Idle Speculation

If you’re one of those people who gets sick of constant political campaigning and thinks it is insane to discuss the 2008 election in January, 2006, then click away now. Please, I don’t want to be responsible for making you scowl in disgust.

Stanley Crouch considers a Clinton-Rice matchup. I suspect it would bring out the worst in both bases. Conservatives loathe no politician so much as Hillary Clinton. The left sees Condi as a neocon architect of America’s fascist empire. All the hatred they feel for Bush would be turned against Rice. Moreover, the racial element would make their smears especially ugly, such as the leftist portrayals of Rice as Aunt Jemima.

Rice's status as a single woman and Hillary’s rather unconventional marriage would probably bring out a smearfest of psychologizing from both sides. Oh, yeah -- it could get ugly.

If we could get past the hysteria and ad hominem attacks, it would be interesting to see two intelligent women competing for the highest office in the land. At this moment I would favor Rice, but that could easily change if she pandered to the religious right or made “volunteerism” the central focus of her campaign.

Would running a black woman as the Republican candidate siphon off black and women voters from the Democrats? I doubt it. For all that multiculturalism is held as an ideal in our culture, I think most people know it’s BS. The left would regard Rice as “inauthentic,” as a traitor to her sex and race. Democrats would vote Democrat.

I think the chance of Clinton being the Democrat candidate is excellent, simply because she has the organization her husband built. I don’t know if I’d bet the house on her getting the nomination, but I’d bet the shed and the doghouse.

The chance of Rice getting the nomination is a longshot. For what it’s worth, she says she is not interested in running. If she ran she would have more competition from successful governors than Hillary would have. Going from Secretary of State to President -- has that ever happened? Did Thomas Jefferson do it?

Rice’s best chance would be if Bush put his weight behind her. They seem to have a good working relationship and the First Lady likes her. If Jeb does not run, it could happen.

One Step At A Time

Gus Van Horn analyzes threats to our freedom of speech as detailed in an essay by Brian C. Anderson. If one freedom can be more important than others, then I would say freedom of speech is most important. Spreading the ideas of Objectivism and changing minds depends on this freedom.

If the liberals try anything drastic to curtail talk radio and the internet, the outcry will be so great that they will have to back down. When the American people are outraged to a great extent, even Republicans grow a spine and stand up to the Democrats. But the liberals know this. The last century of encroaching statism has taught them that incrementalism succeeds in American politics.

Incrementalism is a very real threat to American freedom. Ben Franklin said "It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part." When the income tax started it was something like 1%. The politicians who suggested putting a cap of 10% in the law were laughed at; no one seriously thought the income tax would grow to such an outrageous burden as 10%! Today the top rate is, I believe, 39.6%. What would have sparked a revolution in the 18th century is accepted today.

That’s why it matters to oppose laws such as McCain-Feingold. Once we learn to live with them, then the statists push for the next incremental intrusion on our rights. And then the next and the next…

Right now it is conservatives who prosper from free speech and liberals who suffer. But what happens if, say 30 or 40 years from now conservatives are the establishment and they are threatened by the spread of philosophical ideas supporting reality, reason, rational egoism and capitalism? What do they do? The existence of campaign finance laws and agencies such as the FCC make it that much easier for them to begin their incremental pushback.

I Watched "24"

It was fun. It’s the old Hitchcock plot of a man running from evil who is also pursued by the police. I suspect I would tire of it if I watched regularly. It’s the kind of show in which the absurdities pile up until they reach critical mass and I lose interest. The entire season happens in one 24-hour period? That’s a stretch. SPOILER AHEAD if you didn’t watch the episodes tonight. What did Jack accomplish by executing the assassin of President Palmer? The bad guy was singing like a canary; he would have explained to the authorities that Jack was being framed.

Oh well, we got to see Jack mete out his rough justice.

Political Realignment?

Bill Quick speculates in a long post that America will be seeing a political realignment in the near future. His analysis of America’s class system (not the Marxist model you expect) is fascinating.

I would disagree on a minor point, his historical explanation of the conservatives’ failure to fight big government.

