November 2009

Vol. 23, No. 10

Reflections

Some say ice — Sunspots normally peak and ebb on an 11-year cycle. But shortly after astronomers started keeping track of them in the early 1600s, the sun virtually stopped producing sunspots for a period of about 70 years. That period is known as the Maunder Minimum. Coincidentally, the Little Ice Age occurred during this lull.

Recently the sun has once again virtually stopped producing sunspots. I am not qualified to predict whether we are headed for another minimum, and I’m not qualified to say whether sunspots affect earth’s global temperatures (although the evidence looks pretty good to me), but I am rooting for Little Ice Age II, for two reasons.

First, I don’t want to see cities at low elevations devastated by rising oceans produced by melting ice. Second, I’d love to hear Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s explanation of why the heating bill for his mansion continues to climb. — Jeff Wrobel

Hard numbers — The company that created and administers the ACT college admissions test has just released the 2009 analysis of the nationwide results, and they are not encouraging.

The results show that while 67% of high school graduates are college-ready in English, only 53% are college-ready in reading, less than half (42%, to be exact) are college-ready in math, and less than a third (28%) are college-ready in science. In fact, less than a quarter (23%) are college-ready in all four areas.

This is about high school grads, please note. It doesn’t consider dropouts, who constitute a large percentage of students in most large public school districts. Nor does it consider high school grads who don’t take college admission tests, either because they are going straight into the work force or are going to junior college or trade schools.

The results are essentially the same as for last year (when only 22% of the test takers were college ready in all four areas).

Considering that the sample size here is large — about 1.48 million out of the 3.3 million eligible high school students (usually juniors) took the test — it is clear that our educational crisis continues.

Indeed, the figures are so disappointing that Bob White, head of the nonpartisan Alliance for Excellent Education, was moved to opine, “We’re not making the progress we need to be making. The only way you improve these numbers and get them higher is by improving your secondary schools.” Really, ya think?

But improving secondary schools requires more school choice, something Obama and the Democrats in Congress staunchly oppose. In fact, the only major educational initiative that these union-controlled hacks have taken was to kill the DC voucher program.

You can expect the primary and secondary educational system in America to continue to rot for years. — Gary Jason

Gunfight — The controversy about carrying guns in public is not new. In 1967, however, the political alignments on this issue were completely different. Many conservatives (and others) objected when the Black Panthers insisted on exercising this right in California. In response, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act banning the carrying of guns in public.

Many defenders of liberty have felt the need reflexively to defend the gun-toting citizens who have recently appeared at rallies. This is a mistake, or at least an incomplete response. A far more productive contribution to an otherwise futile debate is to emphasize privatization as a solution. We can find a just and efficient answer to the question only by treating this as a tragedy-of-the-commons issue.

Both sides have a point, but neither can ever be satisfied as long as thoroughfares, parks, and other venues for town halls or rallies continue to be government owned. When a venue is privately owned, the issue becomes a relatively simple one: the owner decides who can carry guns. The problem (to the extent it is a problem) arises only when we take private property out of the equation. In the absence of privatization, the controversy will never end until one side or the other forces its will over the commons through the brute force of legislation. — David Beito

Turnabout is foul play — No matter how much I try, I just can’t get excited about the Republicans in Congress opposing Obama’s healthcare reforms. Sure, they have correctly said it is too expensive and too socialistic. But like the proverbial pot calling the kettle black, the Republicans are hypocrites, as well as big spenders who frequently support socialist legislation, when it is their own.

How quickly conservatives forget that it was Republicans in 2003 that gave us the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (PL 108-173). Initially projected to cost about $400 billion (which is still $400 billion too much), it is now projected to cost over a trillion dollars.

Introduced on June 25, 2003, by the Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert and supported by the Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, this reform and modernization of Medicare passed the House (220–215) and the Senate (54–44) in late 2003 with overwhelming Republican support. In fact, it was Democrats who almost defeated this massive expansion of the welfare state. Only nine Republicans in the Senate and 25 in the House voted against healthcare reform in 2003.

Why are the Republicans en masse opposed to healthcare in 2009? Have the Republicans become libertarians, or are they partisan hypocrites without any real allegiance to the Constitution or the principles of liberty and limited government? I’m afraid it’s the latter. — Laurence M. Vance

Health is in the eye of the beholder — Overhauling the U.S. medical system will do absolutely nothing to improve the health of the population. American medicine is extremely good for acute problems and diseases, but when it comes to health maintenance, it’s next to useless.

Michael Moore, who is physically obese, intellectually dishonest, and philosophically unsound (what a pathetic combination — he should run for Congress), made the argument in his ridiculous movie that the average Cuban is healthier than the average American. That’s correct, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the healthcare system. The average Cuban isn’t healthier than the average American because his healthcare system is better. It’s a horrible, primitive healthcare system. The technology stopped advancing there back in 1960, and the doctors stopped learning new things in that year. Nothing has changed since 1960. But the average Cuban is in much better health than the average American.

There are two reasons for that: he gets a lot more exercise than the average American, and he has a much better diet, which is to say that he eats far fewer calories (and they are unrefined calories).

When things change in Cuba, so they have a diet like that of the average American and the same kind of transportation as the average American, the average Cuban will be in much worse shape.

People conflate the health of a population with a country’s medical system, when these things really have almost nothing to do with each other. — Doug Casey

Childishness — The handsome moron Van Jones resigned his job as Obama’s “green jobs czar” (technically, part of the White House Council on Environmental Quality). Jones had, in years passed, reportedly signed a “truther” document alleging that George W. Bush had orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, DC. He had also called all Republicans “assholes.”

Jones’s explanation for his resignation didn’t make much sense. He said that his critics used “lies and distortions” to attack him; yet he legitimized their complaints by quitting. The New York Times had to twist its prose into logic-defying gibberish (or even more so than usual) to spin its coverage sympathetically to Jones.

Van Jones is a trivial figure, who may already be forgotten by the time this issue sees print. But, for me, the take-away point from his 15 minutes of fame is that people in fairly high positions inside the Beltway believe childish things. That administrations as inept as W. Bush’s are able to control world events to provide causa belli. And that all members of an establishment political party share the same temperament.

I have a daughter in the 8th grade. She’s gotten past such stupid thinking. — Jim Walsh

For the children — As we go to press, our intrepid president is prepping to speechify the nation’s children in an address which, to extrapolate from his prior bloviations, will be tedious, mawky, and radiant with self-satisfaction. No change, then, from a normal session of government schooling. Yet the request that the kiddies set aside 20 whole minutes out of their day’s intense study in order to attend to Dear Leader’s words has sent many a school board to the soapbox, to announce their intended “boycott” of Obama’s speech.

Presumably their complaint is not the same as mine — that those 20 minutes would be far better spent inculcating economic and mathematical understanding through such activities as slinging dimebags or shooting dice — but rather a more general objection to the attempted indoctrination. (As a side note, it would be interesting to measure the overlap between those who support a speech boycott, and those who support daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.) Admittedly, there’s some credence to this charge: initial plans for the address included a Department of Ed handout that would encourage the children to “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.”

All the same, the fear is overstated, and there may even come benefits of enduring the president’s missive. Primarily this is because kids today, however ill-taught they may be, are almost without exception media-savvy: when even lower-class families have a hundred channels, it’s silly to expect that they will give more than five seconds’ consideration to a single talking head — a presentation format that was already on its way out when Max Headroom had his brief static-burst of glory in the late ’80s, and which is by now paleolithic. Hence the benefits: schoolchildren will be confronted with our latest political messiah, a man whose face has through sheer repetition become synonymous with “change,” and they will realize that the man behind the face is, like any other adult authority figure, deeply and utterly dull.

Meanwhile, a much more audacious attempt at indoctrination has gone underreported, and would completely have escaped notice if not for the vigilance of Patrick Courrielche. On his blog, Big Hollywood, Courrielche detailed how in early August he and perhaps a hundred other artists had been recruited by the NEA to listen in on a conference call intended “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda — healthcare, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”

Courrielche was skeptical of this attempt to enlist artists in what he perceived to be a propaganda campaign — a perception amply confirmed by the lead man on the call, NEA Communications Director Yosi Sergant, who noted that “Obama has a strong arts agenda … and has been very supportive of both using and supporting the arts in creative ways to talk about the issues facing the country. . . . now Obama is putting out the call of service to help create change.”

“Ask what you can do for your country”: if there is any dictum which sums up the beliefs of our leaders in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, it is this totalitarian call to national service — which Obama in his children’s sermon will certainly reference. This supposed imperative, after all, is a central component both of Obama’s special-interest leftism, and also of John McCain’s “national greatness” conservatism. In the conference call, it was presented in its most blatant form to these creators and taste-makers, most of whom as dutiful Hope-poster wavers could be expected to commit themselves unreservedly to the NEA intiative.

It may seem to many that trying to prevent the “politicization” of the NEA is like trying to shut the barn door after the horse has bolted. But, as Courrielche notes, in the 40-odd years the NEA has been in existence, he couldn’t find “a single instance of the agency creating or supporting a national initiative that encouraged the art community to address current issues under contentious debate.” And, unlike the technotards in charge of Obama’s inevitably awkward TV address, these artists are not ignorant of media; these are concert promoters, art directors, marketing mavens; moreover, these are street-artists, underground poets, independent journalists — this initiative is recruiting not only those who know how to get messages out in contemporary society, but also those whose status as “outsiders” make them indispensible in overcoming any lingering skepticism among their peers.

Consider too the other organizers of the call: aiding the NEA (in the form of Sergant) were representatives of the White House Office of Public Engagement; United We Serve; Rock the Vote; and Russell Simmons. This last is arguably the most influential man in American culture, a hiphop and fashion mogul who with a nod of his head can make an artist’s career. That’d be the carrot: the stick is that anyone refusing to participate could find funding hard to come by, as the NEA remains the single biggest source of artistic funding in the country. And, as shown by the direct links to Obama and his indentured-servitude campaign, any holdouts could also find themselves as political pariahs, denounced by their fellow conference-callers and shunned by an increasingly politicized arts community.

Several commentators have jumped from this point to backdoor evocation of Godwin’s Law, but one need not raise the ghost of Leni Riefenstahl to recognize that little good can come of yoking art to power. At best, the result will be a sort of cultural Keynesianism, extending the broken-window fallacy to aesthetic products. At worst, there will arise a de facto committee on un-American artistry, ostracizing those whose products are deemed insufficiently hortatory: observe the hatchet job done on John Mackey, whose Whole Foods stores are fixtures in campus and arts communities, for the crime of drawing on decades of corporate experience to offer Obama advice on healthcare reform.

