The comments, as usual, are full of the usual pragmatism that shows up when an Objectivist op/ed shows up at PJM.  They are usually of this sort — a conservative who chides the writer for “errors” which are merely artifacts of his own incomprehension.  (The most advanced of these are the ones that dimly recognize that principled thinking is afoot, but chide the writer for burdening his point with “amateur philosophy”.)

What suddenly jumped into my head was the realization that this sort of thing exactly parallels a well-known phenomenon from history, which not only concretizes the “epistemological primitivism” I’ve been writing about, but is an instance of it: the Cargo Cults of the South Pacific.  (Ironically, the reason why it was fresh in my mind was because I’d read some comments on conservative blogs recently, aptly applying the label to some Leftists.)

From the Wikipedia article:

“A cargo cult is a type of religious practice that may appear in traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults are focused on obtaining the material wealth (the “cargo”) of the advanced culture through magic and religious rituals and practices, believing that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors.”

Lacking any kind of grasp of the nature of what they saw, including its causal origins, the islanders imagined that by re-creating the accidental surface details of American military personnel — i.e. what they could perceive — they could somehow enjoy the full benefits of their presence once more.

That isn’t merely an apt description of how conservatives view the U.S. Constitution — and liberty itself; it’s precisely the same phenomenon (even down to “traditional”,  “Deities” and “ancestors”).

The only difference, is that the ignorance of the South Sea natives was not deliberate.

Remember during the Bush presidency when dissent was the highest form of patriotism? We didn’t hear much from the left about “cooperation” when it came to the Patriot Act or the war in Iraq. And when Congress stopped Bush’s Social Security reform cold, there were no complaints about “obstructionism.”

The idea of forming a movement around “cooperation” is a gimmick to help the Democrats succeed with their socialist agenda, particularly health care reform.

The Tea Party, at least what’s best about it, is founded on timeless principles: limited government, individual rights. I have held these principles for 33 years, since I first read Atlas Shrugged.

The left has gimmicks that hide their true agenda; the free market right has immutable principles.

He discovers that the biggest subways are in non-European cities and that most of the prominent rapid transit systems are domestic. A commenter helpfully added further support:

Here’s a postcard from live free or die New Hampshire, circa 1877. And, oh no — Socialism!

The only problem with their history is that everything they cite was originally private. Chicago’s “L” was originally served by a number of companies that later integrated to provide better service before being taken over by the city after 60 years of service. The PATH system was built and run as the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad for nearly 50 years before it too was taken over by the Port Authority. The New York Subway, though owned and operated by the city from its inception, was built by private contractors. The Manchester Horse Railroad, offered up as an ironic commentary on the nineteenth-century, was actually a private company that flourished in its sixty years of operation until it too was taken over by the city.

Further examples abound: nearly every municipal transportation system prior to the Great Depression was privately-owned and operated—and that jumps to 100% if we look exclusively at the nineteenth century. Mass transit was historically a private affair, and a generally successful one at that. Unfortunately, as public transportation was supplanted by private—viz., the car—in the 1940s and 1950s it inevitably failed to maintain ridership and lapsed into bankruptcy. Once that happened, local politicians deemed it too important to fail and appropriated its assets and operations as a matter of civic pride. Unsurprisingly, public ownership and operation could not stanch the economic losses, which generally continue to this day.

Yglesias is right, though, to point to the contradiction of opposing a high-speed rail network while accepting a public highway system* and a raft of zoning and building code restrictions. A principled stand against one would entail a stand against them all, since they each represent an abrogation of someone’s property rights. One might argue that the opposition to new rail appropriations is strategic given the inordinate capital and ongoing operational expenses it represents. However, one can fight that fight and still indicate one’s rejection of the other abuses.

* On the other hand, the highway system does serve a military purpose, which was one of its original justifications. ↩

This is not a political platform. Its thinly disguised purpose is to hector and shame Republicans into letting the Democrats in Washington, D.C. do what they want. The Dems are not getting things done fast enough for the left, so it’s time to pressure the Republicans to get out of the way. I guarantee that if the Republicans won back the presidency, Senate and House , and if they began to dismantle big government — I know, this is a fantasy — these same people would be shrieking for the Democrats to stop the right. You would hear everywhere, “They stopped the Democrats, now the Democrats must stop them!” The dream of “cooperation” would be conveniently forgotten.

This movement is typical of the New Left, in that it cannot be honest about what it wants. If these people were honest, and capable of thinking in principles, they would say they want socialism. Of course, they can’t say that because it would make the Democrats a party of, I would guess, 15-20% of the population. Honesty on the left means electoral suicide.

When I listen to the Coffee Partiers in their videos, I’m struck by their economic ignorance when they make the rare specific point. One woman argues that socialized medicine — no, of course she doesn’t call it that, but calls it something like, “health care like they have in France” — is cheaper than the slightly freer system we currently have. These people seriously need to read Ayn Rand, Henry Hazlitt, Fredric Bastiat, and then if they got that far, they could go on to Mises. But if they were of the disposition to read these authors, and possessed of the motivation and discipline to study them at length, they wouldn’t be in the Coffee Party movement in the first place.

The woman in the first video (the one standing in the snow with a coffee cup) says at one point that Tea Partiers are motivated by fear of changing demographics. In other words, they are racists. The Tea Party movement has nothing to do with race — it’s about less government and more freedom. But I must admit that it is too bad the anti-immigration Congressman Tom Tancredo had a prominent speech at a recent Tea Party convention, as that makes it seem as if fear of brown people is important to the movement.

