A Second Hand Conjecture

Synova wrote a little post that gets halfway to where I would come down on this perennial parlor game of  the John Galt general strike. Sy recognized that to be successful, such a revolt would realistically be a miserable experience for a society, resulting in bloodshed and economic ruin. But she does not depart from Rand in assuming that the eventual outcome would be desirable. I’d advise the ancient wisdom that if the means are clearly evil in a political project, one should become immediately skeptical of the alleged justice of the ends.

We should also be skeptical of the social assumption for Galt, that there is a definable and rigid division among men into a minority of Platonic creative guardians, and an empowered majority of proletarian oppressors and their craven political servants — and that these factions could have accurate self-recognition of their social roles. I would contend that anyone who thinks of the majority of the people as disposable abstracted parasites, under a constitutional order that explicitly derives its governing powers from the majority consent of the governed, is never selling you anything that’s going to arrive in a happy place.

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Todd Zywicki, of the Volokh Conspiracy, takes a look at libertarianism in the McCain/Palin ticket and notes a distinct western vibe to the first all-western ticket in our history. He had an interesting observation that I think captures a lot of our hesitation about McCain.

The only caveat to this is that McCain’s westernism is tempered by his military background. And frankly, this is what concerns me most about him–his mind seems like a command-and-control, top-down worldview. To put the matter more elliptically to many but more accurately to my thinking, I think he simply does not understand or trust the idea of spontaneous order. In his worldview, things happen (good or bad) because somebody makes them happen. This is not a worldview that is conducive to understanding spontaneous order. That’s a statist streak in him that offsets some of his westernism.

An interesting point to think about. Does Palin temper that? Does she enhance it?

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Newmark’s Door
We can’t enact or enforce enough laws to manage ethical behavior.

“Goo-goos”–good government advocates–have been fighting corruption in government through endlessly tweaking campaign financing reform laws and ethics laws for at least 40 years.

Senator Stevens is the latest case and even though he may have been up to no good, Newmark thinks it will be difficult to convict him.

What I do assert is, that in the absence of a tape or a document in which Stevens admits knowing that he didn’t pay for the full value of the work, it should be real darn hard to convict him.

The only way to stop this is the classical libertarian approach of smaller government.

I’m not the first person to argue this: either restrict government power or live with a lot of corruption. The goo-goos are largely tilting at windmills.

There may be some related good news . Apparently Trent Lott has had an epiphany on the issues of pork and earmarks.

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Greg Mankiw
A review of a new book called Nudge. “is nonetheless nudging people in the direction that somebody thinks will make them better off.”

Smacks of manipulation to me. Seems like education and greater transparency would be a better solution.

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Because of my background in working with emotionally disturbed, learning disabled, and generally abused kids, I am often to drawn to stories about the results of extreme neglect of children. I saw some awfully hard cases with some of the kids I worked with, including a kid who was found as a toddler scrounging for food in a trash can with his younger brother before being put into the foster care system, and a young girl who, although not even ten years old, was “traded” by her mother for drugs on a routine basis. There are some really sick cases out there.

For example, a few years ago some foster parents were arrested and charged with aggravated assault and child endangerment after someone finally checked up on their kids and discovered a gruesome sight:

Two of the teenage boys were so badly nourished that they each weighed less than 50 pounds and stood about 4 feet tall, authorities said.

An investigation into the family began after police found the Jacksons’ 19-year-old son, Bruce Jackson, rummaging through a neighbor’s trash.

The young man, who was adopted in 1995, measured 4 feet and weighed 45 pounds. He also had apparent heart irregularities.

The three other boys, ages 14, 10, and 9, were removed from the home and hospitalized. The 14-year-old was 40 pounds and 4 feet tall.

Investigators said the couple received a yearly stipend of up to $28,000, but kept the boys locked out of the kitchen and fed them dry pancake batter.