This, then, is the real danger of Obama’s schoolhouse address: it’s political sleight of hand, drawing criticism for the indoctrination it is ill-equipped to deliver, deflecting criticism away from more subtle initiatives much better suited to propaganda. Don’t be fooled by spectacle: throughout his career, Obama has done his real dealings through public-interest and labor groups, under the guise of community organization. And for most of these dealings, there will be no Courrielche on hand to expose what’s going on behind the scenes. — Andrew Ferguson

Reach out and touchy feely someone — It is easy to be critical of how businesses have responded to the global warming alarmist agenda. Most firms have fallen over themselves promising to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, in ways that are economically impossible or that reduce their profitability — but not all of them have.

AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson recently listed a number of economically feasible ways to reduce CO2: greater reliance on telecommuting, web-based data management, online delivery of books and other informational services, real-time GPS systems that encourage efficient traffic flows, and dynamic electricity pricing with telecommunication links. Unfortunately, many of these good ideas will be blocked by various state and local laws. Archaic ideas of privacy limit informational exchange. Labor rules limit people’s options to work from home. Trade barriers restrict information outsourcing. These things reduce incentives to upgrade grids and impede creative proposals, such as Stephenson’s, that encourage more rational pricing.

However, Stephenson also supports popular, yet dubious, energy policies. AT&T plans to increase its reliance on alternative fuel vehicles. It is unclear whether Stephenson endorses the current subsidy policies that make wind energy and other less viable power sources possible. Government energy efficiency standards — for light bulbs, through E-Star programs for appliances, and so forth — are not free. They impose costs in terms of either price or product quality. After all, if consumers preferred the products, there would be no need for government mandates or ad campaigns. Granting energy conservation priority over other human needs may even exacerbate such serious problems as global hunger, as has happened because of pro-ethanol government policies.

Capitalism, by means of its dominant institution, the modern corporation, has done many things worthy of praise. Unfortunately, business has failed to market its virtues. Rather it has too often acquiesced to populist and political pressure regarding energy and other fields of politically correct policy. Businesses play defense, merely tweaking regulatory policies, at great cost to themselves. The telecommunications sector has suffered from overregulation of the grid and confused antitrust policies that limit rational reorganization, restricting AT&T and others’ ability to innovate creatively.

In “Creating the Corporate Soul,” a look at the history of corporate communication, Roland Marchand notes that not long ago AT&T was a leader in establishing legitimacy. AT&T promoted its communication networks as a social good, proudly asserting that it enhanced America’s core values of freedom, security, and fairness. AT&T produced brilliant ads during this period — the “Reach Out and Touch Someone” ad series extolling America’s egalitarian values and more recently, the prize-winning, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” illustrating a mobile phone resolving the problems of a working mother. The mobile phone, much like Samuel Colt’s revolver, had become a “great equalizer.” And, as Marchand mentions, other businesses followed AT&T’s example.

Today, AT&T still provides a healthy alternative to the apologetic stance of most businesses, but even it has succumbed to popular whims championed by its critics. Capitalism has yet to gain the moral legitimacy it merits, and that failure, if not soon addressed, will prove costly. — Fred Smith

Shut up, they explained — Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives discussed and subsequently passed the cap-and-trade bill, a massive new tax and regulatory regime intended to slow global warming by dramatically cutting U.S. emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). (Of course, India and China, which produce more GHGs than we do, have refused to join us in this act of economic hara-kiri.) But it has now been revealed that during the same period a brave researcher at the EPA, Dr. Alan Carlin, put out a report expressing reservations about the science behind the global warming hypothesis, and the EPA went to great lengths to suppress both the report and the author.

Yes, that’s right. President Obama, during his campaign, loudly trumpeted promises of transparency in governance, and an end to what he claimed was the politicization of science. But his administration tried to bury the nearly 100-page report written by Carlin and an associate in March. Carlin, by the way, has been with the EPA for 35 years, and is a senior analyst with the Agency’s National Center for Environmental Economics.

When Carlin’s boss, Al McGartland, was presented with the report, he emailed Carlin a command forbidding him from entering into direct communication about it with anyone outside the agency. In another email, McGartland said that since the EPA had already determined to issue its “finding” that carbon dioxide endangers the environment (a finding that did proceed to issue, in March), Carlin was to cease all inquiry into climate science.

But the report and the emails have just been outed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The report makes fascinating reading, and is available in full from the CEI website, despite the EPA’s attempt to quash it.

Since the release of the report, Carlin has been subjected to a concerted smear campaign. He is now labeled a “denier,” although he isn’t; he merely wants the science of global warming to be reexamined before we make any major economic changes. His credentials have also been questioned. After all, his detractors say, he is “only” an economist — despite the fact that his undergrad degree, from Cal Tech, is in Physics.

The points Carlin makes should have been discussed in the debate over the cap-and-trade bill. They are trenchant and compelling. He notes that the EPA’s most recent position on global warming (set forth in March in its Technical Support Document, the “TSD”) was the basis for the cap-and-trade legislation approved by the House and awaiting action in the Senate. But the EPA’s position is based upon science that is more than three years old, in a field (climate science) that is rapidly changing. He points in particular to six major areas in which the EPA’s science is out of date.

First, as he notes, during the past 11 years, average global temperatures have dropped, while both the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide and the amount of worldwide carbon emissions have steadily gone up. Second, the consensus among climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is causing the number and intensity of hurricanes to increase has broken down. Third, the consensus among climatologists that global warming it causing Greenland to lose its ice cover has now collapsed. Fourth, the TSD was formulated before the current worldwide recession hit, with its consequent dramatic slowing of the increase of carbon emissions. Fifth, a paper that came out this year strongly questions the claim that there is a strongly positive feedback of water vapor from increasing carbon dioxide levels — a claim that lies at the heart of the vast majority of computer models that predict global warming. In fact, the data indicate a decrease of water vapor from an increase of carbon dioxide.

Finally, another paper, also out this year, argues that the solar data upon which the TSD rests are faulty. Indeed, the paper concludes that solar variability can explain up to 68% of the increases in global temperatures.

Dr. Carlin’s report deserves to be discussed, and I hope it will be discussed in the Senate debate. As an economist, he undoubtedly understands the massive economic costs of cap-and-trade. And as a free American, he certainly doesn’t deserve to be silenced. — Gary Jason

Pat and Adolf — Patrick Buchanan stirred up a fuss with his column, “Did Hitler Want War?”, which was published on Sept. 1, the 70th anniversary of the day German panzer divisions rolled into Poland. Buchanan argues that the answer is “no” — an opinion that outraged a number of commentators. I wasn’t outraged, but I wasn’t impressed, either.

Buchanan argues that Hitler invaded Poland because of his appetite for Danzig, a city-state between Germany and Poland, and a protectorate of Poland. Buchanan does not mention Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland before that, or the annexation of Austria, or the deal at Munich for the Sudetenland, or Hitler’s breaking of that deal in his conquest of the rest of the Czech lands. Danzig was not a demand that stood alone. It came at the end of a string of demands, and a large broken promise.

The Allies had carved out Danzig (now Gdansk) from German territory at the end of World War I. Buchanan calls it “a town the size of Ocean City, Md.,” which is grossly inaccurate. Danzig Free State contained 759 square miles (half the size of Rhode Island) and 366,000 people, double the population of today’s Providence, R.I.

True, Danzig was 95% German-speaking. It had been cut from Germany without its consent and, Buchanan says, “Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.” Buchanan’s column implies (but does not say) that had Danzig been returned, Hitler would not have ordered the invasion of Poland. The problem with this argument is that when Hitler did go to war, he didn’t just order the conquest of Danzig, and stop there; he ordered the conquest of two-thirds of Poland. His actions told the story. Danzig was a pretext. He wanted Poland as Lebensraum — living space — for the German people.

He was not devoted to peace. In his first years in power, he built up the German military as much as he could, and during the 12 years of his regime, he ordered the invasion of every country that touched Germany except Switzerland. This is not a leader who “didn’t want war.” No doubt he didn’t want all the countries fighting him that eventually did, but he was radically aggressive, belligerent, and willing to risk war.

Some of this is hindsight, of course; but Buchanan is also arguing from hindsight. He avoids discussion of the real problem by running after a straw man — the argument that the West had to stop Hitler because he aimed to take over the world. That was said by a lot of people, including President Roosevelt. It was nonsense, and it’s easy for Buchanan to knock it down. Germany was not strong enough to think seriously about taking over the world. It was a land power only, and its land power crested at Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. It had no navy except for U-boats and a handful of capital ships, which the British sank or chased back to German-occupied ports fairly early in the war. The German army could not get across the Atlantic. It couldn’t even get across the English Channel.

In the second half of his column, Buchanan knocks down the “take over the world” thesis. But his demolition job doesn’t get him where he wants to go. He set out to prove that Hitler didn’t want any kind of war, and if that’s so, the obvious question is, “Then why did he start one in 1939?” And two years later, in invading the Soviet Union, why did he start another one? — Bruce Ramsey

The long wake of the law — An odd and perplexing matter has come up in the Netherlands. A 13-year-old Dutch girl, Laura Dekker, wants to sail around the world — alone. And her parents have given her permission. The state, however, has intervened to delay, and perhaps prevent, Ms. Dekker’s departure.

I should mention that the young lady is already an accomplished sailor. She was born while her parents were sailing around the world, and spent the first four years of her life at sea. She has sailed solo as far as England.

According to reports, Laura’s parents tried to dissuade her, but eventually gave in to her pleadings. Apparently the mother, a German woman, was more opposed than the dad, but as the parents are in the middle of divorce proceedings, she feared losing contact with her daughter. Of course, she may lose the child forever if the latter actually attempts the circumnavigation.

Personally, I think it’s too a big a job for a 13-year-old, no matter how good a sailor she may be. We know that brain development, including the area that controls judgment, is not complete before about age 25. There are good reasons why we prevent minors from doing certain things. On the other hand, a 17-year-old English boy just completed a solo voyage around the world. At 14, he crossed the Atlantic alone.

Is the state justified in intervening? The parents, who are not deranged, decided Laura could attempt the voyage. Their decision may be wrong, but should government then step in?

