Category: ideological culture

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ideological culture media and media people

Greetings, Gridlock

“If you think you have seen gridlock, just wait and watch Goldwater’s final victory.” That’s how Mark Mardell, the North American editor of BBC News, snarkily concluded his column bemoaning Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock’s resounding defeat of 36-year incumbent U.S. Senator Dick Lugar in Tuesday’s Republican Primary.

Goldwater?Barry Goldwater

Noting that when Ronald Reagan captured the White House in 1980, George Will quipped, “It took 16 years to count the votes, and Goldwater won,” Mardell added that with Mourdock’s victory, “Goldwater has now won his campaign to purge his party of moderates; it has just taken him 48 years longer than he had hoped.”

Indeed, Goldwater helped define conservatism as favoring less government, and his 1964 presidential campaign led to a more pro-free market GOP. But Mardell’s implication is that those who want less government are inherently unreasonable, always and everywhere the cause of dreaded “gridlock” in Washington, while those who favor ever bigger government are just being reasonable.

Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 conservative presidential campaign, proclaimed, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

“Bipartisanship has brought us to the brink of bankruptcy,” Republican Senate nominee Mourdock said during his campaign. “We don’t need bipartisanship, we need application of principle.”

Being serious and committed to restoring fiscal sanity to Washington is no vice.

And even the dread gridlock would be a welcome change over out-of-control spending and debt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture video

Video: How to Fail, America

This is stylish, provocative, and … worth thinking about:

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ideological culture

Thinly Veiled

Representative Paul Ryan’s budget plan famously elicited from the president a bizarre accusation about “social Darwinism.” Now Georgetown University’s faculty and priests warn that his “spending blueprint would hurt society’s most vulnerable.”

Ryan undoubtedly laughed off the Darwinism charge, but Georgetown U. is Catholic, and so is Ryan, making his response especially interesting:

“I suppose that there are some Catholics who for a long time thought they had a monopoly of sorts, not exactly on heaven, but on the social teaching of our Church,” Mr Ryan said, adding: “There can be differences among faithful Catholics on this.”

He also argued that a “preferential option for the poor,” a tenet of Catholic teaching, means that people should not become “dependent on the government so they stay stuck at their station in life.”

The latter point is especially telling, for upward social mobility is surely a prime goal of all who are truly concerned about improving the lot of the less well-off.Herbert Spencer at age 78

Interestingly, social mobility and improvement via voluntary co-operation were also major concerns of the two 19th century liberals who have since been labelled the Social Darwinists Nos. 1 and 2: Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. But then, careless charges regarding “social Darwinism” have never had much intellectual substance, and are, almost certainly, irrelevant to Ryan’s actually quite modest plan, which spends 50 percent more than Clinton’s 2000 budget. This fact led Reason’s Nick Gillespie to quip, “If that’s what passes for ‘thinly veiled social Darwinism’ . . . the English language is as broke as the federal treasury.”

I think that’s pretty clear, at this point.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture tax policy

Unfuzzying Up the Past

We hear a lot of talk about the disappearing middle class. Sometimes this jabber goes so far as to posit that normal folks — say, the “99 percent” — haven’t really experienced any progress since the ’60 or ’70s.

So blame the rich. And their government.

It’s not an implausible case. Wealthy interests do rent politicians at extravagant rates, changing policy in their favor.

But as economist Russ Roberts and Cornell University’s Richard Burkhauser discussed recently, sloppy statistics feed the hand-wringing over middle-class decline. Considering government transfer payments from rich to poor and plotting income by household rather than individually, the basic “stagnation” thesis doesn’t pass the “smell test.”

For the real stink, however, consult the Internet memes, particularly this goofy contention:

In the 1950s and 1960s when the top tax rate was 70-92%, we laid the interstate system, built the Internet, put a man on the moon, defeated Communism, our education system was the envy of the world, our middle class thriving, our economy unparalleled. You want that back? Raise taxes on the rich.

Forget the obvious nonsense (ARPANET was the Internet only in ovo; Communism collapsed in the ’80s), and concentrate on the main points, as Tom Woods has done: tax evasion was rampant back in the alleged “good ol’ days”; public schools have doubled in per capita spending since then, and not improved; and the stagflationary ’70s followed the booming ’60s, almost certainly as a consequence of the policies being touted, here.

