Zimbabwe: A Proposal

(Revised version of a cross-posted comment at Matt Yglesias' blog)

I apologize for the lack of blogging lately - the baby's been keeping me busy, plus I've had a case of writer's block.

In any event, the rapidly deteroriating situation in Zimbabwe has inevitably resulted in the question: what, if anything, should be done?

In my view, this is a clear case where the need to defend others against the brutal oppression of their government - which the people have actively and openly fought against - justifies humanitarian intervention of some sort. But what sort? Sanctions don't work (and if you subscribe to a free trade theory of democracy, as I do, are actually counterproductive); resolutions, even when allowed to pass by Russian and China, are toothless; the US military is stretched to thin to attempt yet a third military occupation, and any direct American or Western military intervention would lead to (justified) cries of neo-colonialism/imperialism; and eliminating sanctions would have little effect because Mugabe would probably not take advantage of the eliminated sanctions in a way that would rapidly increase freedom (ie, there would not be a sudden restoration of free trade). Even if Mugabe did re-open Zimbabwe's economy to the world, the re-opening of the country would still require years before it would result in a hypothetical restoration of freedoms, during which much more political oppression and murder would occur.

The only answer that really makes sense to me is the answer that most goes against every fiber of my libertarian being: "regime change." Before I get chastized for this idea by the entire non-interventionist wing of the libertarian movement, let me make clear that I am NOT arguing that the US military should undertake this venture. Indeed, I believe doing so would be extremely ill-conceived and would primarily result in driving support to Mugabe and further legitimizing already valid concerns of neo-colonialism and imperialism. Instead, I advocate seeking intervention to remove Mugabe, by force if necessary, by either the African Union or by independent African nations.

I believe this because, if ever there was a country where "regime change" would actually work, it would be Zimbabwe. First, it is a country with a relatively weak military and an increasingly unpopular leader. But, then again, compared to the US, Iraq's military was very weak and Saddam Hussein was obviously deeply unpopular amongst the majority of Iraq's population. Yet Iraq was an extraordinarily bad candidate for "regime change," as we have found out, and as I frankly believed at the time. The difference, however, is that in Zimbabwe's recent past, it had a relatively strong civil society (Mugabe's turn to totalitarianism occured largely in this decade), the remnants of with are apparently still in enough operation to permit someone like Tsvangirai to pose a threat to Mugabe. Furthermore, intervention by a coalition of neighboring, non-Western nations would largely overcome any local fears about neo-colonialism and imperialism. In essence, what I am advocating is what should have been done in Rwanda.

As I said, the key factor here is that Zimbabwe has or until relatively recently had a relatively strong civil society. A strong civil society is usually a pre-requisite for liberal democracy, even if that civil society is largely non-politically based - this is why, say, Spain's transition to liberal democracy was rather smooth, while the transition in much of Eastern Europe and the former USSR has been marked by outright civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, low-scale civil war and a decade of authoritarianism in Georgia, a reversion to authoritarianism in Russia, widespread corruption in Ukraine, etc.

My point is this: at the moment, Zimbabwe would not fall into chaos like Iraq did if Mugabe was forcibly removed and his army disarmed. But the more that he continues his crackdown, the weaker Zimbabwe's civil society will be as practicing the freedom of association becomes increasingly dangerous. Mugabe's crackdown the last few weeks is designed to accomplish precisely the effect of destroying free association and civil society. In so doing, he will not only make open dissent impossible, but he will have the perhaps unintentional effect of making a peaceful succession to anyone of whom he does not approve nearly impossible. So the longer the world allows Mugabe to remain in power, the less outside military intervention will be a viable option and the more chaotic will be the aftermath of his or his successors' eventual fall from power.

But again, neither the US nor any other Western nation can or should be involved in any military intervention except perhaps to provide logistical support. Anything more would simply have the effect of feeding into deep-seated resentment of colonialism that would rally support to Mugabe. Instead, I would argue that we should do what we can to encourage a large-scale intervention by either the African Union (unlikely to succeed, unfortunately) or by Zimbabwe's neighbors and other African countries. If that results in the successful removal of Mugabe, then a UN peacekeeping force would be appropriate and would probably need to remain for only a brief period of time, perhaps a year or two.

Political Coalition Shifting Redux

I'm having a bit of a tiff in the comments section to my post the other day, which was otherwise one of the best-received posts I've ever had. Although it is not worth reviving most of the debate here, I think the commenter does make one important point that is presumably intended to undermine my argument that political coalitions are not monolithic but are instead slowly but constantly shifting as different issues fade from or jump to the forefront. His point is that the leadership of the "Left" actually IS monolithic. Although they are not "socialists" (or, for that matter, even classical liberals, as demonstrated by their lack of backbone on warrantless wiretapping) as he perjoratively calls the leadership, it is probably true that this leadership is fairly monolithic. However, this is also equally true of the leadership of the Republican Party, and the leadership of the "Right" more generally.

