There has been a lot of loose talk that it does not much matter if the Democrats take the House of Representatives, the Senate or both.
“President Bush will still have the veto” and/or “the Democrats will not want to raise taxes, or do other bad things, because this will ruin their chances in 2008”.
This talk assumes that President Bush will somehow turn into Captain Veto if the Democrats win – an assumption for which there is no evidence in George Bush’s record. It also ignores the fact that many of the tax rate cuts that have been made are temporary – i.e. unless there is a vote to make the cuts permanent taxes will go up automatically.
Such hopeful talk also ignores the power of the media and of academia: The Democrats are already talking about increasing taxes on ‘the rich’ and the media and academia will present any tax increase as ‘only’ a tax increase on the rich.
The Democrats also have planned a set of new regulations (for example regulations designed to make unions stronger – and thus undermine American industry and increase unemployment). The media will present all such regulations as ‘fair and just’ and academics (such as the ‘economist’ Paul Krugman) will rush to agree – just as they will rush to justify any tax increase.
People who think that “well the Republicans have not been much good, and the Democrats will not be able to do much harm – so it does not matter if they take Congress” are deluding themselves.
Even the ‘likely voter’ defense may not save the Republicans. As many people are fired up to vote by the state of the war in Iraq, and many conservative and libertarian minded people are upset with Republican failure to control government spending (although nonmilitary spending growth has been much lower than it has been in Britain).
With the elections only a couple of weeks away America may well be sleep walking over a cliff.
Paul, my view has never been that it does not matter if the Democrats win, unlike in the UK, where hardly matter if Labour or the Tories wins, either way the UK loses… in fact these is much to be said for the Tories not winning as the (big) advantage of Labour winning is that it might finally destroy the Tory party once and for all, making room for a serious opposition party to form (perhaps UKIP, perhaps a new party calling itself the Tory party).
My argument has been that in the long run, if people opposed to intrusive Big Government Democrats keep supporting Big Government Republicans just because they are increasing the size of the state less quickly, then the Republican Party will soon go the way of the British Tory party and be indistinguishable from what it ostensibly opposes. The long term consequences of that far outweigh a few nasty years of Democratic majorities.
This choice will become very stark and perhaps obvious even to many dyed-in-the-wool Republican loyalists is the worst case scenario happens next presidential election (i.e. John McCain gets the Republican nomination).
The same thing will happen if the Republicans win. However, with a Democratic House, you might get someone to stand athwart the War & Tyranny tracks yelling, “Stop!”
– Josh
Nah, best you might get is someone muttering “slow down a bit” so that they can concentrate less on disarming Iraqis and more on disarming Americans.
I hate to say it, but a Democratic congress may actually help things by causing a stalemate that dramatically slows the spending and regulation of both parties. Amazing how history has shown great expansion of the U.S. economy during years where one party has the Whie House and the other has the congress.
“stand athwart the War and Tyranny tracks, yelling “Stop” ….. From democrats?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?
You obviously can’t be from the USA. The democrats long to accelerate the engine of War and Tyranny by pulling out of Iraq and leaving the millions who are trying to create a civil society, to the tender mercies of the Islamo-fascists, Syrians and mad-mullahs of Iran.
I hate to say it, but a Democratic congress may actually help things by causing a stalemate that dramatically slows the spending and regulation of both parties. Amazing how history has shown great expansion of the U.S. economy during years where one party has the Whie House and the other has the congress.
My rule for voting for a president is simple: I ask myself which of the two candidates is more likely to stay out of my hair for the next four years. My hopes for what they could do are always less than my fears for what they might do, so I always prefer the candidate with the more modest ambitions.
In this case, the Democrats want to get into my hair in a big way, like so many nits. It matters a lot. The big-government Republicans are an aberration; the big-government Democrats are the heart of their party. They may disagree about what the most pressing problems are, or how best to solve them, but they always agree that any problem requires additional powers and money for the central authorities. Most Republican voters disagree, although many Republican pols may not.
Bush has lost me. His only claim to my support is that he is better than the alternatives that have been proposed from time to time. That is faint praise, considering the nonentities the Democrats have put forward.
As Democrats did after we pulled out Viet Nam (broke agreements of support and aid), so will they do with Iraq.
Dr. Thomas Sowell has written a 4 part article – if the dems win, get ready for President Pelosi, W and Cheney will be removed from office.
You think we’re loud now, just wait.
Sorry, but I’m all for the Democrats taking the house. The Republicans need a wake up call, and the whole system could use a nice, harsh dose of gridlock. I’ll be voting in December to depose my current governor, but I’ll likely vote (shudder) democrat for my congressman. Mike Rogers Taliban-Republican tool that needs to go in any case, so I should be able to stomach voting for the donkey.
You obviously can’t be from the USA. The democrats long to accelerate the engine of War and Tyranny by pulling out of Iraq and leaving the millions who are trying to create a civil society, to the tender mercies of the Islamo-fascists, Syrians and mad-mullahs of Iran.
Fortunately, they’re only dying at a rate of 12k+ a month under the just and humane US occupation. LOL
– Josh
Perry’s argument is self-contradictory. Because there’s the danger that John McCain might be the Republican nominee therefore conservatives and libertarians should abstain from politics to ensure that he’ll be nominated by the moderates and liberals in the party?
If there is logic somewhere in this picture, it escaped me.
The argument that divided government will slow down government spending ignores the nuances of history. That is only true if one party is opposed to more spending (see Robert Taft’s Republican Congress v. President Truman, President Reagan v. Democratic Congress, Newt Gingrich’s Republican Congress v. Clinton). Unfortunately, that is not the case now. You have a president who is not eager to cut spending and a Democratic Party that wants to raise spending. This is the perfect recipe for increasing the deficit. The proper analogy for President Bush and a Democratic Congress is President Eisenhower and his Democratic Congress when they cooperated seamlessly to raise spending.
The only hope for reducing spending at all is to ensure that conservative Republicans retain control of Congress and then pressure them to reduce spending.
No true libertarian could vote for the Republicans in their present Christian-Right-possessed incarnation. It’s the Republicans who are the main enemies of fundamental personal freedom (see abortion, assisted suicide, Plan B, War on Drugs, stem cells, separation of church and state, etc., etc.). All this tax-and-regulation stuff is of marginal importance by comparison — and even there, who’s been sending federal spending through the roof over the last few years? I’m with Purplethink on that one. Unlike a parliamentary system, our system allows us the blessing of divided government, so let us make the most of it.
I don’t think anyone who lives outside the US can quite grasp the magnitude of the impact of the Foley affair. The Republicans’ extremism and incompetence has eroded their support down to just the Christian Right base, and now Foleygate is undermining that. There’s a political earthquake coming next month and nothing can stop it. Best hope is that it brings the Republicans to their senses so that they nominate a moderate like Giuliani for 2008. If not, well, given the choice of a fundamentalist nanny-state or an economic nanny-state, the latter is definitely the lesser of two evils.
Infidel753,
First, where is the evidence that Democrats are less supportive of the War on Drugs?
As for stem cell research, what has been banned is federal funding. Private funding continues. What is so libertarian about government funding of scientific research?
Third, you’re ignoring the principle of federalism. Revoking Roe v. Wade means that individual states get to decide what they want. States with a pro-life majority can ban abortion. States with a pro-abortion majority can continue as before. What is so wrong with different groups of people living under their own sets of laws? Why should the principle of one group apply to all?
The principle of federalism was specifically designed to make sure that groups with opposing principles can nevertheless live in the same country. Roe v. Wade violates that principle by prohibiting a diversity of views among states.
The choice is not between “a fundamentalist nanny-state or an economic nanny-state.” Rather, the choice is between one party that supports free trade, guns rights, low taxes and can be pushed to support privatizing Social Security and Medicare v. another that opposes all these things.
abortion – I support getting rid of Roe vs Wade. There is no way that such a contentious issue should be decided at the federal level. There is no specific libertarian argument, to my knowledge, as to when a foetus starts getting human rights, so I don’t see why libertarians should care one way or another.
assisted suicide – again, a humanist thing. Not libertarian related.
plan B – plan B?
war on drugs – bad, but the Democrats support it as much as the Republicans.
stem cells – if foetuses have human rights, do we really want to encourage a market in parts of dead foetuses?
separation of church and state – the Republicans are better on this one. Bush actually made some moves towards encouraging faith based charity spending. It’d be great to get rid of government welfare, and government education, and return these functions to the church where they belong.
Withdrawal of Roe v Wade and prohibition of federal support for stem cell research are however based on a moral position, not because they represent any excessive use of state power.
As for assited suicide, I would have thought that was the ultimate issue of self-ownership.
Except that is not what I said.
What I said is that if the Republican Party nominates another Big Government supporter like McCain, and you reward the Republican Party by voting for them anyway, you have only yourself to blame when the choice is between one party which increases the power of the state, and another Party who just wants to increase it faster… which is not much of a choice [see the Tory Party in the UK for an example of what your future can be].
By voting for Big Government non-conservative Republicans, you progressively turn the Republican Party into a party of… Big Government non-conservatives. Why is that so hard to understand?
It is a war. Idiot.
True, but it would also open up a door for Congree to pass a national law on the issue. At present, this is more likely to be a pro-choice law, but the pendulum seems to be swinging on abortion.
I agree – this is a libertarian issue. We should support the right to suicide, assisted and otherwise.
In general, yes, but recently the Republicans have been a lot more zealous about it than the Dems. I’m talking specifically here about Gonzalez, who has been throwing the book at everyone, including completely harmelss medical marijuana cases, etc. The feds have also been putting unprecedented pressure on states to all in line about medical marijuana and decriminalization efforts. I can’t wait until Gonzalez is gone as attorney general.
That study has been discredited. It has serious problems with its sampling methods, as I have explained in the comments section on another thread.
That’s not the way I understood Perry’s argument. He’s not advocating abstaining from voting in the primary – merely cutting support for the Republicans if they run useless tools like McCain in the main election.
Htyang’s point about the two opposing sides in gridlock needing to have different opinions about spending is right on point. It doesn’t matter who wins this election because Bush is neither Reagan nor Gingrich. He has no principled objections to government largesse, so the only use his veto is likely to be put to versus a hypothetical Dem majority Congress is as a negotiating tool to shape the form of the spending. He won’t complain about the amount.
As for Dr. Sowell – I don’t really mind if impeachment procedures start against Bush. We’ve never gotten straight answers on a lot of thngs – including whether the wiretapping program violates FISA, and it’s clear that nothing short of so drastic a measure would force a disclosure. The Democrats will not win a large enough majority to remove Bush from office without a solid case – so I say let the hearings begin.
There’s a simple, but not always pleasant rule. If a party knows it can count on your vote because they’ve convinced you the other side is worse, they have _no_ incentive to actually deliver on anything they’ve promised you (or tried to lead you to believe they’ve promised).
Voting for the greater of two evils (and in the US the degree of greater and lesser evil is mostly statistically irrelevant) is occasionally a good idea as it reminds the lesser of two evils they actually have to deliver something. If you can’t stand actually voting for the greater evil, then stay home and deprive the lesser evil of your support which they thought they had sewn up.
