Conservatives across the right side of the spectrum have historically agreed that a market economy is worth conserving. Inflation is inimical to a market economy. Saving is de facto discouraged. Fiat currency, as opposed to specie currency or specie-backed currency, has no intrinsic value. Cloth paper, ink and chlorophyll do not trade on the open market at anywhere near the purchasing power of gold or silver.
As Judy Shelton of the Wall Street Journal has pointed out, fiat-system “inflation undermines capitalism by destroying the rationale for dedicating a portion of today’s earnings to savings. Accumulated savings provide the capital that finances projects that generate higher future returns; … inflation makes suckers out of savers.”
Americans have been shocked into the realization that “kooks” like Ron Paul (so-called by radicals, socialists, and charlatans like Keith Olberman or John McCain of “Cap and Trade,” amnesty, and McCain-Kennedy infamy) have been pointing out the nakedness of the emperor, when all along their 401ks were soothing them with delirious descriptions of the fine threads and shimmering gossamer translucence of his new robes.
Here are some reasons why a return to a backed currency should be – and can be – pursued at the present critical juncture. Continue Reading »
Not because I truly advocate this, but as a thought experiment, I wanted to toss this little bit of Machiavellianism out there for the neoconservative readership to mull over and respond to, if they wish.
Seeing that radical jihadists have been and will continue to be a destructive force in world affairs, and presuming a certain measure of legitimacy to sphere-influence and responsibility, what objection(s) would you have to the CIA or other covert agency fomenting political assassinations, terror attacks, and mayhem on an increased scale in China designed to deliberately provoke the Sleeping Dragon into massive military responses to Islamic fundamentalist strongholds?
Today I responded to a poll on a social networking website that asked, “Do you think the US should test for Drugs in order to receive your Welfare or Food stamp Check.” Of course, I voted no. Astoundingly, I was in a very small minority. Out of 122,368 people who voted in the poll, 115,179 (or 94.1%) of them said, “Yeah, sure, I think the government should force people to submit to a search without probable cause or a search warrant. The Constitution? What is that?” When one sees results like these, it is cause for despair for this country’s future.
I agree with Hank Aaron. Let Pete Rose back in, Bud Selig. There is no consistent reason not to. I hate that he sullied his name and the game by betting on it while he was a player and a manager. I hate it. Pete Rose was a childhood hero. I supported the ban when it was imposed. But time and events have conspired to make me change my mind.
Yes, he broke rule 21d. Yes, he lied about it. He also eventully admitted what he did. He claims, and Dowd’s investigation even supports, that he never bet against his team. He sought treatment. He apologized. And he played harder and cleaner than any other man who ever put on a glove. Ever. These are just the records he still holds:
Most career hits – 4,256
Most career outs – 10,328
Most career games played – 3,562
Most career at bats – 14,053
Most career singles – 3,215
Most career runs by a switch hitter – 2,165
Most career doubles by a switch hitter – 746
Most career walks by a switch hitter – 1,566
Most career total bases by a switch hitter – 5,752
Most seasons of 200 or more hits – 10
Most consecutive seasons of 100 or more hits – 23
Most consecutive seasons with 600 or more at bats – 13 (1968-1980)
Most seasons with 600 at bats – 17
Most seasons with 150 or more games played – 17
Most seasons with 100 or more games played – 23
Record for playing in the most winning games – 1,972
Only player in major league history to play more than 500 games at five different positions – 1B (939), LF (671), 3B (634), 2B (628), RF (595)
Unbelievable. Hall of Fame material in anyone’s reckoning. Show leniency, Commissioner Selig. With DuRocher, Sutton, Ford, Molitor and other cheaters or druggies in the Hall, and then Clemens (you broke my heart), Canseco, McGwire, Bonds, Rodriguez, and the rest of the steroid and HGH crowd not banned, it seems absurd to keep the ban on Rose in place.
Doughboy sent me an email last night with the subject line “you’ll like this blog.” In it he provided a link to a libertarian blog and noted, “They hate Bush, Lincoln and the war, but love Ron Paul and libertarianism.” The idea that I am libertarian no doubt stems from my admission that I cast my primary vote last election for Ron Paul.
Along the lines of full disclosure, especially in light of the fact that a simple rereading of the archived posts I’ve written on this website, will reveal that I have not always held Dr. Paul in high esteem. Indeed, I may have referred to him as a kook, his followers as the Kool-Aid Brigade, and whose appeal to the fringe element was disturbing.
