The left likes to portray conservatives as "anti-science."  They even like to talk about a "Republican War on Science."

Science, though, seems to be getting it from the left, at least as often. 

In the NYObserver, Bill Wasik reviews Seth Mnookin's new book The Panic Virus:

Near the beginning of The Panic Virus, Seth Mnookin's definitive, infuriating history of the myth that vaccines cause autism, the author relates a story from a Park Slope dinner party he attended in 2007. Mr. Mnookin was discussing pediatric health with a new parent in his early 40s who explained that he and his wife had decided to delay their child's vaccines. On what sources had he based this weighty decision? Questions along these lines were met with murk. "I don't know what to say," the man replied. "It just feels like a lot for a developing immune system to deal with."

It was this F-word—feels—that left Mr. Mnookin justifiably gobsmacked, and it serves as the departure point for The Panic Virus, an attempt to explain how thousands of otherwise sophisticated Americans could make a fatuous decision to opt out of what is arguably modernity's greatest medical achievement. Most children "exempted" from vaccines (a fittingly ridiculous term, as if the kids place out via AP exam) are not low-information progeny. They are being raised in college towns, in wealthy suburbs and in tony urban enclaves like Park Slope, by the sorts of parents who are otherwise given to grave tut-tutting about the anti-science stances of others—the climate-change know-nothings, say, or the ovine devotees of the garish Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.

So are these parents stupid?  Or are they just perpetrators of what pie-faced liberals like to call the "Tragedy of the Commons?"  Or maybe a little of both?  Wasik has his own answer:

Most exempting parents are intelligent enough to know that our relative freedom from infectious disease is due to vaccination; they merely feel that the risk of childhood vaccination (and there is some, though it is small, and autism is not among the dangers) should be borne by the children of others. One such parent, whose child was responsible for setting off a 2008 measles outbreak in California, told Time that she "felt safe in making the choice to vaccinate selectively" because measles "doesn't tend to be a problem" in the United States. She went on to make the point more explicit: "[B]ecause I live in a country where the norm is vaccine, I can delay my vaccines."

So maybe it's not only a question of being anti-science.  Maybe it's also a matter of being selfish.  Of believing that vaccines are fine, for a certain class of person.  

The left, always ping-ponging between being irrational, and being snobs.

I received the e-mail below from The Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf this morning:

Diane,

Today I wrote a short obit at The Atlantic that urged people to set aside politics for a day and mourn Breitbart the husband, father, and energetic professional. After some time passes, probably early next week, I'm going to write a post that grapples with his professional legacy.

I saw that you wrote on Ricochet:

The tremendous work that Andrew Breitbart accomplished for the conservative cause is all the more remarkable when you consider that he really only became a household name for us conservatives over the past three years.

Would you mind telling me, on or off the record, what specifically he accomplished for the conservative cause that is tremendous and remarkable? I've got my critiques of Breitbart. Insofar as there are accomplishments to set forth alongside them I want to do so.

Thanks for reading.

I'll kick us off with the things that stood out to me in reading through Ricochet's large collection of Breitbart tributes and remembrances:

1.  As Ben Domenech noted a few months ago, conservatives really lag in the arena of investigative journalism.  Andrew Breitbart did more to expose the stories that the rest of the media either conveniently ignored or even worked hard to keep under wraps than anyone else.  In the process, he:

• exposed Anthony Weiner's lies, ultimately driving him out of office which paved the way for a Republican to assume office in NY-9 for the first time since 1923;
• drove ACORN into extinction.

2.  He built up a whole lot of invaluable internet infrastructure that has proven to be an important set of resources for the right. From Breitbart.com to Big Government, Big Hollywood, Big Journalism, Big Peace, and with an assist to the Drudge Report.

But to be sure that Conor has a thorough list of the things that conservatives consider to be Andrew's biggest professional achievements, I put the query to the Ricochet community.

Markos Moulitsas is, according to his Twitter bio, the founder of Daily Kos and the author of American Taliban: How Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists to the Radical Right. On Super Tuesday, he tweeted something very sad:

Santorum scoffs at notion that gov't creates rights. In other words, he doesn't believe in the US Constitution

I can think of few better examples of how serious a problem we have as a country than what this tweet represents. When people responded by pointing him to, you know, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, he doubled down:

Dear Cons, show me where in the Constitution is god mentioned. In fact, it states "we the people" as the source of the rights (Preamble)

When you look at the religious liberty battle facing the country right now, you have one side speaking in terms of government intrusion into a natural right. The other side talks about the "right to free birth control" or a "war on women."

The deeper problem, of course, is that one side is talking about negative liberty and the other side doesn't even understand the vocabulary.

I don't want to get too pessimistic here, but this is what decades of horrible public and private education have wrought: a populace that doesn't understand liberty, how rights are derived, and the very basis of civil society.

What to do about it?

Earlier this week, I wrote about why mom--Marilyn Haggerty--went viral, and suggested that the internet is, click-by-click, democratizing pop culture away from snobbishness and toward authenticity.

Today, in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan has another take on the democratizing tendencies of the internet. Like Tocqueville, she points out that the more democratic a culture gets, the more it tends to level things down. Of particular concern to Noonan, and for good reason, is how coarse the rhetoric surrounding women has gotten in the media:

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Year of the Woman, declared by someone in 1992 to mark and encourage the entrance of so many women into American politics.

At the exact same moment something else was happening in our public life, and it had equal or greater impact on our culture—the rise of the Internet.

Suddenly, by the mid 1990s, there was a new public place of complete freedom. Suddenly everyone—in blog posts, on personal websites, on news sites, in comment threads—had an equal voice and was operating on an equal field. The Internet became—this is America, we have a certain DNA—a bit of a Wild West. It was exciting and invigorating, a new frontier, but it held dangers, too, and darkness.

