Futures and Options

Well, Michael Lind, I’ll say this for you, you’ve started me thinking.  Much like a blind pig, you seem to have stumbled across a truffle in spite of yourself.  Sort of, anyway.

The question you ask, how would Lincoln vote today, is a good one, even if you slant the answers by comparing dissimilar data or through the use of a strawman in lieu of actual Republican positions.  Let’s have a look at your points from a more objective lens, shall we?

Race:  Obviously Lincoln was, first and foremost, a man of the mid-1800s.  Allowing for the inherent prejudices of his era, it seems clear to me that Lincoln was entirely against any sort of racial discrimination. It also seems quite clear that he was not against using federal power to mandate the recognition of civil rights.  In this case, it seems that both current parties would have an equal claim to Lincoln.  Despite the vocal states’ rights contingent within conservatism, this view is far from a majority and, what is more, even affirmed states’ rights supporters acknowledge that there are areas where federal power is necessary to ensure the cohesiveness of the country’s laws.  A person would be hard pressed to demonstrate that any significant number of conservatives would support the idea of civil rights being a states’ rights issue.

Immigration:  Again, both parties have a claim on Mr. Lincoln in this area.  Republicans may actually have the stronger claim.  Bear with me on this one.  In the real world, outside of the strawman created by many liberals, conservatives are emphatically not “anti-immigration”.  What conservatives are is anti-illegal-immigration.  Anyone who wants to come to this country should be allowed access to legal channels.  Race, gender, religion, nationality, etc should never be relevant to the immigration process.  I find it difficult to believe that a man like Mr. Lincoln would have supported amnesty for those who have broken the law, and because of this, I have difficulty thinking that Mr. Lincoln would be on the liberal side of this issue.

Economics:  Mr. Lind bases his claims on Lincoln’s statement that, “My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank … in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff.”  True enough.  But let us look at the differences between Lincoln’s time and our own.  Yes, Lincoln supported a central bank (in his time the term “national bank” was used interchangeably with what is today called a “central bank”, i.e. in the US, the Federal Reserve), but so do almost all conservatives.  The argument over whether a central bank should exist is settled (a central bank is necessary if only for the maintenance of a standard currency); what is debated today is just how much power such a central bank should have.  Lincoln gives us little to go on if we wish to divine his opinion on that matter.  Yes, Lincoln was in favor of the internal improvements system.  But again, look at the time period in which Lincoln was speaking.  The country was actively expanding at that time; new states were being added rapidly and federal programs were needed to fuel the expansion.  This is not a situation which is analogous to the present.  So far, two of the three positions give us little, if any, information to suggest that Mr. Lincoln would prefer or avoid either party.  Finally, a high protective tariff.  This is definitely not going to sway Mr. Lincoln towards the globalism of the Democratic party, nor would it even find Mr. Lincoln a home among the more centrist Republicans.  No, this view puts Lincoln firmly in the libertarian camp, rubbing elbows with Ron Paul rather than any centrist politician.

National Debt:  Again, Mr. Lind is disingenuous.  First, he uses the growth of the federal budget (indeed, quite staggering) during the Civil War to “prove” that Lincoln supported massive debt.  There are several things wrong with this, not the least of which being that Mr. Lind fails to provide anything beyond anecdotal evidence of an increase in debt to go along with the increased budget.  The primary objection to this portion of Lind’s diatribe is, of course, that Mr. Lincoln was embroiled in a war that he did not start and that he had choice to avoid.  Whether Mr. Lincoln supported high national debt or not, the war must be fought.  There’s no evidence whatsoever given to support the idea that Lincoln would have been in favor of voluntary, discretionary increases in the national debt.  It is one thing to increase debt in the face of an immediate existential threat to the Union, but it is quite another to choose to increase debt when such actions are unnecessary.  Mr. Lind, apparently, fails to grasp this distinction.  We would need to ask Lincoln himself how he felt about today’s situation, and that option is not exactly available.

Taxes:  Lincoln signed the bill creating the IRS into law as well as the bill that established the first income tax, true.  But this is hardly indicative that Lincoln would have supported the current level of taxation or government spending.  Nor is Mr. Lind’s knee-jerk characterization of Republicans as, “calling for more tax cuts as the answer to every problem” anything but a ridiculous strawman argument.  As a polemic, Mr. Lind’s assertions here are entertaining.  As anything resembling objective analysis, they are severely lacking.  Once again, the best we can say is that Lincoln’s modern position is unclear.

