Labor Day...Why?

Monday is Labor Day! A day where we sit by the pool one last time, grill burgers one last time, and take advantage of one more holiday sale. But what is Labor Day all about? No, really what IS it all about?

How is it that no one has demanded that Labor Day be repealed as a national holiday? I mean, liberals should hate it because it makes the unemployed, poor people, and stay-at-home Moms feel bad about themselves. And conservatives should hate it because it is counterproductive to NOT labor and well, it's a Union/Socialist/Communist holiday brought to you by Union/Socialist/Communists in Europe mainly French...GET BACK TO WORK, YOU LAZY SLUGS!

Okay, maybe we can come to a compromise. Let's call it "End of Summer Day". That way we can all be equally sad, but still no Communists! Win-win - Yey!

All kidding aside, have a great Labor Day weekend! Please feel free to rant at will...

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Wake Up and Smell the Eucalyptus

Every once in a while, it's helpful to take a look at how conservatism (or at least, "not liberalism") is faring outside the U.S. And as we've seen, Europe is having to seriously rethink its whole welfare state thing. And happily, some of the people who speak English (kind of) are reaching similar conclusions.

I speak in this case of Australia, which seems to have begun the rightward shift the mother country apparently still can't manage. Australia's political history has been a rough one for conservatives. There's a strong Labor Party, which means lots of big-government boondoggles--it's more than flirted with socialized medicine and other schemes. And a few years back, Canberra enacted a stringent nationwide gun-control measure, whose "success" has been mixed at best.

But things are changing in the land down under. In national elections this September, the Liberal Party (which is actually fairly right-leaning, because they're funky in their terminology like that) gave Labor the boot, with party leader Tony Abbott taking over as prime minister. A pro-life Catholic, Oxford-educated, with a long history in business and government, Abbott campaigned on a platform of reducing bloated bureaucracy and putting fiscal responsibility ahead of vague international commitments to "go green." Perhaps to the surprise of the political elite, both in the capital and abroad, the new executive proceeded to do just that, boosted by popular dissatisfaction with high taxes (including a hefty carbon tax) and the resulting sluggish economy. Within a few weeks of taking office, Abbott dissolved the so-called Climate Commission and put in motion plans to end funding of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Mind you, the government hasn't flatly turned away from environmentalism. There's still a Department of the Environment which handles such issues, and the CEFC still exists. What Abbott did was to a) streamline the central government, just as he said he would, and b) send the message that renewable energy isn't bad, but it needs to stand on its own two feet. Market-oriented, delivering on his promises, making all the bureaucrats and activists mad....must be nice.

But this past week, the government went even further in the environmental field. With a UN conference on global warming global cooling climate change about to begin, the Australians announced that, while they would honor their previous commitments, whatever new taxation or regulatory proposals came out of the meeting, they would not be taking part. Even more encouraging was the language in which the rejection was issued. The cabinet ministers explicitly stated they would not involve themselves in any kind of "socialism masquerading as environmentalism."

That's kind of a big deal. If the government had simply said it couldn't comply at this time, however much it might agree with the principles, that wouldn't be very attention-getting. But to use the sort of language that gets people over here condemned as Tea Party bomb-throwers says a lot. There's being conservative in your talk and being conservative in your actions, and while the latter is what counts, the former is very reassuring in its own way.

This is, of course, only one of a whole set of issues Abbott and his new government have to deal with. Bringing down taxation is a major point of debate, and the country is having a big debt-control debate of its own. And naturally, the Labor hacks are doing their best to block reform. So it remains to be seen how much progress Aussie conservatives will make. But the signs are good, especially with Abbott's leadership. Socially and fiscally conservative, highly educated, with a winning track record and a proven willingness to take on the Left--it's early, but it's promising thus far.

Which brings me to my last point. If all goes well, should we look into forging some birth records to show that he, too, was born in a Hawaii hospital?

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Our Wrongs and Our Rights

Well, we've had fun times this week, what with DOMA being struck down and other silliness. Not being a deep and learned scholar of constitutional law like our dear President, I doubt I could say anything as to the legal details of the case or its rights and wrongs. I would, however, like to address this whole notion of gay marriage as a "right."

The lure of accepting gay marriage as an inevitability and even perhaps a positive good is something many conservatives, especially young conservatives, have snapped up, and while I for one refuse to go gently into that good night (or whatever the phrase is), I do, on some level, understand its appeal. Nobody likes to be mean, or to be perceived as mean; and the libertarian ethos that is part and parcel of American conservatism would have a hard time in any climate opposing calls for the freedom to marry. Consider the stance of groups like "Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry," which argues that endorsing gay marriage "is in line with our core belief in limited government and individual freedom," not some "partisan issue." Well, I can forgive them that (though not their rejection of opposition as not "a conservative or an American value"). But their rhetoric strikes me all the same as extremely muddle-headed, to say the least, and as indicative of our modern obsession with rights.

Although it seems most glaring today in connection with gay marriage, this is hardly a new obsession. The history of the modern West could almost be summarized as people conceiving of rights and then being determined to get them, no matter how noble or absurd. Consider, for example, the UN's "Universal Declaration of Human Rights," which includes in its list not only the right to marry, the right to equal pay, and the right to free education, but also the right of copyright, the right to an international order, the right to develop one's personality (whatever that means), and the right to "rest and leisure." Well. But are these claims merely laughable, or actually wrong?

Conservatism has always been suspicious of such broad declarations of personal right. And rightly so: Too often, people mean by "right" something nice that they think everyone should be able to have. That is hardly its true meaning, though--rights have never existed in a vacuum, but are always dependent on circumstances and the obligations that go with them. As Russell Kirk put it, more presciently than he knew, in The Conservative Mind: "If a man has a right to marry, some woman [or in this case, some man] must have the duty of marrying him; if a man has a right to rest, some other person must have the duty of supporting him." Rights and obligations: You can rarely have the former without the latter, and in the real world, obligations often take precedence altogether. This is why I never understood the furor over DADT being cast as a matter of one's right to serve in the military. No one has a right to serve in the armed forces; if such a right existed, anyone not drafted could call themselves "oppressed." Military service is, in the final analysis, an obligation which the military authorities include or exclude a man from as they see fit.

Though the two are hardly identical, something similar could be said about the "right to marry," whether it concerns gays or straights. No individual or board has oversight of marriages, it is true. But just as it would be foolish for me to say my rights are being violated if I don't get drafted, what should I say if I'm unlucky in love and can't find a spouse? Who's violating my rights then? The ladies who shot me down? The government for failing to provide me with a wife? Does any of this make sense?

Now maybe you'll say that I'm interpreting this too narrowly. "Right to marry" doesn't mean the right to be provided with a spouse, it means being able to get married if you and another person want to do so. Fair enough (though you really can't call it a "right" in that case). But at no time in history have we permitted the fulfillment of such desires at face value. Incestuous marriages are not allowed; neither are polygamy or group marriages (yet). Feel free to compare those behaviors to homosexuality or not; the point is that restraints on who can get married are and always have been universally accepted, regardless of the banned people's feelings or whether they "love each other."

Concepts like freedom, liberty, and fighting for one's rights are part and parcel of American conservatism, and should not be denied. But in order to do that, we must not confuse libertarianism with libertinism, nor our desires, sexual or otherwise, with actual rights. At its heart, conservatism understands that liberty exists alongside an often-fragile social fabric; where an institution as important to that fabric's continuation as marriage is concerned, accepting a concept like "homosexual marriage" can only come after careful deliberation and weighing of the costs and benefits (if any), and certainly not because it's demanded as a right.

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Too Much Love

As you know, I am no fan of contemporary society in most respects, and have spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what its main flaw is. Recently, though, a commencement speaker hit on a point which I think explains a lot of the craziness going on today. See what you think.