…the global depression of the thirties shook their confidence and they, in some part, ceded to the left certain moral high grounds as they came to agree with the notion that government was needed to restrain capital in order to prevent "market failures."

Their confidence was shaken because they accept the moral premise of altruism, which undercuts their free market economic ideas. We saw the same thing happen in 1995 with the government shutdown. The Democrats and the MSM stood firm and the Republicans collapsed in disarray. They did not really believe in fighting big government because they were undercut by their moral premises.

One realignment I fear is that the religious right will make a deal with the environmentalist left. They both oppose freedom and want to take society back -- the right wants to take us to the middle ages and the left wants to take us to the Pleistocene. I fear they will make a deal saying, essentially, “The right can have its way on abortion if the left can have its way on the economy. The right can enchain man’s spirit, whereas the left enchains his body.” Such a realignment would put America into two clear-cut camps, individualists and collectivists.

The Internet and Truth

Mark Steyn observes:

Michael Barone made a characteristically sharp analysis the other day about the political impact of the Internet: "The left blogosphere has moved the Democrats off to the left, and the right blogosphere has undermined the credibility of the Republicans' adversaries in Old Media. Both changes help Bush and the Republicans." That's very well put. On the left, new media have only yoked the Dems ever more tightly to old weaknesses -- not least on national security and foreign policy. This November will be another bust.

If this is true, then breaking up the liberal media monopoly is worse for the left than we realize. Since the rise of the New Left, the Democrats have survived by obscuring their nature to swing voters. The left side of the blogosphere is saying “Screw that, we’re liberal and we proud of it.” The right side of the blogosphere is challenging MSM liberal bias. In both cases, the internet is clarifying the truth. That could be disastrous for the Democrats.

Never Mind...

Ann Althouse discusses how incompetent the Miers nomination looks in light of the Alito hearings. The Miers nomination is two or three months old now, but I still can’t get over how stupid it was to nominate that woman to sit on the Supreme Court. The samples of her writing that came to light were bad by high school standards. The thinking in them was banal liberal pieties.

I have to think that Bush is as simple-minded and ignorant as Miers. This presents a real danger to America -- no, not the danger of dictatorship that the left sees in Bush, but the danger that Bush will accept big government proposals simply because he lacks the intelligence to understand why they are bad. The spending increases, the education bill and the prescription drug program are the fruits of his ignorance.

Republicans have got to stay on Bush’s ass for the next three years. They must push him to cut spending and regulations. They should push this little man so hard that he gives them the finger.

What am I talking about? They’re Republicans. They don’t give a damn if spending explodes.

It's moments like this that I despair for our future.

The Democrat Offensive

Today Senator Dick Durbin fired a salvo in what the Democrats hope will be an effective strategy this year, attacking the Republican “culture of corruption.”

America deserves honest leadership in Washington to replace the current Republican-dominated government, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said Saturday in the Democrats' weekly radio address.

The concentrated power of the current GOP-controlled Congress and executive branch has produced "a culture of corruption that is preventing government from dealing with the real needs of our nation," Durbin said.

This line of attack was immensely successful for Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The House post office scandal, pay raises, Jim Wright’s book deal and Dan Rostenkowski’s corruption -- these scandals I remember off the top of my head, and there were more. After decades of power the Democrats were complacent, arrogant and corrupt. Now that Republicans have the power, Democrats are hoping they can repeat Newt Gingrich’s success.

The issue of corruption is not an abstract policy issue. It’s easy for people to understand. A Congressman took money from a lobbyist; he is a bad man. It’s more interesting than social security.

The Republicans will counter by arguing that the Democrats are corrupt too. Since the MSM is now the media arm of the Democrat Party, I expect the narrative to be that it is a heavily Republican scandal. A few Democrats might be sacrificed to prove the media’s objectivity.

An added attraction of this strategy to the Democrats: they can integrate a leftist attack on corporations.

"Powerful corporate special interests control the agenda and people who don't have paid lobbyists really don't have much of a voice," he said. "To these power players, the challenges facing America are not problems to solve, but opportunities to exploit."