In fact, my political outlook has fundamentally changed. Twice. If one reads one of my original posts about how I view Traditionalism (the label I would place on myself), one could see that I viewed myself as closer to the paleoconservative camp with reservations about the more isolationist elements that crop up there from time to time. If one reads that post, one could be forgiven for believing that I have maintained an admirable consistency over time. Would that that were so. There was the regrettable interregnum period where I denounced paleoconservatism, paleoconservatives and drifted very close to the neocon camp (mainly out of disgust with the anarchist Lew Rockwell crowd). On election day, I walked into my local polling place fully intending to vote for John McCain because any other vote was “wasted.” I carried my voting slip into the carrel and, as I was poised to darken the circle next to McCain’s name, I hesitated. I decided to fill in the other ovals for all the other races first and come back to it. As I stood there, I took stock of my beliefs and the arguments we had had on this website. I found myself unable to do the very thing I had been urging everyone else to do – to swallow one’s pride and cast my vote for Party if only to defeat the Other. I knew I couldn’t vote for McCain. The question remained, however, whose circle I would color in. There were third party candidates including the Liberatarian candidate. And then there was Dr. Paul. Voting my conscience in favor of freedom and Constitutional order, I darkened the so-called “kook’s” bubble and walked out at peace with myself for the first time in months. I had come full circle.
I voted for Ron Paul, like I said, because I value the framework of limited government set forth in the Constitution. John McCain, who campaigned for cap-and-trade and some form of health care reform did not offer that option. It was clear to me that the Republican Party did not hold dear the constitutional order that had served this country well from its founding to today. Consequently, I decided that day that I was no longer a Republican. Neither, though, was I a libertarian.
I am not a libertarian, contrary to Doughboy’s assumption, mainly for two reasons. First, I agree with almost nothing the libertarians espouse when it comes to their social agenda. Second, libertarians have a tendency to reduce man to homo economicus and view all of society, like the Marxists, in terms of dollars and cents. Man is entitled, as a result of his creation in the likeness and image of God, to more credit than that. That said, there is much to admire about their devotion to limited government and conservatives can find strong, but limited, allies in libertarians.
What is disturbing to me is this notion that anyone who supports Ron Paul a) is a libertarian – Dr. Paul’s own steadfast defense of life in the Congress should put to rest that notion; b) hates Lincoln; or c) hates Bush. I don’t hate anyone. I see Bush and Lincoln for the flawed men they are/were. However, it seems that a person is automatically tarred as a hater if he has the temerity to point out those men’s limitations and the ways in which they positively harmed the nation. Both men, wittingly or not, contributed great good to the country. In the wake of 9/11, George W. Bush’s leadership was exemplary. He held together a nation that had been rocked on its heels through his determination, resolve, and clear-sightedness. Likewise, Lincoln should be lauded for ending slavery, even if that was simply a by-product of his efforts to preserve the Union.
On the other side of the ledger, Bush committed this country to a needless aggressive war against a nation that had not attacked us, posed no threat to the United States, and which had no connection to the attacks on 9/11. Lincoln aggregated power to the federal government in violation of the Constitution that has never been returned to the States. Indeed, it could be argued that Lincoln is the father of the modern centralized federal state that is so inimical to freedom from oppression.
We traditionalists are a nuanced crowd. Simply because we value the perspective espoused by Dr. Paul does not make us haters. We neither hate nor adore our leaders, but attempt to view them fairly in a wider context that takes into account the grand sweep of history and tries to calculate the prospective effects of their actions. To jump to accusations from such a paucity of evidence as the admission that we voted for a candidate that wasn’t fully endorsed by the establishment is simply intellectual laziness.
Peter Schiff has a new article out cataloguing the misery that is coming down the pike. In 1979, Milton and Rose Friedman wrote a book called Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. In it the Friedmans decribed the causes and remedies for inflation.
Five simple truths embody most of what we know about inflation:
1. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon arising from a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output (though, of course, the reasons for the increase in money may be various).
2. In today’s world government determines – or can determine – the quantity of money.
3. There is only one cure for inflation: a slower rate of increase in the quantity of money.
4. It takes time – measured in years, not months – for inflation to develop; it takes time for inflation to be cured.
5. Unpleasant side effects of the cure are unavoidable.
As Schiff notes in his article, the massive amounts of spending by GWB and Obama, abetted by Bernanke’s keeping interest rates exceptionally low, have conspired to increase the amount of money available in the market. As the Friedmans point out, any time the money supply increases at a rate faster than the supply of goods on which to dispose of that money, inflation results. Furthermore, as the Friedmans point out, it takes years to feel the effects of the government’s policies. Once the die is cast, however, the outcome is inevitable.
