Jay Reding.com

Mario Loyola makes a cogent argument against adding more troops to secure Baghdad. He raises some good points, but ultimately I think that the political solution we need can’t come about in the current circumstances. Our biggest mistake in this war was not establishing a monopoly of violence earlier. We backed off from Fallujah in the spring of 2004, and then we backed off from al-Sadr at the same time. We should have taken Fallujah and crushed the Mahdi Army back then when the stress on our military was less. Each time we’ve had the opportunity to show strength, we’ve failed. Arab culture is an honor/shame culture, and we can’t forget that. A person who shows indecision is regarded as weak, and our vacillations have ensured that we’re not respected or feared in Iraq.

Machiavelli was right — it is better to be feared than to be loved, and right now our enemies regard us as weak. We can’t maneuver politically from such a position of weakness, and neither can the Iraqi government. We can’t play in Iraq under American rules, when in Iraq, you do as the Iraqis do, and that means be willing to show strength and cracking down on the insurgency. Once we’ve established the position that we’re not going to go away until things get fixed, then and only then can the political process move forwards.

Right now, as President Bush has himself admitted, we’re not winning in Iraq. We’re not winning not because Iraq is unwinnable — that’s simply untrue. We’re not winning because we’re not doing enough to win. The terrorists know that our will is extremely weak. They’re succeeding in their propaganda war and their greatest victory is almost within their grasp. All they have to do is keep the pressure on for just long enough and they’ll win what they could never have won using a conventional military approach. They know that the weakness of the American military isn’t in the troops, it’s in the fickle nature of the American public.

All we have to do is ensure that they don’t get their wish. Striking at them harder gives us the momentum, and in war (as in politics), momentum is everything. The reason why many Americans feel we’re losing this war is because we’ve given them no reason to believe it — taking out some high value targets and restoring order in Baghdad would go a long way towards showing that we can win this war.

The consequences of failure are horrendous, which is why we cannot allow the terrorists to gain the upper hand in Iraq. More troops equates to more pressure, even over a short period of time. It won’t be sufficient by itself — we need to take the gloves off all our troops and allow them to inflict serious pain on the enemy, but it’s an important first step towards recapturing the momentum we need.

Captain Ed rightly takes Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) to task for criticizing a federal judge nominee for being present at a Massachusetts “commitment ceremony.” Senator Brownback apparently takes an issue with a federal judge being at such a ceremony.

Judge Neff did nothing illegal. She attended a private function for the daughter of a longtime friend. Last I checked, Sen. Brownback has the right to wag his finger at the Judge’s behavior, but that is not grounds for disqualifying her for the federal bench.

The fact that Sen. Brownback is asking Neff to recuse herself from any case involving same-sex unions is not only patently silly, but also a likely violation of the doctrine of separation of powers. Making a judge beholden to a member of the legislature on a political promise is certainly unethical, and Brownback should be ashamed for even suggesting such a thing.

Brownback may be trying to court social conservatives, but he’s shot himself in the foot with everyone else. His aspirations to the Oval Office were always a longshot, and this little outburst illustrates exactly why.

The Chicago Sun-Times has a scathing editorial on the decision by the French government to pull its Special Forces troops from Afghanistan just as the Taliban seem to be on the offensive. As they say, quelle surprise…

President Bush’s former speechwriter, Michael Gerson, has a attack against small government conservatism in Newsweek. Gerson’s attack is rather blistering, and it shows that the conservatives who have accused the Bush Administration of abandoning bedrock conservative principles may have been all too right. For instance, Gerson argues:

As antigovernment conservatives seek to purify the Republican Party, it is reasonable to ask if the purest among them are conservatives at all. The combination of disdain for government, a reflexive preference for markets and an unbalanced emphasis on individual choice is usually called libertarianism. The old conservatives had some concerns about that creed, which Russell Kirk called “an ideology of universal selfishness.” Conservatives have generally taught that the health of society is determined by the health of institutions: families, neighborhoods, schools, congregations. Unfettered individualism can loosen those bonds, while government can act to strengthen them. By this standard, good public policies—from incentives to charitable giving, to imposing minimal standards on inner-city schools—are not apostasy; they are a thoroughly orthodox, conservative commitment to the common good.

Now, he’s right on the first part. Burkean conservatism (which is what American conservatism is all about) stresses the value of societal institutions as the “permanent things” which bind society together. A healthy society possesses healthy institutions. However, where Gerson gets it utterly wrong is by equating societal institutions with government when the two are not equivalent, and in fact are often hostile to each other.