The woman in the snow also brings up the old distortion of anarchism — although again, she doesn’t use the word. (Do they consciously conspire to be vague and undefined, or does it just come naturally to these people?) She makes it seem as if Tea Partiers want no government, when most of them want Constitutional government. To leftists, if you think Obama should not be running General Motors, then you’re a wild-eyed, bomb-throwing anarchist.

This movement is based on such uninspiring ideas that it will be interesting to see how long it lasts and how big it grows.

And The New York Times is trying to smear the Tea Party movement by linking it to the militia movement of the ’90s.

Robert Tracinski comments on the Times’ smear job in TIA Daily:

The real story here is not about the Tea Party movement; it’s about the left. The ruling political clique in Washington has suffered a catastrophic loss of moral legitimacy—just at the point when they have been seeking a rapid and far-reaching expansion of their power over our lives. This has led a significant portion of the public to conclude that the real essence of the left’s agenda is a lust for power and control. And so a whole series of ideological groups—from Bilderberg conspiracy theorists to students of Ayn Rand and the Federalist Papers—have risen up in response to this dangerous vacuum of moral legitimacy.

And so the left has to seize on the existence of one of these groups, the racists and conspiracy theorists, in order to deny the existence of the real intellectual alternative: the Ayn-Rand-Federalist-Papers wing of the Tea Party phenomenon.

UPDATE: Revision.

Atlanta Progressive News has parted ways with long-serving senior staff writer Jonathan Springston. Apparently, Springston’s affinity for fact-based reporting clashed with Cardinale’s vision.

And, no, that’s not sarcasm.

In an e-mail statement, editor Matthew Cardinale says Springston was asked to leave APN last week “because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News.”

This is from APN’s Frequently Asked Questions:

“Progressive news is news that brings us closer to universal health care, living wages, affordable housing, peace, a healthy environment, and voting systems we can trust.

We provide news of concern to working families, and therefore, our writing is geared toward a specific audience. Fortunately, our audience–working families–comprises a majority of people in the United States who are largely ignored by corporate media sources.

We believe there is no such thing as objective news. Typically, mainstream media presents itself as objective but is actually skewed towards promoting the corporate agenda of the ultra-wealthy.

APN, on the other hand, does not pretend to be objective. We believe that our news coverage is fair and that our progressive principles are fair. We aim when possible to give voice to all sides, but aim to provide something different than what is already provided by corporate sources.”

APN’s policy explains the predominant trend in journalism today, but they are more up front about it. This is the reason the mainstream media has such a liberal bias (although APN believes they are “corporate media” that think they’re objective). This is why the MSM ignored questions about Obama’s past. It’s an excellent example of how modern philosophy is spreading through our culture,  working its way from universities to newspapers.

How long can a culture that no longer has confidence in objective reality remain free? I would imagine the answer is “Not long.”

“What is a trade deficit?  How does it export inflation?

Surely the idea of a trade deficit disregards the principle of value-for-value trading, regardless of national borders?

Money is an abstract symbol of values traded (concretized as coins & notes).  If a Chinese manufacturer obtains American money from an American, for goods the American has purchased, then the two men, and the two nations. are value even!  There can be no deficit between them.

The trade deficit idea treats the American *dollar* as a concrete, and as an “American item” being depleted.  It does not consider the value of the goods Americans have imported, & by which Americans will benefit.

Walmart, above all, has understood the economic meaning of Chinese labor, however implicitly, and capitalizes on it. Americans receive an enormous material benefit—whilst economists fret about a trade deficit with China.  American lives are massively eased by the cheap Chinese products bought by American money.  Despite talk of sweat shop labor, American money improves the lives of those Chinese. No, their lives do not match those of Americans, but their lives are improved because of Americans (despite the Chinese Communist government).

If there is any sort of deficit, would it not be a human-value deficit, on China’s part?   China’s  2007 GDP/capita is ~ $5,000.  The province of  Guizhou, with 40 million people, is as poor as Nigeria or the Sudan at only $1500, see GDP/cap  by Chinese province.  Most Chinese labor for a few dollars a day, working Americans earn as much in half an hour.

C.W. may have a point about exporting inflation.  Imagine measuring the economic impact of an increase in fiat American money on the economies of countries that are busy printing  their own money?

Last week, Daniels penned an article critical of Ayn Rand at The New Criterion.

Yawn.  Nothing new there, right?  It’s just Whittaker Chambers all over again.  But something different happened this time.  Objectivists shot back.  They did so in enough numbers that Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, found it necessary to cherry-pick some of the nastier ones for mockery over at Pajamas Media.

But there is one comment there that he did not address at all.  It may very well be due to his not having seen it, but an equally plausible explanation — one that I consider to be equally as likely, in the absence of any other information — is because it eviscerates Daniels and his pretenses to competence in discussing Rand, by means of that weaponry which forever relegates conservatism to to pretender status in the realm of the intellect: ideas.

It is a devastating critique — so much so that Diana Hsieh posted it in its own article at Noodlefood.

Go read the whole thing.  It is meaty, and argues throughout from the Objectivist position of strength: our epistemology.  Marshall uses it to hammer home his core point, always coming to it from different angles but delivering the same blow to which conservatism has no answer.

