Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my pejorated name

Kevin Carson has an interesting article at the Center for a Stateless Society about the assorted meanings of the term “socialism,” which at one point was self-applied not only by statists but by individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker. Among the left-libertarians, there has been some effort to reclaim the term and use it in this sense.

I sympathize with this desire. I’m still bitter about the loss of the term “liberal”; my frequent practice of referring to the American mainstream Left as “left-liberalism” instead of just “liberalism” probably has as much to do with spite as it does with terminological precision. That said, rehabilitating the word “socialist” seems like an even greater lost cause than “liberal,” which still has at least some pro-freedom connotations in everyday English.

It’s too bad since, as Carson points out, “socialism” would be a pretty good term for libertarianism were it not already taken. Instead, perversely, the defining trait of people who are today called “socialists” is the desire to minimize or destroy the power of people in communities willingly working together for mutual benefit and replace it with a system of control and compulsion through the threat of force. When people speak of “socializing” an industry, they mean removing it from the control of society and giving it to an elite.

Once you cease to identify the society and the state, it really is quite bizarre. Such an ideology deserves the name socialism only if your idea of “society” is something along the lines of a prison farm.

It’s frustrating that many of the terms that have been used for libertarianism- liberalism, capitalism, individualism, anarchism- are so thoroughly poisoned by widespread association with ideas hostile or antithetical to it. “Libertarian” itself may suffer this fate, given the continuing abuse and distortion of the term by opponents of the free market. When I consider the fact that the machinery of public opinion is largely controlled by people whose ideology depends on confusing terminology and distorting the difference between economic freedom and economic statism, I suspect it may be unavoidable in the long run.

You kids, with your Twitter and your rap music and your internal combustion engines...

I've created a Twitter feed for this blog, as well as for other politics-related writing I do on line. My username is superfluousjohn, or you can go to my feed by just clicking here.

The Democratic Party I grew up with

I feel sorry for whoever owns the company that makes those “Dissent is Patriotic” bumper stickers. Their stock price must be in the toilet by now.

I have thought for years that the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building was the best thing that ever happened to Bill Clinton during his administration, and probably the best thing to happen to the Democratic Party in decades. Overnight, the rising hostility to the government was all but emasculated as the Democrats and their media lackeys gleefully painted anyone who seriously criticized them as the murderous spiritual kin of Timothy McVeigh. Any meaningful dissent was proclaimed to be automatically illegitimate; anyone who objected to federal power now had blood on their hands. It was the greatest propaganda coup the government could have asked for. I always found liberal complaints during the Bush years about how hateful, vitriolic, and intolerant conservatives were to be incredibly hypocritical; it's as if the Y2K bug deleted their memories of the 20th Century.

Watching the response to the news of the murders of abortionist George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Johns, the most striking thing was the barely-disguised triumph on display. Given how hard Barack Obama’s partisans have worked to portray anyone who opposes the Chosen One as a racist, a lunatic, or some sort of cryptofascist, this is a godsend and they're playing it for all it's worth. Now there are bloodthirsty right-wing terrorists hiding under every bed, and anyone who has ever had the temerity to criticize the government while a Democrat was in the White House is potentially one of them.

It doesn’t help that so many liberals seem to be brought to near-hysteria by the sight of actual opposition even at the best of times. The media coverage and commentary when the “Tea Party” movement at the forefront of the news was a case in point: the suggestions that it was somehow fascistic or antidemocratic to have a gathering to protest the new president’s policies, the accusations of racism on the basis of absolutely nothing except the conviction that anyone perverse enough to oppose Obama must be racist, and the utter confusion when presented with idea that economic freedom or being able to keep what you earned actually matter to some people.

It was especially striking when contrasted to the kid gloves with which the fashionable lefty thugs at anti-globalization protests are handled when they decide to start smashing up some local buildings and cars. Given the attitude shown towards peaceful protests at the Tea Parties, I can only imagine the utter pants-wetting terror that would have ensued if the tea partiers had started vandalizing buildings, throwing rocks and debris, or brawling with police. The media would be dutifully shrieking in hysteria before the first shard of shattered glass hit the ground. And all that was before there were any actual bloody shirts to wave.

Much as the conservative reputation for supporting economic freedom is badly overblown, liberal support for civil liberties and things is usually pretty superficial, a few honorable exceptions aside, as is their supposed concern for separation of powers. Rather like conservatives, they will often talk a good game about the freedoms they claim to support when out of power and then change directions when they get control.

Many liberals spent the last 8 years acting as if George W. Bush was a uniquely wicked figure whose policies just sprang fully-formed into being like Athena. But the developments of the past 8 years were not an aberration or a change in direction, they were a continuation of past trends with a firm basis in past precedents from both parties, many of them established by our most honored past statesmen. If Bush achieved greater heights of oppression, power-grabbing, and usurpation than previous presidents, it was by standing on the shoulders of giants. Many of Bush’s most condemned practices, such as torture and his refusal to acknowledge the constitutional limits of his office and the separation of powers, are just the natural evolution of the Bill Clinton administration. Bush’s principal innovation was to have the United States government torture people in-house rather than outsourcing the job to friendly regimes in Third World hellholes.

So, there is no reason to expect any serious support of civil liberties from the Democrats, especially if there are more violent incidents tied to opponents of the current administration. I expect the idea of outlawing "hate speech," as most Western democracies do, to move from the leftist semi-fringe to a more mainstream position. (Which is especially worrying when you consider how promiscuously the word "hate" is used by many liberals when describing opposition.) Erosion of privacy, security from search and seizure, and due process will continue; I’ve been saying for years that Bush’s homeland security machinery would end up being used against domestic right-wingers, and I’m even more confident of that now.

Obama has all the accumulated powers built up by George W. Bush, a domestic law enforcement establishment that grows more militarized with each passing day, and much stronger support among the opinion-shaping class and institutions than Bush could have ever dreamed of. Things could get ugly.

Fr33 Agents

Not long ago, as I mentioned here, I got a position as one of the bloggers for Bureaucrash. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter there was a change in leadership and, it appears, in the direction of the organization. As a result, I've departed from my blogging post there. As the old saying goes, God never closes a door without opening a window, and then quickly slamming the window shut again on your fingers as you try to climb through. Or something like that. I'd like to give a big "Thank you" to former Crasher-in-Chief Peter Eyre for giving me a shot there.

Happily, there is good news. Thanks to the efforts of some former Bureaucrashers, a new group called Fr33 Agents is up and running in order to create a new network for libertarian activists. It's just getting underway, but the site looks pretty nice already and I encourage everybody to give it a shot. And if you feel you don't currently have enough contacts in the all-important White Male Alienated Loners Ages 25-40 demographic, swing by my profile and add me as a friend.

