Comments Posted By Foobarista
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Actually, neither is the party of personal empowerment, although you'll find somewhat more "empowerment-minded" politicians in the R party than the D party, which is all about bureaucrats, lawyers, race-baiters, and sundry free-lunchers.
Nowadays, I mostly vote R, since the L party is a waste of time - and I see bible-thumpers as less of a threat than the various factions in the D party.
This in many ways makes me weird, since I'm culturally more in tune with the socially liberal D's than some rock-ribbed conservative R's, but I figure it's easier to keep bible-pounders out of my bedroom than statists out of my pocket.
I'd prefer for the lot of them to go away, but am well aware that politics is like war: you may not be interested in it, but it's definitely interested in you.
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 15.10.2009 @ 13:22
I want the smartest guy in the world - that I can trust to be on my side - to be negotiating with our competitors in the world.
There _are_ educated elites that I can trust, but I require more of them than just Ivy League credentials and the ability to wordsmith.
Part of my problem with much of the elite is it has such identical life experience: born to upper-middle-class and up parents, right kindergarten, right high school, did a zillion checkbox activities, went to Ivy or other "top school", got good grades while doing a bit of drugs to "be different", get law degree or PhD, work for a government agency, BigLaw, advocacy outfit, or Wall Street, become a senior bureaucrat or politician. They read the same authors, eat the same food, vacation in the same places, and are exposed to the same media.
Very few of them have much life experience outside this "pipeline".
Does this define "smart"? Certainly those who make it to the end of the pipeline are "smart", in the IQ-test sense of the word. But they have a very narrowly-defined view of things, and rarely are exposed to life-informed opinions of those who aren't in the pipeline.
The problem is that, even though both parties are dominated by people who went through the pipeline, the country is still clearly going to heck in a handbasket. This systemic failure makes people increasingly question not just individuals in government, but the pipeline itself.
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 14.10.2009 @ 13:45
For my part, the scary thing is that the "citizen of the world" types are now in charge. If you're a citizen of the world, you aren't a citizen of a particular country, and regard "love of country" as a form of dangerous, probably racist tribalism. Also, "citizens of the world" may do things that they see as "globally" necessary, but which weaken the country that happens to host them at the moment.
Given that I see exactly these sorts of arguments from writers popular with "elites", I find it hard to dismiss them out of hand.
If you hate everything about your country, can you love your country?
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 14.10.2009 @ 11:13
INTELLECTUAL CONSERVATISM ISN'T DEAD: MAINTAINING A CONSISTENT PHILOSOPHY
How about a few simple things, that could be used to inform policy:
1. The government should consume no more resources than necessary to do its functions.
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 13.10.2009 @ 13:44
2. Its functions should be limited by a fairly restrictive reading of the Constitution. In particular, the "Commerce Clause" should not be interpreted as an enabling act for vast government intrusiveness.
3. "Social insurances" should exist, but should be measures of last resort for individuals.
4. Government policy should avoid entrenching existing business models or structurally guarantee groups wealth beyond what the market should provide. Whenever regulatory regimes are blocking innovation, the regulatory regime should be re-examined and discarded.
5. Businesses that are failing must be allowed to fail quickly so that resources are not overly invested in failure but are redeployed elsewhere. If the government is involved, it should be to help displaced workers, not to prop up dying businesses.
VIRTUAL DEBATE OVER IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM
Sorry to jump in and hijack things...
American presidential assassins are nuts who get lucky. (Fortunately) there hasn't been enough of them to correlate them to "political climate", but to date the only one that's arguably like this is John Wilkes Booth. Other assassins and attempts have been of the "lone nut" variety - and their politics often has little to do with much of anything beyond nuttiness and weird fringiness.
Friedman is way too much into the "I heard from some guys at the bar" school of "first-person" journalism, where the plural of anecdote is definitely data. His column the day before said China was going to be a green superpower. His proof: he talked to a couple guys at a meeting.
As for Rick's post, my standing take is Iran wants nukes and will get them. There ain't squat we can do about it; the "international community" is irrelevant, if it means a bunch of Euros. The real "community" that matters is Russia and China, and they love having Iran (and Ajad's buddy Hugo) yanking our chain.
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 4.10.2009 @ 18:35
DOES THE WORLD LOVE US ANY MORE WITH OBAMA AS PRESIDENT?
The general consensus among people I talked to in China recently is that Obama is a joke, and his election repudiates democracy as a form of government capable of producing competent leaders.
I've always maintained that democracy's advantage isn't that it picks good leaders, but provides a way to get rid of bad ones. Even there, Chinese friends point out the numerous entrenched idiots in Congress as counterexamples.
It's hard to defend our system these days.
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 23.09.2009 @ 22:21
ANGRY IDEOLOGUES vs. THE STATISTS
I don't think we have many genuine 1930s-style statists in the US, but we do have people who see the government - or what they often call "society" - as a vehicle to achieve Great Social Things. Many lefties (and some righties) see the government as a benign, agenda-less entity that would run perfectly and reform society into a more pleasing form, if only the "right people" were In Charge. Sometimes, they pretend that the government, at least as an entity apart from society, essentially doesn't exist.
An interesting test is whether a person refers to the government as "we" or "they". Even in a democracy, the government isn't a "we" (unless you work for the government), and the various elements of the government will have their own agendas, which will often not be favorable to anything but itself.
I think that where things run off the rails for polemicists is when they mistake results for intent. American "statists" don't necessarily see a big state as a good thing by itself (although there are definitely some that do, on both left and right), but the things they want mandate a large, expensive, intrusive state, so they push for the expansion of its powers, resulting in a big state.
I think it's best to assume intentions are benign and to keep the focus on results.
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 31.08.2009 @ 15:10
LEARNING NEW THINGS CAN BE FUN
The problem is that Congress won't table the Republican alternatives. They won't even be presented in committee, much less put before the members for a floor vote. They actually tried early on in the healthcare debate, but the committee chairmen basically told them to fuggaboutit.
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 9.08.2009 @ 19:07
JUST LIKE THE BIRTHERS ONLY WORSE: LIBERAL CONSPIRACIES ABOUT HEALTH CARE REFORM
Part of this is what I call the leftist "Kansas syndrome", based on "What's the Matter with Kansas" book that was so popular with lefties in the mid 00's. Basically, it boils down to "who could possibly reject a free lunch? After all, it was paid for by evil rich guys?"
Since these free lunches are supposedly in these people's "class interest", they have to be idiots and are being fooled by the diabolical machinations of the evil rich.
The idea that they may have big-picture concerns about the destructive effect on the economy of high taxes and giant government is dismissed out of hand, since lefties don't themselves believe it.
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 6.08.2009 @ 12:33
And a disclaimer: I definitely resemble the middle-aged white guy remark...
Comment Posted By Foobarista On 2.08.2009 @ 16:04