Anyone who’s _really_ upset at the republicans and still votes for them “because the democrats would be worse” has little cause to complain that the republicans aren’t listening to them. Give me one good reason they _should_ listen to you if you’ll vote for them no matter what.
“When in doubt vote against”
Robert Heinlein (I think!)
Yes, it’s Heinlein. I found the full quotation here:
***fundamentalist nanny-state or an economic nanny-state, the latter is definitely the lesser of two evils.***
Except with one you get the other. Look at the logic of stripping cigarettes from society, it is justified because the government has put itself in a position to pick up medical bills. It is quickly putting itself in the position of rooting through your pockets, kitchen pantries, and bedroom drawers. He who pays calls the shots. Statists are Puritans whatever face they put on. Nothing changes the fact that physical resources are limited, so controlled allocation requires a moral filter.
Ultimately there is no “better” version of Statist control.
***The big-government Republicans are an aberration; the big-government Democrats are the heart of their party.***
I beg to differ. At the end of Bush’s term, the Republicans will have had the Presidency for 28 of the last 40 years. Granted the Dems controlled Congress for a goodly portion of that time, but as of late it has been all Republican.
In the last 6 years, the accrual basis debt has gone from $20 Trillion to $46 Trillion. Nixon was a Big Government Republican, Bush Sr. was all about compassionate conservatism and a thousand points of light, and Bush Jr. has hardly been a small government patron. The only Republican that is credited with being small government minded was Reagan, and the debt exploded under his watch, spending was not altered much at all. Cutting taxes doesn’t mean much in the long term unless spending is cut and Constitutional constraints are put on the Federal Government, something the Republicans have not done.
It is quaint just how the average Republican/Conservative wants desparately to believe the party is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from sensibility, but the decades long track record shows otherwise. The Federal Government has exploded in the last 8 decades, and the Republicans have done nothing to stop it.
When one examines the reality of public policy put into place by ELECTABLE Republicans and ELECTABLE Democrats, there isn’t a whole lot of difference. Yet both parties talk a good game, appealing to the varying factions existing under their main umbrellas. Yet it all goes on apace. Economic reality always intrudes. The rest is 1984ish blather.
Federalism is not a positive value when it conflicts with individual freedom. If Roe vs. Wade is repealed, some states will indeed ban abortion, which will reduce the freedom of choice of individuals in those states. This would therefore be a bad outcome from a freedom-centered viewpoint.
Federalism has often had a negative effect. For a century our southern states used their autonomy to bully and terrorize their black citizens. The eventual movement of the federal government to suppress these practices undermined states’ rights, but increased individual freedom.
Free trade, low taxes, and most of the other issues where the Republicans are better than the Democrats, have only a very marginal impact on individual freedom compared with the more fundamental personal issues like abortion and drug enforcement where the Republicans are worse. Throwing someone in prison for years for possession of some trivial amount of marijuana, or telling a woman who wants an abortion that she can’t have one, is a far greater violation of their freedom than raising their taxes is.
It’s not obvious to me that things like privatizing Medicare would even increase individual freedom at all, in any concrete, meaningful sense, and individual freedom is what I’m concerned about, not libertarian ideology.
Low taxes accompanied by high spending (the current Republican practice) just doom us to higher taxes later when the national debt grows to untenable size. We don’t know whether the Democrats will get spending under control. We do know, by now, that the Republicans won’t.
The Republicans had their chance. To use Perry’s argument for my own purpose, if we re-elect the Republicans after all they’ve done, where’s their incentive to change?
Brad, where’s the empirical evidence that getting one kind of nanny-statism means you inevitably get the other? The track record of the Democrats is that when they are in power, we do indeed get more nanny-statism in the economic field (that is, more taxes and regulation), but less in the fields I consider more important (protection of abortion rights, less interference with things like assisted suicide, sometimes less zeal in enforcing drug laws). Why am I wrong to expect that the same pattern will repeat itself if the Democrats gain power again?
***Throwing someone in prison for years for possession of some trivial amount of marijuana, or telling a woman who wants an abortion that she can’t have one, is a far greater violation of their freedom than raising their taxes is.***
While I agree with the majority of what you wrote, and while I agree with the first part of the premise above as an invasion into privacy and freedom, the taking of taxes should not be let of so lightly, and I say that is the reason no one is really doing much about the tax bite that is necessary. It is so accepted now by almost everyone as a necessary evil that it gets a pass.
Yet if the government came a took 30%-50% of your property today, there’d be revolution. Take it from them via withholding and transaction taxes, it becomes almost as if the “property” never existed. People have been receiving the net of their labor for so long they’re numb to it.
And that is what is taken here – a person’s labor and their values. The whole framework of productivity, and the personal framework of ones decisions is imbedded in their trade of labor for money, and the have a large chunk taken, and an equal amount mortgaged upon (by the runaway debt) is perhaps the largest ongoing, across the board violation of freedom and personal privacy that exists in the U.S. It shouldn’t be let off so lightly.
Agree in general, but have a couple of nits to pick. (1) The Southern states institutionalized their racism, but blacks were no better off in the north in practice. Take a look at Detroit or Boston for some first-class examples of violent resistance to the desegregation of the school system. (2) The aftermath of the Federal government’s interference has brought a lot of individual freedom – right. But it has also brought affirmative action, government oversight of hiring practices, etc.
I agree that there was a net increase of individual freedom, but some nasty precedents got set as well, so federal interference in this case is a mixed bag, even if more positive than negative.
It is a war. Idiot.
You’re speaking of it as if it’s some natural disaster, like a typhoon. It’s not. It was chosen and planned for by very wicked men, and cheered by waterheads like you and Deano.
Putting the Democrats in charge of a branch of Congress is one way to throw a stumblingblock in front of these wicked men: investigations, hearings, impeachment proceedings, anything to start raking these guys over the coals.
– Josh
***Brad, where’s the empirical evidence that getting one kind of nanny-statism means you inevitably get the other?***
The largest government shake down in history, the Tobacco Settlement ring a bell? The endless attack on the liberty of smoking, or owning an establishment that allows its patrons to smoke? People have been trying to sue tobacco companies for years unsuccessfully, but get liberal minded Attornies General behind it, with Medicare deficits to make up, and all of a sudden billions change hands and endless ordinances banning smoking from nearly every aspect of life. The economic intervention that the government is responsible for peoples’ medical care is leading to the extermination of smoking, a personal liberty.
The Democrats are the ones who are pushing for all sorts of laws and sin taxes (the most laughable at this point is the gentleman from Chicago who is trying to pass ordinances against fatty fois gras that restaurants can sell, granted a different level of government, but still). The Democrats have pushed government control over education at all levels, fighting against any mode of privatization (the State attachment to young minds is perhaps the other biggest attack on freedom other than taxes). The Democrats contain the majority of environmental zealots who penalize producers and have driven up the cost of products and stalemate innovation.
You see there’s more issues than just the ones you’ve trotted out. BOTH parties are about finding Statist solutions to perceived ills of society. BOTH parties have their opinions on the behavioral aspects of society. Laws are necessary to stop or change behavior that would otherwise be acted upon. BOTH parties are in love with laws that go well beyond defensively protecting life and property. If you want empirical evidence, just look at the number of pages added to the Federal Register and which side of the aisle it comes from.
And since every aspect of human life translates into economic terms, the interaction of people and resources, how can economic-nannyism not be seen as an invasion on personal freedom and liberty at the most basic level? To not see life in terms of individuals and resources as the essence of reality is to have an a priori buy in into Statist constructs. It is precisely THAT reality that booted my ass from the Republican Party. Trace any Puritanical law back for enough and you’ll find an economic rationale, the unacceptable cost to the Body.
The dialectic of the two-party system of Statists has gotten us more laws and more debt than any nation in history. Neither party supports individualism in any meaningful way, and both invade the freedom of individuals to trade, whether it be a free trade of labor for money, or the money to needs and wants.
As a last point, what sort of freedom are we ever going to have with a $46 trillion debt that materializes out of those who think that redistribution is necessary, and the logic is forming that to limit the cost, behavioral control is necessary at best, and intervention into production at worst? As I said before, resources are limited, so those who deem to be well informed enough to forcefully control allocation are going to have to use some filter of morality to decide how it is done.
What I said is that if the Republican Party nominates another Big Government supporter like McCain, and you reward the Republican Party by voting for them anyway….
Except that I have no intention of voting for John McCain even if he does get nominated by the GOP. If your concern is that some of us do not set limits to our tolerance, you can put yourself at ease.
I live in California. This year, I’ll be voting for the Libertarian candidate for governor and not Gov. Schwarzenegger because he does not match my minimum standards.
I’m not content with merely voting for the lesser of 2 evils. I must have something positive to vote in favor of. Gov. Schwarzenegger blocked a number of very bad liberal initiatives but since he didn’t do anything positive, I’m not going to support him.
My point has always been that in the case of the Republican Party now, it has done a number of positive things. I already named several elsewhere and here. Let me name more: Appoint a solid economist like Ben Bernanke as the Fed Chairman (not exactly an insigificant position), appoint Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court, and also tighten welfare work requirements.
My concern is that I’m experiencing a terrible case of deja vu where people with extreme positions and a refusal to compromise (Politics is all about compromise. People who don’t want to compromise have no business talking about it.) create the situation of having an illusory perfect become the enemy of the good. It’s a clear case of wishing for the impossible while at the same time dissing those who actually had some solid accomplishments.
I remember back in 2000 some Leftists made similar arguments: That Bush and Gore were the same therefore they should all vote for Nader.
Suffice it to say, most of them had many causes to repent since then.
Be careful what you wish for.
Just because the Democrats have not been in power for the past 6 years, everyone seems to suffer from amnesia about they did in the past. In Bill Clinton’s first 2 years alone, there was the assault weapons ban, a massive tax increase, and the attempt at a national health care that almost succeeded. The Republicans have not come close to such ambitions.
–Fortunately, they’re only dying at a rate of 12k+ a month under the just and humane US occupation. LOL–
Just doing our part for world “sustainability” Wild P.
You’re for sustanability, aren’t you?
The abortion war is over, you guys aren’t listening to the younger generation.
Until the greatest generation is gone for a few years, you won’t get looser drug laws.
It’s a generational thing.
It is a war. Idiot.
How do you figure that? You just expect a tyranny to fall over if you ask nicely? I’d sure hate to have you on my side when things get tough.
I find it interesting which names you do not mention. Like Saddam, for example. You are just another idiotarian making common cause with true tyrants on the basis that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. George Bush is you enemy so the Baathists and Islamists are your friend. BDS pure and simple.
–The Democrats will not win a large enough majority to remove Bush from office without a solid case – so I say let the hearings begin.–
And doom us to Nixon redux? Didn’t you learn anything from the 70s?
Are you nuts?
–The Democrats are the ones who are pushing for all sorts of laws and sin taxes–
Don’t forget NYC transfats.
Abortion is not Congress’ purvey (/). It’s always been a states-rights issue, the USSC has needlessly split the country for 30 years.