So, this must prove that political coalitions are, in fact, monolithic, correct? No. All it proves is that party leaders represent their constituent party groups. The role of party leaders is to maintain the party's coalition as best as possible while doing what they can to push through top-priority issues for as many consituent groups as possible. As a result, party leaders well represent the results of the logrolling and unconscious dealmaking that occurs in the formation of a coalition. As coalitions change, so do party leaders - but always the party leaders will approximately represent the top priority issue positions for the coalition's most important constituent groups at a given moment in time. The result is that party leaders are rarely philosophical ideologues*, but are instead usually uninspiring and philosophically incoherent practitioners of "pu-pu platter partisanship," taking a few pet positions from every constituent group.

Over the course of time, top priorities change for constituent groups as victories are won or those priorities become obsolete. As a result, priorities between constituent groups will inevitably conflict. When that happens enough times, the group that loses the conflict will start to withdraw from the coalition as it becomes increasingly willing to question party orthodoxy on lower-priority issues. As long as we remain in a two-party system, the likely effect of withdrawal from one coalition is to simply switch coalitions- provided, of course, that there is common ground with the other coalition on a sufficiently important issue.

Admittedly, even this is an oversimplification - even within subgroups, individuals will have many different secondary and tertiary priorities, and may even have different views on the prioritization of its primary issues (e.g., libertarians). A party's failure to support the subgroup's primary priorities will thus not necessarily result in the subgroup abandoning the party if the other party is little or no better on the issue set.

Once a good chunk of a constituent group begins to migrate to the other coalition, it will begin to exercise an increasing amount of pull on its primary issue sets. This pull will result in increasingly friendly policies towards the consituent group's primary issue set such that, over time, the entire body of the constituent group switches coalitions, leaving a void in the process in the old coalition that will be filled by either formerly allied groups that remain in the coalition or by another group that is also switching coalitions.

To return to the issue of why party leaders are so monolithic, I think this analysis leads to two explanations - one cynical, one less so. I suspect the truth is a combination of each. The less cynical explanation is that party leaders reach their positions because they are the people whose views are most capable of achieving consensus within the party, or at least of representing the largest number of constituent group priorities. The more cynical explanation is that it is absolutely essential to party leaders that they maintain the then-existing coalition. Any changes in the coalition's fundamental structure are a threat to the party leaders' positions, and thus they need to maintain the coalition's status quo in order to keep their hold on power. Taking a position that may force one group out of the coalition may guarantee that the leader will lose power, even if (and maybe especially if) the outgoing group is replaced by a larger incoming group.

*Newt Gingrich is the exception that proves the rule. Although he was most certainly a philosophical ideologue, he was successful because his Contract with America strategy was entirely centered on finding the issues on which the various Republican constituent groups could agree and pushing only those issues. In so doing, he brought the Republican coalition back from its initial post-Cold War life support and revived it long enough for the Clinton-era scandals to take over as the unifying factor for Republicans.

UPDATE- Re-reading my post this morning, I realized that a sentence in my first paragraph was poorly worded and could have been construed to mean that I was calling the political Right as a whole monolithic when I was only intending to call the leadership of the Right monolithic. That sentence has been corrected.

Towards a Libertarian Realignment

In my post on the DNC deal on Sunday, I linked to Will Wilkinson's outstanding post on so-called "Liberaltarianism." Wilkinson's post is outstanding and, as much as I didn't want to, I found myself nodding in agreement with just about everything he wrote. In the post, Wilkinson points out that although much libertarian attention is focused on Rand and Rothbard, thinkers like Hayek and Friedman were far less absolutist in their approach and far more willing to argue on behalf of some form of basic social safety net. This is not to say they were socialists - far from it. And that is exactly Wilkinson's point, which is that not every single government program represents an irrevocable slide towards socialist totalitarianism. Indeed, he argues that the experience of most liberal welfare states in recent years shows a general trend away from socialism and towards a "liberal-capitalist welfare state."

Finally, Wilkinson argues that the death of any possibility of full-on socialism, combined with the end of Communism has permitted libertarians to more greatly emphasize social issues, something I have argued repeatedly. As a result, we no longer have much of anything in common with the American Right. On the other hand, the effective death of outright socialism in a large part of the American Left makes a long-term alliance with them completely natural. Indeed, such an alliance would be much more of a reunion than a new coalition - as Hayek himself argued in his classic Road To Serfdom, many socialists were really just classical liberals who became frustrated with the speed of free markets and were effectively suckered into alliances with groups that had rather illiberal ends. In other words, the difference between libertarians and many, even most, American liberals is one solely of means rather than ends. By comparison, after 8 years of the Bush Administration, I think it is increasingly clear that the differences between libertarians and American conservatives is fundamentally one of ends rather than just means.

Ron Chusid, a self-avowed liberal with whom most libertarians disagree only rarely, notes that liberals should welcome libertarians into their fold, saying: "If you think of libertarianism in terms of the prominent political candidates this year, you are also missing a considerable amount of libertarian thought which is much closer to liberalism, especially if we remember the origins of liberal thought. "

This is not to say that Wilkinson's points, which have been receiving an awful lot of attention in the libertarian blogosphere, are above criticism. Indeed, Arnold Kling has written his own partial dissent that is worth reading (H/T: Art of the Possible). However, I think Kling falls into a significant logical trap, as I wrote in a comment at AOTP, and which reiterates much of what I have stated repeatedly on this blog: that politics are about shifting coalitions, and there is no reason to believe that a coalition will remain static if its constituent members cease to have much in common:

I think Kling makes an extremely common mistake, which is in assuming the political left to be monolithic. The fact is that the “Left” in this country, just like the “Right” is just a mish-mosh coalition of various ideological groups. Those interest groups can and do change sides over the course of time, as different issues come to predominate within the group.