Religion:  Mr. Lind hits home on this point.  Not coincidentally, this is also the point on which Mr. Lind expends the greatest amount of energy in providing sources and quotations.  Scholarship does have value after all.  Unfortunately, the section is marred by the only-technically-not-absent acknowledgment that the religious right is not the entirety of the Republican party.  It seems that Mr. Lind is unhappy to admit that there may be conservatives out there who are neither scientifically backward nor religiously intolerant.  (Though, this is perhaps to be expected of someone who, in another article, claimed that the phrase “Judeo-Christian” was, “a weaselly term used by Christian nationalists to avoid offending Jews”.  Surely a statement like that must offend any serious academic student of religious history.)  And again, this doesn’t necessarily place Mr. Lincoln outside of conservatism as a whole.  Indeed, again it seems more likely to place Mr. Lincoln on the fringes, rubbing elbows with libertarians.

In the end, the blind pig does find his truffle; today’s Republican Party is clearly not aligned with Lincoln’s positions on the issues.  And Mr. Lind does admit that the Democrats are not exactly in a position to claim that they are carrying Lincoln’s torch either, so there is at least a hat-tip towards objectivity.  Still, Mr. Lind is clearly intent on axe-grinding, and it shows.  His articles are frequently ambitious, but unfortunately his own lack of academic rigor lets them down.  It would be nice, I think, if Mr. Lind’s articles were revisited by someone who is actually as intelligent as Michael Lind thinks himself to be.

I know. I’ve been mentioning him perhaps too often lately, but his most recent series has been hitting very close to home for me.  I just couldn’t resist one more trackback to the man who seems to be able to channel my own ideas.

…Beck and others like him, who constantly raise the specter of American doom, of Obama as commissar, the Democrats as Nazis, while imploring listeners to “take the country back” and start some kind of “revolution” are bat sh*t dangerous to the conservative movement. I am not convinced, as many on the left seem to be, that any of this hyperbolic rhetoric will lead to a massive outbreak of violence. But there is little doubt it marginalizes conservatives even more than they were on November 5 of last year and unless the tables can be turned and the Beck’s of the movement are themselves tossed to the sidelines, I fear that conservatism – yours, mine, the paleos, the neocons, the elites, and every kind of conservatism in between – will achieve the same kind of irrelvancy that liberalism experienced (for many of the same reasons) for much of the two decades preceding Obama’s election.

Good on ya, Rick.

There has been a lot of talk lately about how conservatives such as Meghan McCain, Rick Moran, and, yes, myself, are “eating our own” when we criticize media figureheads like Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, or Rush Limbaugh.  Criticism of these figures is “falling into the Democrat [sic] trap“, being “jealous” of their success, or indicative that the commenter is really a liberal in disguise who is busily astroturfing, as the reactions to Moran’s comments on Hot Air seem to indicate.  There are two questions that come to mind when I hear these criticisms of conservative media personalities; are they necessary, and, to a lesser degree, why do I bother.

Obviously, given my own past commentary, I believe that such criticisms are necessary.  Which means that I therefore have to answer why I believe that they are necessary.  The why is, as are most things in life, more complex that I would prefer.  First of all, the conservative movement is fragmented to a degree that is simply not present among liberals.  I do not mean to say that there are not “kooky” factions on the left, there certainly are, but not to the degree that conservatives are fragmented.  Because of this fragmentation, and the accompanying lack of clear leadership, more fanatical members are able to shout loudly enough to be perceived as leaders, or at least promoted as leaders by the left.  To be sure, the left has its own fanatical members (Bill Ayers and Noam Chomsky anyone?), but because the left is more unified and has a strong, centralized, leadership, perpetuating the idea that people like Ayers and Chomsky are “leaders” of the liberal movement is not tenable (and, to be clear, would not be accurate even if it were tenable).