The blues will have it, the reds will limit it, but the American public has been very consistent over the past 30-odd years —
Usually about 60% don’t like it but want it available for rape and incest but won’t pay for it.
And they younger kids are more pro-life than their parents.
SD will not get their draconian view passed, they’ll have to settle for what the majority wants.
Dems in office, more Kelo decisions.
The tobacco lawsuits are, at least, somewhat defensible. Cigarette companies spent years spreading claims, which they knew to be false, that smoking did not cause disease. They spread lies which induced other people to harm themselves. Whether this is legally actionable behavior is certainly something about which reasonable people can disagree.
I don’t consider laws against smoking in places of business to be an infringement of freedom at all. No one has any inherent right to subject other people to hideously-stinking toxic crap in an enclosed space. Nor does any business have any right to make exposure to such stuff a condition of employment. I don’t know about Britain, but over here, no one is talking about banning smoking in private homes. And having to go outdoors to smoke is simply not in the same league, suppression-of-freedom-wise, with being sent to prison for years for mere possession of a controlled substance.
***Politics is all about compromise. People who don’t want to compromise have no business talking about it***
I was all prepared to not continue our debate from a previous thread (and therefore not clutter this site too much) until I read this.
Now you are the arbiter of who is worthy of having a comment in the body politic (or even a message board)? I think this says more about your position in general than anything else. You’re right and everyone else is a shade of wrong, and anyone who has the temerity to strongly disagree with you and stand by their convictions is an extremist. As I have said before, my views stand squarely with widespread opinion of less than a century ago. A person is an extremist simply because the majority apparently don’t have an understanding of basic economics and have a nonsensical budgetary process, and the two generations of thinking in between that have driven up debt to fantastical boundaries are the normal ones, and thereby the only ones whose opinions matter? The majority CAN be wrong, as I think they are, since most people can’t name any SCOTUS members, or other of their elected officials for that matter, but if they have an opinion, fine. It’s nonsense itself to think that uninformed people matter, while people who have an inkling of what is going on but don’t comport with the majority are labeled extremists and told to fuck off.
Forgive me that I can name most (if not all) members of the Supreme Court, and who my Rep is, and who my Senators are, and who my State Rep is, and who the Governor of my state is, and forgive me for having read enough history, and read the Debates on the Constiution in two volumes, and have read the Constitution itself, and that I have read the Financial Report of the United States and see (as an accountant) that the fucking balance sheet doesn’t add up, and that if the US Government had the same rules apply that apply to private citizens, they would be hauled off to jail, but since they are the “moderate” and “compromising” among us, they can do as they please? What separates the U.S., an entity with a $46 Trillion retained deficit and any other private entity. Why would anyone invest in such a grossly lopsided entity? BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE POWER TO USE FORCE. Care to estimate how much force is going to be necessary to wring another 4.5 years domestic production out of the people to pay for all that they have promised? While all the States themselves are in a fiscal crisis, and municipalities are driving up taxes (my Mother’s taxable value of her house for property taxes just went up 36%). And on top of all this, the estimated effect of two wars isn’t even taken into account (see the economic effect of Viet Nam on the 70’s).
The “compromises” (or moderacy, the word du jour from the last thread) have led to, once again, a $46 TRILLION dollar debt. “Compromises” between two huge entities both spouting nonsense IS STILL NONSENSE. Just because it is distilled via nonsensical debate doesn’t give it any more credibility. The distilled output of two deranged minds doesn’t mean it’s sanity.
But suffice to say, whatever the belief, I give room to listen and not tune them out. Does it please you to know that I, too, see the need for change but not all at once? Certainly, but we don’t have 30 years, we have 8. Does that call for more drastic and radical action? Yes. To begin the fix to this crisis requires a definite course of action, one that the a goodly portion of the “normal” crowd isn’t going to like too much. Which of the presidential candidates from either side of aisle has the plan, because they could very well be the one in office, along with the rest of Bush’s term, for the next decade, and if it’s not well along to being fixed, we’re screwed. Why does Comptroller General Walker basically say the same thing. Is he (gasp) an extremist radical too? He must be, hence why the average level headed compromisor in Congress appears to be ignoring him. Or perhaps, he too is an accountant and can see that the balance sheet doesn’t balance by a long shot, and without rapid change, there could be a SUDDEN (his word) shock to the system.
Regardless, don’t take upon yourself to validate whose opinions matter.
I’m just so sick of the hypocrisy and dishonesty, maybe we need a rush to the bottom, get it over with….
Rick, there are days I think Brad is an optimist.
lmao……..I must be getting old, but it just gets worse and worse. I’m afraid the only cure will be a return to the dark ages for a few hundred years. Hopefully we can get there and back without eliminating the human species. How’s that for optimism……lol
Let it be said that I don’t smoke and I hate second hand smoke with a passion.
***I don’t consider laws against smoking in places of business to be an infringement of freedom ***
Using force to prevent people from doing what they were peacably doing a decade ago is not an infringement on freedom, then I guess we have two largely different definitions of freedom.
***The tobacco lawsuits are, at least, somewhat defensible. Cigarette companies spent years spreading claims, which they knew to be false, that smoking did not cause disease. They spread lies which induced other people to harm themselves. Whether this is legally actionable behavior is certainly something about which reasonable people can disagree.***
Anyone with a brain can tell you that pulling smoke into your lungs is not good. People knew this before the mandatory warning labels, which have been on cigarettes for decades with little result. People do all sorts of harmful things to themselves, and they are perfectly free to do so. The biggest fact that did Tobacco in was that they designed the cigarette, both in the filter and its chemical composition, to deliver a greater amount of nicotine than with out such “spiking”. How long will it be before fast food and junk food are targeted for spiking with the MSG (et al) that is a flavor enhancer, to deliver their fatty, salty, sugary doses of death? It’s starting with sin taxes and laughter, but give it a decade and a half, with twenty-somethings on dialysis with blown kidneys before the Attornies General effect another shakedown.
***I don’t know about Britain, but over here, no one is talking about banning smoking in private homes***
Several States are debating putting laws on the books that would prevent parents from smoking in their cars if kids are present. It won’t be long before they pass. And if you can’t smoke in a car, is it long before you can’t smoke in the same room by the same logic?
Now you are the arbiter of who is worthy of having a comment in the body politic (or even a message board)?
I’m not the administrator of Samizdata.net so obviously I can’t ban anyone. It’s the steadfast refusal on the part of some people to recognize the simple realities that I find frustrating.
I hate to break it to you, but being right is not enough. You also need a road map to get there. I have one, you don’t.
I repeatedly point out what incrementalism has accomplished. People either ignore them or belittle them. After all, to acknowledge the accomplishments of incrementalism will shatter that extremism so many people here hold dear to their hearts.
As I noted repeatedly, your brand of extremism has been tried by the Libertarian Party and they produced far less than what incrementalism has accomploshed.
I do listen to what people have to say. That’s why I’m responding to you right now. I in turn wonder about people who willfully ignore all the positive accomplishments of the Republicans that I pointed out.
***… there are days I think Brad is an optimist.***
I don’t think I’m an optimist or a pessimist; I’m a realist. If there is any optimism in me, it is that mankind can withstand individuals with freedom, and left to itself, culture will correct societal ills before it threatens to dissolve society. We wouldn’t have a huge accrual debt and the adding of ponderous pages to the Federal Register if it weren’t for the powerhungry tapping into the currents of pessimism that run within the body politic. You don’t force someone to do something, or stop doing something, because you’re optimistic.
(Warning – Philosophical canned corn ahead)
We all have our own yawning chasms of existential angst we have to carry around with us, bashing each other over the head, or threatening peacable people with fines and cells isn’t going to make it go away. It just gives a rationale to fearmongers to gain positions if influence and affluence in society while not being productive in the least.
I’m optimistic that man can be left to himself and thrive. I’m up against pessimists that think only by “making that which is not forbidden, mandatory” will society function. An old saw, but accurate.
Re: tax increases, is it actually worse to have spending paid for via taxes than via government borrowing? CATO published research showing that tax cuts matched very closely with subsequent increases in spending.
If government spending is free, who could be against it? But if it has to be paid for, then cost/benefit analysis has to be applied, opening up arguments than libertarians might be able to win.
Some Democrats (Nancy Pelosi I believe is one) advocate a no increased spending before taxes are found to pay for it. That is at least fiscally conservative, if not libertarian.
As if any credible member of the Democratic party had voted against Iraq? Wild Pegasus and her crowd are either useful idiots, or else standing up for outright socialists like Feingold and Co.
On the Republican side of the aisle, it’s quite clear that the libertarian side of the Republican disfunctional marriage is slowly gaining ground with the victories of the Sunshine folks and company, and the general self-destruction of Hastert, DeLay, etcetera.
–advocate a no increased spending before taxes are found to pay for it. —
And that’s why they’re going to increase taxes.
Brad, as long as we have pro-growth policies, low taxes, tort reform, HSAs, we can handle the debt. We’re at 65%, where we historically are. Besides, about $25 trillion is due to change hands over then next decades because of inheritance.
Or
We could just Logan’s Run everyone over 80.
Start reading The Skeptical Optimist. It’s better for us for the bureaucracy to owe us money than we owe it.
I’m glad you’re home is paid off and you’re debt-free.
Well so I do. My whole point is that too many people who want a smaller state are continuing to support Republicans who deliver a larger state due to the deeply mistaken ‘Vote for the Lesser Evil principle’. My road map is for people to stop supporting such people in order to motivate the party to actually work for your vote. It is not a theoretical point, it is a very practical suggestion.
I am all for incrementalism, but what we have at the moment is incrementalism going in the wrong direction. That John McCain can even contemplate a run at the White House on the Republican ticket shows just how badly wrong the ‘lesser evil’ approach has gone.
And have you noticed that I do not sing the praises of the LP? Their hearts are (usually) in the right places but when it comes to selling their vision or dealing with the big bad world outside America, their heads are firmly wedged up their arses.
I have no problem at all with gradually shifting the debate onto ground of our choosing…but what a great many voters need to realise is to do so, they must stop supporting Republicans who are moving things in quite the opposite direction. If that means voting LP just to spank their local Republicans back into some sense, then for gawd’s sake do that and stop sending RINOs to Washington.
Kindly read the part about “a large enough majority.” The Dem majority in the 70s was considerable. If the Dems win, their majority will be slight. They will not be able to keep this issue going if there is no merit to it. I have no problem with presidents being removed from office if they break the law. Do you?
htjyang,
Then why the steadfast refusal to acknowledge how Walker pretty much says what I have been saying and you’ve yet to address either him or anything from the Financial Report of the United States Government? Have you read any of it? I provided a link previously. What contained within that document provides you with any form of optimism? The fact that no opinion is expressed because control procedures are too non-existent? The fact that a true value of assets is not known principally due to lack of proper records? The fact that the debt is six times bigger than even people who pay some attention think it is (the $8 trillion hard debt).
