Iraq: A Madisonian Analysis and Proposal

(Via memeorandum)

Ed Morrissey has a typically thoughtful post making the argument for staying in Iraq as a a duty we owe to the people of Iraq and to our allies in the region. As usual, Morissey avoids the demagoguery that all-too-often infects debate over the war - on both sides. In his argument, Morrissey points to anecdotal evidence that the Iraqi people want us to stay and that the biggest hurdle to obtaining their full-fledged support is a fear that we will abandon them as we did in 1991.

He further argues that our presence in Iraq allows us to fight al-Qaeda in open battle against our military strength rather than in terrorist attacks in the US against civilians. Finally, he suggests that if we pull back and Iraq becomes a terrorist haven, the Iraqi people will not welcome us back a third time. He finishes his post with an assertion that the terrorists are on the run and that Iraq is on the verge of being a successful democracy.

Not surprisingly, I largely disagree with Morrissey's arguments. However, it is most certainly essential that we consider the sentiment of the Iraqi people in deciding what to do come January 2009.

One problem I have with Morrissey's argument is that it is based on the anecdotal evidence of a handful of soldiers who have served in Iraq (Morrissey does not specify the time period for their service, so I will assume they only recently returned). There a few problems with this reliance: first, it is anecdotal, from one source. While I do not doubt that his source is truthful, it is difficult to extrapolate from one source to the entire population of Iraq. This is particularly the case when you consider that Iraq is a country that is essentially comprised of portions of three nations (an important fact that I will return to), within which there are dramatic differences in security and outlook based on geography. I've also seen polls and other anecdotal evidence which would seem to contradict Morrissey on this. The reality, as usual, is likely to lie somewhere in between. At a minimum, I suspect that the Kurds and most Sunnis (at this point) want us to stay. I also suspect that a not-insubstantial number of Shiites want us to remain as well; however, Sadr's continued popularity suggests that a majority or at least a plurality of Shiites want us out.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume that the Iraqi people want us to stay. If that is the case, I think we are still left in an extremely difficult position, and the issue of what to do next remains complicated.

Although it is intuitively true that we are better off fighting Al Qaeda with our military than having to worry about terrorist attacks at home, this is only true to the extent that we are actually able to defeat Al Qaeda. The problem we have is that our presence in Iraq is extremely inflammatory in the rest of the Muslim world and is almost inarguably Al Qaeda's best recruiting tool. As a result, to a large extent we are just playing Whack-a-Mole in Iraq with respect to Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorism more generally. To make matters more difficult, though, our continued presence in Iraq also inflames passions amongst people who are not terrorists; as a result, our ability to obtain the cooperation of local populations in the rest of the Muslim world is significantly reduced.

But mostly, we face a much bigger problem than our generals can handle with respect to Iraq. The fact is that the solution in Iraq is not just military. Gen. Petraeus is as fine a man and as competent a general as exists on this planet, and SecDef Gates is likewise an all-too-rare honorable public servant. The problem that we have, however, is that the military is really only good at two things, as a famous general once said (MacArthur?): killing people and blowing stuff up. This is why Republicans in the late 90s were (rightly) so up in arms about Clinton's nation-building policies.

Gen. Petraeus is particularly good at getting the military to do its intended job. But that only means that our troops can improve the security situation in Iraq (which they have, to a large extent, done since Petraeus took command). However, he cannot force a political solution to Iraq's remaining problems.

Worse, our insistence on certain "benchmarks" (which largely have not been met) will at best result in an artificial solution to Iraq's political problems. Meeting such benchmarks only creates top-down agreement. It does not, however, create trust between neighbors or between the constituent groups of each of the three Iraqi "nations."

One of our many mistakes in going into Iraq in the first place was our failure to realize that Iraq the country arose purely as a result of arbitrary line drawing 100 years ago by the British Empire. These three groups were never given the opportunity to create inter-group trust prior to being forced into the same country. This meant that the only way to keep order between them was through either an extreme form of authoritarianism (ie, Saddam) that ensured rapid punishment for inter-group strife or through an extremely decentralized government similar to the American Constitution (as it was originally intended, rather than as it has become interpreted). By decentralizing - essentially allowing near-absolute autonomy for each region - the three nations of Iraq would have been able to build trust between themselves over time.

But Iraq wound up going the extreme authoritarian route. As a result, no trust was built up between the three nations and - worse - there was no civil society to speak of within Iraq to allow separate, non-tribal factions to form. Our failure to recognize the lack of diverse factions in Iraq was one of our biggest mistakes in the leadup to invasion. (Historically, the existence of a robust civil society has been a prerequisite for the establishment of a successful democracy).

Since the invasion, there has been little opportunity for inter-group bonds to form, and thus Iraq remains a land of three primary factions. As Madison recognized, a lack of diversity of factions is fatal to democracy. So long as tribal loyalty remains paramount to most Iraqis, it will be impossible to form anything resembling an Iraqi "nation," and strife will continue ad infinitum. This is perhaps the most significant reason why Africa remains a land of so much civil war and violence- few African countries are composed entirely of one nation and civil society has had little opportunity to flourish between different nations.

The need for diversity of factions implies that inter-group harmony can only be created from the bottom-up. Simply making peace between the leaders of each faction is unlikely to have much long-term effect unless each leader rules his group with an iron fist. Unfortunately, there is also little that the American military can do to create this diversity of factions that cuts across tribal lines. To the extent the American military can do anything, it is already doing so. Indeed, the improved security situation has allowed inter-tribal neighborhood patrols to form. But this is not nearly enough, as only a relatively small portion of Iraqi society is involved.

What this all means is that our continued military presence in Iraq - as currently formulated - is unlikely to result in anything resembling a peaceful Iraq, at least not without the rise of another dictator (which we obviously do not want). At worst, we are simply delaying intertribal genocide and full-scale civil war. At best, our presence will have to continue for decades, with the security situation never improving much beyond its current status, as the different tribes (especially the Sunnis and Shi'a) fight violently for control of the reins of power.

If we withdraw now, the likelihood is that Iraq will descend into something resembling full-scale civil war. However, I do not believe that al Qaeda will play a particularly important role in such a war, as there will be little motivation for foreign Muslims to enter the fray on one side or the other. To be sure, Jordanian Sunnis will not exactly be in love with Iraqi Shi'a, but neither will Jordanian Sunnis have the motivation of a jihad to get them into the fray. In other words, while withdrawal would undoubtedly have horrible short-term effects, it would not result in a caliphate for Osama bin Laden. As such, I do not buy the argument that withdrawal amounts to surrender - we would not be "surrendering" to anyone; at best al Qaeda would get an extremely short-lived PR victory, but would still lose much of its future ability to recruit and take advantage of local populations.

In this respect, and especially factoring the costs of the war to the US in blood and treasure, withdrawal is likely more palatable than the current course of operations. In addition, we would be able to move more troops into the Afghanistan front, where they could almost certainly do more good in actually fighting terrorism on the battlefield.

There is, however, one other option that I think would be more palatable still, although retaining some severe drawbacks. That option is the outright partition of Iraq, with a rewritten Constitution to go along. In this option, we could prevent outright civil war from occuring, primarily by enforcing territorial borders. Within each territory the local government would have almost complete autonomy, including with respect to security matters. In Kurdistan, of course, this setup would require virtually no changes; in the rest of Iraq, substantial changes. Free trade between territories would have to be required in the rewritten constitution, as would free migration between territories (provided the migrants go through checkpoints along the way, of course). Over time, this could help to build trust between the tribes, and more importantly would establish intertribal interests. As these new interests eventually became predominant over tribal interests, we would be able to gradually reduce our presence in Iraq. Eventually, one would hope, the need for inter-territory checkpoints would be eliminated.

Of course, as I said, there are drawbacks to this approach. For starters, there would initially be strife over the sharing of oil revenues, and there would also likely be mass migrations between territories (although much of this migration has already occured). In addition, we would not be able to supplement our forces in Afghanistan. Most importantly, we would have to commit troops to Iraq for an extended period of time (though far less than we would if our current strategy is to succeed), perhaps 10 years.

If this course of action is successful, we would then remove our troops from Iraq and return them home. We should not have a permanent base in Iraq along the lines of Korea unless: 1. Iran remains a clear and present danger to Iraqi stability or to world peace; 2. Both the Iraqi people and the Iraqi federal government so desire; and 3. there is Congressional approval for such a plan. Even with all three of those conditions met, I am suspicious of any permanent base, but at a minimum those conditions must be met.

America, 2008

I've always been particularly proud to share a birthday with Thomas Jefferson. So I was a bit disturbed to have my morning blogosphere birthday present be this. To sum up: about 20 DC area libertarians got together at the Jefferson Memorial to celebrate the birthday of our nation's most anti-authoritarian Founding Father. In celebration of this, they were all wearing their iPods, dancing silently. For about 10 minutes. At midnight. When virtually no one was around.

