RedStateEclectic

The Christmas Truce

The Christmas Truce was a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires that took place along the Western Front around Christmas 1914, during World War I.

♪ Help them to learn
Songs of joy instead of burn, baby, burn
Let us show them how to play the pipes of peace ♫

Nothing to Hide?

I encountered the nothing-to-hide argument so frequently in news interviews, discussions, and the like that I decided to probe the issue. I asked the readers of my blog, Concurring Opinions, whether there are good responses to the nothing-to-hide argument. I received a torrent of comments:

• My response is "So do you have curtains?" or "Can I see your credit-card bills for the last year?"
• So my response to the "If you have nothing to hide ... " argument is simply, "I don't need to justify my position. You need to justify yours. Come back with a warrant."
• I don't have anything to hide. But I don't have anything I feel like showing you, either.
• If you have nothing to hide, then you don't have a life.
• Show me yours and I'll show you mine.
• It's not about having anything to hide, it's about things not being anyone else's business.
• Bottom line, Joe Stalin would [have] loved it. Why should anyone have to say more?

via chronicle.com

I'm just guessing here, but I think we're all going to need to either get used to terrible intrusions on our privacy, or learn be more assertive and take your chances...

Papers, Please.

[Chief Todd] Stovall told the group of almost 40 residents that beginning in 2013, the department would deploy a new street crimes unit to high crime areas on foot to take back the streets.

"[Police are] going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck," Stovall said. "If you're out walking, we're going to stop you, ask why you're out walking, check for your ID."

Stovall said while some people may be offended by the actions of his department, they should not be.

"We're going to do it to everybody," he said. "Criminals don't like being talked to."

[Mayor Mike] Gaskill backed Stovall's proposed actions during Thursday's town hall.

"They may not be doing anything but walking their dog," he said. "But they're going to have to prove it."...

via reason.com

If I lived in Paragould, Arkansas, I'd be looking for someplace else to live. Paragould is a town of about 26,000. If it's come to this there, though, there may be no hope anywhere.

Savor Your Cup

The Hot Chocolate Story:

A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were talking at a reunion and decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired. During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives.Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups-porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite — telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said:

“Notice that all the nice looking; expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup that you’re drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not the cup; but you consciously went for the best cups… And then you began eyeing each others cups.”Now consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your job, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate we have.”

The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything that they have. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. And enjoy your hot chocolate! – Anonymous

 

Terrorist = Conviction

Glenn Greenwald on the charge of terrorist and the shocking implications of what it means to go to court under that charge:

But the Court of Appeals went much further. It reversed the conviction on all of the counts - including the non-terrorism counts - and ordered a new trial. That was necessary, said the court, because there are special rules that govern a trial whenever a defendant is charged with "terrorism", and these rules are so permissive, so designed to ensure conviction, that it is inherently unfair to convict someone under these rules who is not charged with terrorism.

Full article.

When is a trial no longer a pursuit of justice? When that trial possesses a predetermined outcome against you.

The Facts about Mass Shootings - John Fund - National Review Online

There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.

Despite all of this evidence, the magical thinking behind gun-free zones is unlikely to be questioned in the wake of the Newtown killings. Having such zones gives people a false sense of security, and woe to the politician or business owner who now suggests that a “gun-free zone” revert back to what critics would characterize as “a wild, wild West” status. Indeed, shortly after the Cinemark attack in Colorado, the manager of the nearby Northfield Theaters changed its policy and began banning concealed handguns.

In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problems they face as they carry out their evil deeds.

via www.nationalreview.com

Interesting opinion piece. While it is a little disconcerting, I guess, to think of some people carrying weapons, there may be something to be said for loosening the restrictions a bit.

A disturbed individual will find ways of doing mass harm with or without a weapon, but a responsible carrier of a weapon has the potential to save a lot of lives.

How Many Feds Does It Take to Screw In a Light Bulb?

And when will that bulb come on?

The Polish get the joke:

Poland was the only country in the European Union to avoid recession in 2009 and has been the fastest-growing EU economy since. Mr. Balcerowicz dwells little on this achievement. He sounds too busy in "battle"—his word—against bad policy.

"Most problems are the result of bad politics," he says. "In a democracy, you have lots of pressure groups to expand the state for reasons of money, ideology, etc. Even if they are angels in the government, which is not the case, if there is not a counterbalance in the form of proponents of limited government, then there will be a shift toward more statism and ultimately into stagnation and crisis."

… By his reading, the increasingly politicized Fed has in turn warped America's political discourse. The Lehman collapse did help clean up the financial sector, but not the government. Mr. Balcerowicz marvels that federal spending is still much higher than before the crisis, which isn't the case in Europe. "The greatest neglect in the U.S. is fiscal," he says. The dollar lets the U.S. "get a lot of cheap financing to finance bad policies," which is "dangerous to the world and perhaps dangerous to the U.S."

