Politics – Page 52 – Maverick Philosopher

To Call it an Exaggeration Would be an Understatement

There are statements so extreme that to call them exaggerations would be an understatement. There are plenty of examples to be found in liberal precincts.

"The photo ID requirement is voter suppression. It disenfranchises minorities, the poor, the elderly. It is an onerous barrier to voting."

Onerous? In Pennsylvania a photo ID can be had free of charge. In Arizona it costs a paltry $12 and is good for 12 years. If you are 65 or older, or on SS disability, it is free.

Are our liberal pals exaggerating? Actually it is more like lying. It is the willful misuse of language to win at all costs. Linguistic hijacking.

Obama: One Cool Dude

But cool is all that remains.

The Voter ID Controversy Continues

It amazes me that new articles and columns in high-class venues appear almost daily concerning what really ought to be a non-issue. Of course, I blame the Left for this. By maintaining preternaturally absurd positions, they force sensible writers to waste time and energy opposing their nonsense. Here is how a 15 August NY Times editorial begins:

Judge Robert Simpson of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania seems to assume that legislators have a high-minded public purpose for the laws they pass. That’s why, on Wednesday morning, he refused to grant an injunction to halt a Republican-backed voter ID law that could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority state residents in November.

One thing you have to understand about leftists is that they regularly engage in semantic distortion: they will take a word that has an established meaning and misuse it for their ideological ends. 'Disenfranchise' is a case in point.

To disenfranchise is to deprive of a right, in particular, the right to vote. But only some people in a given geographical area have the right to vote. Felons and children do not have the right to vote, nor do non-citizens. You do not have the right to vote in a certain geographical area simply because you are a sentient being residing in that area. Otherwise, cats and dogs and children and felons and illegal aliens would have the right to vote. Now a requirement that one prove that one has the right to vote is not to be confused with a denial of the right to vote.

My right to vote is one thing, my ability to prove that I have the right another. If I cannot prove that I am who I claim to be on a given occasion, then I won't be able to exercise my right to vote on that occasion; but that is not to say that I have been disenfranchised. For I haven't be deprived of my right to vote; I have merely been prevented from exercising my right due to my inability to prove
my identity.

That's one point. The author of the NYT editorial begins by egregiously misusing 'disenfranchise.' But note also the cynicism betrayed in the opening sentence. Third, we are asked to believe the unbelievable, that "hundreds of thousands of poor and minority state residents" will be 'disenfranchised' come November. Hundreds of thousands? Prove it! In Pennsylvania, photo ID is free. So even the 'poor' can afford it. Our editorial writer continues:

He wrote in his ruling that requiring a government-issued photo ID card to vote “is a reasonable, nondiscriminatory, nonsevere burden when viewed in the broader context of the widespread use of photo ID in daily life,” as if voting were equivalent to buying a six-pack of beer or driving a car.

At this point I stopped reading. The writer is committing a grotesque straw man fallacy. No one claims that voting is "equivalent" — whatever that is supposed to mean – " to buying a six-pack of beer or driving a car." The point is that the photo ID requirement is a minimal one in that photo ID is necessary for all sorts of transactions in everyday life that ordinary people engage in. And again, in PA you can acquire this ID for free. Our idiot editorialist also seems not to realize this issue has nothing to do with driving a car. A photo ID is not the same as a driver's license. The latter is a species of the former as genus. You don't need to own a car, and you don't even need to have a driver's license.

Now if you want to read something intelligent on this issue, besides what I have written, I recommend this WSJ piece, and this article from Commentary.

Generation Screwed May Support Ryan

Gen-Xers (those born between 1965 and 1980) are the cohort sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials. Now they have one of their own in contention for high office. And Paul Ryan, 42, is no slacker. Romney's pick of the man for VP was a brilliant stroke and may gin up support for the Republican ticket as Kirsten Powers argues.

She quoted a word I had never seen before, 'athazagoraphobia':

Generation X chronicler Jeff Gordiner, has written that Gen-Xers suffer from “athazagoraphobia”—“an abnormal and persistent fear of being forgotten or ignored.” Except it’s not really a phobia; it’s been reality for a long time. Maybe that is about to change.

