Thursday, January 14, 2021

Today's musing minute - impeachment should be about constraining the role of government.

 

Mainly for my non-libertarian (classical liberal) friends.

Make no mistake, the distressing political pathology that we are seeing in the end comes down to one basic thing - the size, power and scope of government. Deficits, and levels of debt are bad, but (as Milton Friedman reminded us) it is more fundamentally the extent of government that matters. A small limited government has less power and is less of a target for influence by big business and popularist social groups. Representative democracy only works when the government's powers are clearly and firmly constitutionally constrained. The story of at least the last one hundred years is the steady erosion of these constraints with the predictable effect of entrenching and expanding a powerful ambitious non-elected machinery of government. The progress is steady, but each major crisis has accelerated it.

 A certain proportion (who knows how large?) of those who voted for Trump voted against his opponents in the hope that he could and would stem this trend. It seemed to be working for a while, to a limited extent. But it has ended very badly. And those who supported the incoming administration should be under no illusions about what is really going on here.

They may have the moral high ground on impeachment, but for the wrong reasons, and within a concept of government that is the opposite of what they are supposed to be impeaching Trump to defend.

Trump's most obvious transgression was to maintain and encourage his followers to believe that the vice president, together with Republican loyalists, could and must nullify the election in his favor.

But, in his campaign promise to "drain the swamp" he has manifestly failed. Instead, the government leviathan monster rises ascendant with this public spectacle and exacerbates a deeply divided population, a population divided not over the appropriate role of government, but more mundanely simply over who should be in control over that government in order to push their particular bloated agenda.

A ubiquitously intrusive government is inevitably corrosive of both freedom and prosperity. Unfortunately, most people who feel the loss of prosperity never realize that its cause lies in the loss of freedom, yet that widespread realization is the only hope of reversing this trend.

 

 

Monday, January 11, 2021

Today's musing minute - they're back !!

 Today's musing minute.

Ok, my Parler has gone. No outlet for those who annoy the woke folk. What do they think they have accomplished? Like parents telling the children to shut up and listen. The children get resentful and rebellious.
Oh so cynical and hypocritical. I am not a right-wing populist and it makes MY blood boil What will it do for the marginally unhinged?
The solution? I don't know. It would help if the consumers of big-tech products let the companies know they do not approve - loud and clear - and also the shareholders.
I am disgusted with Trump - though arguably he could not help it, given his uncontrollable passions. He has opened the door to Obama redux on steroids - with craven cronies to boot.
This is no contest. The statists on the left are just better at it. The right wing autocrats are crude, rude, sometimes violent, always obnoxious and simplistic. The left-wing autocrats can be shrill, but usually with elegant prose, navigating the rules, wearing fashionable clothes and hairstyles, so self-righteously indignant, while they squeeze away your freedoms and your money to fuel their virtuous social justice projects. They are the consummate con artists selling poisonous snake oil to the resentful. Their critics used Trump to give them the finger and it felt good, until it didn't. And now they are back, unrepentant, every bit as violent in their own way.
God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change ... . But can we change this? Probably only when enough people realize what is going on and come to a better understanding of what liberty, prosperity and justice really require.

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Thoughts in the wake of this momentous day in America. Warning: long post.

 In the days and weeks to come, commentators will point out that what happened today was the culmination of a set of pathologies on both sides of the political spectrum. Yes, Trump and his followers high and low, sincere and expedient, share blame (as do those who encouraged and excused earlier left-wing, widespread and enduring rioting and destruction) - no excuse for the individuals who committed the violence themselves. But, if we want a thorough understanding we have to ask, who is responsible for Trump? How did we get to this point of such disillusionment with the political candidates, that the American public was able to elect the likes of a Donald Trump (whether or not one favored some of his policies)? I have pointed this out before; to point to the degenerate character of Trump and his numerous supporters is a cop out. Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will be asking this question. For the Democrats it will involve distancing from the radicals that are seen as a subversive threat to the very fabric of the country. For the Republicans it will entail finding decent articulate candidates who evince some credible semblance of adherence to the core Republican values - generally "centrist" in nature.