When anyone can say anything, anyone will. When the guy in the basement having his third Grey Goose finally got a telephone line on AOL, he found out he could take his Id out for a ride. He could log on, indulge his angers, and because it was anonymous he never had to stand by his words, or defend them. He never had to be embarrassed in front of his kids.

Internet is a breakthrough in human freedom. But over the past 20 years it has had a certain leveling effect. It hypes the cheap and glitzy, it reduces the worthiness of a thought to the number of clicks it gets.It has helped set a new cultural tone. It is not a higher one than we've enjoyed in the past.

Our comics and commentators went with the flow, but it only flows downward. . . .

Interesting food for thought. It raises a fundamental question about American democracy: Is the democratization of our mass culture--as represented by the internet--concerning because it drags the culture down to the lowest common denominator, or is it good because, in its driving populism, it serves as a check on elitism? 

Good news! "U.S. marriage rate stable"--researchers report that 56% of men and 52% of women are still married twenty years into their first marriages.

Don't feel like breaking out the champagne? Wondering whether our expectations for long-term happiness in relationships can possibly go any lower?

There's good reason to worry. It's not just the hard data about divorce, or about how fewer and fewer people are even attempting long-term commitment in the first place.

There are also all the firsthand accounts--overwhelmingly by women, though men are frustrated too----of how nearly impossible it seems to be, to get what we want out of relationships.

We have brilliant social scientists explaining the breakdown of marriage and brilliant cultural commentators warning about the toxic mess that modern relationships often descend into. But where can we go for a viable alternative?

May I suggest?--Jane Austen. The list of what she has to offer modern men and (especially) women practically writes itself. I'll start, but please jump into the conversation!

What we find in Jane Austen, that's too often missing from real life today:

• Love lives with dignity, instead of humiliation--Emma and Lizzy make mistakes, but it's all on a higher plane, somehow
• An aesthetic of elegance, not hotness
• Keen (and mostly forgotten)  insights into male and female psychology
• "Rules," not for manipulating the opposite sex but for getting just close enough to the other person to know whether he's the one for you--without getting so close you completely lose your perspective
• Happily ever after as a live option

Those who follow my blog have an idea how I’m spending my time as a retired CEO. I’m working – not for money, for fun. Beyond my recreational life (weapons of choice being a tennis racquet or a golf club - on a good day I use both), I’m writing about business leadership, branding and life. I’ve also written a historical novel, although I’m still trying to find a publisher who isn’t afraid to invest in a newbie, grey-haired writer in a market going through drastic change. Bottom line, I love a challenge and I’m every bit as goal-oriented as I was thirty years ago. Fortunately I don’t take myself as seriously as I did in my business days; I no longer fret about my insecurities or fear the political animals lurking in the hallowed hallways of the Zurich head office.

Looming retirement can be awfully daunting to a CEO, especially to those who define themselves by their jobs. Think about the personal and behavioral characteristics of the typical CEO. He (yes, "he" - 97% of Fortune 1000 companies are led by men) is:

1. Performance-Driven
2. Energetic and tenacious
3. Passionate and disciplined
4. Visionary
5. Resourceful

In addition, he enjoys his leadership role and the power that goes with it. Imagine how difficult it is for him to keep his ego in check. These 5 characteristics plus ego and power are the very traits that motivate ex-CEOs in their afterlife. Many find satisfaction using their influence to help others. They get behind philanthropic causes with all the zeal and determination they exerted while rising to the top of the corporate ladder. Former CEO of sports apparel maker Russell Corporation, Jack Ward puts his time and money into helping inner-city kids. Warren Staley (Cargill) supports Habitat for Humanity with a hammer, a saw and a wallet. GE's Jack Welch divides his time consulting with companies, travelling, golfing, lecturing at MIT's Sloan School of Management and donating time and money to business education.

But, not every CEO follows this trodden path. Some find happiness pursuing interests that evaded them during the demanding years in the C-suite. At one time I worked for a hard-driving chap who was prematurely pushed out of the corporate cockpit. He was 62, a golden parachute strapped to his back, but no hobbies or interests beyond business. Worried for his mental well-being, his wife bought him lessons in painting. Painting wasn't the answer. But the notion of artistic discovery inspired this lost soul. He embarked on creating life-size, caricature stone sculptures of people he knew. He became an excellent sculptor and a much happier man than he ever was in the executive suite. You could see it in his eyes whenever he spoke of his work and his desire to improve. His glowed.

During the latest edition of "Kaus and Limbaugh," David Limbaugh took a shot at--well, at whom would you suppose?  Barack Obama?  Harry Reid?  Not at all.  David took a shot at little moi. I was so startled I nearly fell off my elliptical trainer.

In a post a couple of days ago, I said, essentially, that Republicans would be crazy to risk a government shut-down.  They'd find themselves in about the same position in which Newt Gingrich and the new House GOP majority found themselves in 1995:  taking all the blame.  When you're up against the President of the United States and the mainstream media, I argued, you lose.  And balancing the budget right now, this very year, when the Democrats still control the White House and the Senate is a) impossible, and, b) beside the point.  The point is to place Republicans in position to defeat Obama and recapture the Senate in 2012.

David's counter-argument?  I wouldn't want to put words into his mouth, exactly, but basically David said I'm lily-livered.  The country's in trouble, we need dramatic action, and I've underestimated the

 extent to which the American people understand this.

Okay, David, baby, let's mix it up a little.

This very month, there will come three moments when Republicans could make a stand--and two during which they could plausibly shut down the government.

1.  Voting on the continuing resolution to fund the government through the rest of this fiscal year.  My view:  Even if the GOP got everything for which it's asking, that would still amount to only $61 billion in cuts.  Chump change.  Don't for goodness's sake risk a cataclysmic fight over that.

David?

