Last week, Mollie raised an interesting point about what a Mitt Romney nomination means for the Republican Party. In the comments, I shared my concern concerning the lean-Republican independents who make up much of the Tea Party, and who prior to 2009 were mostly inactive in politics beyond regularly voting.

The Tea Party is a collection of people who felt compelled to transition from citizens to activists in favor of limited government and fiscal restraint. Many sacrifice time away from family, work, and life in a desperate attempt to save the nation they love, from their perspective. My concern is that the Tea Party will recoil from supporting a Republican Party that is headed by John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and Mitt Romney.

I spoke with one such Tea Partier, Rebecca from Florida, over the weekend. She's a retired detective turned young stay-at-home mom, who labels herself a "generic Tea Partier." What she had to say was fascinating and illuminating, and it should concern just about every smart Republican. She was gracious enough to let me publicize her thoughts here at Ricochet.

Here's what she had to share:

"I became politically engaged after the 2008 election," Rebecca told me. "I used to only vote in Presidential elections and local elections that were of interest to me. In January of 2008 I saw Barack Obama give a speech and I was really wowed. He is quite a gifted speaker." She admits that she "liked what he was saying, but some things were just a little off."

She started listening to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck again, wanting to hear what this Obama fellow was really about. But beyond that, she didn't engage in activism - she just showed up to vote for McCain, despite what she considered his "progressivism."

"Obama got elected. Then Obamacare was rammed through. I was appalled. I couldn't believe the shady way such important legislation was passed," Rebecca said. "I have some like-minded mommy friends and I got together with them. I joined our local 9/12 Project, and As A Mom and the TEA Party of Tampa Bay."

Via email and Twitter, Rebecca started sharing information, organizing, paying more attention to what was happening. She took early retirement in 2010 to stay home with her son (Benjamin - a great name, am I right?), and gave birth to another young son (Jameson) last May.

"You see, I now have *much* more to think about in regards to the future of our country," Rebecca said, and happily so. She redoubled her efforts, achieving a level of engagement in politics she'd never had before, and as you all know, Florida's Senate race was ground zero for this movement.

"Casting my vote for Marco Rubio in the primary and then again in the general gave me this amazing feeling of accomplishment," Rebecca said. "I felt like we had done it. First, when he beat Crist for the Republican nod. When he won the seat, I felt like I had finally been able to cast a vote for someone I *believed* in, instead of just choosing the least worst one."

"2010 was a real turning point for me. I watched the midterm election results as we won the House with some good, solid conservatives and I felt so proud and accomplished. I felt like we - the TEA Party, my mommy friends, ME - we had made a difference," Rebecca said. "We were helping to put our country back on the right path, and return to the ideals of our founders."

"Then came 2011," Rebecca says, and her mood clouds. "It felt like every time I turned around, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell were selling us out, hanging our Tea Party freshmen out to dry, and doing it for no apparent reason."

She's unsure why this is. "Are they idiots, or just the worst chess/poker players ever? Every time they have an opportunity to limit government, reduce taxes, etc. they blow it."

And all the while, President Obama is able to "look like he's trying, he's really trying, but the 'Republican Controlled Congress' keeps getting in the way. The debt ceiling increases. The lack of a budget. The 30-odd House passed bills that Harry Reid won't allow a vote on." Indeed, Rebecca is so infuriated with the Congress' inability to carry their message or push back, she thinks a third party might be needed.

"I almost feel as though there needs to be a new party, a truly conservative party, that really represents us. Sometimes I feel like the GOP is more interested in protecting their jobs than in promoting conservative ideals. At least, that's what Boehner and McConnell make me think," Rebecca said.  "Why can't we have a party full of Rubios - candidates who believe in American exceptionalism and limited government, and do so unapologetically? Why do we have to have so many squishes?"

The Republican presidential stakes kicked in, and Rebecca engaged. Her hopes rise with Rick Perry's entrance, but then "he gets hammered for stupid things, and drops." She thought about Herman Cain, "but his lack of campaign management was disconcerting." She never really thought Bachmann would make it to Florida, and says "Erick Erickson has educated me too much to cast a vote for Rick Santorum."  She considers Ron Paul's views right on a number of accounts, but thinks his foreign policy is "crazy."

"So here I am, supporting Newt Gingrich," Rebecca says. "I'm not in love with Newt, but I trust him more to stay true to conservative ideals. The guy pushed Clinton right, for goodness sake. I only trust Mitt to stay true to himself."

So, Rebecca, about Mitt: why not Romney this time?

"I don't trust him, and I don't think he can win. He is utterly unaware of how offensive his disconnect with the average American is. He drops $10K bets like it's nothing. He thinks $342,000 isn't very much to make in a year," Rebecca said. "I don't begrudge him his wealth - he worked for it and earned it and that is admirable. But I hate his lack of awareness of how super-wealthy he is. His flip-flops are legendary."

"Oh, and he invented Obamacare."

"I see a Romney nomination causing Tea Partiers like me to tune out. We are already disheartened by the congressional leadership. Romney will be the final nail in the coffin. He is completely uninspiring, and is everything we have been working so hard to defeat within the GOP," Rebecca said. "Don't even get me started on that Bain Capital picture. Ugh. There is no way he can win. And I don't want to have to defend him while he tries."

"What is the point in becoming educated on candidates and politics, arguing with my friends, taking the time away from my family - to end up with the guy McCain can't even look in the eye. Why bother?" Rebecca says. "Obviously the "establishment" has already decided it's Romney's turn, and to hell with what we want. I feel like I'm being patted on the head and told "Now go vote for Romney like a good little girl. We know what's best."... I don't even do that to my 3-year-old. It's insulting. It doesn't make me want to campaign for him."

"It honestly makes me want to skip the election, but Obama scares me too much to do that. I do think a Romney presidency will hurt the GOP brand though, and make it hard for a real conservative to have a shot," Rebecca said. "I feel like this is so similar to our 2010 Senate race. Romney is the Crist candidate, loved by many and backed by the establishment. But we have no Rubio. Crist would have been an easy win. He was a liked governor. Without Rubio, he would have easily won the seat. Just because we don't have a Rubio in this race doesn't mean we need to settle for a Crist."

Rebecca feels pressure, among more longstanding Republicans, to get on board the idea of Romney. But she says she's more likely to disengage. This is part of my overall concern: where cycles of political strife often include longtime activists bemoaning flawed nominees (as we saw in 2008 with McCain, and 1996 with Dole) and threatening to walk away, these are paid professionals who have been actively engaged in politics for decades. The Tea Party has a much shorter timeframe of engagement, which may indicate they are more likely to return to their previously disenfranchised state.

"It's like [Republicans] think because I don't eat, sleep and breathe politics, I can't make an informed decision - it must be emotional. My guy lost so I don't want your guy to win. When really I just don't think your guy is the best guy for the job," Rebecca said. "I can easily see a decreased Tea Party voter turn out if Romney is the nominee. I know political pundits may find this hard to believe, but not everyone's life revolves around elections. Are they important? Yes. Should people vote? Absolutely. But LIFE happens."

Rebecca tabulates her schedule for tomorrow, Florida's election day - a typical Tuesday for her household. She flies solo nearly all day, and she's never voted early. Husband's breakfast/lunch packed. Get her two boys up. Breakfast/lunch packed for them. Thirty minutes to Kindermusik, all morning there. Home early afternoon, already late for their naps. Errands, an abbreviated playtime. Dinner, baths, bed. Just voting, she says, is nearly impossible with two youngsters during the day lest naptimes and eating schedules be disrupted, and there's no way she can even attempt to get it done with both kids after about 5 because of the after-work crowds. But she'll still do it.