Those challenges include the lack of affordable health insurance, dwindling pension plans and rising energy costs, Durbin said.

Durbin’s argument is, to put it in my words, that because corporate special interests are able to buy off Republicans, Americans don’t have socialism. Of course, Democrats never utter the word socialism because it would be electoral suicide. Instead, they focus on concrete issues like health insurance and rising gas prices, expecting Americans to be incapable of understanding the principles behind the pinch on their checkbooks. This is not cynicism; I doubt that Senator Durbin has a clue about the economic and political reasons behind today’s urgent problems.

So we can look forward to another year of scorched earth politics. In the end, some politicians will be ruined, perhaps deservedly, but the fundamental problem -- government intervention into the economy -- will not be any better. If anything, the Democrat strategy of tying corruption to corporations (i.e. capitalism) will increase government regulations and diminish freedom in America.

Memories of the Air Force

I was in the United States Air Force from 1976-80, the Carter years. My military years were perhaps the low point in two centuries of American military morale. No, it wasn’t my fault. America was on retreat and communism was advancing everywhere, from Southeast Asia to Central America. Inflation was rampant, interest rates were high, government price controls were causing gas shortages and Carter was asking Americans not to put up Christmas lights. It’s not a coincidence that America’s nadir was the left’s zenith. Since Carter it has been downhill for the left and uphill for America.

I joined the Air Force because I was restless and wanted something new. I wanted to get out of the nest. The military was my ticket out.

Before I got on the bus to take me away from home, my Mother advised me not to linger in bus stop restrooms because homosexuals hang out there. I took her advice seriously, going in and out of the restrooms as fast as possible and avoiding all eye contact.

I was a chinese linguist, trained at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey (a primo place to be stationed). I flew out of Okinawa in what the media call “spy planes.” We were not spies, as we wore uniforms while we worked. We wanted to be called linguists, not spies, because spies are killed when they’re captured. Somehow that made a difference to us.

I ate the best chinese food I’ve ever had in Japan. Since I got back to the states I have not found anything that comes close. The chinese fast food that sits in tubs under lights is slop I would not feed to pigs.

I spent my last year in the Air Force at Ft. Meade, Maryland, where I worked in the NSA. I’ll tell you two things I’m pretty sure I can say about the place. The building had the longest corridor I have ever seen; must have been an eighth of a mile. And they piped muzak into the building. I think they did this to keep the Russians from eavesdropping.

I sat at my desk trying to read chinese, which I could do only with the help of a dictionary. If you want a test of your patience, try looking up a word in a chinese dictionary. Remember, they don’t have letters. Nothing in their language makes sense like that. You have to look up the radical of the character, a part of the character under which it is grouped. Then you have to count the number of strokes and hope you find something that looks like the character you’re trying to define. It’s a nightmare. Doing this all day with that ghastly muzak coming out of a speaker in the ceiling -- it was like being in a modern novel with no sex parts.

I’ve forgotten my chinese now. Use it or lose it.

I was a mediocre military man. I did the job okay, but sometimes my hair touched my ears and my bed was not always made. But I’m glad I was in the USAF. I met challenges, saw new places and got to observe a lot of interesting people. They’re all filed away in my subconscious; maybe one will reappear in my next play in the form of a Roman centurion or an inner city cop or maybe even an airman.

24

I watch very little TV. The last show I watched regularly was -- get ready for it -- "All In the Family." We're talking 1974 here. Nowadays I have even given up cable news except when a big story breaks. I can't take their idiotic arguments with spinmeisters shouting talking points at one another.

I never miss a Lakers game. Other than that, I read or watch DVD's. I know I'm missing a lot of good shows.

This Sunday I will watch the season premiere of "24." It seems to be about a law enforcement agent who fights terrorism with the moral absolutism of Mike Hammer. Fighting crime isn't just his job, it's his personal mission. From what I read, "24" is a world of black and white, not shades of gray. I guess that means Steven Spielberg is not involved.

Waiting For the Democrat Napoleon

Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House thinks we might have reached a turning point.

The confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court may have proven that liberalism has lost its fighting edge. And the reason is that it is no longer politically viable to try and tar and feather conservatives with the appellation of “racist” or “sexist” simply because someone disagrees with the public policy prescriptions of liberal interest groups like the NAACP or NOW….

This has been one of the more revealing confirmation hearings in memory not for what the nominee has said but for highlighting how the tactics of the left in opposing conservatives have failed utterly. It remains to be seen whether or not Democrats will pay a price at the polls for their underhanded tactics. I tend to think not as few beyond the beltway were watching these hearings. But if the failure of their tactics means anything, it is further proof that the tired, wretched line of attack that liberals have engaged in for more than a quarter of a century against conservatives may finally have outlived its political usefulness.

Sweaty palms at DNC headquarters… “You mean we have to do more than ritually mouth the words racist and sexist? We have to, like, think about deep stuff? Form intelligent arguments? Pass the Rolaids…”

The end of liberals attacking character instead of ideas cannot come soon enough. I don’t think dinosaurs like Kennedy can change, but maybe the younger ones like Obama will. It’s doubtful. There’s a cliché that says generals fight the last war. In 1939 the French were prepared to refight WWI; the German Blitzkrieg blew them away. The Democrats have been fighting the same war for over 30 years.

The Democrats’ fundamental problem is the same one that devastated them in the 1972 election: they have become a New Leftist party. The American people are still not as far left as the Democrat base, although there has been some shift. California used to be a more Republican state, but recently it has been reliably blue.

The Democrats learned that their electoral survival depends on concealing their agenda. The only two Democrats to be elected President since the ’72 landslide are southern governors who campaigned as moderates. In the ‘80s the word “liberal” became such a liability that even Senator Kennedy dances around it.

Instead of arguing issues honestly, the Democrats have relied on vilifying their opponents. Their opposition research focuses on any variations from political correctness they can use to cry racism, sexism, insensitive, and so on. When researchers found the Concerned Alumni of Princeton connection to Alito, they were overjoyed. They were like Linus after he gets back his security blanket.

The Democrats are waiting for that genius to arrive who can repackage statism so that it sells. Since giving up the welfare state is inconceivable, this is their best hope for finding a new tactic. Their other hope is that the American people become more like the Democrat base. Here the left relies on public education.

The Democrats dominate the education establishment. From kindergarten through college, students are fed a constant diet of New Leftist propaganda; environmentalism, identity politics, welfare, the UN -- issues such as these are held up as unquestioned ideals. After 12 years of this statist propaganda and four years of even more intense doctrination at college, including sensitivity and sexual harassment training, it is a wonder that any educated American can think independently at all.

So far the only thing that has kept a majority of American voters from agreeing with the Democrat base is the American sense of life, the last glow of our Enlightenment heritage. The Enlightenment was a long time ago. After two centuries of anti-Enlightenment, irrational philosophy, the character of the American common man is not much of a guarantee against the encroaching state.

It is becoming clear to the generals that the old war cannot be refought. New tactics are needed. But the shape of the new war is still unclear. Will the left find a way to bring the American people over to their side? I tremble at the prospect of the Democrats finding their Napoleon.

Another Wile E. Coyote Moment?

The Democrats come up with these plans to destroy Republicans that blow in their face. They’re Wile E. Coyote moments. The greatest of all was the Iran-Contra Hearings. The Democrats chortled with delight at the prospect of getting Oliver North to testify on national television. They couldn’t wait! Then North appeared and Americans saw a man who projected moral certainty that he was right in fighting communism. It was a disaster for the left. And they could not get the man off television because he was scheduled for so much time. After the first day I remember some Democrats actually whining that they wanted equal time.

The Clarence Thomas Hearings were another such moment. Judge Thomas stood up to their smear campaign. Now he sits on the Supreme Court.

The Democrats saw an opportunity for some free media exposure at the Wellstone Memorial Service. They turned a memorial service into a political rally. The American people were aghast at this display of leftist values.