Every state’s foster care system has a few stories like this, some more than others. The sad fact is that there are really bad people out there, for whatever reason, and some of them become parents and foster parents. How can these people become foster parents? Well, as bad as they end up being (and, it is actually pretty rare), they are still better than the home from which the foster kids are typically removed. For example, there’s the case of Danielle Crockett: (more…)

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Jordan Page (who is a kind of Ronpaulist Joan Baez) reflects on the “Revolution March,” a July 12th Ron Paul protest rally in Washington DC, in part organized by Adam Kokesh (who of late believes the Washington police are involved in a clandestine conspiracy against him).

Now, I grew up in the libertarian movement such as it was. Although I no longer consider myself a libertarian out of respect for the philosophy, I think I knew it well. My libertarianism was of the rightish sort, but fundamentally a movement for liberty through reason. A movement of the great economists and political philosophers of the Austrian School and the University of Chicago. The movement of Mises and Friedman. But this paranoid, revolutionary rubbish presented by Page as libertarianism, is utterly unrecognizable to me.

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Peg pointed me this way, and I really enjoyed nodding in agreement. Of course, I have long nodded in agreement with Megan. Especially on these:

2) Gay marriage. I’m basically pro, but I take the Burkean arguments seriously.

3) Immigration. Again, I’m pro–but while I think the anti-immigration side makes often ridiculously ahistorical arguments about how current immigration differs from past waves, I think that more-open-borders folks like me don’t give enough respect to the real cultural frictions that immigration causes.

[…}

5) Taxes. I don’t have any very well thought out position on the optimal level of taxation in society. I take seriously both the justice arguments of the libertarian absolutists, and the notion that anyone living in a wealthy society owes their prosperity at least as much to the wealthy society as they do to their own skill and hard work–and if you doubt this is true, I suggest you go try to deploy your rugged individualist talents in Zimbabwe. I think society has a duty to care for those who genuinely can’t care for themselves, but I am against an ever-expanding notion of what constitutes “can’t”.

6) Intergenerational equity. I don’t mean social security, which I think is largely a stupid program. I mean questions about how we should privilege the interests of people who exist now over those who will exist in the future. The environment is the most obvious, but not the only, area where these questions come up. To me, health care is another one; the core issue is that we can probably help some people by moving to a single payer system today, but only by destroying the innovation machine that will help many many more people down the road.

7) Humanitarian intervention. I am often tempted by the isolationist stance, the cool purity of its single-rule decision making. Then another Darfur rends my heart. I don’t mean to address the prudential, utilitarian calculus, but rather the question: if there’s a good chance that we could make things better, should we? And under what circumstances?

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The idea of state funded and administered universal health care is a bugbear of libertarians everywhere, and especially those who are subjected to such a system as a matter of course. Routinely held up as one of the worst of the lot of state-run systems is Britain’s NHS. Now, direct from the trenches of the NHS battleground, comes one insider who thinks it’s high time that the system was scrapped:

Here is a great new book to cheer libertarians as we draw close to the sixtieth anniversary of the National Health Service. Written by the director of Nurses for Reform, Dr. Helen Evans, and published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, ‘Sixty Years On: Who Cares for the NHS?’ not only shows that the country’s top 100 health opinion formers no longer actually believe in nationalised healthcare but, gloriously, this book fundamentally challenges the medical monopoly inherent in all health systems around the world.

The IEA finds that the study underlying Dr. Evans’ book reveals an increasing dissatisfaction with state-run health care among those charged with providing it:

Containing a series of devastating blows to the NHS at 60, the research shows that when speaking off the record a substantial majority of Britain’s health elite no longer believes in nationalised healthcare. Instead, an overwhelming majority accepts a much greater role for private provision – including private hospitals, clinics, GP services and dentists.

I recall that the President of the Canadian Medical Association expressed similar sentiments not long ago, so this result is not at all surprising. What is surprising is that, despite copious amounts of evidence, and reams of historical documentation, people still believe that government can run anything very well, much less a system devoted to the ever changing circumstances inherent in the provision of health care to the masses.

