Category: Politics

Photo ID: Voter Suppression or Liberal Projection?

If it is racist to demand photo ID at polling places, what does that say about how liberals view black people? They must view you black folk as utterly incompetent nonentities incapable of taking part in modern life, as pimps, whores, drug addicts, carjackers, hoodie-wearing thugs, smash & grab artists, troglodytes, total losers  . . . .  Time to rise up and move off the liberal plantation.

The Left-leaning Los Angeles Times ran a  piece the other day with the risible subheading: "The evidence is overwhelming that recent photo ID laws are politically motivated."  This is a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black.  It is also a good example of psychological projection.  After all, it is liberals and leftists whose motivations are purely political.  Their sole motivation for opposing photo ID laws is to win at all costs and by any means including voter fraud.  I say this because they do not have one single cogent argument against such laws. Liberals project  unsavory motivations into their opponents.  This defense mechanism keeps them from having to acknowledge that is they who have unsavory motivations.

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.  Is this why our liberal pals oppose it?  Liberals are not famous for their common sense.

Too many liberals, however, see these common-sense requirements as acts of voter suppression, as witness this astonishing outburst from Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan:

In November, five million eligible voters will find it harder to exercise their
rights in America — 150 voter suppression laws have been introduced in 30 state
legislatures across the country.

The most common tactics: requiring photo ID, restricting registration drives,
limiting early voting and imposing onerous residency requirements. Who do these
laws most directly affect? The poor, the elderly, minorities and the young. And
how do those groups typically vote? Democratic.

Let's consider photo ID.  For Granholm, requiring such ID is a form of voter suppression.  How's that for hyperbole?  Does she call it bank withdrawal suppression when check cashers are required to produce ID?  The other day I withdrew a sum of money from a checking account in excess of what is obtainable from an ATM machine.  I was asked to show my driver's license.  Was that an infringement of my right to access my own funds?  Of course not.  The demand was eminently reasonable even though I am known at the bank in question.  Similarly with the photo ID requirement at the polling place.  Examples like this can be multiplied indefinitely. 

Some liberals say that voter fraud is rare.  Maybe, maybe not.  In any case, irrelevant.  There is a principle at stake.  Besides, how many people lack ID?  Without ID one simply cannot function in society.  To exploit and adapt a slogan of the Harvard logician, Willard Quine, "No [social] entity without [social] identity."  You're a nonentity without  ID.  So when a liberal says that voter fraud is rare, reply, "So is lack of ID.  Since almost everyone has it, almost no one is excluded from voting by the ID requirement."

Since liberals don't have even one cogent argument against photo ID, we are justified in psychologizing their opposition to common-sense requirements.  Their opposition is rooted in a desire to win by any means, including fraud.  As lefties, they believe the end justifies the means.  They see themselves as the noble standard-bearers of equality against their disgusting, evil, SIXHRB opponents.  (SIXHRB: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted. HT: Dennis Prager.)

By the way, Governor Granholm is now on the faculty at University of California, Berkeley.  Surprise!

Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good."

Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain.  And he may stay in office in part because of disgusted conservatives who fail to heed Voltaire's principle.

Politics is a practical business. It is always about the lesser of evils, except when it is about the least of evils. It is not about being ideologically pure. It is about accomplishing something in a concrete situation in which holding out for the best is tantamount to acquiescing in the bad. Political choices are forced options in roughly William James' sense: he who abstains chooses willy-nilly. Not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.

Don't let the best or the better become the enemy of the good.  Try to achieve something achievable.  Don't pine after the unattainable.  Impossible dreams are for liberals, not reality-anchored conservatives.  It did not surprise me when I learned that Ted Kennedy's favorite song was The Impossible Dream.  Figures!

Related post: Can What is Impossible to Achieve be an Ideal for us? 