And you talked about $40 Billion in “good” that was done. Well, at such a pace we’ll have this problem licked in 1,200 years. Billions don’t mean much in this debate. You trotted out 30 years as a cycle to clear things up, and it can be done incrementally. It would require doing away with current laws and programs to the tune of $1,700,000,000,000 per year, starting in two years to have things balanced by 2036. What’s first? And stick to simple realities of what either Dems or Repubs are talking about to remove anything close to that amount.
Why do you not at least acknowledge that Bush added $11 Trillion to the accrual debt and that the accrual debt has gone from $20 trillion to $46 trillion under a Republican President AND Congress, perhaps because that flies directly in the face of all the “Good” the Republicans have done?
I, too, find it frustrating that people ignore simple realities. Can you even comprehend what $46 trillion dollars is? THAT is a simple reality. It is one that is not borne by ECONOMIC reality. It is a fiction. And something has to change very soon, or draconian taxation that will contract the economy will have to be collected. This isn’t a 30 year cycle to clear itself out. Demands are going to made very soon, sooner than the 2018 that the liberal/Dems think is the magical cutoff line to worry our moderate, compromising little heads about, and Republicans replace SS with private plans without providing the answer as to how the short fall that will be created in the short run will be made up. The US government is on a pay as you go basis, and any reduction in SS collections will have to be made up in general revenue. Are people going to be able to fund private plans AND pay in the shortfall that is going to exist soon? THAT’s the problem, deciding who is going to pay. THAT’s the fallacy built into the compromised transfer system that has been created (otherwise known as the mother of all ponzi schemes). Someone wins, someone loses. The ability to kid the losers that they are winners is coming, and no one is discussing how to prepare for it. The Dems/Libs’ answer is truly centralized and controlled solutions, the Republicans playing at stuffing one pocket while picking the other, and changing little in the short run. At least the Dems are pretty much up front what their solution is, rotten rationed collectivism dolled up as Good, while the Repubs play with debt, and that what you don’t choose to see will only hurt you a long while from now, when we’re long gone. No one is truly talking about rolling back entitlements and cutting taxes so that people can save unfettered, and transfer according to their own value systems.
What an extremist nut am I.
And how much of that do you think is likely to be spent on paying down the debt?
***Brad, as long as we have pro-growth policies, low taxes, tort reform, HSAs, we can handle the debt.***
No we can’t. There is no growth rate that can make up for $46 Trillion of accrual debt (perhaps that’s why we are at war? A position not loved here at Samizdata, but there is a demonstrative connection between Welfare/Warfare States). This is $46 Trillion we would need to have now to fund the projected inflow over the outflow. The only way that sort of money is going to flow into the treasury is to tax at a rate that would negate any growth. That’s one of the main points that Walker whom, I’ve referred to before, makes very clear.
Carrying a national debt that is fantastical and unending is the very proof that rank and file Republicans are espousing a form collectvism, albeit hidden, but very plain if you care to look.
******From – Comptroller General’s Remarks to the Senate Centrist Coalition –
The Status Quo is Not an Option
We face large and growing structural deficits largely due to known demographic trends and rising health care costs.
GAO’s simulations show that balancing the budget in 2040 could require actions as large as:
Cutting total federal spending by about 60 percent or
Raising taxes to about 2.5 times today’s level
Faster Economic Growth Can Help, but It Cannot Solve the Problem:
Closing the current long-term fiscal gap based on responsible assumptions would require real average annual economic growth in the double digit range every year for the next 75 years.
During the 1990s, the economy grew at an average 3.2 percent per year.
As a result, we cannot simply grow our way out of this problem. Tough choices will be required.*******
Of course his analysis (I assume) works under the assumption that we do nothing until 2040 for such ridiculous “solutions”. But what good does it do to creep up to such solutions over that whole length of time? And imbedded within that time line would be smaller, painful solutions that would pick out economic minorities to harass to make such huge transfers happen. The changes need to be discussed now, implemented very soon, to properly match the benefits and costs properly to individuals (or at least proper generations).
We may be able to grow out of the $8 Trillion of debt, but never the accrual $46 Trillion. Reductions in entitlements or large increases in taxes will have to take place. Of course it will likely be the savers who get run over both ways as entitlements disappear for them and they have taxes take a big chunk of their savings to pay for the non-savers.
____________________________________________
*** It’s better for us for the bureaucracy to owe us money than we owe it.***
Government, at the end of the day, is a fiction. Saying that THEY owe us is the same of what we owe IT (other than foreign purchased treasuries). Ultimately at any point in time, what is bought and consumed is done out of the then current production of the country. It is simply who holds the assets or rights, earned or extorted. Even our own savings only has value as it being a “marker” of what we can demand from the then occuring production. That is the underlying fantasy involved, the bureacracy that owes us has to take it from somewhere, and when it does it will endeavor to redistribute when it takes and gives.
That is ultimately how this accrual debt should be viewed. Are we allowed to work and defer and save and consume based on a system of freedom, or are all our endeavors wiped clean by the notion of “entitlement” and production and allocation clear through the Treasury, one way or another? Which sounds capitalistic and which sounds collectivist? And proposed solutions which hang to notion of freedom without discussing how shortfalls created under the evolving constructs will be handled is sleight of hand.
No matter how its contrived as long as we have grossly inflated entitlements, we will eventually have a pure collectivist system. The fact that it already 10+ years since the Dems tried to socialize medicine, it tells us just in what straits we already are. If we meander into this slowly, and given the goverment’s propensity to convince people that more government is good when crises hit (like the beginning of a health crisis), and people are finding it hard to pay because they didn’t save properly, then even the center, that has thus far bucked socialized health care, will come to embrace it. We didn’t get to where we are by having a public policy that said that bumps in the road need to borne by individuals rather than the collective. I’m afraid that any further bumps along the way to supposed fiscal sanity aren’t going to borne with good grace. People tend to jump at the easy answer. You can rest assured that if socialized health is embraced, and it the inevitable rationing ensues, and Stella has to wait 5 years for a hip replacement, it’s going to be the ever shrinking private sector that will be blamed.
“***I don’t consider laws against smoking in places of business to be an infringement of freedom ***
Using force to prevent people from doing what they were peacably doing a decade ago is not an infringement on freedom, then I guess we have two largely different definitions of freedom.”
I explained in my earlier comment why I say this.
How grossly offensive to the senses does something have to be before it crosses the line to become assault? Having another person light up a cigarette near me in an enclosed space is about comparable to having him come up and urinate on me, in terms of the general physical unpleasantness involved, the enduring stench impressed into clothing, etc., though one could argue that the smoke is the worse of the two, since it actually gets inside the body. If you think there is an inherent right to subject other people to that kind of thing, or for an employer to make exposure to it a condition of employment (by allowing smoke in a restaurant, for example), then we do indeed have two different definitions of freedom. It doesn’t make any difference to me if the assaultive behavior was considered acceptable at some point in the past.
I was not aware of the proposed laws about smoking in cars with children, but this doesn’t really strike me as unreasonable either. You don’t have any inherent right to feed your kids rat poison just because they’re your own kids (at least, under “my” definition of freedom you don’t). It’s the same principle.
Do we have an “inherent right” to feed our children transfats?
Where does it end?
Solutions have already begun. Look at the IRA change.
Yes.
When you start violating someone else’s rights – like, for example, forbidding them from buying food containing transfats with their very own money that they earned, or preventing someone from selling them the transfats they desire.
If an adult cannot smoke in their own car with children present, then logic would dictate that they could not do so in their own house, unless, of course, licensed with qualifying exhaust systems to take the cigarette smoke into canisters for proper disposal (couldn’t just vent it out into the air outside lest a passerby be assaulted).
This just confirms just how far we have gotten as far as our public policy. The use of force is so rampant and accepted that the endless additions to Public Laws at every level is seen as Good. Ah well, specious arguments likening smoking in front of your own children in your own house to feeding them rat poison is sound underpinning for local social policy and defining oneself as a disinterested third party to peacable behavior that has been going for centuries the world over is nutty.
I guess from now on parents need to HAZMAT their whole house, and lo if an accident happens to Billy and you can’t show his sign off that he was informed by signature in the HAZMAT binder. I guess the Mr. Yuck stickers just won’t cut it anymore. Any “accident” will have severe economic consequences, and prison certainly is not out of the question. Just think, maybe the local authorities could do semi-annual inspections and mandates for lockout/tagout, or maybe even OSHA. The mind reels with giddiness at the possiblities to do Good.
As for an establishment, I don’t view such as part of some “commons” but private property, and the owner’s will rules what peacable activity is conducted upon it. Cigarette smoke is no more an assault than perfumes and colognes, which can cause reactions in people as well, and can be highly offensive to a given nose. If such use was assault as well, well…slippery slope and what not….
“People who think that “well the Republicans have not been much good, and the Democrats will not be able to do much harm – so it does not matter if they take Congress” are deluding themselves.”
I agree, except with the part that “Republicans have not been much good.” It’s much worse: they have been terrible. This administration has bankrupt the country and handed our tax dollars to their friends and family. They saw a pot of money (surplus), and took the whole thing and then some. You say, “but there is a war stupid.” Of course there is, so we can line the pockets of defense contractors and eventually gas and oil companies. They have lied, cheated and stole at unprecedented rates and magnitudes. There has never been, in the history of the US, such a terrible administration in my opinion. So while the dems can do harm (and anyone could), it is unlikely that will do the harm that this administration has; that would be difficult to achieve. I don’t think the dems have the deception machine together like the reps. For example, the reps plant a story in the Iraqi press (as our own government has noted has been a strategy of this admin) on the Iraqi death toll, downplaying it. Then they get a few papers, a couple of their corporate funded think tanks (American Enterprise Institute, etc.) and “humanitarian” groups (Human Rights Watch) to quote these stats as a basis for discounting the scientific research showing much higher numbers. Thus the American people are misinformed. They use their corporate funded think tanks at every turn, pulling them out and flaunting them as legitimate, independent researchers.
Gawd Doug!
Is your post meant as humor? I sure hope so, otherwise your litany of Bush omnipotence makes him sound God-like.
1.) “… saw a pot of money (surplus), and then took the whole thing and then some..”
And all while reducing unempoyment to 4.4%, growing the economy, fighting terrorist scum, standing up infant democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq (which the democrats long to strangle in the cradle), developed a workable missle defense system to checkmate nutters like N. Korea, oh yes, and directed hurricanes at his enemies in Louisiana.
2.) “… so we can line the pockets of defense contractors..”
Ummm, real life people have jobs at defense contractors and pay taxes. Real life soldiers, who are better men and women than most of society, depend on these contractors to make the other guy die for his cause. Next time one of our ABMs shoot down another test missile, you might think how this might save your sorry arse in the future from nutters like the dear leader.
3.) ” They have lied, cheated, stole at unprecedented magnitudes….”
Maybe some examples? How about …. just one?
4.) “.. unlikely they (Dems) could do the harm this admistration has…”
Well let’s see, if Clinton’s ignoble retreat from Somalia created Al-Qaeda, I wonder what would happen if this level of cowardice and back stabbing of our allies were to be repeated in Iraq?
Doug, please refrain from wasting your time at nutter websites like Daily Kos. It damages brain cells.
There was no surplus, Doug.