Like a doomed Greek hero, Bernanke believes he can avoid his fate. But, like Oedipus, no matter what gyrations Ben attempts his Uncle Sam is doomed. Moreover, the question that Schiff poses is whether Bernanke will have the balls to face down his government masters to impose the only solution that might work to fend off the approach of the Inflation Monster. As the Friedmans point out, government never takes responsibility for its role in creating the monster:
No government is willing to accept responsibility for producing inflation, even in less virulent degree. Government officials always find some excuse – greedy businessmen, grasping trade unions, spendthrift consumers, Arab sheikhs, bad weather, or anything else that seems even remotely plausible.
Moreover, the government actually benefits from high inflation. To give one example, today we have sold billions of dollars of debt to the Chinese. We take money from the Chinese, which is worth a dollar today to finance whatever projects we want to spend teh money on. In ten years, after a serious inflationary period, we pay them back with dollars which are worth very much less. The Chinese have been screwed and the government finds that it has borrowed money for nothing or better than nothing – they have paid us to finance our spending.
In the face of the large benefits to the government, does anyone really believe that Bernanke will be able to stand up to whoever sits in the Oval Office and tell him no? Sure, the consumer will have felt the pinch and may be hurting. But, the cure for inflation causes the economy to slow down. Would a president want to slow the economy when the people are feeling their economic woes so strongly? Not likely. And despite Ben’s assurances, it is likely he will not have the fortitude to face down the president, the people, and tell them, “This is for your own good. Take your medicine. It will make you better, even if you feel worse for a while.”
This country is in for some tough times ahead. GWB started it. Obama made it much worse and appears intent on heaping even more coal on the fire. The Friedmans liken an inflationary period to binge drinking:
A more instructive analogy is between inflation and alcoholism. When the alcoholic first starts drinking, the good effects come first; the bad effects only come the next morning when he wakes up with a hangover – and often cannot resist easing the hangover by taking “the hair of the dog that bit him.”
The parallel with inflation is exact. When a country first starts on an inflationary episode, the initial effects seem good. The increased quantity of money enables whoever has access to it – nowadays, primarily governments – to spend more without anybody else having to spend less. Jobs become more plentiful, business is brisk, almost everybody is happy – at first. Those are the good effects. But then the increased spending starts to raise prices; workers find that their wages, even if higher in dollars, will buy less; businessmen find that their costs have risen, so that the extra sales are not as profitable as they anticipated, unless they can raise their prices even faster. The bad effects start to emerge: higher prices, less buoyant demand, inflation combined with stagnation. As with the alcoholic, the temptation is to increase the quantity of money still faster, which produces a roller coaster was have been on. In both cases, it takes a larger and larger amount – of alcohol or money – to give the alcoholic or the economy the same “kick.”
The parallel between alcoholism and inflation carries over to the cure. The cure for alcoholism is simple to state: stop drinking. It is hard to take because, this time the bad effects come first, the good effects come later. The alcoholic who goes on the wagon suffers severe withdrawal pains before he emerges in the happy land of no longer having an almost irresistible desire for another drink. So also with inflation. The initial side effects of a slower rate of monetary growth are painful: lower economic growth, temporarily high unemployment, without, for a time, much reduction of inflation. The benefits appear only after one or two years or so, in the form of lower inflation, a healthier economy, the potential for rapid noninflationary growth.
It will be interesting to see if Bernanke has the wherewithal to resist the urge for a little nip when the hangover comes. His previous track record with the subprime fiasco indicate that he may have good intentions, but his judgment is not always sound. Bet on the occasional shot…just to get us through the night.
Obama met with but did not apologize to Sgt. (Aleister) Crowley. “Professor” Gates (through his lawyer) threatened to dredge up some kids to fabricate relate “similar” experiences with Sgt. Mephistopheles if the Cambridge authorities release the audiotapes of “Professor” Gates’ ranting while Sgt. Beelzebub was trying to radio information inside the house he was legitimately inside to investigate a possible burglary in progress and make sure there was not another person inside threatening “Professor” Gates. Here’s the story.
President Obama famously stated during his campaign for the office he now holds that he wanted Americans to be able to frankly and openly discuss matters of race in America. Okay.
Last night, as I watched the President’s press conference, I watched in mild shock as Lynn Sweet (from Obama’s adopted hometown newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times) unabashedly toadied up to the privileged, elitist president by lobbing a (likely pre-screened) softball question having nothing to do with so-called healthcare reform. Calling the President’s attention to the brouhaha surrounding his “friend” Henry L. “Skip” Gates’ arrest by Cambridge, MA police, the President, a former Constitutional Law professor, said “I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three — what I think we know separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact.”
So, to recap, the President of the United States of America — after admitting he did not have a command of the facts — made some serious leaps in a nationally televised press conference.