Review of Economics for Real People

We're always on the cutting edge here at The Superfluous Man, and so I'm happy to bring you a review of 2004's Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School by Gene Callahan. In all seriousness, though, it's an excellent book for anyone who wants to explore the subject of economics and is looking for a place to start. It's also great for anyone who wants to get an overview of some of the distinctive features of Austrian economics and the ideas of important figures like Ludwig von Mises without the risks involved in carrying around economics treatises so massive that they threaten to collapse into singularities and gradually consume the earth from the inside out.

Suite101 made me submit an actual photo of myself- never a good idea- for my profile and said I was supposed to smile in it. That's something I try to avoid in daily life, because I look like a complete jackass whenever I smile. (I also sometimes have an annoying, shrieky, mad scientist-like laugh that I find embarrassing, so I pretty much do whatever I can to avoid ever displaying any positive emotions whatsoever when other people are present.)

I bring this up because I wanted to prevent anyone who saw my profile picture from getting the impression that I write while popping Quaaludes and/or sitting in a big cloud of marijuana smoke. Not the case. I achieve that dopey, confused look with no performance-enhancing substances of any kind.

Acceptable targets

Gay marriage has been prominent in the news this week, which got me thinking about recent events. Some of you may recall the recent case of Carrie Prejean, a contestant in the Miss USA Pageant. In the course of the pageant, the contestants were asked their opinions on various social and political questions. When asked what she thought of gay marriage, Prejean answered:

Well I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. You know what, in my country, in my family, I do believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman.

Something of a media shitstorm followed in the wake of this, with Prejean vehemently condemned in many quarters. I disagree with her comments, though I think the torrent of loathing and ridicule directed towards her in the media has been excessive and cruel. In any case, Miss Prejean enjoyed a period of infamy for the remark and was roundly condemned as a bigot in the media and many places online. It was, I thought, an oddly disproportionate response to a near-nobody expressing what is still, unfortunately, the opinion of most Americans. In 2007, a political figure of some note who had been asked his opinion on gay marriage said:

I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.

This statement does not seem substantively different from Prejean, though it is certainly better-expressed. As well it should be, since these words were spoken by none other than Barack Obama, then a Senator from Illinois. Obama’s supports civil unions, but his opposition to gay marriage remains unchanged since making this statement.

So, where’s the anger? Large swathes of Prejean’s critics- and many supporters of gay marriage in general- have argued that any opposition to gay marriage is necessarily rooted in bigotry, and regard support for it as not merely right but a requirement to be considered morally decent. You’d think Obama’s stated opposition would draw more fire. Likewise that of Hillary Clinton and Joseph Biden, who believe the same thing.

Some figures on the Left have, to their credit, taken Obama to task for his views on this issue. For the most part, though, not a whole lot is said, or at least not loudly, and certainly not with the same fury, and it seems odd to me that Prejean gets the hammer dropped on her while the President of the United States- who probably has a bit more potential influence on the matter- largely gets a pass.

Of course, when people have invested their hopes in a leader or savior, or in an organization or movement, they can often start screening out or rationalizing things that would otherwise anger or disgust them. (See Cheryl Cline’s posts here and here. Hell, see most “limited government” Republicans during the Bush Administration. Or the previous Bush’s administration. Or the Reagan Administration. Or the Nixon administration. Or the Eisenhower administration.) I’ve also seen how many liberals- a few admirable dissenters aside- are reconciling themselves to Obama’s lack of enthusiasm for civil liberties, and quietly accepting things that people were screaming bloody murder about under Bush.

On several occasions while growing up, I hit a wall hard enough to leave my knuckles bleeding. The wall had nothing to do with why I was angry on these occasions, but I was so agitated that it was either the wall or somebody’s skull. I couldn’t confront the person who had actually caused my distress. That was partly because I feared facing him, but it was also partly because it was too upsetting to fully, consciously acknowledge the truth about this person. I wanted to believe that he was good, that he valued me. To stand up and say, “The way you treat me is wrong” would have clashed with that. This is a common defense mechanism.

I suspect a lot of Obama supporters who support gay marriage don’t know his actual position on the subject; they just assume, because they admire him, that he shares their beliefs. However, I’m sure plenty do know. If you believe that opponents of gay marriage are despicable bigots, AND you’re one of the many people who greatly admire Obama and consider him a great man, you’ve got a problem on your hands. The Obama phenomenon fired many people’s hopes and won their hearts in a remarkable way. I don’t think Bush ever had that kind of effect; he had plenty of admirers and even a messianic aura for some, but he didn’t create the sort of ecstatic “in love” sensation that Obama brings out in a lot of people.

As I’ve written on before, having hopes raised and then smashed is painful. So, too, is accepting that someone you’ve put on a pedestal isn’t what you thought they were. Even if you don’t have an especially strong attachment to Obama, seriously criticizing him can be uncomfortable if your friends or colleagues do. This is especially true on an issue where, if liberals were to take their own rhetoric seriously, many of them would have to declare Obama not merely mistaken but morally reprehensible.

Enter Carrie Prejean- a person who prominently displays the same flaw as Obama for the whole country to see, but in whom liberals have no emotional investment. She’s an ideal human punching bag. And just like a punching bag, you get a satisfying thump when you hit her without having to worry about hurting your hands or ticking off someone who knows how to punch back. Her pageant remark was a perfect opportunity to make a stand for gay rights without the costs, either emotional or social, of going after someone more relevant. Her very unimportance makes her ideal. I think this idea has implications for a lot of issues, and not just for Democrats, but this is long enough for now.

Motorhome Diaries crew arrested in Mississippi

Learned via Facebook: The Motorhome Diaries crew- Jason Talley, Pete Eyre, and Adam Mueller- were arrested in Jones County, Mississippi for filming a police officer who had stopped them. Talley was apparently choked and pepper sprayed. Eyre was charged with possession of beer in a dry county, Mueller with disorderly conduct and disobeying an officer, and Talley with disorderly conduct, disobeying an officer, and resisting arrest. They are currently out on bail.

Hopefully the attention this has been getting online will do some good. For more info, check out Free Keene and Fr33 Agents. In addition, Talley, Eyre, and Mueller will be on Free Talk Live tonight at 7 PM Eastern time to talk about what happened.

“Disorderly conduct,” disobeying an officer,” and “resisting arrest” are all-purpose charges for anyone the police are pissed off at, and generally mean whatever the hell the police want them to mean. Please help spread the word on this if you can. You can not only help prevent an injustice from being done, but help drag the way law American enforcement all-too-frequently acts into the light of day.

My new friend

Regular readers may recall that a few months ago I made a post in memory of my cat Kira, who died last summer. I adopted a new cat in March, but haven’t gotten around to writing about it until now. Luckily, there’s a shelter quite close to my house, so I didn’t have far to go.