Much of what the “Left” generally claims to believe in is not as universally held as they like to think. Instead, many in the modern Left coalition, just like many in the modern Right coalition, conform their political views over time on lower priority issues to match the views of coalition members to whom those issues are of higher
importance.

So I think it depends which element of the “Left” you’re talking about. The Barack Obama wing of the Dem Party, for instance, typically is most concerned with civil and personal liberties and a less aggressive foreign policy; meanwhile, the populist wing of the party (now dedicated to HRC) is primarily concerned with populist economics. The Obama wing tends to have a pretty good understanding of the concept of free markets; what winds up happening, though, is that they wind up sounding like outright socialists because the figure that people within their coalition who care more about the issue than they do probably also know more about it than they do. Similarly, politicians in this wing of the party have to tailor their message to be more populist on economic issues in order to make sure they retain the support of the more populist elements of the party.

If you look at the survey TNR posted a week or two ago regarding the respective political messages of the two parties, you kind of get a good idea of what I’m talking about. In that survery, something like 60 or 70 percent of Dems wound up agreeing with restrictions on free trade when the survey indicated that free trade was the Dems’ position; but when you removed party labels from the questions, that number dropped to barely half, with the rest saying that they supported more open trade policies.

Bottom line: if economic populists begin to shift to the Republican Party due to the GOP’s stance on social issues, foreign policy, and immigration, then the remaining Dems are likely to be well worth libertarians joining as coalition members. As I said yesterday, the threatened defection of HRC supporters would hasten this result. However, without that kind of defection, McCain is probably not the candidate to pull the economic populists into the GOP fold. Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, would have been exactly that candidate.

In the short term, the coalitions have not switched enough to make me willing to gamble on Obama, even though I think he is a far superior candidate to most recent Dems. In the long-term, though, I see no reason for libertarians to return to the GOP fold.

UPDATE: Several other bloggers have picked up on this now, each with some very smart takes that provide a good supplement to what I've written above: Fester at Newshoggers, Kyle at CFLF, and Ron Chusid. Fester's post does a particularly good job of describing the nature of political coalitions, concluding that:

The coalitions that are assembled under the labels and institutions of Republicans and Democrats will change after this election. But that is normal and healthy. And this is the far more likely outcome than a complete rejiggering of American voting rules, political norms and constitutional governance structure that would be needed to break a two party hold on power.

Well Played, Sir!

As plenty of libertarians are now aware, the Bob Barr campaign issued a press release denouncing the support of Stormfront and an (apparently prominent) racist, which had been posted on an internet message board. The press release is sweeping in scope, and hits every note that a lot of us had wished Ron Paul had hit. As an expression of libertarianism, it just about hits the nail right on the head, I think:

"The Barr campaign is not going to be a vehicle for every fringe and hate group to promote itself. We do not want and will not accept the support of haters. Anyone with love in their heart for our country and for every resident of our country regardless of race, religion, nationality or sexual orientation is welcome with open arms.Tell the haters I said don't let the door hit you on the backside on your way out!"

I am not going to say that this statement took a lot of political courage (although given some of the comments in the Hit&Run thread, maybe it took more political courage than it should have in this day and age). But it does demonstrate an understanding of politics and media savvy that has been heretofore lacking amongst libertarian politicians (self-styled or otherwise). Moreover, it shows a willingness to tackle issues head-on that I suspect could have some significant appeal to voters in the general election. In any event, this is the first story of any significance involving Bob Barr since he won the LP nomination last week. I think it gives us a pretty good preview of where he is going with his campaign.

1. The campaign is organized and capable of creating its own news stories. Were it not for the press release, it is debatable whether any news outlets would have picked up on the "endorsement" by the hate group. However, in choosing to both disclose the endorsement and vehemently denunciate it, the Barr campaign gets to control the way the story is portrayed in the media. Moreover, they actually are able to get some media coverage of the issue, which is always something that libertarian and LP candidates find nearly impossible.

2. The campaign is politically astute enough to turn a potential liability into an asset. If media outlets had picked up on the "endorsement" before the Barr press release, the headline would have been "Hate Group Endorses Libertarian Candidate." By making itself aware of the "endorsement" and immediately denouncing it, though, the headline becomes "Libertarian Candidate Denounces Hate Group." In the process, the candidate avoids having to answer questions like "What do you think of Mr. X, who has endorsed you?" Look at the fallout that McCain has had to face over the Hagee endorsement, or that Obama has had to face over several of his supporters, and you can see just how difficult it can be to completely recover from an endorsement by a particularly vehement racist or extremist. By taking ownership of the issue immediately, the Barr campaign was able to control its dissemination and to prevent any impression that it was equivocating on the issue.

3. The campaign has decided that the support of more, uhh, mainstream voters is more valuable than trying to keep fringe groups within the fold. One of the biggest problems I had with the Ron Paul campaign was that it appeared to value the support of people like Alex Jones and 9/11 Truthers far more than it valued the support of the average libertarian-minded voter. While this may have allowed the Paul campaign to raise an obscene amount of money, it also prevented the Paul campaign from catering its message to a broader audience. The Barr campaign has no intention of falling into that trap.

