Category: Politics

National Public Radio Needs Your Support!

If you like NPR programming, as I like some of  it, write them a check!  Just don't demand that they receive taxpayer support.  At least not now.  We are in fiscal crisis, and budgetary cuts must be made.  If such inessentials as NPR, PBS, NEH and NEA cannot be defunded, where will the cuts be made?  Think about it.  If these small allocations cannot be zeroed out or placed on moratorium, how are we going to tackle entitlement reform?

So one good reason to defund NPR is that we cannot afford it.

Some think that a refusal of sponsorship amounts to censorship.  But that is stupidity pure and simple and duly refuted here.

But even if we could afford it, NPR in its present configuration should not receive Federal support.  And this for the simple reason that it is plainly a propaganda arm of the Left.  Now that should be obvious to anyone who has been following current events, including the firing of Juan Williams, the exposure and sacking of the two Schillers, etc.  If you deny the Leftward tilt of NPR in its present incarnation, then you are delusional and not worth talking to.  So let's assume that you are sane and admit the bias.  The next question is whether you think it is morally right that tax dollars be used to push points of view that most of us in this conservative land find objectionable.  I say that it it is not morally right that you take my money by force and then use it for a purpose that is not only inessential and unconnected to the necessary functions of government, but also violates my beliefs.

Perhaps, if NPR were balanced like C-SPAN, it could be tolerated in times of plenty.  But we are not in times of plenty and it is not balanced.

So that is my second reason for defunding NPR. 

Note that a reasonable liberal could accept my two reasons.  I am not arguing that government must not engage in any projects other than those that are strictly essential such as those connected to the protection of life, liberty, and property (the Lockean triad).  I leave that question open for the space of this post.  I am arguing that present facts dictate that defunding NPR is something we ought to do. 

I love Garrison Keillor and his "Prarie Home Companion" and tune in whenever I can.  "Guy Noir" is one of my favorite bits.  So I hope NPR stays on the air — on its own fiscal steam.  Hell, if they wean themselves from the  mammaries of massive Mama Obama Government I may even send them a check myself!  And the same goes for PBS. 

Taxation: A Liberty Issue

Despite their name, liberals seem uninterested or insufficiently interested in the 'real' liberties, those pertaining to property, money, and guns, as opposed to the 'ideal' liberties, those pertaining to freedom of expression. A liberal will go to any extreme when it comes to defending the right to express his precious self no matter how inane or obnoxious or socially deleterious the results of his self-expression; but he cannot muster anything like this level of energy when it comes to defending the right to keep what he earns or the right to defend himself and his family from the criminal element from which liberal government fails to protect him. He would do well to reflect that his right to express his vacuous self needs concrete back-up in the form of economic and physical clout. Scribbler that I am, I prize freedom of expression; but I understand what makes  possible its retention.

Taxation then is a liberty issue before it is a 'green eyeshade' issue: the more the government takes, the less concrete liberty you  have. Without money you can't get your kids out of a shitty public school system that liberals have destroyed with their tolerate-anything mentality; without money you cannot live in a decent and secure neighborhood.  Without money you can't move out of a state such as California which is 'under water' due to liberal fiscal irresponsibility.

Taxation is a liberty issue.  That is one thought as April 15th approaches.  Another is that the government  must justify its taking; the onus is not on you to justify your  keeping. Government exists to serve us, not the other way around.

Who Benefits From Public-Sector Unions?

An excellent piece by Michael Barone.  Excerpt:

The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public employee unions, who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic Party. (emphasis added)

Is that clear?  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?

On Civility and the Recent Civility Initiatives

Civility is a good old conservative virtue and I'm all for it.  But like toleration, civility has limits.  If you call me a racist because I argue against Obamacare, then not only do I have no reason to be civil in my response to you, I morally ought not be civil to you.  For by being civil I only encourage more bad behavior on your part.  By slandering me, you have removed yourself from the sphere of the civil.  The slanderer does not deserve to be treated with civility; he deserves to be treated with hostility and stiff-necked opposition.  He is deserving of moral condemnation.

If you call me a xenophobe because I insist that the federal government do what it is constitutionally mandated to do, namely, secure the nation's borders, then you slander me and forfeit whatever right you have to be treated civilly.  For if you slander me, then you are moral scum and deserve to be morally condemned.  In issuing my moral condemnation, I exercise my constitutionally-protected First Amendment right to free speech.  But not only do I have a right to condemn you, I am morally obliged to do so lest your sort of evil behavior become even more prevalent.