2.  Voting to raise the debt ceiling.  Here's the way Sen. Marco Rubio put it in his column the other day in the Wall Street Journal.  He would refuse to vote for raising the debt ceiling, he insisted

unless it is the last one we ever authorize and is accompanied by a plan for fundamental tax reform, an overhaul of our regulatory structure, a cut to discretionary spending, a balanced-budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

My view:  Fine. That's just the right way for the Republicans to position themselves before going into the negotiations.  But in the GOP's inner-most councils, everybody should recognize that it's just that:  staking out a position.  Don't actually do it.  Don't shut down the government.  We want Americans to look at the GOP next year as a part of calm, sane, forthright accomplishment, not as latter-day Samsons, willing to knock down the entire edifice as long as they get to show off their strength.  

Note, by the way, that our own Lauren Fink, married, God bless her, to a Marine, got a little nervous about this the other day, saying that down in Quantico the Marine families had all already been briefed about the disruptions in their lives that a government shutdown might cause.  Ricochet member Casey, himself a military man, posted a reassuring reply, noting that our men and women in uniform would indeed continue to get paid.  But just think about that for a moment, David.  All who serve in uniform, and their dependents--which is to say, several million people--have already found themselves unnerved.  That's just the merest foreshadowing of what would happen if the government actually closed.

Anyway, David, where are you on this one?

3.  The GOP's proposed budget for fiscal year 2012.  Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and my new hero (smart, charming, funny, and fearless--that's Ryan), will be introducing this sometime during the next three weeks.  This budget will be serious.  It will take on entitlements.  It will encompass both deep cuts and basic, far-reaching reforms.  The debate over this budget won't involve the risk (or, as I suppose you might put it, the opportunity) to shut down the government, but all the same it represents the right place to stand and fight.  The budget for 2012--this is where the GOP can draw the sharp distinctions between itself and Obama.  This is where it can demonstrate real seriousness.  This is the vehicle that can most effectively offer the American people a real choice when they cast their ballots next year.

Three hills.  I say we make our stand on the third.

David?

Last week I spotted the ad pictured at right on the J.Crew website.  The text beneath the photo, which reads "Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink.  Toenail painting is way more fun in neon," struck me as odd.  I certainly wouldn't encourage effeminate tendencies in my own sons, but who am I to criticize a complete stranger's parenting decisions?

What I find most surprising is the controversy that has sprouted out of what I sized up to be a harmless, albeit odd advertisement.  Fox News has gathered incensed responses from around the web:

“This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity,” psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow wrote in a FoxNews.com Health column about the ad.

Media Research Center’s Erin Brown agreed, calling the ad “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.”

“Not only is Beckett likely to change his favorite color as early as tomorrow, Jenna's indulgence (or encouragement) could make life hard for the boy in the future,” Brown wrote in an opinion piece Friday.  "J.CREW, known for its tasteful and modest clothing, apparently does not mind exploiting Beckett behind the facade of liberal, transgendered identity politics.”

Not being a parent myself, I appeal to those of you with young sons.  Aren't critics overreacting here?  Or is there something legitimately alarming and off-putting about this ad?

“Forty years ago,” our own John Taylor noted here earlier this week, “in a famous debate with Keynesian economist Walter Heller, [Milton] Friedman said 

‘The fascinating thing to me is that the widespread faith in the potency of fiscal policy…rests on no evidence whatsoever.  It’s based on pure assumption.  It’s based on a priori reasoning.’”

That got me to thinking.  In the four decades since, have there been any instances in which a Keynesian fiscal stimulus has actually worked?  In Canada or Sweden?  In Belgium or France?  For that matter, in Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein or Monte Carlo?

To put it another way, when Paul Krugman tells us the problem with Obama’s $800 billion stimulus is that it was too small, is there anything other than Krugman’s own theories on which he’s basing that claim?  Not scratchings on Krugman's chalkboard, but actual, demonstrable human experience?  At any time?  In any place?

That strikes me as a darned good question.  I herewith toss it into the Ricochet mosh pit.

It is at once a tired cliche' and a terrible truism that life isn't fair.  None of us are safe from calamity.  But sometimes, fate seems to take a wicked swipe at very good people in the worst way.  I read with sadness and respect the letter that Ronald Reagan wrote when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.  Odd, I thought, and awful that those who have lived such rich and colorful lives should be deprived of the memories of such a journey.  

But life isn't fair.  As I sit here, struggling to put into words feelings that are caught in my throat, I think it would be best to just state it:  So it is with my Dad's permission that I pass along his recent diagnosis of Alzheimer's.  We've suspected, but we now have confirmation.  As with most things, Dad has taken things with grace and humor.  He said he can't remember what it was he was supposed to forget, so with that characteristic smile, he sees it as a simplification of life in general.  Plus, he looks forward to hiding his own easter eggs anytime of the year he feels like it.  Dad's wit is still very much alive, as evidenced by our recent discussion on whether or not the Christmas song, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman" was in fact an act of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (the word Merry being of dubious meaning).  But the little things,…what day of the week it is, or the need to repeat information several times in a conversation, betray the insidious nature of the disease.  

I find myself thinking of the unfairness, of course.  Here is a person who has served our country in uniform, who served God and others while in the ministry, who leaves in his wake a sea of smiles and laughter at his ebullient personality and effervescent humor.  A person whose father was a share cropper's son, whose family is overflowing with colorful stories and hilarious people, who at the age of 71, has every right to look back on a life well lived and simply chuckle at the memories,..and here is a disease that will rob him of that priceless treasure.  And rob his family of enjoying those memories with him.  That my friends, simply isn't fair.  

I read in the Good Book that we won't be given more than we can bear,..and that all things work to the good for those who love Him.  I believe it to be true and yet,….and yet I find myself asking why.  It's not an improper question, is it?  The inquisitive nature was instilled in me by the Almighty after all, so why should it be blasphemy to employ it?  