Several minutes into this brief celebration, the Park Police showed up and ordered them to disperse. When one asked "why?" she was arrested. Welcome to life in the Bush Administration, when you can do something that disturbs absolutely no one at a memorial to a symbol of anti-authoritarianism and get arrested. The charge? "Interfering with an agency function," according to Radley Balko, who was actually there for some of it. In other words: if you dare to question an illegal order from the police, they can arrest you. Which means that the police are, quite literally, above the law.

Reading some of the comments to Megan McArdle's story on this, it's suddenly very easy to see how our President has managed to destroy the Constitution with very little objection from the American people. I do believe that T-Jeff himself is weeping a bit today at the blind obedience to authority that has overtaken much of the nation he helped found.

More reactions to this outrage at memeorandum.

Happy Tax Season!

Sometimes it's good to be self-employed. Other times, not so much.

For all the good Milton Friedman did in the world, he is spending an awful long time in purgatory for his role in paycheck withholding. If we all had to go through this kind of annual pain, I'm pretty sure we'd be a bit more prudent with government spending and taxing.

Another Reason to Back Bob Barr

Something I've noticed in the last few days: he's about 1000 times more politically savvy and shrewd than Ron Paul ever was. For starters, his position on immigration has a nuance that Ron Paul's lacked, as I noted the other day. This nuance allows him to be "tough" on illegal immigration without coming across as a raving Tancredo-ite.

But today, he has shown an ability to stay on top of the news cycle and put out an outstanding statement on the so-called Obama "gaffe." His statement manages to not only be timely, but also doesn't pretend to speak for the voters, as McCain and Hillary have both done. Instead of resorting to the demagogic "Snob-ama" refrain that has characterized most of the response to the statement, Barr used the occasion to actually push his campaign theme of freedom:

"People get bitter, so that's why they support the Second Amendment? Or that's why they support the First Amendment? That's what he seems to be saying."

While I detest the "sound-bite culture," the fact is that it is the way we get our news today. Barr's remarks make a magnificent sound-bite. I can see him doing a good job of getting enough publicity and support to make it into the Presidential debates this fall. At a minimum, he will make life very uncomfortable for John McCain.

What Should the Media Be Covering? Redux

(via memeorandum)

This has to have Glenn Greenwald in conniptions (and rightly so). We now have the President admitting that he was fully aware of the methods of torture his top-level Cabinet members were approving. Not only that, but as Cernig points out, those meetings occured before the Yoo memos, and in fact were responsible for ordering the Yoo memos as a CYA. This is something that ought to drive any American with a conscience to cry for impeachment.

Despite this, there are at this moment exactly four other bloggers of any note discussing this story.

Meanwhile, the rest of the blogosphere is in a tizzy like I've never seen before over another story. And what story might that be? Obama said some things that were politically incorrect! GASP! A politician isn't completely in touch with the people? STOP THE PRESSES! Indeed, this gaffe is so horrible that Powerline is making the argument that it disqualifies Obama from the Presidency.

If this is all the supposedly enlightened and attuned blogosphere wants to talk about, it pretty strongly suggests that Megan McArdle's argument about the media is correct. The media cover the torture issue relatively little because the public does not really want to hear about the torture issue. The public would much rather hear about who made the latest utterly meaningless campaign gaffe.

For the record, my take on Obama's horribly overblown gaffe is this: he is correct that there are an awful lot of homophobic, racist, xenophobic gun-toting Bible thumpers in small-town America. (Of course there are plenty of gun-toters and Bible-thumpers who are not necessarily homophobic, racist, and xenophobic, as well). Where he is wrong is in thinking these attitudes are attributable to mistrust of government. Usually "one who mistrusts government" is a synonym for "libertarian." But last I checked, the only two of those traits that are really compatible with libertarianism are gun-toting and (debatably) Bible-thumping. Moreover, last I checked, Hillary "the Country Can't Afford All My Ideas" Clinton is an even bigger believer in the inherent goodness of government than Obama AND she also happens to be married to a man whose administration allegedly failed these voters by not paying enough attention to their concerns. The fact is that there are other reasons these attitudes are so common in small-town America. I've seen enough of it first-hand to know. But it has absolutely nothing to do with distrust of government.

***UPDATE*** Tas also wonders what the big deal is with this story.

Please File This Under Authoritarians and Dumb-Asses

(This post title is a not-so-subtle hint to Doug & Co.)

I have very little to add to this Jim Henley post. Just to sum up: we are sending hand-held lie detectors to Afghanistan (and eventually to our local police here in the US, with a stop in Iraq along the way, of course). The "information" gleaned from these divinatio...err, Evildoer Finders is to be used as a way of finding terrorists, providing access to important areas, and as a screening tool for interviewing potential police officers and interpreters.

The trouble is: the machines are only between 63 and 79 percent accurate, making regular lie detectors look like the Oracle at Delphi (which, of course, was amazingly reliable).

As I said in a comment to Henley's post: I'm pretty sure that I can tell when someone is lying to my face at an accuracy rate of 63 percent. There's also, of course, the fact that these machines are to be used in situations where extremely heavily armed men will be asking the questions. For some reason I doubt that these machines were tested in circumstances that precisely simulated that environment. Which means that the real accuracy rate is probably more along the lines of a coin-flip.

The Problem of Over-Regulation, aka We Just Hit Chapter 10 of Atlas Shrugged

(Via memeorandum)

Thank you, Congressman Oberstar for telling the FAA it wasn't being intrusive enough in its attempts to hyper-regulate air travel. I'm sure anyone hoping to fly in the next three months deeply appreciates your efforts. (As a side note: my understanding is that most of these maintenance issues are unrelated to safety, so our economy is going to be even more screwed up than it would have been just so the FAA can look tough for the Congressman). I'm even more certain that the airline industry and its hundreds of thousands of employees also appreciate all the cancelled flights and lost customers which will result in even bigger losses than usual in this quarter. It's not as if airlines ever go out of business or anything.

As someone who has had his share of professional battles with the FAA, anyone who thinks that the FAA isn't aggressive enough has no idea what they're talking about. Of course, if you've ever read the Federal Airline Regulations and the thousands of circulars that the FAA puts out, you would realize that it is literally impossible to comply with every regulation the FAA has and still serve your customers in an acceptable fashion. Of course, when you have that many regulations to oversee, there is probably a tendency to overlook some of the less-important violations in order to make sure you can safeguard against the more-important violations. Or, just as likely, and as Ayn Rand and Hayek both pointed out, the enforcement of those regulations just becomes completely arbitrary and based on personal connections.

***UPDATE*** Iain Murray makes the point that these idiotic hyperinspections, which come out of one man's desire to have his ring kissed, may actually be worsening safety. As Murray points out, no small number of travelers stopped by the useless inspections will travel to their ultimate destinations by car instead. Car travel being significantly more dangerous than air travel, the likelihood is that the FAA's bow to Congressman Oberstar will actually cost more lives than it will save.

More at memeorandum.

Thieving Bastards!

Tony at RollingDoughnut has an outstanding evaluation of the asinine mortgage "crisis" bailout passed today by the Senate. (If you like my site and haven't bookmarked Tony's site, then you should do so now- he takes an almost-identiccal tone to mine but covers a more diverse array of topics).

In any event, it seems the bill is even worse than many of us had feared, as it "combines large tax breaks for homebuilders and a $7,000 tax credit for people who buy foreclosed properties, as well as $4 billion in grants for communities to buy and fix up abandoned homes."

This means that the result - which is clearly intended - of the bailout package will be that homebuilders will have an incentive to, uhh, build more homes. At a time when the supply of for-sale homes is already at record highs? Is the solution to the so-called housing crisis really to increase the supply of homes even more? How does that make sense?

Of course, the $7000 tax credit for purchasing foreclosed homes is every bit as bad. This will have the effect of reducing the value of homes owned by people who have actually lived up to the terms of the mortgage contract they signed (people like, well, me). Which will mean that those homes will continue to sit on the market for months and months at a time. In other words, incentivizing the purchase of one specific kind of real estate will have the effect of making things even worse in the rest of the real estate market - which happens to account for like 99% of homes owned. But it gets even worse than that: the people who buy foreclosed homes are usually investors and developers, not people looking for a home to live in. So the Senate's solution to a problem caused by too much speculation is...to encourage more speculation? And not only that, but the people receiving this benefit aren't even people you could call your "average Joe."

But they didn't forget the "little guy" completely. No, they left in $11 billion in "tax-free mortgage revenue bonds" to help people refinance out of subprime loans. The fact that those people agreed to those subprime loans out of their own free will and have benefited for 3-7 years from unnaturally low interest rates on those loans appears not to have crossed the Senate's collective brain. My wife and I both had ARMs on our properties before we got married. We both understood that meant our payments would go up dramatically when the ARM kicked in. But we also understood that the ARM was a terrific option for each of us since we only intended to live in those places for a short time and since we both had every reason to believe that our incomes would rise at a greater rate than the ARM increase.