Examples can be multiplied, but the point is clear.  Civility has limits.  One ought to be civil to the civil.  But one ought not be civil to the uncivil.  What they need is a taste of their own medicine.

One must also realize that 'civility' is a prime candidate for linguistic hijacking.  And so we must be on our guard that the promoters of 'civility' are not attaching to this fine word a Leftward-tilting connotation.    We must not let them get away with any suggestion that one is civil if and only if one is an espouser of liberal/left positions. 

The Left no more owns civility than it owns dissent.

The motto of the No Labels outfit is "Not Left. Not Right. Forward."  'No Labels' is itself a label and a silly one , implying as it does that there are no important differences between Left and Right which need identification and labeling.  It is also preposterous to suggest that we can 'move forward' without doing so along either broadly conservative or broadly liberal lines.  To 'move forward' along liberal lines is to move in the direction of less individual liberty and ever-greater control by the government.  This is simply unacceptable to libertarians and conservatives and must be stopped.  There is little room for compromise here.  How can one compromise with those whose fiscal irresponsibility will lead to a destruction of the currency?  Any compromise struck with them can only be a tactical stopgap on the way to their total defeat.  Fiscal responsibility and border security are two issues on which there can be no compromise.  For it is obviously absurd to suppose that a genuine solution lies somewhere in the middle.

Worst of all, however is to claim that one is neither Left nor Right but then take policy stances that are leftist.  This demonstrates a lack of intellectual honesty.  The 'No Labels' folks cite the following as a "Shared Purpose": 

  • Americans want a government that empowers people with the tools for success – from a world-class education to affordable healthcare – provided that it does so in a fiscally prudent way.

    • But that's not a shared purpose but a piece of pure leftism.  First of all, it is not the government that 'empowers' people — to acquiesce for the nonce in this specimen of PC lingo — government is a necessary evil as libertarians and conservatives see it, and any empowering that gets done is best done by individuals in the absence of governmental shackles.  It is also not the role of  the federal government, as libertarians ansd conservatives see it, to educate people or provide health care.  Only liberals with their socialist leanings believe that.

    What the No Labels bunch is serving up is mendacity.  First they paper over genuine differences of opinion and then they put forth their own opinion as neutral, as neither Left nor Right, when it is obviously leftist.  So what these people are saying to us is that we should put aside all labels while toeing the leftist party line.  And be civil too!  I say to hell with that.  Let's be honest and admit that there are deep differences.  For example, if you say that health care is a right and I say it is not a right but a good, or a commodity, then we have a very deep difference. 

    In the wake of the Tucson shootings, the University of Arizona has set up a National Institute for Civil Discourse.  And then there is the American Civility Tour. Just what we need: more wastage of tax dollars on feel-good liberal nonsense.

    I conclude by referring you to a very interesting Allegheny College survey, Nastiness, Name-Calling, and Negativity. 

    Obamacare and Wussification

    An ugly word for an ugly thing.  Either one.

    The Obamacare provision which allows children to remain covered by their parents' health care insurance until the age of 26 promotes wussification.  Do I need to explain this? Not to a conservative, for whom the old virtue of self-reliance is indeed a virtue and therefore something to be encouraged and not undermined. 

     

    Are You a Liberal? Take This Test

    The following statements in boldface are taken verbatim from Dennis Prager's Are You a Liberal? I comment briefly on each in turn. Mirabile dictu, it turns out I am not a liberal! I could make of each  of these items a separate post. (And you hope I won't.) I don't want to hear anyone complain that I am not arguing my points. I argue plenty elsewhere on this site. In any case, that is not my present purpose.

    Continue reading “Are You a Liberal? Take This Test”

    No Labels? Label We Must!

    This is silly.  "Not Right. Not Left. Forward."  There are are real differences between Right and Left that cannot be ignored.  The positions must be carefully defined — and appropriately labeled.  'No labels' is itself a label — an inept one.  Label we must.  So we ought to do it carefully and thoughtfully.

    I now hand off to Jonah Goldberg.

     

    Pelosi’s Theme Song

    Not Fade Away.  The dingbat won't slink off into the sidelines.  Pretty face, though.  Too bad there's nothing behind it.

    The late Ted Kennedy's favorite song actually was The Impossible Dream.  Figures.  It sums up the Left so well: the pursuit by any means of impossible mirage-ideals without regard for consequences.  "To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause."  To be willing to break 100 million eggs for omelet-in-the-future.

    So conservatives don't have ideals?  Not at all. Ours are reality-based, grounded in genuine potentials of human action, and respectful of hard facts about man and nature. 

