Jens 'n' Frens


	Jens 'n' Frens Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political. "A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures." -- Daniel Webster

Friday, September 10, 2010 ::: So is the Koran-burning off or on? I've lost track. I think I first heard of this story through Volokh, a bit before this point about how he and CAIR are playing off of each other. CAIR, though, isn't alone in making the point that this could stoke violence, in particular among those our troops are facing. I don't actually think much of that point, though. The fact that we have the right to do something obviously doesn't mean that we should (a point that Andrew McCarthy uses to tie this story to Cordoba house), and many people have tried to persuade the pastor of this. But if the fact that we are harboring a crank who likes to burn books causes some people to attack our troops, I'm not inclined to think of those people as the sort of people we should compromise with. I'm more inclined to think of them as the reason we have troops. We shouldn't condemn this act because it will offend Muslims who will want to kill us, we should condemn it because it will offend hundreds of millions - maybe billions - of Muslims who don't want to kill us. As President Obama noted in his press conference today, Bush always made it clear that we were not at war with Islam; in fact, many Muslims are on our side. It is their sensibilities we should be sympathetic to. A few extras: Althouse highlights the distinction between burning one's own books and confiscating books from others; while I share with the Washington Post writer to whom she responds the visceral reaction against any kind of book destruction, Althouse's distinction is, in fact, quite important. A friend of Glenn Reynolds laments the attention that this is getting relative to the many acts of charity performed by churches across the country. MSNBC invited the pastor onto a show, where the host behaved more poorly than he did. Labels: Islam, MSNBC, philosophical issues in democracy ::: posted by Steven at 11:47 PM (0) comments Monday, August 30, 2010 ::: I don't follow Glenn Beck closely, but the excerpts I have read from his rally over the weekend - timed and sited to coincide with the anniversary of MLK Jr's most famous speech - increase my esteem for him. I was struck not only by his call for self-responsibility, but also by something I read from Al Sharpton's small counter-rally; the president of the NAACP, Ben Jealous, said that Beck's crowd consisted of "small hearts and small minds," or something like that. Even ignoring the irony of this line being spoken in the presence of Al Sharpton, I don't think it fits Beck in general (some of his fans, possibly; I don't know) and certainly not his tone on Saturday. Beck is more combative than I go for, and sometimes lacking in perspective, which (along with a lack of free time) is why I don't tune in, even though I think we have broadly similar world-views. It is easy to make the step from combative to mean (Ann Coulter is quite talented at this), but I haven't seen it from Beck. Even when he was taking out Van Jones, it didn't strike me as a personal attack. He said once that he thought Obama was racist, but I understood this to be based on some of his statements and policies rather than arbitrary mud-slinging. I don't believe that Beck picks a new "worst person in the world" on every show. Maybe my ignorance of Beck is greater than Jealous's (though I wouldn't bet that he tunes into Beck's TV show much more frequently than I do); presumably, he had no chance to learn about the speeches being given at Beck's rally before his speech was delivered. If so, his remark was merely poorly timed; Beck's rally, if not his show, seemed to be more about calling on each member of the crowd to be the responsible, mindful sort of person capable of self-government than it was about calling for less government from above. This message is quite consistent with many of the greatest supporters of civil rights in America, from Fredrick Douglas, to Booker T. Washington, to Reverend King himself. I hope that Ben Jealous's heart and mind are big enough to accept it, and that those who heard it on the mall on Saturday take it to heart as well. Labels: Glenn Beck, philosophical issues in democracy ::: posted by Steven at 12:16 AM (0) comments Monday, June 14, 2010 ::: It's almost a week since Alvin Greene was nominated by South Carolina Democrats to run for the US Senate. While I'm certainly not guaranteeing that nothing interesting will turn up about how he got elected, there's a good chance he won because his name was listed first on the ballot and a bunch of idiots and saps, having bought into the naive mantra that voting is in and of itself a good thing, knowingly cast entirely uninformed ballots. There will be people who call for different rules on ballot ordering because of this, and that wouldn't be a bad idea except insofar as it prevents people from learning the broader lesson here. (This is likely to be worse problem for the Democrats than for the Republicans, but to a significant extent it's a part of our national secular religion and pervades most of the political spectrum.) Labels: philosophical issues in democracy ::: posted by dWj at 11:47 AM (0) comments Wednesday, October 01, 2008 ::: Political Hazard I'd like to make some further points about this bank bailout. Many have written about the "moral hazard" of government bailouts. The moral hazard is this: if private actors believe that the downsides of risky business decisions will be covered by government, they will be more likely to make risky decisions, insulated as they are from the consequences. There's