I would not be “pretty angry” if police officers investigating a possible burglary at my house asked me to identify myself, nor would I be “pretty angry” if they detained me if I were stupid enough to yell at them and refuse to provide such identification. In fact, neither would just about any other sane member of society not bent on attacking police officers. But there’s more to it, of course. Just as I suspected when I heard of the incident, “Professor” Gates, who makes his living — a handsome living among the privileged elite of Northeastern academia in Harvard — immediately began to play the race card, and I feel confident in speculating that he did so with a view toward future racemongering, as is his wont. Read the police reports for yourself. You be the judge.
But let’s frankly and openly discuss another thing that’s “just a fact,” Mr. President: African-Americans and Latinos “disproportionately” commit the crimes in this land of ours. Not so in many other places; but here in the good ol’ U.S. of A., even with a Republican-authored and pushed Civil Rights Bill, the facts are plain. Janet Reno’s Department of Justice confirmed it, even. Federal UCR stats continually confirm it. Blacks and Latinos, and specifically, young black and Mexican, Dominican, and Puerto Rican men, disproportionately commit crimes of almost all classifications. Steve Sailer had a detailed and irrefutable piece on the matter in 2005 on VDare.com. Please take the time to read it and pay close attention to the data he lists and the sources he cites.
That has quite a lot to do with the “long history” of some minorities being “disproportionately” stopped: it’s called criminal profiling, and it is entirely different from simple racial profiling. Guess what? A white guy in a BMW circling the block in a crappy lower-income black neighborhood — as anyone who has ever watched COPS could tell you — is just as likely to be stopped (moreso, probably) as a black guy in the same area, because, chances are, he’s up to no good. Looking for blow, a hooker, whatever. Same thing applies to the ones cops know by experience commit other types of crime. Except those other types of crime turn out to be the ones society deems most serious: murders, aggravated assaults, robberies, burglaries, thefts, and so on. If blacks comprise about 13% of the population, give or take of the country as a whole, and if that 13% is “disproportionately” crammed into urban areas, we still should raise an eyebrow when the crimes in those areas with higher concentrations of blacks and Puero Ricans, for example, still show a disproportionately large number of those minorities committing those crimes. Not just getting arrested for them, mind you, because noone yet is insinuating (against evidence or common sense) that whites are committing them at higher rates, they just aren’t being arrested for them. Yet. I’ll bet someone, perhaps “Professor” Gates, will surprise me.
So, Mr. President, we’ve laid some other facts out there. Let’s discuss them. How about you start by loudly, vociferously, and continuously demanding that certain slivers of certain minority groups stop acting the way they do? You know, before you go accusing the diversity instructor and universally recognized nonracist good guy cop of acting stupidly before you know anything about the incident (apart from what your racist friend Skip told you, that is).
“People keep telling me how wildly popular Obama himself is, even if support for virtually all his major initiatives is eroding. Not true–the first bit, I mean. David Brooks had an interesting piece in our former paper of record today about the “Liberal Suicide March.” I think he’s right about the direction of the march. But why, apart from the sentiments of his colleagues at that fast-sinking newspaper, does he believe that “Most Americans love Barack Obama personally.” Every poll I’ve seen suggests the opposite. Nota bene: Obama did not “win by a landslide,” as the good people from Acorn, MoveOn.org, CNN, and The New York Times like to imply. He won by a margin of about 52-46–respectable these days but not hardly a landslide. And since being elected, Obama has, despite a moment of euphoria among the left, sunk steadily in the public’s estimation. In fact, he ranks 10th out of the 12 post-war presidents at this point in his tenure. Politico reports that “the number of Americans who say they trust the president has fallen from 66 percent to 54 percent. At the same time, the percentage of those who say they do not trust the president has jumped from 31 to 42.” Could it be worse? Sure. And it probably will be soon.
There is a larger question about Obama. Back when he was campaigning, some commentators assured us that, despite his hard-left associates, pronouncements, and instincts, Obama really was a “pragmatist” who who govern from the center. Any evidence of that yet? I think Bill McGurn is right that, so-far, Obama has been anything but “post-partisan.” But as the rats desert the ship and his poll numbers plummet, one wonders whether Obama will muster the political canniness that saved Bill Clinton.
Wake me up when he fires Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod. No, I’m not holding my breath
A few minutes ago, I received an email from a good friend of mine and I thought I should forward it.