Selective memories help in constructing just-so policy “proofs.” The middle class has received some big hits, I grant you. Still, we’ve seen progress, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Categories
ideological culture political challengers

The BWIA Taboo

Last week, a Mommy Maelstrom unleashed when Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, interviewed as an “expert” on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, charged that Ann Romney, who reared five boys as a stay-at-home mom and continues to be the better half of presidential candidate Mitt, had “never worked a day in her life.”

Super-swaddling mothers of all sorts were outraged. Their husbands, as I can attest, were offended as well.

Stay-at-home mothers work. Hard. Long hours. So, there!

After denouncing Ann Romney’s career status, Rosen added that, “She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and, and, and how do we worry — and, why do we worry about their future.”

So perhaps Rosen wasn’t attacking Mrs. Romney’s decision to stay home and rear her kids, but, instead, Romney’s commission of a more heinous crime: BWIA (Being Wealthy in America). She should be ignored not because she’s a homemaker, but because she’s rich.

That bias against “the rich” is nearly official national policy. Though a devoted and hardworking mother, Ann Romney should be seen and not heard.

What upset Ms. Rosen was not that she might be seen and heard by us, but by her husband, if elected. You see, when we vote for a president we in effect vote for an unofficial advisor. With Bill Clinton we got Hillary; with Mitt we’d get Ann.

By Washington’s standards, Rosen’s worst transgression was to remind voters that Ann Romney exists — for as soon as Ann gets into the picture, Mitt doesn’t look so bad.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

War and Broccoli

The art of polling is similar to almost any effort where interpretation is required: Context is important.

The Reason-Rupe pollsters seem to get this. Their recent survey covers not only a lot of ground (the president’s job performance, possible candidates in the upcoming elections, health care, morality and war) but goes into some depth on a number of the issues covered. For instance, each of Obama’s major challengers is put in the context of several competitive scenarios — Obama vs. Romney, Obama vs. Santorum (the poll was conducted before Santorum dropping out), Obama vs. Gingrich, Obama vs. Paul, etc.— with even possible third-party runs brought in. All very interesting.

The biggest section of the poll concerned health care. These questions also probed alternatives, eliciting opinions explicitly in the context of possible options and outcomes. But the results regarding Iran’s nuclear capabilities were especially provocative. Nearly half of Americans tend to favor military action against the country were we to discover that the Iranian government was developing nuclear weaponry. But, when the conflict was considered as a long, dragged-out affair — of the same variety as happened in Iraq — support dwindled, and the numbers opposed to intervention went well over half.

Not shocking. Costs matter. Context matters.

The most amusing element of context in the poll emerged in one pair of questions regarding Obamacare. Is the federal requirement to carry medical insurance unconstitutional? Over 60 percent said yes. But switch that mandate to requiring Americans to buy broccoli and other healthy foods, and those crying “unconstitutional” shot up to 87 percent.

Now that’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Swinging a Dead Cat

Americans too often forget how ugly politics used to be. In the 19th century, “tarring and feathering” was just one terrible way among many of “making a point.” Drenching somebody in hot tar is painful; putting feathers on that someone and sending them running was humiliating, as well.

And a sign of horrid cruelty.

Politics, which (we should remind ourselves) is how we publicly decide who gets to use the awesome and awful powers of the state (itself known to be the cruelest of cold monsters), can’t help but conjure up hate and violence. We must remain vigilant against that tendency.

So the recent killing of a Democratic campaign manager’s cat — actually, his child’s pet — and its desecration with the word “liberal” marked on it, has a context.

But that context is no excuse. It’s an incredibly sick, deranged, hateful act. We should all hope justice prevails.

The campaign manager responded reasonably, condemning whoever did it without casting blame about blindly. Too bad I can’t say that about the comments to the article on ThinkProgress.org. Many commenters there blame all “conservatives,” right-wingers, Rush Limbaugh, et al.

Like racist rhetoric, this paints blame with a wide brush, holding a whole group of people responsible for what one person in that group does. Shameful. But it’s even a bit worse in this case, since the guilty person has not been caught, so we don’t even know who did it or whether that person was actually a “conservative.”

