Month: October 2010

The university is discriminating against “Students for Cannabis Policy Reform Group” because it disapproves of their message:

Considerable research indicates the use of cannabis does not contribute to healthy decision-making, particularly in college-age populations. Given the above, the University determined that recognizing the “Students for Cannabis Policy Reform Group” as a DePaul student organization would not be congruent with our institutional goals regarding the health and well-being of our students.

Eugene Volokh has details.

Daniel Larison shows how Christine O’Donnell’s ignorance of the Constitution renders her unable to make even the arguments that would advance the cause of her supporters:

The real shame is that O’Donnell could have had a valid point on the question of church-state separation, but she didn’t begin to know how to make it.

As an activist and talking head, she has learned slogans about the separation of church and state, but evidently she has not learned anything more than that. The establishment clause has been wildly and mistakenly misinterpreted so that a restriction created solely to prevent the federal government from imposing a religion on the states has been turned into a general imperative for all levels of government. This is not what critics of the Constitution wanted when they argued for a guarantee that the federal government would not establish a religion, but more important it is an unnecessary and obnoxious restriction of the free exercise of religion. Of course, one has to know that the establishment clause exists and know what it says before one can criticize its misinterpretation.

Delaware Republicans got the candidate they deserve in this election.

Greg Scoblete flags a fairly long video on the British defense cuts. He quips:

If you were a NATO member looking at crippling debt loads and the urgent need to slash government expenditures and you knew you had the world's most powerful military obligated by treaty to ride to your rescue, where would you make cuts?

Bagehot is amazed that the British defense retooling involves a long-term partnership with the French:

[T]he truly startling part for me was hearing a Conservative prime minister say, not once but repeatedly, that Britain's future clout lay in working with its two closest allies, "the United States and France." Playing down the fact that from now until 2019 the cuts mean that Britain will not be able to fly fighter jets off an aircraft carrier, Mr Cameron specifically noted that at least one of two new aircraft carriers under construction would be redesigned with catapults so that it could take American and French aircraft.

Asked by an MP what had changed to make Britain so keen to work with France, the prime minister said that (a) President Nicolas Sarkozy was very keen on this planned cooperation, (b) Mr Sarkozy had shown willing by putting France back into the military command structures of NATO and (c) that France and Britain were both determined to maintain and enhance their defence capabilities. To translate these cautious words into plain English, Mr Cameron was telling MPs: (a) France is a serious military power, indeed the only other serious military power in Europe (b) Mr Sarkozy is a radical pragmatist whose decision to rejoin NATO's military structures buried decades of Gaullist anti-Americanism and (c) like Britain, France is broke.

 The last thing seems to me the most salient. And some day soon, America will have to face it as well.

A reader writes:

Where does Rick Hertzberg think society's ability to give people "enough to eat and a roof over their heads" comes from, if not from those economic liberties and rights he holds as secondary? It's all from the surplus created by the division of labor and comparative advantage. The overflowing abundance that marks modern society – where people like Hertzberg can make a comfortable living writing for The New Yorker without ever cultivating his own food, weaving his own clothes, building his own home, and so on – would not exist if not for the continued protection of free enterprise and private property. (And he dares to quote Adam Smith in his follow-up post!?)

Free enterprise comes before voting.

If I can steal generously from Hayek for a second, society didn't develop the complexity that it has today because everyone in a small village in 2,500 B.C., or 100 A.D., or 1640s New England got together and voted to divide their time and effort in order to provide goods and services for exchange; this happens organically. This happens because it has proven, over thousands of years, to be the most efficient and mutually-beneficial means of getting past subsistence and reaching a better life. Without this, there is no possibility for organized self-government and modern civil rights.

In what possible viable world view could the "right to vote" be valued more favorably than property rights and the freedom of enterprise? Let's leave the philosophical for a second and look at this empirically: What impact does my right to vote have on the world? Very little. I live in a gerrymandered Democratic district, as a classically liberal Republican. My school board has had the same self-interested bozos in office for twenty years. Forget about the U.S. Senate; the only numbers that matter in the Senate are the size of the caucuses, and not the relative impact of my vote in Pennsylvania. My various executives – county, state, federal – merely preside over a rapidly-growing administrative state that is increasingly autonomous, practically speaking, and far too complicated for any particular chief executive to influence at more than a 10,000-foot broad policy level.

