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Culture & Society Archive

Wednesday

5

September 2012

0

COMMENTS

Big Government is Not A Unifying Force

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Culture & Society, Liberty & Limited Government

This video opened the DNC:

A lot of folks are talking about the declaration that “government’s the only thing that we all belong to,” with many responding with various forms of an argument denying our status as the property of government. And they should be talking about it; it’s a repugnant statement. Just not necessarily for that particular reason.

The verb belong, like many in the English language, can have multiple meanings. One implies ownership; another membership. The video quite clearly is intending to use the latter definition. Should the producers have seen the obvious meaning behind the statement using another common definition of belong – that we are owned by government? Probably, and it probably says something about their sensibilities that it either never occurred to them, or they didn’t care. But that’s a minor point.

I believe that the most powerful arguments are ones that, when an opponent’s statement is ambiguous,  avails the other side the benefit of the most favorable, reasonable interpretation possible. Defeating a stronger argument is a more significant feat, after all. In this case, I think it is clear the video is attempting to say that we all have membership in government, and therefore concludes that it is a binding and unifying force. That is the interpretation I am sure they intended, so it is the one  I prefer to address. And it’s more than sufficiently disagreeable to warrant heavy criticism.

So what of the idea that we all have membership in government, and therefore that it helps bind us together? On the first point, I think John Hayward does a good job of explaining why we don’t really all belong to government even in that sense:

The Left was in the middle of shrieking that the video wasn’t saying the government “owns” us; it was saluting the government as the collective expression of our combined will, justified in anything it wants to do – or make the rest of us do – because we sanctify it every few years through the ritual of voting.

Even this benign-sounding apologia for “government is the only thing we all belong to” is incredibly wrong-headed.  We most certainly do notbelong to the government. We are all members of the electorate, which is a very different thing.  Each of us lives beneath several distinct governments – federal, state, city – empowered to protect our rights, not act as the almighty executor of some “collective will” that exists only in the totalitarian fantasies of liberals.  There are very few areas of government action that command anything like overwhelming majority support from Americans, let alone nearly unanimous approval.

But it’s the idea that government brings us together that I find must detestable. Although the video did not say “big government,” that is what we have today so in context that is what it is defending. And big government is anything but unifying. Here’s what I wrote on the subject way back in 2008, at a time when both Presidential candidates were promising to heal all that which socially divides us:

Despite the modest downsizing after the end of the Cold War, by 2000 the federal government employed almost 3 million people, and government employment at the federal, state and local level now combine for 16% of the total national work force. There are ten additional cabinet positions compared to the beginning of the 20th century. So in addition to spending more, they are also doing more.

We have all these bureaucrats to manage the regulations covering every aspect of our lives. Government tells us what we can eat, where we can smoke, what medicines we can use and what insurance we can purchase. It even tells us who we can marry and where we must send our children to school, along with what they must be taught.

This intrusion of government has sparked the “culture war.” It exists because government, by design, requires one-size-fits-all solutions on issues on which there is no one size that fits all. As an example, when parents cannot choose where to send their kids to school, they must fight within the political system to see that the schools teach what they want. Different parents have different ideas, often mutually exclusive, on what they want their children to learn. Because they must fight over control of the same system, some must inevitably lose.

When issues of importance to the people must be fought over, it’s understandable that the fighting can be intense. A lot is at stake in every election. Repeat this process again and again, on issue after issue, and it is little wonder why Americans are polarized today. Government has pit us against our fellow citizens in a battle for control of our own lives. It’s a battle we can only lose, and which the new administration’s big government programs can only make worse.

Government is inherently divisive, which is something I think our Founders understood and is one reason why they tried, though sadly failed, to severely limit its scope. But there are actually things which unify us. One is our understanding of our inherent rights as human beings. Our united belief in those rights – of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – is what led first to our rejection of unjust rule, and then eventually to the formation of our specific government. But that’s a far cry from saying that government itself is that unifying force.

The video contrasts our common government with the fact that we belong to different churches and clubs, implying that those individual choices are the things which divide us. This is exactly backwards, and betrays a dangerous affinity for collectivism.  Yes, people go to different churches and belong to different clubs, but the option to associate freely with the groups that we choose, without one person or group of people’s preferences for association being imposed on all others, is exactly what makes it possible for us to live together without constantly being at each other’s throats. Voluntary cooperation is the most unifying force of all.