“Daniels, however, demurs from looking too deeply into the matter. But while he steers clear of the ideas in the cultural milieu…”

“Daniels, however, does not attempt to identify or explain why the current fad of intellectual snobbery is an obsession with nihilism…”

“Daniels never examines what ideas the “totalitarian mindset” consists of, or what philosophy underlies it. In fact, apart from vague notions of “inhumanity” and “authoritarianism,” I don’t believe that Daniels knows what a “totalitarian mindset” is, which is why he can be so flippant with the label.”

“Mr. Daniels does not ask such questions nor offer answers. He does not write about ideas.”

“Daniels does appear to have read The Fountainhead (alas, apart from skimming The Virtue of Selfishness that seems to be the extent of his reading from Rand), but he is unable to name its theme: individualism as intellectual independence…”

“What is clear in his analysis of The Fountainhead is that Mr. Daniels can’t get past his hang-up on the details of architecture to evaluate the ideas at its core.”

“Again, this is the whole of his case. And again Daniels does not write about ideas, but superficial non-similarities–Stalin also spoke Russian and had a respiratory system, don’t you know.”

“Such superficial and baseless evaluations are the closest Daniels gets to Rand’s ideas. He spends the rest of the article attacking a straw man.”

This is the end result of pragmatism: a crippled intellect, so incapable of handling ideas that its only possible defense while still attempting to maintain at least a pretense of intellectuality, is to pretend that they don’t exist; the famous “Blank out”.  We saw that pattern on this blog in Clayton Jones’ comments on this post, and Marshall lays it bare with Daniels.

In those rare times when conservatives actually do try to address ideas, the most bizarre — and revealing — things result.  With Jones, the one time he risked dealing with the *principles* of American government, he ended up equating the principle of limited government to anarchy (!)  Daniels does this several times, most notably in his declaration of Ayn Rand as being “Soviet”.  And who can forget Whittaker Chambers’ hysterical screeching, thirty-four years before Godwin: “to the gas chambers, go!”

But Marshall goes even further; via Daniels’ own words, he eloquently reveals the conservatives’ emotional motivation for their avoidance of ideas: they fear them, and the black art (epistemology) that involves them:

“If Daniel’s had read her works or listened to her lectures, he would have observed that she made her case by laying out the evidence that led her to draw the abstract conclusions that became her philosophy. But why bother thoroughly investigating someone you are going to critique when you believe that ideology as such is just window dressing for dark, bestial impulses?”

The root and meaning of conservatism’s insistence upon being an “anti-ideology” is its deep-seated, fundamental mistrust of the human mind, of reason and of everything that proceeds from it.  For such minds, “black art” is a precise description of epistemology.

So it should be no wonder why conservatives should find themselves confused and frightened by ideas.  They lack the tools required to comprehend them as such.  Like primitive tribes who rely on faith to ameliorate their helplessness in the face of physical nature, conservatives do the same to address their helplessness in dealing with ideas.

In closing, I can do no better than to close with Paul Marshall’s last line, which is an epitaph for the intellectual pretenses of Anthony Daniels and of conservatism itself:

“”Anthony Daniels’s writing can sparkle. He can entertain with erudite and obscure trivia. But he seems unwilling to think deeply about ideas. Consequently, his intellect is as wide as an ocean, but as shallow as a puddle.”

I believe that Audi intended it as a caricature: the only difference is that there is not yet an actual police force dedicated to environmental law enforcement at such a visible level. The absurd, petty laws from the commercial actually exist and the intrusiveness of the movement is incredible. (Looks like I’m not the only one that’s noticed the parallels.)

The pretext of global warming catastrophe is becoming increasingly flimsy as time passes. Each day finds new doubts coming to light—the jig is almost up. At some point, the justification for government expansion to prevent a cataclysmic future will evaporate entirely. The time is ripe for the left to make its move. With the health care legislation stalled for the time being, the Senate might take up Waxman-Markey or perhaps something even more meddlesome.

I think a lot of the opposition to socialized medicine by the public stemmed from picturing their health care being run by the post office or the DMV. This mental image crystallized the end towards which the reform was heading and galvanized them into action. In much the same way, I hope that the Audi commercial brought the slippery slope of the environmentalist movement into focus so that the average Super Bowl watcher could see what his view of “going green” would lead to when it became compulsory.

People don’t seem to mind statism when it’s affecting other people, but they draw a line when the hectoring and meddling becomes pervasive. This is the last remnant of the vaunted American sense of life. It is unprincipled, pragmatic, and tenuous to be sure:

A dictatorship cannot take hold in America today. This country, as yet, cannot be ruled—but it can explode. It can blow up into the helpless rage and blind violence of a civil war. It cannot be cowed into submission, passivity, malevolence, resignation. It cannot be “pushed around.” Defiance, not obedience, is the American’s answer to overbearing authority. The nation that ran an underground railroad to help human beings escape from slavery, or began drinking on principle in the face of Prohibition, will not say “Yes, sir,” to the enforcers of ration coupons and cereal prices. Not yet.
— Ayn Rand, “Don’t Let It Go,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, 213.

The dystopic future envisioned by Audi and its ad agency is chilling and repugnant, which is exactly the point of the ad no matter how inadvertent. Americans will meet the “overbearing authority” it represents with defiance and the left knows this.

She gave her usual common sense arguments against the follies of the Obama administration and championed limited government and so on. Unfortunately she grounded many of her arguments in religion. I don’t want to discuss those arguments here. Suffice it to say they were standard religious right positions.