On Calling Obama a Socialist

It is a tactical mistake for libertarians and conservatives to label Obama a socialist. For what will happen, has happened: liberals will revert to a strict definition and point out that Obama is not a socialist by this strict definition. Robert Heilbroner defines socialism in terms of "a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production." To my knowledge, Obama has never advocated such a thing. So when the libertarian or conservative accuses Obama of socialism he lets himself in for a fruitless and wholly unnecessary verbal dispute from which he will emerge the loser.

It is enough to point out that the policies of Obama and the Democrat Party lead us toward bigger government and away from self-reliance, individual responsibility, individual liberty, and sound fiscal policy.  If you want to use the 'S' word, you can say that Obama & Co. are pushing us in the direction of socialism.  But calling him a socialist is tactically inadvisable.  Never forget that the whole point is to remove him and his gang from positions of power.  To achieve that goal we need to persuade large numbers of fence-sitters that  that he is leading us down the wrong path.  That persuasion is less likely to happen if we come across as extremists who misuse language.

It is even worse to label Obama a 'communist.' Every communist is a socialist, but not every socialist is a communist. If our president is not a socialist, then a fortiori he is not a communist. It is intellectually irresponsible to take a word that has a definite meaning and turn it into a semantic bludgeon. That's the sort of thing we expect from leftists, as witness their favorite 'F' word, 'fascist,' a word they apply as indiscriminately and irresponsibly as 'racist.'

Liberals and leftists love to sling the SIXHRB (sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted) epithets to pre-empt thought and prevent debate.  We should avoid similar behavior.

Milos Forman has an op-ed piece in the NYT entitled Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close.  Forman takes umbrage at the loose way 'socialism' is used by some conservatives:

Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.

Forman goes on to recount a couple of truly horrifying tales about what it was like living under the jackboot of communism in Czechoslovakia.

Although Forman is right to distinguish the brutal forms of socialism from the supposedly benign forms, he seems willy-nilly to concede that Obamacare is a socialist policy.  He is also quite naive if he thinks that the seeds of jackboot socilaism are not already present, in undeveloped form, in 'benign' socialism.  He seems not to understand that power corrupts people and that one can get to a truly awful destination by tiny steps each of which seems reasonable and benign.

The pious platitudes with which Forman ends his piece are risible.

Barack Obama, the PoMo Prez

No one is more skillful than Victor Davis Hanson when it comes to exposing His Mendacity, the empty suit currently occupying the White House.  Here is an excerpt from a recent column:

Illegal, Legal, Neither, or Both?

I think the current status of immigration law goes something like this. It is fine for a municipality or state to contravene immigration law by declaring a region a “sanctuary,” where federal law cannot be enforced. But it is illegal for a state to enforce immigration statutes when the federal government will not. Arizona was sued for trying to deport illegal aliens; so California is considering ways to grant them amnesty. If an illegal alien graduates from high school, serves in the military, or breaks no law, he can be exempt from deportation; but if he does not graduate, does not serve, or breaks a law, there is no expectation that he will now suddenly be deported at the time those eligible for amnesty will not be. The president told Latino activists he wanted to, but could not, issue exemptions by fiat, but then did exactly that a bit later as the campaign heated up.  Eric Holder both claimed the Arizona law encouraged profiling and admitted he had never read it. Obama called for an end to vilification, and then begged Latinos to “punish our enemies,” in the manner he once asked supporters to “get in their face.”

Mandate/Tax/Penalty?

The new federal takeover of health care requires a mandate, a tax, or a penalty, but the architects of the plan cannot agree on which — not a surprising postmodern turn when Justice Roberts reportedly wrote much of both the majority-confirming and the minority-dissenting opinions. It is unpopular now, but supposedly won’t be when it is enacted (or read for the first time) — and that is why over 2,000 insiders obtained exemption from such popular legislation. The 2,400 pages of ObamaCare were to lower our premiums by $2,500 a family, but they have already risen by almost 10% on average. Barack Obama ran against Hillary Clinton for her advocacy of a mandate, a position he ridiculed as both unfair and unworkable — before asserting just the opposite when he adopted her position as his own. One cannot be rejected for insurance for a preexisting illness, and therefore need not purchase insurance (preferring instead to pay the mandate / tax /penalty) until he is actually in extremis and in need of costly care — sort of like buying car insurance the day after you were blindsided, or life insurance on the day you were diagnosed with leukemia.