"I will be voting this Tuesday. I will make it fit into my schedule. I feel like my vote matters right now," Rebecca said. "But can you see how I might not make it a priority if I feel like either my vote doesn't matter, or if I don't feel like the candidate I'm voting for will be much different then what we have? Can you see how life may take precedence over casting an uninspired vote? I can't be alone in this thought process, and if enough people feel this way (and I think they will) it will be catastrophic for Romney and really very bad down-ticket as well."

Will the Tea Party remain engaged in a party led by Romney, Boehner, and McConnell? Rebecca thinks we are about to find out.

"I feel like the people who live politics just don't understand those of us who don't. I am a self-identified political junkie. I am enthralled this cycle with how things change so quickly, and I am trying to stay very informed. But I have to be honest, my time is limited. My family, my boys are my everything. Being informed takes time away from them," she says, whether it's engaging online, organizing activist responses, pushing back their naps to attend a rally.

"If I don't feel like I'm making a difference, where is my incentive to take that time from them?" Rebecca asks.

How Republicans answer her, and the concerns of those like her, may decide their future as a party in 2012 and beyond.

Leaving aside the political questions, I'm curious about Ricochet's Christian members. Who among you arrived at your faith by a mystical route? Who arrived at it by a rational route? I'm using William James' distinction:

I spoke of the convincingness of these feelings of reality, and I must dwell a moment longer on that point. They are as convincing to those who have them as any direct sensible experiences can be, and they are, as a rule, much more convincing than results established by mere logic ever are. One may indeed be entirely without them; probably more than one of you here present is without them in any marked degree; but if you do have them, and have them at all strongly, the probability is that you cannot help regarding them as genuine perceptions of truth, as revelations of a kind of reality which no adverse argument, however unanswerable by you in words, can expel from your belief. The opinion opposed to mysticism in philosophy is sometimes spoken of as rationalism. Rationalism insists that all our beliefs ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate grounds. Such grounds, for rationalism, must consist of four things: (1) definitely statable abstract principles; (2) definite facts of sensation; (3) definite hypotheses based on such facts; and (4) definite inferences logically drawn. Vague impressions of something indefinable have no place in the rationalistic system, which on its positive side is surely a splendid intellectual tendency, for not only are all our philosophies fruits of it, but physical science (amongst other good things) is its result.

Actually, a political question occurs to me, too: What percentage of self-identified Christians vote Democrat? Does anyone have any reliable statistics on that? 

In Monday's Wall Street Journal, Peter Berkowitz notes that the Federalist Papers remain an indispensable text for anyone seeking to understand the Constitution and the principles that underlie it--which is to say, of course, for anyone seeking to understand the American experiment in democracy. 

Do our institutions of higher learning take the Federalist Papers seriously? No they do not.

An excerpt:

By the end of 1788, a total of 85 essays had been gathered in two volumes under the title The Federalist. Written at a brisk clip and with the crucial vote in New York hanging in the balance, the essays formed a treatise on constitutional self-government for the ages.

The Federalist deals with the reasons for preserving the union, the inefficacy of the existing federal government under the Articles of Confederation, and the conformity of the new constitution to the principles of liberty and consent. It covers war and peace, foreign affairs, commerce, taxation, federalism and the separation of powers. It provides a detailed examination of the chief features of the legislative, executive and judicial branches. It advances its case by restatement and refutation of the leading criticisms of the new constitution. It displays a level of learning, political acumen and public-spiritedness to which contemporary scholars, journalists and politicians can but aspire. And to this day it stands as an unsurpassed source of insight into the Constitution's text, structure and purposes.

At Harvard, at least, all undergraduate political-science majors will receive perfunctory exposure to a few Federalist essays in a mandatory course their sophomore year. But at Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley, political-science majors can receive their degrees without encountering the single surest analysis of the problems that the Constitution was intended to solve and the manner in which it was intended to operate.

Most astonishing and most revealing is the neglect of The Federalist by graduate schools and law schools. The political science departments at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley—which set the tone for higher education throughout the nation and train many of the next generation's professors—do not require candidates for the Ph.D. to study The Federalist. And these universities' law schools (Princeton has no law school), which produce many of the nation's leading members of the bar and bench, do not require their students to read, let alone master, The Federalist's major ideas and main lines of thought.

How can this be? 

Particularly in the aftermath of the New Deal, according to the progressive conceit, understanding America's founding and the framing of the Constitution are as useful to dealing with contemporary challenges of government as understanding the horse-and-buggy is to dealing with contemporary challenges of transportation.

Berkowitz doesn't go into this, but his argument makes me love the Tea Party even more.  As a friend who works in a bookstore told me not long ago, once the Tea Party movement got started a couple of years ago, books on the Constitution, the Founders, and, yes, The Federalist, really took off.  Ordinary Americans--taking our founding principles seriously.  Hamilton, Madison and Jay would have been delighted.

Attention Ricochet Members,

We are all moving to Weston, Florida. Why, you ask? Because of this, from Governing:

Weston, Fla., an affluent suburb 25 miles northwest of Miami, has one of the most unusual charters of any city: it specifically discourages the city from hiring employees.

... Since its inception, the city has used contractors to fulfill virtually every city function. Today, the city of 65,000 has a budget of $121 million -- and just nine of its own employees. "I see no reason why we'd ever have to increase the number of employees," says Mayor Eric Hersh, who’s led the city for over 10 years. 

All total, the city has about 35 contracts for services such as parks maintenance, engineering, code enforcement, building permits, public works and custodial service. Fire and police service has been contracted out to Broward County.

The city has about 285 full-time equivalent employees who are "dedicated staff" provided by contractors. They work in city facilities and are treated like city employees, but on paper, they are actually employees of private companies that get paid by the city.

The result is a situation that many city managers and mayors may envy. City leaders don't have to deal with labor disputes or union negotiations; they aren't struck with ballooning pension obligations; and they aren't dealing with painful and politically unpopular layoffs.

Many of the contracts are for a particular level of service, as opposed to a particular number of employees. When the amount of work facing the building department slowed during the recession, for example, the city didn’t have to continue to pay idle workers. "That’s the vendor’s issue of what he does with the staff," says Daniel Stermer, who served as Weston city commissioner from 2002 to 2010 . "We’re not paying for it unless somebody’s using it."

Anytime that I get into a dispute with a liberal who believes that my conservative/libertarian fusionist worldview would deprive poor children of educations or leave old ladies out on the street to die (that one's for your French brother-in-law, James), I always tell them the same thing: just because government decides to finance a good doesn't mean that government should build the bureaucracy to provide that good. Little did I know that all this time there was a city living out that mantra.

Here at Stanford the other day, I had a cup of coffee with David Strauss, a young man with a couple of questions he very politely asked me to post on Ricochet.

Studying for his doctorate, David is a couple of years into his program in electrical engineering, working hard on a thesis on “sub-surface imaging.”  (Don’t ask.  Although David is wonderfully articulate, and although he spent a good ten minutes slowly and painstakingly telling me about his work, I was able to grasp virtually nothing.  It has something do with using electro-magnetic signals to see hundreds of feet underground.  As I listened, my tiny little mind kept going back to the comic book ads for glasses that were supposed to enable teenaged boys to see through clothing.)

Working at a major university, surrounded by scientists, laboratories, and equipment, David finds himself musing quite about the nation’s vast scientific-industrial complex—and the demands in makes on American taxpayers.  But here’s David:

With the new Republican majority in the House, many people have been talking about rough times ahead for science funding for the next couple of years.  I would like to open up this discussion of scientific policy to the Ricochet community. 