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"  Matthew 6:26

And even as The Savior showed his love for us, so too can we, as Dad's family, show our love and thanks for him by meeting his needs as events and circumstances dictate.  Who knows what further bonds will strengthen, or how many more lives will be touched over time.  I don't have the answers.  Would to God that I did.  But I do know that my Dad will not lack for care or the things he needs.  I've seen that happen in at least one instance,…and it will not happen on my watch.  There may come a point when he doesn't even know who we are,…but he will know that he is surrounded by people who love him and will spare no effort to insure his comfort and well being, and that is exactly as it should be.    That's what family does.  

Of the top three or four candidates for the Republican nomination, one is a thrice-married recently converted Catholic; one is drug-legalizing libertarian; and one is a devout Mormon (do I really need to find a link for him?).  Only one candidate, Rick Santorum, really fits the model of a traditional Republican social conservative.  

Choice is good, in politics as in everything else, like pizza.  But the prevailing noise from the left -- remember Theocracy Watch and the whole hysterical nonsense about Dominionsism, whatever that is? -- was terrified about the rise of the Republican theocrat.  Those on the right were supposed to be religious nuts who had only one question:  WWJVF?  Who Would Jesus Vote For?

Again: since autumn, three of the top four candidates for the Republican nomination -- especially in states with strong traditions of Christian, Evangelical, and conservative political activism -- were a libertarian drug-legalizer, a twice-divorced Catholic convert, and a Mormon, which suggests that the Republican voter is pretty sophisticated, and asks himself a lot of questions besides WWJVF.

This is news to the NYTimes:

Dick Harpootlian, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said the embrace of Mr. Romney and the fact that a black Republican, Tim Scott of Charleston, was elected to Congress from South Carolina in 2010 indicates that a new pragmatism may be taking hold.

“It suggests that the minds of South Carolinians are not as shackled by religion and race as they used to be and that we can more fully debate policy,” he said.

Ben Few, 66, an evangelical who owns a pharmacy in Spartanburg, said he supported Mr. Obama in the last election but was now backing Mr. Romney.

They can only bring themselves to talk about South Carolina.  But the real news is -- to them -- that the Republican primary voter seems to be a lot more open, a lot less single-issue, and a good deal more politically thoughtful than they were given credit for, by folks like New York Times reporters.

I wonder if that rattles them?  Just a little?

This is one of the most depressing things I have seen in a while. My friend Paul Wilson from Media Research Center reports on this is as a growing trend in news coverage on this issue. CBS had a panel earlier tell their audience that marriage is basically obsolete. My favorite part is when Matt Titus says this:

''Think about it. Men are supposed to run around the forest and propagate the species and do it multiple times a day. Do you think that we're supposed to be with one person for the rest of our lives? It's unnatural, and if it was the case we probably would not be sitting here right now.''

Somebody please pull the irony alarm and evacuate the building before you laugh yourself to death. Whenever someone suggests that homosexuality is "unnatural"- a view which I don't necessarily endorse- the left cries foul at the intolerance of the right. Lots of other things are probably appropriate to the term "unnatural," a term these esteemed scholars don't seem to need to define. We could include television news in the unnatural category, but somehow I don't think the folks at CBS would care that much.

More disturbing is the use of the word "supposed" I've highlighted above. Don't you see? We don't need marriage because it's supposed to restrain us from doing something we're "supposed" to be doing. Obviously since we feel very strongly motivated to do something, presumably by our genetics, then that is what we're "supposed" to be doing. This would then mean that other "natural" behaviors- they must be natural because people are apparently strongly motivated to do them- should be condoned. This would include such niceties as child abuse, rape, and murder. All they have to do is read the Wikipedia article titled "appeal to nature" to see why this doesn't make sense.

As someone who hopes one day to be lucky enough to perpetuate this ancient institution, socially constructed or not, this whole segment makes me angry in ways I can't describe fully. This is one of those things that leads me to think my invitation to western civilization's funeral got lost in the mail.

I woke up this morning with a few minor complaints about my life. You know, the usual--not making enough money, not focused enough, too many unanswered e-mails, hostage to seven emotionally needy cats. Then I read about the Secret Service sex bust, and I decided my life was just fine.

Can you imagine how those idiots are feeling right now? I am so glad, I am so deeply grateful, I am so infinitely thankful, that I am not one of the Secret Service agents who has just been busted not only for soliciting hookers in Cartagena but for being too cheap to pay the bill. I am so glad I am not now in a plane en route to explain that to my wife.

Thank you, God.  

Ursula Hennessey writes about her disappointment on learning that Richard Thomas was participating in the sexual revolution while portraying John-Boy Walton, prompting Andrew Klavan to write in turn that Mel Gibson, now given to anti-Semitic rants, and Roman Polanski, given to statutory rape, have both produced fine movies. "We have to learn to celebrate the artist's creation as a gift from God," Andrew concludes, "and leave the artist himself to his foolishness, imperfection and inner darkness."

Well, okay, I guess, but let's not understate just how hard it can be to celebrate the way God goes about distributing those creative gifts. I mean, really. Why could John Kenneth Galbraith write better than Milton Friedman? Why does Christopher Hitchens write better than Mother Teresa? Why were Paul Newman and Marlon Brando better actors than John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart? The bad guys have Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and John Irving. Our side has Tom Wolfe. That's three to one. When it comes to the arts, it's almost as if God wants the good guys to start from behind.

When--or, rather, if--I get to heaven, I intend to take this up with the Almighty. In the meantime, Ursula and Drew, I have only you. What are we to make of this?

Our discussion of candidates with personal baggage led Mollie to note the tendency of politicians who are not terribly principled in their private lives to wind up indicted on corruption charges.

I was meditating upon that and thinking of my beloved Margaret Thatcher. She was, famously, tenderly devoted to her husband, to whom she was very happily married. She insisted upon cooking him his breakfast every morning, no matter what the demands of her day as Prime Minister of Britain. His death devastated her.

