Cheneys to host Bidens on Thursday

…are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?

The Community Organizer was made famous by our President-Elect as his sole “qualification” for the job – save running a successful but financially corrupt Presidential Campaign. Credit is due; Obama changed politics and campaigns forever.

Obama’s success underscores the failure of Republicans to enlist the same level of grass-roots participation among conservatives and centrists that could (and that’s a probably a stretch) have swung the 2008 Presidential Race in John McCain’s favor.

John McCain lost the election not because he was a conservative. He lost because he wasn’t conservative enough. In any case, this election probably wasn’t lost in 2008, rather over the last eight to fourteen years.

The election of 2008 was probably over before it began as the conservative movement ended with George W. Bush’s first State Of The Union address. Republicans have failed to show Americans how they can best serve the interests of middle Americans, moving to the center and leaving the right unoccupied, sometimes desperately adopting quasi-liberal positions in the interest of political expediency.

For naught it turns out.

America hasn’t ceased to be Center Right but Republicans made the fatal mistake that Center-Right is where they should camp out to wait for them. The GOP has failed to make the case to the American people that conservatism represents the best hope for the values that the majority of Americans still hold to be true. Worse yet, Republicans have failed in their leadership by not notifying Americans that this crisis calls for sacrifice and discipline – not another government bailout. A bailout that in retrospect, John McCain should have voted against.

The promotion of Universal Health Care (albeit a “conservative” version), No Child Left Behind, buying ill-gotten mortgages and the most fiscally liberal Republican in modern history have left conservatives without a candidate – or a party.

The result? Kamikaze conservatives actually voted for Barack Obama to hatch another Jimmy Carter backlash.

…but many more stayed home.

Liberals have overrun conservative strongholds by gathering legions of new voters under the banner of esoterica, lead by “Community Organizers.” These Pied Pipers, heretofore dismissed, armed with the internet and credit card terminals are the new tools of political power aggregation and management. The meteoric and unsubstantiated rise of Barack Obama is the ignoble manifestation of this grass-roots groundswell. It bolstered voter turnout (although not as much as expected) among liberal constituents during a contest that concurrently exhibited a mediocre turnout among conservatives.

Lesson learned.

For ’12 -nay ’10- it behooves conservative Republicans (sadly, there is a distinction) to steal Obama’s playbook, rend the chapters on “How to Garner Fraudulent Contributions via Anonymous Credit Card Donations”, “Deflection and Projection”, and “How to Hypnotize the Electorate by Saying Nothing At All” and enlist their own “Community Organizers” to educate, motivate and mobilize the would-be conservative base for the next go-around.

The cause? A new Contract with America? A renewal of unabashed conservatism among Republicans. A rejection of the notion that our federal government is the solution to all ills personal and national. An acknowledgment that our government has become bloated, corrupt, and insolvent.

Moving to the center seemed like a good idea at the time. Average Americans however, are less ideological and more pragmatic. They just want to know who will help them keep their job, keep their taxes low, protect them from evil and share their values of family, freedom, and independence.

Republicans need to sell true conservatism as the only way to serve the long-term needs of the greatest number of Americans. True conservatism is good for the economy and our national security. True conservatism creates real wealth, real jobs and real charity. True conservatism promotes accountability and self reliance; still core values of America to this day. True conservatism promotes democracy and protects the world from tyranny while at the same time champions the rights of the smallest lives. True conservatism recognizes that some traditions got that way because they work.

Republicans have failed to close the sale that Ronald Reagan teed up for them. There’s a good chance Barack Obama and his cortege will meet them half way, but Conservatives need to make Liberal a bad word again. One voter at a time.

…we have two years.

That’s right Mitch, the Market didn’t exactly endorse Obama’s victory. In fact, Barack Obama made history two days in a row: the largest post-election stock market plunge in history.

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) — The stock market posted its biggest plunge following a presidential election as reports on jobs and service industries stoked concern the economy will worsen even as President-elect Barack Obama tries to stimulate growth.

Apparently the market has a different idea as to what will stimulate growth. Does the market not think that raising taxes and expanding government are good things? Is the market wondering why Liberals and their followers haven’t learned their lesson yet?

History…

Year Dow President-Elect

2008 -5.05% Barack Obama

2004 +1.01% George W. Bush

2000 -0.41% No decision: G.W. Bush v Al Gore*

1996 +1.59% William Clinton

1992 -0.91% William Clinton

1988 -0.43% George H. W. Bush

1984 -0.88% Ronald Reagan

1980 +1.70% Ronald Reagan

1976 -0.99% James Carter

1972 -0.11% Richard Nixon

1968 +0.34% Richard Nixon

1964 -0.19% Lyndon Johnson

1960 +0.77% John Kennedy

Draw your own conclusions…

NRO’s Kevin Williamson notes that independents think the media has been unfair to Governor Palin (emphases added):

Strong majorities of the public say the press has been fair to John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. But fewer than four-in-ten (38%) say the press has been fair to Sarah Palin. Many more believe the press has been too tough on Palin (38%) than say it has been too easy (21%).

While opinions about Palin coverage are highly partisan, many independents share the view that the press has been too tough on the Alaska governor. Among independents, 41% say the press has been too hard on Palin, 20% say the press has been too easy and 36% say the press has been fair. Republicans overwhelmingly believe the press has been too hard on Palin (63%). Just 7% say the press has been too easy on her. Nearly one-in-five Democrats (18%) agree that coverage of Palin has been too tough.

Williamson reprises a question I asked in the past week or so: 

This brings up a question: Why do conservatives still feel the need to go through the dinosaur media? If you really want to talk ideas and policy, Rush Limbaugh’s show is probably the best forum, if you can get on. Rush doesn’t have a lot of guests, but when he does he gives them a chance to actually articulate their ideas in a developed way. If you’re looking for a place where substantive conservative ideas can get a hearing, there’s talk radio, the better blogs, Glenn Beck, NR/NRO, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, &c. It’s not so much that these outlets are conservative-friendly, but that they’re interested in ideas. The Wall Street Journal is not going to ask a lot of “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” questions, or game-show inquiries about the deputy fisheries minister of Hoogivsastan. Treating the fossil media as though they were still the only — or the main — game in town only serves to prop them up and to diminish conservatives’ ability to get a hearing for our ideas.

It would be much more interesting to hear Governor Palin spend an hour with Glenn Reynolds than with Katie Couric.

And the Northern Alliance (Volume II, the Headliners) is certainly a contender, too.

As Williamson notes, it’s time for conservatives to start playing to the few media strengths we have.

The Next Bailout: Detroit

First came Bear Stearns, then mortgage lenders and borrowers, followed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: They’ve all looked to Uncle Sam for a bailout, and now the word around Washington is that Detroit will be next on the taxpayer supplicant list.

