Category: Political Philosophy

Trump Wants To Be King

I was able to listen to the hearing before the DC Circuit this week in which Trump’s lawyers argued that the President can commit literally any crime and get away with it so long as he manages to get through impeachment. It is, to be blunt, a profoundly stupid argument. What Trump says is that the political process of impeachment of the President is a prerequisite to the criminal prosecution of a President. This is a deliberate misreading of the Constitution. Here is what the Impeachment Judgment Clause actually says:

Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.

US Const. Art. I, §3

In other words, impeachment only removes an official from office, it is not a criminal sanction, but someone who is impeached and removed may still be charged criminally. The idea behind this clause (as made clear by the Founders at the time) was that impeachment was only a political solution, and an official still remained criminally chargeable after impeachment.

What Trump’s lawyers are arguing is that a President cannot be charged criminally unless they are convicted in an impeachment proceeding first. This argument is patently ridiculous, as the DC Circuit noted right at the outset. Under Trump’s argument, the President of the United States could order the assassination of the entire opposition party in Congress on January 19th and because there was no chance for the President to then be impeached, the President could not be criminally charged for murder. If you think that hypothetical is crazy, that is literally one of the first questions asked at the hearing, and Trump’s attorney was forced into saying that is exactly what Trump’s position is.

If there is any question why someone who was once a rock-ribbed GOP-supporting conservative is now not only voting for Joe Biden, but openly campaigning for the Democrats, that is it. The most fundamental thing in American government is that the power of the government is constrained by law. My whole disagreement with the left has been that they are too eager to use the coercive power of the state to remake society. But now the “right” is arguing that there should be no guardrails at all against Presidential power. That position is fundamentally anti-American. And while I still have a healthy skepticism of the Democratic Party, the GOP is now the biggest threat to this country out there. The January 6th insurrection was the point where anyone still supporting the GOP crossed from being a rube to being a danger. The second the GOP party line went to supporting the insurrection, it became not a political party but a terrorist organization.

Trump’s position before the Court this week is the position that the President is accountable to no one. So long as the President can either delay impeachment or keep their party to the party line, the President is free to murder, accept bribes, sell secrets, or do whatever the hell they want. That is not a position that is remotely American or remotely acceptable.

Trump wants to be a King, and the GOP is perfectly happy to let him. That is why the GOP is neither American nor conservative. That is why this conservative is all in with the Biden campaign in 2024.

No Longer California Dreamin’

The reason why I am not a liberal is because liberal means can never achieve liberal ends—and nowhere is that more apparent than in the state of California. For decades, California has been an enclave of liberalism, an experiment in liberal governance and liberal ideology. Even when Arnold Schwartzenegger was elected governor, ostensibly as a Republican, he governed as a center-leftist. The Republican Party in California has become a virtual irrelevancy, and the California Legislature is now subject to Democratic super-majorities in both houses.

And what is the result of California’s full-throated embrace of liberal policy? This article in The Washington Examiner lays the truth bare:

What are Californians getting for all this government spending? According to a new census report released Friday, almost one-quarter, 23.5 percent, of all Californians are in poverty. One-third of all the nation’s welfare recipients live in the state, despite the fact that California has only one-eighth of the country’s population. That’s four times as many as the next-highest welfare population, which is New York. Meanwhile, California eighth-graders finished ahead of only Mississippi and District of Columbia students on reading and math test scores in 2011.

Middle-class families that want actual jobs, not welfare, are fleeing California in droves. According to IRS data compiled by the Manhattan Institute, since 2000, almost 2 million Americans have left California for other states. Their most popular destination: Texas.

It is ironic that the Democratic Party champions itself as guardians of the middle class, when California shows how liberal policies have the effect of hollowing out the middle class. California has become an enclave for the super-wealthy and the super poor—those in the middle take the worst squeeze. California has become a state where income inequality is some of the highest in the country, despite the notion that liberal social and fiscal policies will create a more equitable society. Despite years of liberal policymaking, California has not become a more equitable place to live.

At the same time, California’s tax rates are some of the highest in the nation. While liberals love to argue that Proposition 13, which limited the Legislature’s powers to raise property taxes, are the reason for California’s woes, the truth is far different. California has some of the highest tax rates of any state in the country, and has a highly progressive tax structure with seven brackets. Despite having a tax system that does everything that the left argues should be done, California is a fiscal basket case.

So what is California’s real problem?:

The real cause for California’s fiscal crisis is simple: They spend too much money. Between 1996 and 2012, the state’s population grew by just 15 percent, but spending more than doubled, from $45.4 billion to $92.5 billion (in 2005 constant dollars).

California simply spends far more than it takes in, despite having some of the richest parts of the country, California’s unquestionable prosperity cannot accommodate the needs of an ever-expanding government. And the response of California’s left-wing government has been to further raise taxes, forcing an even-greater exodus of middle-class jobs to states like Arizona and Texas. What we are seeing is a state that is coasting by on past successes, but rapidly reaching the inflection point where California threatens to become a failed state.

If that seems like hyperbole, it is not. We can already see it happening on the municipal level. The city of Stockton, California has become the largest municipality in the country to file Chapter 9 bankruptcy. (Chapter 9 is a rarely-used part of the federal Bankruptcy Code that allows cities and counties to reorganize their debts in the same way that companies may file Chapter 11 bankruptcy.) But Stockton isn’t alone: three other California cities have also filed for bankruptcy protection, an almost unprecedented event.