    Companion post: Standing on the Terra Firma of Antecedent Reality

    On Smiting One’s Political Enemies

    Tony Hanson e-mails from the once-great state of California whose governor-elect is once again Governor Moonbeam:

    I see you had Berlin's essay in your library and reread it. I just wanted to say I don't think that we are in quite the bind you describe since there still seems to be a lot of room for some good rationally justified smiting, polemics and general political ass-kicking in spite of value pluralism. I'll make this very brief.

    Defense of Polemics. I am sure you would agree that one's opponents may have all sorts of bad reasons for their positions, and (politely?) exposing them can make people more thoughtful, and may even enlighten them to the truth of value pluralism so much so that they may "flinch" too. Could this encourage comity?

    That is a good point and I fully agree with it.  The pluralistic position, according to which no objective resolution satisfactory to all competent practioners is possible due to irresolvable value differences, is entirely consistent with the possibility of the fully objective exposure of bad arguments and empirical falsehoods on both sides.  Take abortion.  There are bad arguments on both sides of the debate, and almost everyone will agree that there are.   (I won't say what those bad arguments are lest I spark a meta-debate as to exactly which arguments on both sides are bad; but that there are bad arguments on both sides is uncontroversial.)   An argument can be objectively bad for a number of different reasons: it is logically invalid; rests on an empirically false premise; involves a weak analogy; commits an informal fallacy; is so murky and indistinct as to be insusceptible of evaluation, etc.  The essence of the pluralistic position is that once all the bad arguments on both sides are set aside, one arrives at a set of 'good' arguments which, however, do not resolve the issue for an  impartial observer.

    I would quibble, though, with your use of 'polemics.'  From the Greek polemos, it means strife, struggle, war.  So we can define polemics as verbal warfare, warfare at the level of ideas.  There needn't be anything polemical about pointing out to an opponent that one of his arguments falls short of an objective standard such as the one represented by formal logic.  Here there is the possibility of convincing the opponent (assuming he is sincere, intelligent, etc.) because the cognitive values that come into play (truth, clarity, logical coherence, etc.) are agreed upon.

    Defense of War and Smiting.  You said, "Suppose further … that this value difference that divides them cannot be objectively resolved to the satisfaction of both parties by appeal to any empirical fact or by any reasoning or by any combination of the two." Say you are arguing with a Fascist or radical libertarian (who thinks property rights are absolute), and no empirical fact or reasoning satisfies them In other words, they are unreasonable.

    But if you say that the radical libertarian is unreasonable, what are your criteria of reasonability or rationality?  I reject the radical libertarian position on property rights and I get the impression that you do as well.  But from his point of view, his stance is reasonable in that it is rationally derivable from certain axioms he accepts.  Is there some plain empirical fact that he fails to take cognizance of, or some rule of logic that he flouts?  When you  say that the radical libertarian is unreasonable, aren't you just rejecting his scheme of values? He places an absolute, inviolable, value on the individual and his property and refuses to admit that there are any competing values that would tend to have a relativizing effect.  Consider an eminent domain dispute.  Farmer Jones has worked hard all his life and owns 100 acres.  The Feds want to buy from him a strip of land for a much-needed road that cannot be placed anywhere else. Jones refuses to sell.  Even if he agrees that there is such a thing as the common good, he refuses to concede that it has the power to limit the absoluteness of his property right.

    When you say that Jones is unreasonable, what you are doing is pitting your value-based conception of reasonableness against his.  But then my point goes through, which was that disputes like this are objectively irresolvable because rooted in value disputes which are objectively irresolvable.

    Seems like its time for the Converse Clausewitz Principle [Politics is war conducted by other means]. Well, you can of course work to defeat libertarians in the political arena (though they do a pretty good job of this themselves, which is why I follow Medved in calling them 'losertarians.')  But the issue concerns your rational warrant for "unflinchingly" opposing them.  What makes you so cocksure that you are right and they are wrong?

    Further, it seems a distinction needs to be made between the priority of a value, and the weight (or  height?) of the priority. Two people could prioritize security over liberty, but one would be prepared to sacrifice a lot more liberty for security than the other. The extremist gives his value too much weight, obviously; but it also seems one can be objectively wrong about the weight of the prioritized value, and not be an extremist. Invoking Aristotle might be helpful. Though one might not be a complete coward (or extremist), one might miss the mark with respect to courage and be a little cowardly, and so on with the various values. Moreover, it might not be possible to come to an agreement by using facts and reason, to what "hitting the mark" is, but you know it misses. Someone might have a different intuition on what hitting the mark is, or the target might be a large one allowing for disagreement, but it still might be worth trusting your sense of "tone," and fighting for it.