Bear Stearns wasn’t a bailout. It was a buy out, orchestrated by the government to protect our nations financial infrastructure.

Detroit’s political calculation is plain: Having seen the way Washington has bowed to rescue the mortgage industry and Wall Street, why shouldn’t auto makers give it a try? Michigan is up for grabs in the election, so now is the time to strike with a goal of getting the Bush Administration and both Presidential candidates to agree.

Many of us have already done our part. I own two American cars, both rare examples of exceptional design and appeal. A Chevy Suburban and a Chrysler 300C, both with advanced safety features and cylinder-deactivation technologies that allow for fuel efficiency that belies their size and utility.

None of us should be expected to pay to allow Detroit to play. Our American automakers, as much as most consumers would hate to see them fail, deserve their fate. Our political integrity (I know – that’s an oxymoron) should not be allowed to be held hostage.

They are not victims of the fear and economic conditions brought on by an act of terrorism like the airlines.

They are not critical to our financial system as our major banking and mortgage institutions are.

They are public (most of the time – Cerberus-owned Chrysler a current exception) companies that operate in a free (albeit heavily regulated) market.

While they may have been severely impacted by a spike in fuel prices and a concurrent (and resultant) recession, they are not victims of it.

The car makers can also claim with justification to have been hurt as badly as anyone by Washington’s policy blunders. The weak dollar has contributed to the spike in oil prices that has socked their most profitable vehicles. And the nonsensical way that fuel-economy standards force Detroit to subsidize cars that consumers won’t buy has helped put the Big Three in this hole.

Over the last two decades or so, the vehicles with the highest sales numbers have been either a four door family sedan or a pickup truck. The Big Three have dominated one and consistently ignored the other.

Auto industry publications have been imploring the “Big Three” to be competitive in the family sedan segment for decades while the Japanese, primarily with the Camry and Accord, have almost completely poached the market. Market trends have driven fuel economy for decades as well and the Big Three have ignored the signs. I don’t begrudge them the success they have had in the light truck and SUV segment – but at the same time ignoring the rest of the market has for years left them vulnerable to the inevitable day that gas prices would adjust for inflation, let alone represent a crisis as demand has outstripped supply. 

Americans won’t buy the cars that the Big Three have had to subsidize because the product, until only relatively recently, has lacked quality and appeal. When Honda and Toyota build factories in America to build the cars that GM, Ford and Chrysler claim aren’t profitable, their argument falls apart.

There also happens to be a thriving U.S. auto industry outside of Michigan. These plants are owned by foreign companies, but they employ 92,000 Americans and build and sell cars here. Tens of thousands of their shareholders are Americans.

Certainly the UAW shares a large share of the blame. Their myopic strategy of bleeding their host to death, ignoring market conditions and grossly over-valuing their collective services have forced the Big Three to cut content and engineering to compete on price with the Japanese. The result is a widening of the already formidable gap in quality further undermining consumer goodwill and forcing American domestic brand loyalty beyond its limits. In the end the UAW will be left holding the bag.

A bailout at this point is a really bad idea. First of all, it’s been done before – at least once. The result? The Chrysler minivan which simultaneously saved Chrysler and emasculated millions of American males.

More importantly, our long standing economic dominance in the world is predicated on the fact that capital and talent is free to find it’s highest and best use. Pouring billions of capital into a national bailout is exactly the wrong move, evidenced by the extended Japanese recession not all that many years ago. Good money was sent after bad. Capital became scarce. Failed business models and management teams were kept on life support rather than being forced to retool and reinvent.

Regardless of where and why these federal bailouts started, American taxpayers can’t save everyone. The only way to stop this parade of supplicants is to start saying no — and Detroit is as good a place as any.

The Wall Stree Journal picks up where the New York Times left off:

Minnesota’s Vice Presidential Contender

Being on John McCain’s short list for vice president makes Tim Pawlenty a busy guy.

Pawlenty takes a shot at Obama. He’s not just a goalie after all. 

Following that, a side trip to Iowa where, as national co-chair for Sen. McCain’s presidential campaign, he passed out tire gauges as a way of poking fun at Barack Obama’s suggestion the energy crisis be addressed by having Americans better inflate their cars.

If there is such a thing as campaigning to become somebody’s vice president, Mr. Pawlenty is doing a good job in the auditions.

(more…)

An analysis of the purchase of Anheuser-Busch, producer of America’s most iconic brew, by the Belgian firm InBev reveals there was more to the deal than a handsome payday for shareholders.

According to the Tax Foundation, Belgium’s corporate tax rate is 33%, but the effective tax rate can be half the nominal rate thanks to adjustments for something the OECD calls a “notional allowance for corporate equity.” Bottom line: InBev was paying around 20% of its profits in corporate taxes, compared to Anheuser-Busch’s rate of 38.4%. 

Things have gotten pretty bad when U.S. companies relocate to Europe to cut their tax payments. But a research analysis by Morgan Stanley finds the combined company’s corporate tax bill will be lower than in the U.S. and that the tax differential indeed figured into the economics of the sale.

So while John McCain may have benefited from his wife’s ownership of Anheuser stock (estimated at between 40,000 and 80,000 shares), the country will continue to see its competitive edge wither away without a corporate tax rate cut. Mr. McCain to his credit wants to cut the corporate tax rate to 25%, close to the global average. Senator Obama is more interested in raising tax rates than cutting them.

Does the Anheuser-Busch deal represent a precedent? Maybe not. Milller Brewing, long a Milwaukee fixture, is majority owned by SABMiller, the “S.A.B.” being South African Breweries.

Is there more of this to come? With Obama in the White House? Yes and definitely yes.

Wall Street dealmakers tell us to expect more sales of U.S. companies to European rivals thanks to the combination of America’s higher corporate taxes and the weak dollar. They’re right. New data from the OECD for 2008 indicate that the international average for corporate tax rates fell by another percentage point last year, meaning the U.S. is pricing itself out of the market as a corporate headquarters.

Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn is dead at 89.

Through unflinching accounts of the eight years he spent in the Soviet Gulag, Solzhenitsyn’s novels and non-fiction works exposed the secret history of the vast prison system that enslaved millions. The accounts riveted his countrymen and earned him years of bitter exile, but international renown.

And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person’s courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire.

Along with Paul Johnson, Fyodor Dostoyevskii and P.J. O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn was one of the authors that paved the way to my becoming a libertarian-conservative, 25 years ago.