another hazard here, though. It's a political hazard. The bailout creates a political constituency for government regulation. The government is bailing out bad mortgages and the taxpayer is ultimately on the hook. If the taxpayer is ultimately responsible for bad mortgage loans, why should the taxpayer not have a say in who gets a mortgage? A friend suggested, quite seriously, a federal law requiring a 20% downpayment for all new mortgages and a federal agency to determine, on an individual basis, whether home-buyers should qualify for a mortgage. This reaction seems allied to support in nations with socialized medicine for denying medical treatment to smokers, the obese, alcoholics, etc. -- since the taxpayer has to pay the bill at the end, why not save money by regulating away expenses? Tough to argue. Destroy Capitalism to Save It At The Atlantic Monthly, Megan McArdle raises the fear that if a lack of government intervention precedes a catastrophe, a widespread public belief that the lack of government regulation caused the catastrophe will spread, whether true or not. The consequence will be even greater regulation. People who believe that government intervention will likely be worse for the economy than non-intervention are therefore being asked to play along, lest a failure to play along lead to erroneous economic conclusions on the part of the public. This is self-defeating. From the point of view of the free-marketer, he is being asked to desert his beliefs support something that he believes will harm the economy so that people will not think him or his principles at fault if economic harm occurs. Even if there is a government intervention, a financial collapse is likely to be blamed on laissez faire strictly because of widespread ignorance and economic illiteracy. Let us remember that Herbert Hoover responded to the '29 crash by supporting higher taxes and tariffs; in the popular conception of history, he did nothing and his free market principles were responsible for the Great Depression. Free marketers would be better off devoting their efforts to public education. The Rise of the Rent-Seeking Investor Apparently, recent public opinion polls have shown a shift toward approval of the bailout, following the dramatic stock market losses. (I say dramatic, not large, and I choose the word carefully.) Advocates of free markets have long held that building an "ownership society" and increasing the number of people who own stocks (including through 401ks and similar accounts) would create a constituency for free markets. That is, while relatively poor non-investors might vote to tax, e.g., investments and dividends (soak the rich), a large investor class comprising a majority of the citizenry would support laissez faire policies most conducive to economic growth. I fear that the opposite is happening: a large number of the new investors are looking to the government to regulate markets in such a way as to shield them from market downturns. If the bailout is a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to investors, it is a sign of the rise of a new, larger investor class -- quite willing to use government regulation as a tool to enrich itself. If this is so, there will surely be other interesting consequences to follow. Labels: finance, media distortion, philosophical issues in democracy ::: posted by Anonymous at 8:35 PM (0) comments Tuesday, July 01, 2008 ::: Bret Stevens in the Wall Street Journal writes on the subject of: Global Warming as Mass Neurosis. Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in. What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence"). But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris. I've been having a desultory discussion with a colleague of mine about global warming. I consider it unproven; he thinks the models prove global warming pretty well and that I should refrain from advocating policy positions since I clearly (to him) don't know enough about the issue. He does raise an important point: how much information does one have to have on a subject before one may, in good conscience, express a forceful opinion and advocate a course of action? One of my arguments against panicking over global warming has been Chicken-Little-ism. Just a few years back, we were all worried about an ice age. Now, the same data have been reinterpreted to show warming. Finally, evidence of cooling is taken as evidence of long-term warming. Of course, those who cry the loudest tend to have a stake in causing panic (news media for ratings; politicians to advance the causes they have always advocated for new reasons). (And, if you haven't yet read Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear, you should do so. It's not his best writing from the perspective of entertainment, but it puts environmental fear-mongering in proper context.) Are these sufficient grounds for dismissing the notion of global warming, at least until more certain evidence exists? I think so, but I am temperamentally conservative, by which I mean that I believe that the burden of proof on someone who wants us to change our institutions and way of life is very high. When in doubt, inaction is best. What can one say to someone who argues, "I have studied issue X more than you have, and you are wrong, so listen to me"? The problem is that this is the cry of the conspiracy theorist and monomaniac as much as it is the cry of the subject-matter expert. I don't have a good answer. I am afraid, though, that deference to self-proclaimed or even actual experts on matters of political import is not healthy in a democracy. Labels: global warming, philosophical issues in democracy ::: posted by Anonymous at 9:52 PM (0) comments