All,
In case you hadn’t heard already, the current house bill to “reform” and institute government run health care in our country, contains provisions to fund abortions on demand with our money. A sweeping coalition of protectors of our pre-born Brothers and Sisters have organized a webcast at 9 pm EST, this Thursday evening, to discuss ways to defeat this heinous and cowardly legislation. One of the speakers include Fr. Frank Pavone, with Priests for Life, and David Bereit, with 40 Days for Life. The language would also mandate that Christian run health care facilities/medical practitioners, that currently abstain due to their religious convictions, perform abortions as well. Please spread the word!
With the Peace of Christ, Barry
There are a number of other speakers scheduled to address the issue. This legislation must be stopped and I encourage everyone to become involved in defeating it by attending the webcast and by calling your representative and Senators and registering your opposition to this evil bill.
Dennis Prager made some good points in many areas Tuesday morning about some “silver linings” in today’s political scene. It begins, with bold by me:
There is only one good thing about the Obama administration’s attempts to nationalize most health care and to begin to control Americans’ energy consumption through cap-and-trade: clarity about the left. These attempts are enabling more and more Americans to understand the thinking and therefore the danger of the left.
The left has its first president — with the possible exception of Franklin Delono Roosevelt — and for the first time controls the Democratic Party and both houses of Congress. In the name of compassion for the sick and the poor and in the name of preventing worldwide environmental catastrophe, it is attempting to remake America.
In so doing some principals of the left are becoming clearer to more Americans:
Principal One: The left, as distinct from traditional liberals, is not, and has never been, interested in creating wealth. The left is no more interested in creating wealth than Christians are in creating Muslims or Muslims in creating Christians. The left is interested in redistributing wealth, not creating it. The left spends the wealth that private enterprise and entrepreneurial risk-taking individuals create.
The left does not perceive that poverty is the human norm and therefore asks, “Why is there poverty?” instead of asking the economic question that matters: Why is there wealth? And the obvious result of the left’s disinterest in why wealth is created is that the left does not know how to create it.
Principal Two: The reason the left asks why there is poverty instead of why there is wealth is that the left’s preoccupying ideal is equality — not economic growth. And those who are preoccupied with equality are more troubled by wealth than by poverty. Ask almost anyone on the left — not a liberal, but a leftist like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — which society they consider more desirable, a society in which all its members were equally lower middle class or one in which some were poor, most were middle class, and some were rich (i.e., America today). And whatever they say, in their hearts, the further left they are the more they would prefer the egalitarian society
I just sent this email out to about 100 folks. I shall post it because not only is it important, but I think it’ll be something we “donnybrookers” might agree upon?:
On this the 219th anniversary of Washington DC’s founding, how many of your friends have told you that the housing crisis was caused by “deregulation” from the Bush Administration?
Personally, just about ALL of mine have uttered that cliche. And, no surprise, it’s 100% wrong, and the truth is basically the opposite.
Bush repeatedly warned Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and the Dems to regulate, reform and reconsider Fannie and Freddie. This is on record from 2002-2008.
In response, these Democrats said he was “ill-advised” and signed petitions opposing him. Bush’s accurate requests were repeatedly ignored or outright rejected by House “leader” Barney Frank and Senate “leader” Chris Dodd, who then, after realizing they were the main culprits in the disaster (read any of their quotes on the matter from 2006-2008, all of which were proven incorrect), blamed “right wing Republicans” and any CEO (often Republicans) they could drag onto national TV and pester before a gullible audience.
And only Fox News and Maria Bartiromo (CNBC) ever challenged them. They had no answers then either, other than more misguided blame and irresponsibility.
Fannie and Freddie’s bailouts cost us taxpayers more than the bailouts of Bank of America, CitiGroup, JP Morgan, Chase and Wells Fargo combined.
As we so often realize now, Bush was right and they were wrong. He’s a far more mature and kind man than I, so he would never rub it in their faces like I will.
I write all because I simply tire of the moral relativism, mostly from the left, as the right is confident in whom to blame. Why worry when facts are on your side?
This whole political era is so obvious who’s right and wrong — on the war, economy, social issues, the environement, Israel (check this out), etc — that it’s not worth my time.
Without brainwashing factories (aka schools, especially Ivy League) and the media, the Democrat Party would cease to exist…as should have been the case after Republicans finally freed the slaves from Democrats in 1865.
That way, we’d never have heard of the KKK, segregation, Jim Crow, Bull Connor, Al Gore Sr. or Jr., Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton, LBJ, welfare, affirmative action, urban corruption, “post-modernism,” the ACLU, the Clintons, Howard Dean, John Edwards, Barbara Boxer, George Soros, Sandra Sotomayor, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Eric Holder, Barack Hussein Obama or other heinous programs (socialized health care) and non-existent distractions (“global warming”) that have destroyed the black community, put Israel in peril and divided America just like slavery once did.