A Dutch court decided it should. Once Laura’s proposed voyage became known publicly in the Netherlands, the Dutch equivalent of Child Protective Services obtained a court order blocking her from setting off. The girl has been put under the supervision of child care workers for 60 days while a court-appointed psychologist determines her ability to withstand the stresses the voyage would entail. The judges even considered removing Laura from her father’s home, but decided she could remain there under state guardianship.

Now it seems obvious to me that the state has a right, and indeed an obligation, to intervene when children are physically or sexually abused in the home. I even accept (though with some uneasiness) the state’s right to compel very sick children (i.e., minors) to undergo medical treatment against their parents’ wishes. But this case disturbs me. Shouldn’t Laura’s parents, who are expert sailors, decide whether to allow their child to sail around the world? It’s not as if Mom and Dad planned to place a toddler in a boat and then push it out to sea. So what justification is there for the involvement of social workers, psychologists, and judges?

We may believe that in this case Mom and Dad are using very poor judgment, but should the state get involved, and should it have the right to do so? I would like to know what other libertarians think about this. — Jon Harrison

All the president’s ads — I’ve just seen two recently released public service ads, both starring our president. Before seeing these I was concerned that he wasn’t getting enough air time.

In the first, he takes a moment from his busy schedule to share with us his insight that fathers should spend time with their kids. For those eager to follow the president’s recommendation but simply unable to understand what to do, he is kind enough to provide specific examples. It seems that fathers can “play ball, visit a park, or go to the zoo.” He assures fathers who are concerned about the time commitment that “it doesn’t take that much time,” which must be true because he has two girls himself and despite running everyone else’s lives seems to find time to spend with them.

The second ad shows him extolling the virtues of voluntarism, going so far as to mention the great volunteer efforts of the astronauts who got us to the moon. I had assumed that the astronauts were actually paid military personnel, doing their jobs. My error.

I understand that upcoming ads will show the president providing pointers for children learning to tie their shoes and the proper technique for stacking plates in the dishwasher to optimize their shine. At this journal’s deadline, rumors that a 24/7 cable All Obama channel is in the works have not been confirmed, but requests to the FCC for call letters WOBMA have been denied as duplicative. — Ross Levatter

The dissent of man — “Dissent is patriotic.” I detested that phrase from the moment I first heard it — much as I detested the equally inane phrases “the audacity of hope” and “change we can believe in.” Though, mercifully, that first, once ubiquitous, phrase is now rarely heard, I find it coming to mind.

First, I am not so sure that dissent and patriotism are naturally equivalent. The two do not equate in the way this phrase was used by Democrats who opposed the Iraq or the Afghanistan war; they simply sought to avoid questions about any alternatives they might offer. The way this phrase is written, and was uttered by Democrats, implies that dissent in and of itself is patriotic. In that regard, the phrase makes no sense. Among the definitions of dissent are “disagreement, withholding assent, to disagree with the methods, goals, etc., of a political party or government.” Dissent is simply an act. If, perhaps, it was written and uttered as “I dissent from this war because it is against my fundamental ideals, philosophy, and beliefs,” then it would have made sense. Of those who were against the war(s), it seems that only libertarians made such cogent statements.

Second, among the definitions of dissent is “to disagree with or reject the doctrines or authority of an established church” and “separation from an established church.” Regardless of one’s opinion of former President Bush, no one could plausibly maintain that his supporters treated him as an object of religious devotion. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the current president’s supporters. The fervor of many of Obama backers — especially those in the media — borders on religious fanaticism. I feel comfortable stating that many of us are indeed dissenters from any religious aspects of this presidency.

Third, almost everyone is aware of the tea parties and the more recent town hall meetings. The town hall meetings appear to have been intended as staged forums for politicians to tell American citizens what shall be done about healthcare. Any of the numerous video clips available online reveal how offended the politicians hosting these gatherings were by any expression contrary to what they wanted to tell the audience. Though I have yet to be able to attend a town hall meeting, I love what’s happening, The American citizenry seems to be awakening from its stupor, no longer complacently accepting the repeated infringements of its freedoms in the form of laws, regulations and ordinances (which like the healthcare reform proposal, are cast as for our own good).

Change is happening. Whether Democrats wish to “believe in” this change is immaterial. Citizens are engaging the government that is supposed to be by the people, for the people. And, this change is forcing the Democrats to expose their own hypocrisy. Now that they hold the reins of government, Democrats no longer see dissent as patriotic — they are firmly opposed to it.

Finally, I still don’t know if the phrase “dissent is patriotic” is accurate. But, frankly I don’t care. What I do know is that active, intense dissent from “the methods, goals, etc., of a political party or government” which is fundamentally at odds with ideals of liberty, is absolutely necessary — now more than ever. — Marlaine White

Past, prologue — President Obama’s early-September address to the nation’s public school children stirred up a fair bit of controversy. Right-wing commentators expressed justifiable concern about what the content of the speech might be, and shock that the Department of Education had provided associated lesson materials to schools that included questions like “Why is it important that we listen to the President?” and “Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?” Throw in the presidential hagiographies that many students were assigned to read prior to the address, and it’s understandable that parents might worry their children were being prepped for political indoctrination.

Commentators on the left rushed to assure the nation that the president would address the importance of education, not hot-button political topics, and pointed out that, after all, George H.W. Bush had given a similar address to the nation’s schools in 1991 — no matter that Democrats complained then just as Republicans complain now.

In fact, the two episodes, taken together, are a fine example of team mentality in action. In both cases, partisan teammates of the current commander in chief defended the president’s address, while opposing teammates derided it as an abuse of power. Both teams now ignore the arguments they made 18 years ago, because their positions are reversed.

Being a member of neither team, I find it amusing, in one sense, to see through the rhetoric and recognize it as the dissembling and obfuscation it is. In another sense, it’s dismaying to realize that because everybody is busy cheering for his own team and demonizing the other one, few people stop to consider the danger in setting up any politician, under any circumstances, as an inspirational figure for the nation’s children.

The nature of politics is so conducive to corruption and the abuse of power that every politician — in any position, from any party — should be regarded, at best, with unflagging skepticism. We may be stuck with such people littering the public sphere, but we should save any inclination toward hero worship for people who’ve earned it outside the realm of the parasitic class. More than anything, we should teach the nation’s children to doubt the motives and promises of people who wield power, and in the rare case in which a politician proves their suspicions wrong, they can be pleasantly surprised. — Eric D. Dixon

Waterworld — I live on an island that is part of an atoll. An atoll is the coral ring around the place where a larger island used to be. Over the eons, the island eroded away but left behind the much sturdier reef, which is very similar to a solid band of concrete. Coral grows only under water, so at the time when this atoll was formed, the land I’m sitting on was at least a few inches under water at low tide. Right now, this land is a few feet above water at high tide.

Why is it above water now? Every coral isle dotted around the 154-mile circumference of the ancient island is the same height above water, and this is true for just about every atoll in Micronesia. It’s not likely that tectonic forces lifted the whole thing out of the water while keeping everything else level. The only reasonable conclusion is that sea levels were once much higher than they are now. From where I’m sitting, I’d say they were roughly 10 feet higher. And they had to be that high for quite a long period of time for the very slow-growing coral to build to this point.

While I’d hate for global warming to submerge my home, it does seem that would be the more common state of nature. — Jeff Wrobel

Private practice — It was the classic slip-n-crunch. I stepped on wet tile in my bare feet and the next thing I knew, I was dancing an impromptu salsa that ended with a thud on my wrist. Ouch! I’m usually a wait and see kind of person when it comes to medical care, but this felt like a break.

I don’t have a regular physician here (I live part-time in two different states), so I thought about going to the local emergency room to get an x-ray, but ERs are designed for major trauma and I was just nursing a sore wrist. I didn’t need Shostakovich when the neighborhood piano teacher would do. So I asked the ER receptionist if there was a walk-in clinic in the area. She told me about a clinic in Yonkers and gave me the phone number and address. Good for me, I thought. I’ll save money and time.

At the walk-in clinic I asked how much the visit would cost me. (I have a high deductible that wouldn’t kick in for something like this.) “That depends on your income,” the receptionist replied.

“Let’s just assume I’ll be paying the full amount,” I told her. “How much will it be?”

“I don’t know,” she insisted. “It all depends on your income.” I looked around and realized that I was in a welfare clinic. All I wanted was a private, for-profit, ambulatory urgent care center, the kind where you can go for minor illnesses and injuries without needing an appointment.

The answer to my next question was just as discouraging: “How long will it take to have it x-rayed?”

She looked at the clock. “First you have to see a doctor. And Radiology closes at 12:30.” It was already noon. I gave up on the x-ray, bought a soft cast from the drug store, and immobilized the wrist myself.

A few days later I was lamenting the lack of non-welfare walk-in clinics in our county. My friend told me about one near her home. My wrist was still hurting, so I went to the urgent care center she recommended.

There I was greeted by a smiling receptionist who took my information and offered me a seat. Ten minutes later I was ushered into an examining room, where I hadn’t even opened a magazine before the nurse practitioner walked in, examined my wrist, and sent me to the Radiology Center down the hall. Although it was a separate business, I didn’t have to fill out additional forms; all of that was handled by computer. Ten minutes later I was back at the clinic, and five minutes after that the N.P. was giving me instructions for treatment and sending me on my way. Total time? Less than one hour.

I’m a big fan of nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants. They are highly trained professionals who can do just about everything a medical doctor will do during an initial visit. They can diagnose illnesses, treat simple fractures, suture wounds, and prescribe antibiotics. They work closely with large medical practices and can refer a patient quickly to a doctor or hospital in case of serious illness or injury, often securing an appointment faster than the patient could do alone.

Nurse practitioners and physicians’ assistants usually spend more time with the patient, and they charge less. One N.P. I know charges a flat $25 per visit, and she schedules a full half hour for each patient so she can spend some time talking about lifestyle and nutrition. She doesn’t take insurance, but who needs to file with an insurance company when the total charge is barely more than a co-pay would be?

Medical care is one of two services I know of where we are expected to buy without asking the price. (The other is a funeral.) This factor is the bane of the third-payer system, and the primary reason that healthcare costs continue to skyrocket. Increasing the variety and availability of health care by encouraging the expansion of alternative providers will do more to reduce costs than any government program.