Now they’re trying to smear Judge Alito as a racist. Mrs. Alito left the courtroom in tears, to the delight of the Kossacks. Will the American people agree with the left that the Democrats’ “tough” questioning is justified? Or will they see it as unfair bullying? It’s a different world than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Now we have more than just three broadcast networks putting the liberal spin on events. My guess is that this is another Wile E. Coyote moment.

UPDATE: Boortz is about as unsympathetic to Mrs. Alito’s tears as a non-liberal can be:

Then, at one point in the hearing, Alito's wife burst into tears, apparently over the beating Alito was taking. That's unfortunate, but welcome to politics in the year 2006. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Which she did, by the way, only to later return. Still makes for a good headline, though. Those evil Senators making that poor woman cry. That's life in the big city.

Pretty rough! She cried when Senator Graham offered sympathy; that is often when tears come. Graham commiserated because a pack of dishonest cretins was attempting to destroy an honest man's character. Mrs. Alito’s tears were justified. Outrage and disgust at the Democrats is justified.

The irony is that I’m open to someone making a case as to why Alito should not sit on the Supreme Court. If his judicial philosophy is bad, I want to hear about it. But smearing him as a racist because he belongs to some alumni association is not the way to persuade me.

Judicial Temperament

Lorie Byrd at Polipundit writes on Alito’s demeanor in the hearings:

Others have commented about how much more ridiculous (even than normal) many of the Senators questioning Judge Alito appear when viewed in comparison to Alito with his calm and thoughtful demeanor. That is certainly true and while it was also true in the Roberts’ hearings, Judge Alito’s facial expressions have made it even more so. While Roberts and others who have recently been through the confirmation process have worn a perpetual smile and have given the appearance that they regard the questions as fair and worthy of a response, I just don’t get that vibe from Judge Alito’s body language. Judge Alito has been incredibly respectful in his responses, but he is not wearing the big grin that might say to some observers that everything the Senators say is appropriate. Almost as much as anything Judge Alito has said in his responses, that has made me an Alito fan.

In the few minutes I have been able to tear myself from my job to watch the hearings, I have noticed the same thing about Judge Alito. It’s hard to tell from facial expressions, but Judge Roberts’s polite smile might have indicated he saw the hearings as a game to endure to get to the Supreme Court. Judge Alito looks like he is taking the questions with the highest seriousness. That is impressive in a judge. He looks like a man who thinks ideas are important and worthy of his full attention and respect.

It’s a bizarre show, as the questions are coming from buffoons. It’s like watching Aristotle being interviewed by Howard Stern.

Pictures and Arguments

Gus Van Horn analyzes a Democrat bumper sticker that reads, “Remember New Orleans in ’08.”

Neither Bush nor Cheney will be involved in the ’08 election. It is unrealistic to think that their reaction to a hurricane in 2005 will provide mud that will stick to whomever is the Republican candidate. Why does the issue excite Democrats so?

Leonard Peikoff gave a speech called “A Picture Is Not An Argument.” Arguments require logic and abstract thought. They require propositions stated in grammatical sentences. Pictures require only emotional reactions with no rational context.

Katrina was a week of pictures that made Bush look bad. Even better, the pictures were of suffering African-Americans, an important part of the Democrat base. Pictures of suffering poor people is an issue Democrats can understand.

They are hoping that the American people will respond to the pictures with some fuzzy, emotionalist thinking that goes, “Poor black people suffered under a Republican President. All Republicans hate poor black people. Vote Democrat.”

You know what’s scary? I don’t think the Democrats are being cynical here. I think that’s about the level on which their minds typically work. Their political concepts have been formed in a sloppy, emotionalist way. They do not scrutinize their thinking with logic.

They can rally behind pictures; they can rally behind character assassination; logical, abstract argument is probably asking too much of them these days.

Good News

It’s easy for me to get pessimistic. I see stupidity and ugliness in our culture and think, “It’s over. We’re going down the toilet.” I get the impression that Leonard Peikoff used to be of the same disposition, although he has sounded more optimistic in recent tapes. In the past, Dr. Peikoff even talked about directing the publishers of Ayn Rand’s books to print some copies on acid-free paper and send them to places like India. I mean, to hear him talk, we were heading for another Dark Ages and we needed to be thinking about the preservation of knowledge -- the concerns of Benedict and Cassiodorus in the 6th century.