Because of strong, central leadership, Chomsky, Ayers and their compatriots can function as gadflies; their valuable ability of occasional alighting on a salient argument missed by the center is used, but their radical antics are repudiated.  The conservative movement currently lacks this leadership.  Because there is no centralized “voice” for conservatism, the portrayal of people like Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, and others like them as the “central voice” of conservatism becomes a tenable attack.  Without a more centrist leadership, the more radical positions of Beck and his ilk are easily misrepresented as the views of “all conservatives” in the opposition’s propaganda.  Gadflies are essential when there is strong and coherent leadership, but when there is a power vacuum, such as the conservative movement is currently facing, gadflies allow the opposition an all too easy method of caricaturing (and thereby weakening) the very ideologies that these gadflies wish to strengthen.

This reasoning alone is not enough, because it contains within it the hidden assumption that the opposition’s propaganda matters, which must itself be defended against the (sizable) contingent of conservatives who tend to believe that what other people think doesn’t matter.  This is, for me at least, an especially powerful objection as I am sympathetic to this view in most aspects of my own life.  In a perfect world, the truth will always win out and what other people think doesn’t matter if it’s not true.  Sadly, this is not a perfect world and we do not live in Lake Wobegon; all of the children aren’t above average.

Conservatism must grow, and the only available way to grow is to grow towards the center.  The more that conservatives attempt to polarize the electorate, the more we serve only to encourage our own marginalization.  Because conservatism’s growth depends upon moderates, the ability of the left to paint conservatism as an extreme movement is critically dangerous to our long-term political viability.  It does us no good to say that it shouldn’t matter what others say about us because the simple fact is that it does matter within the constraints of our goals.  We cannot legitimately expect to be taken seriously as an intellectual position while simultaneously embracing publicly people who talk seriously about seceding from the United States.

The only way that conservatism can regain any footing as a legitimate intellectual position is for us all to begin repudiating the radical element that has gained such excessive prominence of late.  However much some of us may admire the fact that Beck, Coulter, O’Reilly, and Limbaugh are willing to tilt at windmills, we would all do well to remember that this usually hurts the one who tilts more than it hurts the windmills.

As for why I bother?  Well, perhaps this is a windmill of my own.

A libertarian-minded friend recently brought up the idea of “going John Galt”: packing it all up and withdrawing his productive talents from American society as a protest against the absurd frenzy of government regulation and bailouts sparked by the economic downturn–in effect, going on strike. Turns out he’s not the only one to entertain this notion.
Yet, as much as I agree with their intentions, I wonder if these protesters have misnamed their campaign against big government, and if they should really be looking to John Galt as a model of rebelliousness.

Their defiance is nominally styled on the exploits of the hero of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Galt is the brilliant inventor who vows to “stop the motor of the world” by convincing all the men of great productive ability–the men of the mind–to join his strike. Galt’s goal is the utter destruction of the moral-political edifice of modern America–the elimination of the notion that man is his brother’s keeper. In the novel, it works. Industry and commerce crumble, and the rule of law soon gives way to anarchy.

I once described the novel to my mom, who hadn’t read it. “Sounds like a terrorist,” she said. Her remark gave me pause: she was condemning the hero of one my all-time favorite literary works, yet she sort of had a point. Galt and his comrades are able to stand by, secure in their mountain hideaway, and watch the self-ruination of the world below, exactly as they meant it to happen. Is that not the same sort of moral arrogance–the unflinching belief that one’s vision of the world is correct, and the acceptance of human suffering as a necessary means to achieve that vision in its purest form–that allows men to fly commercial airplanes into crowded skyscrapers? Well, no and yes.

No, because Galt is very careful in choosing his method of rebellion. He doesn’t do anything, which is the entire point. He doesn’t take anyone’s life; he forces everyone to live his life on his own, without mooching off the efforts of others. He lays bare the reality that the bulk of society rests on the productive ability of a determined few. Those that cannot make it on their own, perish (see Zenmervolt’s post on shooting horses).

So yes, the means are different–omission versus commission–yet the end goal of Galt and real-world fanatical jihadists is identical: the destruction of Western civilization. Galt does not flinch at this outcome; he simply sees no alternative. He perceives the moral underpinnings of society to be rotten to the core, and a great and violent cleansing is the only way to wipe the slate clean. This is one of several ways in which I believe Rand’s writing departs from reality (although I don’t think her artistic goal is an accurate portrayal of reality, which is one of the reasons Atlas Shrugged is such an elegantly powerful philosophical statement). Decent men, even if they buy into Galt’s individualist philosophy wholeheartedly, are incapable of watching the suffering of fellow men with heroic detachment. Humans simply aren’t programmed that way. And that’s one of the reasons that “going John Galt” is a poor name for modern-day protests. I doubt that most of the real-world strikers have the goal of destroying Western civilization as they know it. They simply lack the desire to participate in the system any longer.

