Tag: politics

The long-prophesied government

The outlines are beginning to become clear:

The word “global” has taken on sacred connotations. Any action taken in its name must be inherently virtuous, whereas the decisions of individual countries are necessarily “narrow” and self-serving…. There is a whiff of totalitarianism about this new theology, in which the risks are described in such cosmic terms that everything else must give way. “Globalism” is another form of the internationalism that has been a core belief of the Left: a commitment to class rather than country seemed an admirable antidote to the “blood and soil” nationalism that gave rise to fascism.

There is more than “a whiff of totalitarianism” about it; globalism is an intrinsically more deadly threat to Man than fascism, Communism, and Nazism combined. The sacred connotations it has taken on should cause every religious and non-religious individual alike to question just what, precisely, is the nature of the religious spirit behind it. As for me, I think it stinks of sulfur.

The key to full grokking

This statement by Frederic Bastiat is all you really need to know in order to understand the current political economy:

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

It’s always interesting how reading the great minds of the past reveals how little changes in human society. But how surprising to see such a quote appear in the New York Times, even from an outsider!

Sander’s sensible move

This is one of the few times you will ever see me speak well of a socialist politician’s actions:

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday that he was placing a hold on Ben Bernanke’s nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman, a move that could slow the confirmation process. If the hold is not withdrawn, the move by Sanders, an independent from Vermont, means that Senate leaders will not be able to bring up the nomination for a vote by unanimous consent. Instead, they may need to garner 60 votes in order to consider the nomination.

There is no question that Bernanke should not be reconfirmed. He is a charlatan cut from precisely the same cloth as the fraudulent Climategate “scientists”, who are claiming to be saving the world from global warming in much the same way that Bernanke claims to have saved the USA from a second Great Depression. He didn’t, he hasn’t, he has only made the situation much worse through his bankers-first policies of extend and pretend.

Mike Shedlock presents a dialogue that is a great case against Bernanke:

Bernanke: For many Americans, the financial crisis, and the recession it spawned, have been devastating — jobs, homes, savings lost. Understandably, many people are calling for change.

Mish: Ben, the reason people are calling for a change is that you and the Fed wrecked the economy. You did not see a housing bubble, nor did you foresee a recession. I would also like to point out your selective memory loss about your role in bailouts.

Bernanke: Yet change needs to be about creating a system that works better, not just differently. As a nation, our challenge is to design a system of financial oversight that will embody the lessons of the past two years and provide a robust framework for preventing future crises and the economic damage they cause.

Mish: No Ben, we need a system that works differently. You have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you and the Fed are incompetent and cannot be trusted. Ben, here is a compilation of your own statements made from 2005-2007 proving you have no idea what you are talking about.

Understand that the Federal Reserve system is going to collapse at some point regardless of what action is taken by the Congress. But Fed’s end will be much less catastrophic to the U.S. economy if it is intentionally and deliberately shut down as happened with each of the three previous American central banks than if it is left alone to collapse under the weight of its horrific economic contradictions. Denying a second term to Bernanke would be small first step towards winding down the current monetary system and replacing it with something more stable.

And when even something as flimsy and rife for abuse as a pure paper government currency is more stable, you know the present system can’t possibly survive.

The anti-Peanuts president

Obama doesn’t want to be president anymore. I don’t see how you can possibly interpret his decision to embark upon his own Vietnam any other way:

The address before the United States Military Academy at West Point on Tuesday night will not only be used to announce the immediate order to deploy roughly 30,000 more troops, but the administration will also use the occasion to convey how it intends to turn the fight over to the Kabul government, the New York Times reported.

And with their reliably impeccable judgment, his PR handlers actually scheduled the speech to preempt A Charlie Brown Christmas. Whether you see this as accidental or part of the Left’s ongoing War on Christmas, it’s just blatantly stupid. It’s bad enough to Vietnam your presidency, but allowing yourself to be identified as the anti-Peanuts president takes it to a whole new level. This guy is going to have non-black approval ratings in the single digits by the time 2012 rolls around.