The main relationship between scientific research and the government is dictated through funding.  Often, scientific funding is drawn into two general categories: basic and applied.  Basic research is focused on expanding our body of knowledge (think high-energy particle physics or cosmology) while applied research seeks to answer specific questions (think cancer-drug development).  For the most part, in the scientific and academic community, it is difficult to find anyone who denies the importance of “basic research” and the necessity for “basic research” to be funded by the government.  However, all too often, researchers assume that the value of their research is obvious, seeing funding for basic research less as a privilege or a means of enriching the American people but as an entitlement.  With this in mind, a few questions:

What are the “basic science” research areas that the U.S. government should support?  How should the value of basic research be evaluated?  With applied science, it is far easier to quantify the success – lives saved, profit earned, etc – but no similar metric seems to exist for the basic sciences.  Could similar metrics for basic research be defined?  Would such metrics be “too restrictive” and suffocate innovative thinking and creative twists in the scientific process?

Fine minds of the Ricochetoise, over to you.

Several years ago, I saw Newt Gingrich speak at CPAC.  I was blown away and texted a friend—an expert political observer—"I feel like I just saw the next president."  Instantly, my friend texted back, "Lie down until the feeling passes."  I continue to get that from most of the really knowledgeable people I talk to, the sentiment generally being, as one put it, "Newt. Can't. Win."

But I don't know.  I don't generally make predictions (except to say, of course, that the Broncos will win the Super Bowl because while Aaron Rodgers may be playing for Green Bay, Jesus is playing for Denver), but a Newt victory seems to me completely possible.  If Mitt's tepid support isn't enough to stop Newt from making off with the nomination (see Peter's post below), and Newt goes head-to-head against President Me?  Hell, I could imagine a 57 state Republican sweep.  Not saying it will happen, but it's easy to see how it could.

The objections to Newt range from the petty (He talked to Donald Trump), to the irrelevant (He cheated on his wife.  I mean, too bad, but it'll never happen again because Callista would rip his jugular out with her teeth), to the substantial (He's talked a lot of guff about climate change, universal health care, cap and trade, etc.).  But in real life, Newt's a smart guy who loves the country, wants to go down in history as a great president and, if elected with a strong Republican congress, would mostly do the right thing.  At least he would turn us away from the cliff President Sillyman is driving us toward.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, would lose to Obama.  And, dude, at this point, I feel like an eggplant with a face painted on it could beat Obama.  But not Romney.

Not just yet. But North Korea's sinking of a South Korean vessel raises yet another round of grim questions about how long Pyongyang can perpetuate its national hell without lurching into open, general hostilities. What to do? Read Michael Magan at Foreign Policy's outstanding Shadow Government blog.

Update: Outside the Beltway's Doug Mataconis gives pause.

So excited to be here!  By way of an introduction, I’m starting a Sunday evening book club.

Something unheard-of, something unprecedented is approaching.  Before it overtakes us, here is my wish for you. When it comes, God grant that we do not lose each other and do not lose our souls.

This excerpt comes from the most recent, and in my opinion the best, English translation of Boris Pasternak’s epic novel Doctor Zhivago.  Pasternak was a poet and that is clear in many passages, but he also portrays in terrifying prose the gritty, gruesome reality of life in Russia during and after the First World War when communism supplanted a people’s entire mode of existence.

While I would recommend this literary work to anyone (because it changed my life and set me on the course I am now on), I believe that it has particular value for a class of people we know well: the seemingly well-meaning, socialism-idealizing liberals.  The open secret of my life is that I was a Democrat at the start of college.  I soon soured on the party and on the principles of progressivism and I’ve never really looked back.  So, I know how a lot of liberals think, or tell themselves that what they’re doing is thinking.  And if they took the few evenings it would require to read Doctor Zhivago, I believe it could change their lives too.  I’ll offer a few examples.

The title character Yury Zhivago is conscripted into the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.  He is forced to stay in their camp, divided from the people he loves.

Despite the absence of fetters, chains, and guards, the doctor was forced to submit to his unfreedom.

While this might be too subtle for the casually Marxist left-winger, I think every human being shudders a bit at the word “unfreedom.”  It’s not a word in any dictionary, but we all know what it means.  And the idea that a person can be unfree without chains only makes it that much more frightening.  Liberty takes centuries to preserve and seconds to steal.

Then untruth came to the Russian land. The main trouble, the root of the future evil, was loss of faith in the value of one’s own opinion.  People imagined that the time when they followed the urgings of their moral sense was gone, that now they had to sing the general tune and live by foreign notions imposed on everyone.  The dominion of the ready-made phrase began to grow—first monarchistic, then revolutionary.  This social delusion was all-enveloping, contagious.

If we’re talking about ready-made phrases, I would hope that “Yes, we can” would pop into our readers’ heads, not necessarily from any sense of self-awareness, but more because it’s hard-wired into their nervous system now from believing so fervently in it. 

The ban on private enterprise was lifted, and free trade was permitted within strict limits.  Deals were done on the scale of commodity circulation among junkmen in a flea market.  The dwarf scope of it encouraged speculation and led to abuse.  The petty scrambling of the dealers produced nothing new, it added nothing material to the city’s desolation.  Fortunes were made by pointlessly selling the same things ten times over.

Even aspiring wealth redistributors have to understand this devastating and absurd result of subverting the economy, disrupting the market, and spending years making “profits” a dirty word to where people no longer understand it.

And finally, not to deprive you or our nannying friends of a glimpse of the central love story, here is how Lara thinks of Yury:

She wanted, with his help, to break free, if only for a short time, into the fresh air, out of the abyss of sufferings that entangled her, to experience, as she once had, the happiness of liberation. 

Pasternak uses the language of freedom throughout the novel.  The point he makes is that love and a personal, private existence are more powerful life-giving forces than the cold, cruel mechanisms of the state, even and especially when the state claims to be benevolent.  We should be thankful we don’t live in a Soviet society and we should be wary of people touting the same supposed ideals of enforced egalitarianism.

So, here’s my question for our club: What work of fiction (not all Ayn Rand, please) would you recommend for those with more collectivizing tendencies?  Are there enough works of fiction out there? 

            In the wake of Mitt Romney’s resounding victory in Florida’s primary, the odds of anyone other than Romney capturing the Republican nomination seem to be as low as the odds Barack Obama will be offered a guest professorship at Hillsdale College.  As one of the many conservatives who are less than enthused about the nomination of a self-described “Progressive whose views are moderate,” the time has come to decide whether or not to bite the bullet and vote for Romney in the general election.  Traditional party orthodoxy suggests that I should support the lesser of two evils.  However, Romney’s ideology is so antithetical to the principles of conservatism that I believe the best thing I can do for the conservative movement and the country in the upcoming election is refuse to give my support or vote to Mitt Romney.

            The biggest blow to Romney’s conservative credentials is his support for the state-level version of Obamacare during his time in Massachusetts.  Romney’s supporters have painted Romneycare as the best of many bad choices for Romney in Massachusetts (although why they would offer up “Three Cheers” for the best of bad alternatives is beyond me.)  I would be OK with supporting Romney if he openly stated that Romneycare was a mistake that the legislature forced on him.  Unfortunately, Romney has decided to defend his mini-Obamacare project.  Romney himself said “I’m proud of what we’ve done” in reference to Romneycare and lauded it as a “Model for the nation.”  When asked about what he thought of Obamacare in 2010, Romney said he wanted to “Keep the good parts,” and applauded the “Incentives to purchase private insurance” (in other words, the individual mandate.)  These are hardly the words of someone who views Romneycare as the lesser of many evils.  Instead, they point to a man who is proud of signing the precursor to Obamacare into law and is fine with an individual mandate on the federal level.   

