This past Monday the New York Times ran an editorial calling for the abolition of the Electoral College. It made the usual self-serving and historically illiterate arguments against the constitutional system for electing a president. I'm not going to go into them because this post isn't about the Electoral College.
What struck me was the last line in the editorial: " For most reasonable people, it’s hard to understand why the loser of the popular vote should wind up running the country." I actually agree with "most reasonable people" on this point. However, I don't see why the winner of the popular vote should wind up "running the country" either.
The powers and duties of the president are described in the Constitution, chiefly in Article II. Search high and wide and you will not find "running the country" anywhere in there. The president is the head of the executive branch of the federal government, one of three separate and co-equal branches. He is not, or at least he shouldn't be, head of the country.
That so money people, including the New York Times editorial board, think the president does run the country, is the result of the progressive takeover of the government in the 1930's and of a complete failure in civics education in the United States.
Progressives, like their ideological distant cousins in the European fascist movements, believe that progress depends on organizing and mobilizing society under the direction of a strong leader. These being the United States of America, our version of fuhrerprinzip didn't descend to the depths of brutality that occurred in Germany or Italy but it was still a dramatic departure from the limited government established by the Constitution resulting in a gross violation of the rights of American citizens.
Nowadays remarks like those that closed the Times editorial pass almost without notice. It is also far too common to hear journalists and pundits refer to the president as our "commander in chief." If you are a member of the armed services, the president is your commander in chief. If you are an ordinary civilian, he is your employee and that is how you should treat him.
Saturday, December 24, 2016
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Faithless Electors
The presidential election is the day after tomorrow. We may have thought we already went through this last month. But as most people know, the actual winners on November 8 did not include Donald Trump. Instead, they were 538 mostly anonymous people who were chosen as electors. It is they who will vote on Monday and will, most probably, choose the next president.
Although they are known collectively as the "Electoral College," they never actually meet in one place. In accordance with constitutional requirements, the electors from each state meet in their respective state capitals. The candidate with the most votes becomes president, providing he receives a majority. If no one gets 270 votes the House of Representatives selects from the top three vote-getters.
The electors are usually an afterthought as they tend to be party loyalists who reliably cast their votes for their party's designated candidate. This year, however, they are receiving far more attention than usual for two reasons. One is that this year the majority of electors are pledged to the candidate who got the second greatest number of popular votes. This is not unprecedented. In fact it has happened several times before, most recently in 2000. but even that election did not result in the paroxysms and doomsaying that have occasioned Donald Trump's presumptive election to the White House. That's because Trump is a uniquely controversial and polarizing candidate.
Partisans of the losing candidate, Hillary Clinton, have imagined that the electoral college gives them a second shot at defeating Donald Trump by convincing Republican electors, theoretically committed to voting for Trump, to vote for someone else. If 37 Republican electors vote for a different candidate, say Mitt Romney, they deny Trump a majority and throw the election to the House. Even if such an unlikely turn of events took place, Trump would almost certainly still be elected. If Clinton's followers want to install her at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they would need to convince those 37 electors to cast their votes for her. The likelihood of that taking place is small to the point of non-existent.
Unconfirmed reports have been circulating of electors' toying with the idea of freelancing their votes. Most of these electors are nameless and, in fact, include more Clinton electors than Trump electors. One potential "faithless elector" who has chosen to come forward is Chris Suprun, a Texas elector who may or may not have exaggerated his role as a 9/11 first responder. Suprun has become the focal point of a debate over how much autonomy electors have in discharging their constitutional function.
Most states have enacted laws that purport to impose legal sanctions on electors that vote for someone other than their pledged candidate. Internet comment sections are swelling with outraged yahoos demanding imprisonment for faithless electors and attainting them as traitors.
While the laws binding electors exist, no elector has ever been penalized or replaced even though 108 of them have gone rogue. No faithless elector or any combination of them has ever changed an election result so no state has bothered to take legal action and thus these laws have never been fully vetted by the courts.
My own opinion is that laws binding electors are unconstitutional. I'm open to arguments to the contrary but it seems to me that an elector is a constitutional officer and no state government can constrain his performance any more that it can that of a representative or senator.
Although they are known collectively as the "Electoral College," they never actually meet in one place. In accordance with constitutional requirements, the electors from each state meet in their respective state capitals. The candidate with the most votes becomes president, providing he receives a majority. If no one gets 270 votes the House of Representatives selects from the top three vote-getters.
The electors are usually an afterthought as they tend to be party loyalists who reliably cast their votes for their party's designated candidate. This year, however, they are receiving far more attention than usual for two reasons. One is that this year the majority of electors are pledged to the candidate who got the second greatest number of popular votes. This is not unprecedented. In fact it has happened several times before, most recently in 2000. but even that election did not result in the paroxysms and doomsaying that have occasioned Donald Trump's presumptive election to the White House. That's because Trump is a uniquely controversial and polarizing candidate.
Partisans of the losing candidate, Hillary Clinton, have imagined that the electoral college gives them a second shot at defeating Donald Trump by convincing Republican electors, theoretically committed to voting for Trump, to vote for someone else. If 37 Republican electors vote for a different candidate, say Mitt Romney, they deny Trump a majority and throw the election to the House. Even if such an unlikely turn of events took place, Trump would almost certainly still be elected. If Clinton's followers want to install her at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they would need to convince those 37 electors to cast their votes for her. The likelihood of that taking place is small to the point of non-existent.
Unconfirmed reports have been circulating of electors' toying with the idea of freelancing their votes. Most of these electors are nameless and, in fact, include more Clinton electors than Trump electors. One potential "faithless elector" who has chosen to come forward is Chris Suprun, a Texas elector who may or may not have exaggerated his role as a 9/11 first responder. Suprun has become the focal point of a debate over how much autonomy electors have in discharging their constitutional function.
Most states have enacted laws that purport to impose legal sanctions on electors that vote for someone other than their pledged candidate. Internet comment sections are swelling with outraged yahoos demanding imprisonment for faithless electors and attainting them as traitors.
While the laws binding electors exist, no elector has ever been penalized or replaced even though 108 of them have gone rogue. No faithless elector or any combination of them has ever changed an election result so no state has bothered to take legal action and thus these laws have never been fully vetted by the courts.
My own opinion is that laws binding electors are unconstitutional. I'm open to arguments to the contrary but it seems to me that an elector is a constitutional officer and no state government can constrain his performance any more that it can that of a representative or senator.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Russia Wants to Make America Great Again
Some thoughts on the Russian hacking of Democrat e-mails:
1. I'm not sure whether the CIA assessment is true or not. I wouldn't put it past Putin's government to attempt such an operation. But intelligence is an inherently murky field. Very rarely is there a "smoking gun" or direct evidence that leads to an unassailable conclusion. Usually there are only inferences based on evidence of uncertain provenance and reliability. And I wouldn't put it past Obama to manipulate intelligence for political purposes either. That said, for purposes of this post I will assume it's true that persons connected to Russian intelligence services, in concert with nominally independent actors like Wikileaks, hacked the computers and e-mail accounts of Democrat officials and leaked the contents of those e-mails to the press with the goal of weakening Hillary Clinton and boosting Donald Trump's chances in the recent presidential election.
2. The Trump campaign's official statement was juvenile and historically wrong: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again,' " The United States' intelligence community's assessment of Iraq's WMD program, which, by the way, was consistent with the estimates of every other major intelligence agency in the world, is irrelevant to the present issue. The implication of the Trump team's statement is that the CIA should close its doors since it can never again produce reliable intelligence untainted by its errors from fifteen years ago.
The Trump people's assessment of their man's showing in the electoral college is problematic to the point of being deceptive. Trump's unofficial vote count in the electoral college is 306. The vote won't be official until the electors actually meet on December 19 and one Texas elector has announced that he will cast his vote for an as yet unnamed alternative. 2016 is the 58th presidential election since the ratification of the Constitution. Technically Trump's vote total puts him in 22nd place among among all elected presidents. But of course the electoral college didn't even have 306 electors until 1872, when it expanded to 352. If you look at the elections since the electoral college was fixed at its present membership of 538, Trump's total is 10th out of 14, well below the median. If you go back as far as 1900, there are still only 8 out of 30 candidates who did worse than Trump.
3. Julian Assange's denials of Russian involvement are meaningless. From everything we know of him he is a man of uncommonly low character and completely untrustworthy. His statement might be true, but it would be pure coincidence.
4. Put in its most favorable light, what the Russians did amounts to one-sided investigative journalism, similar to what we've come to expect from the major news networks in the United States.
5. The e-mails were illegally obtained but none of the parties involved have disputed their authenticity. The information disclosed is apparently accurate. It is also embarrassing to the individuals involved, revealing them to be dissembling and hypocritical. This was useful information for voters to have so in that sense the Russians provided a service. For the sake of balance they should have hacked Republican e-mails as well, but I doubt that the private e-mails would have been any more damaging than the very public tweets that regularly spewed forth from Trump Tower.
6. The press is carrying the charges of Russian support for a Republican candidate uncritically. Similar allegations that the Soviet Union favored Democrat candidates were deemed to be McCarthyism and heralds of looming fascism.
7. The Obama administration did not disappoint in seeking to use the CIA assessment to advance an unrelated policy agenda. Specifically, according to the Chicago Tribune, "the White House wanted congressional leaders to sign off on a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions." This, despite the fact that no evidence of Russian interference with the actual voting was produced.
8. The Democrats have finally found a reason to complain about Obama's timidity in responding to hostile foreign actions against the United States.
1. I'm not sure whether the CIA assessment is true or not. I wouldn't put it past Putin's government to attempt such an operation. But intelligence is an inherently murky field. Very rarely is there a "smoking gun" or direct evidence that leads to an unassailable conclusion. Usually there are only inferences based on evidence of uncertain provenance and reliability. And I wouldn't put it past Obama to manipulate intelligence for political purposes either. That said, for purposes of this post I will assume it's true that persons connected to Russian intelligence services, in concert with nominally independent actors like Wikileaks, hacked the computers and e-mail accounts of Democrat officials and leaked the contents of those e-mails to the press with the goal of weakening Hillary Clinton and boosting Donald Trump's chances in the recent presidential election.