Isn’t it time to get past blind hatred of the “they”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture too much government

Down With the Capital

My wife and daughter have devoured Suzanne Collins’s trilogy of dystopian novels, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, and they let me accompany them to this weekend’s blockbuster movie of the first in the series.

In the depicted dystopia, a dozen outlying districts have been conquered by the capital. Once a year, for the diversion of sport and, moreover, to assert their life-and-death control over the districts, folks in the capital choose one male and one female teenager from each district — as “tribute” — to go to the capital to fight to the death. The last of the 24 left alive is the “winner.”

The story’s protagonist is Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year old girl whose prowess with bow and arrow helps (illegally) feed her family. When her 12-year old sister gets selected to meet a certain death in the games, Katniss “volunteers” to take her place.

Expressing an independent spirit, Peeta, her district’s male contestant, tells Katniss: “I just keep wishing I could find a way to show them they don’t own me. If I’m going to die, I want to still be me.”

In The Hunger Games, the capital thrives, while folks out in the districts struggle to find enough to eat. In our own country, today, seven of the 25 wealthiest counties are in the Washington, D.C. area. While much of the nation suffers a depressed housing market and high unemployment, that’s not the case in our nation’s capital region.

I liked the movie so much, I’m now reading the book.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture too much government

From Local to Federal

Both the politics of “getting what we want” and the politics of reasonable principles — too often two very different things — rely, ultimately, upon the local, upon voters in actual communities.

In a review of a book with the provocative title How Local Politics Shapes Federal Policy, economist Robert Meiners considers the political economy of America’s most famous dam:

[M]ultiple states wrestled for control of the multi-state Colorado River and for control of the electricity that might be generated. When there is a pot of gold on the table, the stakes are high. Eastern interests opposed the dam. The rhetoric was about “states’ rights” . . . but likely had more to do with eastern members of the legislature seeing no benefit, only costs, for themselves. Again, assuming the dam had net benefits, there is no reason the national government needed to be involved in a project that provide benefits to six states at best.

The book’s author tells the story in terms of ideology, but the reviewer counters that it looks, to him, “more like traditional rent-seeking and logrolling. . . .” Our folks in Congress “constantly think about how to satisfy local interests at the expense of non-local taxpayers,” and that’s certainly the current problem.

And here ideology comes back into the picture. If you think that some people’s lives or property should be sacrificed for some other people’s lives and property, then the ultimate result is the mess we have today. Voters have little option but to take a stand and “ideologically” place limits on politicians and their very own selves.

In our limits, our liberty.

Lacking those limits, we’re each others’ hosts and leeches.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture insider corruption

Billions and Billionaires

Where do billionaires come from?

Douglas French, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, reminds us where the term “millionaire” came from. It was

coined in 1720 during John Law’s “Mississippi Bubble” to describe those making vast fortunes in Law’s Mississippi Company stock that rose from 150 livres to 10,000 in the matter of months. But just as quickly, the stock and the currency wildly inflated by Law’s Banque Royale, crashed and Law was forced into exile.

Today’s plethora of billionaires — which in 15 years has increased fivefold — is (argues French) at least in part the result of Ben Bernanke’s monetary manipulations. He’s the John Law of our time. “What were once Law’s millionaires are now Bernanke’s billionaires. . . . Bernanke has been on the job for six years, and the Gates, Buffetts, and Slims of the world are reaping the benefit. But for how long?”

Keeping track of today’s billionaires has become both a form of popular entertainment (Forbes’s list) as well as a topic for careful study. The political “philanthropy” of George Soros and Charles Koch inspires both enthusiasm and dread in activists, left and right; Warren Buffett has become something of a hero to the 99 percenters, what with his repeated pitches for higher taxes on the rich.

But Buffett is a sly one. He makes his money in a variety of ways — one of which Peter Schiff recently explained: “Buffett actually stated in September 2008 that he would not have invested in Goldman Sachs if not for the implicit guarantee of federal assistance. As a result, he profited at the expense of taxpayers at the very time when they were losing their savings in the markets.”

Not all billionaires are created equal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.