As Indiana’s own popular and successful Republican governor noted in May, it’s not only an unnecessary waste of money to accomplish nothing, but it’s an exploitative, provincial policy that, if it benefits anyone at all, only does so to the richest (and “faltering”) coastal states, while hurting the people it supposedly helps.
No surprise the out of touch Statists running the Democrat party want it so badly.
Having prominently in mind the linguistically-asinine phrase “Global War on Terror,” I wish to begin an exploration and discussion of the history and scope of the current military operations in which the United States of America are engaged.
The long history prior to the independence and subsequent establishment of a Constitutional, sovereign nation known as the United States of America is well worth noting with regard to warfare between Muslim regimes and Western European nations. For our purposes, the official conflict between the U.S. and Muslim started around 1784, when Morocco, which had been the first nation to recognize the U.S. as sovereign in 1777, seized an American ship. Thomas Barclay negotiated a treaty with Morocco’s sultan 2 years later, but this had no effect on the neighboring region of the Ottoman empire then known as Algiers. Algiers justified its continued siezing of American ships, sale of the cargoes and ships, and enslavement of crews by appeal to the Quranic approbation of taking infidel property and chattel. (One wonders how often pirates on the Barbary gave Americans an opportunity to “convert” to Islam before adjudging them recalcitrant infidels; I digress.)
President Jefferson opposed negotiation with the terrorists. Congress, however, saw the wisdom of John Adams who posited that absent a strong navy, tribute would be the best recourse for safety of Americans in the Med, and, over the course of several years, paid millions of dollars to Algiers in tribute. This was common practice, and had been for centuries among Western nations and the Muslim Mediterranean sultanates. Americans languished as slaves in North Africa for a dozen years or so; eventually, after a back-door deal with Portugal, Barbary corsairs again began piracy in the Atlantic and captured a dozen ships. The typical crew then would have been approximately 30-50 men, so let us liberally estimate the human captives at around 1,000. Private American merchants demanded Congress provide them with protection. Rather than insist that merchants afford themselves whatever protections they deemed necessary at their own expense, and after great debate, the United States Navy was created and armed vessels were sent with Marines (clad with thick leather collars to defeat cutlass blows of the Barbary pirates, hence the term “leatherneck”) to do what the merchants refused to do for themselves. There were two Barbary Wars, during and after which other Western powers also engaged the nations of Muslim North Africa, and which resulted in the wholesale repression of Muslim piracy on any large scale in the Mediterranean. Speculation abounded even at the time what progress in westward expansion was lost by allocating resources to these ventures.
I propose to continue this investigation in my next installment.
There has been a behind-the-scenes debate going on among some of the authors of Conservative Donnybrook in the past few days and weeks. The question that has been posed is why should we spend so much time debating the minutiae of conservatism when the real enemies are Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their statist cronies? Certainly, there is nothing wrong with taking shots at those persons mentioned. They richly deserve it. But the premise of this website has always been to explore the nature of conservatism. What are its boundaries? Are there orthodoxies and heterodoxies, dogmas to which every conservative must accede? Personally, I believe that this is a worthy question for exploration and have even found myself being persuaded at times by arguments made by my fellow contributors as to basic foundational beliefs on which I judge our society or exercise my franchise. To that end, the contributions of our writers and commentors are invaluable (even – or maybe especially – when I argue with them).
Jack Hunter, over at Taki’s Magazine, recently wrote a review of Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by radio talk show host, Mark Levin. I recently read the book on the glowing recommedation of one of my friends and had intended to write my own review. In retrospect, I do not believe that I could add anything to Mr. Hunter’s review or that I would add anything different. Anyone who has listened to Mark Levin’s radio program will immediately note a significant difference in tone in his writing. He is far more reasonable and evenhanded in his manifesto and there is much that is valuable in his presentation. I, however, had exactly the same reaction as Mr. Hunter when it came to Levin’s treatment of “national security” and “foreign policy.” To me, after such an excellent exposition of conservative (dare I say it?) orthodoxy, Levin turns conservatism on its head with his celebration of American interventionist foreign policy.
The old wisdom used to be that Democrats took the nation to war and Republicans brought us home. Today, as Mr. Hunter points out, such mainstream expositors of conservatism (or at least what the public is told is conservatism) as Sean Hannity and Mark Levin now routinely decry any position as liberal which questions whether America should send troops to a foreign land. No more do Republicans stand for the idea of “speaking softly and carrying a big stick.” Of course, we still have a big stick – the biggest stick going by far (there’s something especially satisfying as a male to write those words and know they are true). However, we have long since given up the idea of speaking softly. We, as a nation, are in EVERYBODY’S business, telling them how they should live, govern, trade, lend money, etc. Today, we speak non-stop, like a drunken idiot who believes he is the life of the party, waving our stick menacingly around the party. Meanwhile, some of our fellow party-goers have been grumbling about calling the cops and having us removed from the party, but lamenting the fact that the cops cannot handle us.