——————————–
Why do we have to balance the budget? And why by 2040?
Of course if we were allowed to smoke and kill ourselves and others early……..
http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/a1_national_debt/index.html
Hmmm, via Rantburg:
Eight out of ten people who suffer the onset of serious mental illness are heavy cannabis users, claims a scathing report on the effects of the drug. The report found that the huge majority of those undergoing a first episode of psychiatric disorder, schizophrenia or similar mental breakdowns are habitual users of the drug. The overwhelming evidence of a connection between cannabis and schizophrenia was confirmed in a report delivered to Tory chiefs as part of leader David Cameron’s review of party policies. It listed no fewer than 400 different scientific studies that point to links between use of cannabis, illness and destructive behaviour. The findings will pile pressure on Mr Cameron to tie his party to a pledge to reclassify cannabis as a seriously dangerous drug. The report was prepared for the Tories’ social justice policy review in the wake of growing criticism of the Government’s decision to downgrade the criminal seriousness of cannabis from Class B to Class C in 2004….
The rantburg link that Sandy P mentions is here.
Sandy P is obviously unaware that correlation does not imply causation.
Here’s a cool quote from the article:
The answer is probably “roughly the same amount.” I don’t know how the numbers come out in the UK, but in the US it is well known that government policy on marijuana has no effect on the usage rate. (Some data for Australia included.)
Perry seems to think that my post was directed against him – it was not. Actually I was thinking of (for example) various people I had seen broadcasting on “Fox” news financial shows saying that if the Democrats win it would not really matter (because of the Veto and so on) and that the Republicans needed a “wake up call” and so on.
The idea that having a Republican President and a Democrat Congress means that taxes and regulations do not go up did not work very well under George Herbert Walker Bush.
More broadly it is a misunderstanding of the subject of history.
There are no “laws of history” and one does not study history by looking for “data” (such as what happened when their was “gridlock” at various times before).
What people do is what they DECIDE to do. As Collingwood and Oakeshott were fond of pointing out – history is a subject (it the natural scientists refuse to allow it the word “science” – reserving this word for subjects that follow their method) based on the thoughts and actions of human beings – the actions being directed by their thoughts.
If a lot of people (in this case the leading Democrats and their supporters in the media and academia) show (in their events and publications) that they want more statism that is what they are going to do.
The Democrats are not protons or other subatomic particles, they are people.
It is true that someone may wish to reduce statism and fail (due to the power of the media or whatever), but no such restraints operate against people who want to increase statism. The only (vaguely) anti “liberal” television station is “FoX” and that will give in if the Democrats win (a threat of an “investigation” into the business practices of News International will soon bring it into line with the rest of the media).
Allow the Democrats to gain control of Congress and you will think that Republican time was a time of laissez-faire. And the media and academia will back the Democrats every step of the way. Every new regulation will presented as “fair and just” (“only big business could oppose this”), and every tax increase will be presented as a tax on “the rich” (although, somehow, Democrat billionaries will not end up paying more tax).
As for the Republicans moving to a more free market position if the Democrats win. On the contrary – American versions of David Cameron will arise. “We must stop opposing the basic institutions of modern America, we must have a more constructive relationship with the media and academia – and the rest of the modern world, including the international community”.
Everything from the New York Times to the United Nations Organization – this is the “modern world” that Republican “reformers” will want to get friendly with.
Uain. I could improve your employment and household economy by borrowing money in your name and hiring you with it. That works, no?
O.K. let us deal with the corruption thing.
The Bush family although much less rich than the Kerry family pays much more tax (and has for years and years – check the records).
Too simple? Only one example?
Have a look at what happens when a Republican gets accused of financial corruption – he gets hounded out of Congress.
A Democrat (such as one in Louisiana right now) can accept bribes for his personal use (rather than money for his campaign) and stay in Congress (even if the money is found in his fridge).
Why is this? It is because of the power of the media – how they report (even if they report) the stories.
It is the same with sexual corruption. Compare what happened to Mark Foley with what happened to Barney Frank (and so many other Democrats). Even allowing an underage male prostitution ring to be run from your apartment need not harm your political career (if you are Democrat). Indeed Congressman Frank will (given a Democrat victory) will be in charge of major economic committee in a little while.
And, of course, Senator Kennedy is going to be reelected on November 7th (try and think about what would happen to a Republican who left a girl to die in his car whilst he called his lawyer – and who, for years, helped hide a rapist from the law because the rapist was a relative). The stories are not presented in the harsh way I have just written them – because the media choose not to present them that way.
Finally the deficit.
Presently the deficit is 1.9% of G.D.P. (lower than most Western nations). And this is inspite of two wars and Katrina.
“The wars were fought to boost the profits of corporate America”.
BULLSHIT.
Perry thought nothing of the sort… Perry just puts the emphasis in a different place.
The trouble with that theory is that the Republicans are already going on the wrong direction. As a fighter pilot might say “when you see tracer rounds flying past your cockpit from 6 o’clock, there are various things you can do, but the important thing is to stop doing whatever it is you are doing now and do something different”.
Doing what classical liberals in the USA have been doing has resulted in a Republican Party which not only got George Bush elected, it has allowed him to pursue a Big Government agenda. It seems clear to me that more of the same will just result in someone like John McCain taking up the regulate-and-pork agenda where Bush left off.
–US it is well known that government policy on marijuana has no effect on the usage rate.–
Look how long it took to vilify smoking.
Maverick will not be the choice, I don’t care if it’s his turn.
The second quote was not directed at you Perry (again it was directed at other folk who I had heard saying this).
On John McCain:
My instinct is the same as yours – in that I do trust him (any friend of the media is not to be trusted). However, (and this shows how difficult it is for people in Primary elections) his speeches are often hard core free market stuff.
Take the one he delivered to the British “Conservative” party conference (much to the shock of Mr Cameron – to judge by the look on his face). After saying how Mr Cameron was his friend, and how much he admired him (and so on) McCain went into attack mode saying that even if that the greatest danger a conservative party faced was to become to “forget its principles” and become a “party of government” for the “best government is the least government” and so on.
Senator McCain might as well have said “Cameron, you are a subhuman piece of shit”.
The speech was clearly designed for domestic consumption back in the United States.
Now let us say I was a registered Republican and I heard John McCain making speeches like this (and I am sure he makes many) I would think him a hard core pro liberty person.
The real John McCain who (for example) thinks that the First Amendment is a optional extra that can be tossed away in favour of “campaign finance reform” and does his best to make friends with the establishment media, is hidden away.
Primary elections only work if information is got to the voters. Pro liberty people need to get to the voters with information – not “vote Libertarian”, but “this person supports this and that person supports that – and here is the evidence”.
They will find that (contrary to theories about how wicked base Republicans are – because they believe in God and because they tend to be married and have children) that it the base Republicans who are most interested in what their arguments.
I have been a libertarian for as long as I can remember (long before I even heard of the word – indeed I objected to some of the collectivist [i.e. stealing] policies of school when I was about seven years of age.
Bill O’Reilly is supposed to be the arch “authoritarian” Republican – someone that, as a libertarian, I am supposed to hate. I have done his five question “Culture Warrior” test – and I came out with five out of five Culture Warrior score.
And when I hear the words of “moderate” or “progressive” or “modernizing” Republicans (such as the Taft family of Ohio) these words make me feel sick.
Now I am NOT saying that I support everything that Conservative Republicans believe (for example I believe that the “war on drugs” has no constitutional basis, for unlike booze, no Amendment to the Constitution has ever been passed giving the Congress power to ban drugs) – but there are fewer differences between me (as a libertarian) and a arch Conservative Republican than there are between me and a “moderate” or “progressive” one.
I also know how the media will present defeat on November 7th. It will be as the media presented defeat in Britian – “the voters have rejected extremism, if conservatives wish to come back into office they must make peace with the modern world”.
By “modern world” the media (like the “education system”) means the world of the ever growing welfare state and P.C. thought control.
As for the war:
As many people here know I opposed the judgement to go back into Iraq, partly for good reasons (in that I thought that the war would be a lot harder than the British and American governments implied it would be, and partly for bad reasons (I tend to distrust both Muslims and Arabs and most people in Iraq are both – therefore I distrust any mission that is based on the idea that they will be good if only they are freed from a nasty dictator).
However, leaving aside my objections (both the good ones and the nasty ones), I still understand that once started the war must be WON.
If the Democrats take either or both Houses of Congress the “investigations” will mess things up so badly that defeat (both in Iraq AND IN AFGHANISTAN)will be inevitable. “Moderate” Republicans (like James Baker) will rush to join Democrats in demanding that America (and Britian) make “deals” with places like Iran (“it is always sensible to talk to the enemy” – no it is not), regimes whose main goal is (and in the case of Iran has been since 1979) the total destruction of the United States and the rest of the West.
“Moderate”, “progressive”, “modern” people do not understand this. They think everyone is like like them – and many people simply are not.
This will not “save America from war”, it will mean (as with Iran and other nations now) that regimes will take over these countries (and the rest of the Islamic world) that will be dedicated to the total destruction of the United States (and the rest of the West).
A new Caliphate will form (or a a Shia one and a Sunni one – both the same in their attitude to the West) that will make such a war on the West that it will make the Iraq war look like a picnic.
Perhaps Saddam should have been left in place – but it is too late for that now.
Now it is America or the terrorists (both in Iraq and in Afghanistan) and victory for the Democrats means victory for the terrorists. The Democracts (with a few crazy exceptions) do not LIKE the terrorists – but the policy that the Democratic leadership will follow will have the effect of breaking the Administration and giving victory to the terrorists.
Again this will not end the war with extremist versions of Islam – on the contrary, these radicals will be boosted to a level of strength vastly greater than it is now.
Turning to a “small” issue (it is not a matter of peace and war, but the principles behind it are important).
Smoking.
There is a social institution that can help with the conflict between smokers (and nonsmokers, like myself, who have no problems with people smoking) and people who regard smoking as an “assault” (whether or not they cite scientific claims about the harm supposedly caused by “passive smoking”).
This insitution is PRIVATE PROPERTY – an institution not understood by Democrats, or by “moderate”, “progressive” or “modern” Republicans either.
If I go into a boxing ring against another person I have no claim of “assault” if that person hits me on the nose.
I did not have to go into the boxing ring and it did not belong to me.
Ditto if I choose to work in a bar that allows smoking – it is not my bar, if I choose to work there (because it offers higher wages than a no smoking bar or whatever) I choose to obey the rules of the owner.
Of course the rules have to be explained in advance before I sign any contract (for example if someone hits me on the nose as soon I enter a bar “Oh but this whole bar is a boxing ring, we forgot to tell you” is not a defence for the person who hit me), but if it has been made known to me that this place of business (or private house or whatever) is a place that allows smoking I have no grounds to complain.
Let people who object to smoking choose to go to places where the owners ban the practice. And let those of us who do not wish to ban smoking (whether or not we smoke ourselves – and I repeat that I do not)be left in peace.
I think vilify is the key word.
