Who is John Galt?

morality of a liberal

Note: This is the second of four posts about my exchange with Justin.
Also see Part 1, Part 3 and Part 4.

I showed our uber-liberal friend, Justin, the video of Robert Reich implying that liberals lie because their voters are too ignorant to handle the truth about healthcare, culminating in Reich's message to seniors: "We're going to let you die." 

In an email exchange, I asked Justin, "Do you agree that the electorate is too ignorant to be told of such a scheme?  Or do you believe the current reform proposals will actually result in better, cheaper care for all, delivered more efficiently?  I guess what I'm wondering is whether you consider yourself a liberal 'insider' who's not too ignorant for the truth, or whether you take such policies at face value."

Justin replied:

I very much do consider myself an insider who is not too ignorant for the truth.  There's a discounting effect to my claiming that about myself, but no one else is really here to write it for me so you'll have to do me the favor of taking what I say about myself at face value and try to ignore the part where it sounds like I'm blowing my own horn.  I have taken a college-level interest in politics and political philosophy and I have worked in the political field.  I am also among the elite as far as measurable intelligence goes.  I very firmly believe that these characteristics allow me to have a superior -- not just different-but-equal but in fact fuller and more functional -- understanding of many topics, not least of all politics, compared to the vast majority...

I want to be clear that Justin does not claim to be someone who should be making decisions over your life, though it's implied that he does think his vote, for example, should be worth more than yours, and that he is better qualified to pick the leaders who should be making decisions over your life.  (There was not much discussion about what sort of plans such men might have for him.)  I guess you could say Justin's an elitist, but he doesn't consider himself as "elite" as the people he feels entitled to choose to govern you.  How comforting.

scozzafava drops out

Dede Scozzafava has suspended her campaign for NY23.

Considering the late date, Scozzafava's name will still appear on the ballot.  However, the race between Owens and Hoffman is close enough that mere word of Scozzafava's withdrawal should be enough to tip the race to Hoffman.

It would be a shame for the withdrawn candidate's name to split the right's vote.  Maybe someone (hint, hint, NYGOP) could print off some signs reminding Republicans that they should vote for Hoffman now.

words of a liberal

Note: This is the first of four posts about my exchange with Justin.
Also see Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.

I had a lengthy exchange with a radical uber-liberal.  The truth is that he left me with enough material to last a month -- a job so big I've simply been unable to put together a single post to cover it all.

So I'm going to try something different: I'm going to start with just a single quote this guy wrote.  If you base enough stuff on incorrect premises, you can build very rational-sounding, principled arguments that are in fact complete folly.

"Justin" says:

I believe that I deserve what I earn minus what I don't need, which should be used for the mutual benefit of others in the system I live in.

I have three problems with this.  First, "need" is subjective, and it just so happens that liberalism is all about letting some elite define needs.

Second, "earning" already implies "the mutual benefit of others."  Why do you think people give you money in the first place?  If you don't want to consume your earnings, and you don't give it away to suit your own definition of needs, then the least you can do is to reinvest it to expand your ability to create even more mutual benefit.

And finally, if your model includes having only enough to meet your needs as defined by someone else, then why on earth would you ever work as hard as you can, maximizing the mutual benefit you create?  Or, to turn that around, as a liberal what's your plan for getting people to produce as much as they can to meet all of society's perceived "needs," when each individual's personal reward is destined to merely be sufficient for his own needs?

The scary question is that if liberals won't let people keep the fruit of their labor, then what do you suppose the liberal strategy is for making them work?  Answer: You don't want to know.

what can we do?

Michael writes:

I wish that, for the purposes of a more complete discussion, and to hopefully propel this mission in the direction of "what can we do?", you would also bring up the GOP (particularly the previous administration). This needs to be addressed. Without that frame of reference, the debate defaults back to Republicans vs. Democrats.

First, the debate will always be between Republicans and Democrats.  Our entire political process is structured around majorities, so a party's only hope for power is a platform that can appeal to a critical mass of voters. 