There’s a term in Catholic social theory called subsidiarity, a concept which has influenced the formation of federalism in the United States. Pope Pius XI explained the concept as this:

Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy or absorb them.

Even taken out of its original Catholic context, the concept of subsidiarity is an important one in the history of the United States government. The Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution is an example of subsidiarity in government — powers which belong to the people may not be abrogated by the federal government. In the rush by the courts to dramatically expand the power of the federal government through the Commerce Clause, the Tenth Amendment was declared a mere “truism”, nothing more than a slight speed-bump that did nothing to effectively bar the federal government from taking more and more power. (US v. Darby, 31 U.S. 657 (1941).)

Where Gerson gets it wrong is by associating federal actions with the strengthening of societal institutions. Government doesn’t strengthens social institutions, it absorbs them. The use of federal power is not an act of subsidiarity, it is taking from the social fabric and putting the state in a position of greater and greater power. It is the most superficial compassion imaginable. Gerson continues:

Campaigning on the size of government in 2008, while opponents talk about health care, education and poverty, will seem, and be, procedural, small-minded, cold and uninspired. The moral stakes are even higher. What does antigovernment conservatism offer to inner-city neighborhoods where violence is common and families are rare? Nothing. What achievement would it contribute to racial healing and the unity of our country? No achievement at all. Anti-government conservatism turns out to be a strange kind of idealism—an idealism that strangles mercy.

Gerson might as well be advocating liberalism — because he essentially is. The reality of the situation is that government can’t cure crime — it can lock up criminals, but that’s treating a deeper problem symptomatically. Government can’t cure poverty — we’ve tried for the past four decades, and the result has been an entrenched culture of dependency that stifles the individual initiative that lifts people out of poverty. It wasn’t until we dramatically rolled back the welfare state that real results were achieved. Government will never promote racial healing, instead setbacks and quotas serve to further divide this nation along racial lines by promoting the color of one’s skin over the content of one’s character.

What Gerson promotes is the same fallacy that liberalism pushes — that it’s the state that is the solution to our problems. The concept of subsidiarity reminds us of the most important of our conservative principles: that there is no such thing as compassion by proxy. The more the state abrogates the responsibilities of the individual, whether it is our mandate of compassion towards our fellow man, or whether it be the education of our children, the more our society loses the “permanent things” that hold us together. The state can promote healthy institutions not be interjecting itself, but by staying well out of the way.

Take Gerson’s example of the inner city. What does “antigovernment” conservative have to offer the people stuck in America’s ghettos? Far more than Gerson thinks. For one, conservatives believe strongly in limiting government and expanding individual choice by providing for school vouchers that allow someone stuck in a failing inner-city school to go to a private school where they have a chance to succeed. The failure of the educational bureaucracy and the enforced segregation of the public school system make school choice the single most important civil rights issue of our age — and government is the problem, not the solution.

The power of the state is in tension with the institutions of society. The bedrock principle of conservatism is not the sort of big government conservatism that Gerson would advocate — which ends up being a liberal philosophy with a Republican spin. It is a principle that keeps in mind the concept of subsidiarity — that fosters institutions as close to the people as possible, and never allows the state to swallow that which properly belongs to the people. Compassion is an individual trait, it is possessed by people working in soup kitchens, not D.C. apparatchiks deciding how much money goes where. The more the Republican Party forgets its values, the farther and farther we get from our principles and the more likely we are to lose. Gerson has all but abandoned our core principles in favor of a kind of squishy liberalism with a façade of conservative values. If all we will be is a pale imitation of the left, then not only we lose politically, but we will have abandoned the bedrock principles which have animated the conservative movement.

John Fund thinks that Barack Obama will sit out the 2008 race. I’m inclined to agree:

In 2004, when Mr. Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, he had the good luck of seeing both Blair Hull, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and Jack Ryan, the GOP nominee, self-destruct in sex scandals. Mr. Obama’s eventual Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, was an unserious candidate who won the votes of only 56% of Republican voters. A local Chicago political columnist notes that Mr. Obama is the closest thing to a rookie candidate on the national stage since Dwight Eisenhower and nicknames him “Obambi.” Candidates as green as Mr. Obama make rookie mistakes under the searing scrutiny of a national campaign,

The attraction Democrats have towards Obama is perfectly understandable. They’re looking for the “anti-Hillary” — the person who can reach across the red/blue divide and defeat the strongest Republican candidates. Obama is an orator of extraordinary eloquence, he’s got an excellent life story, and he’s telegenic as anyone. The guy admittedly has charisma not seen since another politician named Clinton.

