Category: ideological culture

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free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Déjà vu Economics

Last week I noted the revival of interest in F.A. Hayek’s classic political tract, The Road to Serfdom. This week? The ongoing revival of interest in Hayek’s theory of boom and bust.

According to economist Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., today’s debate about stimulus spending mirrors the debate in the Great Depression between John Maynard Keynes and Hayek. Republished letters from October, 1932, Times of London, are eerily up-to-date.

The letter from Keynes and his allies, arguing that spending — any spending whatsoever — would spring the economy out of depression strikes me as a tad bizarre. All spending is equal? Make that several tads bizarre.

Can you say déjà vu?

The Hayekian response seems at once more sophisticated as well as commonsensical. For instance, Hayek recommended an immediate repeal of the infamous Smoot-​Hawley Tariff. He recognized a major factor for the Depression’s low expectations and business doldrums: The trade-​killing legislation that hit the New York Times’s front page the day before Black Tuesday, 1929.

O’Driscoll and other economists have been making much of the enduring significance of the Hayek-​Keynes debate. But there are differences between the Depression and now, aren’t there? 

Back then, the loss part of the profit-​and-​loss system hadn’t been so completely undermined by recovery policy. Today we have bailouts, and these only increase risk-​taking, likely to make the next bust even bigger — and today’s Keynesianism perhaps worse than the disease itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

Sometimes a Great Reversal

After World War II, European Social Democrats — the heirs of Karl Marx’s delusional vision — broke with their heritage. They rewrote their political principles, compromising. No longer would they go for socialism whole hog; they abandoned its key feature, the replacement of markets with total government control.

This was a great moment for modern civilization. It bequeathed Europe (and, perhaps, America) a clunky and intrusive (and unsustainable) welfare states, sure … but that’s far, far better than Communism.

We may be witnessing a similar groundswell of ideological shift in America’s stronghold of the status quo, the media. This week the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times endorsed budgetary rules that would take power and unlimited budgetary discretion from California’s out-​of-​control legislature:

It’s unfortunate that automated budgeting is necessary. But it is necessary. The state must continue to invest in the social welfare of its people, but we must do it in accordance with California’s projected growth so that we do not repeatedly yank from the young, the elderly and the poor the very services that we provided only a year or two before.

This may not sound revolutionary. But, as Tim Cavanaugh put it on Reason magazine’s Hit and Run, the Times — long an opponent of spending limits — has “acknowledge[d] clearly and publicly that out-​of-​control spending, not insufficient tax revenue, is suffocating the Golden State.”

And that is revolutionary. Not American Founder-revolutionary, but Social Democrat-compromise‑y revolutionary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency ideological culture

“Representatives” Who Avoid Voters

Here’s a surprise. Congressional Democrats who faced angry voters in town halls last summer have scrupulously skipped the pleasure during more recent visits home.

The New York Times suggests that although the open town-​hall style political meeting may not be quite dead yet, it’s “teetering closer to extinction,” inasmuch as only a few of 255 House Democrats held such meetings during a recent week-​long recess. Instead they arranged invitation-​only, scripted meetings with that portion of the electorate who believe that super-​sizing the nanny state and burying the country in an Everest of debt are the best things that could ever have happened to us.

These congressmen evade communicating with unhappy constituents to “avoid rage.” And to prevent video clips of their fatuous non-​answers to highly pertinent questions about mega-​billion-​dollar bailouts and pork barrel projects and socialized health care, etc., from showing up on YouTube.

One politician explains that town hall attendees last summer didn’t want to “get answers” so much as pursue a political agenda. I can’t help but remember the YouTube video in which a congresswoman “leading” a town hall forum seemed more interested in her cell phone than in a constituent’s explanation of why she didn’t want a government solution to medicine’s current institutional problems. Anyway, who really expects to escape “political agendas” at political forums convened to discuss politics?

Hopefully, the brilliant campaign strategy of ignoring voters and their legitimate concerns won’t pay off on election day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture

Facebook’s Secret Shame

Facebook has had some bad press lately.

The popular social networking site got in trouble in recent months for the ever-​more-​cavalier way it treats users’ privacy. People complain that their data has been unilaterally exposed in ways they never expected when they first signed up for the service, and that privacy settings have devolved into a confusing, hard-​to-​tweak labyrinth.

Facebook seems to be adjusting its privacy practices in response to the bad publicity. But there’s another lamentable Facebook practice that has, unfortunately, received less sustained attention: Its willingness to shut down a user’s Facebook page solely because somebody else is offended by the viewpoint expressed on that page.