Beginning with the 1962 short novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Solzhenitsyn (sohl-zheh-NEETS’-ihn) devoted himself to describing what he called the human “meat grinder” that had caught him along with millions of other Soviet citizens: capricious arrests, often for trifling and seemingly absurd reasons, followed by sentences to slave labor camps where cold, starvation and punishing work crushed inmates physically and spiritually.

His “Gulag Archipelago” trilogy of the 1970s shocked readers by describing the savagery of the Soviet state under the dictator Josef Stalin. It helped erase lingering sympathy for the Soviet Union among many leftist intellectuals, especially in Europe.

But his account of that secret system of prison camps was also inspiring in its description of how one person — Solzhenitsyn himself — survived, physically and spiritually, in a penal system of soul-crushing hardship and injustice.

Sheila O’Malley:

Shaking my head. Strange. How it feels like a personal loss.

The world was a better place, a more honorable place, a place where bravery was possible, and where truth was always louder than lies … because he was in it.

Jay Reding:

His influence helped foster in the end of the Soviet empire and the dawn of a new age of freedom. His willingness to speak out against the evils of the Soviet system helped forge the moral case against Communism. 

Read Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag. Great stories, great lessons – and history that mankind will forget only at its immense peril.

UPDATE:  One thing that’s important to remember about Solzhenitzyn; he was Russian, first and foremost.

While The Gulag was a key motivator that helped bring down the USSR, Solzhenitzyn also endorsed the authoritarian Putin, and supported many of the former KGB officer’s crackdowns and power-grabs.  This is not out of character with the “Russian personality”, of course; in a land that’s been a kick-toy for invaders for millenia, security trumps “liberty” in the traditional western sense, and Solzhenitzyn embodies this trait.

One of those things we conservatives take on faith (a faith that is pretty much always answered, as a matter of fact) is that the market sorts out all things.

Now – will drilling in ANWR or off the coast or in the Badlands of North Dakota drop the price of gas by half instantly?  Of course not.

But a lot of us are paying a lot less for gas – less, even, than we were when gas was under $3 a gallon.

In my case – well, I bike to work from April through (crosses fingers) most of October.  And my company pays half the price of my Metro Transit “all you can ride” card, and my bus almost literally goes door to door – faster, in most cases, than the combination of driving and then walking from a parking spot.  I do it out of a combination of loving biking, liking being in some kind of shape, and scando-scottish penurity.

Speed Gibson (AKA “the best blogger in the Twin Cities that you’re probably not reading enough of, now that Roosh has retired/started posting at “Shot”)?   Well, he provides a glimpse into the “grass-roots” free market response to gas prices:

After the DFL shoved the various new rail transit taxes through the 2008 session, I vowed not to pay it. I can report that I have more than succeeded, adjusting my driving habits to reduce my gasoline consumption and raising my use of buses.

Biking to spite the DFL?  Kudos!

Now, with bus fares going up to again cover the rail losses this fall I needed a way to avoid paying the extra quarter as well. For that and other reasons including pleasure and exercise, I purchased a used bicycle. I just got it tonight (the shop refurbs it after you buy it), and I really like it. Actually, the left pedal fell off after 1/2 mile and I had to limp back for a quick repair and re-inspection, but all is well now…Meanwhile, I’ll be really green, using no fossil fuels every time I bike to work, just under 6 miles. Plus, I’ll save the $4 bus fare or the $2 gas plus depreciation.

Y’know, there’s a great protest idea for the next session; the next time the DFL agitates to raise the transit taxes, there should be a ride-by of Republicanson bikes.

(But they’ll probably start taxing bikes).

Slate

It looks like you are getting screwed, even without Obama in office and even if you borrowed responsibly while everyone around you went all in.

It would appear the White House, reportedly run by a Republican Administration, has better things to do than protect taxpayers from covering losses taken by people that either (1) Should have known better (2) were realizing the downside risk in their investment which in no way should have been a surprise or (3) were out to screw people out of their homes, their money, or both.

Housing Bill Hammers Taxpayers

Combine a housing meltdown with election-year politics and the results were not going to be pretty. Add a crisis in confidence in Washington’s favorite quasipublic companies and what we’re getting is a rout for taxpayers, especially those who kept their heads during the housing mania.

The House yesterday passed a housing bailout by 272-152. The White House has thrown its reservations overboard and is begging to sign this boondoggle, despite the less-than-veto-proof majority. A few brave souls in the Senate are threatening a filibuster, which is where the last hope lies for stripping the most egregious and expensive provisions from this monster.

Even conservative estimates by the Congressional Budget Office say the cost for this bailout will run to $41.7 billion, with $16.8 billion offset by higher taxes. No one has any idea of the real cost.

On the floor of the House yesterday, Democrats argued that this bill was the least Congress could do “for the people,” given the way the government had “helped” Bear Stearns. The cost borne by Bear Stearns was having its shareholders all but wiped out and half its employees pink-slipped. Countrywide was likewise sold at a fire sale price. Not so these two government-chartered giants.

Citing the Bear Stearns “bailout” as a precedent, a Democrat has only to open his or her mouth to reveal a view to profound economic illiteracy. Forcing one financial institution to buy out another and at a price just North of zero thereby locking in losses for investors and employees alike (many of which just before being asked to gather their personal effects) is hardly a bailout.

The Fan/Fred Bailout Is a Scandal

This should have been a perfect opportunity for Republicans, struggling to regain some standing with the American people, to rise united and demand real accountability and reform.

Just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted last week, President Bush withdrew his previous veto threats against the overall legislative package on Wednesday, having gotten virtually nothing in return.

So what will congressional Republicans do? Ironically, a veto-sustaining majority of House Republicans — led by House Minority Leader John Boehner, Financial Services ranking minority member Spencer Bachus, and Republican Study Committee Chairman Hensarling — voted against the bill on the very same day that the Bush administration caved. “I’m deeply disappointed the White House will sign this bill in its current form,” said Mr. Boehner in a statement. “We must take responsible steps to ensure our financial and housing markets are sound, but the Democrats’ bill represents a multibillion dollar bailout for scam artists and speculative lenders at the expense of American taxpayers.”

Multiple polls show that majorities oppose a federal mortgage bailout by a two-to-one margin.

The President could apparently veto this measure with success but won’t. Washington DC will soon become the largest financial sinkhole in the history of civilization and voting Republican is unfortunately no guarantee of relief.

Barack Obama is proposing $4 Billion in aid to the automotive industry, aid that John McCain is opposed to, and for good reason.

Obama pledges $4b in aid for Detroit automakers

After nearly eight years of getting little or no attention from the White House, it seems as though Detroit’s automakers will be a major focus the 2008 Election. With the economy looking worse by the day, lawmakers in Washington have been kicking around the idea of a second economic stimulus package to get people shopping again, and Mowtown’s lawmakers want in on the money.

