A Second Hand Conjecture

Don’t complain to me if there aren’t any new posts on ASHC. I’m sitting on a beach in Miami and thus completely out of the necessary frame of mind to bitch about Obama and triumph of statism. Now, these other writers on here have no such excuses I note. In fact, they’re probably sitting at their desks right now wondering “why isn’t Lee posting anything new?” To them I toast a fruity morning cocktail with a plastic palm tree. It’s up to you gentlemen.

Even though this excursion is more business than pleasure, the economic conditions here in South Florida remind me of how much I love vacationing during recession. The worse and deeper the downturn, the better the leisure to be found. Hotels to yourself, fire sale prices for everything, pretty girls in bikinis who are more easily impressed with a boring software executive. It’s a fine time to travel to a tropical paradise. The traditional problem being how to pay for it in a recession. Ahem. As cruel a Catch-22 as there is.

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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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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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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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Mitt Romney appears to be calling for a government directed solution to the American automotive indutry’s woes. Marc Ambinder uses the occasion to point out that save Thompson, interventionist government seems to be a consistent theme for all the GOP candidates. How did this come to pass anyway?

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Mike Huckabee outlined his vision for a social conservative / “populist” takeover of the GOP to an Evangelical audience in Michigan. Mark Levin calls it deplorable, DiscerningTexan calls it destructive, and Riehl calls it theocratic. Well, well. It’s beginning to look like Fred Thompson’s aggressive criticism of Huckabee’s views may have inaugurated the removal of many gloves.

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The NYT thinks Fred Thompson may be making a comeback. Some Republicans seem to be warming to his message that Huckabee’s statist policies are unwelcome in the GOP. Imagine that.

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Japan runs the world’s second largest economy with 17 cabinet ministers. Ghana, one of the world’s poorest, currently has 70. Why? Ben Ofosu-Appiah examines the question and argues the need for the dramatic downsizing of African governments. Shakara then offers an interesting counterpoint.

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