In any case, the example I quoted – of your statisitcally uninformed “researcher” asking whether Tony Blair’s policy would condemn a generation of Britons to the mental ward – would obviously have nothing to do with the amount of time it took to “vilify” smoking since Blair was only talking about short term experiment. Even if you take smoking as your example, and usage rates will change in the long term, Blair’s short term experiment with marihuana decriminalization would make no difference on the usage rates.
Oh and by the way – no one has ever been sent to jail for smoking a cigarette. Cigarette usage went down when they became more expensive. If you would care to legalize marihuana and then raise taxes on it, I would consider that an infinitely more sane policy than throwing people in jail for doing something to their own bodies in the privacy of their own homes on their own time with their own money – violating absolutely none of your rights in the meantime – on the basis imaginary and/or statistically uninformed medical “evidence.”
Your personal preferences for what people should and should not do are not a rational basis for making law.
Classic typing mistake by me on John McCain – I left out the “not” in “I do not trust him”.
Still if only he really believed the things he said in his speech at the British “Conservative” party Conference.
As for George Walker Bush:
His “compassionate conservatism” is not to my taste (I class it with “progressive”, “moderate” and “modern” conservativism – i.e. something to be opposed). In practice it seems to be little more than not trying hard to limit government spending (although nondefence discressionary spending has not really increased as a percentage of G.D.P., [unlike in Britain] and President Bush did make an effort to try and deal with the future train wreck that is “Social Security).
On spending the Democrats would be worse (see their endless promises on this), and on regulations they would be a lot worse (there is a whole mountain of regulations that they have already got drafted and just waiting to go).
Should the Democrats win the “political centre” will move in the United States. Now people (at least on Fox and so on) argue about whether Bush should have cut spending as well as tax rates, and about whether such taxes as inheritance tax should be abolished, and about whether President Bush is serious about deregulation and tort reform.
If the Democrats win, the debate will be about whether Republicans should “accept reality and the judgement of the American people” and go along with much higher spending, more taxes and much more regulation.
No prices for guessing what the media and academia will be advising the Republicans to do.
So a “progressive” Republican will be nominated in 2008 and face a socialist like Senator Clinton (and this lady is a socialist). Conservative and libertarian minded people will sit at home in disgust – and the socialist will be elected President of the United States.
Maybe there’s a case to be made for a special exception in Senator Clinton/Rodham/Rodham-Clinton/Clinton-Rodham’s case, yes.,
But let’s at least consider what happens if the Socialist wins anyway, despite the fact that Libertarian-minded Republicans turned out to vote for whatever McCain clone is on the ticket in 2008 (maybe even the bastard himself).
Well, then in the next election the Republicans will reason that they have to win over some of the Socialist’s voters to win – and that will mean shifting (even further) left. In contrast, if Libertarian-minded Republicans boycott the McCain clone and the Socialist wins, then the Republican reasoning in 2012 will be quite different. They will instead be thinking of ways to appeal to the parts of the natural constituency that didn’t turn out for them in 2008.
Take affirmative action as an example. The reason the Dems are so solid behind race-baiting-as-public-policy is because they know that dropping such support is one of the few things that would drive their otherwise reliable black voting block away from them. If Libertarian-minded Republicans hope to exert any influence over their party, they have to be equally willing to walk out if people like Bush and McCain become the party standard. Threats only work if they’re credible.
Depressingly, Joshua, that’s exactly what happened.
For a very long time marijuana was legal if you purchased the tax stamp for it. Except they simply chose not to issue any stamps. Then they fined and imprisoned anyone who sold marijuana without the stamp.
I have no words…. Maybe you do.
MidWesterner said –
“Uain. I could improve your employment and household economy by borrowing money in your name and hiring you with it. That works, no?”
It works for me as long as it in *invested* in scientific endeavours such as, oh maybe missle defense, space exploration, you know, stuff that can get a payback in improved technology in the future.
Back in the late 70’s, Carver Mead suggested that VLSI lithography would stall at 1um dimensions. By 1981 or so, DARPA was spreading research cash around for studies of how to continue lithographic scaling past 1um. Lots of cool stuff was demonstrated like better Etalons to filter harmonics out of the laser light source, better lenses for the projection lithogrphy tools, better methods and materials to make the masks and pelicles, and so on. In 1988, companies were shipping 4Mb DRAMs with 0.8 um geometries.
And now we have cell phones as powerful as a 1980’s PC, the world is wired and technology is the engine driving economic expansion….. so how much would you like?
Paul, your position is substantively that because a bar is a privately-owned business, the owner has the right to make exposure to a seriously carcinogenic (or, if you don’t acknowledge that, hideously repulsive) substance a condition of employment.
If this is the case, how far does it go? Can the owner make submission to random beatings by angry customers a condition of employment? Can he make giving him sexual favors a condition of employment? Games of Russian roulette to entertain the clientele? Is absolutely anything permissible provided it’s explained before the employee takes the job?
I am just trying to find out whether or not the version of libertarianism being promoted here has any connection whatsoever with the real world.
Not really. Point taken/touche – a tax is in many ways just as coercive as simply outright arresting people for possession.
My overall point was that I think at the very least mj should be on the same level as alcohol and cigarettes in terms of “sin” regulations. There is simply no rational argument for the current system of prohibition that I can see. The only “evidence” that is ever offered is of the kind that Sandy P linked – either outright fantasy or laughably ignorant of basic statistics.
753—
I don’t want to dive too deeply into this p—sing contest, but I just have to laugh at the last post about bars and smoking.
Alcohol is a poisonous, central nervous system depressent. Extended use causes the death of brain cells, the death of liver cells, and, if too much is taken in at one time, the possibility of coma and death.
It is well known that many, many crimes, violent acts, and deadly traffic accidents take place under its influence. In the now defunct Soviet Union, and possibly still in modern day Russia and its former satellites, alcoholism and its effects were one of the leading causes of death.
Are you seriously suggesting that a business whose primary “service” is the sale of this utterly poisonous and dangerous chemical is somehow immoral if it doesn’t ban tobacco smoke on its premises, while at the same time dispensing a known addictive and potentially fatal substance?
People who patronize and work in bars know exactly what’s going on in there, including that people like to smoke when they drink.
If you want to start a chain of no smoking bars and restaurants, go ahead, and more power to you. My wife would be one of your most loyal customers.
But, please, spare us the phony moralizing.
Yes.
Now tell me true – would you accept a job that pays $7/hr and also requires you to be beaten by irate customers if they so desire? Do you know anyone who would? Didn’t think so.
Offering such a job would be like trying to sell a 6-year-old laptop for $20,000. You’re free to try, but I rate your chances of success near 0.
As for selling sexual favors, please explain to me why this should be illegal? Do people not own their bodies? Like anything else, sex between consenting adults can be provided for a negotiated price. Honestly, lots of casual dating is not really different – just without the tax forms.
Veryretired — the difference is that alcohol harms only the person consuming it (unless he drives drunk or attacks someone else, and I don’t think those should be legal either). Smoking in an enclosed space harms people other than the smoker. I have nothing against people smoking when there is no one else present. The distinction is between harming oneself (allowable) and harming others (not allowable) — one which I thought even libertarians recognized.
Joshua — in the 19th century, before we had most of our current laws against employer abuses, degrading conditions of employment were indeed common, even if not these specific examples. When such things are legal, they eventually become the norm, and in practice they become inescapable. The employer is inherently in a position of power, since the impact of losing a job is far greater than that of losing an employee. Take away the laws which prevent employers from abusing that power, and we’ll eventually find ourselves back in the same position. I’m not going to give up the advances won in struggles born of hard real-world experience for the sake of unworldly abstraction.
I want to see as much personal freedom as possible. I just don’t think the ideology that wears the “libertarian” label has much connection with that cause any more. Converting the entire public sphere into private property, and then giving the owners of that private property unlimited power over what can and cannot happen there, will in practice mean less freedom for most people, not more. In the 80s and 90s I read probably several cubic feet of libertarian publications — enough to convince me that if the libertarian utopia ever comes to pass, we’ll have much less freedom than we do now, only we’ll also be awash in abstract sophistry “proving” that less is really more because the suppression of freedom is being done by entities other than the government and therefore doesn’t count. No thanks.
Yes, and the 19th century was also poorer in material terms than the present day not just by a great amount but by several orders of magnitude. People did not flock to poor working conditions in factories in the 19th century out of any sense of patriotism or whatever else. They did so because they were desperate. This desperation is not the abstract concept you were taught in school – it was the very real result of shortage of land, shortage of food, shortage of material goods of any kind. For them, working under these conditions and not was a difference between living and dying of starvation. You could, if you like, put all kinds of regulations on industry at this time and slow its pace of expanision, but that is only so many more people that your economy would be unable to feed as job creation slows down or stalls.
So you’re facing a choice between marginally (do let’s be realistic about what kinds of changes we could have initiated and how fast) better conditions for fewer workers, the rest presumably starving, or feeding more and more people as conditions improve over time.
The only way to improve the lot of workers is to actually accumulate a lot of material goods – i.e. by having a robust economy. That is the situation we have now. People who have a choice between dying of starvation and exposure may take jobs in harsh conditions. People who grew up in our affluent society will not. It is the amount of capital that makes the real difference in workers’ lives, not regulations. Therefore, I see no reason to expect that if we remove OSHA regulations that the lot of workers in general will decline.
I am not aware of any examples in my lifetime of someone having been (a) forced to take a job at a bar or (b) forced to patronize such an establishment.
Perhaps you can provide some?
Thanks Joshua.
Glad to know alcohol use never harms anyone but the drinker.
Is it really easier to argue a case if you never actually get the point of someone else’s position, but just plow ahead?
Or is that more of the “self-delusion” Paul was talking about?
Reading the entire comment in context, Infidel does not believe any property owner is entitled to open his property to paying guests. If you do, it becomes part of the “public sphere” and he derides ever converting it back into private property again.
There is a big gap between this post’s theories on government and what is happening on the ground. Please do not pretend that Americans are not allowed to rail against the same intrusive gov’t practices you criticize every day on this blog. That is what a vote for the Dems is. The NSA reading my e-mail and tapping my phone is pretty substantial regulation that has occurred under this administration. I think about this every time I communicate with China, Vietnam, or even Ontario for business. What percentage of the lamented thirty-laws-per-month your state makes up is in the name of your security? All citizenry has the right to vote their level of (dis)satisfaction? right?
Second, the whole dynamic between the Congress and the administration will change if the former goes Democratic. The president will not be signing pork-barrel spending for the same people his proxies have for years called turncoats (“A vote for Ned Lamont is a win for al-Qaeda types,” the Vice President). Instead, the pace of governance will halt. And so will the output of regulation.
Second, if somebody gives you a tax break, then spends $1-3 billion per week in the Near East with your money, has your liability really gone down? Isn’t the Treasury paying interest on those bonds? Won’t we all have to pay it back, now or later?
Idiot!
What makes you think your boring phone calls are of interest to the feds? Do you have any idea how many phone calls enter the ether per minute in the USA alone??
Do you have any idea how much computer or man power it would take to listen in on every left wing kook with such low self esteem that they conjure such fantasies to give their wretched lives excitement?