In any event, let me just second Tony's words when he writes:

The housing market needs to stabilize.... I want that to happen sooner rather than later because that is better for me, as it would be for any homeowner, whatever their equity status. More information is better than less information. But the market will not stabilize correctly, or as quickly, as long as Congress forgets that its job escription does not include "Do something".

I also found something to make this idiotic bill even worse. According to the Washington Post, "the Senate added $6 billion in unrelated tax breaks for renewable energy producers." In other words, the December energy bill boondoggle which is helping boost world food prices through the stratosphere didn't do enough damage, so the Senate felt a need to come back for more.

Rwanda, Genocide, and Self-Education

I know this is old news, but it was a huge story during my hiatus. At the time, I wound up stumbling upon this outstanding post by the always magnificent hilzoy at Obsidian Wings.

The post itself is well worth a read because of the way in which it so utterly dispels any notion that Hillary Clinton pushed for intervention in Rwanda. But that's not really why I'm bringing this up now.

I have always had something of an understanding of what happened in Rwanda, probably a better understanding than most Americans. But that understanding was extraordinarily limited to what was reported at the time in our media outlets. I've always known the raw data of what happened, and somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain I remember hearing about the tens of thousands of bodies found washed up on the shores of Lake Victoria. But I never really understood the context of what happened, nor did I understand the international reaction to the genocide.

In the comments thread to hilzoy's post, though, I found one of the most valuable links I've ever run into. The link is a day-by-day journal written in 2004 by blogger NYCO to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide. Beginning on April 6, 2004, and concluding on July 14, 2004, NYCO provides a detailed description of the events of each day of the genocide. It is at once eye-opening, educational, stomach-churning, and depressing. In doing so, NYCO turned the genocide from an almost too-large to believe number to something that makes you painfully aware of the horrors of that time period. What happened in Rwanda 14 years ago needs to be remembered in much the way that we remember the Holocaust. For those who favored intervention in Bosnia, understanding Rwanda should remind you that an even worse ethnic cleansing was occuring at the same time we were going into Bosnia.

But there is more to this exercise than just learning the details of a horror show that ended well over a decade ago. Of course, there is much to be learned in the tale of Rwanda about the evil that prejudice, hatred, and xenophobia can wrought so easily. When you read the role of talk radio in the genocide your stomach will churn.

And beyond all that, you will find out some uncomfortable truths about the US role in Rwanda. What you will discover is that the US need not have intervened militarily if it wished to save lives. Instead, you will find that US intervention at the UN and protection of its ally's reputation, as well as intentional foot-dragging by the Clinton Administration on the delivery of rented vehicles, played a tremendous role in actively worsening the genocide.

When Bill Clinton apologized to Rwanda in 1998, he was not apologizing for failing to do enough to stop the genocide by intervening militarily. Instead, what he was really apologizing for was the active role his administration played in worsening the horror.

Where Does Expression Begin and Commerce End?

This case in New Mexico helps to illustrate the deep-seated problems with the commercial speech exception to the First Amendment. Where does artistic expression end and commercial speech begin? By whose standards?

The case involves a photographer who refused to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony. The New Mexico Human Rights Commission yesterday found that such a refusal violated the New Mexico public accommodations act, which covers sexual preference discrimination.

Even though this woman is clearly a bigot, if she can be forced to photograph something of which she does not approve, then virtually any speech or expression can be regulated if it is done "for hire." As Professor Volokh points out, photography is art, and is inherently expressive. Other forms of art that are frequently made for hire: every piece of music you've ever paid money to hear (so gangsta rap can be outlawed, amongst plenty of other things), every movie you've ever paid money to see, most works of art you've ever seen in a gallery, and every news broadcast on television. Just to name a few.

This is where the intersection between economic freedom and political freedom becomes clearest. Perhaps more than anything else, this case illustrates just how dangerous the restriction of economic freedom really is.

More at memeorandum.

Bonus side question: What is it about government agencies called "Human Rights Commissions" that makes them so frequently the source of real violations of human rights? For some reason, I keep thinking that they may as well just call each of these agencies the "Ministry of Love" and get the Orwell analogy over with.

***UPDATE*** I should add that I find it almost absolutely certain that this case will get reversed should it be appealed. But the fact that it could even reach this point is a result of the subjective nature of defining "commercial speech."

***UPDATE II*** Doug Mataconis has a similar take on this over at The Liberty Papers.

Bob Barr Scores Points With Evil Cosmotarians

One of the biggest hangups I have with Bob Barr as a prospective spokesman for liberty in this country has been his position on immigration, which has long seemed to be extraordinarily restrictionist in many of the same ways as Ron Paul. This hangup is hardly big enough to prevent me from potentially supporting Barr, but it is a hangup nonetheless.

But in an interview with Neil Boortz (who seems less and less of a libertarian to me the more I hear from him), Barr dropped a bombshell that was music to my ears. This is not to say that he has completely reversed his position on immigration - indeed, he remains quite insistent on tighter border controls and (it would seem) on generally limiting immigration into this country. However, he made extremely clear in his interview with Boortz that he is opposed to mass deportation of illegal immigrants (something I blogged about here). Instead, he has taken the much more reasonable position of performing background checks on illegal immigrants; if the immigrant passes the check, they could potentially remain in the US.

This is hardly a perfect position in my view. But it also makes quite clear that Barr is far from a nativist in his current immigration stance. Moreover, David Weigel did some digging into Barr's Congressional voting record on immigration, and found a handful of important exceptions to his generally restrictionist point-of-view. These exceptions show a Congressman that actually appears more concerned with "illegal" immigration than with immigration more generally, a position that I find perfectly coherent, albeit a position with which I somewhat disagree.

Poll Question

Help us give our daughter-to-be a middle name. The choices are at left. The results will, of course, be non-binding.

Aggregating Yesterday

Yesterday was a busy day at Publius Endures. Below I've aggregated all the posts so you don't have to scroll down to catch up.

More Fun with Bad Statistics: About the murders of trade unionists in Colombia
More on Partisan Business Cycles: Following up a post from last week about the partisan political economy.
What Are the Media's Responsibilities?: In which I take a look at the debate between Glenn Greenwald and Megan McArdle and discuss how much coverage the media should have given to the Yoo memoranda.
What Would Happen if the Media Covered the Yoo Memos More?: In which I argue that greater MSM coverage of the Yoo memos would have been counterproductive in the fight against the torture regime.
Strict Construction: Pointing out the hypocrisy of conservative "strict constructionists" who argue for the "unitary executive."
NSLs and Telecom Immunity: Pointing out that the Bush Administration seems to have an odd set of priorities in determining who is qualified to review "classified" evidence.

NSLs and Telecom Immunity

I know that telecom immunity is less than a hot topic right now, but I think this is worth a post anyways.

The issue at the center of the telecom lawsuits is access to so-called "national security letters" (NSLs) that may or may not have been provided to the telecoms as justification for the Administration's warrantless wiretapping program. It is access to these letters, rather than any claim for monetary damages, that is the motivation behind the lawsuits.

In lobbying intensely for telecom immunity from these lawsuits, the Administration has repeatedly advanced two fundamental arguments. The first is that immunity is required because the telecoms acted in good faith and should not be punished for cooperating with the government on an issue of national security. This argument is absurd and a red herring, however, because the entire issue to be decided by the lawsuits is whether the telecoms acted in good faith.

The second argument often advanced is that the evidence in the case must remain secret as a matter of "national security." So necessary is secrecy, in fact, that not even the judge should be allowed to review the evidence. This argument may seem more plausible, but it really isn't. Indeed, what the administration is saying is that telecom executives and their inner circle of employees are inherently more trustworthy with national secrets than a Congressionally-approved and Presidentially-appointed judge. Moreover, the execs and their employees are so much more inherently trustworthy than the plaintiffs in these cases (none of whom are accused of any wrongdoing) that the plaintiffs should not be trusted with the information in the letters even if it is presented to them under seal and only after a thorough background check.

So there you have it: telecom execs are more trustworthy on matters of national security than all but the highest level of government officials.

Strict Construction

The various ongoing debates about the expansions and abuses of executive power under the Bushies brought something important to my mind.


It used to be - and remains - that conservatives of all stripes love to run around waving the banner of "strict construction" of the Constitution (please note: many libertarians do this as well, but in a slightly - but significantly - different manner). "Strict construction" of course is also called "textualism" and "originalism" in different contexts.

In any event, conservatives often throw these words around as a way of arguing against all sorts of legal changes, usually along the lines of (incorrectly) asserting that strict constructionism would deny the right of gays to marry or (perhaps correctly, depending on your view of when life begins) asserting that it would deny the right of abortion. They also (correctly) have used this manner of Constitutional interpretation as a way of arguing against various federal government interventions in state affairs.