Her name, given by her previous owners, is Midnight. She’s a small black domestic short hair about 6 1/2 years old. I actually first noticed Midnight in precisely the way I first noticed Kira- I walked past her and she brushed her face against my hand through the bars. That piqued my interest, so I stopped and we watched each other for a while. The woman in charge of the cats brought us both into a little side room to see how we got along. She took to me immediately, and I decided to adopt her.

She’s adjusted to her new home quite well. She and my other cat, Toshi, quickly got used to reach other and get along wonderfully. She has several spots by windows that she likes, and she loves sitting in my lap (or occasionally climbing onto my shoulder) when I’m reading, playing games, or using the computer. When she sees me, she makes a sort of squeaking/chirping sound and runs over to rub her head against me. She likes to sleep in my bed at night, either on top of me or on a little pillow I keep in the bed next to my own.

A staggering number of animals are destroyed or left to run feral every year for lack of decent homes. Despite being incredibly friendly, Midnight had fairly poor prospects for adoption: Black cats are pretty consistently the kind least desired by the public, and at 6 1/2 years of age Midnight is also much older than what most prospective pet owners want. If you’re interested in a pet, please consider getting one from a shelter, and please don’t rule out the possibility of getting an adult. There are a lot of animals like Midnight that would love to have a home.

Fall guys

The public uproar over the bonuses for the executives of AIG must be one of the most ridiculous cases of misdirected anger in my lifetime. I'm not going to get all weepy over the hurt feelings of millionaire recipients of government boodle, but it’s a very sad example of how sound and potentially antistatist public sentiments, like “government giveaways to big business are bad,” get redirected so that they are harmless to the rulers. The government loots the nation of billions upon billions of dollars to give to wealthy cronies in an orgy of handouts and corporate welfare, and the lion’s share of public indignation on the subject is directed towards the beneficiaries of one tiny fraction of it, who received it due to a preexisting contract with a firm that was given government money. It’s as if everyone who thinks the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea ignored the existence of George W. Bush, selected a Marine gunnery sergeant at random, and declared him single-handedly responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths wrought by the war.

Seeds of libertarianism on the Left

In my post criticizing the idea of liberal-libertarian fusionism, I said that it is not mainstream liberals but people further leftward on the spectrum who offer potentially fruitful interaction, and who may be receptive to libertarian ideas. I’d like to elaborate more on that. This was originally intended to be a single post, but I ended up having more to say than I expected, so it will be split up.

I should say at the outset that my view of anti-market/private property far Left is not so positive as the assessment of left-libertarians such as Roderick Long or Kevin Carson. (Though I certainly reccomend that you read both of them on the subject.) I concluded long ago that a great many left-"anarchists" are simply state socialists or “good government” liberals in antiauthoritarian drag, the left-wing equivalent of the modern conservative who still claims to believe in "small government" while cheering for George W. Bush. Even those I would not place in that category sometimes display many of the objectionable attitudes of the statist Left, such as the reactionary aristocratic/clerical disdain for trade that pervades mainstream liberalism.

Nevertheless, I think that in an important way there is not one anti-market Left but two. There is what could be called the reactionary Left, who believe in coercion, paternalism, political hierarchy, and keeping the ignorant masses under the yoke of their betters. It is the continuation of the oppressive union of throne and altar that has ruled since the dawn of recorded history, with the idols on the altar reinvented to fit the sensibilities of a post-Enlightenment age where the old justifications of superior bloodlines and divine right no longer convince. It used to strike me as odd that the ancestors of modern American liberalism were so enamored with reactionary, aristocratic, militaristic Prussia; it no longer does.

On the other hand, there is another Left that offers more promise. They have a genuine desire for liberty for the people and an end to oppression and exploitation, but suffer from economic or philosophical confusions about the nature of property and the free market that lead them astray and into support of systems that are destructive to their own values and ideals.

These are ideal types, of course; individuals can be a mix, though my personal experience is that most people on the Left with strong political opinions sit fairly close to one of these two poles. This is not strictly a left-anarchist vs. left-statist split. There are left-wing statists who are confused but basically antiauthoritarian in spirit (some members of the Green Party strike me this way, for instance), and there are avowed left-anarchists who enthusiastically support expanding existing states, or who display a fondness for totalitarian left-wing governments and a desire to deny or soft-pedal their crimes.

This second, antiauthoritarian (or potentially so) Left has certain positive features generally lacking in ideologies like modern American liberalism which provide common ground with libertarianism. They point the way towards a liberty-friendly Left better-suited to supporting the best in its own ideals.

Perhaps the most important is an appreciation for voluntary actions, activities, and groups that arise from society rather than state action. This includes things like mutual aid societies, worker-owned firms, and labor unions. (Modern American unionism as we now know it is largely a creature of state privilege, but there is an older tradition of worker organizations that were outgrowths of voluntary society rather than government intervention. Poke around Rad Geek’s People’s Daily a bit and you’ll find some good stuff.) Now, the anti-market Left’s hostility to the single largest example of this phenomenon- for-profit private business and investment- is a serious gap in understanding. Nevertheless, their grasp of the fundamental idea that socially beneficial activities don’t need to be instigated, funded, or coordinated by the state represents is hugely important.

The more mainstream Left rejects this, and this rejection is a fundamental principle of their philosophy. The “Progressive” belief that society requires coercive technocratic management by the state is bred in their bones. Thus, they seldom seem able to imagine the possibility of anything good being accomplished without the state’s helping and guiding hand. When they talk about things “community organizing” and “social action,” that usually boils down to“begging the government for help.”

The idea that society can work and prosper without a wise sovereign directing things is one of the most important foundations of libertarianism and classical liberalism, and this principle provides a possible bridge between libertarianism and some leftists. I’ll have some more thoughts on some of the contrasts between mainstream liberalism and the antiauthoritarian Left in a future post.

Today Bureaucrash, tomorrow the world!

My apologies for my absence from this site. I haven't been idle, however- I'm now one of the regular bloggers on Bureaucrash. It's given me a chance to do some "entry-level" writing on libertarianism, which I haven't really done since college. I'll have something substantial here soon, but in the meantime you can check out my posts on Obama's fear-mongering, the real effects of recent "consumer protection" laws, and the innacuracy of government drug testing.

Mild annoyance from above

Life is full of surprises. Some people consider this one of its charms, a position that’s always been baffling to me. Case in point: last Thursday afternoon, while I was inoffensively going about my business, a flower pot that someone had evidently positioned insecurely fell from its perch and hit me. Luckily it hit me in the shoulder instead of the head, but it’s still a hell of a shock to have a heavy object whack you from out of nowhere from above and cover you in a shower of dirt.

So basically, my life has turned into a cartoon. And, sadly, it’s a traditional American cartoon based around subjecting the protagonist to sadistic and increasingly outlandish physical abuse, not one of the Japanese ones about an endearingly nerby schlub forced by circumstances to pilot some sort of 50-foot battle robot and/or share a house with a group of foxy female stock characters who are inexplicably attracted to him. Life is not fair.