I refer in this case to a WSJ article by Carl McCoy, who lambasts a lot of the advice regularly offered to college graduates this time of year. You know the drill: shoot for the stars, discover yourself, fifty-three other shallow platitudes, and in this particular instance, "do what you love." McCoy takes real issue with this phrase. There's nothing wrong with trying to find a career in something you enjoy, he points out; but it's a serious mistake to think that you can always pursue such enjoyment and make good money from it and flatter yourself that what you're doing is just as important as anyone else's job. As the writer puts it:

Some will soon go on to better jobs, but many will stay in [their] 'day jobs' for years, waiting for their big break, waiting to be discovered--or simply waiting to find out what exactly it is that they truly love....As someone who has tried living as a starving artist, I can attest that there's nothing romantic or noble about being impoverished in pursuit of doing what you love.

He suggests that college graduates reverse the process, finding a line of work they're capable at and then feeling a sense of purpose and accomplishment from that, rather than finding something they love first.

Good advice, I think. But then, I like seeing meaningless catchphrases get dissected and debunked like that. More importantly, this has a lot to say about conservatism versus liberalism in general.

Despite the many turns it has taken, liberalism has always had a strong element of self-expressionism within it, especially when directed against bourgeois society, aka "The Man." Being in touch with one's emotions and personal fulfillment was just as important to, say, Rousseau in the 18th century as it is to New Ager hippies today. Yes, the Left is very collectivist, but in this respect it's also radically individualist: A liberal, especially a young liberal, has a strong urge to reject any traditional obligations to family or society, with the expectation that someone else (i.e., the state) will come in to pick up the tab.

Contrast this with conservatism. A healthy degree of individualism can be found on the Right, of course. But rather than egotism, it encourages channeling one's personal ambitions and energies into activities that increase the common good and the well-being of society in general. This is one reason why conservatives are often so unfriendly toward posturing "artistes"--it's just hard to see what they're doing as necessary to the functioning of that society.

Anyway, broadly speaking, this clash of personal prescriptions is what's going on the WSJ article I began with. While not completely ruling out personal passion, McCoy definitely places "constructive" occupations like medicine or teaching above others which, though not useless, involve a high degree of self-love.

This point isn't too fleshed out, of course, and there's a lot of wiggle room. But it does kind of get at the fundamental difference between the essentially emotional basis of liberalism and the more practical nature of conservatism. And it applies to other aspects of our culture as well. In particular, this emphasis on personal expression and such is, in my opinion, a lot of what drives the current obsession with self-esteem and, in turn, the anti-bullying witch hunts. There are lots of other things also going on, naturally; this is just one lens through which to view things. But I do think it's an important one.

Any thoughts?

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The Return of the Irrational

Okay, so it's no secret that conservatism has a lot of problems right now. Some of these have already been addressed on the blog, but I thought I'd go in a slightly different direction and bring up a moral flaw we and American society in general suffer from. And no, I don't mean that kind of moral.

I was started thinking along these lines by an article in Spectator magazine last fall, essentially discussing how "moral relativism" has become more a conservative bugaboo than a real thing. Long story short, there are people who claim to be relativists, but no one who can consistently hold to it. You know the drill: Dogma is bad, you can't categorically say that something is wrong, unless it's racism, sexism, homophobia, blah blah blah. It just goes to show how liberalism is a completely contradictory "philosophy," if you can even call it that. In any case, pure relativism is losing ground with the public and even pop culture, as a look at the popularity of principled heroes at the movies will tell you.

No, the real problem, according to Spectator, is a particular kind of morality we modernites are susceptible to: utilitarianism, for lack of a better word. What this simply means is that it is possible, still, to make objective moral statements. BUT, they can only be made if based on statistical or technical data. Want to say something is "good" or "bad" for society? Find study X or survey Y to back you up. Once you have the numbers on your side, then you're getting somewhere; otherwise, you're just fishing in the dark.

There are several reasons why this is bad for conservatives.

First, it makes argument in general a very dicey thing. As the whole healthy/unhealthy food studies prove, there is rarely such a thing as conclusive scientific proof on a social issue, of any kind. Take gay adoption, for example (something closely tied to the larger gay marriage debate); no sooner can I find a study showing that children raised by gay parents tend to do worse than those raised by straight parents than my debate opponent can put out one saying the former turn out just hunky-dory. In cases like this, desirable as such statistical information can be to buttress your argument, relying strictly on a scientific basis for moral points doesn't really do much to advance the debate. The veracity of the science itself just comes under fire.

Furthermore, this kind of approach constrains our battlefields. In arguing on whatever subject, if we restrict ourselves to statistics alone in supporting our position, we make ourselves dependent on what has and hasn't been done on it, not to mention what can and can't be done on it. Illegal immigration and drugs, for example, are subjects inherently somewhat secluded from outside analysis, so we can't argue with fully accurate data at our backs.

But there's a broader way in which this is problematic. Conservatives (and by extension the GOP) have often been branded "the stupid party," people who cling to tradition and prejudice to make decisions. There is truth to this; yet I don't consider that an insult necessarily. As a political philosophy following in the footsteps of Burke and others, conservatism is not, in the main, concerned with purported scientific "laws" of society--even valuable market-based ones such as Smith's and Hayek's--but with proposals about how we should act, individually and collectively; proposals which cannot be proven by social science. The statement that change should not happen for its own sake, for example, is one most conservatives would agree with, but you can't whip out an academic study confirming or denying this. Nor can you produce one showing that the collected wisdom of our ancestors should be considered when making a political or economic decision.

At bottom, conservatism (like other philosophies) asks questions about life, liberty, community, etc. And while the natural and social sciences can inform us about portions of those concepts, they can't tell us why those concepts are good and desirable in themselves. Nor can they tell us everything about how to best pursue and preserve those things. We have to be okay with the fact that reason alone can't answer all this. Or at least, the overvalued pure empiricism we rely on can't.

I don't have a concrete suggestion on how conservatives should proceed with this in mind. Ours is a society extremely wedded to what can be empirically proven, and nothing else. But as we go forward, we need to keep in mind that this is not the only branch of human knowledge, and maybe not even the most important one. We ought to look for a way to demonstrate that what we can't quantify has just as much to say about life and society as what we can.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

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Why The Nanny State Destroys All It Touches

Britain has just provided us with a fascinating example of why conservatism works and liberalism fails in the real world, and we should be paying attention. What they’re doing is removing street signs and other devices meant to keep people safe on the roads. Why they’re doing it, is because these signs were having the opposite effect. Get this!

Our story comes to us from the DailyMail Online (LINK), perhaps the greatest source of actual information left on the planet. This particular story deals with changes that have been made to Exhibition Road in the heart of London’s museum quarter.

For years now, liberal safety advocates have been installing ever more safety measures to protect drivers and pedestrians. This has ranged from restrictive rules for drivers to signs warning drivers about dangers to curbs meant to separate the road from the sidewalk to railings meant to pen in pedestrians to designated crosswalks, etc. The idea was that the government would find all the potential dangers and then warn drivers and pedestrians about them or they would find ways to eliminate those dangers.

Of course, that’s not how it worked out. Why? Because once the government took over warning people about what to watch for, they stopped taking precautions themselves and they relied on the government’s warnings. So now the conservative government is yanking these things out again and lo and behold, it’s actually getting safer. Here’s a picture of the road today with all the gates and curbs and signs removed:

Why is it getting safer? Because people are paying more attention. Said Sir Jeremy Dixon, the lead architect on the new project:

“When the rules by which traffic normally operates are removed - signs, barriers and curb markings - drivers become more observant. They make more eye-contact with pedestrians which produces greater watchfulness. They use the road more like pedestrians. They take more responsibility for their actions. [S]tudies have shown that when traffic lights are removed from crossings, traffic flows more freely and efficiently because drivers take more care.”