Obama’s Victory Speech Decoded

I am a conservative, not a libertarian.  This puts me at odds with John Stossel on a couple of important issues. But here he is spot on.

With libertarians there is common ground; with liberals increasingly little as they become ever more extreme, meandering ever deeper into the wasteland of hard leftism.

Garry Wills on What it Means to Vote for a Republican

Excerpt:

To vote for a Republican means, now, to vote for a plutocracy that depends for its support on anti-government forces like the tea party, Southern racists, religious fanatics, and war investors in the military-industrial complex. It does no good to say that “Romney is a good man, not a racist.” That may be true, but he needs a racist South as part of his essential support. And the price they will demand of him comes down to things like Supreme Court appointments. (The Republicans have been more realistic than the Democrats in seeing that presidential elections are really for control of the courts.)

When dealing with a delusional leftist such as Wills should one attempt to reason with him or resort to mockery and derision?  Probably both.  But at the moment I am not in a derisive mood.  I'll content myself with a couple of obvious points, the obviousness of which does not preclude the necessity to repeat them often.

1. Leftists typically refer to their opponents as 'anti-government.'  But surely Mr. Wills can understand that if one is for limited government, then one is for government.  Since Wills undoubtedly understands this, he lies when he characterizes the tea party as anti-government.  By lying he announces in effect that his intentions are purely polemical and that he is out to win at all costs, like a good leftist, who will doing anything to win: the end justifies the means.

Wills cannot possibly not understand that the debate is not about government vs. no government, but about the size, scope, and reach of government.  He knows this; he distorts the issue nonetheless because his is the mendacity endemic on the Left.

2.  And of course, good leftist that he is, Wills plays the race card.  He speaks of the "racist South."  Now there are plenty of rednecks down there and some of them are racists. But what you have to understand about leftists is that they are virtuosos of semantic inflation: 'racist' in their mouths means the same as 'conservative.'  Actually, it is even worse than this: 'racist' for a leftist doesn't have even this fixed meaning: it is an all-purpose semantic bludgeon the meaning of which expands or contracts like an accordion depending on the ideological needs of the moment.  Label your opponents racists to avoid confronting their ideas.  That's their shabby tactic.

The Obama Administration’s Contempt for the Rule of Law

We are living in very dangerous times.  You need to inform yourself.

Krauthammer: Obama Intent on Not Enforcing Immigration Law

Charles Krauthammer, Obama's Naked Lawlessness

Thomas Lifson, Rule of Law Now an Election Issue

Diana West, Why Arizona Matters.  Excerpt:

I find it difficult to regard the Supreme Court decision on Arizona immigration law as just another controversial or disappointing highest court decision. There is something almost post-apocalyptic  and certainly pre-totalitarian when, to invoke Justice Scalia's dissent, the Court has ruled that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing it. Yes, as Scalia put it, it "boggles the mind." It also conjures up truly alarming comparisons with "justice" as meted out by kangaroo courts, show trials and other horrors of totalitarian dictatorships.

Did we defeat the Soviet empire so that we could become a totalitarian state like it?

SCOTUS Rules Against SEIU

Not all news is bad.

I have nothing against unions as such.  My father was a rank-and-file member, all his working life, of the Boilermakers' Union.  SEIU, however, is a public-sector union, a horse of a different color.  So what's the problem with public-sector unions?  Briefly, this.

