Category: Politics

Voter ID Again

This was written in September of 2006 and posted on the old blog.  But the topic is back in the news.  My view hasn't changed, so I repost.

WARNING! Polemical post up ahead. Don't like polemics? Don't read it!

More puzzling to me than liberum arbitrium indifferentiae is the question, asked of old, asked now, and ever to be asked, namely, why are liberals so contemptibly obtuse?

The latest example, from the NYT no less, concerns voter indentification. Now anyone with common sense must 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 propensity to 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 such.

It is not enough to present a bank statement or a utility bill for the obvious reason that such a document does not establish one's identity: the statement or bill might have been stolen.

     Missourians who have driver's licenses will have little trouble
     voting, but many who do not will have to go to considerable trouble
     to get special IDs. The supporting documents needed to get these,
     like birth certificates, often have fees attached, so some
     Missourians will have to pay to keep voting. It is likely that many
     people will not jump all of the bureaucratic hurdles to get the
     special ID, and will become ineligible to vote.

Considerable trouble? Bureaucratic hurdles? What silly exaggeration! If one doesn't have a birth certificate, one should get one since one will need it for other purposes. Stop buying lottery tickets for a week and you will have money for any fees that might be charged. In any case, what sort of person has no birth certificate? Presumably, the same people who lack ID. How do they live? How do they cash checks? Where do they live? Under bridges? Are these the sorts of people you want making decisions about matters of moment? Is this the new base of the Democrat Party?

Our editorialist is worried about the few who will not vote because they will not make the minimal effort required to obtain the necessary  ID. It would be better for him to worry about the integrity of the   voting process. The election process must inspire confidence in the citizenry, but it cannot do so unless it is well-regulated. Felons, illegal aliens, and other unqualified individuals cannot be allowed to vote.

The NYT editorialist thinks that supporters of photo ID are out to "to deter voting by blacks, poor people and other groups that are less likely to have driver's licenses." This is slander. Now if this moral cretin of an editorialist wants to engage in this sort of psychologizing, we can easily turn the table on him: the reason Dems want unregulated voting is to make possible voter fraud by illegal aliens, felons, and others, people who are their ticket to power.

We can also call him a racist since he apparently thinks black are so incompetent and inferior as to be unable to secure proper ID.

Anthony Weiner at the Gym

It's good that he takes care of his body, but what's the thing about his thing?

It has been alleged that Weiner 'sexted' some of these photos to at least one woman.

So why does he continue to stick it out?  Elsewhere in these pages I speak of the Mighty Tetrad:  "Money, power, sex, and recognition form the Mighty Tetrad of human motivators, the chief goads to action here below."  He won't resign because of the money, a salary of $174, 000 per annum plus benefits.  He won't resign because of the power of his office with its attendant privileges and perquisites.  Power, as Henry Kissinger once observed, is a strong aphrodisiac.  If it made old Henry attractive to the opposite sex think what it does for an in-shape dude like Weiner.  And besides being sex-obsessed, our boy is apparently also an attention whore.  In him the Mighty Tetrad achieves a particulalry twisted configuration.

He says he will seek 'treatment.'  A typical liberal, he would apply the disease model to everything including his morally reprehensible behavior.  He ought to man up, resign, and learn that, even in the Beltway,  manhood is not something located south of the belt line.

It is the control of the cock, more than its deployment, that makes the man.

Why Doesn’t Anthony Weiner Quit?

Or:  Why does he stick it out?  One reason is that he's a Dem and Dems as a group, when compared to Republicans as a group, are shameless.  But the main reason is very simple:

Weiner has also complained to friends that he wasn’t sure how he would make a living if he were to leave Congress and its $174,000 annual salary. "He’s worried about money and how to pay his bills," said a Democratic insider. "He’s very concerned about that."

$174,000!  To do what?  Basically to perpetuate a system whose main goal is the protection of its members' own power, privileges, and perquisites. For far too many pols these days government is nothing more than their hustle, a hustle like any other.

Yet another argument for limited government. 

When it comes to Weiner's 'sexting' of his love engine, bigger is better.  But when it comes to government, bigger is not better.  Wise up, liberals.