4. The Barr campaign is prepared to take advantage of new media to disseminate its message. In addition to being sent to media outlets, the press release was included in what is going to become a regular briefing for "Bloggers for Barr" (Full disclosure: I have joined that list). Within minutes, dozens of bloggers had their hands on the press release, and many of us have now discussed it.

Now, I know there are still plenty of libertarians who resent Barr's nomination or who refuse to consider Barr a libertarian because of his past Congressional record. Obviously, I am not one of them, though I do not begrudge that position. But regardless of whether Barr meets a libertarian "purity" test, there can be no doubt that he is far superior to either McCain or Obama.

The larger point of this post, however, is that the Barr campaign is demonstrating a level of competence that will allow libertarian-minded voters to have a real choice in this election. Even if Barr does not win the Presidency, a vote of just 6-10% would actually have a real effect on the direction of at least one of the two major parties, unlike the usual 1/2 of a percent to which third parties are accustomed.

More from memeorandum.

About that Will of the People Thing

The next time I hear a conservative whine about a governor or court circumventing the so-called "will of the people" by supporting gay marriage, I think they should be required to read the statements below by Vice President Cheney. The first set of comments come from an interview a few weeks ago with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, and the second set of which are from an event at the National Press Club this afternoon.

PART I

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s [the Iraq war’s] not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
RADDATZ So? You don’t care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

PART II
MODERATOR: Do you wish you had answered that question differently? Does it
matter if the public disagrees sharply with the wisdom of the war?
CHENEY: No, when I said, “So?” the point was, “What’s the question, Martha?” She made the statement; she didn’t ask a question.

To be sure, I am not one who thinks that polls should drive political decisions. Indeed, there is perhaps no one as suspicious of the tyranny of the majority as a libertarian like me. But it seems to me that if the majority should be ignored when it comes to issues like ending a war (and thereby increasing government's respect for individual rights), then there is really no basis for claiming that majority should be listened to when that majority seeks to decrease government's respect for individual rights.

So which is it: should the alleged "will of the people" control or should it not? You can't have it both ways.

H/T: Kathy at CFLF

Also more at memeorandum.

My Two Cents on the DNC Deal

1. Rules are rules- Florida and Michigan should not have counted at all. The Clintonites' push to change those rules in the middle of the game shows what they think about the rule of law. They would make good friends with the Bushies.
2. I know that all Democrats remember with great vividity the protests inside the Miami-Dade building in 2000. I wonder- whose supporters most resembled those protesters yesterday? As I said, they'd make good friends.
3. There is nothing so Clinton-esque or, for that matter, Rove-ian than the argument that what the Clintonites seek to do is based on respect for the rule of law. If they had any actual respect for the rule of law, they wouldn't have pushed for the Florida and - especially - the Michigan delegates to be seated in the first place.

The Clintonites now threaten to pick their ball up and go home if their candidate is not the nominee. Obama supporters should not have a problem with this- the Clintonites are as illiberal as could be and are an anchor that weighs down any claim that the Dem Party is a force for good in this country, as I explained here. Instead, the Obama campaign and the remnants of the Dem party should start looking at reforming their coalition- let the Republicans be the party of authoritarians. In the process, the Republicans will lose a pretty good number of their own members, who either vote for Bob Barr (like me) or for Obama, with whom they will have more in common than McCain and the Clintons.

Rather than fret over the possibility of losing the Clintonites, Obama supporters should be embracing the possibility of creating a new coalition that is based on a respect for the rule of law.

Right now, those of us who support Bob Barr are quite likely to be the difference in any McCain loss. The belief is that, in so doing, we will force the GOP to rethink its move to big-government authoritarianism. But if the Clinton-ites move to the GOP, any chance of a reunion between libertarian types and the GOP will be forever eliminated; meanwhile, though, the Dem party will have the opportunity to build its coalition around a broad anti-authoritarianism that unites the huge number of Americans who still have a commitment to the ideals of classic liberalism.

Anti-Capitalism and Environmentalism Are Not Coextensive

...And I really wish that Progressives would stop pretending like they are. If fossil fuels are evil and are the biggest source of global warming such that we need to collectively take steps to reduce our use of fossil fuels, then surely anything that reduces that use cannot be a bad thing correct?
Similarly, if corporate profits are inherently evil such that we need to create a "Reasonable Profits Board" for the purveyors of fossil fuels, then any environmental measures that increase prices (and thereby corporate profits) cannot be a good thing, correct?
Of course, the answers to both of these questions are rhetorical. The problem is that at least as applied to oil and fossil fuels, anti-capitalism and environmentalism are utterly inconsistent with each other.
The proof? According to the Federal Highway Administration:

The FHWA’s “Traffic Volume Trends” report, produced monthly since 1942, shows that estimated vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on all U.S. public roads for March 2008 fell 4.3 percent as compared with March 2007 travel. This is the first time estimated March travel on public roads fell since 1979. At 11 billion miles less in March 2008 than in the previous March, this is the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.

And of course, the reason for this is high gas prices. In other words: perhaps nothing has had more of a positive effect in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions than higher gas prices. So why would any committed environmentalist want to intervene in the market in order to make gas prices lower, on the grounds that high gas prices create "unreasonable" (to whom? by whose standards?) profits?