You pay taxes.  Some of your tax dollars go to pay the salaries of so-called 'civil servants.'  Some of these 'civil servants' belong to unions that automatically deduct union dues from their salaries and funnel this cash to the union bosses and lobbyists who pressure Democrat Party legislators to do their bidding.  Legislators, being human, love their power and perquisities, and do whatever they can to hold onto them.  To stay in power they need votes which they get from the union members who vote as a block for the Dems to get as many goodies as they can.

So we the people are forced via taxation to support the fiscally irresponsible and unsustainable Democrat Big Government agenda. Would you say that that smacks of corruption?

Suppose you object that that the Dems are not fiscally irresponsible.  Well, then you are wrong, but you have a right to your opinion.  That's not the issue, however.  The issue is whether it is legitimate to force people to support political parties whose ideas they oppose.

Regulating Political Speech

A good article by John Stossel.  Punch line: 

It is shameful that leftists let their hatred of corporations lead them to throw free speech under the bus. There is a smarter way to get corporate money out of politics: Shrink the state. If government has fewer favors to sell, citizens will spend less money trying to win them.

Or as one of my aphorisms has it: The bigger the government, the more to fight over!

Jonathan Haidt on Why Working-Class People Vote Conservative

When a working-class person votes conservative, isn't he voting against his economic interests?  That's what many lefties think and it puzzles them.  Why would the workers do such a thing?  This gives rise to the duping hypothesis: "the Republican party dupes people into voting against their economic interests by triggering outrage on cultural issues."

Jonathan Haidt demolishes the hypothesis.

According to Haidt, conservatives have a broader "moral palate" than liberals.  Liberals have only three concerns to the conservative's six (emphasis added):

. . . we have identified six moral concerns as the best candidates for being the innate "taste buds" of the moral sense: care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Across many kinds of surveys, in the UK as well as in the USA, we find that people who self-identify as being on the left score higher on questions about care/harm. [. . .]

But on matters relating to group loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity (treating things as sacred and untouchable, not only in the context of religion), it sometimes seems that liberals lack the moral taste buds, or at least, their moral "cuisine" makes less use of them. [. . .]

In America, it is these three moral foundations that underlie most of the "cultural" issues that, according to duping theorists, are used to distract voters from their self-interest. But are voters really voting against their self-interest when they vote for candidates who share their values? Loyalty, respect for authority and some degree of sanctification create a more binding social order that places some limits on individualism and egoism. [. . .]

Despite being in the wake of a financial crisis that – if the duping theorists were correct – should have buried the cultural issues and pulled most voters to the left, we are finding in America and many European nations a stronger shift to the right. When people fear the collapse of their society, they want order and national greatness, not a more nurturing government.

Even on the two moral taste buds that both sides claim – fairness and liberty – the right can often outcook the left. The left typically thinks of equality as being central to fairness, and leftists are extremely sensitive about gross inequalities of outcome – particularly when they correspond along racial or ethnic lines. But the broader meaning of fairness is really proportionality – are people getting rewarded in proportion to the work they put into a common project? Equality of outcomes is only seen as fair by most people in the special case in which everyone has made equal contributions. [. . .]

Similarly for liberty. Americans and Britons all love liberty, yet when liberty and care conflict, the left is more likely to choose care. This is the crux of the US's monumental battle over Obama's healthcare plan. Can the federal government compel some people to buy a product (health insurance) in order to make a plan work that extends care to 30 million other people? The derogatory term "nanny state" is rarely used against the right (pastygate being perhaps an exception). Conservatives are more cautious about infringing on individual liberties (eg of gun owners in the US and small businessmen) in order to protect vulnerable populations (such as children, animals and immigrants).

In sum, the left has a tendency to place caring for the weak, sick and vulnerable above all other moral concerns. It is admirable and necessary that some political party stands up for victims of injustice, racism or bad luck. But in focusing so much on the needy, the left often fails to address – and sometimes violates – other moral needs, hopes and concerns. When working-class people vote conservative, as most do in the US, they are not voting against their self-interest; they are voting for their moral interest. They are voting for the party that serves to them a more satisfying moral cuisine. The left in the UK and USA should think hard about their recipe for success in the 21st century.