Let’s be clear: the government — any government, fair or foul — is only good at two things. One, making rules. Two, using the power of the state to enforce them. That’s it. No government anywhere, throughout history, is much more than minimally competent at doing anything other than those two tasks. In fact, that is exactly why the founders of this country set up a system of limited government. Instead of carving sections of life where the government’s powers would not apply, America’s forefathers devised a system of limited government whereby the limits of action were placed on the single most powerful entity in the land rather than on the individuals comprising its subjects. It was an attempt to shackle Leviathan.

Despite that attempt, Leviathan has broken free is some places, and uses that leverage to tirelessly strain against its remaining cuffs. Advocates of universal health care encourage the beast to break free of its binds, seemingly without the least bit of comprehension as to the carnage that will result. They should take heed of those who have suffered the demon. What better authority than those who have toiled in the belly of the beast and know its strengths and weaknesses? Who better to dissuade such tomfoolery as unleashing the unquenchable thirst for power of a government monopoly over our very lives than those who have experienced such unrestrained power?

But I expect that the opinions expressed in Dr. Evans’ book will have little, if any, effect. When as potent a wellspring of power as state-run health care is dangled in front of those who lust for dominion over others, there is little chance that they won’t take the bait irrespective of the nasty hook.

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Over the weekend I read with fascination William Saletan’s review of the new offering from George Lakoff, “The Political Mind,” and was struck by the remarkable similarities between it and the revolutionary syndicalism espoused during the prior fin de siècle.

In particular, Saletan summarizes Lakoff’s principal idea as the need for progressives to recapture the and reformulate the social myth that drives the political decisions of the masses:

Lakoff blames “neoliberals” and their “Old Enlightenment” mentality for the Democratic Party’s weakness. They think they can win elections by citing facts and offering programs that serve voters’ interests. When they lose, they conclude that they need to move farther to the right, where the voters are.

This is all wrong, Lakoff explains. Neuroscience shows that pure facts are a myth and that self-interest is a conservative idea. In a “New Enlightenment,” progressives will exploit these discoveries. They’ll present frames instead of raw facts. They’ll train the public to think less about self-interest and more about serving others. It’s not the platform that needs to be changed. It’s the voters.

Lakoff’s concept is not new, although his explanation as to why myth-making is important may be. (more…)

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Via Glenn Reynolds, Wired posts an article describing the fight to include evolution in the science curriculum for students in Florida and Texas:

Charles Darwin was born 199 years ago Tuesday, but the debate he ignited about the origins of species rages on. Florida’s department of education will vote next week on a new science curriculum that could be in jeopardy, because some conservative counties oppose it.

Nine of Florida’s 64 counties have passed resolutions over the last two months condemning the new curriculum that explicitly calls for teaching evolution. The resolutions, passed in heavily Christian counties in the state’s northern reaches, demand that evolution be “balanced” with alternative theories, mainly creationist…

Watchdogs say the stakes are high in the pending vote. If Florida backpedals from evolution, Texas may follow suit. Texas is scheduled to update its own science standards this year. In November, an education official was fired for mentioning a pro-evolution lecture. Along with California, Florida and Texas are the largest purchasers of textbooks in the nation.

“Texas buys about 10 percent of all K-12 textbooks, and Florida buys another 8 percent,” said Lawrence Lerner, a science-curriculum expert at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education watchdog. “If they want creationism in their textbooks, Wyoming may not have a choice.”

I still have a hard time swallowing this argument. Is the publishing world so archaic and backwards technologically that they can’t churn out different versions of textbooks for 18% of their customers, while delivering what the other 82% really want? Diane Ravitch made the same case in The Language Police (an excellent book; I highly recommend it), but I didn’t really buy it then either.

Nevertheless, the reason its even an issue is because the state mandates what the curriculum will be for each and every school.

Florida’s current science standards, which tell teachers what their students must learn, don’t mention evolution by name. In 2005, a prominent education think tank gave Florida a failing grade in science teaching, prompting education officials to overhaul the curriculum. The new standards, drafted last October, explicitly called evolution “the fundamental concept underlying all biology.”