The root causes of these bankruptcies are overly-generous public-sector pensions that are no longer sustainable, massive public spending, and tax revenues that are shrinking as the middle class flees for more sustainable climates. Yet these trends are not being fixed, they are being exacerbated as Sacramento continues to push for more and more spending and higher and higher taxes.

Indeed, California faces a fiscal time bomb that could swamp the entire state. CalPERS, the public-sector pension system in California is facing a fiscal crisis. It has even resorted to filing lawsuits against bankrupt cities to try and get additional money to remain solvent. As California’s tax base becomes increasingly polarized, the flow of money needed to give public-sector employees lavish benefits decreases. But the powerful public sector unions have a stranglehold over state government, which makes meaningful reform virtually impossible. When CalPERS goes bust, as is inevitable, the economic effects would be dire.

And that doesn’t even get to immigration: California’s lax immigration enforcement and lavish welfare benefits have created a massive Latino underclass. Illegal immigration costs California taxpayers up to $1.6 billion every year, a sizable fraction of California’s overall yearly deficit. Even if those costs are inflated, the very real cost of providing benefits to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants is having an effect on California’s already-precarious fiscal situation.

The California Canary in the Fiscal Coal Mine

California’s looming failure is a warning to the rest of us. California is being buoyed by its prior good fortune, it’s abundant natural resources, and its excellent climate and geography. But even these natural advantages cannot hold its decline at bay forever. Should nothing change, California will face fiscal collapse, and it could take the rest of the country down with it. A fiscal crisis in California would have massive ripple effects across the entire United States economy. But the political will for reform is simply not there. With no effective resistance to the liberal orthodoxy in California, there is nothing to slow down the stream of bad policies contributing to this mess.

But what cannot go on forever will not, and sooner or later the results of these bad policies will hit in full force. Sooner or later the unsustainable trajectory that California is on will meet the ground, and when it does, the end result will be messy at best—and that’s the most optimistic way of putting it.

What California show us is that liberalism is rife with internal contradictions. Liberalism teaches that economic inequality is dangerous, yet years of liberal policies have produced shocking inequality in California, The rich Los Angeles suburbs like Beverly Hills, Malibu, or Brentwood exist just miles from some of the most blighted urban landscapes in the country. Liberalism says that the middle class must be defended, yet California’s middle class is fleeing the state, and those that remain are getting squeezed ever tighter by high prices and high taxes. Liberalism says that government should be the solution to our problems, but California’s government is one of the most dysfunctional in the country. California is proof that liberal means can never achieve liberal ends—and each year those contradictions only grow.

What California needs is a complete reorganization. California can succeed, it has all the natural benefits in the world and still enjoys the benefits of being a center for technology, aerospace, biotech, and other fields. Despite California’s brain drain, it still has a substantial part of its educated workforce left. The ingredients for success are all there, but California’s dysfunctional government and left-wing hegemony is keeping it from success.

Restoring California’s Dream

What California needs is to reform its pension system, even if it creates massive political costs. It needs to dramatically cut unnecessary spending, including stopping giving such lavish benefits to illegal immigration. Proposition 13 may have kept California’s property taxes artificially low, but that’s been offset in some areas by insanely high property values in certain areas of the state. Property tax reform may well be necessary, but it should be combined with a simpler, flatter, and less punitive income-tax system and a reduction in both business taxes and unnecessary regulations.

California has benefitted from a highly-educated workforce, but that cannot continue so long as California’s schools are failing, both K-12 and higher education. Instead, California needs to do what the rest of the country must do: reform the educational system from a sinecure for bureaucrats into a result-driven system that teaches the skills needed for the 21st Century workforce. Right now many of the people working for California’s high-tech industries are foreigners on H1B visas—and while those workers add a great deal to the state, it’s not sustainable over the long term. Developing a better educational system will make sure that California can maintain its high-tech economy into the future. If they fail to do that, California will become an also-ran.

California demonstrates the reasons why liberalism doesn’t work: because if you do everything that liberalism says, you don’t get a more equitable or modern economy. The problem is that for many of the stakeholders in California’s broken system, there is no impetus to reform. The public sector unions have every reason to keep sucking at the teat until it runs dry. The educational bureaucracy has no desire to reform and threaten its gravy train. The ultra-rich don’t care what tax rate they pay because they have enough wealth that the difference between losing 10% to taxation and losing 5% ultimately doesn’t impact their standard of wealth. A Hollywood movie star doesn’t care what their tax rate is, they are paid an obscenely large amount of money and their finances are handled by an army of lawyers and accountants. The small business owner who can only afford a part-time bookkeeper is acutely aware of the impact of taxation. Yet the Hollywood celebrity has far more political clout than the small-business owner.

Sadly, the only way that this system will likely be reformed is when there is no other way possible. The liberal welfare state is ultimately unsustainable, but is extremely difficult to reform. California was once a symbol of America’s cultural, technological, and economic might. Yet now it is becoming a warning. If we fail to heed that warning, California dreamin’ will become a national nightmare.

Milton Friedman’s Century

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Milton Friedman, the economist and author who helped inspire some of the most important economic policies of our time and helped millions of people escape poverty. Friedman doesn’t get much recognition outside of economic circles, but his achievements in that field were more than just writing a few textbooks. He helped change the face of the American economy for the better.

