Why I am not a conservative #94850

Michele Bachmann has signed a pledge in which she promises to ban pornography (good luck) and oppose gay marriage. Yet at the same time, Bachmann often goes on in her speeches about freedom. Well, dear, it is one or the other. Freedom only for people who do and say things that you like is not really freedom at all.

Bachmann's confusion is hardly hers alone. American conservatism is knee-deep in people who either simply don't like freedom, despite constantly saying they do, or else support it in theory but run in fear from its exercise. In my view, freedom is not just good in theory, it is good because society is much richer due to the lives and labors of those who actually exercise their freedom, rather than just talking about it.

Planned parenthood

I sure wish the Republicans could focus on what is important, which is the fiscal crisis. Instead, even now, there is time and political energy for symbolic anti-abortion politics.

Expenditures on planned parenthood almost by definition reduce future government expenditures on schools, TANF, SNAP, WIC, and, further in the future, prisons. That is not the place to be cutting.

Get serious people.

Inspiration: Sandy Black on Facebook

Glenn Beck and Trickle Up

Why on earth is Glenn Beck picking on Trickle Up?

He should fire the research assistant who came up with this one.

Very fine response from the President of Trickle Up here.

American Enterprise Institute

Via MR, a thoughtful post about AEI from Arnold Kling.

He addresses two interrelated but separate topics: how to think about AEI and how AEI can best accomplish its political aims. Let me remark on those topics in turn based on my admittedly limited - one visit, a few lunches with AEI folks, reading their emails - information.

Arnold thinks of AEI as stogy, which is a reasonable view. I think of it as incoherent, in two senses. First, unlike the Brookings Institution with which it is often paired (both literally as they run some joint programs as well as figuratively), AEI produces middlebrow policy-oriented research as well as explicitly political output. I would argue that this dilutes the value of the academic work. Second, and more broadly, because of its strong orientation toward free markets as well as traditional social conservative themes, it embodies more than any of the other DC conservative think tanks the deep intellectual and cultural incoherence at the heart of modern American conservatism. There is much talk of freedom and free markets but there is also intolerance of homosexuals and, more generally, no love of cultural difference. It is a sort of pointless freedom, that is possessed but whose actual use is discouraged through cultural and religious norms. On another dimension, it is simultaneously argued that the government is incompetent to deliver mail but competent to engage in vast military/political enterprises half a world away. Inconsistent? You bet.

On the question of how AEI can accomplish its aims, I would say that AEI is pretty good at the middlebrow policy-oriented academic work and should specialize in that valuable activity. Brookings and AEI benefit from having each other, and it would be a shame to see that useful combination of cooperation and competition disappear. Rather than trying to reorient AEI to have a focus on the moral aspects of markets, doing that should be the task of some new entity, or perhaps just left to existing entities such as the Institute for Justice that already do a fine job at just that. Otherwise I think AEI will end up losing something useful, incurring a lot of transition costs, and probably not getting where it wants to go.

On Muslims near Ground Zero

This is such an easy one. Freedom means nothing unless it applies to people you don't like. Put differently, being an adult in a partly free society means leaving other people alone in their choice of leisure time activities and religious beliefs.

The right is embarrassing itself on this one and, indeed, is acting like the people they claim to hate rather than like people who understand the principles that animated the founding of this country.

More prosaically, the Muslim cultural center (or mosque or whatever, the point does not depend on which one it is) might well improve the neighborhood.

The link is via Sue Dynarski on FB

Addendum: a fine rant from Dan Drezner.

Addendum 2: Harry Reid caves in to the mob. This is called being a follower, not a leader. We could use some leaders on this issue. It is very much a teachable moment.

Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts speaks out on foreign policy.

It puzzles me that many on the right think that the domestic parts of the government are corrupt and inefficient while the parts that deal with other countries are somehow not.

Despite a bit of looking, I remain unclear on Roberts' current politics. His wikipedia page suggests a sort of left libertarian nationalism, something that sounds like it cannot possibly be a stable mental equilibrium.

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

Oil paranoia

On Monday I was riding home from the airport with Metrocars (recommended, by the way) and because neither the driver now I could remember the frequency for the NPR station, I was enjoying the rare and exotic pleasure of listening to Rush Limbaugh.

A caller asked Rush if he did not think that Obama had orchestrated the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a pretext for nationalizing the oil industry.

To his credit, this was too much even for Rush - though one wonders how Glen Beck would have handled it - and he gave the caller a long and reasonable enough talking to about why this was actually, as it is, a very bad thing for Obama in several senses.

Still, the woman seemed completely sincere. Wow. She should get out more or at least apply Smith's law: "never assume malevolence when incompetence will do".

William F. Buckley remembered

A fine remembrance by Gary Wills in the Atlantic from a few months ago.

I agree with WFB on some things and disagree with him on others, but I enjoy his writing a great deal (the passages in his autobiography about giving speeches to student and business groups are delightful, as are his musings about early word processors) and I admire both his civility to opponents as well as the great joy he took in life.

Sarah and David

With an economic crisis going on, government spending running amok, and civil disorder in Iran, it is good to know that the social conservatives have not lost sight of what is really important: defending Sarah Palin and her daughters against the evil talk show host David Letterman.

This puzzles on several levels: why would the social conservatives engage in something that almost goes beyond self-parody? Why pick this occasion to go after Letterman, when the jokes in question are not even really aimed at Palin's daughters?

There is actually a boycott of sorts going on that has apparently resulted in some companies pulling their ads from Letterman.

I don't get this at all. Surely these people have something better to do with their time.

Growing Up Buckley

A moving and interesting account of the final months of William F. Buckley and his wife by his son Christopher Buckley from the NYT Magazine.

Book: Miles Gone By

This is an autobiography of sorts by William F. Buckley. I consumed this as an audiobook and enjoyed hearing it read by WFB himself. What he has done essentially is string together a bunch of more-or-less-autobiographical bits written for other purposes and other places and put them in a sort of chronological and topical order.

There is a lot about sailing here, including descriptions of long (and not obviously very pleasant) voyages across the ocean and more clearly enjoyable sauntering around the Caribbean with friends. There is a bit about Blackford Oakes, the hero of WFB's spy novels (which I have yet to read) and about his column on language. There is some here on the history of National Review as well, which I found quite interesting. I think the thing that will stick with me longest, though, is his essay on what it is like to go around on the lecture circuit, which he did for many years as a way of raising money for National Review. His stories of sometimes clueless hosts and tiring audiences were great fun and somewhat familiar at times.

WFB also includes a reading of the transcript of his debate with Ronald Reagan about the Panama Canal. It is rather charming and quaint now to think about how much of an issue that was in the run-up to the 1980 presidential election. In the end, it was much ado about nothing, as such pressing political issues often turn out to be.

Recommended.

What a Rush!

I enjoyed this NYT interview with Rush Limbaugh.

My dad was into conservative talk radio in his later years. I think it had the effect of making him more of a social conservative than he was when I was growing up at home. Of the people he listened to regularly, I can only recall Rush and Michael Medved. I liked Rush because he was funny. The NYT review is actually pretty kind to Rush I think for this very reason: that, like William F. Buckley, he is having a good time, and puts that ahead of being angry. Medved tended not to get mad either, but aimed higher than Rush in terms of historical and intellectual content. Now, since I almost never drive, I never listen to any radio, let alone talk radio.