Socialist, Shmocialist

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 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, and individual liberty.

It is even worse to label him 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 as 'racist.' 

"But haven't you yourself said, more than once, that politics is war conducted by other means?"  Yes, I have said it, and more than once.  In the end that's what politics is.  I call it the Converse Clausewitz Principle.  But we are not quite at the end.  Before we get there we should exhaust the possibilities of civil and reasonable debate.

"But what if the tactic of labeling Obama a socialist or even a communist would keep him from a second term.  Wouldn't that inaccurate labeling then be justified?"  That's a very tough question.  An affirmative answer would seem to commit one to the principle that the end justifies the means — in which case we are no better than liberals/leftists.  On the other hand, how can one play fair with those who will do anything to win?

Obama in Cloud Cuckoo Land

People say that Obama is intelligent.  I'll grant you that he is well-spoken: unlike Bush II he doesn't stumble over his words.  Trouble is, Obama's words are mainly  blather.  I fail to discern the substance of intelligence in them.  The man lives in a dream world. He's incoherent and irresponsible, an empty suit, a disaster.  The Anointed One has turned  out to be an emperor without clothes.  The audacity of hope has given way to the mendacity of empty hope and change rhetoric.

Part of the documentation for these assertions is provided by Victor Davis Hanson here.  Study it carefully.

Why Lie When You Have Good Arguments?

Last week I pointed out Senator Charles Schumer's blatant lie about Tea Partiers.  Apparently, Senator Jon Kyl has also lied and then gone on to justify his lie in a  manner most creative:

. . . Arizona senator Jon Kyl used his time on the Senate floor during a budget debate to claim that abortions make up "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does." When it was pointed out that, in fact, abortion funding constitutes about 3 percent of the organization's budget, Kyl shrugged it off. "It wasn't intended to be a factual statement," he said.

One question is why anyone would lie when they have he has decent arguments.  The use of tax dollars to fund abortion is morally wrong whatever one thinks of the morality of abortion itself.  It doesn't matter how many or how few tax dollars are used.  That's one argument.  A second is that funding outfits like Planned Parenthood is not among the essential functions of government, and that in a time of dire fiscal crisis, government must be pared back to its essential functions.  That's a second argument.  Properly exfoliated, they are powerful arguments.  They won't convince leftists, but then no conservative argument will.  But they will reinforce conservatives in their view and bring some fence-sitters over to our side.

Arguments appeal to our better nature, our rational, truth-seeking nature.

So what does Kyl do? He tells a lie thereby badly injuring his credibility.  Even if Kyl doesn't care about the truth, he ought to care about his credibility, and he must know that to be caught in a lie is to harm it.

So why lie when you have good arguments?

Perhaps it is like this.  "All's fair in love and war" and one of war's casualties is truth.  Politics has nothing to do with truth; it has everything to do with defeating your enemies and gaining or maintaining power.  Politics is about power, not truth.  Politics is war conducted by other means. (I call this the 'Converse Clausewitz principle.')

So perhaps when Schumer and Kyl et al. lie, they make a calculation:  the positive propaganda effect of the lie will offset the negative effect of being caught in a lie, and so lying is conducive to the end in view, namely, defeating the enemy.  Also to be considered is that when politicians  lie they are primarily addressing their constituencies many of the members of which do not care about truth either.  Proof of this is the crap that people forward via e-mail: scurrilous and unsourced allegations about Obama, Pelois and whoever.  When you point out to them that it is drivel, they are unfazed.  For again, it is about winning by any means, and truth doesn't come into it.

Mendacity pays.  Perhaps that is why politicians are so practiced in the arts of deception and prevarication.  They get away with their mendacity and we let them.  They don't care about truth because the people don't and they represent the people.  Maybe we get what we deserve.

Are the Republicans Exploiting the Fiscal Crisis for Ideological Ends?

Many Democrats are arguing that the Republicans are using the current fiscal crisis to further their ideological agenda.  The suggestion is that their stated fiscal concerns hide their real motivations which are ideological.