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When Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976, the world was enamored with the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, who taught that government spending would somehow produce a “mulitplier effect” that would lead to economic growth. The theory was that if the government were to spend $1 it would produce more than $1 in economic activity. In the 1960s, Friedman famously wrote that “we’re all Keynesians now”—a position later adopted by Richard Nixon in 1971.

In the 1950s through the 1970s, one could credibly think that the future lay not with free markets but with centrally-planned economies. Keynesianism was the dominant theory in economics and government policy. Governments across the globe were expanding the reach of central planning in a whole host of economic sectors. The ideas of the Austrian Economic School were dismissed as crackpot theories.

But then, the crash hit.

Friedman’s Revolution

In the 1970s, the world economy entered into a massive downslide. The Arab oil embargo pushed gas prices through the roof. But more critically, something happened that Keynesian theory said was impossible: stagflation – high inflation and economic recession. Conventional Keynesian theory taught that inflation and economic recession were opposites and could not happen at the same time. Yet in the 1970s, that is precisely what happened.

Across the globe, politicians tried the conventional Keynesian remedies. In the United States, Richard Nixon instituted wage and price controls to try to stop inflation, an effort that appeared to work at first until it led to massive shortages of goods. Governments tried to spend their way out of the recession, to little forward growth. The world economy was hanging by a thread, and the conventional economic theories were not helping the world pull out of its economic recession.

But it was Milton Friedman that popularized the way out of the mess. Friedman had already chipped away at the intellectual foundations of Keynesianism. He observed that Keynesian spending and the Keynesian multiplier did not work in practice—once the spigots were turned off, a fiscal hangover resulted. Because there was no new production happening to support all the extra spending, the result of Keynesian stimulus was inflation and recession. Governments wanted to try to inflate their way out of the borrowing costs of all the extra spending, which only made things worse. Further, government “investment” was taking place at the expense of private investment that would produce long-term growth.

Friedman’s theories were right, and his work led him to receive the Nobel Prize in 1976. It was not until the end of the 1970s into the early 1980s that leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher embraced his ideas that the world economy truly began to recover.

Free To Choose

But Friedman was more than just a theoretical economist. He was a gifted philosopher and writer as well, and his work on why free markets are so important to a free society is some of his most important work. His first major popular work, Capitalism and Freedom went into the details of why the economic theory of capitalism was so deeply entwined with having a free society. When it was first published, Capitalism and Freedom was a revolutionary work: Friedman advocated such bizarre notions as a “negative income tax,” an all-volunteer military, and school vouchers.

Friedman continued to popularize his pro-free market ideas in the press, writing columns for Newsweek and other publications. But it was in 1980 when Friedman published one of his most accessible works, Free to Choose, that Friedman’s ideas started truly influencing the popular conversation.

Friedman dedicated himself to pursuing advocacy for free markets and limited government, and he did it with a sense of clarity and purpose. He was able to explain why even the most well-intentioned government programs are thwarted by the complexity of a modern economy. The following clip from the Donohue show in the 1980s shows Friedman at his best:

Friedman, of course, had the better argument, and was able to not only write about economics, but to get millions of people to look at economics in a new way. Instead of viewing economics as the “dismal science,” concerned with the shuffling of abstract value, Friedman popularly imbued economics with a moral aspect. Economics was about maximizing the freedom of the individual rather than the collective or the State. It was about ensuring that individuals were best able to pursue their own ends, provide for their own families, grow their own businesses, and prosper. This shift seems common-sense to us now, and that is due in large part to the influence of Milton Friedman.

A Legacy of Freedom

Today, some of the revolutionary ideas in Capitalism and Freedom are a common part of our day-to-day lives. Milton Friedman pushed for an all-volunteer military prior to the Vietnam War, and today the military is and will remain an all-volunteer force. Friedman’s idea of a “negative income tax” blossomed into the Earned Income Tax Credit, a system where people in poverty who choose to work are rewarded for their efforts with a payment from the government. Instead of welfare, which subsidizes poverty, the EITC encourages work and employment. In 2010 alone, the EITC was responsible for lifting an estimated 5.4 million Americans out of poverty. Friedman’s ideas have lifted 200 million people from poverty into prosperity, an achievement that will stand the test of time.

Now, more than ever, we need leaders who will carry Friedman’s mantle of freedom. Keynesianism, discredited in the 1970s and later by the Japanese “lost decade” in the 1990s is making a resurgence. It isn’t that Keynesian theories suddenly work better than they did in the past, it is that governments are using Keynesianism as a rationale for consolidating political power and justifying more and more control over the world economy. Friedman would have seen right through these efforts.

Just as it was in the 1970s, what the world needs now is not more central State planning, but more economic freedom. The solution to our economic problems is to unleash the creative energies of our people and to get government out of the way of economic growth. Friedman understood this from both a philosophical and a practical viewpoint. Friedman was right back then, and he is right today. And if we listed to his wise counsel again, our economy can come roaring back once again. Milton Friedman’s legacy of freedom can bring millions more from poverty to prosperity again if we are only willing to listen.

Andy Stern’s Liberal Fascism

Andy Stern, the head of the SEIU and one of President Obama’s biggest supporters has a shockingly honest piece in The Wall Street Journal calling for the United States to mimic China’s model of state-run economic development. Say what you will about Stern’s piece, it’s probably the most honest description of where the American left wants this country to go.

Let’s ignore the fact that China, while having improved its human rights record somewhat, is still a single-party totalitarian society that routinely arrests political dissenters, engages in torture of political prisoners, and censors the free exchange of information. Even beyond all those horribles, China is no model for the United States.