Years ago, the Japanese suffered an extended recession because they did this very thing, only on a larger scale. Bankruptcy was considered a national dishonor. Good money was sent after bad; public money at that.

Over the long haul, our economy is much more resilient because we (at least those of us that understand economics and the free enterprise system) understand that failed management teams or business models should not be put on life support. The talent and capital should be free to seek its best and highest use – and without delay. That is why our recessions are typically limited in length and in fact many times our economy comes roaring back afterward.

No one celebrates the Enrons or the WorldComs of the world but we are strengthened by the lesson and can at least take comfort in the fact that the suffering and devastation ended as soon as possible.

Putting our automotive industry on life support will only delay the inevitable. Ford, GM and Chrysler need to reinvent themselves or get out of the way. Don’t think that large trucks and SUV’s sitting on dealership lots is their only competitive disadvantage. They suffer far more from a legacy of arrogance and overpriced labor and benefits force fed by unions acting in their own interest, and not that of their members or the domestic automotive industry.

Presumed Republican nominee John McCain opposes the idea of federally backed loans, but he does support tax breaks to those that purchase fuel efficient vehicles and a $300M in prize money for electric battery powered vehicles

Obama’s proposal is either politically-motivated, ignorant or most likely both. Obama, having no other tools at his avail, thinks the answer is government welfare. McCain understands that the best way to stimulate our economy is to incent innovation and new solutions.

As the economy is almost surely to become the electorate’s chief concern, McCain would be well served to exploit this opportunity to explain to Mr. Obama how and why capitalism works.

The other day, I hired a plumber. When he got to he door, a couple of Code Pink harpies were waiting for him.

That was weird.

Charlie Quimby

Private contractors aren’t only in Iraq. They’re on the scene wherever public resources are deemed not sufficient to serve the needs of the wealthy.

The injustice inherent in the system is everywhere.

People whose plumbing needs fixing but have no money do it themselves. If they have money, hiring a plumber is an option.

Some people go to accountants, or to H’nR Block, and spend their “wealth” to serve their need to get their taxes done. Others, whose resources are deemed not sufficient, use TurboTax.

Companies that are wealthy enough to be able to think about things like “usability” hire me – a contractor (through most of my career) who doesn’t serve the needs of poor, struggling companies.

A relative and career forest fire fighter confirms that insurance company crews have been showing up to foam the roofs of multi-million-dollar houses in places like Big Sur. In California, public agencies trying to manage fire on a broader scale have already run through half their budgets before reaching the main fire season, which starts in August.

To some of us, that sounds like “the wealthy are taking the load off of the public agencies, allowing them to spend their resources on areas that need the help”. It’s downright civic-minded…

…or so it seems to me, a simple conservative.

I guess it’d be more communitarian if they all just let their homes burn down…

The march of our domestic economic policies deeper and deeper into socialistic territory is often justified by liberals who will site Europe’s success; they having scouted ahead for us.

You will hear such things as hight tax brackets and universal healthcare are working for them – they’re doing just fine.

So why is it that there are signs Europe is calling a retreat and marching back our way?

Europe Has an Economics Lesson for Obama

Over the last decade, much of Europe has very quietly embraced market-based reforms that either draw inspiration from American successes or — on issues like retirement security — are even more market-oriented than many U.S. Republicans support.

The cutting of corporate income- tax rates is an excellent example of European market-friendly bipartisanship. Germany’s right-left coalition of Christian and Social Democrats implemented a large rate cut earlier this year, reducing the top marginal corporate rate to about 30% from 39%. Spain’s Socialist and Britain’s Labor governments have followed suit, reducing their countries’ top corporate rates.

These traditionally left-of-center parties understand that in a globalized economy, wealth and investment are mobile, flowing to those countries that provide hospitable investment climates. As part of a European Union where center-right governments in Greece, Denmark, Ireland and Eastern Europe have dramatically reduced corporate tax rates, they understand that they cannot help workers if they drive away the capital that employs and pays them.

Read that last sentence. Now read it again. Thank Ronald Regan for that one.

Mr. Obama’s main solution to the looming Social Security bankruptcy is to raise taxes on the well-off. To date, he has eschewed other solutions such as raising the retirement age or creating private Social Security accounts. But European center-left parties have no such reservations.

Take Sweden, for example. In the 1990s, a series of center-right and Social Democratic governments reached agreement on wide ranging pension reforms that include a private account option not too different than the one proposed by President George W. Bush.

Yah, but they’ll never give credit to Bush for the idea.

This new European consensus is founded, like all political calculations, partly on conviction and partly on necessity. European center-left politicians have slowly come to respect the power of markets. Much like the so-called “Rubin Democrats,” they recognize that the energy and innovation of market actors can better produce wealth than more traditional social democratic economic theory.

Necessity. Hey, soon we will have that in common!

Again, Sweden is an excellent example of this. Since 1932, Social Democrats have governed the country mostly without significant coalition partners, with the exception of the years when Sweden’s economy stalled and they had to cede power — 1976-82, 1991-94 and again in 2006 when the current center-right government took over. Even in egalitarian Sweden, voters will turn to the right if jobs are scarce and incomes stagnant.

Does this bode well for November? Does it hurt bad enough yet America?

I had a lively meeting yesterday with a client and friend with whom I share many values but also a respectful but opposite polarity politically.

As we sat at a Caribou Coffee (which is owned by an Islamic bank; a known supporter of the Palestinians –  but they have more locations that Starbucks – I digress) our conversation weaved around multiple topics on the political landscape and arrived at our national debt.

I maintain that our deficit spending habits and their product, our national debt  have left our country in an increasingly precarious position and is in fact an issue of national security.

The extrapolation of the mathematics, an element of which is our evolving demographics (i.e. more people getting on the wagon and less people pushing it) will eventually result in a national financial meltdown and the collapse of the American dollar.

Liberals oft cited moral imperative to be a compassionate, civilized nation manifested in layers and layers of entitlements will be eclipsed by the fact that at some point we will simply be unable to service our debt let alone borrow more.

Soon we will all be conservatives. Fiscally-speaking that is. The question of what our federal government should or should not do for it’s citizens will become an academic discussion.

(catching my breath)

My colleague countered that he is of the understanding, and has read that in fact that the opposite is true. He maintains that so many nations are owed so much by we Yanks that no nation in their right mind could or would bear the brunt of an American default and the resultant Sheriff’s sale.

It would be financial suicide. (Little consolation in a world where suicide is in fact an acceptable risk, even a tactical element for our most feared enemies).

Nonetheless, I had never heard that before.

I try to keep an open mind. My brief and by no means exhaustive research on the topic (I Googled it) yielded nothing in support the position of my esteemed companion in caffeine. Could this be true? Or is it simply a rationalization of our current predicament and an endorsement to carry on?

