Futures and Options

This morning, the Nobel Committee proved to the world that it has no legitimate interest in awarding the Peace Prize based on concrete accomplishments and has instead chosen to use the prize as a tool for political manipulation.  Let me be clear:  Alfred Nobel’s vision was that the Peace Prize would be awarded for concrete accomplishments, not for vague intentions or political popularity and by using the Peace Prize as a political tool the Nobel Committee has reduced itself to just another political action committee and the Prize to nothing more than a political tool.

That a president who is currently presiding over two wars and who is seriously considering sending an additional 40,000 troops into battle in Afghanistan can be awarded a prize for peace is shameful and those who cannot see this obvious absurdity are blinded by the same ideological biases as the Nobel Committee.

The rural Australian town of Bundanoon, an otherwise unremarkable bedroom community for Sydney, made a desperate grab for news headlines today by supposedly banning the sale of bottled water within the town’s boundaries.

While ostensibly enacted to combat what the town feels to be a waste of resources (in bottling and shipping water that is more efficiently delivered straight from the tap), it should be clear to any thinking person that the ban’s true motivation is simply good, old-fashioned, selfish NIMBY-ism.  A few years ago, a bottled water suppler proposed to build a water extraction plant near the town and, like all good bedroom communities fearful of industrial developments harming their presious property values, Bundanoon has resisted the proposal tooth and nail.  The supplier’s proposal is still fighting Bundanoon’s obstructionist legal challenges and the passage of this new law ultimately represents little more than petulance on Bundanoon’s part.

The fact that this “ban” is ultimately a mere “feel-good” measure is patently obvious to anyone who reads far enough to see that it carries no penalty whatsoever for non-compliance.  That’s right boys and girls, compliance with this so-called “ban” is entirely optional.  The same people who got on a moral high-horse about the inefficiencies and wastefulness of bottled water have, in their woefully misguided zeal, gone through the inefficient and wasteful process of creating an unenforceable law when the same outcome could have been obtained more efficiently simply by going door-to-door and asking the businesses to stop carrying bottled water.

Well done lads.  You’ve wasted everyone’s time and spent taxpayer dollars to do something that could have been done for free in less time.  *golf-clap*

The New Criterion has a lively review by Mark Steyn of Paul Rahe’s book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift. The central idea of the article (and presumably the book, although I haven’t read it) is summed up by this two-hundred-year-old passage from Tocqueville, who was musing on ways in which a free republic could, on its own, collapse into a despotic state, quite apart from the coercion of a nineteenth-century-style despotic monarch:

I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls.

Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs…

The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Sound familiar? The problem is that the transformation to “soft despotism” occurs stealthily, perhaps imperceptibly. The key to retarding its creep, according to Steyn and Rahe, is the vitality of the institutions that traditionally served as intermediaries between the individuals and the sovereign state: family, church, school board, township, county, and the like. These are the institutions that are on the ground, that are actually capable of observing and responding to the problems of individuals and communities, and in which individuals can feel genuinely invested. But that ideal is increasingly forgotten as the federal government assumes greater and greater responsibility for our everyday lives.

Steyn offers this current anecdote in support of Rahe’s thesis:

Today, the animating principles of the American idea are entirely absent from public discourse. To the new Administration, American exceptionalism means an exceptional effort to harness an exceptionally big government in the cause of exceptionally massive spending. The can-do spirit means Ty’Sheoma Bethea can do with some government money: A high-school student in Dillon, South Carolina, Miss Bethea wrote to the President to ask him to do something about the peeling paint in her classroom. He read the letter out approvingly in a televised address to Congress. Imagine if Miss Bethea gets her way, and the national bureaucracy in Washington becomes responsible for grade- school paint jobs from Maine to Hawaii. What size of government would be required for such a project? And is it compatible with a constitutional republic?

Can you imagine a schoolgirl in 1793 sending a letter to George Washington asking the federal government to please do something about the leaky roof on her local schoolhouse? And can you imagine President Washington actually inviting said schoolgirl to come to Philadelphia and sit behind him as he read her letter during an address to Congress in an attempt to shame them into sending a check to Dillon, South Carolina (as Obama did with Ms. Bethea)? We have been sliding down this slope for a long time; perhaps the slippage has accelerated enough during this new administration that people will finally notice.

…”liberalism” used here in the modern-day sense. Please watch this fascinating discussion between Peter Robinson and Charles Kesler. All five parts of the interview are worth viewing, but I found this segment particularly enlightening. Kesler’s thesis is that the progressive notion of economic rights that came alive under Wilson and especially FDR had the effect of liberating citizens from what were formerly considered core virtues — what we today call “family values” — which were largely indispensable in exercising one’s economic freedoms (providing for yourself and your family). Indispensable, that is, until the government took it upon itself to provide those basic economic necessities to everyone. With old-fashioned individual virtue no longer a prerequisite for economic survival, individuals were free to explore beyond the bounds of traditional morality. In short, the New Deal made the Sexual Revolution possible.