Here’s what Stern has to say about China:

. . .I was part of a U.S.-China dialogue—a trip organized by the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the Center for American Progress—with high-ranking Chinese government officials, both past and present. For me, the tension resulting from the chorus of American criticism paled in significance compared to reading the emerging outline of China’s 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development.

Some Americans are drawing lessons from this. Last month, the China Daily quoted Orville Schell, who directs the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, as saying: “I think we have come to realize the ability to plan is exactly what is missing in America.” The article also noted that Robert Engle, who won a Nobel Prize in 2003 for economics, has said that while China is making five-year plans for the next generation, Americans are planning only for the next election.

There are times when I think that it’s hyperbole to accuse the left of being closet socialists, when that attack is over the top. Then I see something like this. Here is the head of one of the Democratic Party’s most important constituency, a friend and informal advisor to President Barack Obama, saying that America should start adopting a five-year plan. Stern doesn’t even try to hide his arguments, or finesse them as does Sinophile Thomas Friedman. He goes right out and says that America should emulate a country that is 100% controlled by the Communist Party.

Liberal Fascism Is Right

Stern’s argument is the same argument that has been made time and time again about totalitarian states. The phrase “Mussolini made the trains run on time” came from somewhere—and as Jonah Goldberg demonstrated in his important and utterly misunderstood book Liberal Fascism, the statist intelligentsia of the 1920s and 1930s saw Fascist Italy as a model for the rest of the world. Stern’s love letter to Communist China is in the same vein.

In the 1930s, American journalist Walter Duranty of The New York Times covered for the crimes of Stalin’s Soviet Union, and held Stalinism as a model for the West to follow. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his work. Stern is just following in Duranty’s footsteps.

Stern argues that free-market capitalism has failed, and that the state-run model as exemplified by China is superior. Anyone who believes that has some screws loose—China’s development is not a model for anyone, not even the Chinese. Yes, the Chinese have boosted their economy and are rapidly industrializing and becoming a 21st Century powerhouse. But their fortune is not due to their model of government. If anything, within my lifetime we are likely to see a catastrophic economic collapse unless China fundamentally reforms.

Clean energy vehicles? Look at China’s high speed rail system—the one held up as a model by Sinophiles like Andy Stern and Thomas Friedman. It is not only massively over-budget, but what has been completed is shoddily constructed and unsafe. This has already lead to fatal accidents and a reexamination of the whole project.

Environmental protection? The environmental ruin of China provides more evidence why the China model is not one to emulate. Beijing and other major Chinese cities are filled with smog, and the government has been attempting to hide the truth about how bad China’s air is from its own citizens. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam caused massive environmental and cultural damage, but the Chinese government steamrolled it through. There’s no Chinese equivalent of the Sierra Club to lobby against the government on projects, at least nothing with anywhere near the power of the American environmental lobby. Is that a model that Stern would like the U.S. to adopt?

Economic equality? China’s level of corruption is endemic, as Freedom House notes in its Index of Economic Freedom. Bribery is all too common in China at all levels. The Chinese system is a system where the politically well-connected receive the spoils, and the rest mire through. Now, for someone like Andy Stern, who is part of the politically well-connected set, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. But for those not part of the political elite, Chinese-style corruption is the antithesis of economic equality.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. China is rapidly industrializing in the way that the post-World War II Soviet Union rapidly industrialized. The Chinese government is not as totalitarian as the Soviets were, but the result will be the same. China can produce all the “five-year plans” that it wants—just as the Soviet Gosplan did for decades. But the 20th Century was filled with the littered husks of governments that tried and failed to execute state-run central planning and failed. Even the ones that didn’t practice Stalinism failed. They failed not because they weren’t good enough at central planning, they failed because central planning of an economy doesn’t work.

And let me make a bold prediction—within my lifetime the Chinese system will either substantially reform or end up in a messy collapse that sends ripple effects across the globe. In fact, I don’t think that prediction is particularly bold, because that is what has happened every time a state has embraced central economic planning.

This Is What They Actually Believe

All of this supports Jonah Goldberg’s thesis in Liberal Fascism—not that American liberals want to strap on jackboots and invade Poland, but that American liberals have an ideological blind spot that causes them to embrace state control of the economy, which inevitably leads to totalitarianism. What liberals like Andy Stern miss is that the Chinese government has the power to implement “five-year plans” because it also has the power to arrest dissidents, attempt to culturally eradicate the Tibetan people, and censor the free expression of its citizens. Once you give the government virtually unfettered power to control the economic affairs of the people, you’ve given them virtually unfettered power to control everything else.

That’s the lesson of the 20th Century, the one that American liberals never seem to have grasped. You cannot get to Bismarck’s welfare state without eventually getting to Adolph Hitler. You cannot get a Mussolini that makes the trains run on time without getting a Mussolini that oppresses the people. You cannot have a Chinese economy without emulating the bad parts of China either. Political power in a controlled market is a zero-sum game—every bit of power and authority you give to the government has to be taken from somewhere else.

That’s why America should not emulate China. America should start emulating America. Our Founding Fathers figured out, centuries ago, that the best way to have a successful and prosperous country was to unleash the people and allow them to flourish. The Founding Fathers didn’t fully understand this concept at the time, but they got it right.