Not surprisingly, though, the "strict construction" method of interpretation is applied inconsistently, at best, to conservative pet issues. When strict constructionism cannot support their preferred outcome, they usually redefine the term so as to make it utterly devoid of meaning.

But even redefining the term "strict construction" to the most absurd degree does not explain how so-called "strict constructionists" can argue for a novel theory like the "unitary executive," or that the President is allowed to ignore the law whenever he deems doing so to be in the interests of national security. Of course, the fact that the "unitary executive" theory has never been heard of in American history until the Bush Administration does not appear to have crossed their minds.

So, conservatives, which is it? Are you in favor of a strict, literal interpretation of the Constitution, or are you in favor of a virtually unfettered executive branch free from any Constitutional constraints as long as the President declares the issue one of "national security," a fact about which he need offer no proof.

What Would Happen If the Media Covered the Yoo Memos More?

Thinking more about the tiff between two of my favorite bloggers, I'm wondering if more coverage in the MSM of the Yoo torture memoranda would backfire against those of us in the anti-torture crowd.

I say this because of the practice in today's television news to turn every political issue into a one-on-one debate in which "each side" gets an "equal hearing." This turns every issue - no matter how one-sided amongst the actual experts - into a very real "debate." In this case, the legal issue of whether the torture memos are legally defensible would then be decided for public opinion purposes by two talking heads in the course of a two-minute debate. This debate would epitomize everything that is wrong with the concept of "majority rules." In such debates, the correctness of your point matters a hell of a lot less than your ability to tell people what they want (or think they want) to hear. Any nuance or expert-level discussion will either be absent from the debate or will go completely over the average person's head.

A couple of examples:

1. If you are an environmentalist, think of the way in which "talking head" one-on-one debate has poisoned public opinion, leaving Americans largely divided on whether global warming is real at a time when global opinion is close to unanimous.

2. If you are a libertarian, think of the way in which the debate over things like Social Security and health care are colored by people's complete lack of understanding of free market economics, or the way in which Reaganomics became known as "trickle-down economics."

3. If you are a civil libertarian more generally, think of every criminal case that has been dismissed because of a Fourth Amendment violation but resulted in public outrage because the defendant was a [insert criminal allegation here].

4. If you believe in greater immigration to this country, think of the way the immigration debate has been colored by bogus arguments about security, population density, and welfare abuse.

My point is this: when the MSM decides to cover an issue in depth, it becomes a "debate" rather than a cut-and-dry case. In such a debate, facts and expertise matter extremely little. What matter is which participant can evince the strongest emotions amongst the audience, ie, which participant is the better debater. If the Yoo memos were to be "debated" on television, torture opponents would be resorting to discussion of things most Americans don't understand like the Geneva Conventions, and that thing called the Constitution. Meanwhile, the other side would be ranting and raving about how this program has made us safer, that it does not authorize torture (even though it does), and that these people are only the worst of the worst terrorists and should be shown no quarter by the US. These are arguments with an immense emotional appeal, even though they happen to all be factually wrong or deep exagerrations of the truth.

So while it's likely that more people than currently would become outraged by the memos, the other side to the story is that even more people would become supportive of the memos.

What Are the Media's Responsibilities?

Glenn Greenwald, Megan McArdle, and Daniel Drezner are having a bit of a blog war today over McArdle and Drezner's response to a post Greenwald made yesterday. The debate revolves around what establishment media outlets cover and should cover in terms of political news. Since this is an important debate, and since I've already gotten into the middle of it, I figured I would add some of my own thoughts here (and specifically in response to something Greenwald addressed to me in the comments to his post).

First, a quick history: Greenwald's original post argued that the media have a moral duty/obligation to cover the Yoo torture memos more in depth than trivial crap like Obama's bowling scores. Greenwald essentially argued that the media cover the trivial stuff either because of a conservative bias or because of an elitist disdain for the average American. McArdle and Drezner responded, with McArdle (in her usual snarky way) pointing out that the media don't cover these stories as much as we think they should because they simply do not get traction with the American public, and thus do not sell papers. Drezner's response was briefer, and contained an important factual error, but questioned Greenwald's methodology and argued that the problem was just one of the media preferring to cover issues that will have a clear future effect. In response, Greenwald accuses McArdle and Drezner of being part of the problem with the media, and arguing that the media is responsible for driving public opinion, not for merely giving the people what they want.

I humbly entered the debate on McArdle's side, with this comment at Greenwald's site. I think and continue to think that Greenwald's outrage towards McArdle and Drezner is misplaced, since they were not making normative arguments about what they think is important, but were instead making descriptive arguments about what the media actually does cover, and why. (FYI-Megan's response to Greenwald is here).

Greenwald then graciously published a direct response to my comment. My response to this is below.

First, I think Greenwald is correct that Drezner's argument is more normative than McArdle's; however, it still strikes me that Drezner (who I don't read nearly as often as I read McArdle) is not arguing that the Yoo memos are an unimportant issue. Instead, Drezner is arguing that forward-looking issues are more important than issues that have occured in the past (note: Greenwald points out, correctly, that the question of torture more generally is an ongoing issue).

Second, the key question of whether the media drives public interest or public interest drives the media is largely a "chicken-or-the-egg" question. My suspicion is that it's a little of both, but in the era of alternative media, the establishment are more frequently following public interest. Indeed, looking at today's top stories on Digg, every single story on the first page is what you would call "trivial." There are several political stories in this group, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule: a DKos story about Obama returning a check, a CNN story linked to with the caption "Clinton Lies Again," and an image captioned "Do the math. It's Over- Obama Supporters at Clinton Rally." These are the stories that even the internet-savvy with access to all sorts of alternative media rank as the best and most important stories of the day.

Third, to call McArdle (an economics blogger/journalist) and Drezner (an political scientist and niche blogger) part of the problem with the MSM and to specifically criticize their lack of focus on the torture question is a bit odd. To the extent either of them are part of the "media," they are "alternative" media sources. While McArdle writes for a major magazine, she focuses almost exclusively on economics; asking her to focus on torture is like asking Greenwald (a legal scholar) to focus on most economically efficient way of solving the so-called mortgage crisis.

Fourth, it's worth pointing out that MSM's hyperfocus on trivialities is one of the reasons that alternative media has been growing by leaps and bounds, and an increasing number of people get their news from blogs, talk shows, and comedians. The existence of these alternatives has allowed a number of stories to prosper (and eventually become significant in the MSM) outside of the traditional media. Indeed, one such story was a triviality created by Progressive alternative media that knocked the attorney firing scandal off the front pages at the worst possible time: the Don Imus scandal.

Fifth, I should say that I do think the American people care more about these issues than the MSM give them credit for in their coverage (consider the huge percentage of Americans who want to impeach Bush or Cheney). However, I think that most of the people who care about these issues are precisely the people who least listen to the MSM; meanwhile the people who care least about these issues are precisely the people who get the majority of their political news from the MSM. This fact makes people like McArdle, Drezner, and of course Greenwald himself, important parts of the solution - not of the problem - because people with a general interest in their niche subject now have the ability to educate themselves in that niche in a much better fashion. It just so happens, however, that Greenwald's niche (civil liberties and legal matters) is a much more popular niche than McArdle's or Drezner's....but it is still a specific niche. The flipside to this, though, is that the MSM's audience is increasingly people who don't care particularly much about any niches at all, and someone like me will have to suffer through hours of coverage before I see a story that has any interest to me. Even when they do cover a niche issue, they will be unwilling to cover it in more than the most general of fashions. Which means that all nuance and subtlety gets removed from the MSM's coverage, and we are left with two talking heads yelling back and forth at each other with generalized talking points that tell those of us in the know absolutely nothing.

Finally, I should point out that a major culprit in all of this is the MSM's current perceived need to "represent both sides fairly" in all matters of political import. In some instances of particularly inflammatory issues (like torture), this can result in reduced coverage because merely discussing the issue publicly will upset a sizable portion of their audience (which means lost ratings).

So the question is: how do we with an interest in a particular issue that we believe of capital importance create enough broad interest in that issue to enact real change? To that question, I honestly do not know the answer. However, as more people rely on alternative media sources, more people will join our various causes and take an interest in our niches.

***UPDATE- For more on the Yoo torture memoranda and a JAG lawyer who engaged in an incredible and heroic act of civil disobedience, see this article today, which I highly recommend.

More at memeorandum.

***UPDATE II- A lot of people cite the Abu Ghraib case as an example of the public caring about issues like this and that therefore the American people would get excited about the Yoo memorandum if the media would just try harder to get the issue out there. Unfortunately, this is the exception that proves the rule. In Abu Ghraib, you had something that created an immediate emotional reaction in the American people and about which subtlety and nuance were unnecessary. Moreover - and this is what is important - the photos were the entire basis for the outrage. As a result, the American public was not outraged at the Bush Administration (especially once they offered a defense that was based on nothing but lies) so much as they were outraged at the individual soldiers involved (and who were themselves in the published pictures). As a result, once the soldiers were identified and brought forward for prosecution, the public was largely mollified.