Even if the Republican party goes away, the alternative is some other party with similar planks, all the same voters, most of the same politicians, new leadership, and a new name.  You can achieve the same thing a lot less painfully -- and with a lot less damage to the country -- by simply replacing the GOP leadership from within.

It starts with education.  We need more right-leaning voters to see beyond the Republican agenda.  We need them to see the principles of liberty -- to actually understand the underlying ideas behind beliefs most people already hold.  In short, we need enlightenment.  Not another Age of Enlightenment with new ideas, but simply a new awareness of the same ideas.  Those principles are not simply the abandoned tooling that once shaped our Constitution; they are still woven throughout its fabric to this day.  And they are not some fad whose time has passed -- they are truths which, while capable of being forgotten, never stop being true.

Governing comes with conflicts of interests.  Any man can make laws to secure his position, or to benefit himself or his cronies financially.  And only an educated electorate can tell the difference.  We need an electorate who can put the right people in.  And sometimes we even need it to reject perfectly capable -- highly electable -- candidates who are simply there for the wrong reason.  We're not trying to get our people to win -- we want our ideas to prevail.

It is about Republicans vs. Democrats.  But the question is whether we rally behind ideas to help these particular Republicans win (like "appealing to moderates"), or whether we communicate conservative libertarian values that resonate naturally with all honest people who simply want proper credit for their labor, ultimately leading to the selection of better candidates.

We need the Republicans to win, but not necessarily these Republicans.  The goal is not to tailor John McCain's message until he can steal enough liberals from the Democrats to win.  The goal is to educate enough Republicans to ensure that a conservative wins primaries -- a conservative who can turn out conservative votes from within even the bluest of blue districts.

In short, we need an overhaul  that leaves all the "moderate" Republicans -- including populists like McCain -- vying for seats as the blue dog Democrats they really are.

original intent

I was thinking about how we're struggling in Afghanistan, and how it's really no surprise since we picked a President with a socialist domestic agenda and nothing particularly good to say to the rest of the world about America.

At first I accepted that this is the sort of choice we have to make -- a domestic agenda or a foreign policy agenda.  But then I realized that I was falling for a liberal premise: that the federal government is supposed to play any major role in domestic policy.  In reality, we have fifty state governments for that -- states who are severely limited in their power to deal with foreign governments, and which are the default government over most domestic matters according to the Tenth Amendment.

I'd been wondering how we're supposed to balance the role of a Commander in Chief against the role of Chief Executive,  when it occurred to me that this is a false choice.  Constitutionally-speaking, the Presidency is about representing our union of states to the rest of the world.  Even if that doesn't call for a military Commander in Chief, it's still primarily a diplomatic task.  Even the federal goverment's domestic role is constitutionally just a form of international arbitration over our member states.

By design -- by original intent -- there's just not supposed to be a whole lot for the President to actually be involved with at home.  Certainly nothing on the scale of what the states are supposed to be doing -- nothing on the scale of the power they so clearly reserved for themselves when they each ratified the Constitution.

So we have a President neck-deep in what is literally our individual personal business, where he doesn't belong, while our troops in Afghanistan are hanging out to dry without leadership.

The founders would be proud.

hoffman or scozzafava?

Okay, I've made it clear that I'm against third-parties.  But we do need some mechanism to communicate with GOP leadership.  And that's particularly true in New York's 23rd Congressional District where the patently liberal Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, was chosen in back-room deals.

The problem is that there's a real conservative running on the third-party in that race -- Doug Hoffman -- and he's clearly splitting the right's chance for victory.

What's the answer?

I'm particularly disappointed with Newt, who's thrown in with Scozzafava.  By doing this, Gingrich implies that he's a Republican first, and a conservative second.  The problem is that the GOP needs people who are conservative first.  But I recognize the imperative of getting more "R"s on the roll call (Speaker Pelosi, anyone?).  Arrrggh -- it's frustrating.

What is the answer?

noteworthy comment

Reader R Brown posted a link in this comment earlier this morning.  The article is so good, I've got to repost it where everyone can see it.