Voter Identification and Voter Suppression

Voter ID

The controversy over voter ID is a fascinating  one because it highlights the deep divide between contemporary conservatives and contemporary liberals.  That this non-issue is debated at all shows that the Left is bereft of common sense.

Anyone with common sense ought to be able to appreciate that voting must be conducted in an orderly manner, 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.

Too many liberals, however, see these common-sense requirements as acts of voter suppression, as witness this astonishing outburst from Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan:

In November, five million eligible voters will find it harder to exercise their rights in America — 150 voter suppression laws have been introduced in 30 state legislatures across the country.

The most common tactics: requiring photo ID, restricting registration drives, limiting early voting and imposing onerous residency requirements. Who do these laws most directly affect? The poor, the elderly, minorities and the young. And how do those groups typically vote? Democratic.

Let's consider photo ID.  For Granholm, requiring such ID is a form of voter suppression.  How's that for hyperbole?  Does she call it bank withdrawal suppression when check cashers are required to produce ID?  The other day I withdrew a sum of money from a checking account in excess of what is obtainable from an ATM machine.  I was asked to show my driver's license.  Was that an infringement of my right to access my own funds?  Of course not.  The demand was eminently reasonable even though I am known at the bank in question.  Similarly with the photo ID requirement at the polling place.  Examples like this can be multiplied indefinitely.  See the above graphic.

Some liberals say that voter fraud is rare.  Maybe, maybe not.  In any case, irrelevant.  There is a principle at stake.  Besides, how many people lack ID?  Without ID one simply cannot function in society.  To exploit and adapt a slogan of the Harvard logician, Willard Quine, "No [social] entity without [social] identity."  You're a nonentity without  ID.  So when a liberal says that voter fraud is rare, reply, "So is lack of ID.  Since almost everyone has it, almost no one is excluded from voting by the ID requirement."

Since liberals don't have even one cogent argument against photo ID, we are justified in psychologizing their opposition to common-sense requirements.  Their opposition is rooted in a desire to win by any means, including fraud.  As lefties, they believe the end justifies the means.  They see themselves as the noble standard-bearers of equality against their disgusting, evil, SIXHRB opponents.  (SIXHRB: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted. HT: Dennis Prager.)

By the way, Governor Granholm is now on the faculty at University of California, Berkeley.  Surprise! 

Companion post:  I Was Forced to Show My Papers!

Politics: Would That I Could Avoid It

Using 'quietist' in a broad sense as opposed to the Molinos-Fenelon-Guyon sense, I would describe myself as a quietist rather than as an activist. The point of life is not action, but contemplation, not doing, but thinking. (I mean 'thinking' in a very broad sense that embraces all forms of intentionality as well as meditative non-thinking.)  The vita activa is of course necessary (for some all of the time, and for people like me some of the time), but it is necessary as a means only. Its whole purpose is to subserve the vita contemplativa. To make of action an end in itself is absurd, and demonstrably so, though I will spare you the demonstration. If you are assiduous you can dig it out of Aristotle, Aquinas and Josef Pieper.  I recommend his Leisure: The Basis of Culture.

So the dominant note of my personality is quietism in the sense just sketched. The Big Questions turn my crank, not this foreground rubbish about abortion, illegal immigration, social security, misuse of eminent domain, leftist race-baiting, etc. It would be nice to be able to let the world and its violent nonsense go to hell while cultivating my garden in peace.

Unfortunately, my garden and stoa are in the world and exposed to its threats. So politics, which has too little to do with truth and too much to do with power, cannot be ignored. This world is not ultimately real, but it is no illusion either, pace some sophists of the New Age, and so some battling within it, ideological or otherwise, cannot be  avoided.  Besides, the issues of the day all have roots in the Big Questions.  So an assiduous and deep-going application to the issues of the day will lead one to the Big Questions.  An excellent example is abortion.