But what if we did all belong to one church? Would that unify us? Obviously not, as that would require first forcing us all into the same church despite our individual preferences. And if we look at history, that’s exactly what Europe was like when our ancestors left for the new world. We have the freedom to do our own things, to lead our own lives, to associate with the people we choose, and to trade with the people we choose; those freedoms are what have historically unified our communities and allowed us to get along. On the other hand, thrusting upon us ever more one-size-fits-all government “solutions” to every problem, big or small, will continue to rip at the strained social fabric of our nation, dividing us ever more into mutually exclusive, non-cooperative camps.

Tuesday

21

August 2012

1

COMMENTS

What’s Wrong With Gender Specific Clubs?

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society

A lot of the talk around Augusta National’s decision to admit its first two female members has me baffled, just as I was baffled when this whole brouhaha began years ago.  What principle, exactly, are the people upset with Augusta’s membership practices enforcing? What’s wrong with gender specific clubs?

On every college campus in America, you’ll find clubs excluding at least half of the population. No women in the fraternities; no men in the sororities. Who does that harm?

Augusta, up until now, was a private, male-only golf club. So what? There are a multitude of private, women-only clubs, and I don’t see the angry feminists busting down their doors demanding men be let in for the sake of equality. Because this really has nothing to do with equality. Anyone was already equally free to start their own private club and set their own rules for it. That’s equality.

These people, who usually prattle on about the benefits of diversity, don’t seem to actually want any. What’s that, how can I say they don’t want diversity when they are trying to make Augusta more diverse? Because if every club has the same rules, the same membership, and the same demographics, then there is no diversity among the universe of private clubs. They’ll all be the same. What’s the fun in that?

Sure, you can make a particular women’s only college more diverse by forcing them to accept men, but in so doing you’ll have made colleges as a whole less diverse. Take the extreme example and say you eliminate gender specific colleges altogether. People will necessarily have fewer choices when it comes to the type of collegiate environment they can choose, meaning the total universe of colleges has become less diverse.

True diversity means allowing different types of clubs, universities and other institutions to exist. If every institution must cater to the exact same crowd, then people will have less interesting and meaningful options available to them. Yes, Augusta is prestigious and well-known, but should their success mean that they are no longer free to set their own membership rules? Shouldn’t the same be expected of every club, or better yet, none at all?

Tuesday

24

July 2012

1

COMMENTS

The Gun Grabber Onslaught Continues

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society, Gun Rights, Liberty & Limited Government

I noted on Friday the incredible speed with which gun grabbers pounced on the Aurora shooting to advance their anti-gun rights agenda. The usual suspects have now piled on or, in Nanny Bloomberg’s case, doubled down.

Michael Bloomberg, who first falsely claimed that violence is getting worse in America, predictably responded to Piers Morgan’s anti-gun pestering by taking his initial stance a step further and declaring that cops should illegally go on strike until politicians are forced to seize guns from law-abiding Americans. Roger Ebert chastised America for being “one of few developed nations that accepts that notion of firearms in public hands.” Piers Morgan chimed in on twitter to note that “now is that time” for America to “do something about its gun laws.” And some guy at the Washington Post wants to require that another party co-sign for someone’s sanity before they can buy a gun, while is despicably pestering shooting victim relatives to endorse gun control.

But what exactly are the knee-jerkers proposing that could have prevented the Aurora shooting? Holmes had no criminal record nor documented evidence of mental illness. The one actual specific proposal offered above wouldn’t work either, as we’ve seen numerous people who knew Holmes state how they couldn’t have imagined him doing anything violent, so it’s no stretch to say one would have co-signed a hypothetical gun application.

The simple reality is that the only way to theoretically keep guns away from the likes of the Aurora shooter is by keeping guns away from everyone – in other words by eviscerating the Constitution and our Second Amendment rights. And I say “theoretically” because even if every gun was outlawed, we know criminals would still get them.

The lack of a practical and realistic solution isn’t the only problem with these reflexive, knee jerk calls to “do something.” The truth of the matter is there just may not be a problem here to solve. I know it’s tempting to react emotionally to any horrific incident, but when it comes to setting policy we need to be logical. Sadly, when it comes to risk management through public policy, logic is often lacking (see TSA).

The shooting in Aurora was horrible, to be sure, but for a little perspective, the equivalent of one Aurora massacre occurs every ten days in Chicago, otherwise known as the gun-control capital of the United States, according to Doug Ross. For even more perspective, 7,630 people died in traffic accidents in the first quarter of 2012, or approximately 7 Aurora massacres per day, or one every three and a half hours.