Leszek Balcerowicz: The Anti-Bernanke

States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another

It is ironic and embarrassing to be the victim of your own success. Well, it happens all the time. And people fight hard to ensure they and others do not notice the odd own-goal.

Economics, in so far as it is the theory of a free economy, is probably the best studied and most powerfully established and insightful part of all the social sciences - the views of the majority of state-adulating economists notwithstanding. 

At least, I have convinced myself in long years of hard study: capitalism not only works, it even works beautifully, and utterly deserves to be praised, promoted, and spread the world over.

Now, what I am not saying is that the foundations, the preconditions of capitalism represent anything nearly as close to a smooth operation as capitalism itself.

And it is on this delicate issue that (many) libertarians and (it seems all) anarcho-capitalists are kidding themselves, to use the American colloquialism.

The mythology that equally inspires and emaciates libertarianism derives its strength from the idea that freedom-based economics works beautifully, as I joyously acknowledge myself, and extends it to the heroic assumption that if we make things work like the free economy does, we shall get them, of whatever nature they are, to be right and properly working and morally satisfying.

In that delusive theory, there appears a term that summarises everything that seems to halt the ideal and natural solution inherent in the concept of a free society: THE STATE.

I will have a lot more to say about THE STATE in future entries. For the time being, let me conclude by pointing out that THE STATE has been, is, and will be part of the overall interaction among human beings. THE STATE does not exist outside nor above that infinitely complex universe of interactions. It is as much subject to it as is any individual human being.

In this spirit I wrote in a comment to an entry at Cafe Hayek:

While Marx did analyse the state very carefully, at times, and still drew the wrong conclusions about how to deal with it, I have the impression that many of my fellow-libertarians think they have drawn the right conclusions about the state to begin with (perhaps by the magic of Rothbardian apriori) and therefore refrain from emitting the duplicating waste of analysing it carefully.

I recommend "State Building and Late Development" by David Waldner for anyone to get an inkling of just how complicated the forces are that shape the seeming monolith we call "the state".

I also strongly recommend Joel Migdal's

"State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another."

See also my posts: Why Politics Will Always Be With Us, Why the State Persists, More Thoughts on the State. And my second comment here.

Happy head scratching to all.

PS

Truth to tell, having discovered just how dogmatic my fellow believers (outside of our circle here at RedStateEclectic) can be, I am having a ball tickling their taboos. Into the bargain, it is great to be utterly serious about something and, at the same time, having chunks of fun just being that serious.

A Proportional Dilemma

How To Kill 60 000 Americans

Americans killing Americans.

In a big and gruesome way.

60 000 victims.

Really?

Why?

How many massacres per day is that?

Many more related questions.

Plenty of answers here.

 

Tangents of Wisdom - Dürer and Popper

Image credit.

One of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite artists, dug out and presented by one of my favourite thinkers.

Note in the threepart video on Dürer's life, the presenter's remarkable interpretation of Dürer's last oil painting, starting at time mark 4:20, which strikes me as being rather consistent with the below quote of archaic German:

Doch so will ich das Wenige, das ich gelernt hab, so viel ich mag, an Tag lassen kummen, auf [daß] ein Besserer dann ich bin sein errät und mich und mein Irrthum mit seinem gegenwärtigen Werk beweislich strof.

Des will ich mich freuen, und dorum daß ich dennocht ein Ursach bin, daß solche Wohrheit an Tag kummt.

Rendered thus into English, by Sir Karl Popper in his book All Life Is Problem Solving:

But I shall let the little I have learnt go forth into the day in order that someone better than I may guess the truth, and in his work may prove and rebuke my error. At this I shall rejoice that I was yet the means whereby this truth has come to light.

Ben Swann: “Hang the Nullifiers”?

Amash on Hannity Radio Show 12/12/12

Amash is continuing to raise his profile here with this purge by leadership. How far can he go though proposing radical ideas like balancing budgets and spending less money in DC?

 

My Take On Michigan's New Right To Work Law

TIn case you hadn't heard, Michigan is now a right-to-work state. The unions are mad, but I really think they brought this on themselves.

When Granholm and the Democrats were in power, they rammed a last minute deal through that made everyone who was getting paid home healthcare dollars a union member. That meant parents caring for their disabled children were now paying union dues, held directly from their paychecks. In the election messaging the GOP successfully played it as tax money meant to go to sick kids flowing instead into union coffers.  Which was true.  Plus, there were no discernible benefits to the newly minted members. No insurance, no pensions, just the promise of lobbying for more tax money in the future.

And it is important to note that there was no real membership vote.  The union and government claimed that they sent postcards to the workers, and that a majority came back marked "yes," but even the union-friendly media reported that they couldn't find anybody who had actually received the card and voted. In short, this was just a cash grab, and was terribly unpopular with everybody except the union.

The new GOP legislature overturned the law. The unions immediately got an injunction and sued. They lost. But they got to collect dues for over two years on that scam. 