Imagine that. When the government takes responsibility for something, people take less personal responsibility for their own actions. When the government stops playing nanny, people take more responsibility for their actions. Who could have guessed?

And there’s more. Daniel Moylan, the Deputy Chairman of Transport for London said this:

“The psychology of this scheme is fascinating. Experience seems to show that when you dedicate space to traffic and control it with signs and green traffic lights, motorists develop a claim on it. It becomes ‘my space.’ Drivers become annoyed if people move into it.”

In other words, they develop a sense of entitlement.

Folks, this is exactly what conservatives warn about with government. When the government gives something to people, they develop feelings of entitlement and they become belligerent to anyone who violates “their rights.” What’s more, they stop taking personal responsibility for their own actions in those areas, i.e. they become dependent on the government.

This issue right here is the human condition in a nutshell and proves the conservative belief that the nanny state is destructive, not constructive. It destroys those it seeks to help. This is exactly why generations of government welfare have destroyed the families who accepted the government’s intervention in their lives. This is why big businesses who have come to rely on the government need bailouts to keep them afloat. This is why we are facing a crushing amount of regulation today, because once the government begins taking care of you, it keeps moving into more and more aspects of your life as you become increasingly helpless. These are not coincidences.

This is why government stinks on a human level and it applies to everything the government touches. There is an incredible lesson here, will anybody learn it? Seeing as how Los Angeles just banned footballs and frisbies from being thrown on the beach. . . I’m thinking the answer is no.

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Should All Nominees Be Supported?

Should a political party’s nominee always be supported? Generally, the answer is yes. A political party is a collection of people whose views overlap enough to give them a common interest in getting each other elected. To that end, they form a party with the implicit agreement that they will compete with each other to represent the party and then will support the nominee regardless of the outcome of the competition. Thus, the nominee should be supported. But there is an exception.

This exception arises when (1) the nominee’s views are well outside the range of common interests which hold the party together, and (2) there is a legitimate belief that supporting this nominee will harm the long term goals of the party.

On the first point, Reagan famously said that he could support anyone with whom he agreed on 80% of the issues. Reagan was making the point that it is foolish and counterproductive to require 100% agreement with a nominee before you can support them. Indeed, 100% agreement is probably impossible. Hence, this is the reason moderates should support conservatives and conservatives should support moderates and libertarians should support social conservatives and vice versa.

But Reagan’s point also contains the implicit understanding that at some point (possibly below 80% using Reagan’s formula) there is no obligation to support the nominee. Why would this be? For that, we need to look at the question of harm.

Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to ensure their products remain consistent. They want to make sure you find the exact same amount in each cereal box, that every batch of Mac and Cheese tastes the same, that every sock has the same number of stitches, and that every Acura uses only Acura parts. Why? Because having a consistent level of quality affects how people perceive their brands. People want to know exactly what they are getting when they make a purchase and branding achieves that -- whereas failing to maintain that consistency damages the brand because people will no longer know what to expect from their purchase.

Whether we like the idea or not, a political party is nothing more than a company, and its product or brand is an ideological range. Choosing a nominee from outside that range blurs the identity of the party and damages its brand.

How? For one thing, this will alienate supporters. Supporters expect nominees to be within the ideological range. When they aren’t, the party has violated the contract under which it claims a right to the individual’s support. It is the equivalent of McDonalds selling you a Big Mac container but including a ham sandwich rather than a burger. This is a violation of trust.

Moreover, this confuses voters. When a person represents a party or ideology, their views become associated with that party or ideology and their successes/failures taint the ideology. In other words, the nominee redefines how the public views conservatism or liberalism, and their meanings change. Hence, conservatism and Republicanism came to be associated with Nixon’s views in 1968, Reagan’s views in 1980, and Bush Jr.’s views in 2000 -- I exclude Bush Sr. because he claimed to be a moderate. Liberalism, by comparison, came to be associated with FDR, LBJ, Carter, and now Obama. Clinton called himself a moderate.

Prior to LBJ, the majority political view of the nation was FDR-liberalism. This could have continued indefinitely, except LBJ disgraced liberalism. His errors in Vietnam and his monstrous Great Society wiped out the Democratic party in the South and set the stage for a conservative resurgence. Jimmy Carter finished liberalism off by proving that Democrats are reckless spenders, incompetent managers of the economy, and militarily inept and cowardly. This set the stage for Reagan.

Reagan’s success revived conservatism while also redefining it back to its roots -- away from the big-government conservatism of the Nixon years. By the time Reagan left office, conservatism had become the natural ideology of the country and 60% of the public believed it.

This could have lasted for generations, except along came George Bush Jr. He wrapped himself in the conservative label and set about running a big government, civil-liberties-crushing, crony-capitalism, foreign-adventuring administration which so thoroughly discredited conservatism that in 2008, the voters were more radically liberal and more willing to accept liberalism than they had been at any time since LBJ. The ONLY THING THAT SAVED CONSERVATISM was the election of Barack Obama. If Obama hadn’t proven to be such a disaster, conservatism would be dead today. But Obama was a disaster and he caused a massive backlash which took the form of the Tea Party.

The lesson here is simple.

Ideologies get defined by their leaders and they get punished for the sins of their leaders. If a nominee calls himself conservative but acts like a liberal, the public doesn’t blame liberalism for his crimes and failures, it blames conservatism even if that person never once acted like a true conservative. Thus, Bush and Nixon, neither of whom could be called conservatives, discredited conservatism. LBJ/Carter/Obama, each of who were progressives and not liberals, discredited liberalism. And in each case, the only thing to save conservatism/liberalism was pure luck that someone worse came along to discredit the other side. If Moderate Joe Democrat had come along after George Bush Jr., we could well be looking at an America that views liberalism as the natural order of things and sees conservatism as meaning reckless spending, bad economic management, and cronyism.

Moreover, the nominee need not even be as disastrous as a Bush/Obama to harm the ideology. The goal of politics is to effect long term change in the country. That is simply not possible when the person representing your ideology holds views that are inconsistent with the ideology. This muddies the ideological waters and confuses the differences between the parties. In other words, when the Republicans and the Democrats both push the same solutions to the same issues, voters will come to believe there is no difference, and they will either stop voting or they will pick the party that promises them the most loot -- advantage Democrats.

This is what happens when you pick someone who is far outside the acceptable ideological range for the party or who happens to be insane. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if Newt or Santorum or Romney or Paul are so far outside the bounds that you should not support them, but ask yourself: “how bad would it be for the party, for my beliefs, and for the country if conservatism came to be defined in the way ____ sees it?”

Winning elections is important, but you don’t want to sacrifice the future to win a single election.


By the way, there's an interesting poll out which shows that 33% of Republicans want a new candidate to jump into the race. This is down from 68% only two months ago. I think the field is set.

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The “Right” Tax Hikes

Before Turkey Day, Pat Toomey and Jeb Hensarling were taking a lot of heat for a tax proposal they made as part of their supercommittee work. Let’s talk about why their proposal actually is something conservatives should adopt. The proposal in question involves either capping or eliminating both the state tax deduction and the home interest deduction. Here’s why you should support this.

The arguments against this are that it would constitute a broad-based tax increase. In other words, most taxpayers would see their taxes go up as a result of this. And if you phase this out above a certain income, then you are playing into the Democrats’ class warfare arguments. Also, eliminating the home mortgage deduction would hurt the home industry by eliminating the incentive for people to buy homes, which conservatives see as promoting personal financial responsibility.

The MSM argument for this is that eliminating these deductions would result in a pretty massive increase in tax revenues, and something on this scale will be needed to reduce the deficit or pay off the debt.

Sounds like a loser, right? Well, not so fast. Consider these points.

● As a conservative, the idea of helping a particular industry through the tax code should be anathema to us. We should not be picking winners and losers no matter how much we like particular industries. And we should not look favorably upon social engineering.

