Category: Politics

The 2012 Election Circus

For commentary on the passing scene, Victor Davis Hanson is hard to beat.  Here is his latest. Bill Keezer deserves thanks for keeping me apprised of what flows from Hanson's pen.  Hanson on Ron Paul:

For someone so savvy about the nature of the disaffected, why did Dr. Paul believe that in the South he could go on rants about U.S. foreign policy that centered around American culpability? Of course, South Carolinians would be receptive to arguments that U.S. expense abroad earned only ingratitude or was counter-productive; but when Paul suggests that we earned hostility on 9/11 by our foreign policy, did he not expect to be widely repudiated? (e.g., So the country that saved Muslims in Kuwait, fed them in Somalia, helped them against the Russians, and bombed a European Christian country to keep them alive in Bosnia and Kosovo had a worse record on Islam than China and Russia, who were not attacked on 9/11?)

Paul has an eerie ability to win over almost anyone on matters of debt and financial insolvency, and lose them in a nano-second when he turns to foreign policy, where he loses clarity and conflates American gullibility with American culpability. A conservative might think it is unwise right now to attack Iran, but he does not wish to be told to look at the situation through the creepy Iranian regime’s eyes.

Hanson on Obama:

What a strange fellow: damning the 1% only to hire three-in-a-row multimillionaire “fat-cat” ex-Wall-streeters as his chiefs-of-staff, while he lives a life indistinguishable from those he caricatures. Obama brags of killing bin Laden, without the slightest concession that he employed protocols to do it that he once smeared, or that he got the troops home for Christmas, without a peep that he followed the Bush-Petraeus plan and not his own that once called for complete flight by March 2008. Poor conservatives: should they praise him for get-real flip-flops or damn him for his hypocrisy and the damage he once did as a critic of what kept us safe? He is a figure right out Aristophanes, a polypgramon scoundrel, a demagogic genius, who can bomb Libya without congressional authority, claim it was not military action — and all the while keep the Michael Moore left silent if not proud of their guy’s duplicity, while begging the right to dare argue that Libya is not better off without the nightmare of Gaddafi.

The man's brilliant and penetrating. (Those are distinct attributes. And of ocurse I'm talking about Hanson.) 

Ron Paul and Libertarian Extremism

Ron Paul made a strong showing in Iowa last night despite his coming in third behind Santorum (second) and Romney (first).  But there is no way that Paul will receive the Republican nomination. His irresponsible foreign policy positions alone disqualify him.  You may disagree with that, but most agree with me, and that includes the better pundits such as Krauthammer.  So Paul's electability is zero.  It is too bad because Paul and libertarians generally have many good ideas which serve as correctives to the socialist drift of the country and can help us move back in the right direction towards limited government, self-reliance, and individual responsibility.  But libertarians cannot seem to control their tendency towards extremism.  This is why the Libertarian Party will always be a losertarian party.  Paul had the good sense to join the GOP, but he hasn't had the good sense to rein in the extremism that seems bred-in-the-bone with libertarians.

Paul is right that the the U.S.  is overextended abroad, but he can't seem to make the point in a moderate and nuanced way.  He has to say, foolishly and irresponsibly, that Iran is no threat.  And so he comes across as a crazy old man who cannot be trusted with the power of the presidency.  His 19th century isolationism was already outmoded in the 19th century.

The extremism of libertarians is connected with their being doctrinaire.  It is good to be principled but bad to be doctrinaire.  It requires the subtlety of the conservative mind to understand the difference and the dialectic between the two, a subtlety that is often lost on the adolescent mind of the libertarian who wants nice clear exceptionless principles to cling to.

I'll give an example of how libertarians, most if not all, are extreme and doctrinaire.  Individual liberty  is a very high value.  One of the pillars of this liberty is the right to private property. The defense of private property against collectivists is essential to both libertarian and conservative positions.  So far, so good. The tendency of the libertarian, however, is to absolutize the right to private property.  He has a hard time grasping that principles and values often butt up against competing principles and values that also have a serious claim on our respect.  So he cannot see that well-crafted eminent domain laws are right and reasonable.  He cannot see that there is something we can call the common good which is in tension with the right to private property. 

A second example is how libertarians typically absolutize the value of liberty while ignoring the claims of such opposing values as security and equality.  For more see my post, Liberty and Security.