In search of dogs to lie down with, Part II

The idea of liberaltarianism, an ideological fusion between libertarians and welfare statist/interventionist left-liberals that has been proposed by libertarians such as Will Wilkinson and Brink Lindsay, has sprung up again. (See Will Wilkinson, C.J. Trillian, and Jonah Goldberg to get the basics. Wilkinson compiles more responses here. I previously wrote about the issue here.) I confess to being baffled that this is still in the air. I can understand how this idea might have had some appeal when Bush was running wild and liberals were doing their best antiauthoritarian impression. The grass is always greener on the other side. However, for it to continue even as Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress spend hundreds of billions demonstrating their contempt for the idea of a smaller government, and as a horde of brain dead liberal pundits rant about how “laissez-faire” and “free market fundamentalism” has caused the current crisis, is incomprehensible to me. I certainly don’t support continuing libertarian alliance with conservatives, but idea that closer, productive libertarian association with liberals is possible is as disconnected from reality as Eric Dondero’s claims that the Republican Party is a hotbed of libertarianism.

The name "Liberaltarianism" itself strikes me as a misnomer, implying as it does some sort of merging or halfway point. The concession made by liberals, if there is any, is quantitative- a liberal welfare/regulatory state somewhat smaller, or perhaps just more efficiently run, than what we have now. The concession made by libertarians is a qualitative change to their fundamental philosophy- accepting the legitimacy and desirability of the liberal welfare/regulatory state, and with it both the basic liberal idea that society needs technocratic state vmanagement and the whole left-liberal conception of which freedoms matter most and which are disposable. I understand that even acknowledging that cases exist where more government is not the answer probably feels like a huge concession for a lot of liberals, but from a libertarian perspective it's not terribly impressive, and one needn’t be some fanatical nutjob to see this.

A lot of support for the whole idea seems to come from the notion that left-liberals and libertarians are united by a shared respect for liberty, personal autonomy, choice, what have you, and that we’re really just quibbling over details and how to implement things. The same thing used to be said of the relationship between conservatives and libertarians, and that was to a large extent the basis for an abusive, exploitative relationship between libertarians and conservatives that lasted decades and is only now dying a well-deserved death. It’s just as false here, and failing to realize this could have results just as pernicious. (Jonah Goldberg, who like many conservatives can be quite sharp when he’s analyzing liberalism instead of putting forth his own program, has a good post about this.)

Liberals consider respect for autonomy and choice an important principle only if you accept liberal assumptions about what areas of life freedom of choice is important or relevant to. The only freedoms liberals show any consistent regard for, and treat as matters of principle, are freedom of speech and sexual freedom. The former is the basis of the power, influence, and psychological and material interests of professional intellectuals and opinion-shapers, and the latter is generally near and dear to the modern secular urbanite, as well as to anyone who wants to stick a thumb in the eye of the traditional bourgeoisie or the reactionary rubes in flyover country.

(Of course, even free speech often goes by the wayside for many liberals if they feel sufficiently confident that censorship won’t turn around and bite them in the ass.)

It’s quite natural to think that whatever you like, value, and benefit from just happens to be what is objectively most valuable or important. That’s by no means a specifically liberal failing, though I think there are factors that make liberals especially prone to it. So, just as conservatives will fight to the death to protect your right to be a white conservative Christian, left-liberals deem sacrosanct those freedoms valuable to left-liberal intellectuals and secondhand idea dealers, and ignore or actively attack the others. And much as the conservative conception of freedom is likely to seem hollow to a would-be immigrant seeking work and a better life in the U.S., a gay couple hoping to adopt a child, or anyone who thinks freedom extends to things beyond owning weapons and practicing Christianity unmolested, the left-liberal conception of what rights are fundamental will be unsatisfying to anyone who takes a person’s right to his labor and property seriously, or just thinks there’s more to being free than talking and screwing as much as you like.

One of the things about libertarianism that has always been most appealing to me is that it declares a person’s right to control his own labor and the products thereof- ultimately, his right to his life- to be just as meaningful as the right of the intelligentsia to vie for influence and status or epater la bourgeoisie. In contrast to the fundamental elitism of left-liberalism, libertarianism puts the freedoms that every productive person uses and benefits from every day of his life on the same level as the freedoms that are especially dear to the intellectual/opinion-shaping class. (A virtue parts of the far Left also have, albeit in a confused fashion; more on that next time.) Liberaltarianism, by its very nature, is incompatible with this; to integrate any meaningful aspects of left-liberalism, it must accept the left-liberal denigration of private property and freedom of exchange and reduce them to the level of instrumental goods, to be tweaked and restricted and disposed of as the rulers see fit.

It's dismaying that, just as libertarians have broken away from an inappropriate and self-destructive relationship with conservative statists, we have people eager to rush into a relationship with another group at least as antithetical to libertarianism, in return for some vague possibility that we’ll get to associate with the statist elite and, if we’re really good, maybe get to play with one of the dials on the big control board a little. It saddens me to see valuable libertarian thinkers expending their energy on a forlorn hope. I’d say that liberaltarianism would mean selling our birthright for a mess of pottage, but in practice it would probably be more like selling our birthright for a blurry photograph of some pottage.

Luckily, I can’t see this taking off. Conservatives paid some lip service to libertarians’ ideas, and often seemed to act as if libertarians were their eccentric cousins- goofy in some ways, but still family. They could put on a good show of liking and valuing us, and I still think a few actually did. Liberals, on the other hand, are rarely anything but forthright in their loathing of libertarians and their ideals, and are generally quite open in their infatuation with collective endeavors, contempt for commerce, paternalistic disregard for individual choice, childish faith in government agents, and general statolatry. (Will Wilkinson describes his ideal as essentially a philosophically left-liberal state that achieves its ends through mostly libertarian means, and that seems accurate, but in his attitudes towards commerce, the market economy, individualism, grand collective enterprises, etc. he is still profoundly out of step with left-liberalism.) Conservatives were able to stomach the presence of libertarians well enough to take advantage of them, whereas I can’t imagine many liberals being able to hide their revulsion.

But haven’t I talked positively about left-libertarians and the idea of reaching out to leftists? Indeed, and I stand by that. But while liberaltarianism and left-libertarianism are often placed alongside each other and regarded as kindred ideas, I would argue that they are not only distinct ideas, but directly clash, and that the potential virtues of the further leftist reaches of the spectrum only throws the unsuitability of mainstream liberalism into starker relief. More on that soon.

My friend

This is not even tangentially related to this site’s subject, but there’s little point to having your own blog if you can’t follow your own arbitrary whims from time to time. I’m planning on getting a new cat from the animal shelter this week, and I’d wanted to post something in memory of my old cat for a while, so now seems like the time.

