenditure if you like. Which government departments has GWB cunningly contrived to shut down with a net reduction in government appropriation of money? Is there a single one?
What it boils down to is that I simply do not believe most “compassionate conservatives” actually do want less state and more civil society… the evidence suggests they want more state, just with their snouts in pride of place in the trough and their hands on the rudder of state… and not a smaller state at that.
Im late to the discussion, as usual, I hope no one minds.
The problme I see with “Compassionate Conservatism” as it is practiced, is that much of the “compromises” being made are NOT steps in the correct direction. There is a place for ideal thinkers, like Perry, to make sure that the goal is defined well. There is also a place for ideas like Friedman’s vouchers, in gradully improving things and moving away from government control. I suppose Friedman could be called a compassionate conservative by some, but most of the people, especially the politicians, that use that term to define themselves or are labeled by it tend not to be coming up with ideas which are legitimately good steps.
Compromise may be necessary, but adding programs and growing government in any fashion is not a compromise. The problem with the current two-party system in the US is that it becomes a choice of which is heading in the wrong direction the slowest. This is not a “compromise” it is merely delaying the inevitable. Our current republic, because it is not abiding by the restrictions laid upon it in our own constitution (much less abiding by a somewhat stricter set of limitations that I would personally prefer), is basically being operated in very close terms to a democracy, with popularity being the main focus. The job description of government, if properly restricted, would not be so adversely affected by the popular vote, leaders would be chosen, jsut as now, but not on the basis of what the majority could get form the minority. Essentially, our Republic was formed, with constitutional restrictions, for the express purpose of preventing the problems that arrive from majority rule. A return to that would certainly be preferable. If a gradual return is preferred (which I likely would be in light of the alternatives) then compromise it is, but most htings I have seen that fall under the label of “compassionate conservative” do not even come close to fitting the bill.
Perry and limberwulf,
Both of you seem to be saying that you do not oppose compromise in principle, nor “compassionate conservatism” as an abstraction. Rather, you oppose the specific policies that have been advertised under the banner of “compassionate conservatism”. That is a very reasonable point of view, and not at all the point of view that I thought I was initially arguing against.
However, I would still claim that at least some policies advertised as “compassionate conservatism” are actually steps in the right direction.
Regarding W’s expansion of the US government, I do not have numbers at hand, but we would need to add back the defense expenditure reductions by Clinton (based on the false belief in the “end of history” and the concept that terrorists could be deterred by the clever use of cruise missiles paid for by previous Presidents), and deduct the W increases in expenditures on war, military build-up, and “homeland security”. Moreover, we would need to distinguish between increases required (“non-discretionary”) by pre-existing law and those that are discretionary. Then we would also need to express expenditures as a percent of GDP, but would probably have to normalize for the Clinton recession that started in March of W’s term. I do not know the result, and one could probably support multiple conflicting conclusions, but I sincerely doubt that you would find Clinton to be better than Bush.
Moreover, you should be careful about attributing all events to their contemporaneous President. Clinton did his level best to socialize US medicine at the behest of his wife. Newt Gingrich led the Republicans in a successful effort to stop this, and when the voters (yes, democratic though they are) trounced the Democrats in the 1994 midterm elections, Clinton fired his wife. Then Gingrich pushed through a reform of welfare that, though a “compassionate conservative” compromise, has been highly successful in at least going in the “right direction”.
Add to this that Bill Clinton is self-consciously a moderate Democrat, unlike say Kerry, and I think it would be extremely dangerous to conclude, based on the Clinton years, that there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.
Moreover, despite his tariff sins (of which Clinton was not immune), W has successfully obtained “fast-track trade authority” (which eluded Clinton) and is currently using it successfully to reduce US tariffs in many instances.
He has cut tax rates dramatically, where Clinton raised tax rates.
His biggest spending increase outside of defense has been the prescription drug benefit. However, this has two good features. First, it is a desirable “grow-government-at-least-more-slowly” compromise to forestall the prescription drug price-controls that the left demands and that both Canada and Europe rely upon. Second, W included a medical-spending account Trojan Horse that may yet prove to be an effective dam against socialized medicine.
For those who decry the foolishness of growing government more slowly under the Republican medical policies, just compare the US to the UK and the rest of Europe and Canada with respect to medical care socialism. I, for one, will take the US system any day.
W is also trying to create a Social Security Trojan Horse in the form of personal savings accounts. This may sound like a small step, and it is denounced as an expensive one, but in fact, it is a dramatic improvement in principle. Rather than relying on our current Ponzi scheme farce, that has always been nothing but an inter-generational forced income transfer, W would at least initiate privatized retirement accounts as an alternative. This is the only sound solution to the Social Security mess, other than outright abolishment (and I dare you to hold your breath for that).