More on Partisan Business Cycles

The other day, I attacked some major flaws I found in a graph which shows that income growth improves for everyone under Dem Presidents while it decreases for all but the rich under Republican Presidents.

I noticed today that both the Great Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok have posted further on this phenomenon, which has been well known and fully explained for quite some time in economist circles. Bottom line, according to Cowen and Tabarrok: it all has to do with a combination of economic certainty and with the willingness of the Fed to pursue anti-inflationary measures under Republican Presidents.

If this is accurate, by the way, then it is a strong argument in favor of McCain over Obama, as inflation is becoming a major concern in our economy, while unemployment is still at low levels largely unheard of prior to the 90s.

More Fun with Bad Statistics

As a way of arguing against a free trade deal with Colombia, Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein link with approval to this graph posted by the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute. According to Klein, Yglesias, and EPI, the graph shows that union members in Colombia can be murdered with impunity under right-of-center Colombian President Uribe. Indeed, the trio go even further than that, calling all of these murders "assassinations," thereby implying that every time a member of a trade union is murdered in Colombia (one of the world's most dangerous countries in general), the motive for the murder is the prevention of unionization.

Except that there are a whole host of problems with this graph and with the purposes for which it is being used.

First, it terms every murder of a trade union member an "assassination." But as I alluded to above, Colombia has one of the world's highest murder rates, period. The idea that trade unionists might be murdered for the same reasons as anyone else (primarily related to the wonderful War on (some) Drugs) doesn't seem to have crossed Klein, et al's collective minds. Indeed, one commenter on Yglesias' post points out that the murder rate of trade unionists appears to actually be lower than the murder rate for the rest of the Colombian population.

Second, it's obvious that the number of murders of trade unionists peaked in the same year as trial prosecution of such murders peaked during Uribe's reign. As the number of unionists murdered has gone down, so too has the percentage of such murders brought to trial. Obviously, this strange coincidence is not a result of fewer prosecutions encouraging fewer murders. But it does suggest something else. Any cop will tell you that the easiest murders to solve are the ones committed by someone the victim knew, while random killings are far and away the most difficult murders to solve. It strikes me that in the year murder of unionists peaked, it is possible (even likely) that this was a result of a greater number of politically-motivated killings. Since such killings would provide an easy motive and thus an obvious suspect, they would be killings with a higher likelihood of being brought to trial. Meanwhile, random killings would be much more difficult to solve. In addition, in a country with such a high homicide rate, it is pretty easy to imagine a police force that tries to make the more easily solved crimes a priority for prosecution over random acts of violence.

Third, it's worth pointing out (as I did in a comment to Yglesias' post) that the graph shows only the percentage of union murders "brought to trial." It does not show the percentage of union murders actually prosecuted or resulting in convictions of some sort. Nor does it show the average sentence meted out in such cases compared to other murders in Colombia. When a motive is easily found, a case is more likely to be open and shut, and thus it is more likely to result in a guilty plea of some sort (and thus not be brought to trial).

Finally, there is this commentary piece from a week ago in the NYT that debunks these statistics even further, which is well worth a quick read of its own.

***UPDATE***I should have noted that this is not to say that there are no unprosecuted politically motivated murders of trade unionists. What it is to say, however, is that the situation for trade unionists appears to be improving the last few years. It's worth also pointing out that the number of trade union murders is now just a fraction of what it was even ten years ago.

I should also add that even if everything Klein, et al, presume is true, this actually argues in favor of a free trade deal. It's fairly well-established at this point that free trade is the best way of spreading liberal values like free speech, due process, etc. While a free trade deal might be viewed as a "reward" for Colombia, it is a reward that will ultimately result in the situation for trade unionists improving significantly over time.

Some Weekend Reading

I'm going to be away for the weekend. But I wanted to leave a link to today's best post, which I believe was one of my most useful ever. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it.

Bob Barr for President?

Via Below the Beltway, Dave Weigel is reporting that it seems like Bob Barr is almost certainly going to announce a run for President under the Libertarian Party banner this weekend.

For reasons I'd rather not get into, I have a better understanding of Bob Barr than probably the vast majority of libertarian bloggers out there (though not as much as some), so I think I should probably comment on his prospective run, which is creating a lot of division within the post-Ron Paul libertarian community.

The first thing I would say is that the LP could do a lot worse than Congressman Barr. Although he most certainly had a less-than-libertarian track record in Congress on things ranging from the Drug War to gay rights, he has clearly experienced a change of heart on many or most of those issues. Many libertarians are rightly suspicious of this conversion.

I can say with a pretty strong degree of certainty that those suspicions are incorrect. Although I have no idea what the former Congressman personally thinks of gay rights on a local level these days, he has quite clearly come out against the Federal Marriage Amendment, and did so almost immediately upon its introduction- and before he joined the LP.

As others have noted, he has also been fairly open about the fact that he has changed his position completely on the War on Drugs. In addition, he is now an extremely vocal opponent of the Patriot Act.

Many libertarians have noted that although Barr, as a Congressman, took several significant steps to weaken the Act, those steps were horribly insufficient. While this is true, it's worth noting that the Patriot Act was passed just weeks after 9/11, at a time when rational thinking was (understandably) almost impossible to come by; the emotions of that day were just too fresh in our memories. It was clear to most people that there had been horrible failures of government, and that those failures led to the attacks; thus, steps needed to be taken to prevent future attacks. For the average non-libertarian at the time (a group in which I include myself), and I believe, even for many scared libertarians, the Patriot Act seemed to be a strong step in that direction, regardless of its flaws. That Barr - at a time when he wasn't even a libertarian (small "l" or otherwise) - was one of the few people rational enough to see that it went too far and needed to be pulled back is to me an extremely strong argument in his favor.

Moreover, Barr has done an extraordinary amount of work to try and weaken or end the Patriot Act since he left Congress. His dedication to civil liberties in recent years has been far more than just a token effort done to bolster his libertarian credentials; frankly, his record on that front in recent years is something that ought to be the envy of just about every single libertarian and Progressive.

Based on my somewhat limited knowledge of the Congressman, many of Barr's positions evolved into something resembling libertarianism before he joined the LP, at a time when he was still nominally a member of the Republican Party. For this reason, I am quite willing to take Barr at his word that his current positions on issues are in fact his sincerely held beliefs rather than positions taken as a way to earn the LP nomination.

On balance, I believe Barr will be a more credible proponent of liberty than Ron Paul was, although he will lack the glamor and media attention that come with a run in a highly competitive, high-profile Republican primary campaign.

Regarding the Iraq War, Barr will be able to speak in a knowledgeable way that Ron Paul could not, which will give him far more credibility on the issue than Paul was able to get outside of anti-war activist circles. As such, he will be much less susceptible to charges of just being "anti-troop" or of simply "blaming America first."

In addition, he will not have the obsession with the Federal Reserve that Paul had, which hurt his ability to appeal to mainstream voters.

On gun rights, there are few people in the country who can speak with greater credibility than Congressman Barr.

This is not to say that Barr is an ideal libertarian candidate, however. He continues to be a vocal supporter of greater restrictions on immigration, a position which I find deeply antithetical to liberty in this country.

Moreover, he will be subject to some of the same charges of racism that Ron Paul was subject to in the days after the newsletter story broke. In 1998, he caused a not-insignificant stir when he gave the keynote address to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group that is often derided - correctly, I think - as a white supremacist organization (the group is the successor to the "White Citizens' Councils). Barr attempted to distance himself from the organization, but it was a story that will be well-remembered by a number of opinion-makers, as the story broke at a time when Barr was one of the impeachment managers in the Bill Clinton impeachment trial.

I should note, however, that Barr was only one of several then-high-profile politicians to be tied to the group, and that Mark Pitcovich of the Anti-Defamation League largely exonerated him from the charges due to his vociferous denunciations of the group as well as some other mitigating circumstances. In addition, Barr will be able to credibly argue that he was a much different person at the time, and that he should not be judged based solely on his actions as Congressman. This is a defense which Ron Paul did not use, and could not have used very credibly given his continued ties to Lew Rockwell.

According to an old Dave Neiwert post, Barr also has connections to the JBS. This is something that troubles me - if it is true, and if those connections continue. Of course, this was a problem that Ron Paul had as well, to a much larger extent. If Barr has ended those connections with the JBS, then I believe he will credibly be able to mitigate any charges of racism that may be thrown his way.

Finally, although Barr's positions on many social issues have changed, it is impossible to completely overlook his staunchly theocratic voting record in Congress. To the extent he disavows that record, I am willing to believe him; however, he has not yet faced questions on a number of issues related to that record, so it is unclear whether he still holds some of those positions. I understand that he continues to be staunchly pro-life; however, abortion is an issue on which I believe there is much room for disagreement amongst libertarians, and I even tend to vascillate regularly as to where I stand on that issue.