If the Dead and the Undocumented Voted Conservative . . .

. . . liberals would be screaming for voter ID.

Obama’s Assault on the Institutions of Civil Society

Obama showed his true colors quite unmistakably in his 'You didn't build that" speech. Yuval Steinitz has his number:

The president simply equates doing things together with doing things through government. He sees the citizen and the state, and nothing in between — and thus sees every political question as a choice between radical individualism and a federal program.

As I said before, it is a classic false alternative fallacy: either you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps or government helps you. This goes together with a straw man fallacy: Obama imputes to his opponents an absurd 'rugged individualism' that they do not espouse.

But most of life is lived somewhere between those two extremes, and American life in particular has given rise to unprecedented human flourishing because we have allowed the institutions that occupy the middle ground — the family, civil society, and the private economy — to thrive in relative freedom. Obama’s remarks in Virginia shed a bright light on his attitude toward that middle ground, and in that light a great deal of what his administration has done in this three and a half years suddenly grows clearer and more coherent, and even more disconcerting.

Disconcerting is right. It's an all-out, totalitarian assault on the institutions of civil society. The Left is totalitarian by its very nature and it can brook no competitors: not religion, not the family, not private charities and associations.

This intolerance of nonconformity is even more powerfully evident in the administration’s attitude toward the institutions of civil society, especially religious institutions involved in the crucial work of helping the needy and vulnerable. In a number of instances, but most notably in the controversy surrounding the Department of Health and Human Services rule requiring religious employers to provide free abortive and contraceptive drugs to their employees under Obamacare, the administration has shown an appalling contempt for the basic right of religious institutions to pursue their ends in accordance with their convictions.

It is important to recall just what the administration did in that instance. The HHS rule did not assert that people should have the freedom to use contraceptive or abortive drugs — which of course they do have in our country. It did not even say that the government facilitate people’s access to these drugs — which it does today and has done for decades. Rather, the rule required that the Catholic Church and other religious entities should facilitate people’s access to contraceptive and abortive drugs. It aimed to turn the institutions of civil society into active agents of the government’s ends, even in violation of their fundamental religious convictions.

The idea is to hollow out the space between the individual and the State, to clear it of the institutions of civil society that mediate between individual and state:

Indeed, the president and his administration don’t seem to have much use for that space at all. Even the family, which naturally stands between the individual and the community, is not essential. In May, the Obama campaign produced a Web slideshow called “The Life of Julia,” which follows a woman through the different stages of life and shows the many ways in which she benefits from public policies that the president advocates. It was an extraordinarily revealing work of propaganda, and what it revealed was just what the president showed us in Roanoke: a vision of society consisting entirely of the individual and the state. Julia’s life is the product of her individual choices enabled by public policies. She has an exceptional amount of direct contact with the federal government, yet we never meet her family. At the age of 31, we are told, “Julia decides to have a child” and “benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and free screenings under health care reform.” She later benefits from all manner of educational, economic, and social programs, and seems to require and depend upon no one but the president.

[. . .]

The Left’s disdain for civil society is thus driven above all not by a desire to empower the state without limit, but by a deeply held concern that the mediating institutions in society — emphatically including the family, the church, and private enterprise — are instruments of prejudice, selfishness, backwardness, and resistance to change, and that in order to establish our national life on more rational grounds, the government needs to weaken and counteract them.

The Right’s high regard for civil society, meanwhile, is driven above all not by a disdain for government but by a deeply held belief in the importance of our diverse and evolved societal forms, without which we could not hope to secure our liberty. Conservatives seek mechanisms and institutions to bring implicit social knowledge to bear on our troubles, while progressives seek the authority and power to bring explicit technical knowledge to bear on them.

[. . .]

To ignore what stands between the state and the citizen is to disregard the essence of American life. To clear away what stands between the state and the citizen is to extinguish the sources of American freedom. The president is right to insist that America works best when Americans work together, but government is just one of the many things we do together, and it is only rarely the most important of them.

One of the problems with Romney is that he has no clue as to what the battle is really about. He thinks solely in economic terms. Paul Ryan or somebody should force the affable milque-toast to study Steinitz's piece and then give him a test on it.