As I watched I began to suspect that this was an event intended to align the Republican Party with the Tea Party movement. My suspicions were confirmed by later events. After the speech Geraldo interviewed a panel of commentators one of which was Juan Williams who flatley declared Mrs. Palin as the new leader of the Tea Party movement. “No she’s not” I nearly shouted at the screen.

A few days later I received an email from the Tea Party Express announcing that they had nothing to do with the organization of that convention but added that they were having Ms. Palin speak at one of their parties in March and at another in April.

Then on Sunday the 7th I got an email from the other national group Tea Party Patriots. They had this to say in part:

“Dear Fellow Tea Party Patriots,

Tea Party Patriots, an organization with a reach of millions of members and over 1,000 voluntarily affiliated tea party and 912 local groups asks: WHY WOULD 600 PEOPLE AT A RALLY CREATE A MEDIA FREENZY?”

Good question since the media have routinely ignored much larger events. And

“Why did the media choose to show up at a tea party rally in Nashville that marketed itself as a “national convention” with only 600 participants who claimed to speak on behalf of the movement?

Why would the media show up just because a national figure was asked to speak? National figures spoke all over the country in local tea party rallies all year and in DC on September 12th.

We believe the answer to “Why?” is this:

There are heavy efforts underway to align us to a political party.
There is great concern that the Tea Party Movement will become a third party.
The media did not do their homework on this “national convention” and is now creating misinformation on the movement.”

I’m convinced that this event was covered to designate the Tea Party movement as a right wing Republican movement. I doubt it will work because the parties I attended last year were mostly independent voters with some Repubs and Dems as well. But they may get some mileage out of it. Stay tuned.

If it is my right to that haircut, what has happened to the right of the barber to offer his service on terms agreeable to him? And if his rights are violated — if he is reduced to the status of an unwilling servant — imagine how lousy my haircuts will look, as he rushes them along to provide them at the price set by government.

Now consider that this same scenario plays out right now with a far more vital service, one upon which all of our lives depend. Today about 50% of medical costs are paid for by the government under terms set by government. We have 50%-socialized medicine in the United States. The problems we have are due to this high level of socialism that already exists.

The solution is not to drink the whole bottle of poison and condemn all of us, doctors and their patients, to life-shortening medical “care” by rights-less doctors and their disgruntled, sick patients.

The solution is freedom. It has never really been tried. Abolish government funding of medical care. Eliminate the rules that bind insurance companies and doctors from offering the care that customers want. Respect the rights of doctors and their patients to freely contract with each other for medical services.

Healthcare is not a right, and our lives depend on acknowledging this fact.

Say “no” to any scheme to further entrench socialized medicine.

*****

Originally posted here on a website that is soliciting solutions for the problems in healthcare. Register your vote.

• The health care of Senators and Congressmen is better than what Americans would get in the plans of those politicians.
• Al Gore’s house leaves a huge carbon footprint. Political leaders from around the world flew carbon-spewing jets to Copenhagen.
• Nancy Pelosi’s relatives flew military jets instead of commercial airlines.
• A Canadian politician goes to America for his heart surgery.

You can probably think of more examples. None of these is actually hypocrisy. The politicians involved all believe they are in a special class to which the rules do not apply. It’s not hypocrisy, it’s the prerogative of power.

In socialism there  are two classes: the rulers and the ruled. The rulers, a small elite, were called nomenklatura in the USSR. The rest of the people functioned as the elite’s slaves.

Robert Tracinski explained the phenomenon at TIA Daily:

The left is Platonist at its root. It does not begin by observing the actual requirements of human life or the means by which much of the world has risen from mass poverty to opulent wealth in the past two centuries. Instead, it begins with a whole series of moral and philosophical preconceptions—that self-interest is evil, that money-making is corrupt, that achievement in the material world is morally suspect, that the independent individual is dangerous—and then tries to bend the real world to fit these preconceptions.

Or to put it in more philosophical terms, instead of starting with observation and moving up to concepts, the method of Aristotle, the left starts with concepts and projects them onto the world, the method of Plato.

In keeping with this approach, the left is also Platonist in its attitude toward the minds of others. Like Plato’s philosopher-kings, the leftists like to imagine themselves as endowed with a superior mental faculty which entitles them to look down on the fact-bound reasoning of the unenlightened masses.

Fundamentally, there is no hypocrisy. The rules they dictate to the masses were never intended to apply to the rulers. They’re special people, motivated by altruism and uncorrupted by greed like the rest of us blinded by capitalism.

Taken to its logical end, the rulers are above the rule of law. In socialism there is no rule of law, only the rule of men. The rulers dictate to the ruled, and they call whatever whims of rule they establish law.

The only hypocrisy involved is that because of America’s tradition of liberty, the rulers must pretend they are “public servants.” They must pretend they serve the constitution, which they regard as a meaningless document. This pretense is convenient because it mollifies those who are ruled and keeps them from rebelling against the ruling class.

Instead of calling it hypocrisy, I think it would be better to point out that our rulers’ actions are perfectly moral by their premises. They get to live by their own special rules. That’s the way statism works, and that’s the way it will be until we restore freedom in America. If you put it this way instead of using the hypocrisy argument — as if the norm were that politicians were humble “public servants,” a bunch of Mr. Smiths gone to Washington — then you stand a better chance of educating the people. A man won’t lose his chains until he sees them.