● The complaint that this would broadly raise taxes can be offset by lowering rates as part of the agreement. Some people would end up paying more and some would pay less, but overall lower, flatter rates without distorting deductions should always be the conservative goal.

● The class warfare point doesn’t really support the idea of leaving the current system in place either. Instead, it argues against phasing out the deduction for the rich. But if we eliminate these deductions entirely or simply cap them at some amount, then everyone is treated equally and there is no support for class warfare.

● And in favor of capping these deductions, if not eliminating them entirely, consider this. The purpose of the home mortgage deduction is to encourage home ownership because that’s fiscally responsible, but does this argument still make sense when we are talking about people who are buying million dollar homes? Presumably, they don’t need the government trying to tell them where it’s best to put their money.

Those are the preliminaries. Now it gets interesting. See, it turns out that both the state tax deduction and the home mortgage deduction disproportionately benefit liberals and support liberalism.

By allowing state taxes to be deducted, lower tax states are essentially subsidizing higher tax states and making higher taxes more palatable. In other words, through the state tax deduction, the federal government will effectively pick up about a third of the tax burden imposed by the states. Thus, if State A taxes income at 6% and State B taxes income at 12%, the federal government gives State A a hidden 2% subsidy and State B a hidden 4% subsidy by reducing the federal taxes it demands from the taxpayers of those states. Because federal spending is a zero sum game, meaning it is finite, that extra 2% is basically money transferred from other states to State B, i.e. lower tax states are subsidizing higher tax states.

Why should a responsible state like Texas be forced to subsidize an irresponsible state like New York or California? If New Yorkers want to pay 12%, let them pay 12%, don’t let them pay only 8% with tax money from Texas going to make up the other 4%. Make these liberal states experience the full consequences of their stupid policies!

And make no mistake, liberal states are the ones benefiting from this.

Moreover, “the rich” who benefit the most from this deduction and the home mortgage deduction are disproportionately supporters of liberals. In fact, according to Michael Barone, voters in high-tax, high-income states overwhelmingly voted for Obama. Nationally, those with incomes over $200,000 voted for Obama by 6% more than voters below $200,000. And in the high-income-tax states, Obama blew McCain away: Connecticut (55%), New York (56%), New Jersey (52%), Maryland (55%), Illinois (54%), California (57%).

Why should a middle class worker in Kentucky be forced to send tax dollars to Washington so that Washington can support the spending habits of rich liberals and rich liberal states?

It’s time to eliminate these deductions or cap them at a low level which doesn’t subsidize liberal states.

Toomey and Hensarling are right in this. Eliminating these deductions is solid conservative economics and philosophy and it’s solid conservative politics.

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Commentarama Reading List (Part 1)

Today we unveil part one of the Commentarama Reading List. These are the top conservative/liberal fiction books you should know. Next time, I’ll do nonfiction books. Then we’ll finish with books you should know to be well-versed in our culture. Today’s list contains thirteen conservative and eight liberal fiction books that best represent the ideologies. These are well-known/influential books with strong messages about liberal and conservative principles -- even if that wasn’t the author’s intent. A couple will surprise you.

Interestingly, finding books that genuinely belong on the list was difficult. Lots of books include political messages on particular issues, but few truly represent the ideology. Also, breaking these down as liberal or conservative proved difficult, particularly as many authors intended something other than the message they ended up creating. So feel free to disagree with my selections and let me know what you think should be added or subtracted.... maybe we can get the list to 25? FYI, check (HERE) to see my criteria for separating them.

The Conservative Books

1. 1984, George Orwell (1948): Number one has to be 1984. Although Orwell was a socialist with communist sympathies, 1984 became the seminal anti-collectivist, anti-big government book. No other book so clearly expresses the nightmare of all-powerful government crushing the individual. 1984 also was ahead of its time, foreshadowing everything from political correctness to doublespeak to thoughtcrime to the surveillance society. . . Big Brother is watching. This is a must read for conservatives.

2. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand (1957): A capitalist opus, Rand’s Shrugged graphically portrays the destruction of society by a government that takes from those who can to prop up those who can’t. If economic equations can be expressed as plot points, this novel does that. Singing the virtues of capitalism, competition and self-interest, this book proved prophetic as leftists have systematically tried to repeat the acts of her villains, always with the consequences she predicted. Shrugged is also unapologetic about the fact that socialism is not noble, it is theft and oppression.

3. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (1931): Huxley is a bit of a contradiction. An extreme critic of the utopian visions of the 1930s, he was also an LSD user who fell for every whacko and mystical idea. Nevertheless, Brave New World is an essential companion to 1984. BNW replaces Big Brother’s government with a corporate “The World State,” but the effects are just as onerous as individuality is crushed to serve the collective good. Yet, unlike Orwell’s 1984, this crushing isn’t done by the government stick, it’s done by an endless supply of government carrots that placate and sedate the public. As Huxley explained, the civil libertarians who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

4. Animal Farm, George Orwell (1945): Animal Farm is an attack on Stalinism (which Orwell described as “ceaseless arrests, censored newspapers, prowling hordes of armed police”), but inadvertently tells us why no collectivist society will ever work. Without the possibility of personal profit, the animals become indifferent free riders who don’t work but expect to receive the benefit of everyone else’s labor. And the collectivist leaders quickly set themselves above the law, keeping the spoils of society for themselves and using cold-blooded murder to eliminate their opponents and suppress the population. All animals are equal, but some animals are indeed more equal than others.

5. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (1943): Rand’s Fountainhead brought the concept of objectivism to life. This book teaches that the only way for mankind to achieve its potential is to free individuals from the sabotaging/protectionist efforts of others. This is brought home brilliantly as a bevy of lesser architects struggle to prevent genius Howard Roark from achieving his potential and thereby exposing their own lack of talent. In essence, Rand argues that society should let people exercise their talents without restraint and let them succeed or fail on their own merits.

6. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (1955) and The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis (1950): I’ve lumped these together because they’re on the list for the same reasons. Both LOTR and Narnia are favorites of religious conservatives, though some groups complain about “pagan imagery.” But they make our list because they are more than just religious allegories: they advocate classic heroic/ethical values, i.e. the stuff the Greeks described as the noblest parts of humanity -- belief in honor and duty, self-sacrifice, friendship, loyalty, and staunch opposition to evil without trying to justify it as shades of gray. These books define the “personal responsibility” portion of conservative thinking.

7. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960): Listing this as a conservative book may seem counter-intuitive as the Civil Rights Movement has been defined by the left as a liberal idea. But the values taught by Lee outline the conservative view of civil rights -- equality under the law for all individuals combined with moral persuasion to end discrimination. . . not the group rights of liberal thinking. Thus, this book's philosophy does not fit with liberal thinking. Indeed, if this book were published for the first time today, I suspect liberals would attack it as Uncle-Tom-like because of its passive acceptance of the world as it is, i.e. its failure to advocate a government solution.

8. The Trial, Franz Kafka (1925): Kafka is another socialist who gives us a reason to fear the consolidation of power. In particular, The Trial warns us against abandoning the rule of law. In this case, a man is arrested and prosecuted by a government which refuses to show itself to him and which refuses to reveal to him the nature of the crime for which he is being charged. This is more real than you would think.

9. Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling (1997): Yep. The Harry Potter series is packed with conservative themes. And while this isn’t a social commentary per se, it does a heck of a job promoting conservative values. For example, as I’ve noted before, the Harry Potter series promotes families, capitalism, individual responsibility, and it shows government to be bureaucratic, corrupt, abusive, manipulative and evil. The series also clearly recognizes the difference between good and evil and doesn’t fall into shades of gray or excusatory psychobabble. These books may not have the gravitas of Lord of the Rings, but their pro-conservative politics are even stronger and more obvious.

10. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1902): A deeply conservative writer, Conrad hated both socialism and direct democracy. Darkness is Conrad’s attack on colonialism and is about good and evil and the dangers to our souls of doing evil deeds. While modern liberals like to lump colonialism in with other supposed “conservative” crimes, its actual roots were liberal -- a utopian belief that government force used benevolently could make natives better people. That’s the same belief that later powered socialism.

11. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1951): The left loves to accuse the right of book burning, primarily because the Nazis burned books and religious groups periodically try to ban one thing or another. But the Nazis were left-wing and the communists were equally guilty, though they were quieter about it. And in terms of modern thinking, it is the left that seeks to ban politically incorrect books, words and ideas from society. Thus, Fahrenheit is a conservative book as it attacks over-bearing governments that control their people by controlling what ideas they can know about.

12. Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1961): An anti-war novel about the marginalization of the individual, this book defined the modern view of bureaucracy. Unlike the darker 1984 and The Trial, Catch-22 explores the circular reasoning and absurdity of bureaucracy as the heroes encounter “no win situations” and “double blinds.” This book does have a counter-culture feel however, and could also be seen as liberal, but its theme is conservative.

13. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein (1966): A novel about a lunar colony’s revolt against rule from Earth, with themes of “rational anarchy” and seeing government as non-existent except as the acts of self-responsible individuals, Heinlein’s Moon is considered one of the most influential libertarian novels of the last century. This book is credited with coining the phrase “there’s no free lunch.”

The Liberal Books

1. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair (1906): Jungle defines progressive politics as it exposes the corrupt practices of the American meatpacking industry and complains about the lack of social programs for the poor. Originally published in a socialist newspaper, Sinclair hoped this would encourage a welfare state. Much to his chagrin, the public focused only on his safety complaints about the meat packing industry and ignored his concerns about the poor.

2. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque (1928): As mentioned the other day, this book is liberal not because it’s anti-war, but because it’s anti-society. This book is anti-officer, anti-family, anti-church, and anti-traditional “heroic” values like honor, duty, self-sacrifice, courage, and friendship. It is the ultimate expression of selfishness, right down to the indifference to the suffering of their comrades. But this is also an excellent book and it became the prism through which modern society would see war.

3. Ulysses, James Joyce (1922): A retelling of the The Odyssey by avant-garde stream of consciousness writer Joyce, Ulysses dwells on the squalor and monotony of life in 1920s Dublin, Ireland. Originally banned as obscene because a character masturbates, this book was the crown jewel of the modernist movement which revolted against realism, tradition, the Enlightenment, and belief in God.

4. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939): The story of sharecropping “Okies” from Oklahoma who flee to California after the dust bowl, this story is leftist propaganda about the idealized working poor being exploited by the demonized rich. It advocates unions and the New Deal, though it complains that not enough money was spent by the benevolent government. Still, it’s a good book for understanding the historical context of the New Deal.

5. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003): On the surface, Code seems like nothing more than conspiratorial fiction. But this book highlights the recent style of attacks on traditional values by the left. This book takes a provably wrong theory that insultingly cuts to the core of Christian belief and presents it as fiction “based on” truth, i.e. it pretends it’s true without saying so. This book is the latest form of soft propaganda.

6. A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen (1879): Ibsen’s House is not only feminist propaganda, but it heralds the truly selfish thinking that dominates liberal thinking. Ibsen’s heroine not only rejects traditional society, but she walks out on responsibilities she’s undertaken, i.e. her children. Ibsen says he wasn’t trying to create “propaganda” for “the women’s rights movement,” but was instead trying to show the need of every individual to become the person they really are. And apparently that means abandoning your family to find yourself. Welcome to the 1960s. . . one hundred years early.

7. The Stand, Stephen King (1990): The Stand appears on some conservative book lists, but I suggest they look closer. The Stand is anti-capitalist, anti-American-society and deeply anti-military, which it shows to be enthusiastic murders. And while many Christians mistake its message for being pro-Christian, it actually advocates liberalism combined with meekness and mysticism as a substitute for religion.

8. Lord of the Flies, William Golding (1954): Conservatives believe people are good and can be moved to improvement with moral persuasion. Liberals believe people are evil and must be controlled by force. Flies makes the liberal list because it tells us that left on their own, children will become murderous animals for no particular reason, i.e. it views humans as inherently violent and evil.

Thoughts? Additions? Subtractions? Corrections?

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How To Tell Liberal From Conservative Books

I’m working on a Commentarama reading list, which will be published Thursday evening. Before I do that, however, it might be wise to define “liberal” and “conservative,” as these concepts are rather nebulous and easily confused. Indeed, as we saw when National Review and Big Hollywood started listing “conservative” films, most people have no idea what constitutes a liberal or conservative film, and they instead confuse things they like for "conservative" and things they dislike for "liberal."

For starters, let me recommend that you go back and read my article on What Constitutes A Conservative Film. That article lays out the difference between mere conservative elements and actual conservative stories, and how to spot both. In particular, you need to look at the context of how issues are presented and how conflicts are resolved.

Secondly, let me ask: should we judge a book by its content or the author’s intent? Take 1984. Orwell was a committed socialist and even a fan of Soviet communism (until the truth about Stalin’s murderous ways came out, at which point he disavowed the Soviets, but not communism.) Yet, 1984 is the seminal anti-totalitarian text. How can this be? Because Orwell meant 1984 as an attack on Nazism, which he considered a right-wing philosophy and which he didn’t see as being at all like communism. So should we call this a leftist book because Orwell meant to attack what he perceived to be a “conservative” philosophy, or should we call it a conservative book because it attacks leftist oppressive government? I believe we should treat books for what they actually are, not what they are intended.

So how do we separate liberal from conservative books? Well, let’s start with the problem: confusion.

Liberalism and conservatism are often confused for a variety of reasons. For one thing, these ideologies are not always honest about what they believe because they know it will not play to the mainstream. (Liberals in particular use rhetoric that does not match their actions.) This blurs the line. Moreover, sometimes liberals/conservatives take ideological positions on particular issues that they would normally oppose so as to maintain political alliances or because of historical accidents. Also, some people who claim to be liberals/ conservatives really aren’t, and they advocate things that are antithetical to the underlying principles of the ideology. Populists and kooks fall into this category as they shift back and forth between pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Yet these groups are “loud” enough that liberalism/conservatism often gets associated with their views.

More importantly, however, both liberals and conservatives largely see the same problems and injustices within society and thus lay claim to the same issues. This generates further blurring and thereby confusion. However, the two ideologies almost always differ in the solutions they propose. And that is where we must look.

To understand this point, one must realize that both modern liberalism and modern conservatism claim roots in classical liberalism -- although the liberal claim is dishonest. Classical liberalism advocated the rights of the individual against the state. It believed in things like freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion or non-religion, freedom of property, freedom of person, and freedom from conformity. However, those freedoms were not unfettered, as classical liberalism also assumed that personal responsibility was required to exercise those rights and government intervention was allowed when personal responsibility failed. Modern conservatism grew from these roots and largely continues to follow these principles today -- a balancing of individual rights against personal responsibility.

By comparison, modern liberalism adopted the rhetoric of individual rights, but actually disdains those rights. Instead, it advocates collective rights and imposition of a solution by those in authority. This is because modern liberalism really traces its roots back to progressivism, which sought to use government power to fix the ills of society. Moreover, liberalism has disdain for the concept of individual responsibility. Instead, it balances competing group interests.

What this means is that when you get a topic like civil rights, it is propaganda to say that one side cares more than the other about the issue. Indeed, both sides have adopted this as a cause. But they see the issue differently and they advocate very different solutions. For example, the conservative solution is to require equality under the law combined with moral persuasion to get people to see all individuals in a color-blind way. The liberal solution is to use the power of government to force group equality. Moreover, both define equality differently, with conservatives believing in equality of opportunity and liberals believing in equality of result. Other issues are similarly divided.