Steven Brockerman is a wise man. He keeps track of the good news. Here is his list for 2005. Yes, there is good news, too. Remembering it helps keep the world in perspective.

Ayn Rand used to think it was important to end a long philosophical conversation focusing on the positive. She didn’t want to extend a bad mood. She held what she called the “benevolent universe premise.” This does not mean that the universe is kindly toward man. It has nothing to do with Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide (based on Leibniz), who held that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

The benevolent universe premise merely means that the universe is not out to get us. There is no fate, no destiny. There is no reason to fight against a malevolent universe like the heroes in Byron’s poetry. Values can be achieved on this earth. Happiness, not suffering, should be the norm in life.

****

Part of my gloominess, I believe, came from reading Austrian economists. For 25 years now I have read their dire predictions of economic collapse. We were supposed to be in Weimar-like hyperinflation by now. Listening to them and buying gold in the ‘80s instead of investing in the stock market would have been pretty stupid.

Maybe the collapse will come when Baby Boomers retire and China attacks Taiwan and WWIII begins and President McCain orders every American under the age of 30 to serve two years of slavery to the state. Or maybe we’ll keep muddling along as we have for decades.

Does Alan Greenspan get credit for holding off the collapse? I really don’t know. He gets a lot of negative press from economists I respect. Will Bernanke bring about the promised end? We’ll see.

Two things above all have kept our economy growing. First, the dynamic engine that is capitalism. Even a fettered, mixed economy produces remarkable wealth. Politicians can be great fools, filling tomes full of regulations and stealing mountains of wealth from taxpayers, but the free element of our economy covers their folly. Life keeps getting better. We don’t feel the effects of our chains.

Second, the invention of the computer. We still do not understand the extent of how computers are changing the west. They make everything more efficient. Every aspect of our economy, from factories to your grocery checkout line, has been made better by computers. Watch a movie from the ‘50s that features a corporation in Manhattan. It will have a scene with a vast room full of women at typewriters. These rooms were called secretarial pools. They have been replaced by the computer, freeing corporations to invest more money in production, raising our standard of living and creating better jobs.

Remember standing for 45 minutes in a bank line? I have not done that for years because of ATM’s. That’s 45 minutes a week that is now mine to spend as I wish instead of standing in a line.

****

In the near run, I must admit, I am still pessimistic. Ludwig von Mises argued that a mixed economy gets progressively worse until it becomes a dictatorship. As he explained, the government intervenes in some aspect of the economy, creates a crisis, then blames the crisis on the elements of freedom left. The government uses the crisis to further expand control over the economy. This is the process he saw first hand in the Weimar Republic that led to Hitler’s dictatorship.

Worse, the philosophic premises that dominate our culture are still bad. When a politician like John McCain waxes eloquent about the nobility of sacrifice, no major voice opposes him. Both the socialist left and the religious right agree on the morality of sacrifice. They disagree on what should be sacrificed and to whom, the state or God. However these disagreements are hammered out, the individual will be hammered on.

In the long run I am optimistic. I think the power of capitalism will keep the economy growing long enough for the ideas of Ayn Rand to spread through our culture. Probably the Baby Boomers and even the Generation Xers will have to die before real change can come about. Alas, that means I probably will not live to see it, unless all that talk about life extension comes about. (There’s a subject for another post altogether.) But as Ayn Rand wrote, anyone who works for the future lives in it today.

UPDATE: I changed the title of this post to Good News. It was originally "Good News (Not From the Vatican)," which was a play on a science fiction short story by Robert Silverberg called "Good News From the Vatican." The old title probably had people scratching their heads.

Political Corruption and Knowledge

Why do politicians allow themselves to take money from people like Jack Abramoff? Is it the Republican culture of corruption? Is it what Lord Acton said about power corrupting? Are humans just weak and sinful by nature?

The federal government spends something like $2.7 trillion a year. This presents politicians with a problem: how do they make rational decisions about how to spend that money? How do they allocate resources?