Meanwhile if higher gas prices (and thereby higher corporate profits) are an inevitable element of any attempt to reduce carbon emissions, then why would any committed anti-capitalist ever be willing to work towards the reduction of carbon emissions?

I suppose one way you could work out these discrepancies is through massive government internvention wherein profits from carbon fuels are either illegal or so highly taxed as to effectively make the oil and gas industries nationally controlled. But if that is the answer, I warn you: that way lies madness. It is impossible to escape the laws of supply and demand - you may as well try to escape the laws of gravity, and any attempt to reconcile anti-capitalism with environmentalism as applied to carbon fuels must, repeat MUST, require an attempt to escape the laws of supply and demand.

In other words, to my Progressive friends: environmentalism or anti-capitalism- you can choose one, but not both. For what it's worth, I might mention that many of you are apparently a lot less anti-capitalist than you think, so perhaps you already have chosen but just want to express anti-capitalism because you think as a Democrat you're supposed to be anti-capitalist. Why do I say this? Because, according to this study, Democrats are as likely to support free trade, pro-business policies as Republicans, when those issues are presented without reference to political party.

Bottom line: if you're an environmentalist who wants us to cut back significantly on our carbon emissions, then you should support big profits for oil companies, in addition of course to some sort of Pigou tax - whether we sign Kyoto is almost irrelevant if fuel prices go sufficiently high.

H/T: Coyote Blog

Of Scarves and Terrorism

Kyle at CFLF weighs in on Scarf-gate and comes away saying that it is "How we know the terrorists have won." The post is one of Kyle's best; normally I'd provide some commentary of my own, but he hits it so far out of the park that I actually have nothing to add.
My only quibble is that I think the terrorists won the second we made it impossible to set foot in public or turn on the TV without seeing Rachael Ray and her annoying awful-catchphrase spouting mug.

Songs of Freedom

Back in October, I blogged with great sadness about the murder of Lucky Dube by carjackers in Johannesburg, South Africa in front of Lucky's own children. In the post, I discussed Lucky's lifelong passion for freedom and individual liberty as expressed through his music. As I said then, but no other musician had as much an effect on my worldview as he did - not even the great Bob Marley. I doubt he was even vaguely familiar with the philosophy of libertarianism, but Lucky's music oozed freedom, liberty, and individualism, as you can see from the lyrics I quoted in the October post. His song "Together As One" was the first anti-apartheid song ever to make it through the airwaves of South African radio, making Lucky a truly courageous freedom fighter. Moreover, he didn't give up the fight for freedom when apartheid ended- if anything, his lyrics became even more anti-authoritarian, pro-liberty, and pro-individualism with songs like "Taxman" and "Affirmative Action," amongst others including the pro-gay rights "Sleeping Dogs Lie."

Alas, Lucky was barely heard of here in the States. And so, I think it is my solemn duty to change that fact as much as I can. Starting this week, I'm going to try to post one Lucky Dube video every Friday. Enjoy.


"Taxman":

Why Obama Could Be the Best Dem President in Recent Memory

I still have every intention of supporting Bob Barr this election as an F-You to the Republicans. But stuff like this gives me hope that a President Obama actually would undo a lot of the harm done by President Bush and Co.:

If elected president, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama said one of the first things he wants to do is ensure the constitutionality of all the laws and executive orders passed while Republican President George W. Bush has been in office.
Those that don’t pass muster will be overturned, he said.

Maybe he will do this, and maybe he's just pandering. But if it's pandering, then it's not the sort of pandering that the average person cares about. Regardless, the very fact that he is making a statement like this at least creates the possibility that a President Obama would follow through on it. Would McCain do something like this? I guess it's possible, but as long as he has to walk the tightrope of keeping Bush at arm's length but not so far as to piss of the GOP base, I don't see it happening. As for Sen. Clinton? Please- do you really think that she of the legendary executive privilege battles and of the Health Care Task Force would be willing to overturn decisions that gave her more power?

H/T: Jim Henley at Art of the Possible (via Obsidian Wings).

More at Memeorandum.

Best Wishes to Libby!

Libby Spencer is one of the most kind, considered, and intellectually honest bloggers around, left, right, libertarian, or otherwise. Libby blogs at a number of sites, two (Newshoggers and The Impolitic) of which are in my "regular reads" - and in each instance, this is largely because of Libby's smart and honest commentary. Even though I disagree with her probably as often as I agree with her (which is more than I agree with most Progressives thanks to her great work on the War on Drugs and on civil liberties), she has never said an uncivil word in response.

So it was with a strange combination of sadness and relief that I read that the tumor she has been dealing with these last few months was deeper and more extensive than expected, but was also successfully removed. According to her co-bloggers at the Newshoggers, her surgery yesterday was a complete success, and she is recovering well. If you have a second, you can leave her your best wishes here.

Mind-Numbingly Bad Statistics

Since I fit in with neither side, I like to think that I try really hard to criticize the Left as much as the Right. But this week, this has been almost impossible.