But nine counties — Baker, Clay, Hamilton, Holmes, Jackson, Madison, St. Johns, Taylor and Washington — have passed resolutions officially calling for the teaching of evolution to be balanced with alternative explanations of life’s origins, almost certainly religious.

The resolutions have been patterned after the one from St. Johns County, which calls for “teaching the scientific strengths and weaknesses of the theory rather than teaching evolution as dogmatic fact.”

Critics say the resolutions’ language is thinly veiled creationism — either in the strictly biblical sense, or the more-modern take of “intelligent design,” which purports to use scientific methodology to prove divine intervention.

“We’re concerned that we not impose state standards that prevent an open dialogue concerning other theories,” said David Buckles, superintendent of schools in Putnam County, which is also considering opposing the new curriculum. “Did life begin in ice? Or was it the Genesis version? Or intelligent design? We want the pros and cons of all of it.”

Looking just at the bolded portions, isn’t that where the problem lies? Does this issue ever come to a head if there weren’t some state regulators “imposing” rules on the schools? Or am I just some crazy libertarian nutter who doesn’t appreciate the value of a public education (yeah, some value)?

In fact, I do see the value in having an educated public, but over the past 30 years or so I don’t see governments actually accomplishing that task. Instead, we get propagandized curriculum that has little to no bearing on the real world. Classrooms are used as social science labs, and students are treated as the guinea pigs. Whether its the idiots trying to shove PC, multi-culti, white-people-are-racists nonsense down our kids throats, or bible-thumpers filling their heads with religion dressed up as science, I don’t see an educated populace being created. I see a bunch of poorly equipped kids being fed ridiculously antiquated and/or downright false ideas. And to top it all off, we are treated to nanny-staters of all types duking it out in a game of moral oneupmanship for our political amusement. How does any of that add to the value of public education?

I’m one of the lucky ones who can send my kids to private school (barely), but what about all those parents who don’t have that choice? Their kids are left to suffer at the hands of petty bureaucrats and teachers unions, each with their own agenda that’s applied in a “one size fits all” manner, regardless of what might be truly best for the child. And heaven forbid that a teacher develop his or her own method of educating. If that were allowed, then how would the bureaucrats maintain control? Next thing you know, they’ll want merit pay.

For so long as the state is in charge of education, these sorts of problems will only get worse. Are vouchers the answer? I think they would help by putting choice back into the hands of parents. But that wouldn’t do anything about abominations like No Child Left Behind, and the ridiculous wrangling over evolution that comes up again every couple of years. In my opinion, the best thing to do would be to get the state out of the business of education entirely.

By that I don’t mean pulling out all tax dollars. Even though my children don’t actually benefit from it, I don’t have a problem with helping kids get an education. I just have a problem with the government being the one to control and deliver it. Instead, I’d say let all schools be private, and let the government funds used for education now be set aside for use by parents, without any strings attached. They could apply the money towards the school of their choice. And let the schools decide what and how they will teach. If one school doesn’t prepare kids for the future as well as another, then it will see a loss of income. It will be forced to give parents what they want, or go out of business. And for every school that is successful, thus earning a greater share of the tuition, another one will spring up to grab some of that lucrative pie. In the end, we would have schools that are responsive to the needs of children and their parents, and not beholden to local, state or national politics.

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Publius Endures examines the premises of the paleo-libertarians which populate the Lew Rockwell universe. He gets much right. In fact, the local majoritarianism he identifies in their thought is the same reason they could not only argue against the Iraq war and the conflict in the Balkans (reasonable) but wax eloquent about forcing our views on the people of Russia, Serbia and Iraq. As if the dictatorships in those countries were true expressions of the people’s will.

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John Tabin at Reason takes a look at how libertarian hopes in various candidates have collapsed in the course of the primaries. The rise of the statist McCain and the theocratic statist Huckabee, looking like some kind of libertarian nightmare. Tabin concludes that the staunch federalist Fred Thompson is the last plausible libertarian option, and is now standing before his last opportunity in South Carolina….with the polls badly against him.