Of course, the unions were worried about the Right To Work wave affecting the status quo, but new Governor Snyder said that he wasn't going to pursue it. Those remarks actually caused quite a bit of grumbling from the rank and file members of the GOP, who already had legitimate concerns about exactly how moderate Snyder was going to be as Governor. 

But the implied truce apparently ended this November,  when the unions tried to get the voters to amend the Constitution in a manner that would have made it illegal for the legislature to pass Right To Work laws. Note that they were intentionally deceptive about the real effect on the amendment - they insisted that collective bargaining, which is actually federally protected, could vanish without it. While yesterday's chatter insisted that the people didn't want Right To Work, I believe if that talking point were true,  they would have campaigned for their amendment on its true merit. But they didn't.  They chose instead to demigogue with dark talk of home health pedophiles and unlicensed nurses instead of just explaining that this would protect the right of employers to run a union shop.  (See what I did there?)

They lost.

The Governor, who really is a moderate, tried to tell them that these things were creating a firestorm in the House. He told them that if they tried this amendment, that he wouldn't be able to stop the RTW bills. They went ahead, I suppose assuming that he was soft enough to not sign the bills. But apparently he has a thing about negotiating in good faith, and agreeing not to pursue a RTW bill meant that they shouldn't have gone after an anti-RTW bill either.

I suppose Libertarians actually should view this as government intrusion. After all, the unions negotiate with the employer, and the deals to hold out union dues from all employees is based on that agreement. Who are we to meddle in the deals that unions work out with the employers, right?

But here's the rub - as an employer, I can't demand that all my employees donate to causes I agree with. Liberals would never support, say, me hiring people and insisting they had to shop at the company store, or even donate $10 a week to my friend's cat rescue, if they wanted to continue to work there. In fact, they would likely get upset if I gave merely offered premium parking spaces to employees who donated. 

No, the ship about what employees can and can't do to their employee's salaries sailed a long time ago, and not without some good reasons. The unions have managed to carve out special exceptions for themselves all these years.  Special privileges for the politically connected.

Some things never change.  But today, Michigan isn't one of them. 

Why Politics Will Always Be With Us

Image credit.

In contrasting economists Pigou and Coase, Steven Landsburg's essay reminds us, in my reading, that there can never be an end to politics, and freedom should not be conceived as being a blissful end state void of politics, but ought to be regarded - much in keeping with the motto of our blog - as little more than a reversible episode on a scale of imperfect approximations -- see also my post Why the State Persists:

Writing in The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert illustrates the power of analogy:

A man walks into a bar. He orders several rounds, downs them, and staggers out. The man has got plastered, the bar owner has got the man’s money, and the public will get stuck with the tab for the cops who have to fish the man out of the gutter.

…..

The man pulls into a gas pump. He sticks his BP or Sunoco card into the slot, fills up and drives off. He’s got a full tank; the gas station and the oil company share in the profits. Meanwhile, the carbon that spills out of his tailpipe lingers in the atmosphere, trapping heat and contributing to higher sea levels. As the oceans rise, coastal roads erode, beachfront homes wash away, and, finally, major cities flood. Once again, it’s the public at large that gets left with the bill.

In both cases, Kolbert endorses the “fair and logical” solution: The man should be taxed to incorporate the costs that his choices impose on the rest of society.

I like this game. Can I play too?

A man chooses to build his house on the oceanfront instead of 100 miles inland. This makes him especially vulnerable to rising sea levels and therefore leads him to lobby for a carbon tax. The man gets his house; the builders and contractors share in the profits, and the public at large bears the consequence of higher gas prices.

Or even:

Some people want to burn a lot of carbon, which raises global temperatures, imposing costs on owners of oceanfront property. Other people want to protect their oceanfront property, imposing costs on the people who want to burn a lot of carbon. A journalist at the New Yorker convinces her readers that the only “fair and logical” solution to this conflict of interests is to come down entirely on the side of the property owners, leading to the implementation of suboptimal policies. The journalist gets paid, the magazine editors congratulate themselves on the influence of their writers, and the general public suffers the consequences.

Should the property owner and the journalist be taxed for exerting their malign influences?

[...]

Coase’s key insight is that all of these externality problems are fundamentally symmetric. The question is never “how do we stop A from harming B?” but instead “should we let A harm B, or should we let B harm A”? A consequence of that symmetry is that no abstract principle [...] can possibly be used to guide policy. Any purely abstract argument for preventing harm from A to B is an equally good argument for preventing harm from B to A.

[...]

Should we tax the man who comes out of the bar and passes out in the gutter? Maybe. But if your only argument is that the man should not be allowed to harm the rest of us at no cost to himself, then your argument also shows that we should not be allowed to harm the man (by taxing him) at no cost to ourselves. Should we tax the man who drives a gas guzzler? Maybe. But if your only argument is that gas guzzlers cause harm to others, you’ve got to face the fact that taxes also cause harm to others.