Link: http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/04/supreme-court-justice-opinions-columnists-epstein.html

An excellent article about the upcoming Supreme Court selection. Court cases should be decided based on the facts and the law, not the feelings judges have for the parties involved. Obama’s words on the matter reflect a real intellectual immaturity on the matter; it’s astounding that he actually taught law.

This again shows that fairness is a trait found most lacking in liberals. For them, it is never adherence to rules and process that is respected, but about achieving their own end results. Now I understand the catchphrase. Instead of a system we can depend on and believe in, we get “change we can believe in,” as in the law changes with the sympathies or empathies of the court.

Epstein also points out the incredible short-sightedness of liberal thinking:

… it could lead to a regrettable disregard of the systematic consequences of judicial decisions. Focus too much on the homeowner or the tenant in the individual case, and it is easy to overlook the lenders and landlords who may cut back on lending and renting to these groups if stripped of their legal protection. Ex ante accessibility to credit and housing is of vital importance to everyone, members of vulnerable groups included.

In just about every policy arena, liberals are always trying to solve the problem of the moment without regard for how this affects future incentives and perceptions. Whether it be throwing money at poverty or promoting subprime lending or appeasing foreign dictators, it’s the same story: one-dimensional thinking.

Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124104689179070747.html

This is one of the most important articles I have seen this year.

I don’t know if Arthur Brooks (President of AEI) reads my blog, but he’s certainly on the same wavelength as I am. I’m not just talking about politics or issues in general, but about what fault lines are most vulnerable and what strategy is best to repair them.

Making the moral case for capitalism and freedom is as important and timely now as ever. Fundamentally, most critics of free-market capitalism these days do not dispute its usefullness. Rather, they attack its “excesses", perceived “unfairness", and persistent “inequality". Even among conservatives they are winning the argument: neoconservatives like David Frum and pragmatic conservatives like Ross Douthat have said that liberals have identified what people want (the ends), but conservatives know how better to deliver them (the means).

But the ends do not justify the means.

In the end, liberals and progressives are plagued by static, or at best short-term, thinking. How do we solve the current crisis? How do we cushion the blow to those who blew it? There is no concern whatsoever for the long-term effects of policies, be they moral hazard, cultural degradation, or government dependency. Capitalism is simply the maximization of freedom coupled with responsibility. It’s core is a moral axiom: you are responsible for your actions and only your actions. Everything else is a choice.

Here is how he relates the cultural war over capitalism to the tax day tea parties:

Still, the tea parties are not based on the cold wonkery of budget data. They are based on an “ethical populism.” The protesters are homeowners who didn’t walk away from their mortgages, small business owners who don’t want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don’t need bailouts. They were the people who were doing the important things right – and who are now watching elected politicians reward those who did the important things wrong.

Here is the best passage from Brooks’ article:

Advocates of free enterprise must learn from the growing grass-roots protests, and make the moral case for freedom and entrepreneurship. They have to declare that it is a moral issue to confiscate more income from the minority simply because the government can. It’s also a moral issue to lower the rewards for entrepreneurial success, and to spend what we don’t have without regard for our children’s future.

Enterprise defenders also have to define “fairness” as protecting merit and freedom. This is more intuitively appealing to Americans than anything involving forced redistribution.

Link: http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/29/gop-should-end-affair-with-corporate-elites/

I have not yet written an article about the afflictions of the Republican Party (or the conservative movement) and how to correct them. If I had, this article by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) would serve as a model. He hits the nail on the head, not by attacking business constituencies, but by attacking constituency itself. As DeMint says:

The road back to Republican success is not to reinforce our weakened coalition of corporate interests, but to drop it altogether. Republicans shouldn’t be the party of business any more than they should be the party of labor - we’re supposed to be the party of freedom. We should get out of the business of picking winners and losers in the marketplace.

Business interests have been a Republican constituency for over a hundred years due to a general shared belief in private enterprise. Yet quite often Republicans have let the constituency’s interest trump their core values and promoted corporate welfare. This has become especially egregious in the last ten years and with the financial bailouts. As DeMint says, our mission should be a message of freedom and not one group or another.

I challenge Republicans to take it one step further.

Family interests have increasingly been a Republican constituency since the cultural revolution of the 1960s due to a general shared belief in family values. Yet here too Republicans have let the constituency’s interest trump their core values, most notably with child tax credits and homeownership favoritism. Economic policies should not be tailored to fit one’s perceived constituencies. As in the case of corporate welfare, stop helping your perceived special interests and just do what’s right.