ButI'll give Mitt this: his pick of Ryan as running mate was courageous and intelligent.

Yes, Vote Fraud’s Real

There is no need to play the 'numbers game.' The photo ID requirement is a matter of principle.

Anyone with common sense ought to be able to appreciate that voting must be conducted in an orderly manner, a manner to inspire confidence in the citizenry, and that only citizens who have registered to vote and have satisfied the minimal requirements of age, etc., are to be allowed into the voting booth. Given the possibility of fraud, it is therefore necessary to verify the identities of those who present themselves at the polling place. To do this, voters must be required to present a government-issued photo ID card, a driver's license being only one example of such. It is a reasonable requirement and any reasonable person should be able to see it as one.

But if you want to play the 'numbers game' voter fraud does occur often enough to be a serious problem.

Voter ID Laws are Not Like a Poll Tax

Here we go again:

First, a voter restriction is like a poll tax when its authors use voting fraud as a pretext for legislation that has little to do with voting fraud.

Second, it is like a poll tax when it creates only a small nuisance to some voters, but for other groups it erects serious barriers to the ballot.

Third, it is like a poll tax when it has crude partisan advantage as its most immediate aim.

1. Presumably the issue concerns the requirement that voters produce government-issued photo ID at polling places. Voting fraud is obviously not a 'pretext' for such a requirement but a good reason to put such a requirement in place. The claim that photo ID legislation has little to do with voting fraud is ludicrous. The whole point of it is to prevent fraud.

2. It is just silly to claim that phtoto ID "erects a serious barrier to the ballot." If you don't have a driver's license, you can easily acquire photo ID from a DMV office for a nominal sum. You are going to need it anyway for all sorts of other purposes such as cashing checks. In the state of Arizona, the ID is free for those 65 and older and for those on Social Security disability. For others the fee is nominal: $12 for an ID valid for 12 years.

3. Those who support photo ID are aiming at "crude partisan advantage?" How is that supposed to work? Do non-Democrats get such an advantage when they stop voter fraud? Is the idea that it it par for the course that Dems should cheat, and so, when they are prevented from cheating, their opponents secure a"crude partisan advantage?"

What we have is crude psychological projection. Unable to own up to their own unsavory win-at-all-costs motivations, liberals impute to conservatives unsavory motives. "You want to disenfranchise blaxcks and Hispanics!" As if these minorities are so bereft of life skills that they lack, or cannot acquire, a simple photo ID. Note also the trademark liberal misuse of language.

To disenfranchise is to deprive of a right, in particular, the right to vote. But only some people have the right to vote. Felons and children do not have the right to vote, nor do non-citizens. You do not have the right to vote in a certain geographical area simply because you are a sentient being residing in that area. Otrherwise, my cats would have the right to vote. Now a requirement that one prove that one has the right to vote is not to be confused with a denial of the right to vote.

My right to vote is one thing, my ability to prove I have the right another. If I cannot prove that I am who I claim to be on a given occasion, then I won't be able to exercise my right to vote on that occasion; but that is not to say that I have been 'disefranchised.' For I haven't be deprived of my right to vote; I have merely been prevented from exercising my right due to my inability do prove my identity.

I am still looking for a decent argument against photo ID.

Invective, Philosophy, and Politics

A new reader (who may not remain a reader for long) wrote in to say that he enjoyed my philosophical entries but was "saddened" by the invective I employed in one of my political posts.

I would say that the use of invective is justifiable in polemical writing. Of course, it is out of place in strictly philosophical writing and discussion, but that is because philosophy is inquiry into the truth, not defense of what one antecedently takes to be the truth. When philosophy becomes polemical, it ceases to be philosophy. Philosophy as it is actually practiced, however, is often degenerate and falls short of this ideal. But the ideal is a genuine and realizable one. We know that it is realizable because we know of cases when it has been realized. By contrast, political discourse either cannot fail to be polemical or is normally polemical.

Let me then hazard the following stark formulation, one that admittedly requires more thought and may need qualification. When philosophy becomes polemical, it ceases to be philosophy. But when political discourse ceases to be polemical, it ceases to be political discourse.