On the whole, however, I think Barr would be a credible spokesman for liberty in this country, and may be able to get just enough support to get included in the Presidential debates.

There will be those in the LP who are upset that Barr could come in and take the nomination after the party has already had its primaries. On that, I will not comment, as it is a bit too much "inside baseball" for someone like me who is fairly agnostic about the existence of the LP and understands little about LP rules and procedures.


More reactions at Memeorandum.

Sad News of the Day

I just saw that Ed Morrissey shut down Captain's Quarters during my hiatus and is now blogging at Hot Air. While as far as I can tell Captain Ed's style and tone is the same as it's always been, I'm a bit saddened by this bit of news. As much as I frequently disagree with the Captain, he has always done an outstanding job of giving his opinion and news with a good dose of calm and reason, with remarkably little of the vitriol and venom that often exemplifies the A-list blogosphere of both the left (see: Talkleft) and right (see: Michelle Malkin). In joining Hot Air the Captain is now forcing me to fight through the hyperbole and rank hatred that is often typical of Hot Air's tone. Sigh.

Although, I must admit that the usually cantankerous Allahpundit seems to have taken a more even tone in the handful of his posts that I have read in my short visit over there this afternoon.

I'll continue to read Captain Ed regularly, but I do lament the disappearance of his outstanding site.

Amusing Post of the Day

Reflections from a Rotting Nation has an amusing and poignant post describing why he wants to bring back indentured servitude. It pretty much sums up the libertarian view of the world about as well as possible.

"They Took Ur Jerbs!"

Perhaps the most common argument against immigration and especially "illegal" immigration is that the immigrants take jobs away from hard-working, honest Americans. I've always found this to be more than a little strange.

While standing in Home Depot the other morning, the silliness behind this line of argument was abundantly clear to me - in this still relatively prosperous area of New Jersey, just about the only other people in the store were Latino immigrants. Most of them appeared to be contractors preparing for renovations on a home of some sort. I only saw one non-Latino in the store who appeared to be a contractor (and I was there for a solid half an hour).

Thinking about this, I recalled that in my time in the DC suburbs of Northern Virginia (another prosperous area of the country), the Home Depot was also usually filled with Latino contractors. And I remembered all too well the lines of mostly illegal immigrants I used to pass regularly waiting for work at the local 7-11.

The point is this: immigrants tend to go where the jobs are, and where the labor markets are tightest. In other words: they're rational human beings. They don't go where there is a high unemployment rate, but instead they go where the unemployment rate is lowest and jobs are most plentiful. And indeed, the states with the highest per capita immigration populations (2005 data) are states that we generally associate with a strong, stable economies, and a fairly high quality of life: California, New York (although the upstate economy is awful, most of the immigrants tend to be in the prosperous downstate area), New Jersey, Florida, and Arizona. Other states with immigrant populations greater than 10% (2005 data) include states like Massachusetts, Nevada (which was a boom state at the time), Illinois (presumably mostly in the Chicago area), and Connecticut. States with the lowest immigrant populations included the Southeast (except for Georgia, where Atlanta was a boom town at the time), Michigan, Missouri, and Ohio- all areas generally associated with comparatively weak economies.

This would seem to blow the job-stealing argument against immigration out of the water. But there's more. I crunched some numbers and found that the strongest anti-immigrant attitudes are in places with the fewest immigrants. Meanwhile, I found that the weakest anti-immigrant attitudes are found in places with the highest number of immigrants. In other words, the people most likely to be anti-immigrant (and therefore to think that immigrants hurt economies) are the people least likely to actually be affected by immigration. The only logical explanation for this is therefore rank nativism and scapegoating....they are blaming immigration for their problems even though they are almost entirely unaffected by immigration compared to the rest of the country.

To do this, I compared the 2005 immigrant percentages (this was the most recent data I could find) against exit poll data from this year's Republican primaries on the question "What should be done with illegal immigrants?" (This question was not usually asked in the Democratic primaries; in addition, immigrants tend to be heavily Democratic, which means their presence was unlikely to skew data much in a Republican primary). This question was asked in a total of 24 Republican primaries this year. What I found was a very clear trend in which the higher a state's immigrant population, the less likely GOP voters in that state were to answer "Deport them" (the most extreme anti-immigrant answer included) on this question.

I'm too lazy to calculate r-squared and p values for this data, but from the looks of it, it appears quite statistically significant by political science standards. The scatter plot is above. Should anyone be willing to calculate those numbers, I would be eternally grateful, and will provide you with the raw data.

Lest anyone think that this data is skewed by the level of conservatism in the relevant GOP primary or by the region in which the state is located, I want to point out some data that disprove that. First, New Hampshire (a relatively moderate state by GOP standards) has one of the lowest immigrant populations, and one of the most virulently anti-immigrant voter bases (50% answered "Deport them"). Second, Texas, with a high immigrant population but a very conservative GOP base has one of the lowest "Deport them" percentages (37%). In addition, Utah, with a very conservative GOP base but a moderate immigration population was tied for the lowest "Deport them" percentage (35%).

In my mind, this graph I've put together shows an extremely strong likelihood that strong anti-illegal immigrant attitudes are heavily colored by rank nativism and irrational scapegoating and stereotypes.

NOTE: For the record, the states included in my study were: VA, OK, MI, SC, AZ, NY, AL, NJ, CT, CA, NH, FL, MO, UT, WI, GA, TN, IL, LA, TX, MD, MA, MS, and OH.

From the Department of Awful Statistics

This graph has been making the rounds of the left-of-center blogosphere the last few days. It purports to show that all elements of American society do better under Democratic Presidents than under Republican Presidents. The clear implication is that the economic intervention of Democrats is a more successful policy than the free market orientation of Republicans.

While I don't care one iota about whether Republicans or Democrats are generally better, I do care about free markets. So I want to comment on some major problems with drawing conclusions from this graph.

1. There is a significant small sample problem. The statistics relied upon are only from 1948-2005. Since it is attempting to compare Republican Presidents vs. Democrat Presidents, there are in effect only 6 data points covering 32 years for the Republicans, and only 5 data points covering 24 years for the Democrats.
2. Eight years (25%) of the Republican data points were covered by Nixon/Ford. Nixon's (and Ford's) economic and domestic policies were largely anathema to anything resembling a free market. Indeed, Nixon committed the single most unspeakable economic act possible from a free market perspective: he instituted wage and price freezes. For three years. As anyone with an understanding of free market economics could predict, this action completely devastated an already ailing economy. As a result, the Nixon/Ford years are the worst economic years included in this graph.
3. Eight years (33.3%) of the Democratic data points were covered by the Clinton Administration. Despite Bill Clinton's many flaws, his Presidency is generally regarded as being historically favorable to free markets. Certainly we should remember that NAFTA was ratified under his watch, that it was he who declared the era of Big Government over (only to be ushered back in, ironically, by GWB), and that he had a particularly ornery Congress to deal with, which meant that neither Clinton nor Congress could get much done, economically speaking (this is usually a good thing for free markets). As a result of all this, the Clinton years were by far the best economic years included in the graph.
4. Another four years (16.7%) of the Democratic data points were covered by the Carter Administration. Whatever Carter's flaws on economic policy - and there were many - he was still better for the free market than the Nixon/Ford era. Certainly, he didn't institute wage and price controls, and importantly, he also deserves credit for beginning the process of deregulation.

The point is this: the data behind the graph wind up providing us with no information from which we can make generalizations about Republicans vs. Democrats or free markets vs. interventionism. There are too few data sets to compare, and the data sets that do exist are massively skewed due to two or three major anomalies where the President governed in a manner diametrically opposed to his Party's stereotypical economic position.


***UPDATE***I should have included a fifth point: Short of idiotic things like price controls, a President generally has pretty minimal power over the economy. Even to the extent he does have economic power there is a certain, undefined lag time between the policy making and the effects of the policy being felt. The data used appear to grant a one-year lag time, but the reality is that in some cases lag time could take several years. The fact is that the economy is generally too complex to be able to tie broad-based indicators like real income gain to a specific government policy or set of policies. (This being the reason why economic theory remains a relevant analytical tool).

The Secret Is Out

For the last year I've been quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) plotting a move to Switzerland, which I believe is the closest thing to Libertopia that exists on this planet in the post-Bush Doctrine world. This move may or may not happen even if Obama wins the Presidency this year (and it will DEFINITELY happen if Hillary somehow steals the election), but I noticed awhile back that the small Alpine nation had passed the US in just about every libertarian category: economic, social, foreign policy, etc. Fortunately for me, when most people think about Switzerland and freedom, it is only to use them as an example of how a well-armed society need not have much violent crime.