    I agree that if value V1 takes priority over value V2, there remains the question of how much higher up in the axiological hierarchy V1 is.  Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death."  He apparently valued his liberty over his very life.  Would you call him an extremist?  If yes, then what is wrong with being an extremist?  If he is placing an inordinate value on liberty, how do you show that?  Or take the Obama liberal who is willing to sacrifice his liberty for (the promise of) cradle-to-grave security and material comfort.  How do you show in an objective manner that the liberal places too much value on security and not enough on liberty?  You simply assert that "one can be objectively wrong about the weight of the prioritized value." Gratuitous assertions, however, elicit gratuitous counterassertions in response.

    Tea Partiers object to the liberty-encroaching governmental overreach of the Obama gang.  (Case in point: the 'individual mandate' of Obamacare which forces citizens to buy health insurance.)  The political conflict is rooted in a deep value conflict.  How resolve it?

    I don't see how Aristotle helps in this.  I would also point out that he was talking about virtues, not values, which are a different animal entirely and didn't come into philosophical currency until the 19th century.  A virtue is a habit (hexis, habitus), a dispositional feature of an agent; a value is . . . well what exactly is a value?  An abstract or ideal object of some sort?

    The ComBox is open to give Hanson an opportunity to reply.  Others may chime in as well, but only if their comments are well-informed, intelligent, and stick precisely to the topic under discussion, what he says and what I say here and in the post that Hanson in replying to.  I simply delete comments I consider to be substandard. 

    The Conservative Disadvantage (2010 Version)

    We conservatives are at a certain disadvantage as compared to our leftist brethren. We don’t seek the meaning of our lives in the political sphere but in the private arena: in hobbies, sports, our jobs and professions, in ourselves, our families, friends, neighborhoods, communities, clubs and churches; in foot races and chess tournaments; in the particular pleasures of the quotidian round in all of their scandalous particularity.

    We don't look to politics for meaning. Above all, we conservatives do not seek any transcendent meaning in the political sphere. We either deny that there is such a thing, or we seek it in religion, or in philosophy, or in meditation.  A conservative who denies that there is ‘pie in the sky’ will certainly not seek ‘pie in the future.’ He will not, like the leftist, look to a human future for redemption.  He understands human nature, its real possibilities, and its real limits.  He is impervious to utopian illusions.  He will accept no ersatz soteriology.

     A conservative could never write a book with the title, The Politics of Meaning.  Politics for a conservative is more like garbage-collecting: it is a dirty job; somebody has to do; it would be better if nobody had to do it; and we should all lend a hand in getting the dirty job done. But there is little by way of meaning, immanent or transcendent, in garbage collecting and sewage disposal: these are things one gets out of the way so that meaningful activities can first begin.

    I’m exaggerating a bit. To write is to exaggerate, as a Frenchman might put it, which amounts to a meta-exaggeration. But I’m exaggerating to make a serious point. We conservatives don’t look for meaning in all the wrong places. And because we don’t, we are at a certain disadvantage. We cannot bring the full measure of our energy and commitment to the political struggle. We don't even use the word 'struggle.' We are not totally committed to defeating the totally committed totalitarians who would defeat us.

    But now we need to become  active.  Not in the manner of the leftist who seeks meaning in activism for its own sake, but to defend ourselves and our values so that we can protect the private sphere from the Left's totalitarian encroachment.    The conservative values of liberty and self-reliance and fiscal responsibility are under massive assault by the Obama administration.   So if you value your life and liberty, you are well advised to inform yourself and take appropriate action.

    So get off your conservative duff and vote!  It matters.  We must divest 'conservative activist' of its oxymoronic ring.  There is too much at stake. Next week's election will be a watershed event.

    Santayana on Americans and Socialism

    George Santayana (1863-1952), Character and Opinion in the United States (Norton, 1967), p. 171:

    His instinct [the American's] is to think well of everybody, and to  wish everybody well, but in a spirit of rough comradeship, expecting every man to stand on his own legs and to be helpful in his turn. When he has given his neighbor a chance he thinks he has done enough for him; but he feels it is an absolute duty to do that. It will take some hammering to drive a coddling socialism into America.

    Santayana remarks in his Preface that his observations were made over a forty year period prior to January, 1912. Despite all the socialist hammering (and sickling?) that has gone on since then, we are still at some distance from the coddling socialism found elsewhere. American self-reliance may be on her last legs, but she ain't dead yet.

    Maybe we can revivify her a bit this November 2nd.