And even if ruin and anarchy were their goal, achieving it by going on strike from society would be unlikely to achieve it. It’s too easy for humans to survive in this world. Our historic inventiveness has made life incredibly easy, and we are never required to acknowledge the root means of our existence. Thus, I simply cannot foresee the world falling to pieces as it did in the novel, even if a significant percentage of the world’s productive citizens “went John Galt.” People will go on happily, comfortably, unthinkingly for a long while, maintaining the moral-political status quo.

What “going John Galt” amounts to in the real world is an act of political expression. And in that vein, it may have some impact. Personally, I still think the world is a pretty good place, with lots of people worth dealing with, and I am not ready to withdraw myself, even if I had the means and wherewithal to do so. So my own acts of political expression will be writing blog posts, voting, etc. I am still hopeful that we can change the status quo from within. Rand’s novel is a tremendous artistic statement about a powerful philosophy; it is not, and does not strive to be, an accurate portrayal of the real world. Its worth as a guide to real-world action is dubious, but its worth as a guide to philosophy is indisputable, and those who live in the real world would do well to read and understand it.

The more I read of Rick Moran’s writing, the more I am convinced that he is one of the few fully rational voices involved in today’s conservative movement.  This time it’s an honest appraisal of the damage that the conservative media personalities are doing to conservatism as an ideology.

…allowing the left to define conservatives and try to discredit them by marginalizing even mainstream righties is a breeze when kooks like Glenn Beck give them fodder for their critiques almost every day.

I’m not sure that it’s possible for an objective and honest person to disagree with Moran here.

“Pumpkin, that’s modern medicine. Advances that keep people alive who should have died a long time ago, back when they lost what made them people.” – Dr. Percival “Perry” Cox in the very first episode of “Scrubs”

Between yesterday’s article about the reduced health care costs of smokers and the near-continuous stream of news pieces about the economy I’ve started to think that maybe there’s some common ground between the two.  Not in any causal or correlative way, but in overall philosophy.  Modern medicine has given us many great things; it has eradicated diseases like polio and has all but eliminated diseases like tuberculosis.  On the other hand, it creates situations where people can linger for years, sometimes decades, connected to “life” support machinery but unconscious and otherwise devoid of everything that makes us truly “human” and “alive”.  It seems to me that we’re now extending this same practice to corporations.

Dolling out government funds to corporations just to keep them afloat makes them artificially viable.  Remove the infusions of government cash and the companies go into bankruptcy and are forced to re-organize, at which point they may either return to the marketplace as revitalized entities or they may fail entirely, but they do so on their own inherent viability not from a continuous infusion of taxpayers’ dollars.  There comes a time when we either pull the plug or waste time, effort, and money in a futile attempt to postpone the inevitable.

Those who support bailouts may point to the Chrysler example of the early 1980′s.  They may say that Chrysler’s government loans allowed the company to claw its way back and revitalize itself; that the 1980′s were a fantastic time for Chrysler’s profitability.  They would be wrong. The government gave Chrysler no money at all back in 1979; they merely co-signed Chrysler’s loan applications.  Taxpayer dollars, while at risk, were not actually spent.  Also, that co-signing came with strings attached.  Chrysler of 1979 went bankrupt in every real way save actually calling it Chapter 11.  In every functional aspect, it was a bankruptcy.  Chrysler’s creditors were forced to settle for 30 cents on the dollar or were paid off in shares of stock that were effectively worthless except as toilet paper.  Chrysler’s workers were forced to accept pay reductions and over 40% of the hourly workers were laid off.  Chrysler went through a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in everything except the name.

If anything, Chrysler’s previous “bailout” in 1979 is proof that the Chapter 11 Bankruptcy process works.  It’s time to take the “patients” off of life support and let them live or die on their own merits.

More comforting news about the world today from the Wall Street Journal.  It seems that not only have software gurus managed to break into the network that controls our power grid (and other utilities), but they’ve also implanted programs that would give them control at a later date.