A new poll shows that a majority of Californians now support gay marriage and oppose the proposed constitutional amendment banning it. As you may know, I have argued that judicial "activism," to the extent that it protects insular minorities against the tyranny of the majority, is actually a good thing. As such, I don't buy into the arguments made by conservatives these days that the decision validating gay marriage was "legislating from the bench" in a way that usurps the "will of the people." But nonetheless, having a poll that shows that the "will of the people" in fact supports gay marriage pretty much destroys any argument that the "will of the people" has in fact been usurped.

And so, of course, the only response for conservatives who oppose gay marriage and claim that their position is the "will of the people" must either back down from their arguments, or try to discredit the poll. And, given the poll from a week or so ago showing substantially different results from this one, it is entirely possible that this poll is flawed. BUT, if you're going to discredit a poll, it's probably a good idea to be intellectually honest about it, rather than doing what JammieWearingFool does here:

Of course, if you refer to the poll, you see under ideology a full 70 percent of those sampled consider themselves middle of the road (53-35%), moderately liberal (72-23) or strongly liberal (85-11))and they overwhelming favor gay marriage. If you look at the 30% considered moderately conservative (61-32) or strongly conservative (85-11). When broken down by party, the sample is 43% Democrat, 33% Republican, 24% non-partisan. In other words, Republicans are outnumbered 67-33%. Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area comprise 46% of those polled.In other words, this poll doesn't even come close to a fair representation of the
population. Granted, California is a blue state, but you cannot possibly claim a poll where left outnumbers right 70-30% as valid.

The trouble of course with this is that JammieWearingFool makes several totally absurd assumptions here: 1. That people who consider themselves "middle of the road" are part of the "left"; 2. That people who consider themselves "non-partisan" are part of the "left"; and 3. That even under his unbelievably broad definition of "left," only slightly more than half the voters should be part of the "left."

So when JammieWearingFool says that "left outnumbers right 70-30%" in the poll, he is being more than a little obtuse. In reality, the poll numbers reflect that left and center outnumber right 70-30%, but that self-identified liberals are outnumbered by self-identified conservatives, 30-28%. If California were a pure "purple" state, then you would essentially expect left, right, and center to be about 33% each. Since, as JammieWearingFool acknowledges, California is a "blue" state, a decrease of only 3% from this norm is not exactly earth-shattering. Moreover, this poll from SurveyUSA (and I'm sure there are plenty others from other firms that make similar findings) shows that only about 26% of Californians self-identify as "conservative," with 42% self-identifying as "moderate" and the remaining 22% as "liberal." So, if anything, the poll slightly oversampled conservatives and liberals by about an equal amount.

But the flaws in JammieWearingFool's analysis go further. He decries that only 33% of the respondents to the poll self-identified as Republicans, leaving 2/3 of the people as "not Republicans." In the process, he seems to ignore that 24% of the respondents self-identified as independents, and that Dems only outnumber Republicans 43%-33%. And looking at the numbers from the 2004 elections, we find that in 2004, 43% of voters identified themselves as Democrats, 34.7% as Republicans, and 23% as independents. So, at worst, the poll undersampled Republicans by a whopping 1.7%; of course, given the hard times the GOP has gone through since 2004, it's more likely that self-identified Republicans have decreased by about 2% in California.

Finally, JammieWearingFool criticizes the fact that 46% of poll respondents were from Los Angeles County and the Bay Area. Well, according to the 2006 US Census data, just over a quarter of California residents lived in LA County; and roughly another 20% lived in the Bay Area....which adds up to, you guessed it, 46%!

I look forward to the retraction.

More at memeorandum.

**UPDATE**Lest you think that I'm just picking on one lonely lesser-known Righty blogger, I note that at least one other Righty blogger has picked up the meme from JammieWearingFool.

Political Correctness Strikes Again

At this point, I think we libertarians are officially fighting alone when it comes to the war against political correctness. Clearly, after Michelle Malkin's latest, the Right has lost any and all credibility on this front. To recap: in a commercial for Dunkin' Donuts, Lucifer....err, Rachael Ray, wore a scarf that apparently, kinda sorta, looked like a keffiyeh, which is a Palestinian head dress (most famously the trademark head gear of Yasser Arafat). According to Malkin (clearly an authority on these matters), keffiyeh-like scarves are now a fashionable way of showing solidarity with Palestinian terrorism or for expressing anti-war sentiments (you know, since those two things are clearly two sides of the same coin). As a result, Malkin launched a campaign against Dunkin' Donuts over the ad, threatening a boycott in the process....no, really.

It seems that Dunkin' Donuts has decided to cave in to this threatened boycott. Celebrating her victory, Malkin writes, without a hint of irony that:

"It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists. Too many of them bend over backwards in the direction of anti-American political correctness. "

Compare this statement to Jesse Jackson's statement in the wake of the Don Imus firing by CBS that the firing was a "victory for public decency." Or to the NAACP's statement that the controversy over that firing was "refreshing." Get my drift?

Political correctness is idiotic, whether it comes from the Right or the Left. And threatening a boycott over a freaking scarf is an all-time new low for trivialities.

More at memeorandum.

Non-Political Thought of the Day

As painful and depressing as this season has been for me as a Mets fan, I never seem to tire of listening to the SNY TV crew. I honestly can't imagine a better color team than Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. To be sure, there are more entertaining crews (the NESN crew come to mind, but never underestimate the "I am Keith Hernandez" factor at SNY), and there may even be more informative crews (though I doubt it), but there can't be a better all-around broadcasting team in baseball.

