The database

Donald Trump is taking flak for proposing a “Muslim database.” In fact, this was proposed by a reporter, Trump never said it. Trump’s mistake is that he didn’t address the idea. As if the content of a reporter’s question is his responsibility.

What he did say, however, is worse:

Well, we’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule. And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy.

The larger point that seems to have gone missing is that there already is a database of Muslims… and tea partiers and ACLU supporters and college protesters and gun owners and Bernie Sanders contributors and… well, what ever filters the NSA wishes to apply to the bulk data they’re collecting.

They already know where you’ve been, if an email had a keyword they’re looking for, your age, your race, your charitable contributions, where you were born, what you’ve purchased, what you read, what you eat and drink, the state of your health and who you’ve called and when. Do you really think they can’t already pretty precisely figure out your religion? A bit of information, moreover, some of you may have already directly declared on some government form or other.

Liberty is not inevitable. Freedom isn’t free.

In some places, a moment of silence is observed at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month because that is when the guns went silent for the armistice that ended World War I. I observe this ritual recognition of the price of peace and freedom. I commend it to you.

This day is Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Veterans Day. The silence should resound throughout the countries who observe it under those different names.

This pittance of time pays respect to those who gave their lives in our defense. Our remembrance of their gift is not important to them. They don’t know they won. Were they with us still, they would minimize their contribution. If they would discuss it at all.

Remembering these heroes’ values is vitally important to us, lest we gradually come to think that things had to be the way they are, and not some other way. We could become convinced that our present advantages were owed to us, destined and easy: The “natural order of things.”

This is an exceedingly dangerous belief, appropriate to no one: Held only by those who believe the natural order of things guarantees their personal safety and well-being – regardless of their effort, despite their unexamined ideals.

In reality, things are the way they are because some people were – and are – so committed to liberty as to give their own lives in its defense.

They died defending your right to choose to observe a minute of silence.

It is your choice.

Liberal Ayn Rand?

At Slate, Beverly Gage asks “Why Is There No Liberal Ayn Rand?

Ask Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan how he became a conservative and he’ll probably answer by citing a book. It might be Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Or perhaps he’ll come up with Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, or even Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. All of these books are staples of the modern conservative canon, works with the reputed power to radicalize even the most tepid Republican. Over the last half-century, they have been vital to the conservative movement’s success—and to liberalism’s demise.

We tend to think of the conservative influence in purely political terms: electing Ronald Reagan in 1980, picking away at Social Security, reducing taxes for the wealthy.

The answer to “Why Is There No Liberal Ayn Rand?” is right there, in the first sentence of the second paragraph. It’s blindingly obvious (it’s even Ms Gage’s point) that “Liberals” don’t think in terms of ideas. Ideas are hard work, intentions are easier. Liberals like to think in terms of intentions, and mostly they think in terms of how they interpret the intentions of others based on their own intentions to improve humanity. Liberals don’t think like free people, they think in terms of how to apply power to the purpose of perfecting their fellows. To a Liberal, making everybody else perfect is what Liberty means.

The reason there’s no Liberal Ayn Rand is the same reason there’s no Liberal Rush Limbaugh. It’s been tried and it has utterly failed. It’s the very definition of oxymoron.

You might as well ask why there’s no “Liberal” John Galt. A question you couldn’t ask if you’d bothered to pay attention to certain compelling arguments from your opposition. Even if the ideas weren’t compelling to you, would the demands of diversity not require you to attempt to understand? Would not a reasoned defense of your own ideas demand it?

And here the answer is again – in the first sentence of the third paragraph:

Liberals, by contrast, have been moving in the other direction over the last half-century, abandoning the idea that ideas can be powerful political tools. This may seem like a strange statement at a moment when American universities are widely understood to be bastions of liberalism, and when liberals themselves are often derided as eggheaded elites. But there is a difference between policy smarts honed in college classrooms and the kind of intellectual conversation that keeps a movement together. What conservatives have developed is what the left used to describe as a “movement culture”: a shared set of ideas and texts that bind activists together in common cause. Liberals, take note.

But it’s yet more subtle than that. First, the tea party people needed no institutional bastion of conservatism, controlled by an insular elite, to “re-educate” them. They’d have a hard time finding one if they did. They didn’t need the ivory tower re-education camps in the first place. They get it innately. They fundamentally understand it. When they read Ayn Rand, they can see today’s headlines. Our president’s success as a community organizer doesn’t make them swell with pride. Rather, it reminds them of Wesley Mouch.

“Liberals” have not abandoned the idea that ideas can be powerful political tools, they have abandoned the idea that anyone but them is allowed ideas. They are shocked, shocked when anyone deigns to challenge their intentions.