            Furthermore, Romney’s defense of the individual mandate bears a surprising resemblance to the arguments used by Progressives such as Barack Obama and Franklin Delano Roosevelt to justify their expansions of government.  Romney has argued that government-mandated health insurance is based on “Personal responsibility” and Romneycare protects individual rights by preventing “free riders” from gaming the system.  It almost seems as if Romney believes we must abandon free market healthcare principles to save free market healthcare.  Furthermore, Romney’s argument for Romneycare echoes Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s sentiments in the Commonwealth Club Address that “The exercise of the property rights might so interfere with the rights of the individual that the government, without whose assistance the property rights could not exist, must intervene, not to destroy individualism but to protect it.”  FDR and Romney make identical arguments.  Romney argues that the exercise of individual rights on healthcare infringes on the rights of other individuals, and thus the government must intervene to protect “individualism.”

            Jonah Goldberg recently wrote a column arguing that dissatisfied conservatives should vote for Romney because he will owe the conservatives who elected him and govern like a conservative.  Unfortunately, Romney and his supporters have shown no sign that they care what conservatives in the Republican Party think.  Romney’s scorched-earth campaign tactics against Newt Gingrich and the dismissive, snide treatment Romney’s apologists have given anyone who dares question The Mitt Romney’s conservatism (I’m looking at you, Ann Coulter and David Frum) doesn’t bode well for conservatives who hope Romney will listen to them.  Furthermore, voting for Romney will hardly make him want to listen to conservatives.  If anything, it will show that Romney can take conservatives for granted and still earn their votes. 

            Mitt Romney’s approach towards government places him drastically outside the conservative camp.  Instead of arguing that big government must be eliminated, Romney seems to believe that he can run big government well.  Voting for Romney sends the message that conservative voices can be ignored with impunity.  Conservatives are ignored by candidates like Romney because they believe conservatives will simply vote for whoever has an R next to their name, the only way to ensure the GOP understands that conservative voices cannot be ignored is to show that our votes are not guaranteed.  Mitt “I’m a Progressive” Romney is the ideal candidate to use as proof that even the most loyal Republicans have their limits and will not vote for Liberalism Light.       

A fascinating development, as reported by the New York Daily News:

Peter Thiel has made his fortune by being part of the next big thing: He was a co-founder of Paypal and one of the early investors of Facebook.

But a new Details profile sums up his new plans: “Forget startup companies. The next frontier is startup countries.”

Thiel has donated $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute, the brainchild of Patri Friedman, a former Google engineer and grandson of economist Milton Friedman. Here’s the gist: creation of libertarian, sovereign nations built on oil-rig-type platforms anchored in international waters and free from the laws and moral codes of any other country.

This is one step beyond the Free State Project, the plan to turn New Hampshire into a libertarian paradise. Rather than working within the system, Thiel and company's more radical vision essentially says the whole system of government is so broken that we have to start from scratch.

(There is a precedent for this, by the way. Another group of libertarians attempted to create the Republic of Minerva in the South Pacific in the early 1970s. The 'nation' was quickly annexed ... by Tonga).

As unsatisfying as the Obama years have been for most of us here, I think it safe to say that none of the Ricochetoise have any plans for seasteading in the near future. It does raise an interesting question, however: what would the government have to do to compel you to "go Galt", give up on the whole American enterprise, and search for greater liberty elsewhere?

I'm seeing endless appeals to the Judeo-Christian heritage of the West in the media. For balance, I would like to urge upon everyone a proper weighting of our Greco-Roman heritage. 

To continue the Shakespeare theme from the National Review Cruise (btw, when is Ricochet going to schedule it's own cruise? With Rob Long in charge, I foresee a three-hour tour on a boat named the Minnow), where speakers discussed the "conservative novelist."  Are there novelists who are conservative?  Are there any great novels that are conservative?  Or is there no place for liberal or conservative in art (as one of the cruise panelists argued)?

Here is a chance to combine our discussions with Black Friday–I am interested if any great conservative novels will make for good Christmas gifts.

Imagine approaching your teenage daughter ten years ago with the following suggestion: “Honey, let’s go buy some poster board and paste a picture of you on it. Then we can add some photos of you with your friends, and you can make a list of places you like to go, the food you enjoy, and all sorts of other fun facts about you. Then we’ll hang the board in the hallway at your school, and your friends can write their comments on it.” I don’t know what her exact reply would have been, but it would likely have been something akin to, “Are you nuts, Dad? That’s all personal stuff! I don’t want just anybody to be able to look at it!”

And now, jump ahead to the Facebook Era, where the idea of “personal stuff” seems almost quaint. Lost in all the talk about IPOs and instant millionaires is the sea change that has overtaken our lives. Facebook horror stories abound, and today’s high school student is likely to deal with more anxiety from the number of Facebook friends he has or doesn’t have, or from the number of likes and dislikes he amasses, than from anything as mundane as taking a final exam or choosing a college.

I understand that there’s no going back, and that any anti-Facebook screed is likely to be viewed as the rants of an out-of-touch Luddite. However, it occurs to me that we may be confronting one of the most fundamental societal changes we’ve ever faced without ever having thought much about it, discussed it or planned for it. This generation is acting as the guinea pig, and there’s absolutely no telling what the results will be. Will we look back in twenty years and give thanks?  Will we curse the world we created? Or will we see Facebook and its successors as just another creation with good and bad aspects to it?

What do you think?

Daily Kos has posted an Open Letter to that 53 Percent Guy.

I wanted to respond to you as a liberal.  Because, although I think you’ve made yourself clear and I think I understand you, you don’t seem to understand me at all.  I hope you will read this and understand me better, and maybe understand the Occupy Wall Street movement better.

First, let me say that I think it’s great that you have such a strong work ethic and I agree with you that you have much to be proud of.  You seem like a good, hard-working, strong kid.  I admire your dedication and determination.  I worked my way through college too, mostly working graveyard shifts at hotels as a “night auditor.”  For a time I worked at two hotels at once, but I don’t think I ever worked 60 hours in a week, and certainly not 70.  I think I maxed out at 56.  And that wasn’t something I could sustain for long, not while going to school.  The problem was that I never got much sleep, and sleep deprivation would take its toll.  I can’t imagine putting in 70 hours in a week while going to college at the same time.  That’s impressive. ...

I think anyone who makes his argument in a fashion this civil deserves an absolutely sincere and civil response. Would Ricochet care to lead the way? I'll forward your responses to the author and I'll ask if he'd like to consider them. I don't know who he really is--it's the Internet, after all--but I'm certain there are many decent people who feel this way, whether or not they're typical of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  

In the Wall Street Journal today, Jonathan Last reviews the new book by Bryan Caplan, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids:  Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. "Mr. Caplan's book," Last writes, "is cheery and intellectually honest....

And the bedrock of his argument is solid:  Modern parenting is insane.  Children do not need most of what we buy them.

So far, so good.  But then Last gives the review a nasty, and--to me, at least--startling twist.

But....[i]n study after study, researchers find that parents are consistently less happy than non-parents.  No matter how you control the sample, if you have two identical people--one with a child and one without--the parent will be 5.6 percentage points less happy.  Mr. Caplan bravely acknowledges this problem but is never able to say clearly what, exactly, the benefits of parenthood really are.

Parents, less happy?  I'd missed all these studies.  More to the point, the finding runs counter to pretty much all I've observed throughout my life.  When my college buddies and I were in our twenties, those who remained single, making good money as consultants, jetting here and there, buying sports cars--sure.  At some superficial level, they may have remained "happier."  But by the time we were all in our mid-thirties, that had changed.  I think of one friend in particular who had a rocket of a career as a management consultant, living the life while the rest of us settled down and raised our families.  On his own admission, he got sick of it.  At 49, he finally married.  At 50, his wife had a child.  He's happier now--incomparably happier.