Political strategists would probably say that is foolish and a recipe for defeat. I think they are wrong. They have been trained to think in terms of identity politics and voting blocs and demographics. But as anyone can tell you, politics in the last 20 years has become much more polarized and ideological. People take pride in independent thought and don’t want to vote Democratic because they’re union or Republican because they’re wealthy. Too often different demographic groups under the same banner conflict and power jockeying becomes expensive, tedious, and unreliable. Give voters a clear, predictable political philosophy and leaders who believe in it and follow it and you will get their votes.

Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/425yustu.asp?pg=1

Peter Berkowitz writes a very good article here about Obama’s supposed pragmatism. The following paragraph was especially enlightening:

To realize its utopian dreams, the new pragmatism makes use of a fundamental deception. Purporting to focus on practical consequences, it equates what works with what works to increase government’s responsibility to promote social justice in America. Although it reduces morality to interest and dismisses the distinction between true and false as a delusive vestige of an obsolete metaphysics, it treats the progressive interpretation of America as, in effect, good and true. Under the guise of inclusiveness, it denigrates and excludes rival moral and political opinions.

One reason why liberals often (though not always) like the pragmatist label is that any government program’s purpose is necessarily framed in terms of a governmental or social end. The individual or taxpayer is not part of the equation. This is why success is always gauged without regard to cost: does the program work to reduce poverty (or promote homeownership or reduce pollution or whatever)? Then the program is a success. Cost-benefit calculations are irrelevant because the costs are external to the program goal.

Here is another good passage:

A truly postpartisan pragmatist–or a pragmatist in the ordinary, everyday sense–would pay attention to the long-term economic consequences of massive government costs and expansion. He would also show interest in the full range of moral consequences of his policies, in particular the practical impact on citizens’ incentives for responsibly managing their lives of a great enlargement of government responsibilities for managing their lives for them. But a pragmatist for whom it is second nature to measure all policy by how well it promotes a progressive agenda might well ignore or deflect consideration of these awkward consequences.

Ideology has become a dirty word in our politics. But ideology is simply adherence to principle. Pragmatism is a useful path when no guiding principle is clearly apparent or perhaps even when principles conflict. But pragmatism as a principle or ideology in itself is nothing more than conformation to unprincipled interest.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/23/AR2009042304647.html?hpid=topnews

Young children are easily duped. If grandma gives them a $20 note in their Christmas (sorry, Holiday) card, you can easily swindle it out of them by offering them a handful of change. Coins seem more like real money than paper, and so children who don’t know better are sometimes happier to get solid shiny weighty quarters and nickels than crumpled flimsy $20 bills.

At his first Cabinet meeting this week, Barack Obama defended his call for department heads to cut a measly $100 million out of their budgets. “None of these things alone are going to make a difference,” he said. “But cumulatively they would make an extraordinary difference because they start setting a tone. And so what we’re going to do is line by line, page by page, $100 million there, $100 million here, pretty soon, even in Washington, it adds up to real money".

Let’s skip the talk of millions and billions and trillions and bring it down to what it means to the average American. These are the numbers divided by all the taxpayers (138 million) in America:

• Added spending for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus bill): $5,703
• Omnibus Appropriations Act 2009: $2,971
• 9,287 earmarks in the OAA 2009: $92.75
• President Obama’s budget spending in FY 2010: $25,167
• President Obama’s budget deficit in FY 2010: $8,543
• President Obama’s budget spending in FY 2010-2019: $302,340
• President Obama’s budget deficits in FY 2010-2019: $67,174
• Difference between Obama’s spending and existing baseline, FY 2010: $1,420.29
• Difference between Obama’s spending and existing baseline, FY 2010-2019: $19,797
• Obama’s request to find $100 million in budget cuts: $0.72

Have you finished laughing? In this coming year alone, Obama plans to add $1,420 of additional spending per taxpayer (i.e. spending that he proposed). But he will fight for taxpayers by finding them 72 cents each in budget cuts. Is he incredibly stupid or incredibly impudent when he says that “$100 million … adds up to real money"? Is he treating us like children or is he acting like one?

As libertarians often say, “Conservatives want to be your daddy, telling you what to do and what not to do. Liberals want to be your mommy, feeding you, tucking you in, and wiping your nose. Libertarians want to treat you as an adult.” Obama is treating us like we’re too stupid to realize the difference between millions, billions, and trillions. He’s acting like we’re children, fooled by the chump change Obama is promising us in one hand while in the other he takes away a stack of our $100 bills. Or is he the one who’s too stupid to know the difference? And he’s running our country.