2. The Trump campaign's official statement was juvenile and historically wrong: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again,' " The United States' intelligence community's assessment of Iraq's WMD program, which, by the way, was consistent with the estimates of every other major intelligence agency in the world, is irrelevant to the present issue. The implication of the Trump team's statement is that the CIA should close its doors since it can never again produce reliable intelligence untainted by its errors from fifteen years ago.
The Trump people's assessment of their man's showing in the electoral college is problematic to the point of being deceptive. Trump's unofficial vote count in the electoral college is 306. The vote won't be official until the electors actually meet on December 19 and one Texas elector has announced that he will cast his vote for an as yet unnamed alternative. 2016 is the 58th presidential election since the ratification of the Constitution. Technically Trump's vote total puts him in 22nd place among among all elected presidents. But of course the electoral college didn't even have 306 electors until 1872, when it expanded to 352. If you look at the elections since the electoral college was fixed at its present membership of 538, Trump's total is 10th out of 14, well below the median. If you go back as far as 1900, there are still only 8 out of 30 candidates who did worse than Trump.
3. Julian Assange's denials of Russian involvement are meaningless. From everything we know of him he is a man of uncommonly low character and completely untrustworthy. His statement might be true, but it would be pure coincidence.
4. Put in its most favorable light, what the Russians did amounts to one-sided investigative journalism, similar to what we've come to expect from the major news networks in the United States.
5. The e-mails were illegally obtained but none of the parties involved have disputed their authenticity. The information disclosed is apparently accurate. It is also embarrassing to the individuals involved, revealing them to be dissembling and hypocritical. This was useful information for voters to have so in that sense the Russians provided a service. For the sake of balance they should have hacked Republican e-mails as well, but I doubt that the private e-mails would have been any more damaging than the very public tweets that regularly spewed forth from Trump Tower.
6. The press is carrying the charges of Russian support for a Republican candidate uncritically. Similar allegations that the Soviet Union favored Democrat candidates were deemed to be McCarthyism and heralds of looming fascism.
7. The Obama administration did not disappoint in seeking to use the CIA assessment to advance an unrelated policy agenda. Specifically, according to the Chicago Tribune, "the White House wanted congressional leaders to sign off on a bipartisan statement urging state and local officials to take federal help in protecting their voting-registration and balloting machines from Russian cyber-intrusions." This, despite the fact that no evidence of Russian interference with the actual voting was produced.
8. The Democrats have finally found a reason to complain about Obama's timidity in responding to hostile foreign actions against the United States.
Sunday, December 4, 2016
It's Time to Deselect Selective Service
Barack Obama has announced that he is now in favor of requiring women to register for selective service the same as men. This fits right in with his impulse to subject common sense, experience and evidence to his rigid progressive ideology. It proceeds logically from his decision to remove all restrictions on women's serving in combat roles. Obama clearly has no respect for Chesterton's rule on fences:
But I'm not really writing today about the role of women or gays in the military. Ironically, I'm actually interested in tearing down a fence, the selective service system itself.
Up until the Civil War, compulsory military service in the United States was limited to the militia. Most every man of military age was deemed by law to be a member of the militia and subject to call-up in times of emergency (There were also instances of impressment for naval service during the War of Independence.) The Civil War was the first American war fought after the industrial revolution made raising and maintaining large armies practical. With the high casualty rates of the war, both sides eventually felt the need to resort to conscription to supply the soldiers necessary to continue the war.
Conscription was again used in World War I when only 73,000 men responded to Woodrow Wilson's call for one million volunteers. Woodrow Wilson created the West's first propaganda ministry, the Committee on Public Information. But even that organization was not equal to the task of convincing American men to volunteer for the daily slaughter then taking place in France.
Conscription was re-introduced in 1940 for the run-up to World War II. After that war ended, though, conscription stayed. The war had destroyed the Axis powers but it established a potentially more dangerous enemy in the Soviet Union and the subject states it had inherited from Germany. Actual conscriptions spiked in the early 50's for Korea and in the 60's for Vietnam but no one has been drafted in the United States since 1973. The Military Selective Service Act authorizes the President to require registration. In 1975 Gerald Ford ended the registration requirement.
Jimmy Carter reinstated it in 1980 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The invasion, and the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran the previous year had exposed Carter's dangerous naivete about the world and he was flailing about for some kind of response to stave off the total collapse of his presidency. His reinstatement of registration was a symbolic gesture, much like his boycott of the 1980 Olympics.
Conscription is a grave imposition upon liberty, often upon life itself, certainly upon the pursuit of happiness. It always has been but it has, on occasion, been a necessary imposition. It is not necessary now. It may never be necessary again, but who knows what the future holds.
Conscription is not unnecessary because the world is no longer dangerous; it certainly is. It is unnecessary because the United States no longer fight wars using mass armies of draftees. The United States' method of waging war requires dedicated, motivated, intelligent volunteers. It requires the use of advanced technological equipment and weapons. It places huge responsibilities on small units and their leaders.s
The United States military is a volunteer force built around a highly professional core of career officers and NCO's. These leaders need the willing volunteers I described above to give their talents maximum effect. They should not be babysitting reluctant draftees putting their time in until discharge.
The typical recruit in 1863 needed to know the nine steps to load and fire a flintlock rifle as well as the regimental drill used to maneuver around a battlefield. Once he mastered those skills he functioned as a cog in a well-oiled machine directed by his commanding officer. His NCO's and junior officers were there mainly to relay commands from the colonel and to make sure the men in their companies were performing as required. Very little independent judgment was required.
Today's infantryman is more than just a trigger puller standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a mass of his fellows, all within sight and earshot of the colors and the commanding officer. He often patrols as part of a small unit, a platoon or maybe a squad. He needs to understand the overall objectives of the higher echelons so that he can take proper action when required to exercise initiative. It is folly to expect this kind of performance from unwilling draftees.
Today the only real purpose for the Selective Service System is to keep a few hundred timeservers drawing a federal paycheck with federal benefits until they qualify for their federal retirement. It's time for them to find real jobs.
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.The fact is there are differences between men and women, physical obviously but also psychological, that make women on the whole less suitable for the rigors of modern combat. In addition to the limitations of women as individual, throwing young men and women together in combat units is asking for trouble for it will inevitably result in sexual attraction, which is poison to unit cohesion. Sexual attraction, by its nature is exclusive and selfish. Effective combat units demand that all members think of the unit and the mission first, without singling certain members out for special consideration. This, by the way, is the same reality that makes admission of practicing homosexuals into the military a risky experiment. None of this is sexist or homophobic. It's just reality and human nature. If your overriding consideration is maintaining an effective military force that will fight and win its country's wars, you will give these cautions due respect. If your goal is to advance a progressive sophomoric fantasy of what human society should look like if it were directed from the faculty lounge, you ignore the evidence of history and experience and tear that fence down.
But I'm not really writing today about the role of women or gays in the military. Ironically, I'm actually interested in tearing down a fence, the selective service system itself.
Up until the Civil War, compulsory military service in the United States was limited to the militia. Most every man of military age was deemed by law to be a member of the militia and subject to call-up in times of emergency (There were also instances of impressment for naval service during the War of Independence.) The Civil War was the first American war fought after the industrial revolution made raising and maintaining large armies practical. With the high casualty rates of the war, both sides eventually felt the need to resort to conscription to supply the soldiers necessary to continue the war.
Conscription was again used in World War I when only 73,000 men responded to Woodrow Wilson's call for one million volunteers. Woodrow Wilson created the West's first propaganda ministry, the Committee on Public Information. But even that organization was not equal to the task of convincing American men to volunteer for the daily slaughter then taking place in France.
Conscription was re-introduced in 1940 for the run-up to World War II. After that war ended, though, conscription stayed. The war had destroyed the Axis powers but it established a potentially more dangerous enemy in the Soviet Union and the subject states it had inherited from Germany. Actual conscriptions spiked in the early 50's for Korea and in the 60's for Vietnam but no one has been drafted in the United States since 1973. The Military Selective Service Act authorizes the President to require registration. In 1975 Gerald Ford ended the registration requirement.
Jimmy Carter reinstated it in 1980 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The invasion, and the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran the previous year had exposed Carter's dangerous naivete about the world and he was flailing about for some kind of response to stave off the total collapse of his presidency. His reinstatement of registration was a symbolic gesture, much like his boycott of the 1980 Olympics.
Conscription is a grave imposition upon liberty, often upon life itself, certainly upon the pursuit of happiness. It always has been but it has, on occasion, been a necessary imposition. It is not necessary now. It may never be necessary again, but who knows what the future holds.
Conscription is not unnecessary because the world is no longer dangerous; it certainly is. It is unnecessary because the United States no longer fight wars using mass armies of draftees. The United States' method of waging war requires dedicated, motivated, intelligent volunteers. It requires the use of advanced technological equipment and weapons. It places huge responsibilities on small units and their leaders.s
The United States military is a volunteer force built around a highly professional core of career officers and NCO's. These leaders need the willing volunteers I described above to give their talents maximum effect. They should not be babysitting reluctant draftees putting their time in until discharge.
The typical recruit in 1863 needed to know the nine steps to load and fire a flintlock rifle as well as the regimental drill used to maneuver around a battlefield. Once he mastered those skills he functioned as a cog in a well-oiled machine directed by his commanding officer. His NCO's and junior officers were there mainly to relay commands from the colonel and to make sure the men in their companies were performing as required. Very little independent judgment was required.
Today's infantryman is more than just a trigger puller standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a mass of his fellows, all within sight and earshot of the colors and the commanding officer. He often patrols as part of a small unit, a platoon or maybe a squad. He needs to understand the overall objectives of the higher echelons so that he can take proper action when required to exercise initiative. It is folly to expect this kind of performance from unwilling draftees.
Today the only real purpose for the Selective Service System is to keep a few hundred timeservers drawing a federal paycheck with federal benefits until they qualify for their federal retirement. It's time for them to find real jobs.
Saturday, November 12, 2016
"Give him a chance."
"Give him a chance."
I hear it every time a new president is elected. "You have to give him a chance." It's the day after election day and the president-elect is someone I did not vote for and do not trust but I'm supposed to forget all that and shut up at least until inauguration day because I have to "give him a chance." (By the way, it's been 28 years since the winner of a presidential election was someone I voted for.)