However, Obama’s is also a doctrinaire left-winger who has never run in a competitive race in his life. Fund is right, someone like him can go from heir apparent to disaster in a heartbeat. A national political campaign is about the most grueling experience there is, and the Hillary smear machine would have a field day pointing out that Obama is an empty suit, at least so far.

Obama could win in 2008, no doubt about it, but there’s also a rather large chance he could lose too. Why bother? Fund is right that a Clinton/Obama ticket would be one of the strongest ones that the Democrats could hope for, and if Clinton wins, Obama gets to be next in line. If Clinton loses, he’s still next in line. Either way, it’s good for Barack Obama.

I think all this Obama-mania is more a reflection on the weakness of Hillary Clinton rather than on the political strengths of Barack Obama — great as they are. Obama hasn’t had to do much other than turn up the charm — which admittedly means a lot in politics, but it isn’t everything. There’s no doubt that Obama could have a very bright political future, but at 45, he doesn’t have to be in any hurry to go for the brass ring quite yet.

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting op-ed written by a fellow at the libertarian Goldwater Institute on how states that lowered taxes between 1990-2000 reduced their poverty levels:

Using data from the Census Bureau, the report found that states with the lowest tax rates enjoyed sizable decreases in poverty. For example, the 10 states with the lowest total state and local tax burdens saw an average poverty reduction of 13 percent - two times better than the national average. The 10 highest-tax states, meanwhile, suffered an average increase in poverty of 3 percent.

Some high-tax states, such as California, Hawaii, and New York, suffered catastrophic increases in poverty. As California began to reject the low-tax legacy of the Reagan governorship, the state’s poverty rate jumped 13 percent in the 1990s.

Some will be quick to dismiss this as a consequence of illegal immigration. But lower-tax border states such as Arizona and Texas had substantial declines in poverty while also experiencing large increases in immigration.

In fact, California’s high taxation has been so damaging to the economy that another increase like the one in the 1990s would result in poverty exceeding Mississippi’s by 2010.

The leftist conception is that by raising taxes you redistribute income to the poor and make the poor better off. The problem with that concept is that it never seems to work. What eventually happens is that the taxation hits the productive members of society, who are forced to cut back on hiring, and more people go out work.

The only long term solution to poverty isn’t to be found in redistribution of assets, but in sustainable economic growth. Government handouts are at best, a stopgap against poverty. The one truly great thing that Bill Clinton did is finally acquiesce to passing significant welfare reform, which got tens of thousands of people off the government dole and into the world of productive work. The result of those reforms was a massive reduction in poverty across all levels, especially among the most vulnerable.

The Goldwater Institute study just supports what casual observation shows: high taxes don’t reduce poverty. The redistributionist model simply doesn’t work. Throwing money at the problem is a simplistic solution that benefits those with a deep-seated sense of noblesse oblige rather than those such programs are designed to help. Programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit provide incentives for positive activity — working a steady a job. Government handouts incentivize negative activities — trying to stay on the dole for as long as possible. That isn’t to say that all handouts are unnecessary — some people need a temporary lift up, but when those handouts become a way of life, the only effect is to keep that person forever under the bootheel of the state. Such paternalism is not only ineffective, but harmful.

The best way to reduce poverty remains the same as it always been: create incentives for people to stay in school, not have children out of wedlock, stay off drugs, and work full time. We could double or even triple welfare payments and not reduce poverty by as much as programs that support strong marriages and stable working habits.

To keep our economy strong, we need to support marriage, jobs, and economic development. That’s the best recipe for fighting poverty, not redistributionism that seeks to throw money at a problem rather than understanding why it exists.

I was quite shocked to learn today that I’d been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. However, I would like to thank Time for such a great honor. After all, I did beat out such notables (both famous and infamous) as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jung Il, George W. Bush, Kofi Annan, as well as countless others. It is quite an accomplishment…

OK, so everyone is now Time’s Person of the Year. If ever there was a case of diminishing the value of the currency, this would be it. After all, now the pickup line of “Hey baby, I was Time’s Person of the Year!” is completely worthless. Believe me, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is livid about that one…

It seems that Time decided to cop out. Yes, YouTube is a fantastic service that portends to shake up the entire world of media. So why not nominate the founders of YouTube? Or better yet, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google? Hell, since Time seems to have a predilection for Steve Jobs, why not nominate him?

Time gets it right when they note the power of citizen media. However, nominating everyone as Person of the Year just seems like a cop-out to me. Apparently, I’m not alone in that.

Oh well, at least I can say that I got to be Time’s Person of the Year, and I didn’t even have to get my ass off the couch to do it…