Do liberals actually believe that we are more secure in the global economy as a debtor nation?

At his best, Michael Yon is among the best journalists around, in the classical sense of the term.

This piece – about an American, pseudonymously “Charlie” – journeying up the Irrawaddy River in defiance of the Burmese junta’s ban on foreigners after Cyclone Nargis, which killed hundreds of thousands and exposed the corruption, cruelty and incompetence of the Burmese government – hit me where I live.

The local people, even the monks, expressed open hatred for the government of Myanmar. The people wanted guns as badly as they wanted shelter. They had no idea what to do with the guns, yet Charlie was deeply moved by the robust character of these people, to whom democracy and freedom were not cynical conceits argued over coffee or crumpets, but ideals for which these simple denizens of the river yearned, believing deep in their hearts that the United States of America could bring change to this far-off corner of the world. They hoped that the U.S. would swoop in and bring justice to the Irrawaddy by deposing the Myanmar military regime. But these hopes would be dashed by real-politik and shifting geo-strategic priorities. Something about the universality of man’s desires occurred to Charlie, how, he thought, we all want the same things—freedom, dignity, a chance to make our own way in this world. Between village visits and dodging patrols he would sit quietly on the bow of the boat and ruminate under the same night sky full of stars that had witnessed men struggle through folly, fiasco, and victory in the pursuit of these very ideas.

This quote smacked me right in the gut when I read it. It resonated on so many levels, both low (this is why the Second Amendment is a right “of the people”, and don’t you ever forget it) and high – this is what America, and the small-d democratic ideal that founded us and, at our best, binds us together, means to those looking at us from outside who really know what it is not to be free. Ignore the eurotrash; douse the stench of Berkeley from your nose; take those breathless articles about America’s supposedly diminished stature in this world and wipe your bottom with them on the hottest day possible, too good for them as it is.

The quote sums up why we’re here.

Naturally, you need to read the whole thing.

Conservatives are just plain better people.

Science proves it! Last week’s NARN I guest Peter Schweitzer, writing in the Daily Mail, concluded:

There is plenty of data that shows that Right-wingers are happier, more generous to charities, less likely to commit suicide – and even hug their children more than those on the Left.

In my experience, they are also more honest, friendly and well-adjusted.Much of this springs from the destructive influence of modern liberal ideas.

There are about fifteen column-inches of examples, of course; I liked this one among many:

You don’t need to explain that to Doug Urbanski, the former business manager for Left-wing firebrand and documentary-maker Michael Moore. ‘He [Moore] is more money-obsessed than anyone I have known – and that’s saying a lot,’ claims Urbanski.

How is it possible that those who seem to renounce the money culture are more interested in money?

One might suggest those on the Left are simply being more honest when they answer such questions. The problem is that there is no evidence to support this.

Instead, I believe the results have more to do with the powerful appeal of progressive thinking.

Many on the Left apparently believe that espousing liberal ideals is a ‘get out of jail free’ card that inoculates them from the evils of the money culture.

Speaking purely anecdotally, that seems to be the case among more than a few modestly-prominent Minnesota lefties. There are exceptions, naturally.

Still, I feel happier just writing it!

P.S.: Let me clarify here; I know many good, wonderful people who are decidedly left of center, and are genuinely good people. Some of them are in my own family. Being a conservative, I’m loathe to judge people by groups, anyway.

But since someone else already did it…

It’s at times like this that I am most diligent about separating my Conservatism – which is what I believe, politically speaking – with the Republican Party, which is the group I associate with to try to forward conservatism.

Because it’s going to be a bad year for the GOP. I predict that while Barack Obama is potentially very vulnerable, it’s going to be another bloodbath in Congress; if the Dems end up with less than 80-85 seats in the Senate and 350 in the House, they should hang it up.

The GOP – the party, not the conservative movement for which it is wrongly considered synonymous by the too many in the media and the sorosphere – squandered a stupendous amount of intellectual and politlcal capital in the past eight years. On behalf of all of us Forbes/Kemp 2000 supporters – we told you so.

Watch closely for the media – especially the paid-off media of the left – to start declaring conservatism dead, after a gunfight to which conservatism wasn’t invited.

Oh, yeah – and conservatism’s been “dead”, according to one pundit or another, a few times in my lifetime. Goldwater’s loss killed it. Richard “I’m a Keynesian!” Nixon supposedly stuck it in a hospice. Stagflation robbed its grave. Bush I gave it a docile, neoliberal veneer. George Will has declared it dead every couple of years, if I remember right. Bill Clinton and his Democratic Leadership Council ideas showed it obsolete (at least until the ’93 Inauguration).

Dane Smith is one of the good ones – but in this piece over at Growth and Justice, he comments on the inevitable tide of “Conservatism Is Dead” articles by wondering if conservatism is actually dead:

There’s a temptation in the punditry business to attach too much meaning to the present, to excitedly say “never before,” and to declare the “fall of” and “death of” this or that. And in my time I’ve seen too many premature pronouncements _ of the death of God, of the decline and fall of liberalism, and even the end of history _ to get too excited.

Smith then excitedly says “never before” and declares the fall, end and death of conservatism.

But George Packer in the latest New Yorker has written an eminently readable treatise about “The Fall of Conservatism.’’ It was referenced in a Star Tribune editorial Saturday about the Minnesota Republican Party’s state convention, and the Packer piece promises to be prime grist for the mill this summer.

Packer quotes conservatives themselves who fear that the movement is out of ideas and intellectually fatigued and he draws some amazing admissions out of Patrick Buchanan about how Republicans consciously and aggressively exploited southern white fury over the civil rights movements to build their counter-attack in the late 1960s. Packer also does a good job sketching out broader and more defensible non-economic motivations for the rise of conservatism: concerns about “the chaos of the cities, the moral heedlessness of the young and the insults to national pride.’’ I’ve always maintained that “liberalism” got to be a dirty word because of “free love” and drugs and flag-burning and goofy dalliances with Marxism, not because of its efforts to alleviate poverty and social problems and gross inequalities in wealth and income.

Which means that a generation of drug-snarfing, free-loving, flag-burning, post-marxist libertines has grown to majority and is now in control of the wheels of corporate, academic and political power. Their children are now middle-class parents. People can still be outraged – but the threshold has zoomed upward. What once were vices are now habits.

Smith’s Minnesota roots start showing below:

And Packer gets closest to explaining the conservatives’ strategic mistake when he cites David Brooks’ analysis about how conservatives overreached with their hostility to government. “An anti-government philosophy turned out to be politically unpopular and fundamentally un-American…People want something melioristic, they want government to do things.’’