I got Kira from a local shelter in 2000, when she was about 9 months old. I noticed her when I was walking past the rows of cages, and she reached out her front paw and touched me, then pushed her cheek against the cage bars and tried to rub against my hand. Quite a stroke of good fortune. Despite being fairly skittish with most people, she seemed to take to me quickly, and so I adopted her.

She loved to sit by the windows, where she could enjoy the sunlight and watch the birds. Once she got used to company, she liked to come up to people, sit nearby, and stick one of her paws out and rest it on the person’s hand. She would always sleep in someone’s bed, preferably with someone in it. She was quite noisy; she had a very loud rumbling purr and would greet people she liked with a sort of chirping sound.

She died too soon. On June 30th of 2008, a tumor that had been growing in her stomach suddenly burst. She had no chance of recovery, and she was put down the same day. It was very sudden; she continued on happily with her usual activities until the last few hours of her life. I’m grateful for that, at least.

She was a wonderful cat, and I was lucky to have her in my life for 8 years. The woman in charge of the cats at the shelter (I’ve always mentally referred to her as the “cat wrangler,” though sadly her real job title probably wasn’t as cool), said she had been neglected and possibly abused by her prior owners prior to being abandoned, so I guess I was able to give her something better than she would have had otherwise. I hope I did. She deserved it.

Next, scarification!

Here’s something both amusing and frightening (Hat tip to Billy Beck): there are actually people getting Barrack Obama tattoos. American politics has been getting more messianic since 9/11, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that it’s reached this level. Dismayed, but not surprised.

It’s especially absurd when you consider that Obama has been in office for less than a month, and thus no one has any idea what his lasting image will be. If he ends up in some sort of scandal or public opinion of him just goes sour, having his face indelibly drawn into your flesh could get really embarrassing a few years down the line. (Imagine going through life with Ross Perot's face on your bicep.) People who have the name of some cute barfly they met 3 hours ago tattooed on themselves at least have the excuse of being drunk.

Hope and desperation

I’m quite hard on American liberals, and I make no apologies for that. That said, whereas liberal pundits and politicians often make me dismayed or angry, most liberalism (or conservatism, for that matter) in the average person just makes me feel sad. That’s been amplified by the Barack Obama phenomenon.

As I’ve said before, in practice American liberalism is not about expanding government power to help the needy or combat exploitation by big business, it is about exploiting fear of big business and sympathy for the needy to build up government power, but it succeeds because so few liberals actually understand that. There’s a lot of bad ideas and deplorable motivations among liberals, but there’s good too, and it’s awful to watch as so many people’s admirable motivations- compassion for the suffering, the desire to protect the vulnerable- are twisted back on themselves by those stronger and more cunning. That's a constant feature of politics, but it's especially glaring now in the afterglow of Obama's coronation. The orgy of pork, corporate welfare, and general jobbery that the government's "stimulus" efforts will inevitably produce are no doubt just the beginning.

It will be interesting to see how public opinion evolves as reality asserts itself. Like most libertarians, I have little doubt what that reality will be. Obama will not fix the economy. He will not bring a new age of national unity and fellowship. He will not do anything positive about the drug laws, welfare statism, dysfunctional education system, or barriers to economic success that wreak such havoc on millions of black Americans. Whether or not Obama is sincere is beside the point; whenever his intentions, he will not be what people dream of him being.

I suspect that we'll be seeing a lot of denial as the disappointments mount. President Bush had millions of people who believed in him no matter how severely he violated the ideal of limited government he claimed to support. (An ideal I think many conservatives still believe in, buried though it is under a mountain of partisan loyalty, intellectual confusion, desperation, and fear. Rank-and-file conservatives and rank-and-file liberals often seem to have a pretty similar relationship to their professed principles.) And George W. Bush didn't enter office on the sort of tidal wave of desperate adulation Obama is enjoying.

Like a drowning man, people threatened with the destruction of hope will cling to anything. People will try to justify or rationalize the failures and the betrayals of promises. People will reconcile themselves to things that would have rightly appalled them if Bush had done it. (See Cheryl Cline's recent post for an example.) Some of that is just cynical partisan politicking, but I think a lot of it is sincere- the death of a beloved hope is so agonizing that people often warp or just deny their own perceptions to avoid that pain. This is a common phenomenon that we've all probably witnessed. It's not hard to find relationships and marriages where one partner is blatantly unfaithful, exploitative, or abusive, and yet the victimized partner has convinced himself or herself that things are okay, that their partner is a good person who loves them.

There is no field of life that offers and then crushes hope as extravagantly as politics. And so, millions of people will end up trying to defend and justify Obama no matter what he does, no matter how much he fails or betrays the dreams he filled people with. Their longing for the good things Obama promises will lead millions to support, against their own ideals, all the bad he causes.

Thus, we see illustrated one of the most striking features of the state and of statist ideologies, which is how effective they are at warping good motivations and sentiments into support for unjust actions and destructive results- in short, of transmuting good into evil. That so many people think of it as not only a benevolent institution, but as the primary means of doing good and expressing what is best in our society, is a terrible irony indeed.

Lawless legislation

My last post brought up the story of Jack Melton, an elderly man who ran afoul of an obscure law by selling fruitcakes he had made in his own home rather than at a commercial bakery. Last time I wrote about some economic aspects of the story, but there’s another angle that’s also worth looking at.

Melton did not go sneaking around at night, covertly selling his cakes in dark alleys and cackling about how the police would never catch him. Instead, he openly advertised for customers. He clearly had no idea he was doing anything illegal. Why should he have? The rules he violated are likely buried deep in the bowels of some phonebook-sized tome of regulations, and selling homemade fruitcake is hardly the sort of clearly improper activity that a reasonable person would simply assume to be illegal.

This illustrates the limitations of “the rule of law” in America. Usually, that concept includes the requirement that the law be publicly made known in advance, so that citizens know what is required of them and cannot be arbitrarily persecuted. This is a concept familiar to classical liberals and libertarians; Friedrich Hayek in particular considered it one of the cornerstones of a free society. In theory, the United States mostly fulfills that requirement- legislation and the rules of regulatory agencies are public knowledge. (Though even here there are exceptions- for instance, many “anti-gouging” laws give essentially no explanation of what the law requires.)

In practice, the laws and regulations a citizen is expected to follow in the modern U.S. are so numerous, so arcane, so rapidly changing, and often so obscure and so difficult to understand, as to create a situation that is often all but indistinguishable from one where they are kept secret. The problem is aggravated by the fact that only a small percentage of them have any relation to widely accepted customs or moral concepts that one could reasonably expect every citizen to know.