Switzerland's high libertarian/classical liberal grades are not just an uninformed perception of mine, either- I've seen a number of annual studies of different freedom indicators that have ranked the Swiss equal to or above the US in just about every conceivable category in recent years. (For the record, the US held the top spot or one of the top spots in all of those indicators in the pre-GWB/Cheney years).

...And all these indicators say nothing about Switzerland's libertarian-like foreign policy of neutrality and relative non-intervention. While this policy decidedly put them on the wrong side of WWII, it's worth noting that it has also done a pretty good job of keeping them safe but well-regarded over the years.

Well, in the current issue of The American, John Fund lets the cat out of the bag, providing a fairly in depth look at Swiss tax and economic policy, as well as at their style of democracy. Fund also points out a dirty little secret- Switzerland is one of the world's most prosperous countries despite the fact that it was an economic backwater only a century ago.

Alas, he does not mention Switzerland's relatively liberal perspective on gay rights, drugs (they're not legal but they are a far cry from our militaristic War on Drugs), and all sorts of other personal freedom issues that have little to do with economic policy. But tolerance of other lifestyles is something that the GOP would do well to learn from the Swiss.

This is not to say that Switzerland is in fact Libertopia - it has its fair share of areas where it falls short, too. But it is the closest thing to it currently in existence. Not surprisingly to libertarians, it has a quality of life to match. Surprisingly to Progressives and socialists, it has one of the world's finest health care systems, structured in a way that is more market-friendly than the American system.

In response, my socialist and Progressive friends will likely point to the case of Denmark to show how socialism can work. But that would ignore an important distinction between the two countries - Switzerland is a surprisingly diverse country (note to the anti-immigrant crowd: the Swiss have FOUR official languages), while Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries are extremely homogenous. No less an authority than Hayek recognized that socialism can conceivably work in a small, homogenous society where everyone shares a common purpose. That does not make it feasible in a massive nation like the US which has one of the world's most diverse populations (second note to the anti-immigrant crowd: restricting immigration more is a good way to screw up that diversity and therefore make socialism more likely).

Now if only I could find a job in Switzerland....

The Source of Conflict and Hatred

I wanted to share a revelation that I've had in the past few years that I think applies to conflicts and harmful behavior of all types. And that revelation is this:

Atticus Finch was wrong when he said that you can't understand a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes, and thus implied that the cause of conflict and hatred is a lack of understanding of other people.

What I have learned is that conflict and hatred isn't caused by failing to understand others, but is instead caused by people thinking that they do understand others.

Put more clearly: The problem isn't that people don't understand each other, it's that they think they do.

I will be happy to elaborate on this more fully should anyone ask.

I'm Baa-ack

My apologies for my unexpected hiatus over the last month or so. I don't want to get into the details behind it, but I've been dealing with an all-consuming problem that made it difficult for me to do anything with this blog. I'm hoping to get back up and running in the coming days as I catch up on current events, although my posting will probably be limited to just one or - at most - two a day for the foreseeable future.

Just to deter any speculation on these fronts, the issue that has kept me from posting did NOT involve any of the following: drugs, alcohol, arrest, dee-vorce, firearms, illegal wiretaps, Guantanamo Bay, torture, Hillary Clinton re-education camp. It may or may not, however, have involved tap dancing on the grave of the Mitt Romney campaign.

Tactics and Political Brand Names

Kyle has an interesting post today that is a continuation of a discussion we had yesterday. In recent days, Obama has been responding to increased attacks that he lacks substance by giving more substantive speeches that tone down a lot of his more inspirational rhetoric. As Kyle points out, Obama was initially criticized early last year for being too heavy on the substance and too light on the inspiration in his speeches. When he changed his tone to replicate his legendary 2004 convention speech, he began to get traction and closed the gap with Sen. Clinton. As Kyle also recognizes, it is this style which has carried Obama from longshot to favorite.

But with the increased vigor of the attacks by the Clinton campaign on the substance issue, Kyle thinks it wise of Obama to respond with more substance and points out that Obama needs to figure out how to combine the style with the substance. As I argued yesterday, I'm not so sure, at least not at this stage of the game. I analogized it to switching to a prevent defense with too much time left on the clock when you've been dominating the defensive side of the ball all game and you just need one more turnover or sack to put the game out of reach.

Thinking on it a little more, I think there's another element here that shouldn't be overlooked. At this stage of the game, the highly informed and moderately informed voters have made up their minds and are unlikely to switch sides. Obama has pretty clearly won that battle as much as he's going to. The voters who are left to persuade - and there are a lot of them - are the low information voters; Jay Cost argues this fact explains a lot of the polling discrepancies we've seen this year. As Cost further explains, in a primary campaign low information voters are left to judge the candidates on personality and name recognition, since actual policy differences are usually so small. For the low-information voter who only gets to make their decision once, what matters most is the politician's "branding."

Although Obama has made up huge ground in terms of his name recognition and the reliability of his "brand," he cannot possibly compete with the Clinton "brand" on name recognition and reliability in the mind of the low information voter. By taking a more "substantive" tone, though, this is exactly what he is trying to do. (Of course, what passes for "substance" in political speeches is really just a litany of false promises made to sound impressive by peppering in nice, beautiful, round numbers).

By taking this "substantive" tone, Obama is selling himself as essentially a "me-too" product. That is a battle he cannot win because he isn't giving the voters a reason to give up their loyalty to the Clinton brand name. It's analogous to why people are willing to spend the extra 30 cents to buy the name-brand soda instead of the store-brand soda, even though they're exactly the same thing- they trust the name-brand, and don't trust the less-familiar brand.

When Obama takes his more inspirational and preachy tone, though, he is giving voters a reason to change brands. Instead of selling himself as another, less well-known cola, he is selling himself as something completely different...suddenly, he's Dr. Pepper rather than RC Cola. Sure, he won't be able to convince the cola die-hards to change brands, but he wasn't going to be able to convince them to switch anyways since he wasn't giving them much incentive to change brands. But he will convince all the people who are bored of cola to try something a little different.

It may be that Obama has already won over enough people that he can afford to go back to this substantive line of debate and "play prevent defense" or start his own line of cola. But I'm not sure that he's reached that point; regardless, I think his uptick in the polls will stall out if he tries to beat Clinton on her terms. This thing's not over yet.

Grading the Candidates

It took me a few days, but as I promised the other day, below is my analysis of the three remaining candidates with a realistic shot at the Presidency. Should Bloomberg run as a third party candidate (or for that matter, Bob Barr or another prominent libertarian), I will revisit this analysis. Of course, this analysis is utterly useless if you are unwilling to vote for someone who is not a libertarian in any way (and will thus be abstaining or voting for the LP candidate no matter what). But I think it's a useful guide to the big three nonetheless.

I have prioritized and weighted the issues based on their importance to me in this election; I have no doubt that others will disagree with that weighting and prioritization.

1. Executive Power/Civil Liberties - This is by far the most important issue this year in my mind. A politician with an expansive view of executive power is a politician willing to cram policies down our throats regardless of whether there is an overwhelming consensus (or any consensus at all, for that matter) behind those policies. In other words, a candidate's views on Executive Power affect the weight I give to their views on all other issues. The simple fact that all three major remaining candidates come from the Senate suggests that no matter what we will have an improvement over Bush due to a likely respect for the institutional separation of powers that presumably results. A view of Executive Power that is less expansive is, by the way, a necessary component of the Madisonian view of faction that is supposed to be the focus of this site; an expansive view of Executive Power will lead a President to run roughshod over opposing factions in the hopes of creating a permanent majority faction.

First, Sen. Clinton's past creates many serious questions about her on this issue, particularly with respect to the way in which she handled her infamous Health Care Task Force, and also with respect to her avowed support of an expansive view of executive privilege. McCain and Obama's political careers have both primarily been in the legislative branch, suggesting a likelihood of profound respect for the legislative process. However, McCain's sometimes bulldog-ish style on legislative matters creates some room for concern, as does his support of today's FISA legislation, complete with immunity for the telecoms. I have no doubt that he would be a vast improvement over Bush/Cheney on Executive Power, and to his credit he has stood up against torture. As importantly, he has absolutely condemned the use of signing statements across the board, which neither Clinton nor Obama has done. However, McCain voted against restoration of habeas corpus, which is a huge strike against him. Obama, on the other hand, is a constitutional law scholar who has largely stood up against expansion of executive power in a way that neither Clinton nor McCain have; moreover, his rhetorical emphases on consensus-building hint strongly at a candidate who is unlikely to force policy and law down our throats without having something resembling a super-majority behind him.