There are two ways to answer that; the cynical way (“people want government to do things for them, and to give them stuff), and the idealistic way (my favorite cliche-in-the-making; government is a tug of war between the “state is my mother” crowd and the “abolish everything but the military and the courts” crowd; it’s for damn sure the far-left’s fringe won’t stop pulling until we have mandatory abortion and are living in eco-friendly yurts arranged along rail lines, so we pull the other way for all we’re worth).

This notion that there is some negotiated settlement to this pull – that the leaders of the left will meet the leaders of the right (whoever they are) and reach a gentlemans’ agreement that provides just the right amount of services, and leave us with just the right amount of government intervention, so we can all move forward is…

…a conceit of the group of which Smith is president. Growth and Justice is built around the wonky notion that

I, for one, will pull.

And in the end, because of a very contradictory conservative view of government as limitless when it comes to security and national defense, conservatives after almost 30 years of dominance “hadn’t made much of a dent in the bureaucracy, and they had done nothing to provide universal health-care coverage or arrest growing economic inequality.’’

I’m surprised that someone like Smith would write that first sentence.  If your nation is not secure – and by “Secure” we mean “enemies afraid to try to kill us”, not “teachers paid so well they don’t go into insurance sales” – then what, indeed, is the point of having a nation; why have a government at all?

Packer goes on to quote conservative David Frum as saying that “smaller government is no longer a basis for conservative dominance.’’

True.

It never was.

Government does so much to mess up this country besides just “being big”.  Taxes sap our economic vitality; entitlements drain our prosperity and our drive; appeasement of those who’d kill us gets more of us killed; campaign finance reform and “Fairness Doctrines” and excessive taxation and banning smoking in bars and cars and homes and gun control gut our liberties; government policies that foster illegal immigration sap our culture; a shoddy, PC-based education system based more on punching political tickets and perpetuating its budget than on teaching our kids to be literate, capable citizens capable of thinking about issues like this one is worse than useless.

Every one of those issues are byproducts of big, unresponsive government-for-it’s-own-sake.

I don’t want conservatism to fall or die, anymore than I want yin to wipe out yang or night to eclipse day. And it doesn’t matter what I think because conservatism and the great ideas it stands for _ individual and market freedoms, personal responsibility, family values, respect for the past, and religious convictions _ will and should always be with us as we try to build a better world. I just think conservatism needs to return to the healthy accommodation its adherents used to have for other principles _ equality of opportunity, social justice, and a respectful faith that community and the “we” are at least as important as the individual and the “I”.

True conservatism is always about “we” – including putting those all-important limits on “we”.

And so we keep pulling.  I have a hunch that one Obama term with a Pelosi Congress will make George Packer wish he could eat his article.

UPDATE:  Oh, yeah – gotta reach a conclusion, don’t I?  Conservatism isn’t dead.  It’s just looking for better spokespeople.

Let’s establish in advance; I’m a conservative.  The state of the Republican Party today – spending enough to make the party of Tip O’Neal think they can ding us on fiscal responsibility, defending earmarks – bothers me.  It bothered me in 2000, when we few, we very few, we Forbes supporters ran up against the Dubya juggernaut.

The only thing that bothers me more is the notion on the part of some conservatives that if “we” lose this election, it’ll be a good thing in the long run,

Ken Taylor at Red State tackles this lunacy:

Many Conservatives believe that allowing Democrats in the White House with a Democrat Congress will be such a disaster that the President will be a lame duck after only two years and the GOP under Conservative leadership will become the Majority in 2010 with a Conservative President to follow in 2012.

Look – I was one of the first, I think, to compare Obama with Jimmy Carter, and we all know how that turned out.

But one is a fool to put ones faith in parallels.  An Obama Presidency along with a Reid/Pelosi Congress would be a disaster, to be sure – but big government is addictive, and the addicts’ votes count just as much as ours do.   It took four years to expel Jimmy Carter – but the Carter years weren’t a self-contained event with an beginning, middle and end, independent of other context, Carter was in fact the last symptom of the disease of the New Deal/Fair Deal/Big Deal – forty years where government so ingrained itself into American culture that Republicans basically differed from Democrats only in cosmetics (and, to be fair, Demcrats were largely responsible and capable at defense, the Constitution and foreign policy, until 1972), a conversion so complete that it left classical conservatism so far in the wilderness it took a Ronald Reagan to move it back to center stage.

There are no Reagans in the wings.   And the symptoms of that age live on; America’s cities still mainline huge government and untrammeled spending; the farm belt is structurally addicted to government intervention.

With a Democrat President like Hillary or Obama and a Congress giving them their entire Socialist agenda, the damage that it will cause in even two years may not be able to be reversed. How many government programs once legislated and funded have ever dropped of the books ? NONE. Two years of total Democrat Socialist control will add massive programs and taxes that will be near impossible to reverse even with a Conservative President and Congress.

And, almost worse than the programs themselves, the addiction that they cause.

I’m afraid that conservatives who think the nation can try a four-year experiment with aversion therapy are, ironically, way too optimistic.

Pat Toomey, former conservative Republican rep from Pennsylvania and current president of the Club for Growth, writes an excellent post on the GOP’s reflexive defense of RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). 

You need to read the whole thing for its background.  The story is, of course, an important one in Minnesota, as the GOP grassroots in many districts have taken action to shun RINOs – including some sitting incumbents. 

Toomey:

A Republican majority is only as useful as the policies that majority produces. When those policies look a lot like Democratic ones, the base rightly questions why it should keep Republicans in power. As the party gears up for elections in the fall, it ought to look closely at the losses suffered under a political strategy devoid of principle. Otherwise, it can look forward to a bad case of déjà vu.

Last week on the NARN, I said that in a sense – in the long-term, certainly – putting RINOs to the (rhetorical and political) pike is more important than defeating DFLers.  Hyperbolic?  Maybe – but also on point.  If we, the GOP, don’t offer a coherent choice (and in 2006, the voters were pretty clear that we did not), the voters will have no reason not to vote Tic.  Acting like Tics – like Reps. Erhard and Peterson and Tingelstad and the rest of the Override Six – eats the party’s seed corn; it gets a short-term electoral bump, at the expense of long-term viability as a party.

Robert Downey – not only working again…:

A winking nod to that tumultuous history is baked into the banter in “Iron Man.” The movie opens with Mr. Downey’s mitt wrapped around a tumbler of whiskey, rumbling along in a Humvee, AC/DC’s “Back in Black” blasting on the soundtrack and Mr. Downey acting all lusty and incorrigible. And when Gwyneth Paltrow’s character, the dewy-eyed, ever-loyal assistant he sees with new eyes by the end of the film, learns about his alter ego, Mr. Downey’s Tony Stark goes deadpan.