If you’d like sophisticated military analysis of the decision to put an additional 30,000 troops in pointless peril, here it is in three words: never reinforce failure.

Warning: feminist committing historical analogy ahead

You have to know a bit about Rome to understand how amusing this clueless female attempt to draw upon history is:

When the Roman Empire was broken, Diocletian fixed it. He completely revamped the imperial government, discarding centuries of tradition in favor of a new organizational structure designed to meet the challenges of the day. You can do stuff like that when you’re an emperor. It was sort of a one-man Constitutional Convention.

Considering that Diocletian’s economic reforms were a complete failure – his Edict on Maximum Prices is a byword for futility among economists – he was responsible for the bloodiest Roman religious persecutions since Nero, and his abdication led directly to an empire-wide civil war, it should be readily apparent that the historical example of Diocletian is not the ideal one for a would-be reformer to cite. It’s almost impressive that the woman managed to outdo Thomas Friedman and his wistful dreams of Communist Chinese autocracy with this historically illiterate analogy.

Although I have little doubt that given his dithering over Afghanistan and the warnings of a Dubai default, it’s not going to be long before abdication will look more than a little attractive to Obama.

UPDATE – the poor woman still doesn’t realize how dim-witted her attempt to look scholarly by citing history was:

You know what they think is the most important thing about Diocletian? Price controls. I’m serious. The Edict on Maximum Prices: that’s what they think is the big deal. The second thing they know about him is the Christian persecution. Not one of them even mentions the division of the empire, which by any measure was one of the most critical and formative moments in history (one we’re still living with). None of them mentions the Tetrarchy. None of them is aware of what I would have thought was basic knowledge: that Diocletian fundamentally restructured the Empire and reformulated its constitution.

First, Diocletian didn’t fix anything; most of his policies were failures. As the Cambridge Medieval History writes: “It is natural to think of Diocletian as the projector and of Constantine as the completer of a new system of government for the Roman Empire, which persisted with mere changes of detail until it was laid in ruins by barbarians. But in reality, the imperial institutions from Augustus onwards had passed through a course of continuous development. Diocletian did but accelerate processes which had been in operation from the Empire’s earliest days….” Of course, “the new type of monarchy” which Diocletian and Constantine established between them was a more centralized, more absolutist one, so it should come as absolutely no surprise that a feminist would find inspiration in it.

Second, she simply doesn’t understand that the salient point isn’t that Diocletian restructured the Empire, it is that the form his restructuring took was absolutely insane and led to precisely the sort of violent power struggles that could easily have been predicted from the failures of the First and Second Triumvirates, to say nothing of the four wars of the Diadochi that preceded them. After Diocletian’s abdication in 305, the Tetrarchy lasted precisely ONE year before the inevitable civil wars began; these lasted 18 years until Constantine managed to defeat Maximian, Maxentius, and eventually Licinius in 324.

Also, Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices is the most important thing about his rule today; it is far more intellectually significant now than the fact that a Roman Emperor elected to centralize power and establish a fundamentally flawed administrative scheme that failed on numerous occasions in the past. Sure, the division of the empire affected the course of history, but then, so did the foolish decision of Perdiccas to marry Alexander’s sister and in a very similar manner.

Today, there is no one pushing the notion of four co-presidents and persecutions of American Christians are mostly limited to refusing to let Boy Scout troops meet at schools and refusing to say “Merry Christmas”. Price controls, on the other hand, are still being enacted around the world despite the fact that Diocletian’s Edict offers powerful evidence that not even an autocratic government with a determined and violent dictator at the helm can successfully debase the currency or enforce predetermined price levels.

All that being said, note that I am definitely in favor of a third party, a fourth party, and a fifth party. Regardless of whether you are on the left or the right, you should be able to recognize that America badly needs alternatives to the present bi-factional party ruling on behalf of the banks rather than the liberal or conservative bases its two factions purport to represent.