We haven’t had a free market in health care for over 100 years. We have to get government out of the way and let a true free market do what it does best: increase the quantity, quality, and availability of goods and services. A combination of high-deductible insurance to pay for catastrophic illnesses and injuries coupled with health savings accounts to pay for day-to-day expenses is the best way to achieve the best health care for the most people at the lowest cost. — Jo Ann Skousen

Dash it all — A lot of people are upset these days. The federal takeover of healthcare, pending inflation, text-messaging while driving: you name it, we’ve got things to be unhappy about. As for me, I’m unhappy, too — about the demise of the emdash. It’s dying faster than newspapers.

The emdash is the equivalent of an emphatic comma or parenthesis. According to the “Chicago Manual of Style,” it is used to amplify or explain (see example above). It’s much more powerful than the puny endash, which is used mainly for connecting numbers, as in “Duke beat UNC 64–63.” (Both are good crossword-puzzle words, however.)

But no one knows how to make an emdash in Word. It’s tricky; you have to type two hyphens without spaces, and the dash doesn’t form until you’ve put a space after the second word. (There’s also the technique of going to the symbol menu item, but that takes time — and where is it, anyway?)

It’s easier to type a space and that little bitty endash followed by another space. And now that publishers are simply “inputting” authors’ Word manuscripts, even genuine published books (the latest, “After Tamberlane,” by John Darwin) are riddled with those little floating flecks surrounded by space. Pretty soon the emdash will be completely forgotten. Even crossword-puzzle writers won’t have it to kick around anymore. — Jane S. Shaw

Warring paradigms — Anthropologists and sociologists tend to view the world in terms of communities; they emphasize the way in which society shapes how individuals interact with one another. Economists and psychologists tend to view the world in terms of how individuals affect society. But are these perspectives so different?

Ronald Coase, F.A. Hayek, and other economists display a rich understanding of the cultural context in which individuals interact. Indeed, Coase sees the market as the set of cultural and legal rules that allow individuals to conduct voluntary exchange with one another in society.

These thoughts are triggered by “Missing Persons: A Critique of Personhood in the Social Sciences,” by the late Mary Douglas and her colleague, Stephen Ney. In this volume, Douglas critiques the dominance of homo economicus in the political world (she wrote this book before the recent resurgence of political collectivism). She portrays economic man as “selfish and unmannered, brutish as Caliban, naive as Man Friday.” But is this the view libertarians really hold of man?

To some extent, it is. Libertarians do talk of “methodological individuals.” America does not go to war with Iraq; rather, some people in power commit troops to that theater. And Randians eschew any concept of mankind that is not self-centered.

Coase and many libertarians believe the purpose of policy is to steer the cultural and legal institutions that reduce transaction costs in, and thus barriers to, voluntary exchange among individuals. This approach to economics is certainly “social,” yet, it is also profoundly libertarian, in a sense. Perhaps the term “classical liberal” better captures this societal element of libertarianism. Reducing transaction costs liberates the energy and genius of otherwise isolated individuals, allowing them to interact with others.

We at CEI are seeking better to understand the ways in which individuals react differently in the political world of “rational ignorance” from the way in which they react in the private world of self-interest. Since the modern world is roughly half political and half private, it is critical for us to understand it and to craft our policies and their marketing accordingly.

Now, does anyone know of any social psychologists or cultural anthropologists with some understanding and sympathy for individual freedom? If so, I’d appreciate an introduction. — Fred Smith

The color of stupidity — Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who led more than 500 U.S. mayors to sign a promise to abide by the Kyoto Protocols, and who is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, has lost his bid for reelection. In the August 18 primary, after seven and a half years in office, he came in third behind two political novices.

In the March Liberty, I had a Reflection about Mayor Nickels. During a big snowstorm last December, his people had refused to salt the streets. Salt was said to be bad for the salmon in Puget Sound. This is a “green” city and an 85% Democratic city, but voters wouldn’t excuse having nearly unusable streets for a week. In their next chance to vote for him, three-quarters voted for somebody else.

The snow was the most recent thing, but it wasn’t the only thing. There is a matter of a highway, old US 99, which bypasses downtown along the waterfront. In the 1950s, this highway was put into a double-decked concrete viaduct. In 2001 an earthquake left the viaduct damaged but still usable, and in 2002 Mayor Nickels proposed to tear it down and replace it with a tunnel.

The arts people and the urban-design people had always hated the viaduct. Most of them welcomed the tunnel, no matter what it cost. So did Seattle’s downtown establishment, because a tunnel would make the waterfront nicer, and unblock some views. The tunnel was, of course, the most expensive option. The state highway people wanted to build a new viaduct for a billion or so less. The progressives wanted to knock down the viaduct and replace it with bus service — the “surface transit option.” The conservatives (there are a few of those in Seattle) wanted to prop up the old viaduct with a bit of steel and keep using it for another 30 years.

Gov. Christine Gregoire, Democrat, offered Seattle money for a new viaduct, but not enough for a tunnel. Nickels held out for a tunnel. He asked the state’s two Democratic senators to get money in Washington, DC, on the argument that Route 99 carried international cargo, making the tunnel part of a transportation project of national importance. Actually the extra cost of a tunnel rather than a viaduct was not a transportation project but a beautification project. It wasn’t of national importance; it wasn’t even of suburban importance.

Well, the senators couldn’t get the money. Even the Bush people weren’t that stupid.

To strengthen the mayor’s hand against the governor, in March 2008 Seattle had a public vote. The ballot said viaduct, yes-no; tunnel, yes-no. Mayor Nickels was hoping for people to vote yes for a tunnel and no for a viaduct. They voted no on both: 55% no on a viaduct and 70% no on a tunnel. He said he was happy with the vote because the viaduct had been clearly rejected.

Enter the Discovery Institute, a conservative thinktank that champions Intelligent Design, which refers to human origins, not roads. Discovery also promotes transportation projects — big ones. Here it argued that the mayor’s tunnel was the wrong kind. His was a cut-and-cover project. That was too messy. It would tear up the waterfront for seven years. What was wanted was a bored tunnel, deep, like the one under the English Channel. A bored tunnel wouldn’t disrupt the city. Others picked up the argument (not crediting the Discovery Institute, which is untouchable by Seattle liberals).

And so Nickels cut a deal with the governor to have a tunnel bored from one end of downtown Seattle to the other. The state was to pay any cost overruns. The legislature codified the deal, except that it changed the part about overruns: Seattle would pay for those. Mayor Nickels laughed this off, saying the state’s proviso was unenforceable. And there, on August 18, it stood. No other vote of the people had been held other than the one in 2008, in which 70% had said, “No tunnel.”

Mike McGinn, one of the two candidates who knocked Nickels out on August 18, made “no tunnel” the big issue of his campaign. He is a Green, and because he favors the surface transit option, he won the votes of the left. By pointing out again and again the tax liability of the tunnel, he also, I think, got most of the votes of the right.

There was another thing on the Seattle ballot on August 18: a 20-cent tax on disposable grocery bags, whether paper or plastic. The idea was to “incent” people to use cloth bags, which would not foul the environment either in their manufacture (paper) or disposal (plastic). The City Council had passed the tax, Mayor Nickels had signed it, and the two candidates who beat him both supported it. But the plastic-bag manufacturers had collected signatures for a referendum and had run a campaign to annul it. In mailers and TV ads they argued that the law was punitive, that it exempted big retailers like Wal-Mart, and that it hurt the poor. The grocery chains, except 7-Eleven, gave them little help. But they spent $1.3 million — a fact trumpeted by opponents — and they beat it. The vote was 53% no. The bag tax was defeated, having never gone into effect. — Bruce Ramsey

Behind closed doors — In past issues of Liberty I’ve mentioned the various real estate scandals involving key members of Congress, such as Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY). There’s another such affair, one that’s being largely ignored by the major media, which seem to function primarily as propaganda organs for the Democrat Party.

The Countrywide Financial Corporation, which was such a large player in the recent mortgage crisis, had a special VIP program, officially called “Department 850” by Countrywide but nicknamed “Friends of Angelo” by company employees (after Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide’s controversial CEO). This program existed to give sweetheart loans to powerful government officials, including many of those supposedly having oversight responsibility for the mortgage industry.

Now, you would think that, given the massive mortgage meltdown from which the country still struggles to recover, Congress and the mainstream media would be on fire to discover precisely who got “Department 850” loans, under what conditions, and why. After all, Countrywide generated a lot of the dicey paper that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bought, which cost the taxpayers dearly.

To his credit, Rep. Darrell Issa, ranking Republican member of the powerful House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee, has been fighting to have the committee subpoena the damn records, so we can all discover which of our virtuous solons got these loans. But he is being stymied by the chairman of the committee, Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY), who has refused to issue the requisite subpoenas.

Why on earth would he do that? Because he was himself a Friend of Mozila.

Yes, it turns out that Rep. Towns received a VIP loan — actually, two loans — from Countrywide. Towns denies that he knew he was getting special loans, but his claim seems dubious on the face of it. Not only were the interest rates considerably lower than the going rates at the time, but both of the mortgages had a mailing address that referenced “Room 850” at Countrywide’s headquarters.

Let us accept Rep. Towns’ claim that he didn’t know he was getting special treatment. Fine. Then what does he have to hide? Why should he block the acquisition of records, so that the oversight committee can, you know, like, oversee them?

Towns’ actions reek of corruption. But they don’t much interest the news media. — Gary Jason

Guarded optimism — I’ve been in India for a week and I have to say, I have never felt more optimistic about my homeland.

The reason has absolutely nothing to do with the government (which is extraordinarily corrupt) or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (who is perhaps the most spineless human being I have known).

I attribute my optimism to technology. Telephony, internet, and other media are bringing enlightenment to some of the most backward parts of India.

Of course, India is still a pathetically poor, violent, corrupt, self-centered, lawless, abusive, and extremely superstitious country. Unless you spend your time here only in five-star surroundings, you will be literally and figuratively molested almost nonstop. However, technology is changing the culture, bringing in awareness, and rather rapidly. I cannot help being amazed at the small civilities now developing, fruits of modern commercial customs. The changes are happening, in their small ways, in so many areas, and the interactions between those areas, that I doubt it is possible to predict what India will look like in 20 years.

It is Black Swan country. But it will be a very, very different country, and in my opinion mostly much better.

I have just been to the gym here in Bhopal. It has expanded to perhaps four times its former size. The machines are all new and modern. And still I could not find a machine to work on. This has all happened in the last six months.