Liberals have channeled their energies even more narrowly over the past half-century, tending to prefer policy tweaks and electoral mapping to big-picture thinking. When was the last time you saw a prominent liberal politician ascribe his or her passion and interest in politics to, of all things, a book? The most dogged insistence on the influence of Obama’s early reading has come from his TeaParty critics, who fume constantly that he is about to carry out a secret plan laid out a half century ago by far-left writers ranging from Alinsky, the granddaddy of “community organizing,” to social reformer Frances Fox Piven.

In fact, no. Tea party criticism is not about the books Obama may have read, it’s about the books he “wrote.”

Liberals may argue that they are better off knocking on doors and brainstorming policy than muddling through the great works of midcentury America.

Policy without theory is untestable, and I can see why “Liberals” would consider that a strength. It allows them the excuse that without Obama’s stimulus the unemployment rate he promised wouldn’t go over 8%, but hit 10% (and more), deserves a Mulligan. He meant well.

And that Obama predicted the unemployment rate, with stimulus, would now be 5.6% is irrelevant. Get that? Not below 6%, but 5point6%. This is the same administration that quibbled over whether an unemployment rate of 8.254% should be reported as 8.3%.

So much for the precision wisdom of the centralized planners. You know, those very same people who turn out to be even more wrong than our president… in some book written by Ayn Rand.

Nothing to see here about testing ideas, let’s just MoveOn:

Ms Gage continues:

Some of this imbalance is due to the relative weakness of the current American left. Liberals are not the logical counterweight to conservatives; leftists are, but they are few in number.

Some of this perceived imbalance is due to self delusion. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama (who, as a teen, was mentored by an avowed Communist, wrote about hanging out with Marxists in college and who, in 1996, received the endorsement of the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America), Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters, Barbara Boxer and Debbie Wossname-Schultz are not left? The self-declared Communist (Van Jones) and admirer of Mao (Anita Dunn) whom Obama appointed to positions of power were not left? Please.

And, finally, a note is required on the lead sentence of the closing paragraph:

In the current election this means that liberals also run the unnecessary risk of ceding intellectual authority to the right.

Excuse me, but this is the risk Liberals continually choose. They do it gleefully, confident in the ascendance of their intentions, and with no thought about ideas. There is no necessary or unnecessary when peering down from the summit of moral superiority.

This election may represent increased risk for those who don’t have, or care about, ideas; but they don’t care enough to read Atlas Shrugged or Capitalism and Freedom to find out about the ideas that oppose them. Many of us who’ve read Atlas, have also read Das Kapital and Rules for Radicals and The Black Book of Communism. We have some idea what we’re up against, and, unlike Ms Gage, we can even name Liberals we used to consider serious thinkers. We were wrong, but we could say why.

Unintended consequences

Health Care and the Dynamics of Intervention

“We have a crisis! We have to do something!” Actually, what we have to do is undo a lot of things.

Every time I hear some dunderhead complain that the General Government needs to control “x” because otherwise it will cost the General Government too much to continue providing x — and especially x’s new extension, “y” — I think of all the reasons the Founders never intended the General Government to be involved in whatever “x” is in the first place. It’s why the powers are enumerated: You don’t get to grant yourself an interest in something so you can gradually take it over by complaining about the results of your own actions.

As it is, the General Government is free to cause the problem, and the “fix” is always to take more liberty from individuals. It’s 55mph speed limits, or “We won’t give you money for roads.” It’s our money in the first place. If we weren’t compelled to send it to them, they couldn’t extort us with it.

The Founders didn’t have to imagine all the ways in which these problems could be created, (they couldn’t have imagined the need for a 55mph speed limit, nor Obamacare) all they had to do was recognize the universal tendency of governments over the course of centuries. The Constitution is NOT a “living document.” Mostly, that holds because we’ve learned nothing about power and corruption. We keep electing the practitioners, and it’s our fault for not holding them to the contract of the Constitution.

Precedent

The Stamp Act of 1765, of which today is the 245th anniversary, inflamed citizens of the 13 colonies and led directly to the American Revolution of 1776. The government of America was fundamentally changed as a result. That was arguably the last fundamental change until about 1940.

American colonists opposing continuation of Britain’s suzerainty amounted to about 40% of the population. Yesterday, our present day government defied the will of about 60% of its people, now to be known as “subjects.”

The Stamp Act was repealed on March 18th 1766.

Update: 8:14.

I meant to include this link for a more comprehensive examination of this topic;
Why Tea Parties?

…our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

This is the conclusion of the Declaration of Independence, signed by men who fully expected they might lose their lives and their fortunes, but who would never lose their honor.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Sometime today, while you are enjoying your freedom, find time to read the whole thing. If you have guests, read it to them out loud. If you have children, read it to them. The 56 men who signed our founding document deserve your remembrance.