It is quite easy to break the law by sheer chance, and it is likely only because government officials often do not enforce the rules to the hilt at every opportunity- whether out of sloth, compassion, or sheer whim- that many of us are not being blindsided with punishments for obscure infractions on a regular basis. Of course, this also means that a government official often has all manner of entirely legal means of tormenting you, should he take a dislike to you. Indeed, the system would likely be considered completely intolerable even by arch-statists if all the rules were rigorously enforced. Arbitrariness and unpredictability is inevitable, and would be so even if every government official was scrupulously honest and selfless

Obviously, this is a matter of degree- no human legal system can ever have perfect clockwork regularity and predictability, and there are countries much worse than America in this regard. Nevertheless, it could certainly be a lot better, too, and the more numerous and intrusive the laws of a country, the more that country is necessarily characterized by the rule of men and not that of law.

The dread scourge of unlicensed Christmas desserts

Hello, all! Unfortunately, my ill-fated holiday season sapped a lot of my energy, so I’ve been out of action for a bit. It’s good to be back.

It’s always comforting to know that the government is protecting us from nightmarish menaces like this: (Hat tip: Hit and Run)

Shasta County health officials are cracking down on an 86-year-old disabled World War II veteran who has been selling homemade fruitcakes for more than a decade.

The Department of Environmental Health cites an obscure law banning food businesses in private homes.

Jack Melton of Redding gave away many of his pecan-filled fruitcakes. But health officials saw a small handmade window sign offering some for sale.

Health specialist Fern Hastings says Melton must use a commercial bakery that has passed a health inspection even if he gives his cakes to the public.

The threat posed by elderly World War II veterans with access to unlicensed baking equipment cannot be overstated. Back when I was in high school, my Uncle Bob died tragically when he was decapitated by a piece of rye bread my grandfather had recklessly over-toasted. Remember the glass pane scene in The Omen? Just like that.

This is a nice example of the numerous little things the government does to inhibit small entrepreneurs- remember, Melton ran afoul of a prohibition on the distribution of cakes not made in a “commercial bakery.” A lot of government restrictions on business, combined with things like zoning laws, serve the purpose of suppressing forms of entrepreneurship that would otherwise be accessible to huge swaths of the population, including many people too poor to invest in any sort of new production equipment or training, simply using equipment and skills they already have- running a jitney service with your own car, cutting styling hair out of your own home, fixing appliances and machines in your garage, and so on. (See also Wendy McElroy on cottage industries.)

Even when such activity is not illegal, the government can often make it such a pain in the ass to comply with all the bureaucracy and regulations that it isn’t worth it, or is too daunting a task to get started on. (Or is done off the books, which creates a risk of punishment and leaves the businessman without access to the courts.) It’s often pointed out that, due to some of the fixed costs involved, regulatory compliance often disproportionately burdens smaller firms. This factor would become most extreme in a one-man business, especially if the entrepreneur is poor and using household goods as capital.

Regulation also poses a particular barrier two entrepreneurial efforts by the poor in another way, which I haven’t seen mentioned as much. If your childhood education was of low quality, you’re at a disadvantage in researching and dealing with all the rules that apply to you. This is even more of a potential problem if you were born elsewhere and English is not your first language.

The example seen here, baked goods, is another obvious candidate for something many people could do- plenty of people know how to cook, almost everyone already owns an oven, and necessary materials are a few dollars at the grocery store. Time requirements are not overwhelming- you don’t have to sit continuously by the oven while you’re baking something- so it’s something that can be done by a homemaker or someone who already works out of the house. It’s also an area where average people with no special training can often produce products that are better than most of what is available in stores- my mother routinely made cookies much better than what the grocery had, for instance. And, of course, the very nature of the operation provides a built-in incentive for honesty and safety- your customers know where you live. You’re not going to make a living at it, but it’s certainly a way many people could supplement their income.

Doing something like that probably doesn’t occur to all that many people. Most people don’t sit around trying to figure out ways to run businesses from their house or engage in other small-scale local entrepreneurship, of course, and so don’t directly feel the burden of not being allowed to, but I suspect that is itself largely a product of the legal environment.

People imitate successful examples. In the sort of highly regulated environment that ensnared Jack Melton, positive local entrepreneurial role models are discouraged or prevented from arising in the first place. If the economy suddenly became laissez-faire, most modern Americans still wouldn’t start looking around for new, independent forms of trade and production that they could pursue, because they haven’t seen it and don’t think of it themselves. However, simply allowing the few that do hit upon the idea on their own to succeed unmolested will show more people that it can be done and inspire more people to make their own attempts, which will create more positive examples, and so on and so on until doing it no longer strikes a people as odd. In such a culture, the legal regime we have now would seem absurdly constrictive.

If large numbers of people started engaging in small-scale entrepreneurship of this sort, alone or in small groups, many established firms would start to feel the pinch in two ways. There would be a horde of tiny competitors nibbling away bits and pieces of market share. Further, some people who start out working from their home or garage may grow enough to become bigger contenders in their field, and thus a rival to the established players. In this respect, many regulations that discourage small-scale entrepreneurship have an effect much like one of the effects of minimum wage laws, which can make people with extremely limited skills unemployable and thus unable to get work experience and skills that would make them more competitive workers. Likewise, if you have little business experience and little capital, the regulatory state makes it harder to acquire more of either. The bottom rungs of the ladder have been sawed off.

I think a number of fields in the economy, especially many services and household goods, would be considerably more competitive with these forces unleashed, with newer firms rising up to challenge incumbents at an accelerated rate and a relentless swarm of small-timers and part-timers forever gnawing away at the edges. Of course, no one likes being gnawed at by relentless swarms of things, least of all the people already on top with the most to lose, so there are numerous businesses with a vested interest in preserving or strengthening the current system, and the means to get it done- largely, in one of life’s nasty ironies, thanks to the aid of their alleged foes.

I’ve got a bit more to say, but his has become rather long already, so I think I’ll save it for another post.

Unintended consequences

Writing about the problems that arise when the government intertwines itself with an area of the private economy, in this case medicine, Roderick Long writes:

When so much of the health care system has been unnaturally sucked into the federal embrace, such selective de-funding unfairly limits people’s choices in a way that they would not be limited in a free market. If I and my gang use the violence of the state to gain a near-monopoly of some good or service, our decision to refuse to provide that good or service to people we don’t like begins to look not so innocent…

…it’s a great example of how the Rawlsian/Dworkinian [Ronald, not Andrea or poor Gerald] dream of a state apparatus that is neutral among its citizens’ competing conceptions of the good is ultimately incoherent. Federal funding for contraception and abortion violates the rights of taxpayers who oppose those practices on moral grounds; selectively de-funding those practices in the context of a heavily statised health care industry threatens people’s reproductive freedom.

Quite right. There's an important consequence to this: Because neutrality is impossible, state involvement in any area of society encourages additional conflict between citizens, as formerly private activities become public business.

For this reason, it’s somewhat ironic that pro-choicers are generally much more likely than pro-lifers to support more government in health care. As things stand now in the United States, abortion is fairly difficult to assail successfully- totally outlawing it on either the national or state level would require an amendment to the national constitution. But suppose we had universal health care, with everything paid for by the government. Now it’s simpler- you don’t have to outlaw a medical procedure to stop it, you just have to deny it funding.