As Kesler acknowledges, some of the evolution of traditional “family values” is attributable to changes in the overall economy that made it more conducive for women to earn a living.  But the Sixties, he argues, went far beyond mere recognition and acceptance of changing economic realities; the progressive movement at its core was an outright repudiation of traditional morality, made possible by the creation of the welfare state.  Much to think about there.

I suspect that libertarian-minded readers might disagree with this analysis, as it posits a definite link between traditional morality and economic freedom.  But I would note that Kesler’s worldview does not require a government-imposed morality (which libertarians find repugnant).  Rather, traditional morality was and is a tool to cope with economic realities when those realities are not taken care of by the government.  So government need not impose moral virtue; it need only keep its nose out of individuals’ economic business, and individuals will turn to virtue of their own accord.  The perversion of progressivism is that it removes the need to deal with economic reality, and so we find traditional virtues cast aside as no longer necessary to survival.

Incidentally, I find the Uncommon Knowledge series to be one of the best things on the web. Robinson doesn’t try to hide his conservatism, but he nevertheless elicits some challenging and enlightening commentary from his always impressive guests. Never a waste of time to watch his interviews.

At the beginning of this month when the US Government effectively bought a controlling interest in General Motors, Obama had this to say:

What we are not doing, what I have no interest in doing, is running GM.  They, and not the government, will call the shots and make the decisions about how to turn this company around.

Unless, of course, calling those shots and making those decisions means they need to close a plant within a prominent Democrat’s district.  It seems that Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has “convinced” General Motors to delay the closure of GM’s plant in Norton, Mass.  Nevermind that this is precisely the sort of thing that Obama promised us would never happen.

Overall though, I really don’t see how this can possibly go wrong.  I mean, it’s not as though this sets a precedent for using GM as a means of administering pork-barrel projects to a congressman’s home district at the detriment of the remainder of the country.  And it’s certainly not as though a politician would ever ignore the larger picture if doing so could enlarge his own piece of the pie.

Oh…  This is the real world, isn’t it.  Yeah, we’re screwed.

H/T to Discriminations for bringing this to my attention.

I already explored some reasons for criticizing Sotomayor in a previous post, but it looks like we have a couple more gems from from someone who is nominated for one of the most mentally-demanding positions in the world.  In describing her experiences in college, Sotomayor said in a 1996 speech at Princeton:

When my first mid-term paper came back to me my first semester, I found out that my Latina background had created difficulties in my writing that I needed to overcome. For example, in Spanish, we do not have adjectives. A noun is described with a preposition, a cotton shirt in Spanish is a shirt of cotton, una camisa de agodon [sic], no agondon [sic] camisa.

Now, I’ll admit to not knowing enough Spanish to even ask where the bathroom is, but I still know enough to understand that even when the construction is, “a shirt of cotton”, the word “cotton” remains an adjective, whether in English or in Spanish.  To be sure, the point which Sotomayor is attempting to make, that differences in standard grammatical construction between two languages represent additional challenges beyond mere vocabulary for people who learn a second language, remains reasonably valid.  However, Sotomayor’s method of expressing this point can only be described, charitably, as “inartful”.

In a delightful case of sabotaging her own point, Sotomayor had earlier said:

Most people never go back to basic principles of grammar after their first six years in elementary school. Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.

Personally, I bristle when someone mangles a common idiom.  Furthermore, style guides frequently caution against being excessively prescriptive with regard to split infinitives as there are often cases where a split infinitive is superior, both in clarity and grace, to it’s ostensibly grammatical counterpart.  As if that weren’t enough, her distaste for the passive voice is likewise misplaced; in legal or technical writing it is often desirable, if not strictly “necessary”, to omit reference to an agent that is performing the described action.

As before, the point which Sotomayor was attempting to make stands reasonably valid.  Clear and concise writing (which is generally achieved through mindful consideration of proper grammatical style) is vitally important to effective communication.  However, we once again see an example of how Sotomayor’s own writing falls short of being clear and effective.

I recognize that grammatical errors are part and parcel to the human condition and I do not expect that anyone will always be completely without error in his or her speech; however, the examples above are such as should have been well proofed and I do not believe it to be at all unreasonable to expect that Sotomayor would understand that Spanish does indeed have adjectives and that the proper English idiom is “bristle”, not “blister”.  A person who is being considered for a seat on the US Supreme Court simply should not produce writing that suffers from such elemental flaws.

From the Associated Press via Yahoo!

Jolted by cost estimates as high as $1.6 trillion, Senate Democrats agreed Tuesday to scale back planned subsidies for the uninsured and sought concessions totaling hundreds of billions of dollars from private industry to defray the cost of sweeping health care legislation.