A bold pronunciamento, not in its first limb, but in its second. The second limb is true if the Converse Clausewitz Principle is true: Politics is war conducted by other means. Whether the CCP is true is a tough nut that I won't bite into just yet. But it certainly seems to be true as a matter of fact. Whether it must be true is a further question.

Another possible support for the second limb is the thought that man, contrary to what Aristotle famously said, is not by nature zoon politikon, a political animal. No doubt man is by nature a social animal. But there is no necessity in rerum natura that there be a polis, a state. It is arguably not natural there be a state. The state is a necessary evil given our highly imperfect condition. We need it, but we would be better off without it, given its coercive nature, if we could get on without it. But we can't get on without it given our fallen nature. So it is a necessary evil: it's bad that we need it, but (instrumentally) good that we have it given that we need it.

Of course my bold (and bolded) statement needs qualification. Here is a counterexample to the second limb. Two people are discussing a political question. They agree with each other in the main and are merely reinforicing each other and refining the formulation of their common position. That is political discourse, but it is not polemical. So I need to make a distinction between 'wide' and 'narrow' political discourse. Work for later.

Now for a concrete example of an issue in which polemic and the use of invective is justified.

Can one reasonably maintain that the photo ID requirement at polling places 'disenfrachises' blacks and other minorities as hordes of liberals maintain? No, one cannot. To maintain such a thing is to remove oneself from the company of the reasonable. It is not enough to calmly present one's argument on a question like this. One must give them, but one must do more since it is not merely a theoretical question. It is a crucially important practical question and it is important that the correct view prevail. If our benighted opponents cannot see that they are wrong, if they are not persuaded by our careful arguments, then they must be countered in other ways. Mockery, derision, and the impugning of motives become appropriate weapons. If you don't have a logical leg to stand on, then it becomes legitimate for me to call into question your motives and to ascribe unsavory ones to you. For, though you lack reasons for your views, you have plenty of motives; and because the position you maintain is deleterious, your motives must be unsavory or outright evil, assuming you are not just plain stupid.

Companion post: The Enmity Potential of Thought and Philosophy as Blood Sport

Obama’s False Alternative

Obama apparently thinks that the only alternative to omni-intrusive, ever-expanding government is some sort of 'rugged individualism' according to which each individual pulls himself up by his own pony-tail in the manner of the celebrated Baron von Muenchhausen. Bullshit. False alternative. That he would push this false alternative is a good illustration of Obama's mendacity. There is a way to avoid the extremes: subsidiarity.

Photo ID: The ‘It Would Disproportionately Affect Hispanic Voters’ Argument

Here (emphasis added) we find:

In March, the Justice Department denied the Lone Star State the necessary clearance for this new law, arguing that it would disproportionately affect Hispanic voters. Texas officials appealed. To preserve the access of all citizens to the right to vote . . . the District Court should follow the Justice Department’s lead and strike down this highly suspect and unnecessary law.

What is interesting here is the role disproportionality plays in these leftist attempts at argument. Let's see if we can uncover the 'logic' of these arguments.

Suppose people of Italian extraction are disproportionately affected by anti-racketeering statutes. Would this be a good reason to oppose such laws? Obviously not. Why not? The reason is that the law targets the criminal behavior, not the ethnicity of the criminal. If it just so happens that people of Italian extraction are 'overrepresented' in the memberships of organized crime syndicates, then of course they will be 'disproportionately affected' by anti-racketeering laws. So what?

It is very easy to multiply examples. Who commits more rapes, men or women? You know the answer. Among men, in which age group will we find more rapists? Will there be more rapists in the 15-45 age group or in the 45-75 age group? You know the answer. Laws against rape will therefore disproportinately affect males aged 15-45. Would this be a good reason to oppose such laws? Obviously not. Why not? The reason is that the law targets the criminal behavior, not the age or sex of the criminal.

Suppose that drunk drivers are predominantly Irish. (Just suppose; I'm not saying it is true.) Then laws against drunk driving would disproportionatey affect them. Of course. But that would be no reason to oppose such laws. Is a law just only if it affects all groups equally or proportionately? Of course not.

Who is more likely to be a terrorist, a twenty-something male Egyptian Muslim or a sixty-something Mormon matron? Do you hesitate over this question? The answer is clear, and you know what it is. Are anti-terrorism laws therefore to be opposed on the ground that they disproportionately affect young Muslim males from middle eastern countries?