I am convinced you nutters think GW Bush is God. How else could he or his evil minoins effortlessly wield such power?
Infidel753 thinks that it is O.K. to ban smoking in a bar because he thinks that “passive smoking” is bad for health.
Actually scientists are divided on this issue, but let us say he is correct. Working at night (and especially working some nights and some days – shift work) is unhealthy (this sort of life style even pushes up cancer rates).
So people should be banned from being security guards (and many other things) Infidel753?
Nothing to do with being extreme Mr what-ever-your-name-really-is, it is a matter of what used to be called “common sense”.
Nobody gets out of life alive, and if someone’s choices (such as working in an “unsafe environment”) shortens their life – that is their business, not yours. You may advise them not to work in such a place, or in such a way – but you have no right to threaten violence (i.e. regulations) if they do not choose to take your advice.
On Joshua’s argument:
So the Republicans lose in November – move to the left and (because you and others refuse to vote for a “progressive” Republican) lose in 2008.
Sorry the Republicans would then MOVE TO THE LEFT AGAIN. You see the media (and academia) would denouce John McCain (or whoever the candidate was) as an “extemist free market fanatic” (remember the media is dominated by people like Infidel753 – they could be the best friend of McCain one second, and then denoucing him the next). The media and academia would simply “explain” (endlessly) that the Republican party had STILL not fully made its peace “with the modern world” or the “compassionate nature of the American people” (or other such) and demand yet more statism.
The fact that people had did not come out to vote because they did not trust the Republicans to hold down government spending and regulations would never be mentioned in the media (remember the first order of business would be a threat of an “investigation” into News International – in order to get Fox news to fall into line with the rest of the media).
In Britian when people stopped voting Conservative (because they did not trust the Conservatives to resist higher spending, higher taxes, or E.U. regulations and they were right not to trust them – look at the record of the John Major government), this was presented as people supporting Labour (even though the Labour vote has not gone up – indeed the Labour party got fewer votes at the last general election than it got in any general election for decades).
So the Conservatives moved to the left (Mr Cameron) – which will mean that even more conservative minded voters will stay at home at general election time. So the Conservatives will be told (by the media and academia) “you are still too right wing, you must modernize more” and then……….
You want the Republicans to be more free market – so do I. This is the way to do it.
First prove that they can win in spite of the media and academia (the way to do this is to vote for them and try and convince others to do so – not sit at home). And also make sure you are active at the PRIMARY ELECTION stage (and before).
The media will denounce any Republican as a evil person who wants to grind the faces of the poor. But the good side of such lies is that the media can not attack a real free market Republican any more than they attack a George W. Bush big spender (they will just use the same level of “baby eater” stuff for both) – so a real free market Republican does not lose any votes for being such.
So the thing to do is to get as good a Republican candidate as you can. But remember, if the Democrats take Congress all Hell will break loose – it will be as if the big spending Republicans really were free market “extremists”.
No doubt you’re right about this – but I don’t think that campaign strategists go entirely or even mostly by what the media says. It’s sort of a common joke in America that the media predicted a landslide win for Mondale in ’84 because none of the reporters had any friends who were voting for Reagan. (Of course, this is just a joke – most papers did indeed predict a Reagan victory; the joke is based on something Bernard Goldberg overheard in the CBS newsroom.)
No, but it would come out in the polls. There are people who make (large sums of) money based on how accurately they predict elections results. The more successful of these do not simply read the New York Times and take its word on the outcome.
As for the Conservatives in the UK – I have the impression that they haven’t been a free-market party in a very long time – dating way back to the 1951 election. Thatcher was a bit of an aberration, no? And not too popular within her party, the way I understand it. She won the leadership in 1975 sort of by accident – that’s just where the pieces fell as the party outsed Heath. That she continued so long is a testament to her managerial skills (and ability to win elections – though that probably had more to do with the split in Labour and general lunacy of their platforms at the time) – but she, too, was ousted, and there were vocal opponents among the Tory MPs during her tenure. I’m not sure that Cameron’s ascendancy is proof that the media has successfully tricked the Conservatives into thinking that people want leftist policies. Probably it’s just due to a lack of strong leaders in that party all ’round, no? But I don’t know as much as I should about British politics, so I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong.
I think the greater danger is in letting the pollsters see that the Libertarian wing of the party will turn out forthe Republican candidate no matter what – based on fear of the dreaded Dems winning. No doubt it would be a travesty if they win – but that, too, can be effective in eroding their support.
In the short-term, you’re right, and perhaps we should make clear that there will be pain associated with a general Democrat win in November. But to get the long-term (which is ultimately more important) trend to work out, I think some short-term sacrifices might be necesary.
Curious. I don’t know what this means. I was watched the political candidates give timed “elect me” statements tonight on the TV.
One of them is very much in the right place. While there will be some libertarians that can find more to disagree with, outside of the Marriage Amendment, everyone of his other positions is acceptable to many, and in some cases most, libertarians.
I don’t know what he proposes to do about political corruption, that bears watching. But clearly legislative votes are for sale to the highest bidder in a great many high profile cases. Several of our Wisconsin legislative leaders from both parties are now convicted criminals for abusing office power.
For those of you who can’t understand the emotion driving the campaign finance reform movement, votes are for sale on the floors of our legislative bodies. Some of the legislators are so arrogant as to commit convictable crimes, but most of them use the mechanism of campaign donations to collect payment. While money=speech, it is also true that votes=$.
It’s a flaw of our system that selling legislative votes = big campaign coffers = slick and successful elections = corrupt politicians = selling legislative votes = big campaign coffers = etc ….
I notice he’s pro-life. A couple of years ago I would have thought that would be something that Libertarians wouldn’t like. But then I was told at a party meeting once that there were lots of pro-life Libertarians. And indeed, our local Libertarian candidate for Rep is fiercely pro-life. On his website he even admits that it’s “due to my religious beliefs.” How that can be a Libertarian justification is completely beyond me. Surely if we can’t agree on abortion we can at least agree that religion should not be a basis for making public policy?
Anyway, I thought it was interesting that you flagged the marriage amendment as an issue that might turn Libertarians off of Nelson but did not also flag abortion.
I am ‘pro-life’ too Joshua… the way I see the issue is treating ‘aborting’ a cluster of cells a few days after conception as murder is preposterous (the Catholic position, for example), but treating aborting an unborn child a few days before delivery (which appears to be Leonard Peikof’s position) not as murder is also preposterous.
Where does a reasonable person draw the line? I really do not know and upon that basis I think abortion should only clearly be illegal (i.e. murder) if it is late term even though I find the entire practice abhorrent. I am simply not prepared to support charging someone with murder unless I am certain a person has indeed been murdered. It is not an easy issue.
Joshua-
I would submit that being pro-life is indeed compatible with a Libertarian philosophy. Prior to Roe v Wade, abortion laws were decided in each state as per our constitution. This to me seems eminently libertarian in that the people of each state were closer to the formulation of those laws, whether for or against. Roe v Wade brought abortion under federal jurisdiction, in clear contravention to the Constitution, which limits federal authority to things like inter-state commerce.
One Supreme Court justice penned that his opinion for federalization of abortion laws was derived from “emmanations from the penumbra of the Constitution”…….. scary!
I should clarify. I completely agree that Roe v. Wade should be overturned and the power to decide the issue returned to legislatures (where it belongs). It would certainly be a gain in principle for states’ rights, though I seriously doubt it would in practice: Congress would eventually pass a national law on the issue. I see Roe v. Wade as a separate issue from ethical questions about the legality of abortion. If Roe v. Wade were overturned, these ethical questions would not go away.
I am a case in point: if Roe v. Wade were overturned, I would still vote, in my own state, against any restrictions on abortion – and until recently I would have expected that to be a general Libertarian position. Apparently it is not.
Joshua,
After first reading Ayn Rand and deciding I was an objectivist (I’ve since distanced myself from ‘Randroids’), I applied reason to the question of abortion. I have no religious basis for my belief unless you believe that a moral imperative to study reality with the faculty of reason is a religious doctrine.
I chose to divide the question into smaller units.
First, when does life begin?
Second, when does a right to life begin?
After thinking about it for over years I comfortable in the conclusion that life begins once new DNA exists. All other transitions are variable and subjective. To use any other criteria leads either to philosophical inconsistencies or far worse.
I also believe that the begining (and end) of a ‘right to life’ is something that can be discussed rationally should anyone care to do so.
It is critical to any rational discussion to break each point into the smallest possible question. People preaching moral beliefs like to bundle individual questions together even worse than politicians bundle together appropriations bills. When deliberate, this bundling is a sure sign of intellectual (or fiscal) shenanigans.
I reached my conclusion from a mostly ambivalent point of veiw. I would be happy to discuss how I support my conclusions dispassionately, but that could be difficult for some people even here on Samizdata. If one of the contributors (or editors) chooses to open a thread on the topic, I will explain myself.
Midwesterner-
Of course, it is impossible to tell from your comment what conclusion you eventually reached. However, I agree wholeheartedly with your general approach: when ‘life’ begins and when a ‘right to life’ begins are distinct questions and should be answered separately.
I also agree that ‘life’ begins at conception, but I obviously have a different idea about when a ‘right to life’ begins.
I have also distanced myself from “Randoids” over the years, but I’m still very sympathetic to the overall Objectivist approach to ethics. An idea is not reponsible for the people who hold it.
But I didn’t mean to start any discussion on abortion per se – was just noting that it surprised me to learn that so many Libertarians are pro-life. I would indeed enjoy hearing a pro-life argument from a Libertarian point of view – but I agree we’d need the permission of the editors to really start a discussion on it.
I’m still miffed, however, that Schansberg thinks it’s OK to run on the Libertarian ticket and justify his support for outlawing abortion with reference to his religious beliefs. If he’d care to give a rational justification, I’d be willing to listen. Of course he’s entitled to his religious views – but I don’t feel comfortable voting for people who think religion is an acceptable basis for public policy. It doesn’t mean I won’t vote for them, just that it makes me uncomfortable.
The point is moot in this election, however, since I forgot to register! 🙂
Joshua, Midwesterner… I will put a suitable ‘thread starter’ article up tomorrow (unless some other samizdatista beats me to it) as it is a difficult subject well worth discussing… but I am succumbing to an opiate induced fog and I can hardly keep my eyes open so it is an uncharacteristic early night for me… my apologies for the delay.
Thanks, Perry!
Ouch.
Agnosticism is the only rational rule book for mediating between people. Even if one does hold strong religious beliefs.
My home town paper some years ago ran an editorial by the owner/publisher/editor (small town) stating that as a matter of policy there would be no mention of abortion anywhere in the paper. He said that the issue had nearly torn his family apart and he was not going to let that happen to the paper as well. (I just saw Perry’s comment during preview. Thanks, Perry.)
Once I erased the halo that I had graffitoed over Ayn Rand’s head in my mind, I was able to better appreciate the amazing contribution she made to philosophy and at the same time, use the morality and principles to which she introduced me, to arrive at a differing conclusion. Some people (Randroids) have sanctified Ayn Rand complete with a dogma and a doctrine of infallibility. Then they fight over what that doctrine is. Go figure…
Funny. I never intended to keep it a secret. It’s just that the process is what matters. If the process is sound, the product will follow. See you on the next thread.