The wisdom about the political parties was true as recently as the Nixon administration and somehow in little more than three decades what was once the liberal statist position has become the mainstream conservative position. I’ve spoken about the ratchet effect elsewhere; here is a rather striking example. To some extent, I think some of the explanation for how this has happened can be found in the rise in popularity of talk radio and the hosts who hold forth on that medium. For the most part, I believe, they and their listeners are largely orthodox conservatives who believe in small government in most realms except in foreign policy. When, as Mr. Hunter points out, most modern-day conservatives have received the entirety of their political education from talking heads on the radio, but have not read Kirk or Burke or Hayek, it is understandable how they could arrive at the screwy conclusion that there is something conservative about intervening in every conflict in every hell-hole that erupts around the world. Nonetheless, one can only conclude that most of these people have not made the effort to fit that position into the larger structure that conservatism as a worldview provides. The two positions are entirely unreconcilable.
The belief that government should be fashioned so as to be as unobtrusive as possible to the individual and executed at the lowest possible level, but also believing that the nation’s role is to project its power into every corner of the globe creates a cognitive dissonance that is unsettling to a systematizer like me, who wants everything to maintain a certain internal consistency and harmony. How does it support small, local government to tax people to the tune of more than $1 billion to wage a war in Iraq against a nation that had not attacked us, posed no threat to attack us, and had only the most tenuous of relationships with those who had attacked us (namely, a common religion)? Yet, many propose to continue our intervention in neighboring Iran. I can imagine Bill and Doughboy pulling their keyboards closer to respond that Iran has attacked us. They have, after all, undoubtedly caused many of the casualties we have suffered in Iraq. But, that begs the question. If our troops had not been in Iraq, what harm would (or could) Iran have caused the United States? If we were to remove those troops and bring them home, would Iran still pose a threat to the United States? Wouldn’t it be prudent at this juncture to save our money, our blood, and our capacity for self-defense by leaving the region and focusing on our own borders? We have won the war in Iraq it is said. Great! Let us enjoy the fruits of that victory and withdraw the victor. But, we must ask ourselves: Are we safer for having waged that war? Has our victory secured American security? If not, one must ask himself why not or he will commit the same errors again as is being urged.
I propose that resolving this question – how the idea of small, local government comports with global interventionism – may be more important to the future of this country than is exposing Barack Obama’s agenda. It is only if we can save the soul of conservatism that there can be any resistance to the creeping fascism of statist policies like President Obama’s.
Just a quick note to mention, since secession is a topic that crops up here every now and then, that Daniel McCarthy has a thoughtful post up on the subject, in effect a paleo word of ambivalence on the subject.
In particular, on the issue of constitutionality in the case of the US, he writes:
The answer is that the Constitution neither allows nor forbids secession — the Constitution’s answer, in effect, is “don’t ask that question.” That’s the correct answer because responding to the question of secession in any other way would destroy the Constitution: even if only a few states secede, once the principle is granted, any state may leave whenever it pleases, weakening the Constitution to nothing. But if secession is not possible at all, the states may not leave even when the central government becomes overbearing, and if this principle is established in fact — as it has been — the result is the destruction of the federal system, rendering the Constitution a dead letter. The only way to have kept the Constitution intact was not to press the question in the first place.
Sounds about right to me; the arguments on the subject that I’ve heard, pro and con, have a certain legalistic character, a tendency to take some disparate historical and legal threads and try to weave an airtight case when it can’t really be done. The subject is left unaddressed in the Constitution for a reason. But granting McCarthy’s take on the subject, is a stable, decentralized, federalist system possible at all over the long run?
… it would behoove us here at the Donnybrook not to dwell on that sordid, pathetic tale. Instead, I would like to remember the life and death of another celebrity who recently passed away.
