I've not flown outside the U.S. for a year, but I remember one time having to do both the scanner and the pat-down.  Anyway, I prefer the scanner; that they use the same gender for the pat-down is not helpful if you are bisexual, it just means you don't want either gender touching you there.

Very creepy.

Oh?  Turn out the base strategies are extremely common, and extremely damaging.  Bush in 2004 and Obama in 2012 come to mind.  Remember Trayvon Martin?  That was all about stimulating turnout.  If politicians didn't have to worry about turnout, they could actually persuade the other side.

Now you're simply being obtuse.  Didn't you read up on Woodrow Wilson back when Glenn Beck was making a big deal out of him?  The modern administrative state, with it's delegation of legislative power to executive branch agencies, arose precisely because people distrusted democracy.  Our entire system of checks and balances came from a distrust of democracy. 

It's simply absurd to state that Americans don't have a fear of democracy.

That may be true, but see my other point: our collective fear of democracy is why two-thirds of our government is undemocratic and often unaccountable.

Oh come on.  People who vote today are hardly well-informed motivated statesmen.  The American fear of democracy is why the judicial and executive branches have near-dictatorial power.  We should get over it.

I don't think pols should exclusively pander to the (what is it, 15%?) of independents in the middle.  But nor should they exclusively pander to the base.

Someone should start a new meme on Twitter.  #FlushAwayEconomics.  That would be awesome.

I love it.

Politicians have to worry about base turnout now, but if we had a national requirement to vote they wouldn't have too.  That was my point.

Let's suppose politics revolves around lazy bums who can't be bothered to show up. Forcing them to show up won't change their nature as lazy bums, so wouldn't politicians end up pandering to the same lazy-bum set even if voting is compulsory?

Politicians pander to them because they stay home on voting day, not because they are lazy bums. Thus, if you force them to vote, the problem is solved.

It's not just a matter of raising taxes, either.  Remember that the vast majority of Americans pay little or no taxes.  Marginal rates will probably decline in the next few years, but effective rates are likely to go up.  And don't forget real bracket creep: growth in median income will naturally increase taxes over time.

The voters need to choose the level of government they want, then pay for it.  The Chinese and the rest of our trading partners are not going to bail us out for reckless fiscal policy (whether it's spending or tax cuts) forever.

It solves the problem because it forces party bases to turn out.  Politicians do not have to live in fear of their supporters staying home on election day.  Why should politics revolve around lazy bums who can't be bothered to show up at the polls without a lot of psychological support?

And frankly, I don't see how anyone could think either party's base is well-informed.  If nothing else, they are made up of voters, and voters do not like being told that a) their wages must decline, b) their benefits must decline, and c) their real tax burden must go up.  All of that is perfectly true, but understandably no one wants to admit it.

Diane, you completely missed the point of that article.  American political parties do not appeal to mythical "educated voters"--they appeal to their bases, who are often the least well informed.  I've been saying we need a national requirement to vote forever, for exactly this reason.

Saying there is a right not to vote is idiotic.  Should small percentages of motivated (but clueless) Americans dictate public policy to the rest of us?

Anyone ever wonder if getting rid of the charitable tax deduction--and it's subsidization of "non-profit" pressure groups--would keep this sort of thing from happening as often as it does?

I had forgotten about school choice.  That is an area of agreement.

The dirty truth is that gay marriage is one of the few socially conservative issues that doesn't decimate the libertarian social-conservative alliance, since it basically involves doing nothing--gay marriage is already banned in most states.  Actual policy changes to reverse social breakdown would decimate that alliance.

If social breakdown were reversed, gay marriage wouldn't be such a problem to heterosexual voters, who might see it as what it was originally intended to be: an attack on mainstream gay culture.  But because fusionism has so narrowed the range of socially conservative policy debate, alternate polices that actually reverse social breakdown--as opposed to the gay marriage issue, which is basically a "don't make the problem worse" strategy--aren't even mentioned.

Don't be absurd.  Growth of the American welfare state is concentrated in middle-class entitlements--means-tested welfare has actually shrunk a little bit.  In addition, the federal government and the states have  been experimenting with "free enterprise zones" for years, with little success.

I'm not saying we need less market freedom.  But the interventions needed to turn around the white working class and inner-city blacks will not be compatible with libertarianism.  This is why nothing ever gets done; look at the most extreme form of social conservatism today: "gay marriage is bad."  Rather than coercing heterosexual (or, my preference, all) couples to live in committed monogamous relationships, socially conservative policy makers are basically doing nothing.