Consider E=mc2.  You know the speed of light is fast.  Now square it -- as fast as fast can be, times itself.  That's how much energy is locked up in any given mass of fuel.  Or, as the article says:

When we burn a gallon of gasoline, one-billionth of the mass of the gasoline is completely transformed into energy. This transformation occurs in the electron shells. The amount is so small that nobody has ever been able to measure it. Yet the energy release is large enough to propel a 2000-pound automobile for 30 miles – a remarkable feat when you think of it.

...One elementary source of comparison is to consider what it takes to refuel a coal plant as opposed to a nuclear reactor. A 1000-MW coal plant – our standard candle - is fed by a 110-car “unit train” arriving at the plant every 30 hours – 300 times a year. Each individual coal car weighs 100 tons and produces 20 minutes of electricity. We are currently straining the capacity of the railroad system moving all this coal around the country. (In China, it has completely broken down.)

A nuclear reactor, on the other hand, refuels when a fleet of six tractor-trailers arrives at the plant with a load of fuel rods once every eighteen months. The fuel rods are only mildly radioactive and can be handled with gloves. They will sit in the reactor for five years. After those five years, about six ounces of matter will be completely transformed into energy. Yet because of the power of E = mc2, the metamorphosis of six ounces of matter will be enough to power the city of San Francisco for five years.

This is what people finds hard to grasp. It is almost beyond our comprehension. How can we run an entire city for five years on six ounces of matter with almost no environmental impact?

conservatism rising

(H/T: Drudge) Gallup reports that "Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group."

Basically, around 10% of 2008's self-described liberals are now calling themselves moderate, while a similar number of 2008's moderates are now conservative.  Also, I doubt that what people want has changed much -- shifts like this are caused by respondents' perception of what liberal policies actually deliver.  And the more liberalism people get, the more conservative they realize they are.

Gallup points out that even moderates answer most questions more conservatively now.  This indicates two things.  First, a growing understanding that the conservative approach yields results that are at the very least not as bad as liberalism.

And second, a lot of people who call themselves moderates are actually conservatives.  Perhaps they disagree on an issue or two, or perhaps they associate "conservatism" with a religious viewpoint that they don't personally hold.  But when it comes time to vote, these folks have hinted that they're a lot more skeptical about liberalism than the label "moderate" suggests.  It isn't that they've just realized they like conservatism as much as they've just discovered what liberalism is really all about.

the nuclear option

Yesterday, from the Associated Press: The prospect of nuclear power being used as a bargaining chip for cap and trade.

The article correctly points out the benefits of nuclear power, which is being considered as bait to lure some Senate GOP support to the climate bill.

What's not mentioned -- and worth noting -- is that those benefits already exist.  On balance, nuclear power is already a good thing.  But we can only have it if we submit to a massive tax bill?

What you're seeing here, basically, is a right being withheld.  Inherently, you have the right to nuclear power as long as you are willing to pay all the externalities associated with generating it.  But here you're being told that you will only be permitted to exercise that right if you are willing to give up another right -- in this case, paying the tax burden of cap and trade.  This is not why Congress exists.

On principle, Democrats can argue all day long that that the risks of nuclear power are unacceptable.  But if they are willing to compromise on that point to make some other deal, then that's not a principle at all -- it's extortion.

employer mandate = minimum wage

The latest idea being kicked around the Senate is a mandate for employers with over 50 employees to provide health insurance.

Any time you see the government requiring your employer to "give" you anything, just remember that someone's trying to use your own stupidity against you.  Employers don't make any money without employees, and they only hire employees because it's profitable to do so.  Adding a massive cost to each new hire will simply redefine the criteria used to decide which applicants are worth hiring.

The bottom line is that all benefits are funded by the productivity of workers.  If, after funding benefits like mandatory healthcare, your employer discovers there's less profit left for him, he will be forced to rethink his staffing.  If you're lucky, your wages will freeze until your productivity covers the cost of the mandate -- until the full cost of your benefits is coming out of your own pocket.

But if you're not so lucky, then -- like a rising minimum wage -- the mandate could mean unemployment.  The libs in Congress already know this.  And now you do too.