But that’s the little picture. In the big picture, what is happening is a sea change in the attitude of middle-class Indians. They have grown increasingly polite and sophisticated. I had thought that India’s historical baggage would make it difficult for it to change. I was wrong. Indians in their early 20s are hardly distinguishable from those in the West, and are perhaps more optimistic and focused. I have talked and talked for the last week with all possible people. I can see that the English language and India’s better interaction with the West will make it possible for it to change rather rapidly, once those now in their 20s come to positions of leadership.

I visited Morena, a small town in central India. Violence has a long and deep history in this part of India (as it has in the rest). The local culture is about “might is right.” That belief runs so deep in this area that you would be stupid to negotiate with most people, based on what you would call “logic” and “rationality.” The belief system is not very different from what you perhaps see in parts of Africa: “I want this so I will take it.” You have to experience this to understand it.

In Morena, kidnappings are common. Murders and rapes are used to settle scores. You stole from me, so I will rape your daughter, the logic goes. This area is well-known for human trafficking. Just 25 years back, it was known for the open auctioning of women. And often such things are supported by the local democratically elected bodies. No wonder that I see “democracy” as a fanatical western religion.

Today’s newspaper says that the government did virginity tests on girls that it helped get married. This is unconstitutional, but the people in the government are so appallingly stupid that they did not even realize that what they were doing was unconstitutional.

Corruption in India seems to be worse than it ever was, but then, I have just been to the driver’s licensing office.

The changes of the past two decades have been attributed to Manmohan Singh, democracy, and liberalization. I do not believe in this attribution. I attribute the changes of these decades to media, telecommunication, and the general technological revolution.

I normally don’t like media; I have no interest in what runs on it. But if you understand the time and space in which Morena exists, even the stupid programs on TV have been culturally revolutionary. They have brought a lot of awareness among the people. In Morena, people now resist, go to the media, and fight back. Children, increasingly educated in English, move out to bigger cities, to work in big companies, and then bring back new ideas, to give to their parents. This may be setting off a chain reaction.

In my gym in Bhopal, there is a girl who wears a Che Guevara T-shirt. Every cell in my body wants me to ask her if she ever cared to ask her parents what socialism really means. But then, if you understand the time and worldview that a lot of the country exists in, even a lazy interest in the likes of Che is a sign of a significant improvement in the thought process. This is a move from a lifestyle of absolutely no ideas to that of a few.

Four hundred million SIM cards have been sold in India. Although this is believed to mean that there are now 400 million subscribers in India, the real figure is much lower. Everyone I know has more than one SIM card. There are even cellphones with a multi-SIM-card option. When I lived in Delhi, a call to Bangalore would cost $2 a minute in today’s real terms. It would have taken a huge bribe to get a phone connection; property prices were often valued on the basis of the connection. Now the same connection is virtually free, and the call costs perhaps one-half of 1% of what it did before.

So low are the cellphoning costs that most people don’t seem to know what they are. This has made it possible for the poorest people to keep themselves informed. Because of these low prices, the growth rate in cellphones will continue for a long time. I did not appreciate the revolutionary effect of this on India’s isolated villages. But even Morena is showing signs of changing.

But the biggest change I have seen is that in the attitude of people below 25 years of age. They might as well have come from a different culture. They do not have the utter corruption of my parents’ generation or the confused and conflicted minds of my generation. Of course I am only talking about a small section of middle-class youth. But now these folks ensure that other people will line up. Until two years back, I had never seen this happening. In Bhopal, these youths actually stop to give way to the disabled or the old. A few years earlier it was normal to hear the old and disabled being called such and asked to hurry up or move out of the way. And this seems to be forcing the parents of these youths to mend their ways.

To me, an amazing change is starting to happen, which will in the final analysis have more consequence for growth than anything else. I can see a change that I could not have predicted when I was here only eight months ago. I had not expected that given the aid of technology, culture could change so rapidly.

So, despite the fact that I see huge short-term social problems, I am no longer pessimistic about India. I see hope, growth, and very good possibilities of making money. So optimistic have I grown that I have just taken an Indian cellphone connection. I have also, with some difficulty, renewed my Indian driving license — a process which shows there is still a long way to go before corruption will cease to be a part of every transaction. — Jayant Bhandari

Modestly proposed — There are so many rumors about healthcare reform going around these days, it’s hard to know what’s true. For instance, I just heard about a new program coming out from the Department of Health and Human Services called Cash for Geezers. It tries to eliminate the huge costs paid by the government for Medicare patients in their last month of life and deal as well with the growing shortage of organs needed for transplant.

If your grandparents are on Medicare and meet certain other qualifications (Alzheimer’s; other forms of dementia; send more than two complaining letters per year to their congressman; don’t contribute to the DNC), you can turn them in to the nearest university-affiliated medical center for $4,500 cash!

There, the Geezer brain is smashed so that no one else can turn it in for cash (a clever cost-savings technique that guards against fraud and abuse). The transplantable organs are then harvested and reused. The financial savings to the government, especially after the passage of universal coverage, is tremendous. Those on the transplant list benefit too. As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “It’s a real win-win. Young people get cash to help stimulate the economy; Medicare costs fall; transplant waiting lists go down. Old people no longer have to suffer for a month only to die.”

This program makes as much sense as most government programs, and more than many. So you can understand my confusion about whether it has actually been proposed or is just a brainstorming . . . so to speak . . . effort of some policy wonk at the Center for American Progress (likely a wonk with bills to pay, whose grandparents no longer send birthday gifts). — Ross Levatter

Smashing our way to prosperity — President Obama says that the energy legislation he sponsored, a cap-and-trade scheme along with subsidies for new energy technologies, will create 3 million new jobs. Thus he displays once again a knowledge of economics on par with the average teenage ninja turtle, another pop icon of virtue if not of economic literacy.

You can say a lot about cap-and-trade, depending on where you stand in the global warming debate. What is clear is that it will act like a tax on energy, which will ripple through the economy. What is also inarguable is that the government has a lousy track record for picking winning technologies (read: companies). Job creation? Since when does increasing costs throughout the economy create new jobs, even if you throw subsidies at a few favored companies to make up for it? The answer is, only in the wacky world of Obamanomics.

But why stop at cap-and-trade and subsidies? The president should hire an army of patriotic hooligans to break every window in America, then a second army of glaziers to fix them. Voila. Another 3 million jobs, maybe six. House Bill 2556: Break It and Fix It.

Since Obama defers to Pelosi to flesh out his economic initiatives, expect the following enhancements:

  • No homeowner will be allowed to fix his own windows (gotta protect those new jobs).
  • Only unionized glaziers need apply (gotta reward those Democratic Party stalwarts).
  • Anyone earning less than $50,000 can claim a tax credit for repair costs, whether or not he owns a home, or a window, or, for that matter, pays taxes (gotta be fair).
  • Income earners above $250,000 will pay the cost of repairs (or the theoretical value of the repairs) for everyone.

    • There you have it, an economic policy for the Age of Obama: deficit spending, financial stimulus, bailouts, subsidies, higher energy costs for all, higher personal taxes on the well-off, a stew of politics, ideology, and class warfare, devoid of economic literacy. — Bob Marcus

    Nixon with charisma — As Obama’s healthcare socialization bill faced a surprising surge in opposition, he began to resemble Dick Nixon ever more eerily. We beheld yet another Obama persona: NixoBama.

    Perhaps the most famous self-defining remark by NixoBama is what he said to a group of fans in Philadelphia during his campaign: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” But what really brought out NixoBama was the sight of angry constituents showing up at various Democratic congresspeople’s “town hall” propaganda sessions, intended to grease the wheels for the American National Health System (brought to you by your friendly neighborhood post office). Everywhere on the internet were videos of statist Dems sweating as angry constituents peppered them with questions about how much Obamacare would cost, whether it would require rationing, and so on.

    NixoBama and his flunkies in Congress were furious. They called these protesters such epithets as (quoting from a DNC official, Brad Woodhouse) “angry mobs,” “mobs of extremists,” and “rabid right wing extremists.” The Democratic powers-that-be claimed that these people were organized by the vile insurance industry. Nancy Pelosi immediately reported that the anti-Obamacare protesters were carrying swastikas, and both she and Rep. Steny Hoyer branded the protesters “un-American.” Rep. Brian Baird (D-Vancouver) said that the protesters were using Brown Shirt tactics. NixoBama even set up an email address, flag@whitehouse.gov, so that bien pensant citizens can narc off those filthy traitors who question socialized health care, or spread lies about it. You have to admit this is a clever twist: an automated enemies list.

    I couldn’t resist sending an email myself, reporting a particularly egregious liar about health care: Barack Obama himself. No doubt I can expect a tax audit in a month or so.

    That Obama and his backers are doing this is doubly hypocritical. First, Obama started his career as a “community organizer.” Obviously, this community organizer supports organizing only leftist communities.

    Second, Obama, during his campaign, urged his followers to confront people and politicians of opposing views. For example, in a campaign speech in Elko, NV, he said, “I need you to go out and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republicans. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” But nobody is allowed to do the same with him or his punk brigades.

    This NixoBama is certainly an amazing piece of work. — Gary Jason

    Che-town — A friend recently gave me a copy of an article from the Russian publication Pravda. It was a commentary about Americans willingly rolling over for socialism. Though recent popular mobilization inspired by dissent over Obama’s healthcare proposal gives me hope that we can prevent the conversion of our free society to a socialist one, it remains an uphill battle.

    Over time, American citizens have gradually traded liberty for eccentricity. The epitome of this unequal exchange is seen on college and university campuses across America. Anyone who has occasion to frequent them can attest to the following. Our undergraduates have a penchant for expressing their “individualism” (as I have often heard students call it) and “freedom of expression” in their attire. In expressing said individualism and freedom, virtually all of them wear the same clothing. Some are goth. Some are punk. My favorite — and, by far the most common expression of “individualism” — is the ubiquitous “Che” shirt. “Che” shirts are so prevalent on American campuses, I’ve often wondered if these shirts are handed out at student orientation.

    I am not a prude or a generational snob. And I am not picking on college and university students. They simply serve as a useful example of a larger problem of self-deception in our (at least for now) free society.