Thus, when trying to separate books into liberal or conservative, the relevant question is not what issues they address, the relevant question is what solutions they propose?

Now let me add two caveats. First, on conservatism: it is important to realize that being religious and being conservative are not the same thing. Religion deals with the relationship between ourselves and God, politics deals with the relationship between man and the state. Thus, being politically conservative and being religious address two different aspects of the human condition. There can be significant overlap, particularly as many people let their religious views inform their sense of personal responsibility, but it is very possible to be conservative without being religious. The corollary is true as well, as it is equally easy to be religious without being politically conservative. What this means in terms of labeling books is that just because a book has a religious theme does not make it conservative. . . it makes it religious. Whether or not the book is also politically conservative will depend on how the religious themes are applied to the relationship between man and the state.

Secondly, on liberalism: there is another aspect of liberalism that must be considered. Liberalism has a destructive core that asserts itself periodically. That’s why socialist movements turned to violence in the 1900s, 1930s, and 1960s. And that’s why the counter-culture found a home within liberalism and why counter-culture values, i.e. the tearing down of existing societal institutions and norms, continue to hold so much sway within liberalism today. Thus, books that promote counter-culture values, even where the underlying issue may be of concern to both conservatives or liberals, must be considered liberal.

A good example of this would be All Quiet On The Western Front, which predates the official counter-culture movement, but shares its elements. Neither left nor right is “pro war.” Both have found reasons to start wars and both have shown a willingness to resist wars. Thus, it would be wrong to say the anti-war All Quiet is a liberal book just because liberals have been more anti-war lately than conservatives (in the 1930s, this was reversed.) What makes All Quiet a liberal book, rather than a conservative book, is its disdain for the traditional institutions of society. This book is not merely anti-war, but it is anti-officer, anti-church, anti-family, and anti-hero, by which I mean it disdains the individual values society normally considers noble, i.e. self-sacrifice, courage, honesty, faith, etc. That puts the book firmly into the counter-culture wing of liberalism and makes it a liberal book.

And let me be clear on this counter-culture point. Merely advocating change does not make one an advocate of counter-culture values. Counter-culture values are at odds with society and human nature as a whole and they seek to destroy existing institutions rather than reform them -- it is the difference between eliminating racism within police ranks (i.e. reform) and eliminating the police force (i.e. counter-culture values). Counter-culture values tend to be extremely radical.

That’s how I would divide books ideologically. If they propose a government or collectivist solution or they advocate group rights, or if they advocate counter-culture values associated with breaking traditional society, then they are liberal. But if they advocate freedom for the individual vis-à-vis the state coupled with individual responsibility, but without pushing those freedoms to the point of being counter-culture beliefs, then they are conservative.

Agree?

Tune in Thursday for the list. . .

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Yelling Fire On A City Street

I generally lean toward libertarianism in the sense that I believe strongly in limited government and strong individual rights. However, I have real problems with doctrinaire libertarianism. Specifically, I don’t accept the view that many libertarians have that government is always bad and that private sector answers are always better. (I also object to the confusion of libertinism with libertarianism, but that’s a post for another day.) This view ignores the problems of free riders and opportunity costs, and I think it’s an intellectual dead end.

Doctrinaire libertarianism holds that there is no problem that the private sector cannot resolve better than the government. In most instances, I would agree with this. The private sector is better at delivering food and products, balancing the needs of producers and consumers, meeting needs and wants, and allocating resources to their best uses. But there are other considerations that continue to make government a necessary facet of our lives, and which libertarians often ignore. Specifically, I’m talking about free riders and opportunity costs.

A free rider is someone who realizes that they don’t need to spend money because others will do it for them. The best example might be someone who attends a church every week, but never contributes to the church. This person enjoys the services the church provides, but does not pay anything to make sure those services can still be provided because they know that others will make those payments for them. They are basically “free riding” on the greater desire of others to ensure that the services continue. The same is true in group projects, where one person learns that others will pick up the slack if they don’t do their part, or anywhere where a person discovers that others will do their work for them.

The free rider problem in doctrinaire libertarianism arises this way: services like fire protection, roads, emergency medical, and police protection are important to the community at large. But the free riders know this. So if we eliminate the government’s role in providing these services, and we leave it up to private persons to pay for these services if they want them, then the free riders will simply refuse to pay because they know that others will make up the difference. Thus, they get the benefits of the services without paying for them.

One solution to this is what happened in Tennessee the other day. In Obion County, residents are required to pay a $75 annual fee to get fire protection services. If they don’t pay, then the fire department will not put out any fire that hits their homes. This week saw an extreme example of this, where the fire department refused to put out a home fire because the owner had not paid the $75 fee, even though they had turned out to protect the home of a neighbor who had paid the fee.

On the one hand, this sounds fair and reasonable. The guy didn’t pay for the services, i.e. he tried to free ride, and he knew what would happen; thus it was right to not provide him with the services. But there is more to consider here. For example, fire is a tricky thing, and there is no guarantee that letting this home burn wouldn’t cause the whole neighborhood to burn down, thereby risking millions of dollars in damages and dozens of lives. Further, think of the economic waste of letting a $100,000 home burn down because of a $75 fee. You may say, “so what, it’s his problem,” but that $100,000 loss will now be spread among all the homeowners in higher insurance rates or in deflated property values if he can’t rebuild.

Consider other services as well. Suppose they don’t pay for police services. Would you really want a magnate for crime next door to your house? What keeps it from spilling over onto your property before the police can come protect you? And what about visitors who don't know that the homeowner didn't pay the fee and suddenly can't get the police to respond to their emergency?

Or think about roads. Many people now argue that roads should be turned over to the private sector. But is that wise? First, consider the free rider again. You may spend a fortune to build the perfect road so that the fire department can rush to your house. But what’s to keep a neighborhood on the route from refusing to build a road, and thereby keeping the fire engine from even being able to get to your perfect road? Secondly, consider the waste. If all roads were private, then nothing should keep the owners from putting up toll booths and denying access to people who don’t pay. Think about the economic waste of suddenly employing millions of tollbooth personnel around the country. Further, think about how difficult it would be to travel anywhere without knowing how many tolls you would run into, what the cost of those tolls would be, or whether the roads are even open. Image if going across town suddenly involved crossing 50 private roads, each with its own toll regime (charging whatever they felt they could get away with). Imagine trying to go across country. The chaos, inefficiency, and misallocation of resources this would cause would be devastating to our economy.

The truth is that some activities are simply better handled by a government, which can impose a tax on all persons and thereby eliminate the ability to free ride, and which can then allow all citizens to use those services/facilities without having to navigate the whims of dozens of private groups. Thus, this is an area where I diverge from the doctrinaire libertarian view, which places ideology above practicality. I certainly agree that the government has gone too far and gotten into too many things that should be within the exclusive domain of the private sector, but I do not agree that there is no role for government in providing services that are essential to making a town function.

So while conservatives seem to be lining up on both sides of the issue of whether or not the Tennessee fire department acted correctly by not putting the fire out (see National Review), I think the bigger point here should be whether it makes sense for conservatives to advocate a system that lets people opt-out of essential services like fire protection. I think that arguing in favor of the opt-out system misunderstands the effects on society as a whole and weakens our claims when we talk about privatization or elimination of nonessential services. In other words, if we’re arguing that the fire department should sit on their hands because you didn’t pay a fire service fee, then we have little credibility left when we argue that the government should not be providing dozens of non-essential services.

So what do you think?

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CPAC: Libertarians v. Religious Right

CPAC was much more interesting this year than usual. Not only did it signal the start of the Presidential race, but it signaled an interesting shift in conservative thinking, one which bodes very well for conservatives recapturing the majority of the public. It was also a change that has upset Mike Huckabee -- and he’s very wrong on this.

