Month: April 2007

[Reihan] Can the state manage our way to happiness? This is not as silly a question as it sounds. After discovering the limits of statism in the waning days of the Cold War, we in the West have discovered that the “social desert” Danny Kruger describes in On Fraternity is no utopia. And so a number of sophisticated thinkers have concluded that “governments should shift their priorities from wealth-creation to happiness-creation,” an idea my friend Will Wilkinson forcefully rejects in the latest Cato Unbound.

My suspicion is that efforts to achieve “effective, ongoing rational management using the latest scientific knowledge” will only increase as postindustrial societies grow more prosperous. Why? Well, a lot of it has to do with the peculiar nature of politics in what Brink Lindsey calls an age of abundance: the most pressing conflicts shift from the distribution of wealth to more vexing questions of respect and recognition. And those left behind by the rising tide of wealth-creation will pose a stark moral challenge. A more pronounced paternalism, a scientific politics of happiness aimed at people living on the margins of society (and thus in no position to fight back against these intrusions), is a likely response. Of course, greater wealth will mean that we as a society can “afford” to engage in these social policy misadventures. That is part of what Tyler Cowen brilliantly described as “the paradox of libertarianism.”

But what will this kind of “compassion” do for the dignity and self-respect of the poor? I’d take a wage subsidy over “effective, ongoing rational management” any day of the week, and I think Will would agree.

[Reihan] Yes, they’ve published articles I’ve written with Ross, which if anything is a sign of poor judgment. But they also run articles like “California Behind Bars” by David DeVoss. Read it and see what I mean.

[Reihan] Dr. Dog, critical favorites from Philadelphia, have a beautiful song called “Keep A Friend” that you can find via eMusic or iTunes. You can also listen to it at I Guess I’m Floating, though I do hope you at least consider buying Dr. Dog’s excellent new album: you won’t regret it, assuming you don’t hate The Beatles, psychedelic rock, children, sunsets, and basic human decency. I don’t even like The Beatles. Under Patriot Act II, this would have been grounds for revoking my citizenship. But I digress.

Normally I scoff at love songs. Indeed, I advocate a future in which humans are replaced by transistorized neohumans devoid of any capacity for bourgeois sentimentality, the better to serve our robot overlords. But we all make exceptions.

Dr. Dog is quite popular, but The Affair is not, at least not yet. “Wait for It” is probably my favorite from Yes Yes to You, but it’s not an easy call.

[Andrew] The victims – humanized.

Pro-life protester Caleb Brown prays outside the Supreme Court building April 18, 2007 in Washington, DC. The Court today in a 5-4 ruling upheld a federal partial-birth abortion ban. (Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Getty Images)

[Ross] Tom Wolfe takes on the hedge-fund class.

[Megan]  What is with all the editorials about gun control laws in the wake of the VT shootings?  At least an outright ban on handguns might theoretically have prevented this, though it seems at least equally likely to have encouraged him to use a hunting rifle.  But most of the editorials are calling for things like a renewal of the assault weapons ban, which would have done nothing to prevent the VT shooter from obtaining the handguns he used to commit the crime. 

Then there is this piece from Slate, which points out the non-sequitur, only to add one of its own:

The most sweeping and controversial bill currently before Congress, however, proves only that federal lawmakers engage in gun policy to further their self-interest, not to solve problems. The bill, HR 1022, would renew and strengthen the assault-weapons ban, which Congress allowed to expire in September 2004. Like its predecessor, HR 1022 is a great political tool for both sides, but would have very little practical effect. Assault weapons may be photogenic, but they’re used in only a small fraction of violent crimes. (The Virginia Tech shooter apparently used two handguns, which neither ban would cover.) Furthermore, loopholes in the assault weapons ban allowed for open and legal sale of all banned guns and paraphernalia. These bans distract us from the smarter legal steps we should be taking.

Those steps are . . . requiring private sellers to perform background checks on the guns they sell, which also wouldn’t have prevented this crime, since the shooter passed his background check.

Why don’t we just pass a law requiring gun shops to paint their storefronts in festive colours, perhaps those of the American flag?  I mean, that would do every bit as good a job of not stopping the recent tragedy, while at the same time beautifying America’s commercial districts.

[Andrew] I was just tooling around in the sitemeter stats pages for the Dish and found an interesting statistic. 90 percent of the readers of this site are in the U.S. 4 percent are unknown. 3 percent are from the UK. So far, so predictable. But next up is … Iran, with 1 percent. I find that a hopeful sign. We must never, ever forget that the people of Iran are not the same as their regime. Western blogs that can help provide moral support, information and debate are potential weapons in the war against Islamism.

[Ross] If you scroll through the hysterical posts about today’s abortion decision on, say, TAPPED or any other lefty blog, you would think that pro-life types like myself must be over the moon with joy. In reality, I think the prevailing pro-life mood is captured by Doug Johnson of National Right to Life’s bone-dry remark that "finally, it is illegal in America to mostly deliver a premature infant before puncturing her skull and removing her brain." In other words, it’s great to have a victory, any victory, but in the grand scheme of the abortion debate, the pro-choice side is still beating us about forty (or maybe forty million) to one.

That’s not how they see it, obviously. Brad Plumer, for instance, greeted the decision by remarking that "Anthony Kennedy turns out not to be the closet liberal many conservatives feared." Because declaring a ban on infanticide to be constitutional (maybe) totally makes up for selling the Constitution down the river on that whole Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, sweet-mystery-of-life business. Jacob Weisberg, meanwhile, has a piece up today about how the right "keeps winning" on guns and abortion, in which he writes:

… it should in theory be easier for liberals to require handgun registration than for conservatives to constrain abortion. In practice, the opposite is true. Conservatives have been remarkably successful in promulgating parental-notification laws, waiting periods, and bans on specific medical procedures. Gun-control advocates have tried to borrow from the right’s playbook, promoting restrictions that sound reasonable and poll well, such as waiting periods, background checks, and bans on semiautomatic weapons with scary reputations. Yet they have accomplished little. The only meaningful federal restriction on handgun purchases, the Brady Bill, was considered a huge accomplishment when it finally passed in 1993 after a decade of lobbying. But thanks to the private-transfer or "gun show" loophole, about 40 percent of gun sales remain invisible to law enforcement, rendering the law’s mandatory background checks easily avoidable.

Remarkably successful? Because a quarter-century after Roe vs. Wade, in a country where majorities are at least sympathetic to pro-life aims, pro-lifers have managed to pass some parental notification laws and ban exactly one (particularly barbaric) abortion procedure nationwide? Look at it this way: In twenty-five states, a teenager has to get the consent of one of their parents before they can terminate their pregnancy. In every state, it’s illegal for minors to purchase any firearm. Does Weisberg really think pro-lifers are vastly closer to attaining their goal than gun control advocates?

[Andrew] The usual class act.