Perry-
Godspeed on your recovery.
Joshua-
I would submit that all philosphy comes down to some form of religion or another. Whether Christian or Agnostic or Atheist. There was a Bob Dylan song from around 1980 and the refrain approximated “you will serve somebody”.
As for abortion, my views matured greatly after fathering three unbelievably brilliant, intellectually lazy, loving, disrespectful, adorable, irritating, inspiring, depressing, but overall apple of my eye and meaning of my life, children.
It is easy for bitter women with no children or cowardly single men who want the benefits of marraige without the responsibilities, to be in favor of abortion. But hold your 2 minute old baby in your arms and it will change you.
Joshua says that the polls would show that many people had not voted for the Republicans out of their disgust about them not keeping down spending (although the stuff about “pork” that someone else mentioned is an old myth, it is not “pork” that is the problem it is the entitlement programs).
Well the polls showed something like that here (with most people saying that they did not trust the Conservatives to cut taxes or to stand up against the E.U.) – but that did not stop the Conservatives falling for the media line that they lost elections because they were too free market and anti E.U.
As for the Conservatives being always being a nonfree market party. It is a complex story – if one looks for example at Greenleaf’s “The British Political Tradition” (have a look at “The Libertarian Strand”, I seem to remember it is in Volume II) one finds that many libertarians in Britian were active in the Conservative party in the late 19th century and in the 20th century.
Indeed anti statist arganizations such as the Liberty and Property Defence League were dominated by people who were either members of or voted for the Conservative party (even the Personal Rights Association which worked on what we would call “non economic issues” was full of Conservatives).
The Conservative party was full of different people, no (or very few) actual socialists, but plenty of mixed excomy types and plenty of free market types – and their relationship with each other was often very bad.
However, even in the 1950’s the Conservative party did many good things – returning steel and road transport to private enterprise, reducting taxes, getting rid of rationing and many other regulations, and even trying to roll back rent control.
Even Edward Heath (who later, amongst other things, imposed price and wage controls, let government spending rise out of control and spent the last years of his life praising the biggest mass murderer of human history – Mao) was elected in 1970 on a free market platform.
As for the American situation there is another factor which I have mentioned several times that Joshua has not dealt with.
The opinions of the American people (or some of them) may move to a more statist position. This is because the left will move against Fox news (even a threat of an “investigation” of News International will be enough to make Fox cave in). Fox may not be very good – but it is the only place where most Americans will ever hear a word spoken against such concepts as Social Security (today I heard several people on Fox use the old libertarian line that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme”) and so on.
The pro tax reduction, indeed pro reduce the state generally line will be removed from the sight of most Americans if Fox is forced to be like the rest of the media (which it will be if the Democrats take control of key committees in Congress) “What about the First Amendment?” – well what about it? When has it ever protected a commercial organization?
The Democrats will simply say “we are not attacking free speech, we are trying to clean up big business”.
These are not the days of the old (free market) Chigago Tribune (of Robert McC.) and the other pro freedom mass circulation newspapers of the past Modern print journalism is dominated by the left (they control the “schools of journalism” as a special part of the general power in the “education system” and they control the professional associations) – and most people do not get their news from pro freedom internet blogs.
For most people, Fox is (for all its faults) the only access to nonleftist opinions they have – and the Democrats would make sure that Fox no longer served this dissent function. A monopoly of news and current affairs coverage is a long term aim of the left – and would finally be achieved (look at the grip they already have on entertainment coverage, book reviews, entertainment talk shows and so on).
What Gramsci called the control of the “cultural superstructure in order to gain control of the economic base” (thus turning classical Marxism on its head) would be one important step nearer to being complete.
Someone mentioned above that in the past conditions of work for most people were terrible.
So they were – and wages were terrible to.
This was because the level of economic development was low. The United States had vastly better wages and conditions of work (for most people) in the 1920’s than it did in the 1890’s (and neither regulations or unions were of much importance in the 1920’s) just as it had vastly better wages and conditions in the 1890’s than it did in the 1830’s. Economic development (not unions or government regulations) were what mattered. Not just technology (although new technology helped) but the building up of capital (of real wealth) over time.
Wages and conditions of work are still terrible in places where the economy is poor – in spite of vast numbers of minimum wage statutes and health and safety regulations in such nations.
It is depressing that so many people think that passing regulations is a short cut to better pay or conditions. In fact such regulations (and the efforts to enforce them and the bribes and other such paid to get round them) just hold up economic development and slow up the improvement of people’s lives.
This is not just a “third world” matter. According to the opinion polls most people in most States of the United States really think that increasing the level of a minimum wage regulation will improve the lives of the poor. The level of knowledge of most voters is so low that even the most basic economics is beyond it.
They are at the “we want things to be better, let us pass a law” stage, which is about the same as “we want things to be better, let us cast a magic spell”.
Some people talk of the works of Bastiat (“what is seen and what is unseen” and so on), or the works of Perry in the late 19th century, or the “Economics in one lesson” of Henry Hazlitt in the mid 20th century (or more recent works). But for me, the last section of Ludwig Von Mises’ “Socialism” sums it up – “destructionism” is a good name for the interventionism of regulations.
One thing I forgot to write was that when the higher taxes and new regulations (and “investigations”) that the Democrats will introduce (some of which President Bush will not be able to veto, and some of which he simply will not veto – because he is what he is) cause the economy to go over a cliff – this will just lead to demands for yet MORE statism.
“Look at collapsing industries, the rising unemployment, the terrible poverty – the government must DO something”.
The interventions of President Hoover and Congress (for example the “agreement” not to cut wages and the higher taxes on imports) just made the Depression (itself caused by the government credit-money bubble of the late 1920’s) worse and delayed recovery, but this did not lead to a roll back of the size and scope of government – on the contrary F.D.R. and the “New Deal” (much of which was based on President Hoover’s schemes) came along – thus delaying recovery even more.
Most people did not remember that when the last government credit-money bubble burst (1921) the government (under the much attacked President Harding) did nothing and the economy was growing again in six months.
And in those days there were great free market newspapers – these days newspapers like the “Chicago Tribune” have rather changed (and newspapers like the New York Times are just statist agitprop sheets).
With the castration (via the threat of an “investigation” of News International – after all, as there are so many regulations, the Democrats do not even need to lie to accuse News International of breaking some) of Fox (the only non leftist television network) all mainstream media will be under the control of the left (in spite of the private ownership of the companies).
So when the Paul Krugmans of this word come out with their statist demands (in response to the economic decline caused by previous statism) most voters will hear no dissent from the collectivist line.
As I said above, most voters do not go on to pro freedom blogs – they trust television and the newspapers for their news and current affairs coverage.
The “education system” (including most of the supposedly private colleges) tries to give people collectivist attitudes and most of the mainstream media (educated in “schools of journalism” and other such) work to reenforce this collectivism.
Actually it is impressive that there are so many resisters (people who are not in favour of more government spending or regulations) as there are. But if the left had a defacto monopoly of the media it would be too much to expect that the majority of voters would be resisters – whether in 2008 or any other date.
Reason would still exist – but most people would simply have their own stock of reason to counter the endless disinformation they would be exposed to (whether from news and current affairs coverage or from “arts and entertainment”).
I suspect that even newspapers that have a conservative section such as the Wall Street Journal (it is incorrect to think of the Wall Street Journal as a fully conservative newspaper – much of its news coverage reads in such a way to indicate that it was written by standard “school of journalism” types) would be “got at” in time (perhaps via their business links – most business operations would want to be in the good books of those who controlled the key committees in Congress) and, although people tell me it is impossible, I suspect that the left would find a way to deal with dissent on the internet.
No doubt the above reads as “paranoia”, but such an attitude used to be called “eternal vigilance in the defence of liberty”. One must also remember that there has never been a time in the history of the United States when the leadership of Democrats has been so much under the control of “college types”. These days much the same people control academia, most of the mainstream media and most of the leadership of the Democratic party (for example have a good look at the Democrat leadership in the House of Representatives).
You people need to turn off fox news-bush talking points. why do you hate the working man we need the unions.
If you have an (intelligent) point to make, make it, otherwise… [steps on the roach]
Why are you guys so afraid of the investigations?You think maybe the Bush will be in trouble ?
What investigations? Who is talking about investigations? You still have not made any intelligent points. The article is about taxes and regulations… if your view is that Paul is mistaken and taxes and regulations will not increase if the Democrats win, then explain why.
Well I am man, and as for “working” I am not working at the moment (living on savings) but I have worked for decades nearly always in “lower class” jobs (my background also passes all the tests for “working class”,state educated, rents house, owns no land – hell I do not even have a car and I have never been in an airplane).
As for unions – if you mean as in “fraternities” (before this word got monopolized by college student drunks) or what were known in Britian as “friendly societies”- then I agree with you. Coverage for such things as unemployment, sickness or old age is a good thing.
However, if you mean what W.H. Hutt (himself a lad from the East End of London) used to call the “strike threat system” with other people being prevented by “pickets” and other paramilitary tickets – well that not only shoves up unemployment, but it actually makes wages lower and conditions worse than they otherwise would have been in the long term.
Sure you can “buck the market” for awhile – but only at the expense of signing the death warrent of the industry in the long term.
Wages and conditions of work were not better in the 1920’s than in the 1890’s because of unions or government, any more than they were better in the 1890’s than they were in the 1830’s because of unions or government.
Real progress depends on economic development – “short cuts” (whether by unions or government) are a road that is paved with good intentions, but leads to Hell.
As for “investigations” – actually Perry I did touch on this subject.
“investigations” are a terror tactic (a bit like an I.R.S. audit in the modern world) – it does not matter if someone has really done something wrong or not, investigations by Congressional committees can still be used to destroy them.
For example, I was against the judgement to go into Iraq, but that does not mean I want the United States to lose there or in Afghanistan.
And make no mistake the United States will lose in Iraq and Afghanistan if the Administration is tied up with “investigations” (the leadership of the Democratic party in the House know this, they are stupid, they just DO NOT CARE IF AMERICA LOSES).
As for threats (private ones no doubt) of “investigations” into Fox (or business advertisers in the Wall Stree Journal) I am sure it will not be difficult to make the minority section of the media that does not favour the left fall into line – then the left’s old dream of a monopoly of news and current affairs coverage will be achieved.
Of course there will still be different BRANDS of coverage – but they will say much the same thing.
I will give you and example. For the last several weeks B.B.C. Radio 4 has had a man on for its “Point of View” slot – that man is from the “New York Times” and (no surprise) takes the same leftist view of the United States as the B.B.C.
“What do you mean we do not allow a diversity of opinion – we have someone on from a different organization for our point of view slot”.
Different organization – same opinion.
“Fox” would continue to exist under Democrats – it would just present much the same line as C.N.N.
I apologize – when I typed “they are stupid” (concerning the House Decocrat leadership) I meant to type “they are not stupid”.