In the acknowledgements to my book about her, I note the debt historians owe to her:

Lady Thatcher was under no obligation to give her personal papers to anyone. Indeed, she could have sold them to the highest bidder or burnt them had she thought it prudent. She instead donated them to the British people. This is proof of the depth of her commitment to the ideal of an open society, not to mention an extraordinary testimony to her confidence in her own character. You do not hand over to historians and journalists 3,000 boxes of papers, many of which you have not seen since the day they crossed your desk, if you are not certain that you have always conducted yourself with irreproachable integrity. Think about it: Would you?

I can't say I would have the confidence to hand over the paper record of the past several decades of my life to the public in the serene assurance that not so much as scrap of paper would suggest a hint of personal or professional impropriety. I'd at least want to look at everything once to be sure. 

Mrs. Thatcher was remarkably tolerant of her ministers' personal failings. She had, however, none of her own. 

Earlier today, North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue told a local rotary club about her stolen-from-the-mind-of-Fidel-Castro idea for how to fix the United States economy:

I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.

When the local paper ran the initial report, the headline for the piece was (as the url indicates) "Perdue Suggests Suspending Congressional Elections For Two Years. Was She Serious?" Now the headline declares that she was joking. Ha ha!

Though the full statement, which you can find here, doesn't have an ounce of ha-ha or humor in it, I think any press secretary worth his salt would use the "joke" spin. Mighty nice of the media to agree with that spin!

Be sure to tell us if you have any similar jokes about suspending the democratic process.

From HuffPo comes this barrage of bad news, which isn't really "news" to anyone who has been paying attention:

Educators are expressing alarm that the performance gap between minority and white high school students continues to expand across the United States, with minority teenagers performing at academic levels equal to or lower than those of 30 years ago.

Whenever you read the words "educators are expressing alarm," you know you're about to enter into farrago of excuses and clichés.  Brace yourself:

On average, African-American and Latino high school seniors perform math and read at the same level as 13-year-old white students.

"We take kids that start [high school] a little behind and by the time they finish high school, they're way behind," says Amy Wilkins, vice president for government affairs and communications at the Education Trust, a Washington-based educational advocacy group. "That's the opposite of what American values say education is about. Education is supposed to level the playing field. And it does the opposite. . . .While many people are celebrating our postracial society . . . there is still a significant hangover in our schools."

More signs that what's about to unfold is a swampy mess of nonsense, blame-shifting, and crapola?  These words are all you need to read: "A Washington-based educational advocacy group."  You may as well hang a sign that says: "What follows is going to miss the point entirely."  

Here's what the Education Trust says is the problem.  Here's why black and Latino students are fairing so poorly:

Educators cite these causes for the disparity in performance:

• Lowered expectations for students of color
• Growing income inequality and lack of resources in low-income school districts
• Unequal access to experienced teachers
• An increased number of "out of field" teachers instructing minority students in subjects outside their area of expertise
• Unconscious bias" by teachers and administrators.
• These factors, experts say, produce an opportunity gap for students of color.

 "A 12th-grade education in a more affluent neighborhood is not the same as the education in a less affluent neighborhood," says Dominique Apollon, research director of the Applied Research Center, a national nonprofit with offices in New York, Chicago and Oakland, Calif. "Top students in low-income schools don't have the opportunity to be pushed further and further."

Six excuses.  Six blame-shifting pieces of nonsense.  Six new ways to say "it's racism!"  Six more attempts to deflect the real reason for rotten schools, the real reason for the performance gap, the real reason for the despair and hopelessness in our public schools:

Organizations like Education Trust, and their lickspittle toadying to the teachers' unions and the criminally incompetent public school system.  

With 89 percent of the precincts reporting, CNN has just called Rick Santorum winner of the Colorado caucuses, in which he appears to have defeated Mitt Romney by 38 to 36 percent.  The polls have for several days now indicated that Santorum would win in Minnesota and Missouri, although they understated his margin of victory, but no one--no one--expected Santorum to pull off a victory in Colorado, which was thought to be in Romney's back pocket.

An astonishing upset.  Just astonishing.

Update three minutes later:  The New York Times just called Colorado for Santorum as well. 

I've brought up the Muslim Brotherhood quite a few times on Ricochet. As I've written before, I find it unfathomable, a true national security emergency, that the words "Muslim Brotherhood" mean so little to most Americans. I've been blaming the media, but I am the media, so perhaps it would behoove me just to do something about it.

This week I'll write a multi-part series about the Brotherhood, after which I expect all of America to understand the history and evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood, to be able to write a short essay about the key aspects of its ideology, to recognize the names of prominent figures in the Brotherhood and the names of Brotherhood-linked or inspired movements and groups (particularly those in America, and particularly those whose spokesmen keep showing up on the nightly news), to appreciate the reach of the Brotherhood today, to understand contemporary policy debates about the Brotherhood, and to be able to state succinctly why all of this matters to you. There will be a test at the end.  All of America is expected to take it. 

The Society of the Muslim Brotherhood--the Jamaat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, or the Ikhwan, for short--was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al Banna. A decade later, it had a million active followers and sympathizers in Egypt alone. 

The first thing you must grasp about Brotherhood is its ideology: Its goal is the establishment everywhere of an Islamic state governed by Sharia law. In al Banna's own words, it seeks "to impose its laws on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet." Its motto: "God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Qur'an our constitution, Jihad our way and dying for God's cause our supreme objective." Clear enough?

The Brotherhood's essence is immoderate: It is at its core unremittingly anti-secular, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic and anti-Western. It has fractured; there are divisions within it; like all movements it is comprised of individuals, some of whom are pleasant--but basically it has not changed. It was not moderate then and it is not moderate now. To the extent that al Banna rejected violence as a strategy, he did so only because he viewed it as an ineffective strategy so long as the movement was outranked by superior force--a strategy apt to result in the movement being crushed, which would be counter-productive.