Getting support for such a de facto outlawing of abortion would be much easier to pull off if universal healthcare existed, as well. As it is now, some people want abortion outlawed, but there are a lot of people who don’t want any part of it themselves but don’t think it should be illegal. However, if all abortions are paid for by the taxpayer, the “disapproving but tolerant” portion of the population is faced with a problem- if you don’t want your own money paying for abortions, or just for particular types (late-term abortions, for instance), your only means of self-defense is to eliminate access to it. (History strongly suggests that once universal healthcare is instituted, conservatives will quickly come to accommodate it and adapted into their own ideology, so any sustained attempt by pro-lifers to fix the problem by returning health care to the private sector is unlikely.) You could try to avoid the problem by making abortions an exception to otherwise universal government funding of health care, but liberal pro-choicers would be the first to condemn such a thing.

There are other possible outcomes to conservative-controlled government medicine that many liberals would find uncongenial- things like sex reassignment surgery or in vitro fertilization could also be made inaccessible through de-funding, and such a thing would be easier to accomplish than making them officially illegal when they’re being directly paid for by those who want them. Making health care a purely government responsibility could also strengthen the hand of conservatives when they argue in favor of government control in people’s personal lives. Sex is the obvious example, since it can be a vector for disease and thus a source of health care expenses. If smoking restrictions, helmet laws, “fat taxes,” and the like are permissible because bad health habits can increase government health care expenses-and liberals have become quite insistent that they are- than such restrictions would only become more desirable when the government is footing the entire bill, and many conservatives have their own list of private activities they would like to interfere with.

As usual, virtually no one ever anticipates the possibility that all the powers they want to give the government will sometimes be in the hands of their opponents.

Visit scenic Illinois: Third-World government at First-World prices!

Today, I am proud to be an... Illinoisian? Illinoisite? What the hell are we called, anyway? It doesn't matter. You know, other states can claim their petty distinctions- their monuments, their scenic mountains and forests, their low murder rates. But how many other states in the Union will soon be able to claim the distinction of having two consecutive governors go to prison for corruption?

#@$&% MACHINES!

I just wanted to assure any readers wondering about my absence that I have not been slain in a gangland assassination or died an ironic death entombed beneath a pile of old Jack Vance paperbacks that came crashing down on me when their weight proved too much for my cheap self-assembled bookshelves to withstand. I’ve just been plagued with computer problems, and my computer usage has thus been limited. I should be fully operational and writing on a timelier schedule soon, though, provided the damn thing doesn’t become sentient and murder me in my sleep. Which, considering my usual luck with electronics, is a serious possibility.

Ah, those stalwart champions of the common man

Reading the response to this post by Will Wilkinson, especially in the post’s comments section, made me chuckle a bit. Wilkinson argues that giving billions of dollars in taxpayer money to the Big 3 car companies would be a bad idea. This leads to a predictable outpouring of liberal commenters railing against Wilkinson for being a heartless monster who doesn’t care about auto workers, or a fanatical market fundamentalist who doesn’t understand that a more nuanced view would mean realizing that government intervention is invariably the solution, or whatever- the standard hysterical outbursts that are used as a substitute for actual thought.

The funny part is that liberals are endlessly claiming that their opponents- and especially libertarians- are just shills for big business. And yet here, we have a bevy of liberals attacking a libertarian for his opposition to corporate welfare! Once this would have confused me; it no longer does.

There were voices of reason. A commenter called Jordan summed things up by saying:

Hilarious. You can always count on the types who rail about the "eeevil corporations" to be first in line when said corporations come begging for handouts.

Quite right, and perhaps the best single-sentence summation of mainstream liberalism there is. American liberalism is not about expanding government power to combat exploitation by big business, it is about exploiting fear of big business to build up government power. Much as the actions of conservatives are often baffling if you take their claimed opposition to "big government" seriously, the behavior of liberals does not become fully comprehensible until this basic truth is understood.

I gave up on the Republican Party and stopped considering myself a “conservative” because I realized that they didn’t really mean it when they attacked big government, and were as bad as the Democrats. I hope more people who support the Democrats or consider themselves liberals out of a sincere opposition to exploitative plutocrats similarly start to figure out that the company they are keeping is no more a threat to plutocracy than the Republicans are.

Yes, just like all liberals 'hate America"

A certain pet peeve of my mine has come to the fore a lot lately. Over at the blog Art of the Possible, poster Alix quotes the following from Makani Themba-Nixon:

If anyone doubts that racism is alive and well in American politics, the fact that more than 55 million people voted for McCain in spite of his negative, racist and politically vacuous campaign; his lack of charisma and terrible media performance; his scary choice of running mate and inconsistent positions on virtually every issue of importance; and in spite of his obvious ineptitude for the bread and butter issues facing the majority of electorate should be proof enough. Being White and male gave him the handicap (in golf terms) that got him 50 million plus votes “just because.”

I agree that racism remains a real factor in America, but the fact that some people have the temerity to vote against Barack Obama is not very good proof of that. Much as I dislike McCain, Themba-Nixon's solipsistic inability to grasp the possibility that significant numbers of people might actually vote for him for reasons other than raw wickedness strikes me as a textbook example of the utter lack of empathy that does so much to distort liberal/leftist political analysis and commentary. Themba-Nixon thinks McCain was a bad candidate, and apparently can’t conceive that anyone could sincerely disagree, so it must be racism.

This sort of thing seems to be much more common on the left than on the right. (Right-wingers can be quite nasty too, but their venom tends to have a different feel to it; they often hate liberals, but do not generally seem bewildered by them.) I think part of the reason is differences in the underlying philosophies, which is a post in itself. In large part, however, I think the difference is the product of external conditions. Due to the composition of academia and the American media, liberals in intellectual or opinion-shaping careers are far more likely than their conservative counterparts to operate in an environment where their fundamental beliefs rarely encounter serious challenge. When combined with the center-left/good-government slant of the mainstream media and public education, it’s not hard for large (and influential) segments of the population to go through life with very little experience of anything that seriously challenges their ideology. (Which is why I laugh when any earnest mainstream center-left pundit laments the danger of political “echo chambers” created by all the fragmented communities of the Internet. The fact that some of them seem to actually be sincere just makes it funnier.)

In that sort of environment, it’s easy for liberal premises to come to seem not only true, but so obviously true that people who reject them seem incomprehensible, motivated by sheer perversity. Whenever their many faults, conservatives are forced by circumstance to be constantly aware that not everyone considers the truth of conservativism to be self-evident.

