RedStateEclectic

Moon River’s Impossible Dream

I see that Andy Williams passed away yesterday.  Funny, how certain things trigger memories from other times.  I mentioned in an earlier post that my grandmother passed away this past week.  Until I saw that Williams had died, as well, I’d kind of forgotten that he was a part of my childhood, as well.  I have memories—late 60s/early 70s, I suppose—of watching the Andy Williams Show at my grandparents’ house.  They liked variety shows, so it seems that my memories of TV with Grandma and Granddad revolved around Andy Williams and Red Skelton and an assortment of other from that era.  Of course that was the era of variety…

Have a listen to the voice:

 

Voting for Dummies

Voting for lesser evil can prove difficult when such evil has become too great in its own right. Columnist Conor Friedersdorf from ‘The Atlantic’ writes how he will vote third party:

I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers.

Nope.

There are folks on the left who feel that way, of course. Some of them were protesting with the Occupy movement at the DNC. But the vast majority don't just continue supporting Obama. They can't even comprehend how anyone would decide differently. In a recent post, I excoriated the GOP and its conservative base for operating in a fantasy land with insufficient respect for empiricism or honest argument.

I ended the post with a one-line dig at the Democratic Party. "To hell with them both," I fumed.

… There is a candidate on the ballot in at least 47 states, and probably in all 50, who regularly speaks out against that post-9/11 trend, and all the individual policies that compose it. His name is Gary Johnson, and he won't win. I am supporting him because he ought to.

… If I vote, it will be for Johnson. What about the assertion that Romney will be even worse than Obama has been on these issues? It is quite possible, though not nearly as inevitable as Democrats seem to think. It isn't as though they accurately predicted the abysmal behavior of Obama during his first term, after all. And how do you get worse than having set a precedent for the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens? By actually carrying out such a killing? Obama did that too. Would Romney? I honestly don't know. I can imagine he'd kill more Americans without trial and in secret, or that he wouldn't kill any. I can imagine that he'd kill more innocent Pakistani kids or fewer. His rhetoric suggests he would be worse. I agree with that. Then again, Romney revels in bellicosity; Obama soothes with rhetoric and kills people in secret.

To hell with them both.

I’ve written many times that “If you don’t vote your conscience, why should your representatives?”. The political transgressions appear far more grave than in the past; their existence due, in large part, to a perceived immunity from backlash. Such worrisome traits are then buried under election rhetoric by both parties, who offer up their best argument for victory by pointing out the impending consequences of their loss! Is that any way to run a country?

The trends and precedents mentioned show that elections are not about one president, per se, but the ratcheting effect of government power over time, achieved by a duopoly perpetuated by two opposing camps; very similar to one another but containing just enough variation to entrench the cycle. My hat is off to the system designers. It’s a tough nut to crack. And getting nuttier by the day.

Off to Bodrum

I am excited to be leaving tomorrow for (the clear water of) Bodrum, Turkey, where I will meet a fascinating crowd of liberty lovers. I shall be back on Tuesday, next week - with a host of insights and stories to tell about.

Changing Seasons

I enjoyed Eric’s “Welcome Autumn” post the other day.  As the seasons were changing this weekend, the seasons of life were changing in our family, as well.

On Friday, I received a call that my grandmother—my last living grandparent—was not doing well, and not expected to live much longer.  She’d been in the nursing home with a variety of problems, including Alzheimer’s, for not quite 2 years, so while this wasn’t unexpected, it was certainly something of a marker of change.

As family gathered in Grandma’s room over the next two days, coming and going, we enjoyed one another’s company, talked about warm memories, and said our goodbyes to our 94 year old mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.  The oldest child of a German immigrant father and first generation German mother, born in 1918, she lived her share of physical and economic hardships—as did most of that generation that is now slipping away from us.

Her father was a farmer; her mother was was the traditional farm wife and mother, doing everything from butchering the dinner to raising the vegetables, to feeding the crews of harvesters that showed up seasonally.  My grandmother, in what would have been her middle school years, was called upon by her father to feed the work crew for lunch, because her mother was off acting as a midwife and helping someone’s child into the world.  When my grandmother asked what she should feed the men, he told her to go butcher some chickens.  How many of us can imagine our 12 year old children being capable (much less, willing) of butchering chickens and preparing a meal suitable for a half a dozen or so farm workers?