Grades: Clinton: D, McCain: C+, Obama: B+

2. Foreign Policy/Defense Spending/Commander-in-Chief Role: Foreign policy is arguably the arena in which the President has the greatest amount of direct control, Constitutionally speaking. As a practical matter though, entrenched bureacracies often inhibit a President's ability to actually make dramatic changes in foreign policy. That said, I can say from personal experience that the Bush neo-con bureaucracy is largely located at the top of the food chain at the moment, and would likely be replaced under a Dem administration. The biggest sub-issue within this field is obviously Iraq, Afghanistan, and the GWOT. Sen. Clinton's position on Iraq ought to be cause for great concern, as should her advocacy of "coercive diplomacy" and her support of Kyl-Lieberman. Add to that her husband's rather extensive use of American military power, and I simply can't trust her on foreign policy or the GWOT. While I could not disagree more with McCain on most of his current foreign policy views, his pre-9/11 foreign policy views were quite sane. I also believe that, if indeed we must stay in Iraq, McCain is best equipped to oversee our actions there, and will do so with dignity and without authorizing torture and war crimes. Obama, on the other hand, is by far the closest to a libertarian in his foreign policy views (excluding, for the moment, his views on trade). Personally, I tend to support an immediate or rapid withdrawal of forces in Iraq, with a redeployment to Afghanistan for some of them. However, I do have questions about Obama's ability to oversee such a withdrawal in a wise manner given his lack of military experience (then again, he would presumably defer to the generals on the best way to accomplish a withdrawal). Importantly, Obama's election, in and of itself, would noticeably improve the world's image of the United States, creating an immediate intangible effect.

Grades: Clinton: D+, McCain: C, Obama: B-

3. Economic Policy/Taxes: Both Obama and McCain are well-established deficit hawks. We should never forget that the deficit itself creates a hidden tax in terms of both inflation and additional spending on interest payments. Obama is most likely to attempt to downsize the military budget, but McCain is the most likely to have the ability to do so. McCain has historically been a tax-cutter, and for the record, I think he was right to insist that Bush tie tax cuts to spending cuts. While I will deal with healthcare and SS more below, it's worth pointing out that McCain's positions would, I think, actually cut costs in those fields whereas Obama's would significantly increase them overall, and Clinton's would dramatically increase them. McCain is by far the best on free trade, though Clinton has a pretty good record in that respect, and Obama's economics are much more trade-friendly than his rhetoric. While I think the mortgage "crisis" will be over by the time the next President takes office, it's worth noting that Clinton's call for a lengthy moratorium on ARM adjustments is beyond obtuse from an economics standpoint.

Grades: Clinton: D+, Obama: C-, McCain: B

4. Health Care: Clinton wants to force health care down our throats at tremendous cost and with mandates that scare the bejesus out of me. Hers is an outright nanny-state position that is beyond disturbing from a libertarian point of view; equally bad, she insists on universal health care as an end in itself, and improperly diagnoses the problems with our health care system. She refuses to even discuss the possibility that there are long-term problems with Social Security, dismissing suggestions to that effect as Republican talking points. Obama correctly diagnoses the problems with our health care system as being cost-based, though he incorrectly diagnoses the source of those problems and is far too willing to blame insurance companies for all the ills of the system. Still, his admirable refusal to cave on the mandates issue shows a willingness to leave health care largely in the hands of individuals. In addition, he has actually acknowledged the long-term problems with Social Security; while his solution to those problems is hardly libertarian, my understanding is that it does provide some room for market-based reforms. McCain's health care proposal is far and away the best, and I evaluated it more fully awhile back. It is far from perfect, but by politician standards, it's pretty damn good.

Grades: Clinton: F, Obama: C, McCain: B+

5. Personal Freedoms: Obama gets some bonus points as the rare candidate who may actually scale back (however minimally) the War on (some) Drugs. None of the three candidates would support a Federal Marriage Amendment. Outside of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I don't think there is much that a President can do on most gay rights issues, but I have little doubt that McCain would keep that policy in place, Clinton would be likely to do so for quite some time, and Obama would likely try to repeal it relatively quickly. On firearms, all three are terrible; however, McCain should be by far the scariest on this issue, as he would be most likely to have political capital on this issue, particularly if he only ran for one term. All three, to my knowledge, support the onerous McCain-Feingold law, but of course McCain loses extra points for being the sponsor of that bill.

Grades: McCain: D+, Clinton: C, Obama: B-

6. Education: On education, McCain appears pretty close to the libertarian position; however, his position on No Child Left Behind is extremely vague, and is a major strike against him. Obama gets major points for his support of merit pay and his support of increased education tax credits (which inherently promote greater school choice). Hillary Clinton's position is in lockstep with the teachers' unions.

Grades: Clinton: C, McCain: B/incomplete, Obama: B

I would have liked to include judicial appointments in this evaluation, but I suspect that they will all appoint judges with whom I agree as often as I disagree, but who will on average be well-qualified and fair-minded. I don't think there is a judge on the SCOTUS these days with whom I agree with much more than 50% of the time on close issues.

Final Grades: Clinton: D+, McCain: C, Obama: B-

To be honest, I'm surprised that McCain didn't do worse in this evaluation, while Obama scored about where I expected him to, as did Clinton. I do think this evaluation shows that the differences between Obama and Clinton are fairly substantial, especially on the two most important issues of executive power and foreign policy.

The end result of all this is that Clinton scares the hell out of me, and I think would be as bad or worse than Bush/Cheney have been, McCain would be at least tolerable, and Obama would be above average in comparison to previous Presidents, but by no means the second coming of Grover Cleveland (or Calvin Coolidge, for that matter). Depending on how things shake out in November, I can see myself voting for Obama, the LP nominee, or McCain (but this would require that Clinton be the Dem nominee AND that NJ became a critical swing state, which is unlikely).

Hillary Skips Telecom Vote

Per Marc Ambinder, Obama voted against telecom immunity today, McCain voted for it, and Hillary Clinton voted.... absent?

Obama deserves at least some minimal praise for standing by his pledge to fight against telecom immunity (though as Big Tent Democrat correctly points out, his leadership on this issue has been lacking). In choosing to cast a vote on this issue, he leaves himself vulnerable to charges of being un-patriotic by the GOP. In other words, he took a very real risk here. True enough that he didn't have to sacrifice much campaigning time with today's DC-area primaries.

But the relatively small amount of praise that Obama deserves for his vote shows how cowardly Senator Clinton's actions appear in comparison. As Ambinder points out, Clinton was in Texas, for which she left last night or this morning. While conventional wisdom would point out that Hillary is using Texas as a firewall, her actions in going there at this precise moment are more than a little odd and, I think, transparent.

Her campaign headquarters is in Northern Virginia, right in the center of today's primaries. While she is almost certain to lose all three primaries, one would think she would have stayed in the area in the hopes of at least salvaging a couple of delegates. By staying in the area, of course, she would have also left herself the ability to vote on the FISA bill and the telecom immunity provisions.

Since leaving for Texas on this particular date makes very little sense, and since Clinton's opposition to telecom immunity has long been suspect, her actions give the appearance of being a transparent attempt to duck voting on the issue. By flying to Texas today, she is able to use the ready-made excuse that she was on the other side of the country and was thus unable to cast her vote; this is an excuse that she could not have used had she remained in the DC area for last-minute campaigning.

In my mind, this is nothing more than a transparent attempt to duck a vote on an issue of incredible importance to both the Democratic Party base and civil libertarians. Although I doubt civil libertarians were ever going to much support Clinton, it amazes me that any of the Dem base is willing to give her a pass on this issue.

For the record, I'm also pretty damn annoyed with the folks at Reason today, who chose to focus on the silly Che Guevara flag dustup without any regard whatsoever for the FISA votes. This despite David Weigel's call for more libertarian involvement with the issue a few weeks back.

As usual, Glenn Greenwald has the best coverage of this issue, why it's important, and why the vote on immunity is such a depressing failure of American self-government.

More blogger reactions at memeorandum.

Giving Credit Where It's Due

It's rare for me to offer praise to the LRC crowd. But when one of them leaves the fever swamp, it's worth giving them credit, as is the case with this excellent post from Nick Bradley (who I'll admit usually does a pretty good job avoiding the anti-Cato, anti-Reason vitriol). Bradley discusses the Daniel Koffler Comment Is Free column about Obama's appeal to libertarians that I posted about awhile back.

In any event, Bradley's analysis is well-balanced, fair, and well worth a read, I think.

Money quote:

So, is Obama a left-libertarian? No; Obama's platform is more akin to "Soft Paternalism", a gentler, less threatening approach to controlling people's lives (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Libertarian Paternalism).
...
Don't get me wrong: in a hypothetical match up in the fall between Obama and McCain, I'll either abstain from voting or write in Paul's name. But for the electorate as a whole, Obama would be the more liberty-minded choice over the statist, warmongering, ill-tempered and possibly unstable John McCain.

I'm much more willing to actually vote for Obama in the general election on the grounds that he will be far superior to McCain, and on the grounds that I think a change in foreign policy and a roll-back of executive power are the most important issues this year. But Bradley's analysis of Obama strikes me as dead-on accurate.