None of this is to suggest that non-parents can't be happy.  Manifestly, they can.  But the idea that non-parents are systematically happier--well, as I say, it runs counter to all my experience.

Can anyone help me here?  Has anyone seen these studies?  What am I missing?

Night had smothered the city, and the city gave up its protest in uncountable millions of bubbles and gasps of light.  Below was glittering Manhattan.  The east was black.  The opaque hilly horizon of the west was razor-edged against a last gleam of cold white light.  Destroyers rode the unbridged Hudson; ferries and small craft flecked her with light.  The East River lay her dark secretive self...a cool, lamp-spotted, many-bridged stream between the sprawling white conflagrations of Brooklyn and Manhattan.  It was terrifyingly beautiful up on the roof, four hundred feet above the gaudy streets, four hundred feet up in the cool dark silences, four hundred feet up nearer the stars….

Mr. Blue put his hands into his trouser pockets and leaned backward, his face toward the heavens, now filling with stars.

“I think,” he whispered half to himself, “my heart would break with all this immensity if I did not know that God Himself once stood beneath it, a young man, as small as I.”

Then, he turned to me slowly.

“Did it ever occur to you that it was Christ Who humanized infinitude, so to speak?  When God became man He made you and me and the rest of us pretty important people.  He not only redeemed us.  He saved us from the terrible burden of infinity.”

Blue rather caught me off my guard.  I might have admitted in him a light turn for philosophy.  I did not expect any such high-sounding speculation as this.  But he was passionately serious.  He eyes were glowing in the dark.  He threw his hands up toward the stars:  “My hands, my feet, my poor little brain, my eyes, my ears, all matter more than the whole sweep of these constellations!” he burst out. “God Himself, the God to Whom this whole universe-specked display is as nothing, God Himself had hands like mine and feet like mine, and eyes, and brain, and ears!....”  He looked at me intently.  “Without Christ we would be little more than bacteria breeding on a pebble in space, or glints of ideas in a whirling void of abstractions.  Because of Him, I can stand here out under this cold immensity and know that my infinitesimal pulse-beats and acts and thoughts are of more importance than this whole show of a universe."

--Myles Connolly, Mr. Blue, published in 1928

As I was about to graduate from Stanford business school in the spring of 1990, Steve Jobs invited me to visit him at NeXT, the company he had founded after being forced out of Apple a few years before. 

Showing me into his office, Steve, dressed in a black turtleneck and faded jeans, plopped into his desk chair, then motioned to a pile of chopsticks on his desk.  He picked up a set, opening and closing the chopsticks as he spoke.  “Aren’t these just beautiful?  Look how clean and simple the lines are.”

He had just been in Japan, Steve explained, and at dinner one night he found himself using the best chopsticks he had ever tried.  “They’re nothing but inexpensive wood, just like any other chopsticks,” he said.  “But just look at them.  Beautiful.  I had them ship me a bunch.  Here, have one.”  He tossed me a set.

As we talked in his office, then drove down 101 to Palo Alto, where we had dinner together, Steve mentioned that he’d like me to consider becoming his chief of staff—I was only two years out of the Reagan White House, and Steve figured that someone who had worked for Reagan might meet his own standards—then told me about himself.  Not about his life since he had become famous.  About his early life.  About what it had been like to grow up as an adopted kid.  About what it had been like to be raised by a repo man.  “If somebody got behind in his car payments,” Steve, driving a sleek black Porsche, told me, “the bank would hire my father to get the car back.  My father would tail the guy.  When he pulled into a McDonalds, my father would pull in behind him.  And when he got out to go in and get his hamburger, my father would jump into the car and steal it.  What a way to make a living.”  The sheer raw mercilessness of the market.  Steve experienced it early.  Yet he also spoke that evening about sheer beauty, describing the Santa Clara Valley before it became Silicon Valley.  “Orchards—when I was a boy there were still orchards all around here.  You should have seen it when they were flowering in the spring.  Clouds of blossoms.”

I declined Steve’s offer—he made it clear that he wanted me to protect him from the demands of the NeXT executives, but his executives, with whom I spent a day, made it clear that they wanted me to get Steve to give them more of his time—but we remained in touch.  Steve married a friend of mine from business school.  Both of us sent our kids to the same nursery school.  From time to time we would run into each other at parties or in Palo Alto.  The last time I saw him, we were both at a Fourth of July block party in his neighborhood a few years ago.  As neighborhood kids competed in the balloon toss and pie eating contests, Steve and I talked. 

We discussed both politics (Steve defended Al Gore, who had joined the Apple board, predicting that Gore would win a Nobel Prize, which he did just months later) and business (Steve gave me his analysis of Disney, explaining why he considered Michael Eisner inadequate, detailing the inferiority of Disney’s animated motion pictures to Pixar’s, and lauding Disney’s theme parks, which he considered underrated as both artistic and commercial achievements.  “The way to turn around Mexico?” Steve said.  “Let Disney run the country.”)  When I mentioned that I had begun reading up on the Cold War, he described his friendship with Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, who had helped to develop photographic techniques for U. S. intelligence.

“Hey, Steve!” a neighborhood kid said, interrupting.  “My iPhone isn’t working.” 

I expected Steve to brush the young man off.  Instead he took the iPhone, then spent five minutes examining the device while talking to the kid about the problems he had been having with it.  Steve finally figured out what was wrong.  “You’re not going to like hearing this,” he said, “but it’s not an Apple problem.  It’s a problem with AT&T.”  Before returning the iPhone, Steve held it up to me, pointing out the metal bezel into which the glass cover or window was set.  Then he described the technical challenge involved in manufacturing it.

Intensity, ambition, a profound understanding of markets, a broad and fascinating mind—even if (and I say nothing here I failed to tell him to his face) his politics never made any sense—and a determinaton to get it right so obsessive that he felt compelled to fix a teenager’s iPhone at a block party.  You can almost see how Steve earned his place.  You can almost grasp how he became as important as Edison or Carnegie or Stanford or Rockefeller or Ford.

Yet one characteristic distinguished Steve Jobs from the others.  It’s the characteristic that led him to toss me the chopsticks that I've kept on my desk ever since.

Only Steve insisted on beauty.

When we were recording the weekly podcast just now, somebody--James Lileks?  Rob?--asked our guest, Tucker Carlson, if the Republicans could beat Obama in 2012.  Tucker replied with his usual aplomb and good cheer.

"No."

Tucker named a couple of reasons with which we're all distressingly familiar.  Too many Americans, Tucker said, like getting stuff from the federal government.  Give up goodies right now to stave off collapse in 10 or 20 years?  Don't be silly.  Immigrants?  They vote overwhelmingly Democratic. "Even immigrant groups that might surprise you," Tucker said.  "Indians, for example."

Then Tucker named a reason that was a new one on me--or almost new:  Even the most solid part of the Republican base, rural white voters, who have voted Republican ever since the election of Lincoln, are drifting toward the Democrats.  Why?  Illegitimacy.  The traditional family is breaking down among rural whites with astonishing speed.  Unmarried mothers vote Democratic--they need the welfare state.  And they raise their children in an atmosphere of dependency, teaching them, if only by example, to rely on government handouts.

How bad is the problem?  When we finished recording, I did a little research.  Here's Nick Eberstadt, writing for the American Enterprise Institute:

Forty years after the Moynihan report, the tragic saga of the modern black family is common knowledge. But the tale of family breakdown in modern America is no longer a story delimited to a single ethnic minority. Today the family is also in crisis for this country's ethnic majority: the so-called white American population....