“Let’s face it,” he says. “This is not the worst thing you’ve caught me doing.”

That running dialogue — between audience and actor, between Mr. Downey’s past and present — gives the film a symbolic power not usually found in comic book movies. In the interview he preferred to leave that history between the lines.

…to say nothing of “alive”…

“It has struck me lately that I don’t have to talk about last century at all,” he said with a dismissive wave. But he does so, obliquely.

…and – um – conservative?

“I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics every since.”

(Suffice it to say he is not one of the Hollywood types who weeps over innocents trapped behind bars.)

A hollywood actor who’s more conservative that I am?

I love this country.

UPDATE:  Robert, not Morton.

Why on earth  would a conservative pundit think “Morton”, anyway?

Politics in our society is a matter of compromise among different forces pulling in each direction, reaching an agreement that everyone can live with (or at least tries to, until the next election cycle).

I view politics as a tug of war. A series of tugs-of-war, really – one for each issue that’s out there, at any level, from National Security to Welfare to Cheese Price Supports. At the center of each debate is a mud pit; a ribbon in the exact center of each rope shows how well each team is doing.

My role in that tug of war is to affect that compromise by pulling to the right like there’s no tomorrow. So I pull like mad, and the ribbon over the mud thus inches a little closer to the right. Others, of course, pull against me, trying to edge the ribbon to the left. I know there’ll be a compromise; I know that the harder I pull to the right, the more people will (if I’m doing my job) be convinced to pull with me, and the farther to the right that ribbon – the “final” results of the compromise – will be.

Abortion is one of those tugs of war. When I was a kid, in 1973, the ribbon got a huge pull to the left with Roe Vs. Wade. In the past 35 years, many – from conservative evangelicals to liberal Catholics – have grabbed onto the rope from the right and pulled with all their might. And for some of us, the hope for a compromise – knowing that a complete ban was not going to happen in our lifetimes – was the hope that just one more tug would pull the ribbon just far enough so that people – maybe a majority – would see that while abortion was legal, that aborting a fetus was an act imbued with much more moral gravity than excising a wart or clipping a toenail.

In other words, the first step to an acceptable a less vile compromise would be for abortion’s supporters to realize that there is a moral dimension to abortion. It’s a realization that abortion’s most sacramentalist zealots resist, because it’d be the first step in gutting the notion that a fetus is nothing but a mass of tissue until you get a diaper on it.

Steve Chapman notes in Sunday’s Strib that there are signs the ribbon, measured by popular culture, may have moved that far (I’ve added some emphases):

Laws often alter attitudes, inducing people to accept things — such as racial integration — they once rejected. But sometimes, attitudes move in the opposite direction, as people see the consequences of the change. That’s the case with abortion.The news that the abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years elicits various explanations, from increased use of contraceptives to lack of access to abortion clinics. But maybe the chief reason is that the great majority of Americans, even many who see themselves as prochoice, are deeply uncomfortable with it.In 1992, a Gallup/Newsweek poll found 34 percent of Americans thought abortion “should be legal under any circumstances,” with 13 percent saying it should always be illegal. Last year, only 26 percent said it should always be allowed, with 18 percent saying it should never be permitted.

Sentiments are even more negative among the group that might place the highest value on being able to escape an unwanted pregnancy: young people. In 2003, Gallup found, one of every three kids from age 13 to 17 said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. More revealing yet is that 72 percent said abortion is “morally wrong.”

By now, prolife groups know that outlawing most abortions is not a plausible aspiration. So they have adopted a two-pronged strategy. The first is to regulate it more closely — with parental-notification laws, informed consent requirements and a ban on partial-birth abortion. The second is to educate Americans with an eye toward changing “hearts and minds.” In both, they have had considerable success.

Even those who insist Americans are solidly in favor of legal abortion implicitly acknowledge the widespread distaste. That’s why the Democratic Party’s 2004 platform omitted any mention of the issue, and why politicians who support abortion rights cloak them in euphemisms like “the right to choose.”

But some abortion-rights supporters admit reservations. It was a landmark moment in 1995 when the prochoice author Naomi Wolf, writing in the New Republic magazine, declared that “the death of a fetus is a real death.” She went on: “By refusing to look at abortion within a moral framework, we lose the millions of Americans who want to support abortion as a legal right but still need to condemn it as a moral iniquity.”

This growing aversion to abortion may be traced to better information. When the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, most people had little understanding of fetal development. But the proliferation of ultrasound images from the womb, combined with the dissemination of facts by prolife groups, has lifted the veil.

In the comedy movie “Juno,” a pregnant 16-year-old heads for an abortion clinic, only to change her mind after a teenage protester tells her, “Your baby probably has a beating heart, you know. It can feel pain. And it has fingernails.”

“Juno” has been faulted as a “fairy tale” that sugarcoats the realities of teen pregnancy.

The prevailing view used to be: Abortion may be evil, but it’s necessary. Increasingly, the sentiment is: Abortion may be necessary, but it’s evil.

Miss O’Hara touches on a bunch of things that matter – to me, anyway, and that really is the only litmus test on this blog – in this long, excellent post on religion and the Republican slate.

First, some housekeeping:

Now, I don’t consider myself an “evangelical”. It’s…there’s something screwy about it, namely that the Bible is buried underneath a bunch of self-help books and programs, not to mention lamentably rotten music.

Good Lord, yes.  That the religion of Bach and Handel is saddled with the musical narcotics the evangelical movement has foisted on us is a travesty that someone oughtta answer for, at least to temporal authority.

But I/we digress:

Mike Huckabee, though, is hurriedly being badged as the “Evangelical candidate”, getting what may be an endorsement from Dr. Dobson, and putting the lie to the conventional wisdom from, hmmm, two weeks ago that the evangelical vote had “matured” and was “finally” putting national defense over social issues.

Huckabee reminds me of Arne Carlson, in the sense that he’s “a Republican that the media and the left likes” – presumably because he’s unelectable or because his actual on-the-ground policies are pretty amenable to a big-government nannystater.

Any time the leftymedia starts beating the drum for a “conservative” – who, as better minds than I have reminded you, is a potemkin conservative anyway – it’s time to notice the hairs on the back of your head standing up.

Andrew Sullivan is my blogfather; it was reading his original blog back in early February of 2002 that prompted me to start Shot In The Dark. 

I stopped reading Sully about the time that Gay Marriage became the Most Important Issue Ever to him. 

But a decidedly non-conservative friend of mine sent me this piece, in which Sullivan asks conservatives which of (what he deems, largely correctly I think, to be) the ten overarching first principles of conservatism to which they adhere.