This is not a specifically liberal problem, or a specifically political one; it can crop up whenever there is a similar imbalance between two groups in numbers and/or representation among opinion-shapers. For instance: Extroverts, in my experience, often seem to find the preferences or even the existence of introverts incomprehensible, whereas introverts seldom find extroverts similarly baffling. (Just annoying. I kid, I kid. Mostly.) We don’t have inherently greater insight; it’s just that introverts don’t reside in an environment where most people are like them and the media and popular culture continuously and reflexively treats their nature and preferences as normative. Without sufficient stimulation, the ability to understand people who aren’t like you often atrophies.

At least in this area, libertarians have a certain advantage. Our tiny numbers and rejection of many of the implicit assumptions that underlie almost all mainstream political discourse make it impossible to forget that not all people agree with us, and it’s much harder to imagine everyone who disagrees with you as a monstrous devil when you’re surrounded by and interacting with those people all the time.

Admittedly, the superior insight gained through obscurity and impotence is a fairly small silver lining in a very dark cloud. You have to take what you can get, and do what you can with it. I've previously written on a somewhat similar topic at this post and this post.

A story for election night

I'm finally getting things up and running again. I'll have some new stuff shortly, but in in observance of the election I thought I'd repost something I wrote a while back.

Your Sacred Duty to Vote: A Parable

I was reading the paper one morning when I heard a knock on the door. I hadn't been expecting a visitor, but I quickly got up and opened the door. On my front step, to my surprise, was my next-door neighbor, holding a baseball bat in his hands.

"Uh… Can I help you?" I asked.

He nodded eagerly, and said, "I've come so we can play a game. You'll flip a coin. If it comes up heads, I'll break both of your legs. If it comes up tails, I'll break your arms. I play this game with all the neighbors every few years. Sounds pretty fun, don't you think? You're lucky; in some places people don't get to play my game." He smiled, clearly quite pleased with himself.

"This is absurd!" I exclaimed. "I'm not playing your game. Get off my property!"

He sighed, looking very hurt. "Fine," he said. "I'll flip the coin." He produced a quarter from his pocket and tossed it into the air. It landed on the concrete path in front of my house, heads facing up. "Well, the coin has spoken." Before I could react, he swung the bat, hitting me in the leg. I gasped and sank to one knee. He swung again and again at my shins, leaving me sprawled on the ground.

Through the pain, I cried out, "You broke my legs!"

"Well, yes," he replied. "The coin came up heads. What are you so upset about, anyway?"

Incredulous, I yelled, "You have no right to go around beating people up!"

He seemed baffled at this. "Sure I do. You consented to this when you chose to live on the same block as me. Besides, you refused to exercise your right to flip the coin, like I offered. If you won't participate in my game, you have no right to complain about the outcome."

His reasoning seemed a bit off to me, but I was in too much pain for any deep logical analysis. "Well," he continued, "It's been a pleasure serving you, but I've got to get going. Lots of houses left to visit today. See you in two years!" With that he smiled, gave a polite nod, and was on his way.

A conundrum

One of the frustrating things about politics is how difficult it can be to distinguish actual liberalism from parodies of liberalism. Case in point: Is this Slate article, "Date Local: The Case Against Long-Distance Relationships" a clever satire of the environmentalist drive to subjugate every aspect of human life and slaughter them all on Gaia's altar, or is author Barron YoungSmith actually serious?

Sheep's clothing

As the old Vulcan proverb says, only Nixon could go to China. His reputation as a devoted Cold Warrior meant no one could plausibly accuse him of being soft on Communism for opening relations with China, whereas a dove who attempted it would have been.

I was put in mind o that by the recent $700 billion dollar bailout passed by Congress. The bailout had more support from Democrats than from Republicans. Barack Obama voted in favor of it, as did McCain. If the economic situation gets worse, the next president will be in a position to further expand the state's role in the economy, perhaps significantly so.

I wonder if Democrats felt more comfortable giving hundreds of billions of dollars away to banks precisely because of the public perception that Democrats are opposed to powerful business interests (something even many opponents of the Democrats believe.) Consider Obama himself: he's been accused of being an extreme liberal, a Marxist, a terrorist sympathizer, and a secret Muslim, but how often does anyone accuse him of being a tool of powerful business interests? To the overwhelming majority of the American people, the idea is too absurd to even entertain, even among people who hate Obama.

Thus, I wonder if a Democratic president and legislature might actually be more prone to being a tool of politically connected plutocrats than Republicans would be. To a great extent, legislation intended to aid particular economic interests can fly under the radar, because almost everyone (conservatives included) buys into the myth that interventionism is bad for big business. People might attack a proposed regulation for being innefectual or misguided, but the idea that regulation might be what the major players in the field being regulated want is quite foreign to most people. Nevertheless, being excessively blatant about it can still make people notice, as the public's anger over the bailout shows.

A Democratic government could probably push the envelope farther than the Republicans could- the widespread presumption that Democrats are hostile to the wealthy and powerful would mean that the Democrats would have to get really blatant about it before people started asking questions and catching on, whereas everyone expects the Republicans to be on the side of big business.

On the other hand, the false perception of McCain and the Republicans as devoted supporters of free markets- promoted by the dishonest and the ignorant on both sides of the political spectrum- would provide Republicans with cover as well. After all, if even the Republicans think that the government should intervene, you know something needs to be done!

I'm not sure which factor would be stronger in an economic crisis. I should note that the Democrats' image as enemies of plutocracy would probably make it easier for them to get away with passing genuine pro-market reforms- not that it would ever actually come up, of course.

It never ends...

I was in a fairly good mood until I found this article, via Psychopolitik:

Too busy playing video games to watch presidential ads on television? Barack Obama has found you, too, by becoming the first presidential candidate to buy ad space inside a game.

Nine video games from Electronic Arts Inc., ranging from the extremely popular "Madden 09" football game to the street racing "Burnout: Paradise," feature in-game ads from the Obama campaign. The ads — they appear on billboards and other signage — remind players that early voting has begun and plug a campaign Web site.

I doubt it was intentional, but the way the lede gives the impression of a relentless hunter-"Barack Obama has found you, too"- seems wonderfully appropriate. The hunter being not Obama in particular, but the overwhelming importance of politics and the state in American life.

This apparently will apply mostly to sports games, where it's much easier to fit ads for real products into the game setting, and I'm mostly an RPG/strategy guy, so it doesn't reach me directly. Still, it frustrates me that there are ever-fewer places in our culture where one can avoid this crap.

Ayn Rand once remarked (quoting from memory, probably not exact), "I'm interested in politics so that one day I won't have to be interested in politics." That's always resonated with me. The need to guard against aggression is never-ending, and would remain so even in a fully free society, but the maddening thing about our current situation is that it feels as if there is never a moment's peace- the state and it's machinery of legitimation never stops poking, probing, trying to work its way into everything.

A grim legacy

You know, if "hockey mom" becomes a permanent part of the American political lexicon, I am going to be really pissed. The whole "Sport+Parent" method of describing supposed voting blocs has got to be one of the most annoying innovations in political rhetoric of the last decade.