This fiscal vs. ideological distinction is as bogus as John Kerry's war of necessity vs. war of choice distinction.  Obviously no war is a war of necessity, and every war is a war of choice.  Consider the so-called Civil War of the USA which began on this day 150 years ago.  (So-called because it is better described as a war of secession.  The war was not about the control of the central government in Washington; the war was one of secession: the southern states wanted to secede from the union and achieve independence similarly as the the thirteen colonies wanted to secede from the Crown and be independent of British domination.)  Now the Civil War was certainly not necessary: the North could have let the South secede.  Was U.S. involvement in WWI or WWII necessary?  Obviously not.  And so on.  No war, strictly speaking, is necessary.  You can refuse to get involved in foreign conflicts; you can refuse to defend yourself if attacked.  You can accept dhimmitude.  So every war is a war of choice.   Kerry's distinction is therefore bogus. 

The same is true of the fiscal vs. ideological distinction.  Every fiscal decision reflects underlying ideological commitments, and no ideological commitment is such that its implementation does not cost money.  Obviously, the fiscal policies of both the Republicans and the Democrats are ideologically driven.  It makes no sense to speak of 'politicizing' fiscal decisions since every such decision is already political in nature.  

For example, both the funding and the defunding of NPR, NEH, NEA, Planned Parenthood, etc. are both fiscal and political and reflect different notions  of what  government is for:  what it must do, must not do, and may do.  Imagine  a conservative and a liberal arguing about National Public Radio.

Conservative:  We need government, but "That government governs best that governs least." (Thomas Jefferson).  We need government to do certain jobs that we cannot do ourselves.  But the essential functions of government are limited, and public broadcasting is not one of them.  Public broadcasting may under certain circumstances be a legitimate function of government, but it is obviously not an essential function of government.  There must be limits on governmental power since "Power tends to corrupt, etc."  So, given that we are in dire fiscal straits, and cuts have to be made, and since public broadcasting is not an essential function of government — though it may perhaps be a legitimate nonessential  function of government under financially rosy conditions –  one of the things that must be done to save money is to zero-out the NPR and PBS budgets.  But there is a further reason to defund these agencies, and that is that they are not fair and balanced: they take a liberal-left stance in their programming.  That would be no problem if they were wholly in the private sector.  But surely it is morally wrong to use taxpayers' dollars to promote partisan sociopolitical views, thereby violating the convictions of the vast number of libertarians and conservatives who hold, rightly or wrongly, that liberal-left politicies are pernicious.

Liberal:  I don't buy any of that.  You conservatives and libertarians think of government as a necessary evil when in fact it is a force for untold good that cannot be achieved in any other way.  We need more government, not less.  A just society is a fair society, and a fair society is one in which wealth and other goods are distributed equally.   A severely progressive tax code may infringe the liberties of certain individuals but it helps in the achievement of material equality which is surely a much higher value than the liberty of the individual.  The wealth of the nation belongs to all of us, and it it legitimate for government to spread that wealth around in an equitable manner.  "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," as a very great man once said. Everyone has a right to adequate health care, for example, and it could easily be provided for all if the rich were taxed at appropriately high levels.  As for NPR, its programming is of high quality precisely because it doesn't have to kow-tow to mass demands of hoi polloi.  It helps enlighten the dumb denizens of fly-over country who cling to their guns and bibles.  Sure it tilts to the Left, but leftism is true.  Public broadcasting, contrary to why you conservatives think, is an essential function of government.  Without it, the masses cannot be properly enlightend and educated.

The point here is that both the conservative and liberal positions are rife with ideological commitments.  So it is asinine and contemptible when Dems claim that Republicans are driven by ideology, or that they are exploiting the fiscal crisis for ideological ends.

I wouldn't be so contemptuous of the Dems if they weren't so bloody mendacious and so blind to their double standards.

Big Government on the Brink

We are in deep trouble as Robert Samuelson ably documents in this troubling piece.  So what does Nero Obama do?  He fiddles while Rome burns and its legions get mired in Libyan sand and other sinkholes of the  benighted and backward.  Even if Obama the Irresponsible and every worthless Democrat were sent packing we'd still be in deep trouble.  Meanwhile gold approaches $1500 an ounce.  'Lead'  ain't cheap these days either.  It is a bad sign when gold and 'lead' appear to be wise investment choices. 