He follows the piece with a poll asking for people to check off which of the principles they adhere to.  Of course, that’s way too simplistic – the deeper answers are much more interesting, I think.

So let’s try it both ways.  I took the poll.  And I’m going to try to go for the real answers, too:

SULLIVAN:  The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent. … A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society—whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society—no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.

• MB: I don’t know how a conservative can claim to be a conservative without believing this in some sense.  This presupposes that a society “governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor” would be a small-l liberal democracy, of course; I can’t quite pin the concepts of “enduring moral order” with benevolent dictatorship, for example, together.

SULLIVAN:  The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. … Conservatives are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know.

• MB: Personally?  No.  I’m not.  In terms of a conservative society? I think there’s something to this.  But if you know me, you know that beyond my religious beliefs and my conviction that the Bears are the greatest football team every to walk the planet, that’s totally not me.

SULLIVAN:  Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. Conservatives sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see farther than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time. Therefore conservatives very often emphasize the importance of prescription—that is, of things established by immemorial usage, so that the mind of man runneth not to the contrary. There exist rights of which the chief sanction is their antiquity—including rights to property, often. … The individual is foolish, but the species is wise, Burke declared. In politics we do well to abide by precedent and precept and even prejudice, for the great mysterious incorporation of the human race has acquired a prescriptive wisdom far greater than any man’s petty private rationality.

• MB: I agree, to a point.  But if one follows that to its logical conclusion, the next Thomas Jefferson or James Madison – and it seems reasonable that the human race hasn’t spent all of its eternal ration of genius – is pretty well hosed, right?

SULLIVAN:  Conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. … Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away. …

• MB: This is absolutely true, to the point of stereotype.  The true conservative is ever mindful that unintended consequences bedevil all “top-down” attempts to perfect this world.

SULLIVAN:  The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at levelling must lead, at best, to social stagnation.

• MB: This, again, is absolutely true. Humans must be equal in the eyes of the law (not just courts, but in legislation – but that’s one of the courts’ legitimate jobs); all attempts to make individuals equal to each other in terms of merit and potential by legal or social fiat is madness.

SULLIVAN:  Human nature suffers irremediably from certain grave faults, the conservatives know. Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created. … All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk. … The ideologues who promise the perfection of man and society have converted a great part of the twentieth-century world into a terrestrial hell.

• MB: I’m not sure how anyone can read any history and disagree with this.

SULLIVAN:  Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. Separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all.

• MB: Someone tell Cy Thao.  This is an absolute.  Property makes liberty tenable.

SULLIVAN:  Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism. … In a genuine community, the decisions most directly affecting the lives of citizens are made locally and voluntarily. … If, then, in the name of an abstract Democracy, the functions of community are transferred to distant political direction—why, real government by the consent of the governed gives way to a standardizing process hostile to freedom and human dignity.

• MB: To a liberal, “it takes a village to raise a child” – a noxiously-authoritarian ideal.  To a conservative, society is “a free association of equals” – the very basis of a liberal (small-l) democracy. 

SULLIVAN:  The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. … It is characteristic of the radical that he thinks of power as a force for good—so long as the power falls into his hands. … A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.

• MB: This one got me thinking; “Tension” is a good word.  Authoritarian absolutism is anathema to most of us; libertarian absolutism is naive at best.  I pull hard to the libertarian side (you can take guy out of the Party, but you can’t take…), but the need for prudent, reasonable authority creates a conflict.  And that conflict is an inherently good thing, and it is best that it remain constant; if we “settle” the question, one way or the other, it’ll be a bad thing.  The resolution should not be the goal; the argument should be eternal.

SULLIVAN:  Permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. … He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise.

• MB: It’s one of the great themes of the past 100 years.  And again, the conflict between the two should be the goal.  I think to most real conservatives it is; “conservatives” who don’t recognize change render their beliefs irrelevant, eventually – but permanence, especially in things like moral order, is what makes progress humanly tenable.

So I think I’ve got eight complete agreements, a “mostly” and a “continuity for ye, but not for me”. 

So leave a comment, already.

George F Will on the other Minneapolis taxi controversy – the one that doesn’t involve Somali Moslems and alcohol:

The campaign to deny Luis Paucar his right to economic liberty illustrates the ingenuity people will invest in concocting perverse arguments for novel entitlements. This city’s taxi cartel is offering an audacious new rationalization for corporate welfare, asserting a right — a constitutional right — to revenues it would have received if the City Council had not ended the cartel that never should have existed.

That’s right – owners of Minneapolis cab licenses, who’ve benefitted immensely from government regulations artificially driving down the supply of cabs in Minneapolis, are sueing on Fifth Amendment grounds to protect a “right” to income that exists only because of government intervention!

Will tells the story of Mr. Paucar…: 

Paucar, 37, embodies the best qualities of American immigrants. He is a self-sufficient entrepreneur. And he is wielding American principles against some Americans who, in their decadent addiction to government assistance, are trying to litigate themselves to prosperity at the expense of Paucar and the public.

…who came to the Twin Cities from NYC to try to make his fortune as a cab entrepreneur.

Where he ran into “Minnesota Nice”, in the form of a government-induced scarcity; Minnesotans are apparently happy to pay extra for an artificial scarcity of taxis. 

By the time Paucar got here in 1999, 343 taxis were permitted. He wanted to launch a fleet of 15. That would have required him to find 15 license-holders willing to sell for up to $25,000 apiece…[the scarcity of taxis in Minneapolis]– and Paucar’s determination and, eventually, litigiousness; he is a real American — helped persuade the City Council members, liberals all (12 members of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, one member of the Green Party), to vote to allow 45 new cabs per year until 2010, at which point the cap will disappear.

Minneapolis’ licensees are addicted to the easy life of the regulatory beneficiary: 

In response, the cartel is asking a federal court to say the cartel’s constitutional rights have been violated. It says the cap constituted an entitlement to profits that now are being “taken” by government action.

The danger?  Beyond the stupidity of regulating something like the maximum number of cabs in the first place, I mean? 

If the licensees win, the precedent will be set; no government regulation that confers a financial benefit can ever be undone, because it’ll be a “taking”.

Will gives well-placed kudos to Mr. Paucar…

By challenging his adopted country to honor its principles of economic liberty and limited government, Paucar, assisted by the local chapter of the libertarian Institute for Justice, is giving a timely demonstration of this fact: Some immigrants, with their acute understanding of why America beckons, refresh our national vigor.

…but betrays provincial ignorance of Minneapolis: 

It would be wonderful if every time someone like Paucar came to America, a native-born rent-seeker who has been corrupted by the entitlement mentality would leave.

A good part of Minneapolis would be depopulated.

Hmmm.