UPDATE: Slight revision for clarity.

From the Guardian comes a story titled “The west owes Haiti a bailout. And it would be a hand-back, not a handout.”  Yes, it’s all our fault.  Our fault that they were poor, poorly governed, unprepared for natural disasters.  Certainly, it wasn’t the fault of the Haitians themselves.  Who could have foreseen the lack of economic progress in a nation that was more collectivist than capitalist?  If the Haitian people were content to live under the bad government they had, rather than instituting a better one at any cost or risk, or emigrating to a better one, can we blame them?  Inertia isn’t easy to overcome. 

But the West, now, there is as selfish a collection of uncaring nations as can well be imagined.  Billions upon billions of dollars for bailing out bankrupt financial institutions, but precious little for those that need it most—the Haitians:

The scale, urgency and determination with which western governments moved to salvage a broken [financial] system stands in stark contrast to their laggardly, inadequate and negligent approach when it comes to rescuing a broken society. I refer here not to the emergency aid operations in Haiti, which, given the logistical obstacles of operating in a crushed nation, have been impressive. Nor to the charitable donations from all over the world that prove that people are far more generous than the governments they elect. But to the resources and long-term systemic solutions that Haiti needs and the west could summon – if it so desired.

Haiti has needs.  The West has means.  One side of the equation neatly balances out the other. 

And if simple need isn’t enough justification, there are also the sins of our fathers to account for:

 Haiti gained its independence from France in 1804 through a slave rebellion – the first postcolonial, independent black-led nation in the world. For this audacity they would pay for generations . . .

The US refused to recognise the new country for more than half a century, and would then go on to occupy it for 20 years between the wars. The French burdened it with a punitive debt the country shouldered for over a century.

Both the US and France backed the Duvaliers’ brutal dictatorships and when democratic government did arrive it was hogtied by terms imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. Among other things, rigged trade agreements transformed Haiti from a self-sufficient rice producer to importing the bulk of its rice from subsidised growers in the US. When Haiti fined American rice merchants $1.4m in 2000 for allegedly evading customs duties, the US responded by freezing $30m in aid. With friends like these, Haiti does not need enemies.

So Haiti’s bailout would not be an act of charity, but reimbursement and reparation. This is not a hand out but a hand back. In terms of Haiti’s needs, it would be the beginning not the end. The country needs investment in its social and civic infrastructure so that it can shape its own future.

Is there a country on earth that couldn’t point to similar mistreatment from some other nation at some point in its past?  Should we hold the British of today responsible for the expenses of the Revolutionary War?  Or all the money our forefathers lost due to the anti-capitalist trade restrictions the British imposed upon us in the colonial era?   These trade agreements with the IMF and the World Bank—they were agreements, right?  Both sides agreed to the terms?   These things cannot be imposed on any country by a bank.  Only an occupying army can impose anything. I’m not aware of the IMF or the World Bank having a military wing. If Haiti now doesn’t like the terms of these agreements, is that too our fault, here in the West?

The actions of the IMF and the World Bank are not likely to be capitalist, in that their funds are presumably derived from taxation. The solution to that is the abolition of these institutions, not more collectivism.  Does Haiti want investment in its infrastructure?  On what terms: collectivist, or capitalist?  If it wants them on capitalist terms, the way to get there is by instituting a capitalist government, not demanding tax money from foreign governments, that is, the citizens of foreign governments.  If it wants it on collectivist terms, it wants what can never be justified.  It wants the enslavement of others to themselves.

James Dobbins, a special envoy to Haiti under President Clinton and director of the International Security and Defence Policy Centre at the Rand Corporation, saw other possibilities. “This disaster is an opportunity to accelerate oft-delayed reforms,” he argued. The reforms included “breaking up or at least reorganising the government-controlled telephone monopoly”, and restructuring the ports. In other words, privatising what little is left of the country’s state enterprises.

Clearly, to the writer of the Guardian article, capitalism is the problem, not the solution.

While Mr. Obama was bashing lobbyists during his State of the Union, his administration already had planned private briefings with powerful K Street lobbyists for the very next day. According to The Hill newspaper, the Obama Treasury Department invited lobbyists to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.”

Senator Inhofe:

“I was thinking back during the first State of the Union Address by Bill Clinton and I thought, ‘This guy can say things that aren’t true with greater conviction than anyone I’ve ever seen.’ I honestly think that Obama is better.”

No question Obama is the better liar. Bill Clinton, con artist that he was, had some shred of decency in his soul that showed shame when he lied. Obama, who has lived in the far leftist bubble his entire life, has no trace of shame when he lies. He projects self-righteous condescension when he speaks. He believes he is, as an altruist-collectivist, morally superior to the rest of us. Remember his fantasies about doctors performing needless operations because they’ve been corrupted by greed? That’s what he thinks capitalism does to everyone except the philosopher-kings of the left. He believes he has a moral right to lie to Americans for their own good.

Moreover, postmodern philosophy tells Obama that there is no objective reality, there are only “narratives” informed by tribal differences. Obama believes his narrative is moral because he is not motivated by greed.

As good a liar as Obama is, he is not getting away with his lies because most Americans have a better understanding of reality than Obama. For those Americans who are not sure, there are plenty of sound thinkers on talk radio and the internet explaining how Obama is wrong. Leftists tell themselves they are being drowned out by the “right-wing noise machine,” but really it’s just the truth getting out. In a country with free speech, a statist cannot get away with so many outrageous lies.