In summary, I contend that the specific policies of the current US “compassionate conservative” President really are steps in the right direction. Reject those steps, and you only concede power to the already dominant central planners.
It is not for nothing that the left hates W so fiercely.
indeed… he is stealing their policies, and thereby their voters, and they do not like it one little bit. Sorry but to describe GWB as anything less than the lesser of two evils when it comes to Big Government is perverse: steel tarrifs? wood tarrifs? The man is a statist political hack through and through.
I agree, but my entire point is that I am quite eager to vote for the lesser of two evils, when the difference is material.
That is what democracy is all about.
Tsk… you are descending into platitudes. If the lesser of two evils is only slowing the rate of state expansion, voting for it is just rewarding such a course… the reality is that ‘what democracy is about’ is indeed choosing between the fast death of liberty and slighly less fast death of liberty. I vote for none of the above because the difference between the two is actually not material at all if you take the longer view.
The Republicans will never adopt true ‘small state’ policies if they know that all have to do is hand out slightly less pork than the Dems, because people who want a smaller state will hold their noses and vote for them anyway because they are ‘less bad’. Not good enough… and in the long run, voting for statist Republicans (i.e. most Republicans) is antithetical to reducing the state, not a clever way of finessing it as you seem to think.
To be frank I think you are somewhat deluded if you think most Republicans politicos have any interest is really rolling back the state. I would prefer to see the whole process de-legitimised by a really really low voter turn out (now THAT would be ‘rocking the vote’). I realise tribal affiliations are too strong for most to just say “screw you all” but in the long run that is indeed the smart move. Maybe things need to get worse before they can get better.
Rick wrote – “If property rights, in practice, resulted in greater unhappiness than “socialism”, then I would be a socialist”
Ok. On the same grounds, if killing the Jews resulted in greater happiness than not doing so, would you support it?
If not, then you admit that there are at least some limits to democracy, that there are some inalienable rights possessed by individual human beings, and that protecting these rights is more important than the “happiness” of society.
Perry,
I think it is you who delude yourself, if you think that the major parties are all the same. Thatcher and Reagan made a difference, and so did Newt Gingrich, but all three compromised.
Bush is a compromise, but a good one.
Cobden,
The detail that you fail to grasp is that killing Jews reduces happiness, and that is exactly why I oppose it.
If you find it hard to decern whether killing Jews reduces happiness or not, then I think you’re kind of a scary guy.
Regarding limits to democracy, I never said nor implied that there are no limits to democracy. Even a socialist democracy might put some limits on democracy (like you may not kill people just because of their religion).
The inalienable rights you posit are all justified based on their propensity to foster greater happiness among humans in society.
Or did you find them written on a stone by your God?
By the way, do other animals than humans have any inalienable rights, in your view? (I do not have a good answer to this myself. I just thought that wherever you found the inalienable rights of humans, you might also have found the inalienable rights of pigs, cows, etc.)
Rick, you started this conversation well but are clearly loosing the plot… are you seriously comparing that idealogy-free-zone between George Bush’s ears to Ron Reagan and Maggie Thatcher??? You must be joking! I am not arguing against compromise, I am arguing for recognising when a person is compromising in order to move things the wrong way! Ignore the rhetoric and just look at the interminable list of statist impositions… in what way is GWB better for international trade (for example) that Clinton? How do you explain away the steel and lumber tariffs? How? That is not compromise, that is accepting antithetical principles that should shock even a utilitarian like you.
And yes, your reply to Cobden Bright demonstrates that you are a utilitarian, so I guess the notion of reaching a critical preference by applying reason to objectively derivable principles is alien to you… which is why you did not actually answer Cobden’s question, though you probably think you did. To form a critical preference for A over B does not require either stone tablets from God or the inductive principles you seem to now be using.
Perry,
I will agree that most people who visit Samizdata.net disagree with me. By that standard I am losing the argument, but that standard is of no concern to me.
I initially argued that the concept of “compassionate conservatism” is not, in principle, unreasonable. At this point, you do not appear to disagree with that statement, per se.
What you seem to be arguing is that “compassionate conservatism” is essentially a GW Bush term, and therefore should be seen as nothing more than a reference to the question of whether one should vote for Bush in the upcoming US election.
Put that way, I really would not have bothered to initiate any post at all. However, I do not think that this fairly characterizes the original quote that all our posts are based on.
I do intend to vote for Bush in November, and I do think that he compares quite favorably to Thatcher and Reagan. I realize that you disagree, but you should be aware that most of the voters in the US who plan to vote against Bush will do so because they agree with me. That is, the strong antipathy for Bush among the US left is based precisely on the similarities of Bush and Reagan.
Regarding my response to Mr. Cobden, you seem to think I dodged his question, because I replied that the question, itself, was a contradiction in terms.
Tell me, Perry, if killing people anmd stealing property were “natural rights”, would you advocate killing people and stealing property? Please just answer the question, without attacking the question yourself.
