Politics – Page 52 – Maverick Philosopher

The Incompatibility of a Market Economy and a Socialist Welfare State

Janet Daly of The Telegraph has written a penetrating article. Excerpts (emphasis added)

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.

[. . .]

Mitt Romney had been hinting, in an oblique, undeveloped way, at this line of argument as he moved tentatively toward finding a real message. Then he took the startling step of appointing Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, and the earth moved. If Romney was the embodiment of the spirit of a free market, Ryan was its prophet. His speech at the convention was so dangerous to the Obama
Democrats, with their aspirations toward European-style democratic socialism, that they unleashed their “fact checkers” to find mistakes (“lies”) in it. (Remember the old Yes Minister joke: “You can always accuse them of errors of detail, sir. There are always some errors of detail”.) When Romney and Ryan offer their arguments to the American people, they are, of course, at an advantage over almost any British or European politician. Contrary to what many know-nothing British observers seem to think, the message coming out of Tampa was not Tea Party extremism. It was just a reassertion of the basic values of American political culture: self-determination, individual aspiration and genuine community, as opposed to belief in the state as the fount of all social
virtue.

[. . .]

So it would be deeply misleading to imply that this campaign will be a contest between what Britain likes to call “progressive” politics and some atavistic longing for a return to frontier America where everybody made a success of his own life with no help from anybody but his kith and kin. In the midst of the impassioned and often nasty debate about the future of health care, in which Ryan was depicted as a granny-killer, there has been some serious Republican thinking about the universal provision of medical care for pensioners (or “seniors” as they are called in the US). Because, you see, the debate over there has gone way beyond welfare reform: the need to restrict benefit dependency among the underclass is an argument that has been won. What is at issue now is much more politically contentious: universal entitlements such as comprehensive Medicare and social security are known to be unaffordable in their present form. Ryan, the radical economic thinker, suggests a solution for Medicare in the form of a voucher system. Patients could choose from competing health providers, with a ceiling on the cost of procedures and treatments, instead of simply being given blanket no-choice care. Thus, the government would get better value for money, and individuals would have more say in their own treatment. Now why doesn’t anybody here think of applying that mechanism to the NHS? Oh, yes, some people have – but nobody in power will listen to them.

Clint Eastwood Speaks Truth to Power at the RNC

There were some fabulous but conventional speeches at the Republican National Convention. The best were by Condoleeza Rice, Paul Ryan, and Marco Rubio. But the performance that may prove to be the most effective in securing votes, not to mention rankling liberals, was that of Clint Eastwood.

Here is this aging superstar who introduces himself self-deprecatingly as a "movie tradesman" with hair slightly out of place sporting what the late Paul Fussell referred to in his hilarious 1983 Class as a "prole gap," a class indicator often displayed by working class types on the rare and uncomfortable occasions when they don a suit. (“Here, the collar of the jacket separates itself from the collar of the shirt and backs off and up an inch or so: the effect is that of a man coming apart.") Eastwood looked like he had blown in from a session with cronies at a bar and grill.

He then launches into a 'conversation' with a chair whose absent occupant is none other than Barack Obama. The dialogue is rambling and in places incoherent, but funny as hell. Here it is in full, for your enjoyment.

An actor in an ill-fitting suit addresses an empty suit, a man as vacant as the chair he does not occupy.

The money quote and standing ovation come at 8:54: "You, we, own this country." Here, in the guise of a regular guy, Eastwood speaks truth to power, to use that darling phrase of leftists, a phrase they (absurdly) continue to deploy even when they possess power. Eastwood continued with, "Politicians are employees of ours" and "When somebody does not do the job, we've got to let them go."

Was the person who shouted out "Make my day!" a plant? Plant or not, the Eastwood performance ended on an appropriate "Dirty Harry" note. Dirty Harry, after all, cut through bullshit and did not suffer punks gladly.

The ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Speech Revisited: Wieseltier Says Romney and Ryan are Lying

In His Grief and Ours: Paul Ryan's Nasty Ideal of Self-Reliance, Leon Wieseltier taxes Ryan and Mitt Romney with a simple lie (emphasis added):

It is no wonder that Ryan, and of course Romney, set out immediately to distort the president’s “you didn’t build that speech” in Roanoke, because in complicating the causes of economic achievement, and in giving a more correct picture of the conditions of entrepreneurial activity, Obama punctured the radical individualist mythology, the wild self-worship, at the heart of the conservative idea of capitalism. An honest reading of the speech shows that Romney and Ryan and their apologists are simply lying about it. The businessman builds his business, but he does not build the bridge without which he could not build his business. That is all. Is it everything? Surely it takes nothing away from the businessman, who retains his reason for his pride in his business. But it is not capitalist pride that Romney and Ryan are defending, it is capitalist pridefulness.

Here is the key passage from Obama's speech (emphasis added):

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

What is the antecedent of the pronoun 'that' in the fifth sentence? The general rule, one admitting of exceptions, is that the antecedent of a pronoun is the noun or noun phrase immediately preceding it in the context in question. By that rule 'business' is the antecedent of 'that' and Obama is saying that business owners did not build their businesses. But since the rule allows exceptions, the context permits a charitable reading: 'If you've got a business, you didn't build the roads and bridges and other infrastructuire without which your business would have been impossible.'

So there are two readings of Obama's words. Both are permitted by the words themselves, but one is uncharitable and the other charitable. On the first what he is saying is plainly false: no business person built his business. On the second, what he is saying is trivially true and disputed by no one, namely, that no business could be built without various infrastructure already being in place.

On either reading, there is a serious problem for Obama and his apologists. Either Obama is is saying something that everyone, including Obama, knows is false, in which case he is lying, or he is saying something that goes without saying, something disputed by no one. On the second reading Obama is commiting a straw man fallacy: he is portraying his opponents as holding a position that none of them holds.

So if we are going to be charitable, then we ought to tax the president with a straw man fallacy. But there is worse to come. Behind the latter fallacy is a fallacy of false alternative. Obama assumes, without justification, that if you didn't build the infrastructure without which your business could not exist, then government built it. Or, to put it in the form of a disjunction: Either you as an individual built the the roads and bridges and tools or government built them for you. But that is a false alternative. Not everything that arises collectively is brought about by the government. Obama confuses government with society. Only some of what we achieve collectively is achieved by government agency.

Uncharitably read, Obama is lying. Charitably read, his claim is doubly fallacious and doubly false. It is false that conservatives maintain a rugged individualism according to which each of us creates himself ex nihilo. And it is false that what is achieved collectively is achieved by government agency.

Now did Romney and Ryan lie about Obama's message? No. They interpreted his words in a way that the English language permits. Their interpretation, of course, is uncharitable in the extreme. After all, no one really believes that business people pull themselves up out of nothing by their own bootstraps.

Is Wieseltier lying about Romney and Ryan? No, he is is just being stupid by failing to make an elementary distinction between sentence meaning and speaker's meaning.

Obama's gaffe will be and ought to be exploited to the hilt by the Republicans. Politics is not dispassionate inquiry but war conducted by other means.

Obama must be defeated. Four more years of his collectivism may harm the country irreparably.

I Was Forced to Show My Papers!

Voting this morning in the AZ state primary I was put in mind of an old post from a couple of years ago that bears reposting and editing:

Things are really getting bad here in the fascist state of Arizona. Why just this morning I was forced to show ID when I went to vote. I strolled into the polling place looking a fright after several hours of hiking. I introduced myself as 'King Blog' but that cut no ice with the old ladies who 'manned' the place. They asked to see my driver's license! What chutzpah! What bigotry! A bunch of damned Nazis, if you want my opinion. What if I forgot it, or never had one? Then the Nazi bastards would have disenfranchised me! The very act of requesting ID is an act of

disenfrachisement and intimidation. Besides, it prevents me from voting twice, which I have a right to do.

I should have adapted a line from B. Traven's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Papers? I don't need no stinkin' papers! I'm a human being. You just hate me because I smell like I spent the night under a bridge. I have the right to do whatever I want, wherever I want, and vote wherever I want and as many times as I want.
You Anglo bastards are raaacists because my skin isn't lily-white like yours and because my name ends in a vowel.

I'm gettin' the hell out of this rattlesnake-infested inferno of gun-totin' yahoos, rednecked racists, and xenophobic immigrant-bashers. I'm going where a man can be free. I'm headed for Castro's island paradise. "Live free or die," as I always say.

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.