I’m beginning to think Obama’s presidency is dead. It died on February 27, 2009, the day of the first Tea Parties, which came after Rick Santelli’s February 19 call for protests on CNBC. On that day Independents and Republicans joined to protest the big government policies of Obama-Reid-Pelosi. The Democrat Party leaders responded with smears.

Obama lost the American people. When the Democrats, in their astonishing arrogance, called the protesters racists, KKK, evil-mongers, a mob, and so on, they lost them forever. People don’t vote for a politician after he insults them.

The Democrats thought they could intimidate people away from the protests by demonizing the movement. They didn’t realize they were talking only to their base, and now that is all the support that remains.

This does not mean they will give up. When you believe morality is on your side, you don’t give up. They will try everything to pass their socialist agenda. With the help of their media, some of their lies will will succeed. It will be interesting to see, as failure mounts upon failure, what fresh hells desperation inspires on the left.

Reading around the internet, however, it looked like there might be enough in the speech for a blog post. So I watched the State of the Union speech on YouTube. The whole goddamn thing. Obama likes to talk about sacrifice. I sat through 69 minutes of his lies; that’s sacrifice enough.

If your mind wandered during this speech, you could always look at Joe Biden, sitting behind Obama, to see how you should be reacting. When Obama was serious, Biden put on a frowny face; in lighter moments Biden grinned like a jackass. How nice of Joe to serve as a kind of human cartoon of what we should think. After two centuries someone finally found something useful for vice-presidents to do.

Others have examined the lies. Alex Epstein summed the speech up in one sentence:

We need to rise above fear, hesitation, and partisan politics–to give the government all the power it needs to solve all our problems.

I think Obama was saying in this speech “I am not Bill Clinton.” He’s not a moderate, not a triangulator; he won’t run to the middle after an electoral disaster. He is an ideologue who believes his collectivist agenda is moral and he is not backing off an inch. If you listened to the speech out of focus, as William F. Buckley, Jr.’s son must have done, you might have admired Obama’s integrity and purpose. Obama posed as a reasonable man of common sense who can laugh off difficulties, a man who just wants to get things done to help Americans.

You have to think in principle. You have to remember that Obama wants to expand state power over the individual. His is the path to dictatorship. If you can’t keep that in mind when he talks, then you’re doomed to be a welfare statist and to wonder why those unreasonable people on the right hate him so much. They must be racists!

Everything in this speech was designed to bamboozle people so that Obama-Reid-Pelosi can forge on with their socialist program, despite the fact that most Americans don’t want it. In a remarkably partisan speech, in which he attacked the Bush presidency and the Supreme Court, he also attacked partisanship. In a speech full of lies he attacked cynicism. He knows his ideological comrades in the media will publicize the noble, if hollow, statements, and ignore the partisan lies. A concrete-bound mentality, a pragmatist, would have no idea what to make of this speech.

If you think in principle, you understand that when Obama says “I don’t quit,” he means, “I don’t care what the people want, I will force socialism on them for their own good.” That is the meaning of Obama’s resolve. He has courage to stick to his values, yes. But what values this man has! He has the courage to run your life for you even if you’re too stupid to appreciate it.

We discovered in 2009 that many Americans can think in principle. They see that Obama is destroying our liberty. They have rocked Obama’s party in three elections in the last year, and they’re not done yet. After the Massachusetts election Obama made an odd statement that I interpret as another shot at Bill Clinton:

“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” he told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer.

The captain will go down with his ship. If he does it will be because enough Americans were not bamboozled by Obama’s rhetoric. Those who can think in principle and understand individual rights — the Tea Party Movement — would be the reason Obama failed, and that would make them the most important political movement since the civil rights era.

UPDATE: If you think I was tough on Obama’s speech, check out the reaction over at PJTV.

Andrew Wilson looks at Obama’s economic ignorance. It makes me wonder what Mises would have made of this speech. He’d probably have yawned and said, “I’ve heard it all before in Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s.”

(A key spoiler follows below the break.  It is not necessary to read the story first to grasp my point, but I highly recommend it; it is a good one.)

The story dealt with a future where there was a world named Vexvelt, which was shunned by all the other civilized planets in the galaxy because incest is not only accepted there, but actively encouraged.  When the protagonist in the story visits Vexvelt, he finds that it is a virtual utopia — and that its rejection of the incest taboo is in fact precisely why it has achieved such prosperity and peace.

There is a line spoken at one point by a magistrate, one of the few outside Vexvelt who knows the truth about the planet.  At one point after the protagonist describes the “sanity” of the Vexveltian society, the magistrate said a line which still sticks in my head:  (paraphrasing from memory)

“I would rather go stark, raving MAD than ever endure such sanity!”

Sturgeon later explained that the particular taboo was not the point of the story.  From Wikipedia:

“Sturgeon wrote the story with an afterword that makes it plain that [the taboo] is not the real issue here, but rather how we manufacture falsehoods and turn them into perceived ‘truths.’ How we often take something harmless, then add and build on the perceived ‘truth’ to the point of creating something that is positively harmful.”

The funny thing for me, is that as much as incest is seen as repulsive by nearly everyone, writing a story like that did not damage Sturgeon’s career.  If you examine his Wikipedia page, there is no mention of any big controversy over it.  His writing career continued, and to this day Sturgeon is regarded as one of the stars of science fiction, and rightly so IMO.