You say to me:
That is an indefensible non sequitur. I do, indeed, consider myself to be some form of a utilitarian, but there is nothing in utilitarian philosophy that prohibits the use of reason as applied to objectively derived principles. It is true that utilitarianism can not be limited to reason applied to objectively derived principles, at least insofar as one is attempting to reach “a critical preference”. However, this is only because a utilitarian (unlike a libertarian) recognizes the necessity of including subjective valuations whenever any kind of “perference” is under determination. That is, utilitarians use empirical observations, subjective valuations, reason, and objectively derived principles as necessary tools in deriving “preferences”.
I reject the concept of “natural rights” (although not the concept of inalienable rights). I consider Genghis Khan to be the greatest natural rights philosopher in history. He believed in the right of the strong to kill the weak. That is, he believed in survival of the fittest. That is clearly (and objectively) a natural right.
But there is no natural right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. There is no natural right to private property or freedom of speech. Nature does not grant such rights. Nature grants only the right of the fittest to survive.
I reject natural rights, therefore, not because they can not be objectively identified, but rather, because they do not satisfy my utilitarian preferences. That is, they do not make people happy, as I estimate the sources of happiness based on my empirical observations, subjective valuations, reason, and objectively derived principles.
I contend that free market democracy (that is, democratic government limited so as to preserve the essential preconditions of free markets) can be justified on utilitarian grounds, and on no other grounds whatsoever.
While a statement that there is no difference between Dems and Reps may be erroneous, I do find that the top leaders of both parties are growing the State in some fashion or another, consistently. This, incidently, would include Reagan, regardless of the circumstances that were involved, i.e. the cold war. Taxation was massively increased through deficit spending and the inflation that that breeds when combined with foolish monetary policy at the Fed. As Friedman frequently mentioned, the Fed has had much to do with Economic turmoil, possibly far more than the actions of government, but the two are not so seperate as they were intended, nor is the Fed the great pillar of benevolent expertise ensuring the best interest of the economy that it is presented to be. In that light I would also agree that the negative actions can not be blamed exclusively on the sitting President.
I further recognize that Bush may indeed be the lesser of two evils, but I do not intend to settle for such foolishness any longer. I do not agree with Perry in not voting, low vote turnout simply means a smaller and smaller minority get to decide the fate of the country. If, OTOH, I were attempting to perform some sort of John Galt action, then stepping out of the system and letting it all fall down would be the best course of action. I do not intend to do that. My idea of a good election would be one in which enough people voted libertarian or some other party to get said party noticed and on the radar screen of most people. There ARE alternatives to the two parties, but as long as people settle for the lesser of two evils, they will never gain strength.
There are also systems in which representation does not have to be done in such a consolodated manner, and the current tendency to over-compromise would not be so noticeable. Also, if the federal government were more restricted in its scope of influence and power, the number of issues that had to be compromised on would be greatly reduced.
Rick: to be honest I lack the time and energy to explain in detail why utilitarianism is probably the most evil philiosphy in the history of mankind. I just do not think deconstructing it in the comments section is a good use of my time. Perhaps I will try to write a full blown article doing so or try and induce Paul Coulam to do so (he tends to do that sort of thing with a ravenous wolf-like intensity).
If by ‘natural rights’ you mean rights which are derived objectively, rather than induced by empirical obervation, then yes, I believe in natural rights because induction is in fact a quite incorrect way to understand the nature of reality.
I see no conflict between objective derivation and the use of empirical observations. I see deduction and induction as complementary cognitive techniques. I do not believe that the “nature of reality” can be understood without empirical observation (which is really all that I mean by induction) and deduction in combination.
No deductive theory outside of mathematics can be demonstrated in the complete absence of empirical observation, and no empirical observation can be used to reach any conclusion without at least some related theory.
When I say natural rights are derived objectively, I mean that no subjective valuation (that is no values) is (are) involved. Natural rights follow from nature, and exclude any subjective values of humans.
I do not see how property rights (to take just one example) can be justified based on natural rights. Nature involves no objective concept of property rights. Wild dogs may be territorial, but only insofar as they can defend territory with violent force.
Natural rights have nothing to do with subjective valuations. Yet if you reject all subjective valuations, you have no basis for rejecting Genghis Khan’s principle that might makes right. Certainly, nature consistently grants rights based on might.
Property rights can only be defended by observing both the empirical and the theoretical evidence that societies with respect for property rights are better societies, from the point of view of the humans that live within them.
As I have mentioned before, I have insufficient time to explain why induction is completely incorrect and your entire epistemology is clearly shot through with horrendous errors… as I said before, maybe I will do a proper blog post called “Utilitarianism sucks” or something similarly catchy when I have the energy and inclination to refight that old battle yet again.