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Over the Christmas break John Robb tried his hand at being a libertarian Edward Bellamy of sorts, writing a historical overview of a fully privatized United States from the vantage of 2025. It’s not a society I’d care to live in, but it’s a fitting medium for John. The thing that struck me reading the last chapters of his superb book Brave New War –in which he describes a post-nationalist future world– is that he really ought to be using his ideas in science fiction, instead of books on military strategy. Today, the allegorical novel remains the best vessel for revolutionary ideas like John’s.
PDF here.

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I seem to have caused some confusion with my previous post, “Putting the Question to the Bishop,” by an inartful use of the term “small-government libertarian.” The more I think about, the clearer it becomes to me that this term is redundant — libertarians are, by definition, in favor of small government. To me, the term has always been a way to distinguish between the minarchist (such as Hayek or Friedman styled libertarians) and anarcho-capitalist (such as fans of Murray Rothbard or Robert Nozick) flavors of libertarianism. Minarchists find value in some minimal level of government, whereas anarcho-capitalists are usually anti-state in nearly every form. However, when the term “small-government libertarian” is used in any other context it just becomes confusing. Frankly, I was simply wrong to employ it the way I did.

The intended point of my previous post was to highlight the choice being forced on the Democratic Party by the netroots crowd — those who support the war vs. those who don’t — and to suggest an alternate choice: the anti-war left vs. the pro-small government electorate. The choice I envision does not involve the war, but instead hinges on how one views the State. Of course, anti-war views are well represented amongst those who prefer small government, and that’s fine. A good argument can (and has been) made that if Congress and the Executive branches were filled with small-government types, there would be no War in Iraq. But, in my view, the Democratic Party needs to focus less on netroots voters who would hold their support of the war against them, and more on voters who are (justifiably) wary of the Democrats’ propensity for big government. The latter have been abandoned by the Republican Party. If the Democrats decided to occupy that small-government ground that the Republicans vacated, such small-government voters could easily be swayed to vote Democratic.

In short, instead of “small-government libertarian” I should have simply said “small-government voters.” My underlying premise is this: as the two major parties continue to cater their policies of governance to increasingly smaller and divisive, albeit increasingly more vocal, special interest groups, they are creating an ever-growing swath of independent voters.

If you think about it, don’t you hear more and more people claiming to be libertarians today, despite their seemingly disparate views? I surely do. I believe this is the natural result of the Democrats and Republicans being more concerned with single-issue voters (e.g., pro-choice vs. pro-life; homosexual rights vs. anti-gay marriage; anti-war vs. pro-strong defense; etc.), than with broad policy measures. Eventually all you have left are moneyed special-interests who promise to get out the vote. Left in the wake of this rush to divvy up the battleground into pro and anti groups are those who feel the government is foisting itself too much on ordinary citizens. Most people just want to be left alone, even though they gladly take free goodies when they are a member of a favored interest group (which is, of course, quite rational). In my opinion, a significant number of voters are out there who will choose small-government policies over single-issue candidates (such as pro-defense/anti-war). I only wish one of the two parties would act on that.

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(Listening notes: Magnetic Fields, Husker Du, Queen, Soft Cell, Indigo Girls, The Smith’s, REM, Pet Shop Boys, B-52’s, Scissor Sisters. A homage to Andrew Sullivan of sorts.)

I am here to step into the breach and defend Glenn Reynolds from two people I admire a lot. This week I visited Belgravia Dispatch and came upon this:

I don’t think of Reynolds as a political animal. He has independent integrity. But when push came to shove, Reynolds never challenged in any serious way the abuses of power in this administration nor the extremism of the Malkinesque blogosphere. When a libertarian finds any excuses to ignore or minimize government-sponsored illegality and torture, then he has truly ceased to be a libertarian in any profound sense. If my opinion weren’t so high of his abilities, my disappointment wouldn’t be so deep.

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