Ever wonder what might have happened to him if he had made Vexvelt the only egoist society in the galaxy — if the harmful idea the Vexveltians rejected had been altruism?

I don’t have to wonder.  Paul Shirley, a former ESPN basketball writer and former player, questioned altruism in clear terms recently in connection with the Haiti disaster, and the responses were (not to put too fine a point on it), batshit crazy.  Evidently, altruists too would rather go “stark raving mad”.

As much as I respect Sturgeon’s writing, I can see why he might have seen the risk of being construed as an advocate for incest to be less dangerous than to be seen as questioning that other, far more harmful taboo.

Demonic practices include short selling, making a profit, acting on inside information, making ‘too much’ profit and defending one’s right to do so. I’m sure there are some I’ve missed.

The gods we’ve been urged to worship by the press are government politicians and regulators who know what’s best for us. Noble and virtuous practices are complying with our regulatory masters and having a willingness to find our happiness by sacrificing all those things that make us happy, like our money and freedom and rights, for a non-existent public good.

Obama will give his first SOTU address tonight. It will be interesting to see what demons we will be urged to destroy and what gods to worship. Some have speculated that because of recent setbacks to the Democratic Party’s agenda, Obama will move to the center of the political spectrum. If he uses those kinds of words tonight it will be only appearance. In substance I see Obama following FDR’s lead. He will continue to meddle in the market, causing a prolonged depression, yet blaming all of it on the greed and selfishness of evil businessmen. The people, like they did for FDR, will believe it hook line and sinker and will call for more of the same poison that’s making them sick now.

But there are these differences: Objectivism wasn’t around back then and the middle class today has a lot more to lose by buying into the government-knows-best nonsense being peddled today. We’ll see.

I still strive for balance, but now I fail. Nowadays I’m Johnny One Note, ever pounding on the left. The Dems have all the power and make all the news.

What do Republicans do these days but sit back and let the Democrats immolate themselves on their power-lust? The converse of the Spider-Man line is with no power comes no responsibility. And no blame. Republicans are in the ideal position now; they don’t have to do anything, and even when they propose something, the media are too busy reporting on their god in the White House to notice.

Someday the Republicans will regain power, and then they will do stupid things that piss me off, and you readers of New Clarion will be the first to know about it. I promise.

We now return you to our scheduled programming.

I don’t expect them to actually precipitate one on purpose, but the basic premise — that the American Left is in a do-or-die position — is very likely correct.

Objectivists have been saying for years that the Left is at the end of its intellectual road, and that its position in control of the academy is slowly slipping away.   I think the Left knows this as well.   I believe that the core Left is afraid that if they don’t succeed in pushing America over the tipping point during this administration, they may never get this chance again.

What is this goal — this “tipping point” to which I refer?

I see it as that point where “tax eaters” — those dependent upon government handouts, in one form or another, and their enablers — permanently outnumber and outvote the tax payers and their allies.  Europe is already past this point, and a few US states — California, for example — are as well.

The Left knows that tax-eater constituencies are permanently beholden to them, thanks to what the conservatives call the “liberal ratchet”.  How many times have we heard the whine “but if they take away our handouts, we’ll have nothing”?  Once a government program is ensconced in the economic structure of the country, it is well-nigh impossible to extract (given our current cultural climate), much like an inoperable tumor.   The expectation is that once this voter base is sufficiently large, the trend will become irreversible, and liberty will be permanently removed from the mainstream.

This is the real motivation behind the push to install socialized medicine now.  This was the point of the Left’s substitution of “democracy” for freedom over a hundred years ago: to set the country on a path towards the initial type of tyranny that bears the closest superficial resemblance to freedom: the tyranny of the majority.

Once this happens, The American Left can finally start down the same road towards permanent struggle and war that the Left has followed everywhere else in the world.  The only way out for the producers will be to revolt — go on strike — or enact a literal revolution.  These are extreme options, all but certainly entailing the loss of the comforts of modern society — the threat thereof which which all but the most James Taggart-ish of the core Left will count on to keep them under the yoke.  “Oh, you’ll do something, Mr. Rearden.”

That’s the crossroads we are at right now.  Down one road is Weimar… the other, America.

We were last here in the late ’60’s and ’70’s, when the Great Society was installed, the government was openly debasing the currency, and “malaise” was prevalent.   It was, however, too soon.  Ronald Reagan derailed the Left’s train in the 80’s with an unexpected resurgence of conservatism (due to the temporary migration of the not-sufficiently-dead Enlightenment ideas over to the Right).

Still in possession of the mantle of American liberalism, the Left in 1980 was confident in its ability to wait out the Reagan effect for a generation, and they did.  As expected, the conservatives ran out of steam (thanks to the logically necessary rise of the religious wing of conservatism), and by 2008, the Left was ready to pick right up where they left off.

But something’s gone wrong.  Those pesky Enlightenment ideals, mangled as they are by 40 years of identification with conservatism, still won’t die!  They are still breathing, as the rise of the Tea Parties and Ayn Rand’s rising profile clearly signal.

And last but not least, the mask is falling off; American left-”liberalism” is past its expiry date.  The left is now seen as what they are — socialists — by greater and greater numbers of Americans.  Caught between the false alternative of socialist Left and theocratic Right, millions of Americans are finally smelling the left-right trap and declaring themselves as Independents.