Stern argues that free-market capitalism is failing America. Bullshit. What is failing in America is the very model that Stern wants—a system where the government controls ever more functions of the economy. Over the last few decades the size and scope of government has grown at an almost exponential rate—but has life gotten better because of it? What parts of the economy are the biggest messes? We have an education system that’s a basket case and is harming the future of this country. The education system is controlled almost entirely by the government, either directly or indirectly. Our healthcare system is a mess. Who’s the biggest power in healthcare? It’s Uncle Sam, through Medicare and Medicaid and a whole host of other programs. Our financial system has lurched from one disaster to another. And contrary to the spin, the financial fatcats by and large supported President Obama and have been getting rich off of his largesse since he was elected.

No wonder Stern wants more of the same. His union has gotten fatter and more powerful under President Obama, and if the United States emulated China, Andy Stern would be even more powerful.

China is no model for the United States. China is no model for China. The fact that one of the most powerful figures in American liberalism in the Democratic Party would openly embrace central planning in such stark terms is shocking—even though it’s been clear for some time that’s what they believe in private.

Reagan At 100

This Sunday marked what would have been the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President and the “Great Communicator.” Reagan’s Presidency still shapes American politics even though he left office over 20 years ago. Conservatives continue to idolize him, and even liberals (including President Obama) try to take on his mantle from time to time.

But why? What is it that made Reagan stand out?

The Great Communicator

Reagan had one of the rarest gifts: the ability to take complex political philosophy and communicate it clearly and effectively. Take Reagan’s 1964 masterwork A Time for Choosing:

Even though this speech is over 40 years old, it still stands the test of time. It encapsulates the heart of conservatism as a political philosophy in a way that is clear and straightforward. Reagan had a singular talent for taking complex political ideas and distilling them down to their essentials. Few politicians have such a gift. He didn’t need to rely on the cheap political tricks that have become a standard in political rhetoric. He was a master political communicator, and there are only a few who come close.

But what sets Reagan apart from the rest was that he was not only a great communicator, but he was a man of ideas. Far from the “amiable dunce” that was portrayed in the media, Reagan’s voluminous writings and notes from his radio addresses show that Reagan had a mind like a steel trap. He was fascinated with the details of public policy and how policies effected everyday Americans. From health care to taxes, Reagan spend years studying the details of public policy.

And there is a lesson there: Reagan did his homework. It’s not enough to be a skilled communicator: in order to be a truly effective President, you have to know the issues. Reagan had years of experience: as Governor of California, as a radio host, and as political candidate. He was able to explain the issues so clearly because he understood the issues himself in depth.

The Liberator

But ultimately, Reagan was more than a political icon. He was one of the instrumental figures that helped end the Cold War. It’s easy to forget that even in the 1980s, many in the West thought that the Soviet Union would be with us for decades longer. But Reagan spent much of his life fighting the evils of Soviet Communism. He had the moral integrity to call the Soviet Union what it was: an evil empire. Just as now, the foreign policy establishment didn’t have the courage to stand up for principles of human rights. But Reagan pushed on regardless.

And this tenacity helped fell an empire:

When Reagan told Gorbechev to “tear down this wall” it sent shock waves through the Iron Curtain. Ironically, the State Department, and even some in Reagan’s own Cabinet thought that those words should have been removed. But Reagan insisted they remain, and a seminal moment in Cold War history was born.

It isn’t fair to say that Reagan singlehandedly won the Cold War. But he was instrumental in the process of tearing down the Iron Curtain. The Soviet Union may have collapsed from its own internal contradictions—Reagan was right that Marxism-Leninism would be consigned to the ash heap of history—but it could have lingered on for decades.

The Optimistic American

But ultimately what made Ronald Wilson Reagan such a lasting figure in American politics is that he embodied the optimism of a nation. He saw America as that shining city on hill, and it came through in every speech. Reagan wasn’t a cynic who saw political power as its own end. He wasn’t another self-serving politician. He was an optimist who believed that America’s best days were still ahead.

And that is why Reagan is remembered so fondly today, even by his former critics.

Today, more than ever, we need leadership possessed of Reagan’s optimism and spirit. In a time when many Americans are worried about the state of the economy, the state of the world, and feeling like the American dream is slipping away, Americans are looking for someone who still sees this country as that shining city on the hill. They are looking for someone who still sees America’s best days ahead—and for whom that isn’t just an applause line.

There are few in politics that combine Reagan’s essential optimism, his knowledge of the issues, and his ability to reach out to the average American. Many have been called the next Reagan, but so far none have lived up to the reputation of the 40th President of the United States. Reagan’s cowboy boots are not easy to fill.

One hundred years after his birth, Reagan remains the paragon of modern Presidents, an almost legendary figure. But we should be careful not to let Reagan the legend overwhelm Reagan the man. There is much to be learned from Reagan’s career and Presidency, but in the end future leader should not ask “what would Reagan do” but “how would a leader like Reagan apply enduring principles to the problems of today?” (Which doesn’t exactly fit on a bumper sticker.)

So, even though it’s late, happy birthday to President Reagan. May his optimism inspire the next generation of American politicians to carry forward the principles that he defended in an amazing political life.