But it's all BS. Neither I, nor anyone else has an obligation to give any newly-elected president a chance. The number one reason is that a chance is not mine to give or refuse. Donald Trump has won the election. He will be president in January absent some unforeseen eventuality. But there's nothing I can do to deny him his presidency. He will assume the office and with it all its powers. What he does after that is entirely up to him but he will have his "chance" with or without my assent.
And I don't see any reason to change my attitude about Trump just because he's been elected. Donald Trump was the same person on November 9 that he was on November 8. The parts of his character, his qualifications and his platform that I find objectionable are still there. There's no reason not to point them out just because Trump won.
And when, as I suspect will happen, Trump's presidency goes completely pear-shaped, it will be useful to demonstrate that such an outcome was not only predictable, but predicted. After all, Trump is still Trump. He gives no indication of a well-thought-out philosophy of government or a decent knowledge base about national and international problems. He seems motivated chiefly by his own ego, swayed by flattery.
He is already throwing off signs that he will be reneging on the postures that made him so popular with his most devoted worshipers. The wall won't be an uninterrupted physical barrier from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Obamacare might be amended instead of repealed. And remember "Drain the Swamp?" Trump has brought Trent Lott, one of the Swamp's slimiest alligators, onto his transition team.
Trump's dedicated followers are about to learn that this campaign was just another deal to him. Now that they have given Trump what he wanted, he doesn't need them anymore.
I hear it every time a new president is elected. "You have to give him a chance." It's the day after election day and the president-elect is someone I did not vote for and do not trust but I'm supposed to forget all that and shut up at least until inauguration day because I have to "give him a chance." (By the way, it's been 28 years since the winner of a presidential election was someone I voted for.)
But it's all BS. Neither I, nor anyone else has an obligation to give any newly-elected president a chance. The number one reason is that a chance is not mine to give or refuse. Donald Trump has won the election. He will be president in January absent some unforeseen eventuality. But there's nothing I can do to deny him his presidency. He will assume the office and with it all its powers. What he does after that is entirely up to him but he will have his "chance" with or without my assent.
And I don't see any reason to change my attitude about Trump just because he's been elected. Donald Trump was the same person on November 9 that he was on November 8. The parts of his character, his qualifications and his platform that I find objectionable are still there. There's no reason not to point them out just because Trump won.
And when, as I suspect will happen, Trump's presidency goes completely pear-shaped, it will be useful to demonstrate that such an outcome was not only predictable, but predicted. After all, Trump is still Trump. He gives no indication of a well-thought-out philosophy of government or a decent knowledge base about national and international problems. He seems motivated chiefly by his own ego, swayed by flattery.
He is already throwing off signs that he will be reneging on the postures that made him so popular with his most devoted worshipers. The wall won't be an uninterrupted physical barrier from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Obamacare might be amended instead of repealed. And remember "Drain the Swamp?" Trump has brought Trent Lott, one of the Swamp's slimiest alligators, onto his transition team.
Trump's dedicated followers are about to learn that this campaign was just another deal to him. Now that they have given Trump what he wanted, he doesn't need them anymore.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
I hope that was some mighty good stew, Esau.
"As the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter. He was an outdoorsman, but Jacob had a quiet temperament, preferring to stay at home. Isaac loved Esau because he enjoyed eating the wild game Esau brought home, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
One day when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau arrived home from the wilderness exhausted and hungry. Esau said to Jacob, “I’m starved! Give me some of that red stew!” (This is how Esau got his other name, Edom, which means “red.”)
“All right,” Jacob replied, “but trade me your rights as the firstborn son.”
“Look, I’m dying of starvation!” said Esau. “What good is my birthright to me now?”
But Jacob said, “First you must swear that your birthright is mine.” So Esau swore an oath, thereby selling all his rights as the firstborn to his brother, Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and lentil stew. Esau ate the meal, then got up and left. He showed contempt for his rights as the firstborn." Genesis 25: 27-34.
Some things never change.
Sometime around 2000 BC Esau sold his birthright as Isaac's firstborn son for a bowl of stew. He wasn't in danger of starving to death. He was hungry and he wanted to eat right then. So he traded away something lasting and transcendent for instant gratification.
In the 1930's the people of the United States of America did the same thing. We had a birthright, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, conceived by the most brilliant collection of political minds in recorded history. The Declaration clearly stated the only legitimate purpose for government, to secure the unalienable rights with which we were endowed by our creator. It further declared that governments should be judged by how well they do this.
The Constitution was the result of long discussion and debate about how to create government strong enough to guarantee the rights of its citizens, but constrained enough not to pose a threat to those very rights. The structure they came up with preserved liberty by dividing power. The government would be divided into three separate and coequal branches, each largely independent within its sphere but with measures available to check the other branches if they exceeded their authority. This divided power horizontally within the federal government.
Power was also divided vertically between the federal government and the states. The federal government was one of limited and enumerated powers. The States were the original and natural sovereigns. They had been declared so by the Declaration of Independence. Before there was a Constitution or Articles of Confederation to establish a unified national government, the states were sovereign, free and independent, possessing all the rights, powers and authorities that belong to sovereign polities.
From that toolbox of sovereign powers, the states delegated some to be used by the newly created federal government. Everything not delegated was retained by the states and any attempt by Congress to legislate in areas not delegated to it was illegitimate. This is the meaning of the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Now, the Tenth Amendment didn't really state anything new, it was actually restating explicitly what was already implicit in the text and history of the Constitution. The very first words following the preamble are "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States..." Article I, Section 1. Those words "herein granted" can only mean that there are legislative powers not granted and Congress has no right to appropriate them.4
This was our birthright. And we sold it for a bowl of stew called Progressivism.
As Jonah Goldberg as argued convincingly (I think) in his book Liberal Fascism, Progressivism is essentially the American manifestation of the fascist movement that swept much of the world in the early twentieth century. Progressives, like their European fellow travelers, argued that modern society was too complex and fast-paced to be left to lay people and the vicissitudes of the free market. They said that the only hope for civilization was to identify experts, give them control over the levers of power that influence a modern economy and free them from interference from outdated concepts like due process and the separation of powers.
Although Progressivism really took root in the '30s, and has remained entrenched since then, it had a brief flowering from 1913-1921 with the administration of Woodrow Wilson, the first American President to be openly contemptuous of the Constitution he swore to "preserve, protect and defend," and one of the most racist men ever to hold the office. In his second term, he used World War I as an excuse to centrally plan the economy, jail his critics under the Espionage Act, establish an army of informers reporting disloyal citizens to the authorities, establish the first official propaganda office and take many other steps that created what Goldberg has identified as the world's first fascist government.
Wilson's progressive vision didn't take hold. The public wanted a "return to normalcy." Wilson was succeeded by Harding and then Coolidge, perhaps the last president who could take the oath of office without perjuring himself.
But the people were panicked by the depression of 1929 and turned once again to the prophets of central planning. In so doing they "showed contempt" for their birthright of liberty and sold it for a roll of the dice on a shiny new ideology. And that's what it was. Despite the myths about FDR and his brain trust heroically battling the Great Depression, they actually made it deeper and longer. America and the world had been through depressions before. It wasn't until the progressives got their hands on one that it became "Great." At least Esau's bowl of stew actually satisfied his hunger.
The thing about toxic ideologies like progressivism is the effects don't become apparent right away. Adam Smith said there's a lot of ruin in a nation. Eighty years later the effects of progressive government can be seen in an ever expanding and uncontrollable federal government and a national debt approaching 20 trillion dollars. But the progressive ideas have become so ingrained we hardly notice them anymore and we can't connect our current troubles with the decision we made long ago to sell our birthright for a bowl of stew.
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Bad Idea
So I saw this post on Facebook the other day:
Now I don't know if R. Lee Ermey actually endorses this post or if his image is being used without permission. Regardless, this is one of those policy ideas that appeals to patriotic Americans on a gut level and is designed to elicit clicks and shouts of "Damn right!" It is also a variant on an idea that gets resurrected from time to time that usually goes by the name of "National Service." And it's a bad idea, both in general and as a means to advance the particular policy goal cited in the post.
The United States military today is among the most proficient in the world man for man. How it stacks up to other first-class militaries cannot really be determined outside of an actual shooting war. It's true that readiness has been suffering under the policies of the Obama administration but American arms are still a force to be reckoned with.
It is almost universally agreed that one of the biggest contributors to the United States' dominance on the battlefield is that every American serviceman is a volunteer. They all chose to leave civilian life, go through rigorous training to earn the right to wear an American uniform and then go through even more training to master their particular specialties. Those at the tip of the spear are there because they volunteered for the toughest training regimes.
A second reason for American military effectiveness is as a clear sense of mission. The United States defense establishment exists to win wars and to deter other nations from starting wars by being demonstrably lethal on the battlefield. Whenever the military is distracted from this singular purpose, it loses some of its battle-readiness.
The American military also dominates because of its clear technological edge over its adversaries, although this technology gap appears to be shrinking. The sophisticated technology deployed by American forces can only be effectively operated and maintained by volunteer professionals, not by conscripts. This was clearly demonstrated during the Cold War years when the sustainability of Soviet naval vessels was severely curtailed because their enlisted crews were too poorly trained to keep modern electronics and weapons systems operational. All maintenance had to be performed by the relatively small number of officers in the crew.
With that in mind, the problems with signing up every American for two years' military service become blindingly obvious. By its own terms, this idea is proposed not to increase military effectiveness, but to create political support for veterans' benefits.
The total number of Americans in uniform today stands at about 1.4 million. There should probably be more, but the sort of universal conscription advocated here is not the answer. In the 2010 census there were just over 30 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 24. With a two-year service requirement we could expect roughly one-third to be in the forces, less those who are physically or otherwise unfit for service. I have no idea how many would ultimately be excluded but lets say, for the sake of argument, that it's 25%. That means roughly 8 million additional bodies wearing army, navy and air force uniforms (I'm assuming the marines would continue to take only volunteers).
What are these 8 million people going to do for two years? Are we going to spend money on advanced technical training that may very well take up the majority of their service commitment, only to see them return to civilian life? Do we expect career officers and NCO's to spend their time babysitting conscripts who are only marking time until they can get back to their real lives?