Here is al-Banna in his own words on the concept of jihad. He rejects every verse or interpretation of the Koran that could be interpreted as "moderate" in favor of the most extreme verses and interpretations: 

Many Muslims today mistakenly believe that fighting the enemy is jihad asghar (a lesser jihad) and that fighting one's ego is jihad akbar (a greater jihad). The following narration [athar] is quoted as proof: "We have returned from the lesser jihad to embark on the greater jihad." They said: "What is the greater jihad?" He said: "The jihad of the heart, or the jihad against one's ego."

This narration is used by some to lessen the importance of fighting, to discourage any preparation for combat, and to deter any offering of jihad in Allah's way. This narration is not a saheeh (sound) tradition: The prominent muhaddith Al Hafiz ibn Hajar al-Asqalani said in the Tasdid al-Qaws:

‘It is well known and often repeated, and was a saying of Ibrahim ibn 'Abla.’

Al Hafiz Al Iraqi said in the Takhrij Ahadith al-Ahya’:

‘Al Bayhaqi transmitted it with a weak chain of narrators on the authority of Jabir, and Al Khatib transmitted it in his history on the authority of Jabir.’

Nevertheless, even if it were a sound tradition, it would never warrant abandoning jihad or preparing for it in order to rescue the territories of the Muslims and repel the attacks of the disbelievers. Let it be known that this narration simply emphasises the importance of struggling against one's ego so that Allah will be the sole purpose of everyone of our actions.

Other associated matters concerning jihad include commanding the good and forbidding the evil. It is said in the Hadeeth: "One of the greatest forms of jihad is to utter a word of truth in the presence of a tyrannical ruler." But nothing compares to the honour of shahadah kubra (the supreme martyrdom) or the reward that is waiting for the Mujahideen.

It's all like this, with al Banna. (No, it is not like this with all Muslims, unless you agree with him that those Muslims who believe fighting one's ego to be the greater jihad are "mistaken." Note that he himself believes that "many Muslims today" believe this.) But al Banna is the echt item--a radical who seeks to impose upon the world a religious tyranny by any means necessary:   

we will not stop at this point [i.e., freeing Egypt from secularism and modernity], but will pursue this evil force to its own lands, invade its Western heartland, and struggle to overcome it until all the world shouts by the name of the Prophet and the teachings of Islam spread throughout the world. Only then will Muslims achieve their fundamental goal and all religion will be exclusively for Allah. 

The second thing you must grasp is the approach al Banna advocated: to work slowly and patiently to politicize religion from the bottom up. The Brotherhood is sometimes described as “non-violent,” which is nonsense, it’s plenty violent, but this idea comes from al Banna’s observation that violence was only one tool in the toolkit, and shouldn’t be used when other tools would work more effectively. 

The Brotherhood is vastly more sophisticated, in this sense, than al Qaeda. In Egypt, the Brotherhood created what has effectively been a shadow government, a state within a state, to redress local social grievances and channel economic and political discontent into Islamism. The Brotherhood built (and builds) schools, sports clubs, factories, medical clinics, an entire welfare service network. It had (and still has) specific branches charged with targeting specific segments of society--a bureau for peasants, a bureau for workers. It had (and has) dedicated units for domestic propaganda, for liaison with the wider Islamic world, for press relations. Al Banna created what was and remains an extremely sophisticated political organization, analogous in many ways to the Comintern. 

He also created a paramilitary organization--one that stole weapons, trained fighters, formed assassination squads, created sleeper cells in the army and police, and waited for the order to begin an outright campaign of terror, assassination, and suicide missions. Then, as now, idiot Westerners looked at the Brotherhood, nodded sagely, and said, "Well, the people love them because they build soup kitchens. Surely that's very admirable." 

The third essential thing you must grasp is that the Brotherhood formed an active alliance with the Nazis. There was a natural ideological affinity, obviously--Jew hatred, authoritarianism, an enthrallment with violence and a common hatred of the British. But the transformation of affinity to alliance had very distinct historic consequences; it is precisely why we keep seeing a form of anti-Semitism that reminds us of the Third Reich in the Islamic world today: It comes directly from the Third Reich. The Nazis and the Muslim Brotherhood worked together to create Arab translations of Mein Kampf (translated as My Jihad), to translate anti-Semitic cartoons from Der Sturmer, and to adapt images of the Jew from "Enemy of the Volk" to "Enemy of Allah."

No, this kind of anti-Semitism is not simply the ancient nature of Islam, no more than it it is the ancient nature of Christian Europe--Nazism is a historically unique ideology and unique evil. This stuff we now see in the Islamic world looks like Nazism because it comes from the Nazis. 

Let's begin with that. Tomorrow we'll explore the development of the Brotherhood in the postwar era. As a homework exercise, I leave it to America to identify lobby groups and think tanks in the United States that are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and to note ways that these groups have recently shaped public discourse on matters of national security.

If you fail the test, don't blame the media--I'm doing my best, here. 

It's probably wishful thinking, but I'm noticing something happening in the culture.  Here are the dots, and here's how I connect them:

1. It's official:  for a huge number of students, college is a waste of time.  Not just because they could be out in the world, learning on the job.  But because college is, in many many ways, an expensive, coddling resort.  From Yahoo News:

A study of more than 2,300 undergraduates found 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in the key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.

Not much is asked of students, either. Half did not take a single course requiring 20 pages of writing during their prior semester, and one-third did not take a single course requiring even 40 pages of reading per week.

The findings are in a new book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," by sociologists Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia.

2. Tough parents demand a lot from their kids, and the kids are grateful for it.  In her now-famous WSJ piece, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, Amy Chua lays it down:

In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mothers said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way.

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up.

So her kid must hate her, right?  Not so fast.  From the NYPost, Sophia Chua-Rubinfeld, her daugher, responds:

I admit it: Having you as a mother was no tea party. There were some play dates I wish I’d gone to and some piano camps I wish I’d skipped. But now that I’m 18 and about to leave the tiger den, I’m glad you and Daddy raised me the way you did. 