The Real Climate Of Hate Behind The Giffords Assassination Attempt

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Jay Reding

The attempted assassination of Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona at a Tuscon supermarket was a horrendous act committed by a madman. Rep. Giffords was fortunate to have survived, having been shot in the head. Had she perished in the attack, she would have been the first member of Congress killed in office since Rep. Leo Ryan was gunned down in French Guyana in 1978. Fortunately, in the United States political assassinations are rare.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ)

This horrific attack was bad enough. But making things worse was the reaction of some on the left. Within minutes of the attack, Markos Moulitsas, the left-wing pitbull and proprietor of the left-wing fever swamp The Daily Kos instantly blamed the attack on Sarah Palin. One would think that by now Mr. Moulitsas would know better that to unleash his inner ghoul, but that appears to be giving him too much credit. But he wasn’t alone. Even as it became clear that the shooter was not a member of the Tea Party or a fan of Sarah Palin, the media consensus was clear: the real cause of the shooting was not a deranged madman, but a supposed “climate of hate” from the right.

But the facts tell a different story. Jared Lee Loughner, the shooter behind the attack, was not a member of the Tea Party or a fan of Sarah Palin. He wasn’t part of the right. In fact, it appears that he was a conspiracy theorist and a nutcase who left a trial of online ramblings about mind control through English grammar. Trying to use him as a political prop to bash on the right is simply disingenuous, and does a gave disservice to the innocents who lost their lives in Loughner’s craven murder.

The Climate of Hate Behind “The Climate of Hate”

It’s hardly surprising that partisan attack dogs would try to make political hay out of the Tucson murders. But it isn’t just the left-wing fever swamps who tried to smear their political opponents: a veteran Democratic operative was quoted by The Politico as wanting to associate the Tea Party with the attacks. The Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik wasted no time in blaming political “vitriol” for the shooting. The mainstream media has joined in the chorus, accusing the right of a blood libel in the shooting.

The totalitarian temptation of the left is on full display here: their instant reaction was to blame the right and call for restrictions on the political speech of those they don’t like. For them, it isn’t relevant that Loughner was not part of the right, and this shooting had little if anything to do with immigration, or Sarah Palin, or Fox News. They have seized upon an opportunity to demonize their political opponents, and tacitly accuse them of all manner of heinous crimes.

There is great irony in complaining about a climate of hate while fostering such a climate oneself. And that is precisely what the left is doing by using this terrible event as an excuse for pushing their pet causes.

This weekend, a federal judge was gunned down by a lunatic. A 9-year-old girl, born on September 11, 2001, was murdered by a crazed fool. A Congressional aide was killed at a campaign stop by an unhinged nut. Instead of concentrating on the facts and remembering those who died, the left has cynically turned this tragedy into yet another excuse to have a political shouting match.

There is a climate of hate in this country. It’s the hate of those who would use events like these as nothing more than another attempt to flaunt their ideological self-superiority. It is the hate of those who would use a horrific murder as an excuse to clamp down on political dissent. It is the hate of those who see conventional political rhetoric as a dangerous threat to society—unless it is used by their side, of course.

Rep. Giffords is fortunate to have survived this attack, and with luck she will make a full recovery. The murderer has been apprehended, and will pay for his crimes. But what this shooting has told us is that there are altogether too many people willing to use this tragedy as a blood libel against their political opposition. If they wish to argue that a “climate of hate” led to this shooting, perhaps they should consider the climate they are creating.

Who Is Glenn Beck?

Last weekend, somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 showed up by the Lincoln Memorial for Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally. At The New York Times, Ross Douthat wonders if the media isn’t underestimating Beck’s talents:

The Fox News host had promised that the rally, billed as a celebration of American values, would be an explicitly apolitical event. And so it came to pass: save for an occasional “Don’t Tread On Me,” banner, the crowded Mall was nearly free of political signs and T-shirt slogans, and there was barely a whisper of the crusade against liberalism that consumes most of Beck’s on-air hours.

Instead, Beck served up something considerably stranger. This was a tent revival crossed with a pep rally intertwined with a history lecture married to a U.S.O. telethon — and that was just in the first hour.

There was something innately Tocquevillian about the rally. The focus wasn’t on President Obama’s agenda or winning elections, but on restoring American values. In that sense, it was a deeply conservative rally in a sense deeper than the traditional meeting. It wasn’t a rally for Republican politicians, rather a rally for small-r republican values. In that sense, Beck seems to be aiming for something higher than just transitory partisan gain. His rally was exactly what was advertised, an attempt to restore the honorable values of America’s founding.

First of all, the idea that this was some racist meeting is prima facie ridiculous. It’s a silly media narrative, and nothing more. Beck’s decision to hold it on the anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” address was not necessarily the wisest—but Beck went out of his way to honor Rev. King and his legacy, including giving honors to a black pastor who was present when King spoke. The cheap shots about race say more about the media’s obsessions than it does about Beck’s message.

But I’m not a Glenn Beck fan—his show always seemed like a strange mix of bizarre conspiracy theories mixed with Beck’s maudlin performances. Quite frankly, it seems as though there’s something not quite right with the man.

At the same time, I have to give him some credit. Beck is not an easy man to characterize. He seems legitimately interested in big ideas and isn’t afraid to discuss them on-air. To see a conservative media personality hawk a book is not new—for that book to be F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom certainly is. Beck isn’t like the usual crop of conservative media stars—he is provocative, but he’s far more audacious. He doesn’t just want to see Democrats defeated in elections, he wants to remake the national character.

But Beck has a rather sordid history, having been one of the first radio “shock jocks” before his conversion to both Mormonism and political conservatism. His on-air histrionics and his occasional forays into conspiracy theory detract from his message. Unlike Rush Limbaugh, who brings a showman’s instincts to his radio program, Beck sounds more like a tent-revival preacher (which may explain the tenor of this weekend’s rally). Beck’s sometimes bizarre chalkboard rants, his on-air histrionics, and tenor of his show are hard to get used to, especially if one is not inclined to accept his message.