Edward McMahon, whose famous laugh on the couch next to Johnny Carson’s desk made Americans chuckle along, was an entertainer, father of six, and a retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel. (He would later receive the rank of Brigadier General in the California Air Guard.) Having enlisted in the Navy in 1942, Ed studied flight in Texas, Georgia, and eventually at Pensacola, where he completed his Naval Aviator flight training and received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. He was denied the opportunity to fly in Pacific combat because the exigencies of the service demanded that his superlative skills (particularly at landing on the flight decks of aircraft carriers) be better used to train new aviation cadets, teaching in the famous Vaught Corsairs and Wildcats. Ed was discharged in 1946, but was reactivated during the Korean Conflict. He flew unarmed OE-1 Birddogs as a forward air controller/artillery spotter. He flew 85 missions. He was awarded the Air Medal for meritorious conduct while engaged in aerial service 6 different times. The OE-1 Birddog was an unarmed aircraft. The average return rate during the Korean Conflict for FAC/AS pilots was less than half. Ed stayed on in the Marine Corps reserve, retiring in 1966.
Ed has slipped the surly bonds of earth and touched the face of God. Rest in Peace, General McMahon.
Much has been made of Sarah Palin’s departure from the Alaskan governor’s mansion. Pundits, hacks, “reporters” and the vast unwashed of the American public each have their own theory as to why Proud Palin punted political purveyor-ship. The answer: no one really knows. No one, that is, except Roger Stone.
Stone also goes to great lengths to show how Nixon did the same thing and, viola, a president was inaugurated! Stone writes:
It was 1962. Richard Nixon had had enough. Enough of being called “Tricky Dick, the man no one would buy a used car from.” Enough of the elitist derision that had come his way since the Hiss case. He had had enough of the liberal media who consistently held him to a higher standard than his Democratic opponents and poked fun at his lack of sophistication – he being the son of a grocer. So Nixon blew. He announced the end of his career in seeking elective office; “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Six years later he was inaugurated as President of the United States.
…
Sarah Palin
This moment came last week for Sarah Palin and her husband Todd. Sick of the derision of the media for her unsophisticated country ways, her plain speaking and consistently being held to a higher standard than her critics, Palin had had enough. Palin resigned as Governor and, like Nixon, did not reveal her future plans. A follow-up FACEBOOK posting for her legions of admirers was clearly written in her own hand as it is plain-spoken and blunt.
Palin has the most valuable commodity a Presidential candidate can have – a base. Roughly 23% of Americans and 68% of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin. She alone has this kind of intense following. She alone can fill a large hall or small stadium anywhere in Republican Country. This is similar to the following that sustained Nixon through two defeats and his ‘self-destruction’ in 1962 to win the White House in 1968.
Like Nixon, Palin needs some rehabilitation to her political image caused by the relentless attacks of the elitist media, the knife-work of the relatively talentless Republican Party pros like Steve Schmidt and her own self-inflicted wounds from the post election period that were born out of inexperience at this level of political combat. Like Nixon, Palin can re-make herself in the controlled environment of television. Instead of being tortured by smug media types like Katie Couric, Palin can demonstrate her better understanding of issues and articulate a case against Obama. She can be folksy and plain-spoken and above all, ‘smart.’ All hail the Conservative Oprah!
But there is one major difference between Palin and Nixon: Nixon was smart. Palin, on the other hand, appears, well, jovial but not that intelligent. Sure, she has a following but this is largely a reaction to the media’s constant lambasting of the Northern Nanny Stater. She is hailed as a ultra conservative republican with the credintials to win elections. Yet for all the talk, she often sided with the liberals and democrats in the Alaskan legislature. She runs a state that is famous for its welfare state and federal subsidies. As my father put it, her job is slightly less important than that of the Cook County dog catcher’s.
I know, I know, she was unfairly targeted by Couric et al. But if she can’t fend off the ”attacks” of a nincompoop like Couric, she doesn’t stand a chance against real journalists. I mean, since when is “where do you get your news from?” a hard question? I applaud Palin’s family values, her gutsy entrance into American political culture. But she is in over her head. She simply is not smart enough, quick enough or conservative enough to get my vote for anything other than governor of Alaska. And no amount of extreme make-over candidate edition from Fox News will cure that. Let’s move on.
Professor Douglas Kmiec is all set to receive his recompense for cooperating with evil in helping get Barack “I-will-immediately-bring-all-troops-home-and-close-down-Gitmo” Hussein Obama elected President. Yes, this B.H. Obama. Mm hmm, the same as this B.H. Obama (who, in the plan cut off at the knees by the Senate, actually merely called for relocating the priso… er, war crim… uh, “permanent guests of the United States” to U.S. prisons indefinitely). The very same Barry Obama (of “Choom Gang” fame) who is overseeing the “withdrawal” of U.S. troops from Iraqi cities to Iraqi suburbs and permanent U.S. bases in Iraq – no, really, totally a withdrawal, honest – and the continued escalation of Afghan/Waziristan actions. That “peace candidate,” Doug. Enjoy your plum assignment in the Med. Perhaps the more traditional-minded prelature there will pray for you.
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