And the stated purpose of this service requirement, to create a political constituency for veterans' benefits, can only be achieved if we confer benefits on this vast horde of new veterans. That means spending huge sums of money to bring the vast majority of Americans into a massive new dependency class. Because, in the end, all this is is a gigantic new welfare program. And that will not make America great.
Now I don't know if R. Lee Ermey actually endorses this post or if his image is being used without permission. Regardless, this is one of those policy ideas that appeals to patriotic Americans on a gut level and is designed to elicit clicks and shouts of "Damn right!" It is also a variant on an idea that gets resurrected from time to time that usually goes by the name of "National Service." And it's a bad idea, both in general and as a means to advance the particular policy goal cited in the post.
The United States military today is among the most proficient in the world man for man. How it stacks up to other first-class militaries cannot really be determined outside of an actual shooting war. It's true that readiness has been suffering under the policies of the Obama administration but American arms are still a force to be reckoned with.
It is almost universally agreed that one of the biggest contributors to the United States' dominance on the battlefield is that every American serviceman is a volunteer. They all chose to leave civilian life, go through rigorous training to earn the right to wear an American uniform and then go through even more training to master their particular specialties. Those at the tip of the spear are there because they volunteered for the toughest training regimes.
A second reason for American military effectiveness is as a clear sense of mission. The United States defense establishment exists to win wars and to deter other nations from starting wars by being demonstrably lethal on the battlefield. Whenever the military is distracted from this singular purpose, it loses some of its battle-readiness.
The American military also dominates because of its clear technological edge over its adversaries, although this technology gap appears to be shrinking. The sophisticated technology deployed by American forces can only be effectively operated and maintained by volunteer professionals, not by conscripts. This was clearly demonstrated during the Cold War years when the sustainability of Soviet naval vessels was severely curtailed because their enlisted crews were too poorly trained to keep modern electronics and weapons systems operational. All maintenance had to be performed by the relatively small number of officers in the crew.
With that in mind, the problems with signing up every American for two years' military service become blindingly obvious. By its own terms, this idea is proposed not to increase military effectiveness, but to create political support for veterans' benefits.
The total number of Americans in uniform today stands at about 1.4 million. There should probably be more, but the sort of universal conscription advocated here is not the answer. In the 2010 census there were just over 30 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 24. With a two-year service requirement we could expect roughly one-third to be in the forces, less those who are physically or otherwise unfit for service. I have no idea how many would ultimately be excluded but lets say, for the sake of argument, that it's 25%. That means roughly 8 million additional bodies wearing army, navy and air force uniforms (I'm assuming the marines would continue to take only volunteers).
What are these 8 million people going to do for two years? Are we going to spend money on advanced technical training that may very well take up the majority of their service commitment, only to see them return to civilian life? Do we expect career officers and NCO's to spend their time babysitting conscripts who are only marking time until they can get back to their real lives?
And the stated purpose of this service requirement, to create a political constituency for veterans' benefits, can only be achieved if we confer benefits on this vast horde of new veterans. That means spending huge sums of money to bring the vast majority of Americans into a massive new dependency class. Because, in the end, all this is is a gigantic new welfare program. And that will not make America great.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Compromise
One of my favorite television series is Foyle's War, a British detective show set in the channel-side town of Hastings during World War II. The series' protagonist is Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle, a local policeman who struggles to uphold the law while war rages around the world and his jurisdiction sits in the cross hairs of a threatened German invasion.
A recurring theme in the series is the question of how much principles can be compromised in the service of defeating a greater evil. In the very first episode, Foyle confronts a murderer who happens to work for the admiralty in an office dedicated to cracking German naval codes. He argues to Foyle that arresting him will materially set back this work, costing the lives of hundreds of British sailors and possibly giving Germany time to starve Britain into submission.
And his victims weren't that much of a loss. One was a German woman living in England. She was an enemy alien, but otherwise innocent. She would not be the last innocent German woman to die in the war; there would be thousands before it was over. His other victim was a thoroughly disreputable pub owner involved in blackmail and associated with a corrupt civil servant taking bribes to help young men avoid conscription.
Viewed from a certain perspective it's a persuasive argument and Foyle admits to his driver that he was tempted to let him go. But in the end he concludes "Murder is murder. You stop believing in that, and we might as well not be fighting a war, because you end up like the Nazis."
Now, personally, I find that reasoning a little simplistic but essentially valid. For one thing, when one considers the crimes of National Socialism, overlooking the petty murders of powerful people comes pretty far down the list. Here's how I would have put it:
World War II was, above all, a war for western civilization. To allow National Socialism to succeed in the land that produced Luther, Gutenberg, Bach and countless other luminaries would have discredited the whole idea of western civilization and tarnished the many blessings it has brought to the world.
As an aside, I think that's why it's proper to consider the crimes of the National Socialists as more significant than those of the bolsheviks. Viewed from the western perspective the Germans were "one of us." The Russians were never really part of the west, the efforts of their monarchs notwithstanding.
One of the pillars of western civilization is the rule of law. It is honored more in some parts of the west than in others but all western societies acknowledge it to some extent. To allow a murderer to go unpunished might have been useful to winning the war but it would have undermined the reasons for fighting the war in the first place.
Which brings me to Donald Trump. Every day legions of Trumpkins insist that those who oppose Trump are only assisting Hillary Clinton. Many of them accuse Trump's critics of being actively and consciously in league with Clinton, despite the fact that most of these critics have been criticizing the Clintons for decades in even harsher language than that deployed against Trump.
I should say here that there are two broad classes of Trump supporters: those who have concluded, somewhat reluctantly, that, despite his flaws, Trump is preferable to Clinton; and those who are wholly devoted to him, who have ascribed to him an almost messianic mission to save the United States. Sometimes this latter group reminds me of the entranced thugee cultists of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
But Trump's conservative critics have made essentially the same calculation that Foyle did. Some, including myself, have even been tempted from time to time to support him. But Trump, and the people he attracts, have no knowledge of, or respect for, the ideals, the principles, the institutions and the traditions that made the United States what they are, or were.
The actual policies that might result from a Trump presidency may or may not be more harmful than those that would result from a Clinton administration. But if conservatives attach themselves to Trump, they will have done critical damage to their ability to advocate for a return to the constitutional principles that are the only way to make America great again.
A recurring theme in the series is the question of how much principles can be compromised in the service of defeating a greater evil. In the very first episode, Foyle confronts a murderer who happens to work for the admiralty in an office dedicated to cracking German naval codes. He argues to Foyle that arresting him will materially set back this work, costing the lives of hundreds of British sailors and possibly giving Germany time to starve Britain into submission.
And his victims weren't that much of a loss. One was a German woman living in England. She was an enemy alien, but otherwise innocent. She would not be the last innocent German woman to die in the war; there would be thousands before it was over. His other victim was a thoroughly disreputable pub owner involved in blackmail and associated with a corrupt civil servant taking bribes to help young men avoid conscription.
Viewed from a certain perspective it's a persuasive argument and Foyle admits to his driver that he was tempted to let him go. But in the end he concludes "Murder is murder. You stop believing in that, and we might as well not be fighting a war, because you end up like the Nazis."
Now, personally, I find that reasoning a little simplistic but essentially valid. For one thing, when one considers the crimes of National Socialism, overlooking the petty murders of powerful people comes pretty far down the list. Here's how I would have put it:
World War II was, above all, a war for western civilization. To allow National Socialism to succeed in the land that produced Luther, Gutenberg, Bach and countless other luminaries would have discredited the whole idea of western civilization and tarnished the many blessings it has brought to the world.
As an aside, I think that's why it's proper to consider the crimes of the National Socialists as more significant than those of the bolsheviks. Viewed from the western perspective the Germans were "one of us." The Russians were never really part of the west, the efforts of their monarchs notwithstanding.
One of the pillars of western civilization is the rule of law. It is honored more in some parts of the west than in others but all western societies acknowledge it to some extent. To allow a murderer to go unpunished might have been useful to winning the war but it would have undermined the reasons for fighting the war in the first place.
Which brings me to Donald Trump. Every day legions of Trumpkins insist that those who oppose Trump are only assisting Hillary Clinton. Many of them accuse Trump's critics of being actively and consciously in league with Clinton, despite the fact that most of these critics have been criticizing the Clintons for decades in even harsher language than that deployed against Trump.
I should say here that there are two broad classes of Trump supporters: those who have concluded, somewhat reluctantly, that, despite his flaws, Trump is preferable to Clinton; and those who are wholly devoted to him, who have ascribed to him an almost messianic mission to save the United States. Sometimes this latter group reminds me of the entranced thugee cultists of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
But Trump's conservative critics have made essentially the same calculation that Foyle did. Some, including myself, have even been tempted from time to time to support him. But Trump, and the people he attracts, have no knowledge of, or respect for, the ideals, the principles, the institutions and the traditions that made the United States what they are, or were.
The actual policies that might result from a Trump presidency may or may not be more harmful than those that would result from a Clinton administration. But if conservatives attach themselves to Trump, they will have done critical damage to their ability to advocate for a return to the constitutional principles that are the only way to make America great again.
Saturday, August 20, 2016
The Ruling Class
Kurt Schlichter had a column yesterday taking to task America's "corrupt and incompetent ruling class." This idea that there is some alien sinister force controlling the country is ubiquitous among large segments of the public including the legions of trumpkins.
And although it sounds like a dire and ominous characterization of American politics, it is ironically comforting in that it relieves voters of the pain of confronting the real culprits in our country's predicament - us. We, the citizens of this country, are the ruling class. The government we have is the government we chose. Unfortunately, we are every bit as corrupt and incompetent as the shadowy figures haunting Mr. Schlicher's dreams.
We are corrupt because our votes are for sale. It is commonplace for politicians to brag about how they will direct public funds to some local project whose major, if not only, justification is the dumping of money into the local economy. Others promise free stuff paid for by the taxes confiscated from our fellow citizens. Still others stroke our vanity or envy by punishing behaviors we find objectionable even though they impinge on no one else's rights.
Some twenty years ago I was talking with a co-worker about Bill Clinton's numerous misdeeds including the perjury that got him impeached. I asked him how he could support someone so obviously corrupt. "My 401(k) is doing great." he said. His reaction was typical. Clinton's defenders never denied his crimes. They couldn't without looking completely foolish. Clinton himself could quibble over the meaning of "is" with a straight face. He might have even made himself believe it. This, after all, is a man who takes moral instruction from George Costanza.
