Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

The Growing Disconnect

24 Comments

…between the people and the politicians:

Some years after The Road to Serfdom, Hayek wrote an essay called “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” In it, he describes “as liberal the position which I hold and which I believe differs as much from true conservatism as from socialism,” and he proceeds to argue that “the liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists.” Of course, Hayek uses liberal in its classic sense, referring to someone whose aim is “to free the process of spontaneous growth from the obstacles and encumbrances that human folly has erected.” (John Galt couldn’t have put it better.)

Moreover, what Hayek says about conservatives applies equally well to many who today call themselves progressives:

“Conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate. . . . They lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment. . . . The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change ‘orderly.’ “

In this view, neither today’s “progressives” nor today’s “conservatives” are liberal, which is to say committed, in Hayek’s words, to the “set of ideals that has consistently opposed all arbitrary power.”

Happily, a good many people in America remain committed to just those ideals, and what the burgeoning sales of books such as those by Hayek and Rand really suggest is that more and more of them are becoming aware that, precisely in regard to those ideals, there is a growing disconnect between the country’s political class and its citizens. It was manifestly on display last month when the House approved the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which in its final form was longer than Atlas Shrugged and which none of the members voting on it had read.

It’s a shame that the Atlas Shrugged movie won’t be out until after the 2010 elections. But it will be before the 2012 elections. Perhaps by then, having done it once, the people will have gotten the “how cool it is to vote for a black guy” thing out of their system.

[Early afternoon update]

A commenter expands on my thought above:

That will be a big problem for Obama’s reelection efforts. In 2008 it was a big deal to many people to take part in electing the first African American president, but that argument vanished on January 20. Taking part in assuring the first African American president gets an eight-year term doesn’t seem likely to pull as many voters, especially since his policies are now manifestly far to the left of the majority.

It’s ironic that the first black president got there via a form of affirmative action (as he did throughout his career). People who crow about his high approval ratings (which have nothing to do with his policies) forget that he only got 53% of the vote in a very Democratic year. Gerry Ferraro had it right–there’s no way someone with his thin resume would have been nominated if he’d been white.

I absolutely agree that this will be a big problem for his reelection (assuming he runs) in 2012. Of course, he might have a problem anyway, if he’s viewed as Jimmy Carter redux, on energy, fiscal policy and foreign policy. And that’s certainly the direction he’s headed.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

On Airbreathing Propulsion

13 Comments

Long-time readers know that I am not a fan. I believe that the benefits of airbreathing for launch vehicles are overhyped, and the technical risk too high for anyone trying to develop cost-effective space transportation in the short term (i.e., private investors), when properly designed rockets can dramatically reduced launch costs without such technical risk. That doesn’t mean, of course, that it wouldn’t be useful for the government to do focused technology development in this area, which will help with non-space applications, as NACA did to support the aviation industry throughout the first half of the last century.

That said, John Bossard, a fan of such propulsion systems, has a thoughtful essay with which I largely agree, particularly this part:

In the final analysis, the argument about whether or not airbreathers have a place in launch vehicle systems becomes secondary to how we will approach launch vehicle development. Anyone who doubts whether free-market forces can do a better job that government elites in deciding what is the correct approach for something as relatively straightforward as launch vehicle development, need look no further than the current debacle of our home-mortgage industry, or our nationalized car companies. Perhaps no better example exists than to look at our current national launch vehicle concept, a concept chosen by a elite cadre of our nation’s finest aerospace technologists, and compare the success of that program with that of launch vehicles being developed by private companies.

I would claim that if we allow it, nay, if we demand it, we can let free-market forces decide what the right approach is, and whether airbreathing propulsion has a role in launch vehicle development. We can let all-comers try their hand. Let a plethora of concepts take to the field, and let free-market forces separate the winners from the losers. Cheer your champions! Raspberry your competition! But whatever you do, support the process, be an enabler of the free enterprise and entrepreneurism, and do what you can to make the field open to whoever has the fortitude to try.

If NASA will finally start being a good customer, and purchasing transportation services instead of engineering services, the market might finally be able to sort these issues out, even if decades later than it could have.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What Do Israelis Know?

14 Comments

…that American Jews don’t?

Barack Hussein Obama received nearly eighty percent of the Jewish vote and still garners strong approval among America’s Jews. In contrast, only six percent of Jewish Israelis support Obama.

Even before the election, Israeli Jews, unlike their sycophantic American brethren, saw through Obama. Israelis were the least supportive population anywhere in the Western world of the inexperienced politician turned presidential candidate.

To support Obama, liberal Jews had to engage in a set of incredible mental gymnastics. They had to ignore his twenty-year relationship with the anti-Semitic minister Reverend Jeremiah Wright. They had to ignore his strong personal relationship with the virulent anti-Zionist Rashid Khalidi. They had to ignore his statement to the Iowa caucuses that no one has suffered more than the Palestinian people. They had to ignore his support of his Kenyan cousin and genocidal strongman Raila Odinga, an advocate of Sharia. They had to ignore Obama’s own Muslim heritage. They had to ignore that anti-Israel policy experts such as Samantha Power (who now has her own special seat on the National Security Council), Susan Rice, and General James Jones had the real inside track on advising Obama on the Middle East.

Part of the problem, of course, is that they aren’t liberal. They’re leftist. And they value their leftism above their heritage, and ignore the history of how the left ultimately treats Jews, from Hitler to Stalin. And as noted in comments, the more recent Jewish emigres from Russia know better — it’s the European Ashkenazim who have been here for generations, and remain steeped in their socialist past, that are the problem. Ever since Likud won in Israel, and it was no longer viewed as properly socialist, they (like Barack Obama) seem willing to throw the nation under the bus.

Political Commentary

A House Of Repeal

16 Comments

I like this idea:

Perhaps what America needs is an authority whose sole job is to get rid of outdated, ill-conceived, or just plain bad laws.

This administration would certainly keep it busy.

I don’t know if this is the solution, but the system clearly is broken. The Founders would be appalled.

I still like my idea of a Sunset Amendment:

“All laws passed by the Congress shall remain in effect for no more than ten calendar years from the date of passage, at or prior to which time they must be repassed, or expire. All federal laws in existence at the time of passage of this amendment shall have staggered expiration dates, as a function of their age on the books, according to the formula, time-to-expire = 35 x (year-of-amendment-passage – 1787)/(year-of-amendment-passage – year-of-law-passage) + 5. Repassage of all existing laws will also have a lifetime of ten years.”

I’ve put some (but not a tremendous amount of) thought into this. The idea is to make the whole mess go away eventually, but you wouldn’t want to have a single date of expiration for all existing law–it would simply overwhelm the system. What I’m hoping for here is something that whelms the system only slightly, but enough to keep them so busy renewing important laws that they won’t have time to renew antiquated or bad ones, or to cause new mischief.

The formula has the earliest phaseouts (of the most recent laws) occur in five years, while the oldest laws (some of which, given their age, might have actually been good ones), can hang on as long as forty. The last sentence may be redundant, because it’s implied by the first sentence, but I want to make it clear that once law existing prior to amendment passage has been reauthorized, it has no special status among laws passed later–it is simply treated as any other newly-passed law.

There is a useful discussion of loopholes over comments at the old post.