Tonight was an outright high point, with Keith Hernandez moving down to the front row seats behind home plate to get a different view. He and Ronnie wound up having one of the most instructive discussions about pitching and hitting that I've ever heard.

The thing about this crew is that they don't condescend to the viewer like certain (coughcough McCarver coughcough) other commentators, and so they actually contribute something to your enjoyment of the game by being willing to give the viewer credit for understanding the basics of baseball. Where most color teams are Baseball for Dummies, the SNY crew winds up being more Baseball 301: Advanced Theory and Application.

Plus, you have two members of the '86 Mets doing color....and they're not shy about telling war stories. How bad can that be?

Big Government Conservatism, Part II

Tom Coburn has an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal today that makes the case against so-called "compassionate conservatism" and, believe it or not, against spending increases for Iraq and Afghanistan. The piece argues, correctly, that Republicans are in denial that what ails the Republican Party is that Republicans over the last 8 years have ceased to act like Republicans but are instead trying to be big-government liberals. As any of the millions of libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives who have abandoned the GOP over the last 8 years will tell you, this is exactly correct.

The response to Coburn's piece from the Right is particularly telling in demonstrating just how much the Right has ceased to care about limited government.

Self-described "libertarian (HA!)" Karl from Protein Wisdom argues that in fact it is Coburn who is in denial, noting that "The 2006 exit poll data suggests that the GOP lost control of Congress because: (a) about half of the electorate had a bad opinion of the economy; (b) the Iraq mission was unpopular; and (c) voters did not see the GOP as particularly ethical. " Of course, all three of these things are symptoms of big-government conservatism, but Karl is unwilling to admit that.

AJStrata: "But that is a minor problem, the bigger problem with Coburn is his whining finger pointing. I have numerous examples of compassionate conservatism which were wholly conservatism and were low to no cost, proving that his rants against the impure are fiction. " Strata goes on to claim that Coburn is a hypocrite since as a Senator he played a part in all of this. This ignores the fact that Coburn has been perhaps the single most steadfast opponent of the growth of government spending in the Senate.

These arguments are not about effective governance, which is what conservatism was once about. Instead, they are arguments about how to gain power. But by focusing for the last 8 years on how to gain and maintain power, Republicans have inevitably governed poorly. Which is why they now stand on the verge of losing all the power they had gained, with virtually no conservative accomplishments to be proud of.

Big Government Conservatism

See-dubya, writing at Michelle Malkin's site, demonstrates how modern conservatism is ultimately more about finding things for the government to do than it is about limiting the size of government. In the post, he says that it is a "fair question" of what our counter-terrorism strategy should be "when" we defeat al-Qaeda. One would think that once the biggest threat (and entire raison d'etre for most of the government's counter-terrorism expansions) was eliminated, the appropriate conservative response would be to, quite simply, eliminate those elements of the government.

But that is not what See-dubya thinks. Instead it would appear that the appropriate conservative reaction to beating al-Qaeda, rather than being to decrease the size of government, is instead to "look[] beyond the end of Al Qaeda and consider[] what fresh horror radical Islam may try to release upon the world. " In other words: once we've beaten the threat of al-Qaeda, the next step ought to be to convert our current unofficial war on Islam into an official war on Islam. I'm sure that won't do ANYTHING to push more people into terrorism and radicalism.

Neo-conservatism is increasingly nothing more than a giant self-fulfilling prophecy.

**UPDATE** I forgot to mention this little nugget from See-dubya's post:

"Administrating the peace is every bit as important as winning the war, as the history of a badly drawn peace after WWI shows."

Of course, the fact that the peace after WWI was so badly drawn arose out of a desire to punish the Central Powers as much as possible (just as See-dubya wants to punish Islam as much as possible) seems to have escaped his memory.

(Last sentence edited for grammar)

A Few More Notes on Barr

Although I have thought Barr was the wisest choice for the LP all along, there were still some areas where I personally had some major hangups (although he previously answered a lot of my concerns about his immigration policy, as I wrote here).

Anyways, after reading about his answers during the LP debate Saturday night, the "major" policy disagreements I have with him were reduced to almost zero. There are still disagreements, to be sure, but for the most part they are matters of detail rather than big picture issues. Quoting from Stephen Littau's liveblog, the most important statements Barr made for me were:

"Barr says U.S. policies are based on fear. Kill the PATRIOT Act real good. "
"What immigration policy? Make sure immigrants are not security threats then let them in. "
"Barr: regrets sponsoring the Defense of Marriage Act. Will work to repeal it."

As far as I know, those were the three areas where Barr's libertarian credibility was most in question. As long as you believe his sincerity (and I do), then I think he passes the libertarian litmus test in just about every way.

For what it's worth, I might add that at least on the immigration issue, Barr's position is more consistent with libertarianism than libertarianism's alleged savior, Ron Paul. Also, his recent work on marijuana policy reform demonstrates a greater commitment to ending the War on Drugs than Ron Paul has ever shown.