Good, Better, Best

From the mail bag:

Is the way you interpret Voltaire's saying the way it was originally intended? I'm probably wrong here, but I always took the saying to mean this: a willingness to settle for what is "better" makes it likely that one won't acquire what is "good".
 
Good, better, best.  Positive, comparative, superlative.  "The best/better is the enemy of the good" means that oftentimes, not always, the pursuit of the best/better will prevent one from attaining the good.  The point is that if one is not, oftentimes, willing to settle for what is merely good, one won't get anything of value.  So I suggest that my reader has not understood Monsieur Voltaire's aperçu.
 
Example.  It will come down to Romney versus Obama.  If libertarians and conservatives fail to vote for Romney, on account of his manifold defects, then they run the risk of four more years of the worthless Obama.  Those libertarians and conservatives will have let the better/best become the enemy of the good.  They will have shown a failure to understand the human predicament and the politics pertaining to it.  He who holds out for perfection in  an imperfect world may end up with nothing.
 
You give the example of a spouse: try to hold out for a perfect wife, and you'll never marry at all. An example that would fit my reading would be, if one settles for a wife who's merely better than most of the available options, then one's apt to settle for a wife who isn't good. Sometimes it's better to refuse all the available options.
 
I agree that it is sometimes better to refuse all the available options.  If the choice is between Hitler and Stalin, then one ought to abstain! 
 
Maybe a better example would be, imagine I need to install plumbing in my house. Crappy plumbing is almost always going to be better than no plumbing. But should I (say, out of laziness) really settle for that, on the grounds that 'well, it's better than the nothing I had'?
 
Of course not.  Voltaire's point is not that one should settle for what is inferior when something better is available.  The point is that one should not allow the pursuit of unattainable perfection to prevent the attainment of something good but within reach.  Suppose someone were to say: I won't have any faucets or fixtures in my house unless they are all made of solid gold!  You will agree that such an attitude would be eminently unreasonable.
 
The Voltairean principle as I read it is exceedingly important in both personal life and in politics.
 
Perhaps you know some perfectionists.  These types never accomplish anything because they are stymied by the conceit that anything less than perfection is worthless.  I knew a guy in graduate school who thought that a dissertation had to be a magnum opus.  He never finished and dropped out of sight.
 
In politics there are 'all or nothing' types who demand the whole enchilada or none.  Some years back, when it looked as if it would be Giuliani versus Hillary, some conservative extremists said they would withhold their support from the former on the ground that he is soft on abortion.  But that makes no bloody sense given that under Hillary things would have been worse.
 
The 'all or nothing' mentality is typical of adolescents of all ages.  "We want the world and we want it . .  NOW!"

Le Mieux est L’Ennemi du Bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The better is the enemy of the good."  The thought is perhaps better captured by "The best is the enemy of the good."  In an imperfect world it is folly to predicate action upon perfection.  Will you hold out for the perfect spouse?  Then you will remain alone.  And if you yourself are less than perfect, how can you demand perfection in others? 

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.

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.

Each of  the Republican contenders has drawbacks.  But any of them would be better than Obama.  Suppose Romney is nominated.  He's a wishy-washy, flip-flopping pretty boy.  But he's electable and better than Obama. 

Politicians

Paul Brunton, Notebooks, vol. 9, Human Experience, p. 126, #520, emphasis added:

Politicians — more interested in their own careers than in sincere public service, ambitious to gain their personal ends, unwilling to rebuke foolish voters with harsh truth until it is too late to save them, forced to lead double lives of misleading public statements and contradictory knowledge of the facts, yielding, for the sake of popularity, to the selfish emotions, passions, and greeds of sectional groups — contribute much to mankind's history but little to mankind's welfare. 

Dead on in substance, but also stylistically instructive.  A good example of how to write a long sentence. Interesting because most of the content is sandwiched between the dashes.  The thesis flanks the dashes with the supporting considerations between them.

Few read Brunton.  But I read everything, ergo, etc.

Gingrich and the Kama Sutra

"Newt has more positions than the Kama Sutra." I just heard Michael Medved say this on the Dennis Prager show.  Medved intends it in the best possible sense.