I’m sure most kids adore their grandparents.  My siblings and I were extraordinarily lucky, though. We were fortunate to grow up in the family hometown, where both sets of grandparents lived.  All 5 of us made it to adulthood with all four of our grandparents living—as the oldest grandchild on either side of the family, I was 34 before I lost my maternal grandfather.  All of our grandparents were exceedingly kind and giving people, and would have done anything for their grandchildren.  When we were able to give back a little bit in return—for all they’d given us--in their later years, they always wanted to “pay us”—for fixing running toilets, replacing thermostats or sprinkler heads, and a variety of other minor repairs that one of us could do that prevented them from having to call in professionals.  My brother’s comment, which sums up the end of that generation in our family so well:

It will forever amaze me that someone who spent her entire life selflessly giving to me and everyone else would think that the very little I gave in return amounted to anything worth more than a little Snickers out of her cupboard stash and a drink of milk out of one of her magical aluminum tumblers…I’ve known four people of that kind in my life.  Three went before her, and Grandma Junk was the last.

Rest In Peace, Elsie Katherine Schanze Junker.  Your 3 children, 9 grandchildren, and 21 great-grandchildren could never repay the love and love of family that you gave to us.

Most Economically Free Entity on Earth?

I wonder:

Small government and free-market capitalism are about to get put to the test in Honduras, where the government has agreed to let an investment group build an experimental city with no taxes on income, capital gains or sales.

To insure the city against political change, the Honduran Legislature has agreed that a two-thirds majority will be required to interfere with the city.

MKG will invest $15 million to begin building basic infrastructure for the first model city near Puerto Castilla on the Caribbean coast, said Juan Hernandez, president of the Honduran Congress. That first city would create 5,000 jobs over the next six months and up to 200,000 jobs in the future, Hernandez said.

Strong said construction could begin in months.

“First, we will build the critical infrastructure -- roads, water, power, sewers," Strong said. "In collaboration with the [Honduran] government, we will then create the city’s government system and the security, and 3 to 6 months after that we will build the first factories.”

Full Story.

If you build it, will they come? If you call it free-market capitalism (FMC), does that make it so? Does FMC need the state to first assume the proper amount of roads, water, power needs, and sewers? Also, are jobs the end all to FMC? Do low taxes in and of themselves create an atmosphere for opportunity? What about Honduran regulation and Honduran money?

Walter Block has a pertinent article entitled ‘How the Market Creates Jobs, and the Government Destroys Them’. In it he talks first about misplaced emphasis on job creation alone:

Instead of praising jobs for their own sake, we should ask why employment is so important. The answer is, because we exist amidst economic scarcity and must work to live and prosper. That's why we should be of good cheer only when we learn that this employment will produce things people actually value, i.e., are willing to buy with their own hard-earned money. And this is something that can only be done in the free market, not by bureaucrats and politicians.

But what about unemployment? What if people want to work, but can't get a job? In almost every case, government programs are the cause of joblessness.

This brings me to the type of national regulation that I assume is still in place – even for the proposed FMC island – including, but not limited to: minimum wage laws, working condition laws, union laws, employment protection, and licensing laws. And what of the Honduran currency? Being immune to certain taxes won’t mean squat if Honduras decides to rapidly inflate, effectively negating the tax breaks. Investors must also consider the Sword of Damocles which manifests itself in a two-thirds majority vote that could suddenly remove certain advantages.

The idea of a big government nation granting leniency doesn’t change the existence and future reintroduction of that stalking, intractable force. Does this scenario lend itself to long-term investment?  I’m intrigued, for sure, but this oasis of free market capitalism seems more like an episode of Fantasy Island more so than FMC Island.

Welcome, Autumn

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather
And autumn's best of cheer.
- Helen Hunt Jackson

Kidnapping

Leads to convictions (in absentia) for some CIA agents:

Italy's highest criminal court on Wednesday upheld the convictions of 23 Americans found guilty of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from a Milanese street and transferring him to a country where torture was permitted. The court of cassation's ruling is the final appeal in the world's first judicial review of the CIA practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries, a practice also known as extraordinary rendition.

… Some agents decried being made into international fugitives for following orders from more senior CIA and state department officials in Washington, who called for the extradition while an anti-terror investigation in Italy was underway. 

Full story.

Extraordinary renditions… not a good way to travel. If a person is guilty of a crime, then arrest him and bring forth the evidence to jurors so they can weigh it. Whisking people away without due process is detrimental to thee AND me.