Consider trends in out-of-wedlock births. By 2002, 28.5 percent of babies of white mothers were born outside marriage in this country. Over the past generation, the white illegitimacy rate has exploded, quadrupling since 1975, when the level was 7.1 percent. The overall illegitimacy rate for whites is higher than it was for black mothers (23.6 percent) when the Moynihan report sounded its alarm....

Today no state in the Union has an Anglo illegitimacy ratio as low as 10 percent. Even in predominantly Mormon Utah, every eighth non-Hispanic white infant is born out of wedlock.

I'd been vaguely aware of this, but hadn't considered the political impact--the collapse of a big part of the traditional GOP base.  When Tucker mentioned this, the idea was, as I say, almost new to me. As it happens, I'd heard it exactly a week ago today over dinner with Mark Steyn.

Mark had picked me up at the Hanover Inn, then driven 40 minutes into the woods, crossing a covered bridge and making so many turns and switchbacks that it occurred to me that I'd surely starve before being able to find my way back on my own.  At last Mark turned onto a dirt road, bouncing along the ruts--it's mud season up there--until at last we reached our destination:  An impeccably restored farmhouse dating back to colonial times, now a wonderful little restaurant.

Dinner with Mark is about what you'd expect:  The conversation proves warm, brilliant, erudite, and hilarious, but the recurring theme is, as Mark himself puts it often enough, "the decline of the Republic." Mark Steyn, tap-dancing at the edge of the abyss. 

For miles in every direction, Mark noted, lay country that until just a few decades ago represented the heartland, so to speak, of the flinty, resourceful, independent Yankee spirit.  Now?  "You'll see lovely girls in the local high schools," Mark said.  "When you come across them again five years later, they'll each have three children by three different fathers."  Then Mark told a story.

In colonial times, it was against crown law to cut down any pine that exceeded a certain girth--twenty-some inches, as I recall--because all such trees were reserved for the use of the Royal Navy, which required a ready supply of masts.  Every time you see a colonial house with floorboards more than two feet wide, you're witnessing an artifact of the American spirit--an act of rebellion.  Mark pointed to the floorboards in the restaurant, some of which were certainly more than two feet wide.  "Two centuries ago," he said, "the families in these parts were felling trees in defiance of the crown. Today they're raising their children on welfare checks."

Woe to us all.

The taxi's coming to take me to the airport in about three hours. I just woke up with a start, thinking that I'd overslept, and now I'm afraid to go back to sleep for fear that I will. I'm all packed, and it's the middle of the night, so Ricochet buddies, would you please help keep me awake for the next few hours?

I'll give you something to start with. This reminded me of our earlier conversation about the critical things we just don't notice when we're focussing on something else.

I posted a link to our conversation about whether Islam itself is the enemy to my Facebook page. Some of my friends here in Istanbul (who are Moslems, and, as the word "friend" suggests, not my enemy) weighed in with responses that I think confirm my assertion that the Islamic world is not monolithic. In particular, my friend Babür left a long, thoughtful response, which I'll reproduce in full. (I've told my Facebook friends that anything they say on my page is on-the-record, and I've told Babür this in particular, so I'm sure he won't mind):

As a practicing muslim, and as somebody who's undertaken some Islamic studies, I might have a say for the closing remarks of this article:

-To decide whether Islam INSTITUTIONALLY embraces terrorism or not, the exact description and scope of “GENUINE” Islamic beliefs should be concretized first of all,

-I agree with the fact that, implementations of Islam are, unfortunately, as many as the number of muslims,

-Such differentiation upon "personal perceptions" is the misfortune of any mainstream & globalised religion,

-However, this differentiation occurs only in the practical level: the limits of Islamic beliefs - the theory, is all well defined,

-There is only one genuine, unique and clear-cut definition of Islamic beliefs, which is established back in 632 A.D., preserved with a sound application of METHODOLOGY (centuries before the European version of methodology was developed), and has survived so far,

-This set of beliefs is called "Sunnah", and its followers "Sunnis",

-In terms of daily religious activities, the Sunnah have several sub-categories, the practical sects / "MEZHEB"s; which provide Sunnis with a somehow wide range of options to choose from,

-The practical mezhebs are not at conflict with one another at all; one can pray according to "hanafi" mezheb, fast according to "shafi" mezheb, and yet, make his/her donations according to "maliki" mezheb, etc.: the Prophet (sav) has fulfilled his daily actions compatibly with all mezhebs,

-BUT THEN.. where do we locate the "Shia" concept?

-Clearly speaking, the modern Islamic world is divided into some 75 THEORETICAL mezhebs, most of which fall under the "Shia" category,

-The word "Shia" has its roots in the expression "Gulat-i Shia li Ali b. Ebi Talib", meaning "helpers of Ali b. Ebi Talib",

-Ali, the beloved cousin of Prophet and one of the capital masters of muslims - either Shia or Sunnis, has experienced a major political chaos near the end of his life, and naturally, a circle of helpers / political suppliers formed around him,

-The historical development, and thus, main BELIEF categories of these helpers, the Shia, has 4 main phases:

(1) those who favor Ali over Osman as a caliph (ONLY a political distinction),

(2) those who favor Ali over Abu Bakr and Omar as well (a FAR-FETCHED, but still political distinction),

(3) those who favor Ali over Prophet (sav) (the beginning point of BLASPHEMY),

(4) those who favor Ali over God (an EXTREME point of blasphemy).

-The last two phases emerged nearly a century after the death of the Prophet (sav); SO, DURING THE FIRST CENTURY OF ISLAM, THERE WAS NO DISTINCTION OF BELIEFS, BUT ONLY POLITICAL VIEWS,

-Apart from the Shia, some extremist sects also arose throughout the history, like Batinis, Ismailis, Durzis, etc., who are definitely non-muslims,

-So, in terms of beliefs, the modern Islamic world can be divided into three parts: (1) Sunnis, the unique believers, (2) non-Sunnis, but believers, (3) non-Sunnis and non-believers,

-Haven said all this..

How does genuine Islam, the Sunnah, approach terrorism?

Islam ABSOLUTELY forbids even the slightest offense against individuals (either women or men, the young or the old, etc.) who has not attacked Islam and/or muslims in a military fashion; even, military personnel figthing against Islam and/or muslims who ask for mercy during a full scale battle, should not be touched.

-This rule is very, very clear:

The first two warfare of Islamic history, The Battle of Badr and The Battle of Uhud, were of vital importance for the survival of the early Islamic society and thus, the entire religion.

EVEN DURING THOSE WARFARE, the Prophet (sav) applied the above principle with utmost certainty..

-A similar example is The Conquer of Mecca, where, the Prophet (sav) showed TOTAL mercy (involving the entire enemy army), after being oppressed, humiliated, and even subject to genocide for two decades..

-This is the REAL Islamic approach. Any sincere muslim IS OBLIGED TO oppose terrorism, suicide bombing, 9/11 attacks, El Qaeda, etc.

-The knowledge requirement standards enough to make a decree, or “ICTIHAD” were stated by the Prophet (sav) himself. Those fulfilling the standards, the “MUCTEHID”s can alone authorize the Islamic approach to any situation.

-Real muslims do not care about Imam Whatsoever, etc. has said, unless those so-called, often self-declared Imams measure up to be a muctehid..