I think #1 and #2 are related, in a very big way.  Again, maybe wishful thinking, but I'm detecting in the first cracks in the 1950's and 1960's philosophy of child-raising and education.  Children need to be praised.  Everyone goes to college.  The most important thing is to build up self-esteem.  All of that nonsense seems to be under attack -- and thank God! -- as Americans face a more competitive and cutthroat world marketplace.  

Leaving college with a degree in Sociology and $100,000 in debt no longer seems smart, let alone a birthright.  Teachers' unions no longer have the moral high ground -- not even in Boston! -- and one of the most popular politicians in America has made teachers union bashing an indoor Olympic sport:

And then I re-watched this artifact from the 2008 campaign -- barely three years old -- and it somehow seems hilariously dated, like leisure suits and hippie chicks who say "groovy."

I connect the dots this way:  the culture is turning away from soft.  It's turning away from sociology degrees, feel-good parenting, sagging schools, and political daydreaming.  It's turning back to toughness.

If I were running for president, I'd make note of that.

J.D. Salinger's classic turns 60 this year.

Today, I came across this post by a priest whose understanding of himself, Holden, and one of the book's key passages has developed and transformed, thanks to some Flannery O'Connor as well as personal experience.

When I first read Catcher in my junior year of college, my absolute favorite part of the book was when Holden explained to Phoebe that all he wanted to do all day was stand on the edge of a big cliff, making sure that the kids playing some game in the field of rye didn’t fall over the edge. I bracketed that entire section with a blue pen. A couple of years later, when I read Catcher for the second time, that business about keeping the kids from falling over the cliff remained my favorite part, but this time I underlined the entire section with a red pen and then wrote “Priesthood 173” on the first page of my book, which is where I always make a personal index. Every time I’ve readCatcher since, I’ve stopped on page 173 and thought to myself, “this is what the priesthood is all about.” I always thought of Holden standing on the edge of that cliff as an image of Jesus the Good Shepherd, and I loved that all he wanted to do all day was to save people. That all changed about two years ago.

Do you have strong feelings about the book?

So, it's been a little over two days since the Norway shootings, and the media is having a grand old time pointing to monstrous terrorist Anders Behring Breivik and indirectly lumping him together with conservatives the world over.  You can hear New York Magazine chortling as they write the headline "Far-Right Norwegian Confesses to Oslo Bombing, Youth Camp Shooting."  They were not as enamored of the Discovery Channel shooter, who did not merit the designation "Far-Left."

The left attempts to link every ideology it doesn't like with violence (i.e. Tea Party) while simultaneously making the point that no ideology is free of crazies, and that therefore, no ideology can be held responsible for its crazies.  Either the right wing accepts monsters like Breivik as honest representatives of conservatism, the argument goes, or they have to stop treating Osama Bin Laden and his ilk as honest representatives of radical Islam.

This is silly.  I propose a two-prong test to determine whether an ideology ought to bear culpability for the terroristic violence of its adherents against particular targets:

(1) A large percentage -- say, more than 20% of the ideology's adherents -- support terroristic violence against the target at issue;

(2) The ideology itself contemplates violent terroristic action against the target at issue.

That doesn't hold for Breivik, at least not if we're trying to link him to mainstream European conservatism.  No form of European conservatism of which I am aware condones or even contemplates the mass shooting of European schoolkids.  And no European conservatives -- or at least very few -- would endorse this evil act.

Now, try it on militant Islam.  Certainly more than 20% of radical Islamists support terror against their usual targets -- in fact, more than 20% of Muslims support such violence, period.  And there's no question that radical Islam openly contemplates violence.  So let's stop these idiotic comparisons. Breivik is a sick exception.  Bin Laden is far closer to a rule.  

The Mitt Romney video that Ben Domenech has posted below deserves attention. It demonstrates – if the point needs demonstrating – that Romney is a managerial progressive. His initial response to Obamacare was to want “to repeal the bad and keep the good,” and among the things he thought good about the President’s healthcare reform were the incentive structure (i.e., the individual mandate enforced by fines) and the provision that insurance be provided to those with pre-existing conditions who had not seen fit to pay for insurance when they thought that they were healthy (i.e., making the responsible pay for the irresponsible).

In short, Governor Romney sees us as children who need to be policed in a thorough-going way for our own good. His objections to Obamacare are those of a social engineer. This is the real Romney. The fellow now calling for the wholesale repeal of Obamacare is, as I have argued at length in an earlier post, a chameleon. He will do what he needs to do to attract our votes, or, at least, in his awkward, inept way, he will try. And in this one particular he may feel bound to keep his promise. But once in office – like Eisenhower, Nixon, Bush One, and Bush Two – he will drift into extending the power and scope of the administrative entitlements state. In most regards, he will consolidate what Barack Obama has initiated.

I would like to think that Newt Gingrich represents a genuine alternative. His record in office as Speaker of the House of Representatives is much more conservative than Mitt Romney’s record as Governor of Massachusetts. But his record since then is even more disappointing than I thought it was when I described him as the wild card.

I was inclined to give Gingrich the benefit of the doubt with regard to the consulting work that he did for Freddie Mac. I was wrong. As The Wall Street Journal points out in an editorial in this morning’s newspaper, Gingrich publicly defended both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as late as April, 2007 when he remarked, “While we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself.” He defended Fannie and Fred on the ground there are times “when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development,” and he described himself as being “in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism.”

As the Journal points out, Gingrich was notably silent when Congressman Richard Baker, Senator Richard Shelby, and Bush White House aide Kevin Marsh went to “the barricades” in an attempt to force a reform of Fannie and Freddie:

As for the destructive duo's business model that Mr. Gingrich said he didn't want to change, this was precisely their problem. Far from a private-public partnership, they were private companies with a federal guarantee against failure. Their model was private profit but socialized risk. This produced riches on Wall Street and for company executives. But taxpayers bore the risk of loss—to the tune of $141 billion so far. Why does the historian think they were called "government-sponsored enterprises"?