Should there be a quota system when it comes to rounding up terrorists? "You can apprehend only as many Muslim terrorists as Buddhist terrorists."

Suppose child molesters are 'overrepresented' among Catholic priests. Then laws against such molestation will disproportionarely affect them. But so what? It would be morally absurd to argue that such laws 'discriminate' against Catholic priests and should be struck down on the ground that Catholic priests are disproportionately inclined to engage in child molestation.

Now we know that illegal aliens in Southwest states such as Texas are predominantly, indeed overwhelmingly, of Hispanic extraction. So such aliens would be disproportionately affected by photo ID requirements. But this is surely no argument against photo ID. After all, they are not citizens and have no right to vote in the first place.

Now consider the Hispanic citizens of Texas. They have the right to vote. And no decent person wants either to prevent them from exercising their right or to make it more difficult for them to vote than for other groups to vote. Why would they be 'disproportionately affected' by a photo ID requirement?

Is it because Hispanics are less likely to have ID than members of other groups? Or less likely to have the minimal skills necessary to acquire such ID? It does, after all, take a tiny bit of effort. You have to get yourself down to the DMV and fork over a nominal sum.

I myself do not believe that Hispanics as a group are so bereft of life skills that they are incapable of acquiring photo ID. But that apparently is what Dems believe when they think that a perfectly reasonable requirement would 'disproportinately affect' them. What an insult to Hispanics!

So I ask once again: is there even one decent reason to oppose photo ID?

A Letter to Young Voters

I would quibble with parts of this piece by Dennis Prager, but it is worth reading. Excerpt:

Young people believe that when the government gives more money and benefits to more people it helps them. This is naïve. As you get older and wiser you realize that when people are given anything without having to earn it (unless they are physically or mentally utterly incapable of earning anything), they become ungrateful and lazy. They also become less happy. Every study shows that people who earn money are far happier than people who win many millions of dollars in a lottery. Happiness is earned, not given.

Here’s another: Young people are far more likely to believe that world peace is achieved when nations lay down their arms and talk through their differences. But this has never been the case. Of course, good nations stay peaceful when they talk to other good nations. Bad nations — that is, nations ruled by evil men — are never dissuaded from making war by talk. They are dissuaded only by good nations having more arms than they do. That is why the Marine Corps has done so much more for world peace than the Peace Corps.

If you want to vote Democrat, don’t do so because that is the party that cares more for the poor and the hungry. We older conservatives (and young ones, too) care just as much for the poor. But after living a life of seeing the naïve only make things worse for the poor, we are no longer seduced by caring rhetoric. We are seduced by policies based on the awesome American value of individual initiative combined with liberty to create and retain wealth. It’s now called “conservatism.”

And, finally, you should know this: The “idealists” that many of you find appealing are the ones leaving you with a national debt that will render it very difficult for you to attain the material quality of life that these people have had.

Will millenials be persuaded? Not likely.

Government Did Not Build Your Business

A very good Reason magazine article. The author, Ronald Bailey, explains a distinction between tangible and intangible wealth. Human, social, and institutional capital are forms of intangible wealth.

And while you are at Reason.com, read Sheldon Richman's article on the right to self-defense. It makes a number of obvious points that liberals seem incapable of understanding. Part of the problem, of course, is that liberals live in enclaves in which the truths Richman enunciates are simply not heard. Liberals hang too much with their own ilk. They need to get out more and 'expand their horizons.'

Conservatives are not 'sheltered' in the same way. There is no way a conservative or a libertarian can avoid liberals. Liberals dominate the mainstream media, the universities, the courts, the other branches of government, the entertainment industry, and many mainstream churches. Conservatives and libertarians cannot help but confront liberal ideas.

But what happens when conservative and libertarian ideas are presented to the public via an outlet such as Fox News Network? Liberals scream their pointy heads off in protest. That is clear proof that they are not 'liberal' in any classical sense. They would be better described as left-wing fascists.

How can anybody object to a John Stossel simply presenting his ideas and his arguments? Most of what he says makes good sense. I disagree with his open borders policy and his ideas about drug legalization. He and libertarians generally are dead wrong on those two points. But I don't want to shut him down — or up. I want to hear his point of view.