Honestly, the only two reasons I even make the effort to vote are 1) that I want to enter politics and thus need to cover my tracks, lest I be criticized someday, and 2) if I vote in 50 straight elections in Pennsylvania, I'll get a certificate when I'm 68 years old. It's nothing more than a frivolous little game and good cocktail party fodder.

Let's be clear: of course, the right to vote and popular sovereignty are vital, and in a healthy republic, inviolable. But without free enterprise and private property, they are practically meaningless.

A-fucking-men.

A reader writes:

Blogs that don’t allow comments can’t end entries with “Discuss.”

Touché. But all that means is that we will scour the in-tray for the most penetrating rebuttals and comments and print them. A little patience, s'il vous plait.

Ross Douthat explains why he isn't as down on the Tea Party as some of his fellow reform conservatives:

Absent the Tea Parties, would the G.O.P. really be any closer to kind of seriousness that Frum and I would like to see? I’m not so sure. As far as policy goes these days, the G.O.P.’s inside-the-Beltway leadership often seems more intellectually unserious than the grassroots:

The original “Republicans for Medicare” were sitting Senators, not Tea Party insurgents, and Grover Norquist’s spluttering attack on Mitch Daniels this week seems like a more depressing indicator for conservatives than Christine O’Donnell’s wild ride to nowhere. On the personnel front, plenty of sober, grown-up Republicans are winning elections amid the populist tide, and I have a hard time weeping many tears for all that the Republican Party of Charlie Crist and Lisa Murkowski could have done for the country if the Tea Party hadn’t intervened. And even if most of the populist rhetoric about fiscal discipline is so much sound and fury, if the Tea Partiers just deliver a few politicians into office who are willing to talk honestly about entitlements (and defense spending — though there I suspect Frum prefers the status quo), they’ll have done their debt-ridden country a significant favor.

That's his dream? A "few politicians" prepared to talk about entitlements – rather than his party actually doing something to reform them? Wow. Talk about lowering expectations. He does, however, promise to reconsider even this minimal assessment "if Glenn Beck soars to the Republican nomination in 2012 on the strength of Tea Party support."

And if Sarah Palin does?

ABC reports that Obama is passing on India's Golden Temple:

President Obama will skip visiting one of the country’s most sacred shrines out of fear that wearing the requisite headgear might make him appear Muslim …

Joyner strikes the right tone in response:

Let’s hope this report is wrong because it would be truly embarrassing for the leader of the free world to risk insulting an important ally — the second most populous country on the planet — because it might fuel an idiotic conspiracy theory at home.  Especially considering that the Sikhs aren’t even Muslim.

Sigh. The only way to fight FNC/RNC propaganda is to stare it down defiantly. Never let them see you afraid. Never concede the point to liars, bigots, and charlatans.

A reader writes:

Your liberal readers and bloggers decry the unfairness that gives advantages to the rich, and there is no doubt that life is unfair.  I agree with you that the rich should pay higher taxes than the poor – although I also find the flat tax very appealing. But the liberal ideal of equalizing things is also unfair, let’s be honest. 

The government can’t “repair” the unfairness that exists in the world, and too much effort to do so will do nothing but shift the unfairness.  Perhaps liberals are fine with that, as so many seem to hate the rich, but it seems to me that the best goal is simply try not to be unfair – to anyone.  Yes, this means there will be rich and poor, and some governmental actions are certainly justified, but liberal ideas of punishing the successful are themselves selfish, mean, and doomed to failure, as I’m afraid we’ll see soon if we go too far down this road.

By the way: I’m currently unemployed and have been looking for a job for some time.  I’m in my fifties and figure that, since I’ve used up my savings, I will never be able to retire.  But I don’t want to punish the rich.  Liberals would take money from the rich and bail me out, but they would also take freedom from all of us.  Thanks, but no thanks.  I’d rather work until I die.