I later left this comment:

I've just walked down a street filled literally with thousands of Moslems of exactly the kind many people are seriously arguing do not exist. I saw them with my own eyes, as I have every day for the past five years. With so many other questions in the world, why waste time debating this? Book a ticket to Istanbul, spend an afternoon here, have a lovely time, drink some tea, meet friendly, tolerant, warm, welcoming Moslems (mostly), and see for yourself. They exist! They're my neighbors and my friends! Babür, is there anyone at our gym, for example, who would not describe himself as a Moslem? Would any member of our gym endorse terrorism, honor killing, forcing me to wear the hijab, or subjecting me to a dhimmi tax? The idea is so absurd it's beyond discussion -- and yet we're discussing it.

Theo Spark found the conversation sufficiently interesting to link to it in his blog. He described the discussion as a "raging debate." I notice that his post has been picked up at Right Wing News. So now this chat among my friends is a raging and somewhat public debate, I guess.

The odd thing is that the "raging debate" is about whether moderate Moslems exist. That they do is a proposition so easily verifiable that I don't even have to leave my apartment to do it. I can just look out the window.

But no one even noticed the snake pit of controversy embedded in Babür's claim that Shi'a Islam is a heresy.

Now, as people who know the Islamic world well will tell you, that is--what is it Andrew Sullivan calls it?--the money quote. You just watch and see how much more blood is yet to be spilled over that claim.

And no one even noticed it--their attention was elsewhere.

More from Claire Berlinski

Don't Be Depressed By the GZM Debate

Moderate Islam: A Definition

Arguments Good and Bad: the GZM, Zoning Law, and the Bush Doctrine

Let's Not Convince the World's Muslims We're Out to Destroy Islam

In commenting on the last Republican Presidential debate in the online Ricochet discussion that took place while it was underway, I predicted that Ron Paul would win the Iowa caucus. Later in the debate, when Michele Bachmann tore into him with regard to his views on foreign policy, Peter Robinson asked whether I would like to revise my prediction, and, impressed by the tongue-lashing she administered to her fellow Congressman, I backed off. If the latest polls are any guide, however, I may well have been wrong to abandon my original intuition.

I do not share the Iowans’ admiration for the Congressman from South Texas, but I sympathize with it. In the debates, on economic matters, his observations have been cogent and concise. As anyone who has read Friedrich Hayek can easily comprehend, there is a powerful case to be made against what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “rational administration,” especially in the economic sphere; and Ron Paul knows how to make the argument. In addition, we have to face up to the fact that his rivals leave much to be desired. In a time of crisis, when Americans are more ready than at any time in my lifetime to return to their roots and embrace the cause of limited government, there is no one in the Presidential race of obvious stature, demonstrated competence, and evident eloquence who is willing and able to articulate the case for limited government.

What we have, instead, are a tongue-tied Governor from Texas who knows next to nothing about the national government; a Congresswoman who has never even chaired a committee, who cannot hold onto staff, who commands no support from among her colleagues, and who is apt to descend into demagoguery; a two-term former Senator who lost his seat by a margin of 18% and commands no support from among his former colleagues; a disgraced former Speaker of the House with a taste for adultery, an admiration for the “model” on which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were based, and a penchant for embracing the latest left-liberal fads; and a one-term former Governor with a gift for losing elections who pioneered the program on which Obamacare is modeled and who thinks the individual mandate a policy that conservatives should adopt. In such a field, to the unsuspecting glance, Ron Paul – who is by all accounts good-humored and charming – looks pretty good. I have a colleague who has known him for many years who firmly believes that he is an honorable man.

I do not, however, possess an unsuspecting glance, and about Ron Paul’s honor, I harbor grave doubts. When one examines the Congressman’s record more closely and when one explores what he professes to stand for today, he seems far less attractive. As Julian Sanchez and David Weigel documented four years ago in an article in the libertarian journal Reason Magazine, back in the 1980s, Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and a handful of other libertarians formed a political alliance with a group of paleo-conservatives – most of them unreconstructed Confederates, and some of them out-and-out racists. Their closest ally within this camp was Llewelyn Rockwell, Jr., who served as Paul’s congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982 and was vice-president of Ron Paul & Associates, the highly profitable outfit that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report, and Paul, Rothbard, and Rockwell ostentatiously modeled their project on the demagogic populism pioneered by  Senator Joseph McCarthy and Louisiana’s David Duke. As Sanchez and Weigel put it, “During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic.”

One could, of course, choose to resolutely ignore the conspiracy-mongering, the racial prejudice, the anti-Semitism, and the visceral hostility to the homoerotically inclined which was propagated in the newsletters published by Ron Paul & Associates. One could avert one’s gaze from the implications of a remark that the Congressman once made to Cato Institute President Ed Crane: that “his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto until it folded in 2001.”  And the partisans of Ron Paul – like the partisans of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich – are inclined to be highly selective in singling out what they take to be the elements in their hero’s record that are legitimate for the rest of us to discuss. “That was then,” they say,” and this is now. Focus on the positive, get with the program, and rally around our champion.”

I think that this is a mistaken approach. If you want to try to understand what Romney or Gingrich or any other candidate would be apt to do if elected President, one would do well to look at the overall record in speech and deed of each, and the same can be said of Ron Paul. The Congressman from Texas may or may not himself be a racist, an anti-Semite, a homophobe, and a believer in conspiracies, but he was certainly willing to trade on the racism, the anti-Semitism, the homophobia, and the gullibility of others – and he has not fully abandoned the stratagems that enriched him twenty years ago, made him a national figure, and earned him in certain circles a cult-like status.  As James Kirchik, the journalist who first dug up the newsletters four years ago, has recently reported in The New Republic, Paul, “who once entertained the notion that AIDS was invented in a government laboratory,” asserted just last January “that there had been a ‘CIA coup’ against the American government and that the Agency is ‘in drug businesses.’” Moreover, Paul

appears regularly on the radio program of Alex Jones, perhaps the most popular conspiracy theorist in America (profiled by TNR in 2009), where he often indulges the host’s delusional ravings about the coming “New World Order.” He continues to associate with the John Birch Society, the extreme-right wing organization that William F. Buckley denounced in the early 1960’s after it alleged that none other than President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.” Asked about the group in 2007, Paul told the New York Times, “Oh, my goodness, the John Birch Society! Is that bad? I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society.” Indeed, Paul delivered the keynote address at the organization’s 50th anniversary dinner in September.

There is, in fact, much in Ron Paul’s record that gibes far better with the nativism of a Pat Buchanan (whose Presidential campaign he supported in 1992) than with mainstream libertarianism. As libertarian Ilya Somin points out, with considerable consistency, Paul has opposed free-trade agreements, school vouchers, and relaxed strictures on immigration, and he has resolutely refused to distance himself from “the Stormfront neo-Nazis, racists, 9/11 "Truthers," and other assorted wackos who have endorsed him.” Those who compare Congressman Paul’s persistent association with unsavory characters to that of Barack Obama with Bill Ayers and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright have a point. It may not be an accident that Ron Paul has less appeal among genuine Republicans in Iowa than among certain Democrats and independents. Like his friend Buchanan, he is, in some respects, the heir of George Wallace.

Ron Paul’s stance on foreign affairs gibes well with the various species of xenophobia that he has stoked now for decades. In this respect, he is an heir to the thinking that undergirded the old American First Committee – which once drew support from people as respectable as Potter Stewart, Gerald Ford, Kingman Brewster, William H. Regnery, H. Smith Richardson, Robert E. Wood, Sterling Morton, Joseph M. Patterson, Robert R. McCormick, Sargent Shriver, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Of course, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the German Declaration of War woke these men up from their dogmatic slumber. But there were others – on the left and on the right – who stuck to their guns, and the numbers in their ranks swelled in the course of the Vietnam War. Poorly conducted wars and ill-advised foreign adventures have a propensity for reviving among the excitable the illusion that the United States can go it alone.