Bob Barr '08

Count me amongst those who are relieved that Bob Barr will be at the top of the Libertarian Party's ticket this fall. To be sure, his Congressional record was far from libertarian. But as I wrote last month, I believe his "conversion" to libertarianism is authentic. The basis for my belief arises from several occasions I had to meet the Congressman (albeit only briefly) back in 2003-2004, long before he called himself a libertarian. Prior to that, in mid-2001, I covered one or two hearings in which Barr participated while interning during law school. The Bob Barr I met in 2003-2004 was already a politically changed man in comparison to the Bob Barr of mid-2001, particularly with respect to foreign policy and civil liberties issues. That this evolution would have continued through the following 4 years strikes me as more than likely. For that reason, I believe Barr that many of his current positions are sincerely held.

Barr is someone who brings an instant level of credibility to the LP that it has not had in its entire history. In a year with so many disgruntled libertarian-leaning conservatives, he represents a real opportunity to siphon off votes from McCain.

But the purists are correct when they say that it shouldn't just be about votes - the LP's mission is to spread the libertarian philosophy. Barr represents an opportunity to do precisely that, as there is a chance (perhaps only 1 in 3, but a chance nonetheless) that he will gain enough support to get into the Presidential debates. If he can do that, then he will have an actual platform to spread libertarian ideals; without that platform, no LP candidate will ever succeed in spreading libertarianism. As such, without that platform, the candidate the LP nominates is irrelevant.

This leaves the next question, that of the Vice Presidential nominee. Friend of PE and contributor at LewRockwell.com Nick Bradley offers some interesting thoughts:

In my mind, the most appropriate course for the LP to take is to go with whatever wing of the party is currently in power, i.e. go with a right-libertarian ticket in order to counter the biggest current threat to liberty, the GOP, and go with a left-libertarian ticket if/when the Dems become a bigger threat to liberty.

The implication of this would seem to be that Root is the better nominee, an idea that may have gained some traction after Root's concession speech. I think there is a lot to that concept.

However, for this election, I wonder if the better nominee wouldn't be Steve Kubby, who was apparently being courted for the VP slot by just about everyone this weekend. I say this not because Kubby would be a way of pacifying the purists in the party - I don't think that Barr's running mate should be an olive branch for a couple of hundred particularly disgruntled party insiders when Barr represents a likelihood of picking up an additional several hundred thousand to several million votes by himself. However, Kubby represents an interesting VP candidate if - and only if - Barr can get into the debates. Importantly, I think Kubby's personal story combined with Barr's notoriety could get enough press coverage to push the LP above the debate threshold. But then, in the Vice-Presidential debates, Kubby would have the ability to undermine public support for the War on Drugs like no person in history. I would love to see the VP candidate of the Republican Party personally explain to Kubby - on national television - exactly why it is that medical marijuana should remain illegal.

Alas, I expect that Root will be the VP nominee, which is fine by me. I just don't think he adds to the ticket as much as others seem to believe.

Finally- many thanks to Stepen Littau and Jason Pye at the Liberty Papers for their coverage of the convention this weekend.

More at memeorandum.

***UPDATE***Ron Chusid says that Root got the VP nomination as expected. Again, this is fine by me; but I still think Kubby would have added a lot to the ticket.

Ahead of the Curve

Last week I argued that what the California Supreme Court did was not only correct as a matter of law, but that its "activism" fulfilled a role that is absolutely central to our form of government. In the process, I quoted extensively from Hamilton's Federalist #78, and pointed out that democracy is not an end in itself, but rather a means to end, and that without freedom and legal equality, democracy is meaningless. I further noted that we do not live in a democracy but rather a constitutional republic.

Today, Glenn Greenwald argues that what the California Supreme Court did was not only correct as a matter of law, but that its "activism" fulfilled a role that is absolutely central to our form of government. In the process, he quoted from Hamilton's Federalist #78. He further noted that we do not live in a democracy but rather a constitutional republic. So, not surprisingly, I fully approve of this:

The principal purpose of the Constitution is to prohibit the enactment of rights-abridging laws which, by definition (given that they are being democratically enacted), are supported by majorities. Anyone who argues that a court is acting improperly solely by virtue of the fact that it is striking down a popular law is someone who doesn't believe in the American system of government created by the Founders.

This of course was the central point of my argument last week. It is also the basis for my subsequent post pointing out that conservative reactions to the gay marriage decision have frequently shown a disdain for the Constitution that was once their touchstone.

(H/T: Sully)

Litigating Against Subsidies: Bleg

My last post on agriculture subsidies got me wondering, particularly in combination with my support of judicial "activism" in the sense of overturning laws. The question I was wondering about is this: Has there ever been an attempt to overturn pork barrel spending through a lawsuit where the basis for the suit was the spending's non-budgetary consequences?

The last part of this question is the important part. There have been numerous attempts to overturn various government programs in the past; however, they almost never work because the person suing the government rarely has legal standing to sue (the courts have repeatedly found no standing where the basis for standing is the plaintiff's status as a taxpayer). What I am not aware of, however, is a situation in which someone sued the government because the government's spending policy had a direct, negative effect on them.

Specifically, has there ever been an instance where the government was sued on the grounds that a subsidy had direct negative effects on a taxpayer in the form of higher costs? If so, was there standing? It's been a few years since I delved into that area of law, but I seem to recall precedent from law school that would suggest there would be standing.

If there is legal standing, then the second question would be: what causes of action, if any, would have the best chance of success in overturning agriculture subsidies?