Glenn Beck is not an easy man to pigeon-hole. He seems to understand, as too few conservatives do, that if the conservative movement is to thrive, it has to be based on something more than opposition to Obama. Beck’s show isn’t afraid to point viewers to important works in conservative political though. But at the same time conservatives should think critically about his message: there are times he veers into Bircher territory.

Beck is undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with, and those who dismiss him offhand likely are underestimating him. Certainly the media narrative that Beck is a nutcase, a racist, a bigot, etc. is the product of the typical left-wing smear campaign levied against anyone popular on the right. But Beck is a polarizing figure, and in order for him to get his message out, he has to do more than preach to the converted. Restoring America’s honor is a worthwhile enterprise—but it remains to be see whether Beck’s movement can build upon its successes. If it becomes yet another conspiracy-minded movement based largely on opposition to Obama, or worse a cult of personality surrounding Beck, it will fail. If it becomes a movement that stands on enduring principles, it may succeed. Skeptical as I am about Beck, this weekend was more the latter than the former. If Ross Douthat has underestimated Glenn Beck, so too perhaps have I.

Passing Blame To The Wrong Party

Daniel Larison, of the paleo-con American Conservative takes a look at the woes of the GOP and the conservative movement and puts the blame on national-security conservatives.

It wasn’t that the Bush Administration went on an orgy of spending that made a mockery of conservative principles, or that social conservatives had a message that tended to alienate rather than include, it’s that the the strong national security message of the GOP caused them to lose:

Like their short-sighted cheerleading for a “surge” in Iraq, which failed on its own terms, and their subsequent carping this year that the Pentagon budget increase is too small, the mainstream right’s apologies for torture are not only morally bankrupt but also divorced from the reality of the intelligence, or lack thereof, these methods provided. Much as liberals needed their internal critics to challenge the welfare status quo over the last three decades, conservatism desperately needs similar internal dissent concerning the warfare state. But there is almost none.

One reason for the lack of dissent and accountability is that the majority of the GOP was deeply implicated in supporting and defending the war in Iraq, the signature failure of national security conservatives. To a large extent, the party has defined itself around the ideological fictions used to justify and continue the war long after the country had turned against it. This process was aided by the disappearance of antiwar Republicans in Congress. Never numerous in the first place, most have been replaced by Democrats during the past two cycles.

Now, this argument is wrong, but it isn’t fundamentally wrong. It is wrong on the facts. The surge did work, it worked better than had been expected, and as a testament to how well it worked, the Obama Administration has not disavowed it. President Obama, were the Iraq issue as toxic as it is claimed, could have withdrawn all U.S. troops ASAP. Instead, Obama’s war strategy is not that much different than what a President McCain’s strategy would have been—a gradual and conditional withdrawal over the next year to two years. Moreover, the Obama Administration is hardly rejecting the idea of a hawkish foreign policy. During the debates, Obama needled McCain about getting bin Laden. Hardly the act of someone who wants to push for a more restrained war. Obama has been sending more drones into Pakistan, even though such actions may be dangerous. Rather than de-escalation, Obama plans to put more troops into Afghanistan and has signaled a muscular U.S. foreign policy.

The truth of the matter is, doves don’t win elections in the U.S. Muscular foreign policy is widely accepted by both political parties in the United States. The idea that the GOP lost because they embraced “hegemony” is something only someone inside the intellectual bubble of academia could take seriously.

Moreover, Larison divides the GOP into three wings: social, fiscal, and national security conservatives. The reality is that both social and fiscal conservatives also tend to be national security conservatives. There isn’t a separate wing of conservatives that believe in a strong national defense but not social issues or fiscal ones. Rather, both socially-minded and fiscally-minded conservatives tend to be interested in national security issues. That’s why it’s not that surprising that Evangelicals tend to be supportive of “torture” against suspected terrorists—there is no hard and fast line between social conservatives and national security conservatives. The Reagan coalition was largely built around national security issues, and a strong national defense has been one of the common issues shared by a vast majority of Republicans and conservatives.

There is, however, an element of truth here as well. The GOP lost in large part due to the war in Iraq, a war that was never convincingly explained by the President and suffered from poor management from 2003–07. The “surge” was the product of the Administration finally listening to the people fighting the war rather than dictating from the top down. President Bush never convincingly explained why we were in Iraq so long and why the sacrifice of American blood and treasure was worth it. There was truth in the adage that we were “fighting them over there rather than over here,” but that logic was never followed through.

The GOP has many problems, but “interventionist” foreign policy is not one of them. The Obama Administration continues to play lip service to the idea of a more “humble” foreign policy while still engaging in interventions abroad. Isolationism has not played a major role in U.S. politics since the end of World War II, and for good reason. America’s superpower status demands world leadership, and we can’t have one without the other. If the GOP becomes a policy that abrogates its positions on a muscular U.S. foreign policy, they will lose. While Iraq hurt the GOP in 2006 and 2008, the GOP’s foreign policy positions helped re-elect President Bush in 2004 when Kerry’s weakness on national security proved to be fatal.

The real lesson here is that if you’re going to fight a war, fight it well and keep the American people fully engaged in the conflict. To argue that the lesson conservatives should learn from the last election cycles is to abandon a deeply-held and popular principle of conservatism and embrace a discredited and dangerous isolationism is to learn exactly the wrong lesson.