In capitalism the system of prices gives everyone precise information on how to allocate resources. If the demand for roofing nails goes up .1% and the demand for screws goes down .2%, producers know to make more roofing nails. Hardware store owners know how much of each product to stock depending on supply and demand. With double-entry bookkeeping, they can make calculations down to pennies.

In socialism chaos reigns because they do not have a system of prices to provide information. Should Comrade Boobikoff order factories to produce more roofing nails or screws? The hardware stores always have empty shelves because everything is free -- demand always exceeds supply. Comrade Boobikoof shrugs. Whether he makes more roofing nails or screws, no one will notice anyway.

A mixed economy is, as the name indicates, a mixture of capitalism and socialism. The $2.7 trillion that politicians control is the socialist part. They cannot use the pricing system to make decisions because their function is not to make a profit. On what knowledge do they base their decisions?

That is where Jack Abramoff and his lobbyist colleagues come in. They provide politicians with an ersatz method of calculation. Should group x get $1.1 billion or $1.2 billion? Abramoff says, “If you give $1.2 billion, then group x will donate $15,000 to your next campaign.” The politician’s political self-interest replaces the pursuit of profit by 300 million Americans in the free market as the standard of measurement.

The inevitable corruption of politicians in a mixed economy comes about not because man is innately depraved, but because he is not omniscient. Politicians need knowledge on which to base their calculations of how to allocate resources. They find themselves besieged by countless pressure groups hoping for a piece of the action. How do they decide who gets what?

Imagine you’re a Senator who is promised $50,000 for his next campaign by Lobbyist A. At the same time, Lobbyist B ignores the Senator. Which cause gets a spending increase in the next budget? If the Senator ignore Lobbyist A’s cause, he risks losing that $50,000 he desperately needs to win his next election.

Campaign finance regulations do not end the corruption. As long as politicians have resources to allocate, people will find ways around the laws to get at that wealth. Even if all the money were taken out of political campaigns, some form of influence such as media time would replace it.

The only way to end corruption in Washington, D.C. is to get rid of the socialist part of our mixed economy. When the politicians have no money to give interest groups, then people like Jack Abramoff will have to find honest work.

UPDATE: I have been informed that the model for this argument was created by Gary Becker. I'm happy to give him credit for a brilliant insight. Anything I get wrong in this post is entirely my fault.

Margaritaville

I think one of the best lyrics of the rock era is Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville.” It is clever and poignant. The images are perfect. And notice how the singer tries to evade responsibility until he no longer can. It’s just a brilliant song.

Nibblin' on sponge cake
Watchin' the sun bake
All of those tourists covered with oil
Strummin' my six-string
On my front porch swing
Smell those shrimp they're beginnin' to boil

Chorus:
Wastin' away again in Margaritaville
Searching for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there's a woman to blame
But I know it's nobody's fault

I don't know the reason
I stayed here all season
Nothin' to show but this brand new tattoo
But it's a real beauty
A Mexican cutie
How it got here I haven't a clue

Chorus:
Wastin' away again in Margaritaville
Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there's a woman to blame
Now I think
Hell, it could be my fault

I blew out my flip-flop
Stepped on a pop-top
Cut my heel had to cruise on back home
But there's booze in the blender
And soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on

Wastin' away again in Margaritaville
Searching for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there's a woman to blame
But I know it's my own damn fault
Yes and some people claim that there's a woman to blame
And I know it's my own damn fault

Regret

Via Pajamas Media, I read this humorous piece by Aaron Swartz on turning off emotions.

I would like to figure out a way to turn off regret and guilt. A personal tic I have is thinking of stupid things I did as long as 20 years ago. I cringe and kick myself. These things are WAY over. There’s nothing I can do about them. The lesson is learned. Why does the regret linger?

As Nietzsche said, “Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.”

I have to make clear in my psychology that man is not omniscient. And life if a process of gaining knowledge. I would be a sad case indeed if I didn't know more now than I knew 20 years ago.

I'll probably regret this post tomorrow.