In the past, CPAC has largely been dominated by social conservatives. This year, that changed. This year, CPAC was co-sponsored by a gay group called GOProud. Moreover, the conference was heavily attended by libertarian-leaning conservatives, as evidenced by Ron Paul winning the straw poll rather handily.

This is a good thing. Conservative philosophy is about freedom of the individual and limited government interference in our lives. That’s why principled libertarian thinking fits so well into the conservative movement. They are a natural fit, and their return can only make the movement stronger.

Indeed, the return of a strong libertarian element to the conservative movement, and by extension the Republican Party, will help to impose the real change that is needed in the Republican Party -- a principled opposition to the continued expansion of government.

One of the problems with the Republicans over the past decade has been that they have not been opposed to the expansion of government. Yes, they opposed the expansion sought by the Democrats. But then they would turn right around and try to expand the government themselves. Indeed, it became so bad that the only way to tell a Democrat from a Republican was by looking at the direction in which they were trying to expand the government. Bush was a big proponent of this with his “compassionate conservatism,” which translated roughly into big government working to achieve social conservative and big business goals.

The reintroduction of libertarianism should help put a stop to that kind of thinking and should better align the Republican Party (and the conservative movement) with those 60% of Americans who consistently claim to share conservative beliefs, but who will not identify themselves as conservatives because they view the brand as tainted by its recent advocacy of government intervention.

And that brings us to Mike Huckabee and the Religious Right. Now before everybody gets upset, let me point out a few things. First, having a strong moral grounding is certainly a big part of conservative thinking, and there is nothing inconsistent with being conservative and wanting to see our government act in a moral and ethical manner. Nor could you argue that a belief in God is inconsistent with being conservative. Nor is there anything about conservatism that requires one to believe that the government should blindly ignore morality or religion. BUT.....

The vast majority of conservatives reconcile their belief in God and morality with their belief in individual freedom by understanding that the government should guarantee individual freedoms and should not be a tool for imposing personal views on others. A true conservative thinker would not want the government to push their religious beliefs on others any more than they would want the government imposing another’s beliefs upon them. Not only is this bad for society, but it is bad for religion (see e.g. Europe or the Middle East).

That is why libertarian thinking and social conservative thinking should, with rare exceptions, actually fit together quite nicely. If both respect the principle that the government should not get into the business of imposing beliefs, then everything should be harmonious between the two groups. It’s only where either group violates this principle that the problems arise.

For example, on the religious side, public education should not teach religious doctrine. Nor should the government fund church activities -- though it should not discriminate against religious groups either by, for example, allowing a group like ACORN to receive federal contracts to do community work but excluding a similar Catholic group. Nor should the government be involved in regulating (or criminalizing) “bedroom issues.” It’s just not anyone’s business. You have the right to speak and to persuade, you do not have the right to use government force to require compliance.

On the libertarian side, libertarians must tighten up their thinking and understand that libertarian does not mean libertine (“anything goes”). The relevant question is "will government force be applied" not "does somebody want it." For example, as I pointed out before the advocacy of gay marriage that many libertarians have undertaken is actually inconsistent with libertarian principle because it requires imposing the beliefs of gay advocates onto religious people. Moreover, libertarian thinking does not mean anarchical thinking (“no government”). For example, libertarians are wrong about legalization of drugs, though the reasons will need to wait for an upcoming post. The fact of the matter is that for society to function, some level of regulation is required, and laws, by their very nature, are based on moral judgments.

Both groups are vital to the conservative movement. And if both groups respect this boundary of respecting individual rights, then they should be able to form a powerful partnership that will finally bring together that 60% of Americans that we just haven’t been able to connect with.

But, disturbingly, listen to Mike Huckabee when he was asked why he didn’t attend CPAC, as he has done repeatedly in the past: “CPAC has become increasingly more libertarian and less Republican over the last years, one of the reasons I didn’t go this year.”

Therein lies the problem. Mr. Huckabee and others like him (several leaders of the Religious Right became almost hysterical when they learned that GOProud was a co-sponsor) need to learn to respect libertarian thinking and views. Libertarians are not out-of-line with conservative thinking, it is Mr. Huckabee who is out of line with conservative principles. Indeed, as you may recall from my prior article about his pardons, Huckabee has already demonstrated that he has a dangerous, unprincipled belief that his own personal beliefs are superior to the rule of law. That’s not conservative thinking. That is, in fact, the worst kind of far-left thinking.

Unfortunately, implicit in Huckabee’s dismissal of libertarians is more proof that he is not comfortable with individual rights, that he prefers a government that imposes favored views. This is not conservative thinking. This is the kind of thinking that created the recent RINO problem and discredited the brand. This is the kind of thinking that needs to be excised from the movement.

I encourage Mr. Huckabee and others to meet with the libertarians, to learn from them, and to come to an accord. If not, do not ask for my support any time soon.


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Danger: The Triggered Public Option

If you choose to bore yourself to tears and listen to Obama’s speech tonight, here is what you should listen for. The public option is dead, right? Sure, Obama may mention it, but a whole bevy of Senators have refused to pass any bill that contains it. So it’s dead, right? Right? Why do I keep asking? Here’s why:

Meet Olympia Snowe (RINO - Maine). . . your worst nightmare.

According to CNN and CNBC (and probably others), Sen. Snowe, one of the last great RINOs, is working hard to get Obama the public option. Well, that’s not what she calls it, but that’s what it is. And how does she plan to snatch this crucial socialist victory for her Lord Obama from the well-deserved jaws of defeat visited upon him by the hands of the peasants? Behold: the triggered public option.

The triggered public option works this way. A scaled-down health care reform bill is drafted. It basically does nothing and offends no one. But it lets Obama save face -- something near and dear to the hearts of all RINOs. Hidden within the bill will be the Snowe Amendment (“Snowejob” for short). If (read: “when”) those insurance “reforms” included in the bill don’t result in a reduction in insurance costs within a certain amount of time, a full-on public option will spring forth upon us. . . like a highwayman hiding behind a rock in Maine.

Thereafter, the obvious will occur. The current insurance system will die. You will lose your insurance. You will end up on the public plan. Doctors will revolt, by refusing to take public plan patients. Patients too will revolt when they can’t find doctors and when the doctors they can find can’t get paid for doing any work. The system will go broke quicker than a Congressman in a whorehouse because the numbers are laughably phony. Our budget will collapse, angering the Chinese who hold so much of our debt, but thrilling the gold nuts. And as people begin demanding that their city councils put up statutes of Obama giving Stalin a Snowejob, a retarded woman in Maine will go on television and say, “no one could have seen this coming.”

Seriously, this is the new danger. It is a tactic as old as time itself. When the enemy is on to you, pretend you are doing something else. Since they know they can’t force a public option on a vigilant public, they will try to create a situation that leads to a public option coming into existence without a direct vote. By creating a springing public option, no one need ever vote “yes, I want to socialize our medicine” to make that happen. Indeed, it will happen all on its own, without anyone needing to claim responsibility for it. . . after all, the bill they voted for didn’t create a public option, that “somehow happened” later. In fact, they will assure you, they voted for this bill to prevent the public option.

This is the same trick used by the Congress whenever they want to do something the public doesn’t want and can’t find a sucker to take credit for it.

Now there is one thing that might save us from these masochistic RINOs. Despite the recent mania about the left suddenly morphing into a unified front of evil geniuses, all working according to plan, they are in fact a bunch of whiny morons who can’t stay on the same page for more than a few hours. And they are livid about the idea of a triggered public option. Why?

Go back and read my article about short term versus long term thinking. In that article, I explain how liberal thinking is static; i.e. they live in the moment. They do not understand that people will react to incentives, causing long term shifts in behavior and intended (or unintended) consequences. Thus, they see this legislation simply as a defeat: it does not promise a public option, hence there will never be a public option. Obama lied, my Stalinist dreams died!