But normal people can't deny the truth staring them in the face without feeling completely foolish. So instead of proclaiming Clinton's innocence, they insisted his crimes didn't matter. "Everyone lies about sex." "The French are so much more sophisticated than we are. After all, Mitterand's mistress and wife attended his funeral together." "Ken Starr is on a witch hunt."
This attitude, when applied to the federal government, becomes even more insidious because we trample our constitution for our own personal gain. Most of the giveaways, for which we reward politicians, are simply outside the scope of Congress' legislative authority. But we deliberately jettisoned the Constitution back in the thirties in the fear and panic of what would become known as the Great Depression.
People were suffering through an economic downturn and they decided that giving more power to an arrogant coterie of social engineers was the way out of it. Ironically, the misery of the depression had already been enhanced by short-sighted government attempts to fight it, such as the Smoot-Hawley tarriffs. But the voters shit-canned one of the greatest political documents ever produced, a work of genius by an assembly of statesmen the likes of which we are likely never to see again, for some newfangled, and frankly absurd, ideas about bureaucrats manipulating levers of economic power to control an economy as large and complex as that of the United States. Like Esau in the Bible, we sold our birthright for a bowl of stew.
We are incompetent because we fail to do the work of vetting our candidates before they are elected and holding them accountable afterwards. We take political speeches, and even advertisements and bumper stickers, at face value as if the people behind them don't have actual records and actions that can be evaluated.
And this kind of research isn't even that hard. We live in an age that the citizens of earlier days could not have dreamed of. An untold wealth of information is available right at home. In days not too long ago, in depth research of candidates and issues could only be done at a public library. And even there the information available, when measured against the worldwide sum of information, was frustratingly small. Now there is virtually no fact that cannot be researched almost instantly. But still I hear registered voters discuss candidates and issues in terms so trite and superficial it would be pure flattery to call them cliches.
So don't blame George Soros, the Koch brothers or anyone else. The architect of our present predicament is staring back at you from the mirror. As Pogo says, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
And although it sounds like a dire and ominous characterization of American politics, it is ironically comforting in that it relieves voters of the pain of confronting the real culprits in our country's predicament - us. We, the citizens of this country, are the ruling class. The government we have is the government we chose. Unfortunately, we are every bit as corrupt and incompetent as the shadowy figures haunting Mr. Schlicher's dreams.
We are corrupt because our votes are for sale. It is commonplace for politicians to brag about how they will direct public funds to some local project whose major, if not only, justification is the dumping of money into the local economy. Others promise free stuff paid for by the taxes confiscated from our fellow citizens. Still others stroke our vanity or envy by punishing behaviors we find objectionable even though they impinge on no one else's rights.
Some twenty years ago I was talking with a co-worker about Bill Clinton's numerous misdeeds including the perjury that got him impeached. I asked him how he could support someone so obviously corrupt. "My 401(k) is doing great." he said. His reaction was typical. Clinton's defenders never denied his crimes. They couldn't without looking completely foolish. Clinton himself could quibble over the meaning of "is" with a straight face. He might have even made himself believe it. This, after all, is a man who takes moral instruction from George Costanza.
But normal people can't deny the truth staring them in the face without feeling completely foolish. So instead of proclaiming Clinton's innocence, they insisted his crimes didn't matter. "Everyone lies about sex." "The French are so much more sophisticated than we are. After all, Mitterand's mistress and wife attended his funeral together." "Ken Starr is on a witch hunt."
This attitude, when applied to the federal government, becomes even more insidious because we trample our constitution for our own personal gain. Most of the giveaways, for which we reward politicians, are simply outside the scope of Congress' legislative authority. But we deliberately jettisoned the Constitution back in the thirties in the fear and panic of what would become known as the Great Depression.
People were suffering through an economic downturn and they decided that giving more power to an arrogant coterie of social engineers was the way out of it. Ironically, the misery of the depression had already been enhanced by short-sighted government attempts to fight it, such as the Smoot-Hawley tarriffs. But the voters shit-canned one of the greatest political documents ever produced, a work of genius by an assembly of statesmen the likes of which we are likely never to see again, for some newfangled, and frankly absurd, ideas about bureaucrats manipulating levers of economic power to control an economy as large and complex as that of the United States. Like Esau in the Bible, we sold our birthright for a bowl of stew.
We are incompetent because we fail to do the work of vetting our candidates before they are elected and holding them accountable afterwards. We take political speeches, and even advertisements and bumper stickers, at face value as if the people behind them don't have actual records and actions that can be evaluated.
And this kind of research isn't even that hard. We live in an age that the citizens of earlier days could not have dreamed of. An untold wealth of information is available right at home. In days not too long ago, in depth research of candidates and issues could only be done at a public library. And even there the information available, when measured against the worldwide sum of information, was frustratingly small. Now there is virtually no fact that cannot be researched almost instantly. But still I hear registered voters discuss candidates and issues in terms so trite and superficial it would be pure flattery to call them cliches.
So don't blame George Soros, the Koch brothers or anyone else. The architect of our present predicament is staring back at you from the mirror. As Pogo says, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Saturday, August 6, 2016
Unfalsifiability
Jim Geraghty has a column in National Review Online discussing an attitude among certain Trump followers that is fairly obvious to anyone who spends time reading their comments on the internet. And that is their unshakable belief that their stubby-fingered messiah is a political genius who is just misunderstood by the elites that oppose him. No amount of bad news can diminish their ovine devotion to the Donald. Their reasoning is a flexible as a contortionist. During the primaries, when Trump was leading in the polls, they were gospel. Now that he trails Hillary across the country, the polls are meaningless, or they are rigged or just lies.
Trumpism is a kind of religion. It's adherents are motivated by faith in their casino god and not by reason or empiricism. Ask a Trumpswab what evidence, fact, occurrence or revelation would convince him that Trump is not the god-emperor they he imagines him to be and you will get no answer. Trumpism is an unfalsifiable belief. In his latest G-File, Jonah Goldberg surveyed the history of Trump defenders assuring the public that his juvenile buffoonish manner was just for the primary season and that he would eventually "pivot" to a more presidential demeanor. Simultaneously he surveyed Trump's history of defying that prediction at every term. Goldberg then publicly challenged the Trumpkins:
So I ran through all that just to say this. Trumpism reminds me of another unfalsifiable religion that claims a significant number of adherents - Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, or CAGW. CAGW is a faith based on computer models that is impervious to actual facts. There has been no warming trend for fifteen years now. We're in the middle of a run of exceptionally mild hurricane seasons. Fifteen years ago ABC predicted that Manhattan would be under water by now.
None of that matters. Whatever happens is taken as proof that CAGW is happening and that it's the greatest, most immediate threat the world faces. If it's warm out that's global warming. If it's cold out, that's global warming. Things that have nothing to do with climate, like earthquakes and volcanoes, are taken as proof of global warming.
There are other examples of devotion to ideas that flies in the face of evidence, Obamacare and Head Start for instance. It appears that unfalsifiable faiths are a tempting refuge for all sorts of people.
Trumpism is a kind of religion. It's adherents are motivated by faith in their casino god and not by reason or empiricism. Ask a Trumpswab what evidence, fact, occurrence or revelation would convince him that Trump is not the god-emperor they he imagines him to be and you will get no answer. Trumpism is an unfalsifiable belief. In his latest G-File, Jonah Goldberg surveyed the history of Trump defenders assuring the public that his juvenile buffoonish manner was just for the primary season and that he would eventually "pivot" to a more presidential demeanor. Simultaneously he surveyed Trump's history of defying that prediction at every term. Goldberg then publicly challenged the Trumpkins:
I want to put forward a challenge to everyone still clinging to the he-can-change, pie-in-the-sky, free-beer-tomorrow, Godot’s-bus-is-just-running-late, he-can-change fantasy. Pick a date. Any date between now and Election Day. I want you to commit to the idea that if he hasn’t changed by that day, he never will. And on that day, you need to accept that he is the same cheeto-dusted smatterer some of us saw from Day 1. Then, ask yourself: “What should we do now?”I suspect that the date Jonah is asking for will never arrive. I suspect Trump will remain the same narcissistic blowhard he always has been. And when he goes down to defeat, the Trumpsters will blame #NeverTrump. Some of them are already laying the groundwork for that.
So I ran through all that just to say this. Trumpism reminds me of another unfalsifiable religion that claims a significant number of adherents - Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, or CAGW. CAGW is a faith based on computer models that is impervious to actual facts. There has been no warming trend for fifteen years now. We're in the middle of a run of exceptionally mild hurricane seasons. Fifteen years ago ABC predicted that Manhattan would be under water by now.
None of that matters. Whatever happens is taken as proof that CAGW is happening and that it's the greatest, most immediate threat the world faces. If it's warm out that's global warming. If it's cold out, that's global warming. Things that have nothing to do with climate, like earthquakes and volcanoes, are taken as proof of global warming.
There are other examples of devotion to ideas that flies in the face of evidence, Obamacare and Head Start for instance. It appears that unfalsifiable faiths are a tempting refuge for all sorts of people.
Saturday, July 30, 2016
The Wrath of Khan
I watched not one second of the coverage of either convention this month. But even I knew about the father of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq addressing the Democratic National Convention. It was a poignant story, but it no doubt would have quickly been forgotten if not for the Donald.
The whole point of Khizr Khan's appearance in Philadelphia was to criticize Trump's proposal to ban Muslim immigration into the United States by presenting an example of a Muslim patriot giving his life for his country. Khan made his challenge personal by addressing Trump directly. What sacrifices has Trump made for his country? Has he ever read the Constitution? Somebody had to know that was like waving a red cape at a bull.
Naturally a reporter chose to prompt Trump for a response to Khan' challenge and he obliged. Trump said he's made sacrifices by putting up buildings and creating jobs. He then pointed out that Khan's wife, the mother of the fallen soldier, stood silently next to Khan while he delivered his address. Trump suggested that she wasn't allowed to speak because she is a Muslim woman.