Overextended abroad, collapsing within.  The bigger the government, the more to fight over.   It's time for a return to good old American self-reliance. Make your plans and prepare for the worst.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) Caught Lying

Here at 3:40:  The Tea Party "has an ideology to get rid of all government."  That's a blatant lie.  A lie is not the same as a false statement.  Every lie is a false statement, but not every false statement is a lie.  A further condition is necessary: one must make the false statement with the intention to deceive.  And that is exactly what Schumer is doing.  His intention is to deceive.  For he is not so stupid as not to know that limited government is not the same as no government.  He knows full well what Tea Partiers and other conservatives advocate.  He's lying to hold onto power.

We need to make it clear to him and his  ilk that when they  lie about us we will tell the truth about them.

 

The Bigger the Government, the More to Fight Over: The NPR Case

An excellent illustration of this truth is the current brouhaha over the defunding of National Public Radio (NPR).  Why is time and money being wasted debating this?  The short answer is that government has assumed a function that is obviously inessential to it and arguably illegitimate.  If government stuck to its essential tasks, one of which is obviously not public broadcasting, then we wouldn't be having this debate which is not only unproductive,  but also distractive from truly pressing issues such as 'entitlement' reform.  (A curious coinage, wouldn't you say?  As if prosperous oldsters who, having had a lifetime to accumulate substantial net worth in a relatively stable political and economic environment, are entitled to  intergenerational wealth transfer payments even in excess of what they have contributed  plus a reasonable return.)

The quality of the NPR debate in the House of Representatives was truly depressing.  (I have watched a good portion of it on C-SPAN — which is not supported by Federal dollars and is as objective as an media outlet  gets.)  It's as if the participants live on different planets.  One expects liberals and their opponents (both conservatives and libertarians) to disagree about the  role of government.  But they can't even agree on the 'green eyeshade' issue.  A sensible Republican gets upon and explains how the defunding of NPR will save taxpayers' dollars.  Then a Dem rises to flatly deny that there will be any savings. 

Liberals and conservatives  will argue until doomsday about the size, scope, and legitimate functions of government.  Those arguments are unavoidable and intractable due to profound axiological and philosophical differences.  But one would have thought that agreement could be reached about simple economic facts.  A husband and a wife might argue over whether the tax rebate should be spent on upgraded carpeting or on security doors.  That would be par for the course.  But if they argue about the size of the rebate or about whether or not cancelling their subscription to cable TV will save them x dollars per month,then they are in deep trouble and headed for divorce court.

The Dems are either lying or engaging in some other less blatant form of prevarication when they claim that defunding NPR will not affect the Federal budget deficit.

The liberal case is exceedingly weak, an indication being the rhetorical tricks and distortions liberals sink to.  For example, Representative Louise Slaughter claimed that the Republicans are out to "destroy" NPR.  See here at :34.  That's an outright lie. Or is she so stupid as not to know that defunding a program which its own officers admit does not need Federal funding is not to destroy it?  Contemptible.  Another Dem claimed that the Republicans are ought to"silence" NPR.  Another outright lie.

By the way, here is where civility meets a limit. One is under no obligation to be polite to a liar.

But Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee takes the cake.  She claimed that defunding NPR is an affront to the First Amendment.  How stupid can a liberal be?  Apparently she thinks that the First Amendment protects a government-funded propaganda arm of the Left from the people when it is the other way around:  the First Amendment protects the speech rights of the people against the government.

Of course, no liberal will admit his bias, either out of mendacity, or more likely, because he is simply incapable of seeing it. For a typical liberal, his view of the world is the world.  Hence liberals are mostly incapable of  seeing that NPR pushes a liberal-left point of view.  The problem, again, is not that they have that point of view, but that they feel justified in using taxpayers' dollars to promote it.  Part of the problem is that they do not understand how anyone could reasonably disagree with them. 

The bigger the government, the more to fight over.  Do you like pointless bickering?  Then support an ever-expanding state.

For more on NPR, see here  and here.