Conservatives, on the other hand, who tend to be long term, dynamic thinkers understand that while the bill does not create a public option now, it will be inevitable under this bill. The bill does nothing to lower insurance costs or to help insurers lower costs. Yet, it will trigger if those insurers, who are hostage to massive regulation, don’t do what they cannot do. In effect, the public option is guaranteed. . . but don't tell your leftist friends that, we need them as upset as possible.

As an aside, the difference between long and short term thinking also explains why conservatives understand that a public option will destroy and replace the current system, whereas liberals can’t see that because the bill doesn’t ban private insurance (“if it exists now, and it’s not banned, why won’t it exist forever?”).

So sadly, our best hope lies with the left. Talk about irony though? We need to hope that the left kills a bill designed by a RINO to make sure that the left gets everything they want. Good grief.

In the meantime, call your representatives. Tell them that you will consider a vote for a triggered public option the same as vote for a public option. Don’t let them hide behind the idea that they aren’t supporting a public option or the lie that “it will never happen.” The people have won a victory for democracy, don’t let a Maine SnoweRINO take that victory away.

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Conservatives: Beware The Crazies

I want to take a moment to discuss a danger to the conservative cause: the integration of the insane into the conservative community. During times of great economic and political upheaval, like the present, people will crawl out of the woodwork to take advantage of your heightened emotional state. They play to your fears. They spout false facts and use false logic. They make emotional appeals and demonize all who disagree. They are cultists without the god, and too many normal conservatives are being pulled in. This is a real danger to conservatism.

Yesterday, as I visited one of the websites that I often visit (I won’t name the site), I came across an article in which the author promoted a particular book. Despite recommending that people read this book, the web-author failed to mention that the book spins a vast, ignorant, misleading, paranoid and oft-discredited conspiracy. Indeed, the book is almost a model for how such false conspiracy theories are cobbled together:

1. Begin with an author who does not understand the subject matter about which they are writing, but is willing to claim unique, almost-clairvoyant insight;

2. Mix in cherry-picked data by including only facts that can be spun to further the theory and ignoring all contrary data or evidence;

3. String the data together in suggestive ways and allege that this is evidence of a vast conspiracy that threatens everything we hold dear -- or prevents us from achieving some better state of humanity;

4. Toss in a little false logic, usually centered around the "absence of disproof";

5. Allege a cover-up to explain the lack of data and the sketchiness of the theory -- though the author must simultaneously assure us that they have broken through the otherwise perfect cover-up; and

6. Demonize all potential critics of the theory and any expert who might provide a counter fact.

These are the same principles and mechanisms upon which the 911 truthers, the moon landing conspiracy theorists, and the great international Zionist conspiracy theorists build their mal-theories. They allege vast conspiracies based on irrelevant data and suggestions that the lack of disproof proves the theory -- a ridiculous bit of illogic that you could use to prove the existence of unicorns, leprechauns, or anything else. And when people try to challenge their "facts" or present "disproof", they accuse those people of being part of the conspiracy. Essentially, it's a self-proving delusion.

After reading the article, I pointed out that the web-author should not promote such a book, certainly not without warning about the nature of the book and the lack of credibility of the author -- a John Birch society member who has been vacillating between seeing the Supreme Court, the banks, the Federal Reserve, and a half dozen other institutions as either a communist or capitalist plot, and who claims that the AMA, the FDA and the American Cancer Society are “withholding the truth,” that vitamins cure cancer, because they have economic motives to keep you from curing your cancer.

The web-author responded that he had mentioned in some prior post that he does not condone the conspiratorial aspects of the book, but that he thought it would be a good primer for average people to get an understanding of monetary policy. But this is wrong. This is like recommending Chariots of the Gods, a book about aliens building the Great Pyramids, because the author presents a good primer on Egyptian construction methods. It’s like sending someone to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital because Marx does a good job of explaining the division between capital and labor. It is inappropriate to send people to advocacy books, particularly nutty ones, under the guise that the book provides a good basis for them to learn about an issue, especially without warning them about the degree to which they are being misled.

So why does this bother me? Because the adherents to these fantasy theories are learning to peddle their garbage to unsuspecting conservatives as just another reason for opposing Obama. They are trying to smuggle their agenda into the conservative movement disguised as legitimate concerns. And unfortunately, I am seeing more and more of it creep into the conservative community at large.

For example, every day I receive unsolicited faxes from a group that wants to scare me into opposing Obama. As you know, I do not support Obama. To the contrary, I oppose everything he's proposed. Yet, I am offended by these faxes. Their tone is hyperbolic and they are cholk-full of lies: ObamaCare makes private health insurance illegal and includes forced euthanasia, people older then fifty will be denied surgeries, ObamaCare social workers can seize your children and raise them, Obama is training a group to go house to house seizing guns, the FDA is making it illegal to grow your own food, and Obama has cut a secret deal to give Jerusalem to the Muslims. All lies. In fact, these are the same lies, slightly rephrased, that the wing nuts on the left used to scare their voters about Bush: Dick Cheney is hiding under your bed. But if you only give this patriotic, anonymous group twenty dollars, they can save you!

Now, on their own, these faxes mean nothing. I throw them away. But then I visit websites full of normal conservatives and I see these allegations repeated. That's right, these same insane theories are starting to appear on conservative websites, often promoted by normally intelligent conservatives who know better (or should know better).

This is highly destructive of our movement. Not only is it destructive of the intellectual core of our movement, because it replaces rational thought with illogic, it replaces fact with fiction, and it replaces reason with emotion and demonization, but it also distracts people from the real issues, and it scares off the people who might want to join us. Nobody wants to walk into a room full of terrified, angry people huddle in the corner shouting about burning a wizard.

It is time to stop listening to these flakes, and to tell them to go back to crazyland without us.

Further, conservatives need to repudiate the “idiot movement” that seems to be taking hold. For the same reasons that conspiracy theories are taking root, there seems to be a new strain of thinking that education is bad (often promoted by the same people who espouse the conspiracies). At website after website, I’m seeing more and more rants about “them educated” people and “them college types.” At one site, I saw the ridiculous rant: “we should make it so that you can’t serve in Congress if you went to college.” Yet, far from repudiating this fool, many of the normally reasonable conservatives at the site agreed.

Do you really think being uneducated is a good idea? Who do you think built the car your drive? Who designed the road or the bridge you crossed, the computer you’re using to read this, and the systems that bring you your food every day? Did a high school drop out invent your cell phone? What about that vaccine that kept you alive? Do you look for the stupidest doctor you can find? How about a dumb lawyer? Do you want your kids to have stupid teachers or are you taking them out of education because it's a waste of time?

And let me ask this, does anyone believe that the Founding Fathers were uneducated or that they would support a movement that views the educated with suspicion? Do not confuse those who misuse their education with education itself. To attack education is to attack everything that made this country what it is today.

Education is the pathway to the future. It always has been. It is about opportunity. Education is the key to your success. These days, having only a high school degree is the surest indicator of poverty. And it’s only going to get worse as the world becomes more advanced. If you don’t get an education, in fifty years, you’ll be doing the jobs illegal aliens won’t do.

Moreover, conservatism is an intellectual philosophy. It takes brains to be a conservative -- it takes only emotion to be a liberal. Conservatism, unlike liberalism, understands cause and effect and the fact that people react and adjust. It is often a difficult philosophy because you need to understand the future, you need to see how the world will change when people respond to your policy. It is about thinking ahead. Liberalism is about being swayed by emotion, about hero worship and trusting that a great leader, who knows more than you, will figure it out. This anti-intellectualism that is spreading in conservative ranks runs the danger of destroying conservatism and replacing it with a form of anti-liberal liberalism, and that’s not a governing philosophy, that's a cult of personality.

We need to stop being enticed by false, emotional appeals and crazy conspiracy theories, and start thinking reasonably: question authority, don’t join a cult.

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