Human beings have a propensity for turning half-truths into overarching doctrines that purport to explain everything, and the academy is the natural locus for doctrinaire thinking of this sort. In this regard, today’s libertarianism is not unlike the old Marxism. It starts with an insight into the way the world works, and some of its adherents take the part for the whole. The old Marxists were right to think that transformations in the means of production have far-reaching consequences. They erred, however, when they jumped to the conclusion that these developments can be made to explain everything. Today’s libertarians are right when they argue that central planning cannot work, that the free market is a mechanism for collecting and distributing information, and that the pretense to “rational administration” is madness. When they assert that recessions are a natural and welcome consequence of the business cycle and that attempts to interfere with this process have a tendency to backfire and produce severe and prolonged downturns, they are on the mark.

When, however, they extend their theory of the spontaneous emergence of order from the economic sphere to foreign affairs, they make a mistake quite similar to the one that the old Marxists made. I have attended small academic conferences in which I have heard libertarians earnestly argue that we, not the Germans or the Japanese, are at fault for our involvement in World War I and World War II. I found these discussions, as I found my interchanges with the old Marxists, stimulating in the extreme. Those who make these arguments are often quite intelligent. They are also doctrinaire to the point of madness. When you are a hammer, everything that you encounter looks like a nail.

How did we get into World War I? Their answer is that we provoked the Germans to attack our ships. We did so by honoring the British blockade against Germany while refusing to honor Germany’s blockade against the British. Had we insisted on our right to trade freely with both, or had we acquiesced in the face of both blockades, we would not have been subject to attack, and we would have avoided a serious loss of American life.

How did we get into World War II? At a certain point, the American government refused to sell oil to the Japanese, and this provoked them into attacking Pearl Harbor and seizing the Philippines. Had we honored the principles of free trade, we would have avoided an armed conflict that resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives.

What this particular sect of libertarians (who are no less apt to divide into sects than were the old Marxists) refuses to acknowledge is that the American people have political interests abroad that are incumbent upon them, if they are to remain secure in the long run, to pursue. For all of his faults (which were legion), Woodrow Wilson understood that it was not in the American interest for a single imperialist power to come to dominate Europe. And for all of his faults (which were also legion), Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood that it was not in the American interest for a single imperialist power to come to dominate Asia. Neither sought war. But both sought to tip the balance against the powers they rightly regarded as a threat to the United States, and soon enough they found themselves drawn into war.

I do not mean to endorse Wilsonian internationalism. That doctrine, rooted in a distortion of the thinking of Immanuel Kant, is as mad as the doctrine embraced by the sect of libertarians that I am discussing. It supposes that there can be a war to end all wars and that the world can be made safe once and for all for democracy. The truth is uglier. In the international sphere, order does not spontaneously emerge. It is imposed. It is, moreover, fragile and temporary always, and “rational administration” within the international sphere of the sort envisaged by Wilson and his admirers is no more effective than “rational administration” of the economy. Like the old Marxists, the Wilsonian internationalists and the libertarian isolationists live in an alternative universe. In the universe in which you and I live, however, there is no substitute for prudence. There are fights that are not worth the candle, and there are fights that are well worth fighting. But there will be fights – and on the basis of a sober assessment of our interests, we must choose when, where, and how to fight. In deciding, we must always look to the particulars.

Ron Paul is an adherent of the doctrinaire libertarian sect to which I refer. When it comes to foreign policy, he is not a prudentialist. He is an ideologue – perfectly willing to deny or ignore the facts if they do not gibe with the doctrine that he has embraced. He is also, let me add, a cagey character. To get a sense of what I mean, take a close look at this statement made by his former staffer Eric Dondero and then consider what the Paul campaign says and does not say pertaining  to the Texas Congressman’s stance regarding the Second World War. Paul’s silences are as telling as the words he utters. In this particular, he is very much like Mitt Romney. He is less apt to lie than to speak the truth, nothing but the truth, and only a part of the truth – and to do so in such a manner as to mislead the unwary. His statements sometimes require parsing.

It is in light of this digression that you can understand Ron Paul’s stance regarding Al Q’aeda and Iran. Our troubles are, he persistently tells us, our own fault. We have provoked these people, and what they have done to us in return is perfectly understandable and, he implies, perhaps even just.

We had troops in Saudi Arabia, says the Congressman, and that is why Al Q’aeda attacked the twin towers and the Pentagon (if, of course, it was not the work of Mossad). Ron Paul conveniently ignores the fact that the troops that we stationed in Saudi Arabia were there at the invitation of the government of that country, and he never mentions the fact that the first attack on the twin towers arranged by Al Q’aeda took place before we had any troops in Saudi Arabia at all. In an alternative universe in which the libertarian isolationists reside, inconvenient truths are resolutely ignored.

Ron Paul wears blinders of a similar sort when he discusses Iran. The truth is that the Khomeini regime has been prosecuting a war against us for more than thirty years. At the outset, when Jimmy Carter was President, the theocrats of Iran seized our embassy and took our diplomats hostage. Later, when Ronald Reagan was President, they arranged for a suicide bomber provided by Hezbollah to take out our embassy in Beirut and a great many of our diplomats. Not long thereafter, they did the same for a marine unit posted elsewhere in Lebanon. Later, they arranged for the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia; and when we were in Iraq, they carried on a covert war in that country against our troops.

In our dealing with Iran, we have been comparatively restrained and circumspect. It is true that, towards the end of the Iran-Iraq War, we provided intelligence support to the Iraqis; and when the Iranians tried to shut down the Gulf, we intervened to keep that shipping lane open. But for the most part we have held our fire, mindful that Iran could easily become a quagmire. And we have repeatedly – from the time of Reagan on (remember the Iran-Contra affair?) – made overtures to the mullahs, but never to any avail.

Given the threats that the mullahs and their minions have directed at us, given their treatment of our diplomats in Teheran, given the attacks they have concerted against our soldiers and diplomats in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, given their open hostility to our long-standing allies, and given the fact that they have prepared forces capable of shutting down the Straits of Hormuz and this past week practiced cutting our lifeline and that of our allies to the oil that travels from the Persian Gulf through those straits, we have reason to take seriously the intelligence reports indicating that the Iranians are preparing to build nuclear weapons and the evidence that they are developing delivery systems capable of reach our allies in the Middle East, Europe, and, perhaps, in time, the United States as well.

What is Ron Paul’s response to these developments? He has rejected the evidence out of hand, he has denied that we have any grounds for concern, and he has called for a 40% cut in our defense budget (as has Gary Johnson of New Mexico).  You might want to ask what would be left of that budget were we to cut it by 40%. That budget has four components – legacy obligations (pensions to be paid, medical care to be provided), personnel, equipment, and research on new defense systems. I doubt very much whether Congressman Paul  has in mind radically cutting the first of these four – which would leave us with the task of reducing that part of the budget that goes for present and future defense by as much as 60%. What he has in mind is simple – that we give up entirely the capacity to project power beyond our shores – and he means what he says (as does Gary Johnson).

Ron Paul’s premise (and that of Gary Johnson) is the same as that of those on the left who argued (and still argue) that the Cold War was our fault, that we provoked the Soviet Union, that if we had been more accommodating of the legitimate needs of the communist regime all would have been well. The sect within the libertarian camp to which Paul (and Johnson) belong is as loony as the fellow-traveling left, and it is just as dangerous.

As Ricochet member Percival put it in a memorable comment on this site, “If Ron Paul's stance on law enforcement were in line with his foreign policy, we wouldn't try to defend ourselves with expensive police departments.  Instead, we'd try to understand the criminals and get along with them by giving them what they want – our stuff.”