The cost of centralization

Daniel Hannan explains:

According to the Commissioner for Enterprise, Gunther Verheugen, the benefits of the single market are worth around 180 billion euros a year, while the cost of complying with Brussels rules is 600 billion euros. In other words, by its own admission, the EU costs more than it’s worth.

Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to pitch you on an “economies of scale” argument for centralizing power. If it involves bureaucracies rather than economic activity, you can rest assured that the costs of the centralization will run 3x the purported savings.

Multiculturalism in Minnesota

I tend to suspect the reported “racial tensions” aren’t actually about race. There were certainly never serious problems of this sort at North, South, Washburn, or Roosevelt when I was in school and there was not exactly a shortage of brothers there:

Racial tension has been building at Owatonna High School this week after a fight broke out Monday between white and Somali students, prompting heightened police presence, backpack searches and widespread parental worries. Owatonna Police Chief Shaun LaDue said between six and 15 officers have been assigned this week to the school, which usually uses one liaison officer.

Principal Don Johnson said the problems began when two white students wrote papers in recent weeks that were “inflammatory and very disrespectful.” One student handed out copies of his paper to friends, while the other posted his on a class blog. Both were suspended from the school of 1,600 students — about 100 of whom are Somali.

Johnson said that before the second student returned to school Monday, the student sent text messages over the weekend to white and Somali students that were “unapologetic and in your face.” He then walked into a common area Monday where more than 20 Somali students were gathered and sat down. An altercation erupted that sent one of the white students to the hospital for observation.

Isn’t it lovely to see such vivid cultural vibrancy filling what was once a pallid and boring German-Scandinavian enclave! It’s such a pity that the Somali students can’t be left alone to prepare for their future jihads in peace. Of course, given the reported bomb threat, perhaps they won’t even bother returning to Somalia before detonating themselves.

UPDATE: The only reasonable answer is to deport the criminal aliens. If they are so desperate for excitement, there is plenty to be found in their homeland. Given Minnesota carry laws, it’s only a matter of time before one of the foreign idiots attacks the wrong individual and gets blown away. At which point, no doubt the Star & Sickle will run the usual sob story about the tragic end of the dead imported thugfine, upstanding example of foreign vibrancy just trying to live the American dream. And, of course, the need for gun control.

Is that really a good thing?

Chad the Elder writes of the new conservative critic-in-chief:

It might seem unlikely that a man who was born in Quebec, trained as a psychiatrist, once a speechwriter for Walter Mondale, and a writer for the New Republic would become one of the foremost conservative critics of the Age of Obama. But fate has worked in favor of conservatives in the case of Krauthammer and we’re fortunate to have his voice leading the resistance.

While I think Krauthammer is a less obtuse individual than most of the big op/ed names, I think the constant elevation of non-conservatives to positions of conservative leadership in the media is one reason that the conservative movement continues to find itself in such intellectual disarray. Why are they so reluctant to elevate those who are genuine conservatives and have always been genuine conservatives rather than liberals who belatedly claim to have seen the light?

But the fact that Krauthammer may be reliably correct in his analysis of Obama doesn’t mean that his ideology is reliably compatible with the conservative grass roots, and indeed, I note that he supported TARP even if he subsequently turned against the automotive bailouts. He has also been generally supportive of the neocon’s world democratic revolution, which is a profoundly non-conservative position of zero national interest to Americans. So, if Krauthammer does, in fact, become the chief voice of the ideological opposition, I suspect conservatives will once again find themselves regretting what was always more of a temporary alignment of anti-Obama interests rather than genuine ideological opinion leadership.

This isn’t a criticism of Krauthammer. He’s just doing his job and I’m merely pointing out what I think to be the obvious. Conservatives need actual conservative leadership and they need to stop settling for liberals, neocons, and nominally reformed liberals as their intellectual leaders. My feeling is that anyone who supported the banking bailouts, much less dismissed opposition to them as “know-nothingism” should be completely disqualified from any sort of conservative leadership, opinion or otherwise. If you’re capable of falling for demands for money from the cynical Chicken Littles of the world, you’re far too much of a naif to be a conservative leader.