These are all signals that the Left itself is in serious danger of being irretrievably marginalized, and I think they know it.  The Left is reaching the end of its road faster than America is reaching that tipping point.  This wasn’t supposed to happen!

So it should be no wonder that they are going for broke now.  They fear what we hope — that they will run out of gas before America is brought down.  They know that the time for a Hail Mary pass to get us over that tipping point, is now — and success in this regard outweighs the short-term political pain that will follow.

This is the root of the split on the Left regarding the current bill.  Those core Leftists who support it have concluded that they won’t be able to achieve socialized medicine this go-around, and so are hoping that another Cloward-Piven round of mucking up the system with further regulations and mandates will induce the country to demand a full takeover out of frustration.  Others, however, are afraid that this classic pattern may not occur — that the changes in America that I have noted here, will result in a completely different reaction against government control that will marginalize the socialist Left for good.  This faction wants the public option back in *now*.

Which of them is right?  I do not know.  That’s the nature of a crossroads…. it could go either way.  In either case, I don’t believe that times in America have ever been as interesting as they are now, in my lifetime.

Kevin Drum, writing before the Massachusetts election, said the “noise machine” of the right  is winning the battle of the narrative. Whenever leftists complain about the right-wing noise machine, it means the truth is getting out and it is persuading people. The term is like their earlier term, McCarthyism: both are meant to deflect criticism of the left by demonizing the enemy.

David Plouffe offers a strategy for how Democrats can mitigate an electoral disaster this November. Plouffe spins, as you would expect from a campaign manager.

Everything I have read from the left is BS. I’ll tell you what has happened and what the Democrats should do about it.

When the trio of Obama, Reid and Pelosi found themselves in power together, the New Left was finally, after more than 40 years of struggle,  in control of the executive and legislative branches. Their time had come, and the Democrat base wanted four decades of frustration rectified NOW. They tried to pass their agenda of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” into a European-style socialist state.

It was a domestic shock and awe. The Democrats worked in a fury. They worked in arrogant, partisan disdain of the Republicans. They passed a $787 billion stimulus bill full of pork for various Democrats that did nothing to create jobs, but only made the economy worse. They took over two automobile manufacturers and told financial sector CEO’s how much in bonuses they could make. The House and Senate passed huge health care bills that would raise insurance costs, weaken medicare benefits and get the state involved in who would live and die. They lied about all of the above.

All this and more shook up the American people. Although both parties have been stumbling towards fascism since the New Deal, people never saw it clearly until 2009, when their eyes were opened by the Democrats’ domestic shock and awe. The Democrats were intent on governing to the left of the American people. The people didn’t like what they saw. A movement among Republicans and Independents call Tea Parties sprung up. During the summer the same rebellious spirit met Democrats at town hall meetings.

How did the Democrats respond to the protests among the voters? With name calling. They called the protesters tea baggers (a term that refers to an off-beat sexual practice I had not heard of before 2009), racists, KKK, evil mongers and likened them to Nazis. Mind you, this did not just come from blowhards on MSNBC, but from the leadership. Statements were made by Pelosi and Reid in a campaign coordinated by the White House. Also mind you, the Democrats were smearing some two-thirds of America. In a country with free elections, calling a majority of voters names like racists and evil mongers is no way to win votes. It seemed as if the Democrats were out of touch with reality or suicidal.

The clash between the Democrats and the American people came to a climax this week in Massachusetts. A Republican was elected to the Senate seat that Edward Kennedy had sat in for 47 years. At the moment the Democrats are in disarray, victims themselves of some shock and awe courtesy of the Massachusetts voters.

The Democrat politicians are frightened. They know that if they continues as they have for the last year and make their health care reform bill into law, many Democrats will go down in November. Their base, however, is advising them to pass the bill. The politicians find themselves caught between their base and the rest of America — damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

Their problems are made worse by Obama’s incompetence. His resume is the least distinguished of any modern president. Even the accomplishments seem strangely hollow: as editor of the Harvard Law Review, he never wrote an article and took no interest in the actual editing; in the Illinois State Senate he voted present over 100 time. He’s gone through life landing prestigious jobs in which he did little — and the same pattern shows up in his first term in the White House. In his first year he gave more speeches and golfed more than any other president. At his core he seems empty and unserious. He doesn’t have any idea what to do.

I see only one way out of the bind they are in: they need a crisis. Both Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton have remarked the usefulness of a crisis. But not the penny ante stuff we’re used to, rather a major, gut wrenching, world changing, once-in-a-century CRISIS. I’m talking hyper-inflation, soaring unemployment, mob violence in the streets and marshal law. At the same time they need World War III to begin. They need the Chinese to invade Taiwan, Muslims to start wars everywhere and the Russians to do something stupid. (And Putin is just the man to do it.) The outbreak of some highly contagious disease would also help.

Under the cover of a crisis, they could skip the hassles of constitutional government and all those annoyances that just get in the way such as filibusters and angry voters. They could get to the collectivist dictatorship they want. They could fundamentally transform America into a land in which all individuals sacrifice to the state in return for cradle-to-grave security. And there would be paradise on earth.

My advice to the Democrats is to manufacture the big crisis. I think they’re up to it. Come on, Barack — create a BIG mess. Otherwise, the Democrats are in for more frustration and backlash from the voters. By 2012 they could find themselves completely out of power again.