One night Stossel hosted a discussion between Pat Buchanan and Reason magazine's Nick Gillespie. Paleo-conservatism met libertarianism. Great discussion. Are you going to find something like that on MSNBC? They dumped Buchanan. Leftist scumbaggery!

Gun Laws and the Supposed ‘Politicization’ of the Aurora Massacre

Last year, when Republicans were being accused of 'politicizing' the national debt crisis I made the point that one cannot politicize that which is inherently political:

The Republicans were accused of 'politicizing' the debt crisis. But how can you politicize what is inherently political? The debt in question is the debt of the federal government. Since a government is a political entity, questions concerning federal debts are political questions. As inherently political, such questions cannot be politicized.

If to hypostatize is to illicitly treat as a substance that which is not a substance, to politicize is to illictly treat as political what is not political. Since governmental debt questions are 'already' political, they cannot be politicized.

Then I was criticizing Democrats and liberals. But now I find that some Republicans and conservatives are making the same mistake. They are accusing liberals of politicizing the Aurora massacre. Example here.

But as I said, you cannot politicize what is already political. Now guns are not political entities, but gun laws are, whether federal, state, or local. Whether there should be gun laws at all, and what their content should be are political questions.

Now we all agree that we have to have laws regulating the manufacture, sale, transporting, and use of firearms. So we all agree that we have to have 'gun control.' Gun control is not what I display or fail to display at the shooting range, but is a phrase that refers to gun control laws. Since we all want gun control, we all want (enforceable and enforced) gun control laws, even the dreaded NRA.

It is a liberal lie to say that conservatives are against gun control. It is similar to the liberal lie that conservatives are anti-government. If I am for limited government, then I am for government, whence it follows that I am not against government. (Anarchists are anti-government, but no conservative, and few libertarians, are against government.) Likewise, if I am for laws that prevent the sale of guns to felons, and for other such laws, then I am not against gun control.

By the way, the preternaturally obtuse Bill Moyers got a nice and well-deserved slap-down from Bill O'Reilly the other night for his idiotic remarks about the NRA. Bill Moyers is a one-man argument for the federal defunding of PBS and its affiliates such as NPR. (See National Public Radio Needs Your Support!) Listen to the whole of O'Reilly's speech. He is a moderate on gun control, too moderate perhaps. He is moderate on many issues. Is that why the Left can't stand him?

But I digress. We all agree that we need enforceable and enforced gun control laws. But we don't all agree about the content of these laws. Now that is a political question the answering of which presupposes a political theory, a theory of man in his relation to the state. The gun debate is political from the ground up. It is silly so speak of 'politicizing' it.

Here is what I say. I have a right to life, a right to defend my life, and a right to appropriate means of self-defense. No government has the right to interfere with these rights. This is nonnegotiable. If you disagree, I have to put you down as morally and intellecually obtuse, as beyond the pale of rational debate. I will do my best to make sure that you and your ilk are defeated politically.

What's an appropriate means of self-defense? The tactical shotgun is the most effective tool of home defense. Holmes, the Aurora shooter, had one of those. It looked like a Remington 1070. He misused it for evil ends. That is chargeable to his moral and legal account, not to the gun's. Guns lack such 'accounts.' No gun is a free agent. No gun ever lilled anybody. Killing is an action (action-type); actions are actions of agents. Pay attention, liberals.

There will always be massacres and murders regardless of the stringency of gun laws. Norway.

Can anything be done? Yes. Enforce existing gun laws. Execute miscreants such as Holmes, after a fair trial, in a speedy manner. There could a be a judicial fast-track to expedite the execution of such people within a year, at most. Put limits on the quantities and types of vile and soul-destroying rubbish that HollyWeird liberals dish out. Stop attacking religion, that most excellent vehicle for the delivery of moral teachings. If Holmes had internalized the Ten Commandments as a boy, could he have done what he did? Do you think he would have been less likely to do what he did?

But liberals are morally and intellectually obtuse. So they will fight against all reasonable proposals. A liberal would far rather violate the rights of decent citizens than mete out justice to vicious criminals.