    Our society seems to have lost the very important distinction between individualism and idiosyncrasy. Citizens are mistakenly equating a definitional conflation for an ideological, philosophical, political outlook. Talk about false consciousness! The difference between mere idiosyncrasy and individualism as a philosophy or ideology is huge. Economic, philosophical, social, and political theories and ideologies of individualism maintain that individual initiative, action, and interests should be independent of governmental or social control; that the source of rights and duties originates in individuals, and not in the social whole; and, that the individual and not society is the paramount consideration or end. Idiosyncrasy is an individual’s peculiar physical or mental constitution; a characteristic, habit, or mannerism peculiar to an individual — an eccentricity or quirk, such as the blue-streaks I wore in my hair as an undergraduate, or my one legal colleague’s habit of always wearing polka-dot ties.

    The Rule of Law (as I have discussed in previous reflections) has played a significant role in this unequal bargain. Citizens have continually forfeited control of their own lives by allowing greater government control over their lives in the form of ever increasing laws and regulations. As a society, we seem to have allowed a greater (and welcome) social tolerance for eccentricity and formerly “abnormal” behaviors to substitute for actual freedom.

    Students manifesting their freedom of expression or “individualism” by sporting “Che” shirt uniforms rarely, if ever, seem to truly contemplate ideologies of individualism, like libertarianism. I have also found that many of these students, contentedly clad in their uniforms and satisfied with idiosyncrasy mislabeled and misunderstood as individualism, very seldom consider what they cannot do — from campus speech codes, to smoking bans, to restrictions on academic freedom — and the larger implications of that. They have given up so many liberties, and all they got was a lousy T-shirt. — Marlaine White

    How minimal? — I regretfully recognized, long ago, that my philosophic views weren’t, well, sexy.

    I recall, for example, taking a course in Existentialism as an undergrad. I wish I could have bought that rap — you know, life is meaningless, so just engage the world, choose your values and your life project, and bear bravely on. Select a course of action, and don’t worry, no course of action can be proven or justified logically; you just need to be authentic!

    Brother, that was real leather-jacket philosophy, philosophy for tough guys. If some chick asked you (as they sometimes did back then) if you would respect her in the morning, you just shouted, “Existence precedes essence, babe! Deal with it!”, and it was done. You were in like Flynn, or at least like Sartre.

    It never clicked for me. I could never figure out why committing yourself to an action made it right. Couldn’t I authentically choose to be a drug addict or a Nazi? It all escaped me, even though I love Paris immensely.

    Matters are the same for my political philosophy. I really wish I could be an anarchist. To say you want a minimal government sounds so wimpy. And to say you are a “minarchist” sounds just weird. Why not be bold and say to hell with all government? It seems so much cleaner and bolder, tougher, more masculine. It is so conceptually clear and consistent.

    Of course, a philosophy or an ideology can be conceptually clear and consistent, not to mention “masculine,” and still be wrong, vile, or even outright nuts. Need I mention Nazism or communism?

    But I can understand the appeal of the no-government mantra. When you say you favor a minimal government, the obvious challenge you are going to hear is, “Well, once you start thinking that a little government is necessary, on what basis, and at what point, do you draw the line? How can you argue with a modern statist liberal who just wants more of what you yourself think is necessary?” It would appear that a minarchist inevitably falls prey to a Sorites paradox: if you say that X amount of government is good, why not X plus some small amount more? And then why not a small amount more, and so on, until you have socialism or worse?

    One important tool for making the case for minimal government is empirical data on the relationship between government size and economic growth. There are quite a few economic studies showing that both too little and too much government stifle the growth of prosperity, and seeking to quantify that tradeoff.

    A really excellent recent contribution to the literature has just been released by the Institute for Market Economics (the IME), one of the preeminent neoliberal economic thinktanks in Eastern Europe (it is based in Bulgaria). The article, “What is the Optimum Size of Government?”, is by economists Dimitar Chobanov and Adriana Mladenova and is available for download from the IME website.

    The article notes that, at present, the average size of governments, measured as the total of government spending at all levels as a percentage of GDP, is about 41% for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. The United States, alas, is right up there at over 37% — much larger than many Americans realize, supposing us to be a country that doesn’t believe in Big Government.

    The authors then do an extensive literature survey. (The survey alone is 17 pages; it is appended to the paper so that the reader can rapidly check out the prior studies.) They note that most prior studies had shown a statistically significant and markedly unfavorable relation between the size of government and economic growth.

    Of course, they note, the “quality” of government enters in as well, but even when you are dealing with a relatively good government (minimally corrupt, for example), big government hurts the economy. Get it much beyond its core function — protection of people’s property and liberty, including national defense, provision of a stable legal framework, and promotion (not necessarily provision) of very basic public goods — and government lowers prosperity.

    As to the sweet spot, i.e., the optimum size of government, the prior studies ranged rather widely, from as low as 17% to as high as 40%. Most of the estimates, however, fall in the range of 20% to 30% for the optimal size of government. That means that the OECD governments, including our own, are almost all too large.

    But the authors were able to refine the estimate considerably. They found that at the 95% confidence level, the optimal level of government spending is 25%, using the standard model. And they suggest that it is probably considerably lower, given limitations on the data, such as the fact that the data are skewed because rent seeking is pervasive even in countries with smaller governments (“rent-seeking bias”).

    The paper makes interesting reading. It helps minarchists specify the size of government they prefer. Unfortunately, it still won’t make minarchism particularly sexy. — Gary Jason

    Managed constituents — In the Town Hall meetings about medical care, the Ron Paul movement has been in the thick of it. At the meeting I attended, held on Aug. 12 in Everett, WA, by Rep. Rick Larsen, Democrat, several people flew the yellow Gadsden flag with the snake, and one man wrapped himself in it like a cape, holding his hand up to be called upon. Well, they didn’t call on him.

    The meeting was held outdoors in a small baseball stadium, with the congressman standing near home plate. Both sides — for and against Obamacare — showed up. Nearly 3,000 people attended, sitting on bleachers, many of them holding signs. Opponents had handmade signs, such as these:

    National Healthcare=National Suicide

    National Care is Rationed Care

    No Govt run “take a number” healthcare

    Preserve Freedom: Join a MOB

    No to Socialism

    My Life, My Death, My Business

    Health Care Is Not a Right

    The other side had professionally printed signs supplied by the unions and by Planned Parenthood. But many on the left were more radical, and had their handmade signs, too:

    Private Insurance Companies ARE Death Panels

    Put Single Payer on the Table

    At one point Larsen measured the two sides by eliciting cheers, and declared the crowd evenly divided. It was not; there were more opponents. That was also apparent in the people called on to speak. The congressman’s staff tried to make it random, and most of the people called on were critics.

    The Paul sentiment was clear when one man stood up and said that Larsen had an enviable job, because he got “to work with my personal hero, Ron Paul.” Some in the crowd cheered at that, some whooped, some hooted, and some laughed. No other Republican politician was mentioned by any of the questioners.

    The Paul supporter said he had two questions. The first was whether Larsen would support Paul’s audit-the-Fed bill. The second was whether there was anything in the Constitution that authorized the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance.

    The second was the better question, at least for this forum. Larsen answered the first (no) and called for the next question. Shouts broke out.

    “Answer the other question!”

    “What about the Constitution?”

    He ignored them, answering the questioners selected by his staff and not the ones shouting at him. But a few questioners later, his staffer picked a woman who said her husband was a libertarian, and cared about that unanswered question. “My question is,” she said, “where in the Constitution do you see a mandate for health care?”

    Larsen replied, “There is no mandate for health care in the Constitution. There is no mandate for the Air Force in the Constitution.” In other words, don’t worry about it. He said that constitutional questions are up to the Supreme Court (and might have added that the Court would no doubt follow the precedent of Helvering v. Davis, 1937, in which it approved Social Security on a vote of 7–2).

    Opponents asked other questions. Said one man, “Is there any example of government running things better than the private sector — I mean, anything?”

    “Medicare,” Larsen said. There were some hoots at this, but not too many.

    A woman asked the congressman if he believed people had a right to health care. She thought they did not have such a right.

    “I don’t know the answer to that,” he said.

    Rep. Jim McDermott, the leftwing Seattle Democrat, would probably have said yes. A longtime supporter of single-payer, McDermott had signed on to a “Medicare for all” single-payer bill. Larsen told the crowd, “I don’t support a single-payer system.” When a leftist from Radical Women, Seattle, spoke in favor of one, Larsen said, “I’ll pass your comments on to Jim McDermott,” a polite reminder that she was not in his district.

    A man said that Larsen should read “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare,” an opinion piece by CEO John Mackey that had appeared in the previous day’s Wall Street Journal. The man noted that the piece had begun with a quotation from Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

    “I agree,” Rep. Larsen said. “That is a problem with socialism.”

    When David Arnold Bishop, an independent contractor from Snohomish, Washington, said, “I can’t live the way I live unless I’m free,” Larsen said he agreed with that, too.

    Larsen urged everyone to be polite and was polite himself. Knowing there would be acrimony, he had begun the meeting by having a high-school girl sing the national anthem — “one thing we can all agree on,” he said. Larsen is a skilled politician. He is also a fairly sure vote for Obamacare, when and if it reaches the floor of the House. — Bruce Ramsey

    Overinflated fears — You’ve all heard them at cocktail parties, the inflationary cognoscenti.

    “So, Ted you made 8% on your investments this year. Well, let me remind you, my friend, that since inflation ran at (let us say) 3%, you only made 5%”

    Dumb! It all depends. Mainly on two things.

    First, the accuracy of the inflationary figures. Economics in general is hostage to numerical accuracy. (They just recently figured out that the CPI is as flighty as your pet cockatoo. Energy included? Groceries, taxes, cab fares in Yazoo City?) Besides that, there’s got to be a huge political bias in a number that affects 10 million retirement checks.

    Second, the fact that in reality all of us have our own individualized index, depending on what we buy and sell. What is good for me is bad for you, or vice versa. Our market baskets of goods and services are all different. Sure there’s overlap, but let gas prices skyrocket — so what? I’ll still be sitting on my patio reading and watching the rust grow on my ’02 Mercury sitting in the driveway. And college tuition — that inflationary dragon can continue to breathe fire; I ain’t got no kids to eddicate. The housing market flips and the average annual price scoots up 10%. Who cares? There are no houses on my get list.