Apparently Senate Democrats have forgotten that goods and services actually have to be paid for.  They must have also missed the fact that the country is already bleeding money with record deficits.

Then again, given the ratio of what is paid for to what is going to be financed through deficit spending, maybe they’ve simply decided to exercise the same level of fiscal restraint as their constituents did before this whole mess started.

Several officials said the Congressional Budget Office had issued a cost estimate of $1.6 trillion, with only about $560 billion paid for.

Just put that $1.1 trillion on the credit card and worry about it later.  What’s the worst that could happen?

Seen the new “GM reinvention” commercials? Leaner, greener, faster, smarter? Struck me as a bit creepy how closely that mantra matched the Left’s monolithic vision of the automobile industry. Almost seems as if the commercial could have been paid for by the Democrats in Washington.

Waaaaitttt a second….

Those who would seek to mandate anything for another person’s “own good” would do well to remember the following quote from C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

First of all, for everyone who thinks that “confederacy” means cotton and slaves:

Main Entry:
con·fed·er·a·cy
Function:
noun
Date:
14th century

1: a league or compact for mutual support or common action : alliance
2: a combination of persons for unlawful purposes : conspiracy

With that out of the way, the California predicted in Heinlein’s novel, Friday, may well be here already.  The article in The Economist points out some of the inherent problems in democracy and shows how these issues have come to a head in California:

California has a unique combination of features which, individually, are shared by other states but collectively cause dysfunction. These begin with the requirement that any budget pass both houses of the legislature with a two-thirds majority. Two other states, Rhode Island and Arkansas, have such a law. But California, where taxation and budgets are determined separately, also requires two-thirds majorities for any tax increase. Twelve other states demand this. Only California, however, has both requirements.

If its representative democracy functioned well, that might not be so debilitating. But it does not. Only a minority of Californians bother to vote

So, first we have a problem resulting from an overly-restrictive method of budgeting that is compounded by the fact that fewer than 50% of Californians can even be bothered to vote.  The article then continues:

Those voters, moreover, have over time “self-sorted” themselves into highly partisan districts: loony left in Berkeley or Santa Monica, for instance; rabid right in Orange County or parts of the Central Valley. Politicians have done the rest by gerrymandering bizarre boundaries around their supporters. The result is that elections are won during the Republican or Democratic primaries, rather than in run-offs between the two parties. This makes for a state legislature full of mad-eyed extremists in a state that otherwise has surprising numbers of reasonable citizens.

This leads to a situation in which the minority party will almost always have an effective veto power during budgeting sessions.  With the self-segregation and gerrymandering this creates a situation in which compromise between parties is discouraged and the end result is gridlock where obstructionist politicians of the minority party are often re-elected by their districts because they are so visibly “fighting” the “opposition”.  And this is just the problems with the representative portion; there are problems inherent to direct democracy as well:

Representative democracy is only one half of California’s peculiar governance system. The other half, direct democracy, fails just as badly. California is one of 24 states that allow referendums, recalls and voter initiatives. But it is the only state that does not allow its legislature to override successful initiatives (called “propositions”) and has no sunset clauses that let them expire. It also uses initiatives far more, and more irresponsibly, than any other state.

On the surface, this seems like a good thing; if the people directly approve a proposition, then why should the legislature be allowed to overturn it?  My own answer has to do with the classic “bread and circuses” theory, and The Economist tends to substantiate this:

The minority of eligible Californians who vote not only send extremists to Sacramento, but also circumscribe what those representatives can do by deciding many policies directly. It is the voters who decide, for instance, to limit legislators’ terms in office, to mandate prison terms for criminals, to withdraw benefits from undocumented immigrants, to spend money on trains or sewers, or to let Indian tribes run casinos.

Through such “ballot-box budgeting”, a large share of the state’s revenues is spoken for before budget negotiations even begin. “The voters get mad when they vote to spend a ton of money and the legislature can’t then find the money,” says Jean Ross of the California Budget Project, a research outfit in Sacramento. Indeed, voters being mad is the one constant; the only proposition that appears certain to pass on May 19th would punish legislators with pay freezes in budget-deficit years.

OK, so people tend to pass legislation that is ultimately worthless for the practical purposes of running a state.  So what?  Isn’t government supposed to give the people what they want anyway?  And aren’t voter referendums the most distilled form of the people’s will?  Turns out that they’re not:

It is not ordinary citizens but rich tycoons from Hollywood or Silicon Valley, or special interests such as unions for prison guards, teachers or nurses, that bankroll most initiatives onto the ballots.

Oops.

But at least the initiatives are clear and easily understood unlike the language in most bills passed by legislatures, right?

Propositions tend to be badly worded, with double negatives that leave some voters thinking they voted for something when they really voted against. One eloquent English teacher in Los Angeles recently called a radio show complaining that, after extensive study, she could not understand the ballot measures on grounds of syntax.

Damn.