The “somebody else,” in the case I’m referring to, is the government of Pakistan, which banned Facebook because of a page encouraging people to display images of the prophet Muhammad in protest of threats of violence against the show South Park, which had made fun of making threats against people who display images of Muhammad.

“In response to our protest, Facebook has tendered their apology and informed us that all the sacrilegious material has been removed from the URL,” gloated Najibullah Malik, who represents Pakistan’s Orwellian “information technology ministry.”

It’s dangerous to cave in to demands for censorship. The folks at Facebook were faced with the loss of a large market, but they should have let the anti-​censorship page remain published and let Facebook users in Pakistan pressure their government to lift the ban.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

The New Hollywood Blacklist

Hollywood folks often boast about their tolerance and liberality. Maybe they should look up those words.

Our national myth-​makers especially like to go over the horrors of the McCarthy “Blacklist” period, when the power of government nudged studio owners to blacklist writers and actors and directors who were (or were associated with) Communists.

Almost no one likes blacklists. Indeed, the McCarthy period censorship did much to harm the anti-​communist movement.

But don’t look for such subtleties of judgment from Hollywood today. After all, there is a working blacklist right now.

This time, though, there’s no pressure from Congress or regular Americans for this form of censorship. Hollywood players serve as their own censors, maintaining their blacklist by shunning those they don’t agree with politically.

Take the case of J. Neil Schulman. He was an up-​and-​coming writer in the ’80s. The people at L.A. Law really liked his proposals. But he had the gall to write an op-​ed they didn’t approve of, favoring the right to gun ownership, so the L.A. Law folks dropped him like a hot potato, and spread the word. “Too right-​wing,” they said.

Dan Gifford tells the tale on Big Hollywood. It’s an interesting story. You can see why the new blacklist is more effective than the old: It’s tacit, hush-​hush. There are no hearings, interviews, what-​have-​you. But the effect is pretty much the same as the McCarthy Era blacklist: Chilling.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Scary Halloween

Halloween was even scarier than usual this year, at least for the kids in one Maryland neighborhood. Sit around the campfire, little ones, and let me tell you all about it.

As you may know, obesity is being called a disease these days. People are said to be putting their lives at risk if they indulge in a Nestle’s Crunch or a McDonald’s hamburger. Nothing against careful eating habits, but there’s nothing catastrophic about a heaping of junk food once in a while.

Fortunately, the Halloween ritual of costumed kids going around extracting candy from neighbors continued this year as usual. But the kids in Takoma Park, Maryland, got an extra fright when they came to the home of Michael Tabor.

Tabor is a politically correct hater of Ronald McDonald who warbles that candy is nothing less than rat poison. The Washington Post reports that Tabor was on a nutritional mission this Halloween. When the kids came to his door, he adopted the terrifying guise of dietary hobgoblin. Harangued the kids about the evils of candy and warned that chocolate could cause could cost them a limb. Then offered a choice: a boring apple, or the usual chocolate kids love. His wife kept a tally. A few kids picked the apple, poor doomed souls. But so many just picked the candy despite Tabor’s ghoulish harangue that his wife finally stopped counting.

Tabor says if he had given kids a choice between one kind of apple and another, then they would have picked an apple. Yeah, probably. Wow, that was scary, wasn’t it, kids?

This is Common Sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture individual achievement

A Good Father

Every February, we celebrate George Washington’s birthday because he was the father of our country.

Washington was a good father. He set a high personal standard of honesty and integrity. He led by example. He rejected power for the sake of power. He could be trusted. Without his rock-​hard integrity, we might not have survived as a free nation.

After Washington led our rag-​tag army to victory over the most powerful nation on the globe, some American military leaders wanted to make him King. Washington squelched these efforts. Instead, he resigned his commission as the commander of the army and returned to his farm. There would be no king, said the man who could have been king.

When King George heard the news over in Britain, he didn’t believe it. What man would win a revolution and then, with an entire nation his for the taking, refuse to grab that power? If it were true, remarked King George, “Then Washington is the greatest man in the world.”

Since that time, many nations have been formed with noble words about freedom and rule by the people. Too often the men entrusted with guarding that freedom couldn’t be trusted. Their lust for power led them to betray their countrymen.

We’re free today because of the trail our country’s father blazed for us not only as a great military and political leader, but as man of integrity who loved freedom so much more than power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.