    And there is no universal number that applies to all of us. How could it be otherwise? Memories of such anomalies as the Weimar Republic disaster mesmerize economists, and highly distort our investment judgments. Sometimes 8% is 8%. I say we’ve vastly overstated the danger. And even when the roar of the government printing presses breaks the sound barrier, it’s magnifying the price of all my possessions, is it not? — Ted Roberts

    First thing we do . . . — On August 25, on the legal blog Volokh.com, a 4th-Amendment expert and conservative law professor, Orin Kerr, published a post entitled “Explaining the Unpopularity of Lawyers.”

    It led, in less than 24 hours, to over 180 comments, as the many lawyers who haunt Volokh.com responded — some seriously, others capriciously.

    I read them all.

    But I’m still not clear. Why does the unpopularity of lawyers require explanation? — Ross Levatter

    It’s not easy being green — Not since Jimmy Carter has a president managed to bungle things so badly in such a short time. Indeed, he bids fair to eclipse the wretched Carter’s failures, which is probably why Carter admires him.

    Not content with the healthcare debacle, BungleBama is leaving his mark in the energy arena. His truly sophomoric vision of replacing fossil fuels not with nuclear power (which he shuns, despite his campaign promises), but with wind, solar, and biofuels, is blowing up in his face.

    Consider the Van Jones debacle. Anthony “Van” Jones was Obama’s choice to be the “Green Jobs Czar.” He escaped scrutiny, because as a presidential czar he doesn’t have to be vetted by Congress, and because America’s news media (a.k.a. the Fourth Estate) are of course giving Obama a complete pass on everything he does.

    But the counter-media took notice of Obama’s strange appointment. It turned out that Jones was a race-baiting leftist nut-bar of the first rank. Where to begin? He was videotaped calling Republicans “assholes” for being less enviro-screwy than he is. He also signed a petition for the 9/11 “Truthers,” who allege that George Bush was complicit in the attack upon the World Trade Center. All in all, a remarkable choice for a president who ran on a platform of healing partisan divisions.

    Jones was also on record as describing himself as a communist — in the 1990s! I mean, talk about crazy timing; you choose to become a commie after communism collapses. God, what a buffoon.

    He has also publicly pushed his view that “white polluters” have been “steering poison” towards — guess whom? — black folk. This ties in with his remarkable sociological analysis of the Columbine High School killings. To quote Jones, “You’ve never seen a Columbine done by a black child. Never. They always say, ‘We can’t believe it happened here. We can’t believe it’s these suburban white kids.’ It’s only them!”

    As these and other incidents became known (it has now been discovered that the American public knows how to Google someone, even if the soi-disant “journalists” in the mainstream media don’t) Jones resigned over the Labor Day weekend.

    But Obama’s dream of a “green jobs” explosion (which was supposedly Jones’ area of “expertise,” as if one could have expertise in a domain that is void of content) looks raggedy, anyway. Consider several recent reports.

    First, the release — to complete lack of interest by the mainstream media — of a major study by the Energy Information Administration. This work, dryly entitled “Energy Market and Economic Impacts of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” estimates that the cap-and-trade bill Obama and Pelosi rammed through the House of Representatives in June will by itself raise electric power prices by a massive 20% within 20 years (over and above other projected increases).

    Unlike prior reports critical of the bill, including one by CRA International that estimated it will cost 3.2 million jobs over the next 15 years (the subject of a previous Reflection of mine), this is one report the Obama administration is finding hard to dismiss. The Energy Information Administration is not some private thinktank; it is part of the U.S. Department of Energy.

    Second, a story from The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 3), carrying the sober headline “Spanish Solar-Power Collapse Dims Subsidy Model.” It seems that the Spanish government has thrown in the towel about its massive solar power program, which only recently Obama touted as an example of how green energy is economically beneficial.

    As of last year, fully half of all new solar power installations were located in Spain. But by the end of 2008, as the world recession hit that country, the government decided it could no longer afford its prodigious subsidies for such an economically ludicrous technology. Indeed, solar power companies around the world have had to slash jobs dramatically.

    Finally, another recent WSJ article (Aug. 27), with the clever title “U.S. Biofuel Boom Running on Empty,” explores the collapse of the so-called “biofuels revolution.” “Biofuels” is a term that encompasses three types of fuel: biodiesel (produced from vegetable oils and animal fats); “next generation fuels” (produced from plants such as switch grass that are not foodstuffs); and ethanol (produced here from corn, and elsewhere — in the sane world — from sugar cane).

    But two-thirds of the American biodiesel capacity is now idle, because of the fall in oil prices. For example, Green Hunter Energy, the country’s biggest biodiesel refiner, ceased production several months ago and is contemplating selling a recently built plant.

    Meanwhile, the companies that produce or plan to produce next-gen biofuels are finding capital virtually impossible to get. No doubt hindering their progress is the fact that Cello Energy (which was expected to supply nearly three-fourths of the government-set target for biofuels produced from cellulose) has been found guilty in federal court for defrauding the investors.

    This is all on top of the widely acknowledged failure of corn-based ethanol to prove economically viable. Thanks to Midwest congresspeople, corn ethanol productions get tremendous subsidies, so it will likely stumble on, despite the fact that it has driven up food prices and proven to be ridiculously costly as a fuel.

    The obvious way to deal with global warming and dependence on foreign oil is a rapid expansion of our nuclear power industry, together with a dramatic expansion of drilling for oil and gas in areas of the country foolishly put off-limits for human use by insane environmentalist regulation. But Obama refuses to consider, much less do, either one. — Gary Jason

    The Kennedy curse — It is said that people make gods in their own likeness. If that is true, what kind of people created Edward Kennedy (1932–2009)?

    Kennedy’s biological father was a goatish, pro-fascist crook whose politics were chiefly motivated by Irish-American nationalism and the desire to make one or more of his children president, for no other reason than that they were his children. His mother was a twisted religious bigot. (“Dad was the spark,” Teddy recalled; “Mother was the light of our lives.”) Their children were all, to one degree or another, seriously damaged by their domineering parents. One of the children was lobotomized by a father disgusted by her mental “slowness.” The others were deformed by the assumption that the only way to amount to anything was to achieve power over others. A more vicious premise can hardly be imagined. It is fortunate that at least one of them — John F. Kennedy — knew better, although his life was still grievously influenced by his father’s political ambitions and his lessons in sexual aggression.

    Teddy, youngest male of the family, was a person of average intelligence and below-average capability, darkly overshadowed by his older brothers. He got Cs at prep school but was admitted to Harvard because his family was rich. At Harvard he was caught cheating and expelled. At the University of Virginia Law School he was ticketed for reckless driving four times and received the kind of punishment that the children of wealthy fixers generally receive.

    In 1962, after a one-year career as assistant to the district attorney of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, he was elected to the Senate of the United States, for no other reason than that his father was rich and his brother was president. He was 30 years old, and he held the job for the rest of his life.

    In 1969, he hosted a party on Chappaquiddick Island, MA, for some girls who had worked for his brother Robert’s presidential campaign the previous year. Drunk, he took one of the girls out in his car and drove the car off a bridge. While his companion struggled for life in the overturned vehicle, Kennedy extricated himself, ignored the lights in a nearby house, fled across the island, swam an inlet, and returned to his hotel. In the morning, other people discovered the car and the dead girl, and Kennedy finally reported his association with the event, after soliciting advice from the kind of statesmen who flock around money and power. He went on television to deliver the first of many lachrymose speeches in which he urged people to support him because his brothers were dead. And Massachusetts voters did support him. They reelected him eight times.

    During the following years, Kennedy repeatedly ran or threatened to run for the presidency, convinced that a person who had no work experience, no relevant education, no analytical ability, no sense of morality, no qualifications of any sort except his association with a wealthy family, had a duty to become the nation’s chief executive. He failed ignominiously. Eventually he gave it up, having discovered that even so incompetent and unpopular a figure as Jimmy Carter could beat him handily. Strangely, political pundits were incapable of reaching the same conclusion. For the rest of his life they considered Kennedy the idol of the American people.

    After magnanimously relinquishing the presidency, Teddy devoted himself to his four favorite pursuits: drinking, eating, womanizing, and pushing people around (“legislating”). Like other people who know just enough to understand that there is always someone dumber than they are, Kennedy played the demagogue to an audience of poor people and Hollywood liberals, making violent speeches in which he denounced all who opposed his policies as racists and sexists. Then, in private, he cuddled up to Republican politicians who had no qualms about selling out their party. Together, they produced “compromise legislation” that (imagine!) gave Kennedy virtually everything he had originally wanted. (The press lauded this as “bipartisanship.”)

    Kennedy’s constant desire was to increase the power of government. Always he advocated state power, from the days when he demanded universal conscription to the days when he demanded racial quotas for hiring (“quotas, shmotas” was his contemptuous dismissal of those who objected to this patent inequity) to the days when he moved heaven and earth to impose government healthcare on an unwilling populace. He could not be troubled to read a book, consult experience, or consider the logical implications of the things he wanted. He just wanted them, because they gratified his ego, no matter what the costs might be to others. He had money, so he wanted power. He was a wicked man, a thousand times more wicked than the man who holds up a 7-Eleven, desiring only the cash that’s in the till.

    In 2008, Kennedy developed brain cancer. Instead of resigning the duties he could no longer fulfill, he kept on being a senator, using his remaining days to demand more government, plan a heroic funeral, and try to get his home state to change its electoral laws so that a clone could be inserted in his place. He died on August 25, before he could do any more harm. President Obama, in his funeral oration, called him “the greatest legislator of our time” and “the soul of the Democratic Party.”

    Soul. Can it be that this ranting, bloated, redfaced drunk was the soul of anything?

    It staggers the imagination. Yet this was the hero of the academics and the intellectuals. This was the organism over which National Public Radio claimed “the nation is in mourning.” This was the entity that prompted Yahoo News to run a headline in this form: “Throughout history, Kennedys have grieved losses in public” — as if the Kennedys had, like gods, existed from the dawn of time, making spectacles of themselves to mortals and reveling in their attention.

    All of this is embarrassing to contemplate. But the biggest embarrassments are the teachers and commentators, the political leaders and self-proclaimed idealists, who created Edward Moore Kennedy in the image of their highest aspirations. — Stephen Cox

    Where’s my guillotine? — Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died in late August. His passing brought forth the usual prefabricated obituaries and reverent balderdash. A few, lonely voices pointed out that the arc of the man’s life — from cheating in college to depraved indifference to a young woman’s death to a failed marriage to unseemly abetting of his nephew’s indictable offenses — was not something decent people should emulate.