For the nation as a whole, the states will need to do what Florida did after 2000, namely, to examine and secure the integrity of their voting systems, and desist from ad hoc changes to that system. If justice must be seen to be done, the same is true of fairness.

And, yes, there is also the question of how the hell the security and the intelligence gathering in DC could have failed so badly?

Finally, ironically, this protest has derailed the perfunctory protests that had been planned and are now going to be abandoned in the interests of expediting the process, thus reaffirming the bipartisan commitment to the process itself.

Sunday, January 3, 2021

On being a "liberal" from South Africa

 

The label “liberal” – as a category of political affiliation or orientation – is highly ambiguous, depending very much on the context. Outside of America (notably Europe)  it retains much of its original significance emphasizing the importance of property rights and free trade; while in America it is completely devoid of such connotations, resembling the social democrats of Europe. In other places, matters might be still further confused. 

As an expatriate South African (an America by choice) I have seen a particular confusion among my fellow emigrants of roughly the same, and contiguous generations. I see my South African American friends (almost all Jewish) affiliating naturally with American “liberals” because in South Africa, growing up under Apartheid, they were on the “liberal’ side of the political spectrum - simply because they were opposed to the Apartheid government. 

I think they are confused. I think they are mistaken. I think that if they could be persuaded to do some research and soul searching, they would find out that they have never been “liberal” in the American sense of that word, and would not have supported the policies which it connotes back in South Africa – where American liberals would have been identified more as a species of “socialists” – something almost never encountered in the light of day. 

The reason for the confusion is that, in the South African context of Apartheid, politics was never about the appropriate role and scope of government as such, but, rather, it was almost exclusively about race policy – about the appropriate rights that should be granted to non-whites, and what their place in South African society should be. The Nationalist Apartheid government maintained a lot of the inherited British parliamentary constitutional form of government, but, also, in large part, ran a police state in which non-whites had very few legal and human rights and were subject to frequent exploitation and abuse. The ruling party and its supporters were overwhelmingly Afrikaans and inherited a bitter resentment of the British, that they visited upon the English speaking portion of the white population (who dominated the business leadership of the robust private sector economy). So while there was an uneasy peace between the two white language groups, they constituted two distinct political factions. To be English-speaking was to be opposed to the Nationalists and, therefore, to be “liberal”. Anyone who was not pro-Nationalist was “liberal” – and this shaded into various degrees of “communist” as your sympathies for the rights of non-whites rose. 

The two main political parties were the Nationalist (Afrikaans) and the United (English) parties. My parents were in a third, extremely small, group of English speakers who voted Liberal (later called the Progressive party – not to be confused with American Progressives). It is important to realize that the United Party, for whom most of my friends and their parents, would have voted, was in no way similar to the “liberals” of today’s American Democratic Party. The only similarity is the misleading description “liberal” that English-Speaking South Africans would have unconsciously worn, and thus continue to wear. The only thing they have in common is a more liberal attitude about racial discrimination and human rights. 

The truth is there was no discussion about the proper role and scope of government in the economy and the connection between human rights and economic freedom. Economic freedom was just not considered. It was completely eclipsed by the race issue, put on the back burner for if and until when the Nationalists were ever unseated. No doubt it was part of the United and Progressive Party platforms, but I do not recall anyone paying any attention to that or talking about it. Yet, I feel sure that if these party platforms had contained the kind of massive state intrusions into the economy and private life that current Democratic Party policies have and are proposing to have, they would have been rejected by South Africa’s English speaking liberals – as they should be rejected now. 

The natural home of these anti-Apartheid folks, is not the current Democratic Party. Neither is it the Republican Party (for different reasons – different intrusions into the economy), though some third option, much closer to the original meaning of liberal as someone in favor of equal individual liberty for all regardless of race, color, creed, … , and all the freedom it implies, especially freedom of expression, movement, employment, trade and so on.