The Purpose of the Hearings

The Democrats probably understand they don’t have a realistic chance of stopping Alito. Do you know what I think their primary goal in these hearings is? Fundraising. These televised hearings are a showcase for them to display to their base how hard they can hit Republicans. As much as the Dem base hates Republicans, this is the kind of show that brings in the bucks.

UPDATE: John McIntyre of Real Clear Politics says, Don’t Be Surprised to See a Filibuster.

Initially, I thought a filibuster would be very unwise for the Democrats because it would gin up the Republican base and it was a fight that they at the end of the day simply don’t have the cards to win. However, Democrats want to keep their based fired up and they want to display a willingness to confront Bush and the GOP. A rerun of the Roberts hearings ending with a 58-42 vote for Alito (as opposed to 78-22 for Roberts) is nothing but a loser to their base and a huge conservative victory. The 5-4 majority conservative decisions Alito will be part of for the next 25-30 years won’t contain an asterisk at the bottom saying he only received 55 votes in the Senate.

Even though the odds are that a sustained filibuster would be met with a
change in the Senate rules and Alito’s ultimate confirmation, an argument can be made that strategically it is good political move for the Democrats….

Win or lose, a filibuster would energize the Democrats' base, and even if they fail to stop Alito's confirmation....how much have they really lost? They could say correctly that Alito was going to get through anyway….

The Democrats have nothing to lose with a filibuster. They can force the Republicans to trigger the “nuclear option.” Then they can paint this as an unprecedented action that the Republicans did because they are in thrall to their extremist right-wing base. I can already hear Senator Byrd orating about it.

As John McIntyre concludes,

If we don't see a filibuster, I suspect that would be an indication that the Democrats are weaker and more divided than is commonly thought in Washington.

Conservatives Against Capitalism

Wretchard of Belmont Club (from that name Wretchard, he sound like a serious Christian), in discussing “the end of the West,” quotes James Burnham that modern liberalism,

does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life. Men become willing to endure, sacrifice, and die for God, for family, king, honor, country, from a sense of absolute duty or an exalted vision of the meaning of history… . And it is precisely these ideas and institutions that liberalism has criticized, attacked, and in part overthrown as superstitious, archaic, reactionary, and irrational. In their place liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions—pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints, and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations, and a ten percent rise in Social Security payments.

This is presumably from Suicide of the West, which I have not read. I’m guessing that Burnham’s target is not just what Americans call liberalism today, the welfare state, but the classical liberalism of the 19th century, capitalism. The values he believes men would die for -- God, family, king, honor, country, a sense of absolute duty and an exalted vision of the meaning of life -- are a mixed bag that can be summed up as traditional values, many of which were indeed diminished by capitalism. Capitalism, the system of individual rights, replaced feudalism and monarchy.

Burnham sounds like a real conservative in the tradition that goes back to the 19th century conservatives such as Robert Southey, who were the first critics of capitalism. Their arguments were secularized by the Marxists. Two books in this tradition would be Hillaire Belloc’s Servile State and Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences -- two of the worst books I have read.

Weaver blames socialism on capitalism and the division of labor. He calls socialism, “the materialistic offspring of bourgeois capitalism.” If the West had just stayed in the middle ages, then we would not have all these modern problems. Weaver says that in the middle ages, “there obtained a comparatively clear perception of reality.” (I never understood why the Foundation for Economic Education carried Weaver’s book.)

If these conservatives are uneasy today, it is because the arguments they hear from the Islamic fundamentalists about the decadence and corruption of the West are the same arguments they have been making. These conservatives envy Islamic fundamentalists because they’re willing to die for God. All we have to die for is freedom, which is really not enough for them.

Conservatism cannot provide an intellectual defense of the West. Intellectually, they are helpless against the forces of faith attacking “bourgeois capitalism.” We need a philosophy that upholds reality, reason, rational self-interest and capitalism. Only the philosophy of Ayn Rand will do.

Live Fast, Die... Not So Young

Eric Umansky has an amusing picture of Lawrence Eagleburger walking with two canes and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Now, there’s a guy who says, “F**k you, health Nazis. I’m smokin’ till I fall over.”