And some people wonder why I think it’s a good idea to have a well, a septic tank, propane heat, and a generator.

*_{I don’t think that utilities are evil or that being “on the grid” somehow lets the government track you or anything like that.  Those are ridiculous notions.  But I have always thought that it is a good idea to be prepared to be reasonably independent if at all possible.  It’s just a good way to reduce the potential for minor inconveniences.}

I know that I should not be amused by this, but the irony is just too rich for me to resist.  A new study by Kip Viscusi, an economist at Vanderbilt University shows that thin, healthy people cost insurance companies an average of $91,000 more than smokers from age 20 through death.  All that wonderful self-righteous backlash against smokers and it turns out that it’s the heath nuts who are a larger burden on society.  Even if this means my own insurance rates go up, I’m all but shaking with mirth over this discovery; I man not smoke, but darned if I don’t just love it when the morality squad has their beliefs challenged.

Right Wing Nuthouse makes a good, though slightly vitriolic, point about the allegations that are being thrown around regarding the Oakland, PA shooter’s motivations.

But beyond Willis’ usual hysteria and laughable hyperbole, there is this fantastical notion shared by many on the left that they have insight into people’s souls not granted to us mere mortals. Willis can make an extraordinarily bald faced statement that the reason the Pittsburgh killer acted was because he was influenced by right wing blather – without so much as “we think” this is so or “many believe” this is what he thought – because many liberals think themselves qualified psychiatrists or better yet, “diviners of their neighbor’s intent.” It is a heavy burden Oliver and other liberals carry, this almost psychic ability to peer into other men’s souls and glean motivations that we ordinary folk are not vouchsafed the ability to use.

Now, while I disagree with the broad brush being used here and the portrayal of liberals as a homogeneous group (even though I believe that it is being used for rhetorical purposes and not literal ones, I still dislike it), I wholeheartedly agree that there are at least a subset of people (on either side of the political continuum) who firmly believe in their ability to divine other people’s motivations.  Such beliefs are untenable.  Most of us barely understand our own motivations, much less the motivations of others, no matter how much we wish it were otherwise.

At most, we can say that Poplawski’s actions appear to have been partially influenced by a misunderstanding of the prevailing conservative view that greater restrictions on firearms are possible given the current administration.  Similarly, Charles Manson’s actions appear to have been partially influenced by a misunderstanding of the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter”.  We don’t blame the Beatles for Manson’s actions because Manson was quite insane.  Likewise, Poplawski is clearly insane and it seems irrational to blame the actions of a lunatic on the empty rhetoric of a conservative fringe.

Of course, wherever there is an opportunity for political gain we can always be sure that someone will step in and attempt to exploit it, regardless of party affiliation.

Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that the current mess was caused largely by excessive consumer debt.

This is an interesting article and I would encourage anyone with an interest in the root causes of our current economic situation to read it.  The author does an excellent job of comparing the current downturn to the 2000-2001 “dot-com crash” as well as to the Great Depression of the late 1930s.  The article concludes with the following:

What we’ve offered in our discussion of this crisis is the back story to Mr. Bernanke’s analysis of the Depression. Why does one crash cause minimal damage to the financial system, so that the economy can pick itself up quickly, while another crash leaves a devastated financial sector in the wreckage? The hypothesis we propose is that a financial crisis that originates in consumer debt, especially consumer debt concentrated at the low end of the wealth and income distribution, can be transmitted quickly and forcefully into the financial system. It appears that we’re witnessing the second great consumer debt crash, the end of a massive consumption binge.

This former Portfolio Analyst agrees.  As a country, we heaped debt upon people who were obviously unlikely to be able to repay that debt and now we all have to pay the piper.  The responsibility for the current crisis does not lie solely on the banks (though they do deserve blame for their failure to enforce anything resembling reasonable credit standards), but rather lies upon our own shoulders as well.  We borrowed, borrowed, and then borrowed some more, and in the process we created an economy whose growth was illusionary; fueled by credit instead of by real money.  As the country reached a point where credit began to max out, our economy faltered.  We should not have any trouble understanding why.

Yes, some things are large enough that they need to be bought on credit.  Home loans, educational loans, etc., these debts have tangible and intangible long-term gains and there can be wisdom in taking such debt, but for most of the pieces of everyday life a simple mantra rules:  Pay cash, or do without.