Medved thinks that both Romney and Gingrich would make good presidents.  I agree.  Indeed, any of the Republican candidates would be better than Obama the Incompetent. And I agree with Medved that Gingrich is preferrable to Romney.  But is he more electable than Romney?  He's an intellectual with a funny name.  The average schlep of a voter looks for a regular guy he can relate to.  Like Bill 'Bubba' Clinton.

The Manifesto of the Modern Protester

I found the following in the archives of my first weblog.  The hyperlink has long been dead.  The author is Nicholas Antongiavanni.  Curiously timely in light of the antics of the 'Occupy Wall Street' crowd.  This may  be only  an excerpt.  I cannot find the original document.

1. No ill is so trivial that it can be borne, even for a day; no grievance is so slight that its redress can wait, even for an hour.

2. Until the world is made perfect and justice reigns supreme, getting on with life or transacting any public business is immoral and selfish.

3. Therefore all means (up to and including violence) are justified–nay, obligatory–in stopping the movement of ordinary life until such time as all grievances are redressed.

4. One's moral worth is determined far more by one's social and political opinions than by one's actions or behavior toward others.

5. With one exception: The most noble, moral, and courageous thing one can ever do is participate in (or, better yet, organize) a protest.

6. Therefore, whatever a protest is ostensibly about, it is fundamentally about itself.

7. There are no such things as chance or fortune or bad luck or inherent, irreducible flaws or problems. If something–anything, anywhere–is wrong, unfair, unequal, tragic, inconvenient, annoying, vexatious, or merely perceived to be such, it is not only someone's fault, that someone is profiting unjustly at the expense of someone else. Which is to say, Lenin's "Who/Whom" question–"who" is sticking it to "whom"?–is fundamentally true regarding all human interaction.

7a. All peoples and individuals may therefore be categorized as either oppressors or oppressed.

7b. The oppressed as a whole are a coalition of various oppressed groups. Whatever their apparent differences, they share the same fundamental interests by dint of their all being oppressed.

7c. Whatever the oppressors say about standards of justice or morality is a priori wrong, since it must be presumed to be sophistry concocted for their selfish benefit. The most clever–and most pernicious–of these sophistries is the notion of natural right, i.e., that there is a permanent standard of justice not determined by human choice or opinion. But in truth every professed standard of natural right is a tool of those oppressors who devise and promote it. The only reliable information about justice comes from the oppressed, because they alone are public spirited and pure of heart. Also, because the oppressed alone suffer whereas the oppressed only cause suffering, the oppressed alone can judge what suffering is and how it affects the human soul. Since there is no permanent standard of justice, the response or reaction of the individual soul to any action or actions is the only dispositive factor in determining the justice or injustice of any action. Therefore, justice and injustice are whatever the oppressed say they are.

A Bit of Freedom Comes to Castro’s Island

Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.  In his socialist worker's paradise home ownership was legally forbidden until just now.  Suppose you were 30 in '59, at the age when many are in a position to buy a house for the first time.  Well, now you are 82 with a year to live.  You can buy a house to die in. 

Ain't socialism grand?  That's why leftists want it here, there, and everywhere. 

Private property is the foundation of individual liberty.  This being Friday afternoon, I reckon I'll fix me a Cuba Libre and hoist my glass to liberty.

Demands of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protesters

Here is a list of their individually puerile and jointly inconsistent demands.

One wonders how

Demand nine: Open borders migration; anyone can travel anywhere to work and live

is consistent with

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system

and

Demand four: Free college education.

Libertarians believe in the foolish notion of open borders, presumably because they cannot think in any but economic terms; but at least libertarians are intelligent enough to realize that one cannot combine open borders with a full-tilt welfare state that provides 'free' health care, 'free' college education, etc.   The anti-capitalist punks, utopian dumbasses that they are, dream the impossible dream of a welfare state that allows millions upon millions to flood in to grab the goodies that the government will magically provide for them.

Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo Land.

The Great Obama Catharsis

A brilliant article by Victor Davis Hanson. Makes the case that we are really better off with Obama than we would have been with McCain.  Punning on 'catharsis,' a witty commenter writes, "We have met the enema, and his name is Obama."  Obama will precipitate a Huge Dump which will void us of the crap of leftism.

I now think I was wrong to criticize those conservatives who refused to vote for the wishy-washy pseudo-conservative McCain, thereby aiding Obama.  I overlooked the latter's aperient function.  (Bill Tingley, if you are still reading this blog, you were right.)