This episode illustrates several of Trump's serious character defects. First, nothing can ever not be about him. It would have been so easy to say simply that he appreciates and honors the sacrifice of this American soldier and move on. But he, at his core, is incapable of that kind of restraint.
He asserts that he made sacrifices by developing real estate. He didn't make sacrifices; he made money (usually). His decades-old claim that avoiding VD in the seventies was his personal Vietnam war could have been left in the past had he not demonstrated that this narcissistic attitude is very much a part of him still. His assumption about Mrs. Khan's silence may have an element of truth. She apparently comes from a culture where women are discouraged or outright forbidden from speaking out. But that's entirely irrelevant to her son's sacrifice.
It was obvious the Democrats were going long on grieving mothers in Philadelphia, particularly mothers of sons killed by police. I'm sure they would have preferred to have Mrs. Khan address the convention directly. Maybe she was culturally inhibited or just shy. So they had her stand on stage as a silent endorsement of her husband's speech while presenting another grieving mother for the assemble delegates to fetishize.
I don't credit Democrats with an ounce of intellectual honesty or genuine concern but sometimes you let these things lie so as not to extend their cultural lifespan. Donald can't do that.
Secondly, it's quite obvious Trump hasn't read the Constitution. It's obvious from many of his public pronouncements. He hasn't read it for the same reason Bobby Jindal said he hadn't read the Bible - he isn't in it. If he had, he could have addressed his Muslim immigration ban with a modicum of intelligence the way Andrew McCarthy did in National Review Online.
Trump lacks all self-discipline. This is why he announced his intention to fund super PACs to defeat two candidates he's already defeated. This vindictive self-obsession should be disqualifying in a presidential candidate. That his legions of Trumpswabs can't see this does not bode well for the republic. A country can survive ignorant leaders far more readily than it can survive ignorant voters.
The whole point of Khizr Khan's appearance in Philadelphia was to criticize Trump's proposal to ban Muslim immigration into the United States by presenting an example of a Muslim patriot giving his life for his country. Khan made his challenge personal by addressing Trump directly. What sacrifices has Trump made for his country? Has he ever read the Constitution? Somebody had to know that was like waving a red cape at a bull.
Naturally a reporter chose to prompt Trump for a response to Khan' challenge and he obliged. Trump said he's made sacrifices by putting up buildings and creating jobs. He then pointed out that Khan's wife, the mother of the fallen soldier, stood silently next to Khan while he delivered his address. Trump suggested that she wasn't allowed to speak because she is a Muslim woman.
This episode illustrates several of Trump's serious character defects. First, nothing can ever not be about him. It would have been so easy to say simply that he appreciates and honors the sacrifice of this American soldier and move on. But he, at his core, is incapable of that kind of restraint.
He asserts that he made sacrifices by developing real estate. He didn't make sacrifices; he made money (usually). His decades-old claim that avoiding VD in the seventies was his personal Vietnam war could have been left in the past had he not demonstrated that this narcissistic attitude is very much a part of him still. His assumption about Mrs. Khan's silence may have an element of truth. She apparently comes from a culture where women are discouraged or outright forbidden from speaking out. But that's entirely irrelevant to her son's sacrifice.
It was obvious the Democrats were going long on grieving mothers in Philadelphia, particularly mothers of sons killed by police. I'm sure they would have preferred to have Mrs. Khan address the convention directly. Maybe she was culturally inhibited or just shy. So they had her stand on stage as a silent endorsement of her husband's speech while presenting another grieving mother for the assemble delegates to fetishize.
I don't credit Democrats with an ounce of intellectual honesty or genuine concern but sometimes you let these things lie so as not to extend their cultural lifespan. Donald can't do that.
Secondly, it's quite obvious Trump hasn't read the Constitution. It's obvious from many of his public pronouncements. He hasn't read it for the same reason Bobby Jindal said he hadn't read the Bible - he isn't in it. If he had, he could have addressed his Muslim immigration ban with a modicum of intelligence the way Andrew McCarthy did in National Review Online.
Trump lacks all self-discipline. This is why he announced his intention to fund super PACs to defeat two candidates he's already defeated. This vindictive self-obsession should be disqualifying in a presidential candidate. That his legions of Trumpswabs can't see this does not bode well for the republic. A country can survive ignorant leaders far more readily than it can survive ignorant voters.
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Feeling Pretty Unappreciated Right Now
So I was riding the bus this afternoon and somewhere behind me two people decided to start a race riot. Not really. But there argument was loud, heated and racially tinged to the point that the driver had to pull the bus over to the side of the road and request police intervention. The two antagonists calmed down before the police arrived but what struck me most was that this contretemps was between a black man and a Puerto Rican woman.
You get that? Not a single white person involved. I had no idea you could start a race riot without white people. If you can, then what exactly are we here for? I'm going to go have an existential crisis now. See you later.
You get that? Not a single white person involved. I had no idea you could start a race riot without white people. If you can, then what exactly are we here for? I'm going to go have an existential crisis now. See you later.
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Marking the Further Decline of the American Republic
Three excellent columns hit the internet this morning.
Over at National Review Online Andrew McCarthy has a piece titled "Terror in France and the Annals of Willful Blindness." In it he restates criticisms of the Obama administration's approach to Islamic terrorism that have been raised many times before - chiefly its reflexive rush to cleanse every blatantly obvious act of Islamic terror of any connection to Islam. He identifies the source of this compulsion as, not just an urge to placate the supposedly moderate Muslims around the world, but an inability, a blind spot, that prevents progressives from understanding what motivates people like Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel to attack innocent people. The idea that people could be motivated by religious obligation is incomprehensible to them. As McCarthy says, "Contrary to White House blather, people do not commit mass-murder attacks because of economic privation or over trifling slights. They commit it because they are seized by commands that they take to be divine injunctions rooted in scripture, their devotion to which will determine whether paradise or eternal damnation awaits."
Read the whole column. It's worth it. Particularly because he also takes on a rhetorical tic common to politicians and pundits of the left and right in the aftermath of each new terror attack:
Also on NRO today is a column by Kevin Williamson titled simply "I Told You So." In it he explores why the oft-predicted "libertarian moment" never manifested itself. The error is in the belief that most people are fundamentally in favor of freedom, that all those people living under despotic regimes around the world are ripe markets for liberal republics if only the oppressive dictatorships that govern their countries were removed.
But the fact is that people's desire for freedom, to the extent that it exists, is more often than not subjective. That is, people want the freedom to live in accordance with their values and their desires but they are not willing to extend that freedom to others who hold different values. As Williamson says, "Most people do not want their values to be tolerated — they want their values to prevail."
This mistaken notion about people's commitment to liberty has consequences. A critical assumption underlying George W. Bush's middle-east strategy was that the populations of Muslim nations would embrace freedom if it were offered to them. The record on this is spotty at best.
Closer to home this intolerance manifests itself in the persecution of Christian florists, bakers, photographers, etc. who erroneously thought that "live and let live" was a workable solution to differences of opinion over same-sex marriage.
Over at National Review Online Andrew McCarthy has a piece titled "Terror in France and the Annals of Willful Blindness." In it he restates criticisms of the Obama administration's approach to Islamic terrorism that have been raised many times before - chiefly its reflexive rush to cleanse every blatantly obvious act of Islamic terror of any connection to Islam. He identifies the source of this compulsion as, not just an urge to placate the supposedly moderate Muslims around the world, but an inability, a blind spot, that prevents progressives from understanding what motivates people like Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel to attack innocent people. The idea that people could be motivated by religious obligation is incomprehensible to them. As McCarthy says, "Contrary to White House blather, people do not commit mass-murder attacks because of economic privation or over trifling slights. They commit it because they are seized by commands that they take to be divine injunctions rooted in scripture, their devotion to which will determine whether paradise or eternal damnation awaits."
Read the whole column. It's worth it. Particularly because he also takes on a rhetorical tic common to politicians and pundits of the left and right in the aftermath of each new terror attack:
I had to fight of the urge to throw my television out the window Thursday evening. Images of bodies strewn across the promenade along the Côte d’Azur were interrupted by one vapid pol after another, brought on set to condemn the “cowardly” jihadist. Cowardly? Do you think you could drive a truck through a mass of humanity and then shoot it out with trained security personnel, knowing all the while that you were going to die? Our enemies are barbaric savages, but cowards? To do what our enemies do requires nerve, fervor — a cause they believe is worthy of the raging passion Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al Banna called “the art of death.”I remember reacting negatively to this tendency as far back as September 11 when it was Bush administration officials falling over themselves to condemn the attacks as cowardly. I wasn't sure they understood what that word means. Willingly sacrificing one's life to a cause, no matter how repugnant, is not cowardly. To pretend it is just makes it harder to understand the enemy.
Also on NRO today is a column by Kevin Williamson titled simply "I Told You So." In it he explores why the oft-predicted "libertarian moment" never manifested itself. The error is in the belief that most people are fundamentally in favor of freedom, that all those people living under despotic regimes around the world are ripe markets for liberal republics if only the oppressive dictatorships that govern their countries were removed.
But the fact is that people's desire for freedom, to the extent that it exists, is more often than not subjective. That is, people want the freedom to live in accordance with their values and their desires but they are not willing to extend that freedom to others who hold different values. As Williamson says, "Most people do not want their values to be tolerated — they want their values to prevail."
This mistaken notion about people's commitment to liberty has consequences. A critical assumption underlying George W. Bush's middle-east strategy was that the populations of Muslim nations would embrace freedom if it were offered to them. The record on this is spotty at best.
Closer to home this intolerance manifests itself in the persecution of Christian florists, bakers, photographers, etc. who erroneously thought that "live and let live" was a workable solution to differences of opinion over same-sex marriage.
Finally, over at Townhall, Stephen Chapman writes about "Mike Pence's Towering Hypocrisy." Chapman recalls a speech the Republican vice-presidential nominee gave to the Federalist Society in 2010. In that lecture, Pence held forth on the character traits essential in a president of a constitutional republic such as ours. Among these traits are humility, self-discipline and "an understanding of the fundamental principles that underlie not only the republic but life itself." Having laid down that marker, it's hard to fathom how he could have signed on as Donald Trump's second banana. If nothing else, it's example #34,856,923 of why you should never take anything a politician says at face value.