Winning on Principles

The New York Times has a look at the ideological battle within the Republican Party as the GOP deals with their drubbings in 2006 and 2008 and the Spector defection. Meanwhile, David Frum offers his own suggestions on rebuilding the party.

Everyone looks at the GOP’s problems through the lens of “conservatives” versus “moderates.” That is the wrong way to look at the issue: what this battle really is about is “principles” versus “politics.” The moderates want the GOP to play towards what they see as the political “center”—or the left. The principle-minded factions wants the GOP to stand on a bedrock of principle.

The moderates have a point. If you want to win as a party, you go where the votes are. It’s classic Anthony Downs, the voters fall along a bell curve and the party that can capture the most votes in the middle will win the election.

But the problem is that if the choice is between the Democrats and the Democrats-Lite, why not vote for the real thing? If Republicans start advocating for more government control, they lose the conservative and libertarian wings of the party and end up losing anyway.

There has to be room for both. The GOP cannot win by turning its back on its principles, but it has to be able to advocate for those principles. Being the best conservative in the world does absolutely nothing unless the GOP cannot get others to understand the importance of that stand.

That is the problem with the GOP today. They have no ability to connect with the average voter. They’ve lost the popular imagination, they’ve lost their political “brand” and there is no message coming from the GOP today. Even when they do have a point, they are so ham-handed in making it that they end up hurting each other.

All is not lost. Obama is a mule—a rare character that comes out of nowhere, establishes power, but leaves no lasting coattails. Obama is a rare individual, which makes him dangerous to the GOP, but the more the Democratic Party becomes a cult of personality, the worse off they are. Obama becomes largely irrelevant no later than 2016, and by then the sheen will be off. If the GOP hasn’t gotten their act together by then, they’ll have gone the way of the Whigs. Now is the time that the GOP needs to regroup and experiment.

That is what the GOP ultimately needs to do. They can’t be afraid of failure. They’ve already failed, now is the time to be bold. Yes, the GOP needs to stand on its principles, but what they really need to do is win on those principles. That means trying everything they can to advocate for their values and seeing what sticks. As badly as Michael Steele’s first weeks on the job has been, at least someone is trying new tactics.

Politics is cyclical, and the Democrats are already sowing the seeds of their own downfall. They will grow complacent and arrogant (and have already), and the GOP will get their opening. Exploiting that weakness will take time and trial. But the Republican Party must learn to stand for something and be able to make that stand one that others will join. That is a tall order, but it is the way politics work in America. Politics is cyclical, and any claim of permanent Democratic majority status is as premature now as claims of a permanent Republican majority in 2002 were then.

Tyranny Of The Minority

Law professor Paul Campos takes a critical look at the Iowa Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding gay marriage. (The Court’s opinion is available here.) Campos finds that the legal reasoning behind the decision was lacking:

Stripped of its verbiage, the court’s opinion comes down to the following claims: First, it’s a bad thing for the state to treat people differently on the basis of sexual orientation, unless the state has a good enough reason. Second, the reasons the state gave for treating same sex-couples differently from opposite-sex couples in regard to marriage weren’t good enough.

That’s it. These conclusions might raise various questions in the mind of someone who hasn’t enjoyed the benefits of a legal education. Such as, what was the court’s basis for these claims? Is there anything specifically “legal” about these conclusions? And how did the judges figure this stuff out, especially given that it took more than a century before anyone noticed Iowa’s constitution contained this requirement?

The problem with the Iowa decision is that there isn’t a strong legal rationale for this decision. The Iowa Constitution cannot require the recognition of gay marriage because gay marriage was not acceptable at the time that the Iowa Constitution was written. In essence, the judges are reading their own personal feelings into the law. While the Iowa Constitution is more broadly worded than the federal Constitution, there is still no plausible argument that it was designed to allow for same-sex marriages. What the Iowa Supreme Court has done amounts to going back and changing the words of the Iowa Constitution to mean something that it never was intended to.

Even those who want gay marriage should be troubled by this. There are seven members of the Iowa Supreme Court. There are nearly 3 million Iowans. In a democratic state, 7 people should not be presumed to have the power to set sweeping social policy for the other 2,999,997 people.

Yet that is what happened. The Iowan people did not vote to have gay marriages recognized in their state. In fact, a clear majority of Iowans oppose gay marriage. Yet the voice of the people have been overruled by just 7 people. That is troubling, not only from a standpoint of separation of powers, but because it ultimately hurts the cause of gay marriage. The likely outcome of all of this will be another Prop 8, and even if the Iowa Constitution’s amendment process means that the vote won’t take place until 2012, having this decision essentially forced upon the people of Iowa will not make gay marriage more popular.

This is a clear case of judicial activism. Judges should follow the law, and avoid legislating from the bench. The legal case for gay marriage presented in this opinion is woefully thin—rather the judges decided to enforce a set of social norms on Iowans by their will rather than the legislative process. Even those who support gay marriage should be troubled by that. This is an example of the tyranny of the minority, where the few use judicial overreach to enforce their views in a way they otherwise could not. No matter what the outcome, that kind of circumvention of the democratic process is wrong. The very foundation of our government is based on fundamental values like separation of powers and the consent of the governed. The Iowa Supreme Court has made a sweeping change to Iowa’s social policies and laws without the consent of the people. If such a thing were to stand, it would mean that states are governed not by voters, but by the few.