So we’re essentially talking about shredding our Constitutional rights to prevent another incident whose death toll is matched every three and a half hours on our roads, where nobody cares. Makes perfect sense. And never mind the number of additional crimes that would be occurring or made worse, like this one, once people lose the ability to protect themselves.

The truth is that sometimes bad things happen. It’s part of life, and that you might not always be able to prevent them from happening is part of the price of living in a free society. Sometimes it seems like a high price to pay, but it’s still much better than the alternative.

Wednesday

11

July 2012

1

COMMENTS

We All Lie, Cheat and Steal

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society, Government Meddling, Liberty & Limited Government

That’s the gist of a TIME piece from last month. And I’m inclined to agree.

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who teaches at Duke University, is known as one of the most original designers of experiments in social science. Not surprisingly, the best-selling author’s creativity is evident throughout his latest book, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. A lively tour through the impulses that cause many of us to cheat, the book offers especially keen insights into the ways in which we cut corners while still thinking of ourselves as moral people.

…“A student told me a story about a locksmith he met when he locked himself out of the house. This student was amazed at how easily the locksmith picked his lock, but the locksmith explained that locks were really there to keep honest people from stealing. His view was that 1% of people would never steal, another 1% would always try to steal, and the rest of us are honest as long as we’re not easily tempted. Locks remove temptation for most people. And that’s good, because in our research over many years, we’ve found that everybody has the capacity to be dishonest and almost everybody is at some point or another.”

Human nature is what it is. Yet some of the greatest philosophical differences between the various political ideologies are rooted in differing views of human nature. Utopian ideologies tend to start from a conception of man that is either good or improvable through social tinkering. Turn of the century movements on both sides of the Atlantic, Progressivism and Fascism, shared this central idea that human nature could be corrected through government manipulation. Classical liberalism, based on Lockean theorizing (which in turn drew from the Hobbesian conception of human nature as violent and competitive) rejected this view. While Locke saw the state as necessary to protect fundamental rights, it is also posed a threat of its own. It would be, after all, run by the same flawed individuals.

Which brings me to this passage from the article:

“People are able to cheat more when they cheat for other people. In some experiments, people cheated the most when they didn’t benefit at all. This makes sense if our ability to be dishonest is increased by the ability to rationalize our behavior. If you’re cheating for the benefit of another entity, your ability to rationalize is enhanced. So yes, it’s easier for an accountant to see fudging on clients’ tax returns as something other than dishonesty. And it’s a concern within companies, since people’s altruistic tendencies allow them to cheat more when it benefits team members.”

With this understanding, is it any surprise that government’s are full of liars and cheats?

This reminded me of a quote from James Madison in Federalist #51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

It seems as if the left often stops after the first sentence. Men are bad, so we need government. But what about our government of men? The “auxiliary precautions” of which Madison speaks are exactly the restraints on political power which the left has worked so consistently to erode. In expanding the Commerce Clause into meaninglessness, and turning on its head the Constitutional idea of enumerated powers, today’s government has plenty of control of the governed, but little if anything left in place to oblige it to control itself.

Thursday

14

June 2012

2

COMMENTS

About Those Smartest Guys in the Room

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Culture & Society, Liberty & Limited Government, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

The left always seems to salivate at the idea of setting a lot of really smart people loose on society’s problems. And don’t get me wrong, a lot of them are indeed really smart people. Yet no matter how many times the top-down central planning approach is tried, it fails. Some interesting research might shed light, in part, on why that is:

When people face an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics. Instead, their decisions depend on a long list of mental shortcuts, which often lead them to make foolish decisions.

…A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology led by Richard West at James Madison University and Keith Stanovich at the University of Toronto suggests that, in many instances, smarter people are more vulnerable to these thinking errors. Although we assume that intelligence is a buffer against bias—that’s why those with higher S.A.T. scores think they are less prone to these universal thinking mistakes—it can actually be a subtle curse.

…The results were quite disturbing. For one thing, self-awareness was not particularly useful: as the scientists note, “people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.” This finding wouldn’t surprise Kahneman, who admits in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” that his decades of groundbreaking research have failed to significantly improve his own mental performance. “My intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy”—a tendency to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task—“as it was before I made a study of these issues,” he writes.

Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves. Although the bias blind spot itself isn’t a new concept, West’s latest paper demonstrates that it applies to every single bias under consideration, from anchoring to so-called “framing effects.” In each instance, we readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.