Monday, July 4, 2016
A Day of Mourning
That's what the Fourth of July has come to be for me. We call it Independence Day but the Declaration of Independence did more than effect a political separation from Great Britain. It defined the purpose of government:
The evidence is all too clear that American citizens by and large no longer hold to this view. The only inference we can draw from innumerable "idiot-on-the-street" interviews as well as from election results is that today's Americans think the role of government is to provide them with free stuff at their neighbor's expense and to control that neighbor's behavior for his own good.
Look at the people we elect to office from the presidency on down and tell me we haven't abandoned the ideals that made this country great. Like Esau, we have sold our birthright for a bowl of stew.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed.The purpose of government is to secure the people's God-given inalienable rights. These are rights that don't come from government, they come before it. These are not phony rights like health care or a "living wage," which are rights that can only come at the expense of someone else. The natural inalienable rights are the rights to live at peace with your fellow human beings.
The evidence is all too clear that American citizens by and large no longer hold to this view. The only inference we can draw from innumerable "idiot-on-the-street" interviews as well as from election results is that today's Americans think the role of government is to provide them with free stuff at their neighbor's expense and to control that neighbor's behavior for his own good.
Look at the people we elect to office from the presidency on down and tell me we haven't abandoned the ideals that made this country great. Like Esau, we have sold our birthright for a bowl of stew.
Sunday, June 5, 2016
Jurassic World's Real Villain
For sheer entertainment value few movies top Jurassic World. It benefits from the latest technological achievements in special effects as well as two capable actors, Chris Pratt and Vincent D'Onofrio as its protagonist and antagonist. Pratt has outstanding comedic skills, demonstrated on Parks and Recreation. But he's equally proficient in action movies - Zero Dark Thirty, Guardians of the Galaxy and, of course, Jurassic World. I saw the movie opening weekend, saw it again when it came out on DVD, and have watched it several times in the past two months now that it's streaming on HBONow.
The basic plot is this: After the first Jurassic Park failed before it even opened when Newman shut down all the security fences in an act of industrial espionage/sabotage and after the second park was cancelled when a T-Rex went on a rampage through San Diego, someone thought it would be a good idea to return the scene of the crime and open a theme park on Isla Nublar. After 11 years in operation the run-of-the-mill dinosaurs aren't drawing the crowds like they used to so the powers-that-be decide to start playing around the with the genetic raw materials to make something "cooler." That something is the Indominus Rex, the biggest, deadliest predator on land. What could possibly go wrong?
The problem with watching really good movies over and over again is that very few can stand the scrutiny to which multiple viewings subject them. Plot holes that merely niggled at the back of the mind the first time around are brought into distinct focus. So here's my problem with Jurassic World:
Why is Bryce Howard's Claire Dearing the heroine of this movie? There are some 22 on-screen human deaths in the film's 124 minutes and who knows how many people got eaten off-screen. And it's all Claire's fault. She's in charge. Of course she has bosses she reports to. But "I was only following orders" is not a valid defense. Did she take no lessons from the previous movies? These creatures have a way of breaking loose and chowing down. And yet she wants them "bigger, scarier, [with] more teeth." The lab geeks present her with a new hybrid design. They assure her it's more dangerous than anything else in the park but they can't reveal the details because they're "classified." Apparently she raised not one objection or word of protest about this scheme because she is singly focused on the park's P&L figures. If Claire were a beady-eyed little man instead of a very attractive woman, she'd be Carter Burke in Aliens, exposing Earth to a deadly species in hopes of turning a handsome profit.
We're supposed to empathize with her, mainly because she has two nephews missing in the park with a gigantic killing machine of a dinosaur rampaging through the island. In reality, her nephews are missing because she neglected them by pawning them off on her assistant, breaking a promise she made to her sister to take care of them. She then compounds that negligence by neglecting her duties as the park director, abandoning her post at the control room to look for the children.
While I'm at it, her boss Simon Masrani is a mess of contradictions. He apparently likes to see himself as an enlightened entrepreneur, seeking some notion of public good rather than just profits. He admonishes Claire that John Hammond entrusted him with his life's vision and he mentioned nothing about profits. "Jurassic World," he says "exists to remind us just how small we really are." But, while bringing back long-extinct species might fit in with his goal of giving visitors some perspective on their place in creation, designing a new species runs exactly contrary to that mission. It smacks of hubris, of playing God.
The villain offered up by Jurassic World's creators is D'Onofrio's Vic Hoskins, head of security for InGen, Jurassic World's parent company. Hoskins has some dangerous ideas about weaponizing raptors but he's not the one that introduced I-Rex to the island and then let it escape. When Claire finally confronts Hoskins in the third act she accuses him of "wanting this to happen." Whether that's true or not, she made it happen. Hoskins is actually closer to the solution than anyone else. He wants to use the raptors to hunt and kill the I-Rex. That operation goes sideways but in the end, it takes the raptors, a T-Rex and a mosasaur to bring down Indominus.
Finally, the last scene shows all the evacuated survivors in an airplane hangar. Claire is among them with Owen (Pratt) and her nephews. She had just presided over the worst theme park disaster in history (I checked). Lawsuits and criminal charges are almost certainly to follow. How is she not surrounded by lawyers and spokespeople carefully controlling what she says and to whom. Why is she not subject to verbal and physical abuse from people who have lost loved ones and/or had to flee for their lives.
There will be a sequel. The climax offered some clues as to what to expect, including a genetic hybrid designed for combat instead of entertainment. Hoskins won't be back (see the picture above); he's raptor shit. Will InGen learn from its mistakes? Will the producers?
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Welcome Aboard #ExGOP
Over the past year, as Donald Trump defied every political obituary written about him, maintained a steady presence in the opinion polls and moved from victory to victory in the Republican primaries, I have watched with some bemusement as conservative opinion leaders wrestled with the prospect of not voting for the Republican candidate for president come this November. The latest example is an article by Jay Nordlinger in the current issue of National Review. I am bemused because not voting Republican is a practice to which I reconciled myself some twenty years ago.
I come from a Republican family. Both my parents consistently voted Republican and leaned conservative. My paternal grandfather served two years as a Republican congressman from the Bronx - a most rare creature. One of my earliest memories as a child is watching Richard Nixon announce his resignation on television.
But as a teenager my circle of friends were almost exclusively progressive Democrats from progressive Democrat families. And as a teenager one invariably sides with one's friends against one's parents. So as the 1980 election approached I parroted whatever left-wing propaganda I picked up, accusing Ronald Reagan of all manner of sinister deeds, plans and attitudes.
Then in my sophomore year of high school I found myself with a free period in my schedule, which I spent in the library. In the periodical section was a magazine I had never seen or heard of before - National Review. To this day I am mystified that such a publication was ever allowed into a public school library. I was immediately drawn to it. It had an irreverent sense of humor and I found in it conservatives who defied the caricatures of conservatives that much of popular culture uncritically accepted.
Within months facts and reason persuaded me to become a conservative. I became a full-throated defender of Reagan and Reaganism. When I turned 18 I registered to vote and enthusiastically checked the Republican box for party affiliation. I voted for Reagan in 1984 and Bush in 1988 and 1992. I, like many conservatives, was disappointed with the lack of success in rolling back progressive power grabs by the federal government but I reasoned that little was possible so long as the Democrats controlled Congress.
Then in 1994, in reaction to early overreaches by Bill Clinton, the voters elected a Republican Senate and, for the first time in over 40 years, a Republican House. I thought to myself, "Now you're gonna see something." But, like the Joker at the end of The Dark Knight waiting for the two ferry boats to explode, I was disappointed.
It turns out that, for the most part, Republican politicians are just as addicted to power, and the perks that accompany it, as their Democrat counterparts. It also turns out that Republican voters may like to imagine themselves as rugged individualists but most of them are as fond of federal handouts as any welfare queen.
At this time I also began to take a deeper interest in the Constitution and I realized that much of what the federal government does is not just bad policy, it's illegal. The Constitution vests the federal government with a finite number of enumerated powers. Anything not on the list is off-limits to the Congress and left to the authority of the states.
Then, in the 1930's the Supreme Court adopted a progressive view of the Constitution that one clause, giving Congress the authority to regulate "Commerce ... among the several states," could be twisted into an almost unlimited grant of power. It was a patently absurd interpretation to any objective observer but, with a depression going on, New Dealers convinced a lot of people that greater federal power was necessary.
A lie doesn't become true simply because it's repeated over and over again for decades. And I realized that virtually every office holder who took an oath to support the Constitution was, in effect perjuring himself so long as he acquiesced to the federal power grab begun under FDR. I now saw the two major political parties as rival crime families who may despise each other, but neither one was about to give up theft.
In 1996 the Republicans nominated Bob Dole. Dole had been on one government payroll or another almost his entire life, beginning at 19 when he enlisted in the army. He was a consummate deal maker and moderate, working with Democrats to grease the wheels of government and keep the whole machine running smoothly. Newt Gingrich famously called him "the tax collector for the welfare state."
But the 1996 Bob Dole had donned the mask of a conservative. As a gimmick, during his stump speeches he would pull an index card out of his jacket pocket and read the 10th Amendment - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." But he had no clue what it meant. It was almost as if he were delivering the lines phonetically. But this was the Republican Party's pattern: make comforting noises to the conservatives during campaigns and then, when the balloons are dead and the confetti's swept up, go back to logrolling, empire building and doling out favors (no pun intended).
I decided somewhere along the line that I would no longer vote for someone whose first official act would be to commit perjury. I changed my registration to unaffiliated. I voted Libertarian in 1996 and 2000. After September 11 I no longer had confidence in the Libertarian party's approach to national security so I haven't cast a vote for president since then. With one exception: In 2008 I voted for John McCain because it was the only way I could think of to vote for Sarah Palin. It's a decision I have come to regret.
So this year I will not be voting for either major party candidate for president, but not for the first time. For all the #NeverTrumpers who are new to this, come on in, the water's fine.
I come from a Republican family. Both my parents consistently voted Republican and leaned conservative. My paternal grandfather served two years as a Republican congressman from the Bronx - a most rare creature. One of my earliest memories as a child is watching Richard Nixon announce his resignation on television.