    Kennedy’s politics were, of course, orthodox urban statism. Reflexive, unexamined. No surprise there; he represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate.

    But neither his politics nor his shoddy personal life was what made the man so loathsome. What did?

    The feeble-minded television pundit Eugene Robinson stumbled around the point when he said — as a compliment, apparently — that Kennedy played the part of a prince well. What is this, the Grand Duchy of Fenwick?

    The flabby, dissolute, venal brother of iconic popular figures was a “prince.” That’s why I loathed him. And why I loathe the likes of Eugene Robinson. Off with their heads! — Jim Walsh

    He’s outta here — Tuning in the Red Sox game on the evening of Aug. 26, I was confronted with what I had managed to avoid all day — the death of Teddy Kennedy. I had made a point of not looking at the morning papers or turning on any cable news programs (especially MSNBC and CNN) in order to avoid the overwrought displays of mourning for that bloated excuse for a statesman.

    The Red Sox organization, however, went all-out to honor the blob. The flag was at half-staff; the PA announcer read a long, saccharine tribute to the man; a moment of silence was observed. All this for a guy who was expelled from Harvard for cheating, used his connections to avoid combat during the Korean War, and left a woman to drown after driving his car off a bridge.

    What really struck me about the Sox’s tribute was a line in team owner John Henry’s encomium. Kennedy, Henry wrote, “shaped the lives of millions.” Well, perhaps he did. Certainly he threw plenty of money at people’s problems (real or imagined) during his very, very long career in politics. I may have been one of the few members of the viewing audience who went cold at the words. Imagine a single legislator, elected by the voters of one medium-sized state, “shaping” the lives of millions of Americans. Be it for good or ill, do we want one man to have such power? In Kennedy’s case, of course, it was largely for ill.

    The senator’s martyred brothers, whatever one thinks of their politics, had courage, and President Kennedy deserves to be honored for getting us out of the Cuban missile crisis without a nuclear war, and then ending nuclear testing in the atmosphere. But Teddy? A limousine liberal par excellence, an inebriate, a cheater, a man who fled the scene of an accident while a woman was drowning — this excuse for a man deserves burial at Arlington? Bah! I say good riddance. — Jon Harrison

    Robert Novak, R.I.P. — It is fashionable to scorn Robert Novak (1931–2009), the political journalist and television commentator who died on August 18, a victim of one of the several grave illnesses that plagued him during the latter part of his life.

    Modern liberals hated Novak for the cynical way in which he exposed the cynicism of their social projects, the heartless way in which he revealed the heartlessness of their humanitarianism. Modern conservatives feared his mordant wit, his never-concealed assumption that they were mostly provincial hacks, like the liberals, although they came from another province. Many libertarians distrusted him because he was only a “libertarian conservative.” What was that, anyway?

    The libertarians ignored the fact that Novak’s motto was “Always love your country but never trust your government.” Like the modern liberals and conservatives, they refused to appreciate the fact that Novak was the smartest journalist in Washington. He had a virtually unmatched ability to think for himself, so naturally he failed to please most people, most of the time. But he usually hit whatever target he aimed at. On the typical Washington “insider” show (“Capital Gang,” for instance), the conversation went like this:

    Establishment media liberal: “Insiders tell me . . . The New York Times got it exactly right . . . The experts agree . . . This is a good bill — not a perfect bill, but a bill that will bring this country into the 21st century . . . I know that Neanderthals like Novak may disagree [smile, eyebrow lift, and snort from Novak] . . . “

    Establishment media conservative: “It’s obvious that something must be done . . . The nation demands action, and rightly so . . . Nevertheless, the devil is in the details . . . The bipartisan amendment now being drafted by Senator Smurf remedies most of the problems that Novak and other reactionaries have been orating about [angelic smile from Novak] . . . Insiders tell me . . . The experts agree . . . It’s important to reach a viable consensus . . . “

    Novak: “As everyone knows, or ought to know, this bill is a complete disaster . . . It will increase the national debt by roughly 5% . . . It will cause a massive loss of jobs . . . No one is really in favor of this turkey except the fanatics and the lobbyists for groups that plan to profit from it, so it will probably pass, unhappily for the republic . . .”

    Establishment media liberal and establishment media conservative: Momentary silence, accompanied by hateful glances. Nervous, though condescending, chortles.

    Moderator: “Well, now we’ve heard from Robert Novak. As usual, Bob [amicable sarcasm, as if to a retarded boy], you’re the only one who’s right.”

    But he was. And that’s why people tuned in to those shows. It wasn’t to watch the $500,000 a year ignoramus from The New York Times or the wry little Oyrish humorist from PBS; it was to watch Bob Novak, the Prince of Darkness, who got that name because of his educated pessimism about the pretensions of this country’s political leadership, a subject he always understood much better than the pundits he encountered.

    Novak wrote a nationally syndicated column for 45 years. He was a pioneer of the television talk show. But it’s his autobiography, “Prince of Darkness” (2007), that will keep his memory alive. I reviewed that book when it came out, and I don’t want to repeat all the things I said back then (visit Liberty’s website and look for the June 2008 issue). But let me ask you, How many autobiographies of Washington journalists have you read? That few? Why? Could it be because you’ve found that these people normally write like the hack politicians they cover, as opposed to reveal?

    Novak didn’t hesitate to disclose the facts, about other people or about himself. He withheld information only when he thought innocent people would be damaged. He depicted most of the political functionaries and almost all the presidents he knew as brazen liars or astonishing fools (usually both). He reached similar conclusions about the people who ran for the presidency and failed. In addition, he depicted much of his own life as folly, with particular attention to the amazing quantities of liquor he guzzled before deciding to stop being a drunk.

    He told his life story with the kind of detail that almost no memoirist ever includes, right down to the amounts of money he received for his writing and his television appearances. It has been said that people are much more willing to discourse about their sex lives than to hint at the size of their bank accounts; but Novak, again, was the exception. He showed himself changing from drunk to sober, from agnostic to Christian, from modern liberal to libertarian conservative, and he did so without any hint of self-righteousness. Describing his 1998 baptism, for which Senator Daniel Moynihan acted as a sponsor, he quoted Moynihan as joking, “Well, Bob, now that you’ve become a Catholic, when are you going to become a Christian?”

    Novak had a real and often hilarious sense of humor. He had a large knowledge of American history and an encyclopedic knowledge of how things work in America. He had genuine insights about what we piously call Our Political System, and he expressed his insights crisply and cogently. Few of his thoughts were original, and some of them were, in my view, dead wrong; but they were never stereotyped, never motivated by a desire to reach a consensus with either the Ins or the Outs. He was original, and that’s a lot to say about anyone. — Stephen Cox

    Rose Friedman, R.I.P. — When Rose Friedman died on August 18 at the age of 98, the chief theme of the obituaries was the close partnership she had with her more famous husband, Milton Friedman.

    As far back as 1962, “Capitalism and Freedom,” a path-breaking book based on a series of lectures by Milton, included the words “with the assistance of Rose Friedman” on the title page. “She pieced together the scraps of the various lectures,” Milton wrote in the preface, “coalesced different versions, translated lectures into something more closely approaching written English, and has throughout been the driving force in getting the book finished.”

    Given today’s attitudes, one might wonder, if she did all that, why wasn’t she named coauthor? In later books such as “Free to Choose” and “The Tyranny of the Status Quo,” Rose was, indeed, coauthor. But the real answer to the question is that their partnership was based on a division of labor, one that suited them both.

    Rose had been an excellent graduate student at the University of Chicago, praised by the prominent economist Frank Knight, for whom she was a research assistant. But she never finished her dissertation. And once she and Milton were married (in 1938), they were in agreement that she would place the care of her children above her career as an economist. Thus, there was never a question of “whose career came first,” she wrote in the Friedmans’ 1998 joint memoir, “Two Lucky People.”

    For those aware of today’s frantic cross-country marriages and difficult “spousal hires” in academia, this peaceful and cooperative coexistence between two tremendously talented people may seem very mid-20th century; and indeed it was. “In part this attitude on my part was probably a reflection of the times,” she wrote in her memoir. “Women’s lib was not yet on the horizon.”

    But there was more to it than that. “From the beginning,” she wrote, “I have never had the desire to compete with Milton professionally (perhaps because I was smart enough to recognize that I couldn’t). On the other hand, he has always made me feel that his achievement is my achievement.” And she was less comfortable in the limelight than he.

    Yet, although Milton Friedman might have won a Nobel Prize without Rose, one of the activities that brought him the most fame, the “Free to Choose” documentary series on PBS, might never have happened without her. When the opportunity arose, Milton was reluctant. He thought of himself as a writer influencing economists, not a spokesman on a public television series. But Rose disagreed and persuaded him to accept the project. She was associate producer, and as Milton wrote in his memoir, she “played an indispensable role: she participated in every planning session and every editing session; she was on every shoot . . . she was the best critic of my performance, and perhaps most important the only one willing to be blunt in criticizing me.”

    The fact that Rose became a graduate student in economics at the University of Chicago is itself somewhat remarkable, considering that she was born in a small, mostly Russian town in what is now Ukraine. Her family moved to Portland, Oregon, when she was two years old. Her father worked as a peddler (he eventually owned a couple of small stores).

    Rose attended public school, then Reed College for two years. In her junior year, she went to the University of Chicago, where her brother, Aaron Director, ten years older than she, was already on the faculty. Rose met Milton, also a graduate student in economics at Chicago, in 1932. Six years later they were married, and their partnership, as well as the creation of their family, began. They had two children, Janet and David, the latter well-known to readers of these pages.

    It is said that Rose is the only person who ever bested Milton in an argument (but I haven’t found out what that argument was). For the most part, they were in agreement. Rose told The Wall Street Journal in 2006 that their first policy disagreement was over the U.S. entry into Iraq in 2003. She favored it; her husband was opposed.

    Much of what I know about Rose Director Friedman comes from the 650-page memoir, “Two Lucky People,” a rich collection of anecdotes and personal history, with sprinklings of policy discussion. The only thing wrong with it is its title. Luck is not randomly distributed. Together Milton and Rose Friedman forged a partnership that has revolutionized thinking around the world, bringing back acceptance of free markets. Rose Friedman played a vital role, and we are all fortunate that she was there. — Jane S. Shaw

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