And here’s the upsetting punch line: intelligence seems to make things worse. The scientists gave the students four measures of “cognitive sophistication.” As they report in the paper, all four of the measures showed positive correlations, “indicating that more cognitively sophisticated participants showed larger bias blind spots.” This trend held for many of the specific biases, indicating that smarter people (at least as measured by S.A.T. scores) and those more likely to engage in deliberation were slightly more vulnerable to common mental mistakes.

And this is just part of the reason why getting a bunch of smart people into a room to direct the affairs of everyone else has never worked. But even without these mental errors, the truth is that there is just too much information for any person or group of people to consume to properly make such decisions. Decentralized decision making simply works better.

But what really galls me is how questioning the get-the-smartest-people-in-a-room approach always solicits accusations of being anti-intellectual. I am a smart person according to various objective measures conducted over the years, and more importantly in my opinion, I constantly seek to learn and acquire out new information. But unlike some of my peers, I don’t believe my intelligence makes me qualified to tell everyone else how to live, nor able to solve all of the nation’s problems if only I were given the kind of broad power desired by those on the left.

The people who try to control us for our own good may be smart, but they are not wise enough to realize their own limitations. This is why it is so important to limit their powers and ensure that individuals retain as much freedom as possible to make their own decisions.

Friday

8

June 2012

0

COMMENTS

"Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others"

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society, Identity Politics, The Courts, Criminal Justice & Tort

Americans like to believe that we are all equal before the law. It wasn’t always that way. White landowners once had special privileges. But slavery has been eliminated and suffrage extended to all citizens. Sure, some folks find exceptions and room for impreovement, but by and large we think the law gives us all the same status – that protections granted to one are granted to all.

That is not the case.

From those old days of slavery and limited voting rights, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. You see, there are such things as “protected classes” which receive special rights and considerations vis-à-vis the rest of society. If you belong to such a class, the law gives you additional protections. Sound unAmerican? You betcha.

Consider this story about a professional photographer forced to provide their services for a gay couple’s commitment ceremony, even though they didn’t want to (making a lie of the voluntary part of the voluntary exchange we typically think resides at the heart of a free society). I could easily go on about how this is a fundamental violation of private property rights and a form of enslavement to compel such use of another’s labor against their will. I could. But what really struck me was this passage:

The Alliance Defense Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based legal alliance of Christian attorneys and others that represented the studio, plans to appeal. Elane Photography argued that it provided discretionary, unique and expressive services that aren’t a public accommodation under the Human Rights Act.

The studio asked hypothetically whether an African-American photographer would be required to photograph a Ku Klux Klan rally.

The court responded: “The Ku Klux Klan is not a protected class. Sexual orientation, however, is protected.”

There you have it. It’s bad enough that you can be forced into service for anyone, but that you can for some and not others seems to make it much worse.

I bet you didn’t know that the Declaration really said that ” all men are created equal, except for gays, women and minorities, who belong to protected classes.” According to this court, some Americans get more rights than others. Four legs are good, you see, but two legs are better.

Saturday

26

May 2012

4

COMMENTS

Big Government Does Not Make America Great

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Culture & Society, Liberty & Limited Government

In yet another screed against the Tea Party, Van Jones offers a vehement defense of gigantic govenrment:

“At this point in this struggle, it’s the so-called patriots who are the ones who are smashing down every American institution,” Jones said last weekend in Milwaukee. “It’s the so-called patriots, the ones who come out here with their Tea Party and the flags and call themselves patriots — they’re the ones that are smashing down our unions, smashing down public education, smashing down every American institution that we built, and our parents built, and our grandparents built to make this country great.”

As is the wont of the statist, Van Jones confuses the country for its government, and America’s institutions for government bureaucracies. The institutions that truly make America great – the families, the churches, and the businesses – are not administered by appointed lackeys, nor found in federal budgets. They come from free peoples allowed to flourish relatively unencumbered by overbearing governments.

Thursday

17

May 2012

2

COMMENTS

Obama Makes History

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society

There’s been lots of talk regarding the discovery that the White House website has appended pro-Obama propaganda to the official biography of numerous past Presidents. Included among the chatter has been well deserved and extremely funny mockery.

The consensus has been that this is another example of Obama’s narcissism. And while I largely consider him the most narcissistic president in our nation’s history (though I don’t profess to be a presidential historian, and have only personally lived under a few administrations), it isn’t my biggest takeaway from the story. In fact, it’s unlikely the President even had knowledge of the additions before they happened. At least, I can’t imagine a President being involved in such minutia, but I’ve also never occupied nor worked in the White House.