But as a teenager my circle of friends were almost exclusively progressive Democrats from progressive Democrat families. And as a teenager one invariably sides with one's friends against one's parents. So as the 1980 election approached I parroted whatever left-wing propaganda I picked up, accusing Ronald Reagan of all manner of sinister deeds, plans and attitudes.
Then in my sophomore year of high school I found myself with a free period in my schedule, which I spent in the library. In the periodical section was a magazine I had never seen or heard of before - National Review. To this day I am mystified that such a publication was ever allowed into a public school library. I was immediately drawn to it. It had an irreverent sense of humor and I found in it conservatives who defied the caricatures of conservatives that much of popular culture uncritically accepted.
Within months facts and reason persuaded me to become a conservative. I became a full-throated defender of Reagan and Reaganism. When I turned 18 I registered to vote and enthusiastically checked the Republican box for party affiliation. I voted for Reagan in 1984 and Bush in 1988 and 1992. I, like many conservatives, was disappointed with the lack of success in rolling back progressive power grabs by the federal government but I reasoned that little was possible so long as the Democrats controlled Congress.
Then in 1994, in reaction to early overreaches by Bill Clinton, the voters elected a Republican Senate and, for the first time in over 40 years, a Republican House. I thought to myself, "Now you're gonna see something." But, like the Joker at the end of The Dark Knight waiting for the two ferry boats to explode, I was disappointed.
It turns out that, for the most part, Republican politicians are just as addicted to power, and the perks that accompany it, as their Democrat counterparts. It also turns out that Republican voters may like to imagine themselves as rugged individualists but most of them are as fond of federal handouts as any welfare queen.
At this time I also began to take a deeper interest in the Constitution and I realized that much of what the federal government does is not just bad policy, it's illegal. The Constitution vests the federal government with a finite number of enumerated powers. Anything not on the list is off-limits to the Congress and left to the authority of the states.
Then, in the 1930's the Supreme Court adopted a progressive view of the Constitution that one clause, giving Congress the authority to regulate "Commerce ... among the several states," could be twisted into an almost unlimited grant of power. It was a patently absurd interpretation to any objective observer but, with a depression going on, New Dealers convinced a lot of people that greater federal power was necessary.
A lie doesn't become true simply because it's repeated over and over again for decades. And I realized that virtually every office holder who took an oath to support the Constitution was, in effect perjuring himself so long as he acquiesced to the federal power grab begun under FDR. I now saw the two major political parties as rival crime families who may despise each other, but neither one was about to give up theft.
In 1996 the Republicans nominated Bob Dole. Dole had been on one government payroll or another almost his entire life, beginning at 19 when he enlisted in the army. He was a consummate deal maker and moderate, working with Democrats to grease the wheels of government and keep the whole machine running smoothly. Newt Gingrich famously called him "the tax collector for the welfare state."
But the 1996 Bob Dole had donned the mask of a conservative. As a gimmick, during his stump speeches he would pull an index card out of his jacket pocket and read the 10th Amendment - "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." But he had no clue what it meant. It was almost as if he were delivering the lines phonetically. But this was the Republican Party's pattern: make comforting noises to the conservatives during campaigns and then, when the balloons are dead and the confetti's swept up, go back to logrolling, empire building and doling out favors (no pun intended).
I decided somewhere along the line that I would no longer vote for someone whose first official act would be to commit perjury. I changed my registration to unaffiliated. I voted Libertarian in 1996 and 2000. After September 11 I no longer had confidence in the Libertarian party's approach to national security so I haven't cast a vote for president since then. With one exception: In 2008 I voted for John McCain because it was the only way I could think of to vote for Sarah Palin. It's a decision I have come to regret.
So this year I will not be voting for either major party candidate for president, but not for the first time. For all the #NeverTrumpers who are new to this, come on in, the water's fine.
Saturday, May 21, 2016
The Russian Mama Bear
Look at those veins! That's Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) from a recent episode of FX's The Americans. She is obviously enraged at something or someone - but what, or whom? A little backstory for those not following this excellent show set in the early 1980's:
Elizabeth and her husband Philip (Matthew Rhys) are Soviet deep-cover spies. To all the world they appear to be a typical American middle-class couple living in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. They infiltrated the United States as a young couple in the 60's and began building a life, a cover, and a family. They had two children, Paige and Henry, who are teenagers when the series begins. Paige and Henry were born American and, at least at the beginning, have no idea about their parents' true identities.
Much of the show's tension arises from Philip and Elizabeth's struggle to maintain the facade of a normal life while carrying out various operations for the Sword and Shield of the Party, the KGB. These operations involve late-night assignations with various agents and assets, high-risk infiltration of sensitive installations and frequent violent confrontations with anyone who gets in their way. Both have had sexual affairs outside of marriage, with the full knowledge of the other. Philip actually had a bigamous union with a second wife. All of this activity has to be kept secret, not just from the outside world, but from the two American teenagers living in their home. And, to top it all off, their neighbor across the street is an FBI agent who hunts Russian spies for a living.
During the last season, season 3, the inevitable cracks that result from this kind of stress began to manifest themselves in the life of Paige. At the invitation of a friend, Paige becomes involved with a church youth group and begins to attend Bible studies and Sunday services. Eventually she professes faith in Christ and becomes baptized.
Elizabeth's first instinct is to put an immediate halt to Paige's spiritual exploration. Of the two, she has always been the True Believer, totally dedicated to the state and the party. Philip, on the other hand, has displayed signs of wavering or going native. He occasionally breaches the idea of defecting or running but Elizabeth won't hear of it. But Elizabeth is eventually persuaded that forbidding Paige's religious life would provoke a rift between them that would be personally painful and professionally unhelpful.
For at the same time that Paige finds herself drawing closer to God, the KGB is hoping to bring her into its fold. Philip and Elizabeth's handler tells them that the Center, the colloquial term for KGB headquarters, has hit upon the idea of recruiting the children of its deep-cover agents as "second-generation illegals." It has a vision of a vanguard of Soviet agents with impeccable genuine American identities. The first step is for Philip and Elizabeth to bring their daughter into the fold. In the series premiere, when it appears the FBI is onto them, Elizabeth's greatest fear is not death or prison, it is that her children will learn her secret and despise her for it. Now she has to face that fear head on and tell Paige the truth.
Well, not the whole truth at first. Don't tell her about the sleeping around and the murders and the lives ruined. Instead, tell her that your job is about preventing war and stopping the United States from exploiting third-world countries. Tell her it's actually not that different from the nuclear disarmament campaigns that her church is involved in.
Unfortunately, and ironically, for Philip and Elizabeth, they raised a daughter who is constitutionally incapable of deceit. And in the last scene of the season 3 finale she is seen on the telephone telling her pastor that her parents are Russian spies. And, because she is so honest, she tells her parents that she told her pastor. And the pastor turns around and tells his wife. The pastor assures Philip and Elizabeth that he will respect the confidentiality of Paige's disclosure but the Center isn't willing to take that on faith (pun intended).
The Center's first plan is to arrange an "accident" for the pastor and his wife but that has to be scrubbed at the last minute when a crisis interferes with Philip and Elizabeth's alibi. (And for those who watch the show, the phrase "going to Epcot" will forever have sinister overtones.) Besides, Paige is honest but she's not naive. If anything happened to the pastor it would be difficult, if not impossible, to convince her the Russians had nothing to do with it.
Since the pastor and his wife can't be eliminated, they have to be monitored. And that's Paige's new assignment. But she doesn't like it and begins to balk at spending so much time around them. That's when Elizabeth really lays into her as seen in the picture above. She's had it with Paige's whining. Furthermore, the whole situation is Paige's fault because she didn't think before taking action that risked the destruction of ... their family.
The family. Not the mission or the operation. Not the party, the state, the proletariat, the revolution or the Socialist International. All the things that Elizabeth has dedicated her life to. She's worried about her family. Could there be a more bourgeois sentiment?
As a young girl, Elizabeth would have been raised to venerate Pavel Morozov, the teenage boy who turned in his own father for anti-Soviet activities and was later murdered by his relatives in revenge. The lesson is clear - the state is everything, family is nothing.
To be fair, Elizabeth had spent the better part of twenty years pretending to be a typical American woman and explicit appeals based on Marxist-Leninist ideology would never prevail against the American-born and -raised Paige. Nevertheless, in an apparently unguarded moment, with anger rising and veins bulging, the vanguard of the proletariat, the hero of the Soviet Union, the sword and shield of the party is, in the end, a mother, fighting for her family.
Saturday, May 14, 2016
Lamentations
I've been re-watching the HBO series John Adams and its jarring, and depressing, to see how far we have fallen in statesmanship and citizenship. There has been no politician on the national scene in my lifetime that equals the intellect and the public spirit of Adams, Jefferson or Washington. Look at the collection of ciphers, reprobates, thieves and carnival barkers we had running for president this time around and weep for the republic.
To be sure, the founders were not perfect. Jefferson and Washington owned slaves. Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Act. Jefferson was too ideologically-blinded to recognize that the French revolutionaries were building, not a liberal republic like in America, but the first terrorist, totalitarian state. Recent events have shown he was not the last secretary of state to exhibit such myopia where foreign revolutions are concerned.
But despite their faults, they and their compatriots were dedicated to establishing government that would preserve liberty and they produced between them the two greatest legislative/political documents in the history of the world, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. They bequeathed us a fortune and we, the wastrel heirs, have pissed it away, some by design, some by negligence. Now Barack Obama seems to devise a new unconstitutional outrage every day and his successor seems guaranteed to be a dishonest, self-interested tyrant, regardless of which party wins, and only a small minority of citizens seems to care.
To be sure, the founders were not perfect. Jefferson and Washington owned slaves. Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Act. Jefferson was too ideologically-blinded to recognize that the French revolutionaries were building, not a liberal republic like in America, but the first terrorist, totalitarian state. Recent events have shown he was not the last secretary of state to exhibit such myopia where foreign revolutions are concerned.
But despite their faults, they and their compatriots were dedicated to establishing government that would preserve liberty and they produced between them the two greatest legislative/political documents in the history of the world, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. They bequeathed us a fortune and we, the wastrel heirs, have pissed it away, some by design, some by negligence. Now Barack Obama seems to devise a new unconstitutional outrage every day and his successor seems guaranteed to be a dishonest, self-interested tyrant, regardless of which party wins, and only a small minority of citizens seems to care.
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