Note the agents' lament. Should following orders absolve a person from his actions? This can lead to what Edward S. Herman dubbed "normalizing the unthinkable", a process whereby "ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as 'the way things are done.'" Let's hope that kidnapping never becomes the new normal. It’s a terrifying thought.

Note: Please revisit Georg Thomas’ excellent post, Abstumpfung, written in January. Civilization must resist “the gradual blunting of people's ability to perceive and respect the human dignity of the victims of choice.”

 

Get Out the Vote

Hilarious satire from J. R. Hammond in response to Breitbart’s attempt to argue in favor of a Romney vote:

That’s why it’s silly to dismiss Romney as no different than Obama. Some wave off their obligation to choose with a cliché, that Romney is just “the lesser of two evils.”

That’s true, but the key is “lesser.” If you have to choose between pissing off Stalin or Hitler, you’d be a fool to shrug your shoulders and risk some face time with the dude with the funny mustache (no, the other one with the funny mustache). Make no mistake, you are obligated—obligated, I tell you—to choose between one of two pro-establishment candidates! Don’t throw away your vote by denying that obligation and refusing to lend legitimacy to the perpetuation of the status quo!

This is no time to “make a statement” or pout that Ron Paul got treated badly in Tampa. He did get treated badly in Tampa, and that was stupid and unnecessary. Again, let’s put that behind us! If you are truly dedicated to the Constitution you won’t let it be trampled on by a Democratic president in order to make some soon-to-be-moot point to the anonymous GOP party hacks responsible for not giving Ron Paul a primo speaking slot because they knew he would just repeat truths we really just don’t want to hear.

Priorities, people. Nothing less than the Constitution is at stake here. And I think we can all agree that it would be much better to have a Republican president trampling the Constitution.

Bravo, Mr. Hammond. Bravissimo.

The Limits of Democracy

The common wish to bring something about is not the same as the wish to bring it about together.

Hayek has a passage on this fundamental problem of democracy in his The Road to Serfdom - a problem that keeps cropping up in countless variants, when the wish to achieve collective agreement empowers effectively not the collective but an elite of functionaries.

"The people may have agreed on adopting a system of directed economy because they have been convinced that it will produce great prosperity. In the discussions leading to the decision, the goal of planning will have been described by some such term as "common welfare," which only conceals the absence of real agreement on the ends of planning. Agreement will in fact exist only on the mechanism to be used. But it is a mechanism which can be used only for a common end; and the question of the precise goal toward which all activity is to be directed will arise as soon as the executive power has to translate the demand for a single plan into a particular plan. Then it will appear that the agreement on the desirability of planning is not supported by agreement on the ends the plan is to serve. The effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing  where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all."

Hayek, F.A. (1944 [1994]), The Road to Serfdom, Chicago, p.68 f.

Third Party

Maybe that wasted vote isn’t so wasted if viewed as crucial in a presidential election:

Glenn went on to say, “You guys are so delusional* you’re going to lead to the Arab Spring. What is wrong with you people? Ron Paul is not running. He’s not running.”

“Please by all that is holy, don’t split that vote,” Pat said in reference to libertarians who want to vote for Gary Johnson.

“If you think he can win God bless you then vote for him. If you’re trying to make some point you’re out of your mind,” Glenn added.

On Obama if he is reelected, Beck stated, “Obama’s going to be worse than he was in the first four years. What do you think when he says I’m going to get a little more latitude when I’m elected the second time? What do you think he’s going to do?”

Full story.

Are people who vote third party making some point? Yes. So is everyone else who bothers to vote at all. The overriding point in this country seems to be to win, no matter the cost. The point for most third party voters, presumably, is to choose the best candidate they can find on the ballot.

Such a point is not spiteful, as inferred from Beck’s wording. The Ron Paul people were disenfranchised by the republican nominee whose ideology is far removed from theirs. The empty words to the contrary are no longer attractive to those who have found substance in their time.

Besides, when faced with a choice between two people who, to many Paulians, are remarkably alike on domestic and foreign policy, would it really be a victory in their eyes if either was elected?

I’m reminded of the words by Peter O’Toole’s character, Lucius Flavius Silva, in the miniseries, ‘Massada’. Upon reaching the fortress, only to discover the lifeless contents therein, a Centurion proclaims victory for Rome. To which Silva replies:

A victory? What have we won? We've won a rock in the middle of a wasteland, on the shores of a poisoned sea.

*This, I think, can be viewed as healthy progress since in '08 he labeled us domestic terrorists.