What concerns me is the continued parallels, this being yet another in a long line of examples, between the whole apparatus surrounding Obama – his campaign and followers – and the behavior of tyrants. A common feature of dictatorships, for instance, is the erosion of the line between the individual leader and the state, and even the nation. He is the state. He is the nation. The two cannot be separated. This is why you see the faces of people like Saddam Hussein or Hugo Chavez plastered all over the place.

The leader’s presence is everywhere, not just within the nation, but also its history. The leader is tied into the very fabric of the nation’s history, often times through out-and-out revisionism, but also in more subtle ways, such as through carefully crafted narratives, either embellished or outright falsified, whereby the leader’s story becomes an archetype for the social and cultural values of his people.

Obama, in his attitudes toward governance, his policy preferences and the disposition of his followers, resembles more the typical South American strongman than an American Chief Executive. I do not worry that Obama is going to become a dictator in any real sense of the word, but the willingness of a certain sect of the population, namely his most ardent followers, to not only so readily accept these attitudes but to gleefully propagate them through their own initiative is concerning. It is not entirely surprising, as they are the folks who already ideologically lean toward collectivism, but it nonetheless highlights a disturbing strain of political thought in this country, and ought to remind us that freedom is only ever a generation away from extinction.

Thursday

15

March 2012

3

COMMENTS

The United States of Obama

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society

So lots of folks are talking about this story out of Florida:

An American flag with President Obama’s image in place of the stars flew over a Florida county’s Democrat headquarters long enough to enrage local veterans who called the altered banner “a disgrace.”

Lake County Democratic Party officials took down the flag, which flew just below a standard Old Glory on the flagpole outside headquarters in Tavares following complaints by local veterans. But merely taking it down wasn’t enough for several local veterans, who said they fought for the flag Betsy Ross made famous, not one with a politician on it.

“It’s absolutely disrespectful,” Jim Bradford, a 71-year-old veteran who participated in the Bay of Pigs Invasion told FoxNews.com. “It’s totally ridiculous. To put somebody’s picture there, to me, it’s a disgrace to do that.”

Nor is this necessarily the first time, but it is probably the most blatantly disrespectful.

I pledge allegiance to Barack, of the United States of Obama

This strikes me as a similar sort of political idolatry typical in dictatorships, albeit not as intense. Whether it be Saddam’s Iraq, Chavez’s Venezuala, Kim’s North Korea, or countless other contemporary and historical examples, folks living in a tyrannical society typically cannot escape the visage of their beloved leaders. This is not to say that Obama is or will be a dictator, but the parallels raise interesting questions.

The practice seems particularly common among leftwing dictatorships, though not exclusively so, whether they be communist or populist. Still, I wonder why this is and have come up with an hypothesis of sorts.

A common trait among most leftwing ideologies is a rejection of individualism for collective identity. The self is not the most important identity, the community is and it is typically represented by the state. But while the state may be the most important identity, they are hard to identify with at an emotional level. Enter the charismatic leader.

The leader provides a human face to represent the state, itself representing the community. The people can then emotionally adopt the leader as identity, since they have none of their own. This is why these leaders are capable of being so intensely loved by many while also being so cruel. Once you’ve made that emotional investment, the leader becomes unquestionable.

It is disturbing to see any folks, however many they may be, look at Obama in this light. He is not the state, and the state is not, or ought not be, our identity. We are free individuals.

Thursday

22

December 2011

0

COMMENTS

Forget the 99%, Occupiers Representing Just the One: 'Me'

Written by , Posted in Culture & Society

The Frontier Lab conducted an in-depth look at the motivations of Occupiers. The investigation looked at the values behind their protest, and what they found was almost universal selfishness:

While their rhetoric might decry crony capitalism and bank bailouts, their values reveal self-centered and fear-based motivation.

…their values focus on their own individual fears and desires, rather than on those of others.

…Many in the media and political worlds have made inaccurate conclusions about the Occupy movement because their assessments, so far, have been based on the movement’s superficial attributes – its signs and its slogans – rather than its participants’ values.

By concentrating solely on the surface level pronouncements of the Occupy movement, one can easily be fooled, as the core Occupiers’ motivation hinges less on the political ends than on emotional, self-directed fulfillment.

This would certainly explain what happens in this video from Accuracy in Media, as donations for the real homeless are solicited from an Occupy camp (Hat-tip: Big Government):

“We take.” Indeed.

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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