The real history lesson here may be what the Freddie episode reveals about Mr. Gingrich's political philosophy. To wit, he has a soft spot for big government when he can use it for his own political ends. He also supported the individual mandate in health care in the 1990s, and we recall when he lobbied us to endorse the prescription drug benefit with only token Medicare reform in 2003.

As late as Thursday night's debate, Mr. Gingrich was still defending his Freddie ties as a way of "helping people buy houses." But that is the same excuse Barney Frank used to block reform, and the political pursuit of making housing affordable is what led Freddie to guarantee loans to so many borrowers who couldn't repay them. Yesterday's SEC lawsuit against former Fannie and Freddie executives for misleading investors about subprime-mortgage risks only reinforces the point.

In short, Gingrich is a lot like Romney. Neither man recognizes that the source of our problems is government meddling and the distortion that this produces in what would otherwise be a free and relatively efficient market. What they think of as a cure is, in fact, the disease. Fannie and Freddie, with the help of a Federal Reserve Board that kept interest rates artificially low for a very long time, produced the subprime mortgage bubble and the subsequent economic crash. If healthcare is outrageously expensive and health insurance can be hard to get, it is because of the manner in which the federal and state governments structure and regulate the market. What these managerial progressives in their desperation to manage the lives of the rest of us fail to understand is that the intellectual presumption underpinning the aspiration to “rational administration” that they embrace is the principal cause of our woes.

Romney can perhaps be forgiven for his folly. He is not an especially well-educated man. He is the son of a businessman, and he is himself a business-school product. He understands management; he believes in management; and he is ready, willing, and able to manage our lives for us. Like many Republicans of similar background, he has given next to no thought to first principles.

For Gingrich, there is no excuse. He poses as an historian, and he was trained as one. He is a lot more thoughtful than Romney, a lot more imaginative, and a lot better informed. But he also lacks perspective – for he has been inattentive to the American Founders. Or he has read them through the eyes of the Progressive historians of the early part of the twentieth century.

Alexander Hamilton and Teddy Roosevelt do not belong together. The former was an exponent of natural rights and an advocate of limited government; and, despite their differences, he had far more in common with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson than with the Progressives of a later day. In office, Jefferson and Madison embraced much of what they had once found objectionable in Hamilton’s program.

Teddy Roosevelt was in no way a conservative. He was a sharp critic of the American Founding and of the Constitution it produced. He was prepared to jettison natural rights and limited government, and he did so in a dramatic fashion ninety-nine years ago when he ran for the Presidency as the nominee of the Progressive Party on a radical platform advocating the creation of what is now known as the administrative entitlements state.

A few weeks ago, Robert K. Landers reviewed in The Wall Street Journal a book by Scott Farris, entitled Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race and Changed the Nation. Among the influential losers discussed in the book was Thomas E. Dewey, who ran unsuccessfully against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944 and Harry Truman in 1948:

"Dewey, along with his protégés Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon," Mr. Farris writes, "moved the Republican Party away from an agenda of repealing the New Deal to a grudging acceptance of the permanent welfare state." Dewey—who had been a nationally renowned prosecutor and then a three-term governor of New York—called himself a "New Deal Republican." He favored the pursuit of liberal ends by conservative means. "It was fine for the federal government to initiate social reforms, Dewey believed, but those reforms should be implemented at the state or local level, and they should be funded in a fiscally responsible manner that did not increase the national debt."

Dewey was the heir of Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover, as was every Republican Presidential nominee since his time – apart from Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are cut from the same cloth. As New Deal Republicans, they are peas in a pod, and they have a lot more in common with Barack Obama than with Alexander Hamilton.

It is a scandal that the Republican Party cannot do better than these two at a time of opportunity like the one in which we live.

Last week my friend, and Ricochet Member, Duane Oyen posited a question to those of us on the right, asking if it was time to "Re-Boot" conservatism.  The centerpiece of Duane's post was an article by Dr. Steven Hayward, titled "Modernizing Conservatism."  Dr. Hayward's piece, written at the request of The Breakthrough Institute, (an organization which Duane assures us is a "rational liberal" think tank) serves as a companion to a "modernizing liberalism" article.  While Duane concedes that he agrees with a great deal of Dr. Hayward's ideas, he was curious about how others would react.  

The reaction was swift as the comment thread itself became a bit contentious at times.  But I thought it worth the effort to step back and read Dr. Hayward's article as dispassionately as possible, taking to heart Duane's admonition that, "… we also need to look at ourselves or we ourselves are unserious."  Now to be sure, there are "pet conservatives" here and there whose primary occupation is tearing down those who advance the conservative cause.  Because I don't count Duane in that category, I've spent no small amount of time considering the issues as Dr. Hayward frames them.  

Dr. Hayward begins by citing the recent success of the Tea Party and the 2010 elections, and concludes that we're in trouble.  "Conservatism," he says, "is failing on its own terms."  As indicators, he points to a stagnant minority underclass and a middle class that is not only stagnant, but showing signs of economic regress. "Stagnant income growth and mobility and a shrinking middle class are considered unhealthy by most conservative understandings of social health, cohesion, and well-being," writes Dr. Hayward, but concludes that these issues, "…have attracted only the attention of Charles Murray."  A categorical statement of this order, contradicted as it is by virtually every conservative publication and website in the country whose headlines and tables of contents regularly overflow with considered and urgent analysis of the catastrophic condition of the economy on both a macro and micro level, makes Dr. Hayward's conclusions something less than irresistible, …which is a polite way of saying, "Strike One."   Yes, these issues are existentially important not only to conservatism, but to the survival of the country itself, which is why so many of us are utterly distraught by the choice in candidates offered to us in 2012.  But Dr. Hayward doesn't really explain how the tragic indicators he cites can be called a failure of conservatism.  Certainly the policies of the last two and a half years, which have brought the country to its knees, didn't originate from the right. 

Then comes this statement, which is breathtaking:  

By allowing their well-reasoned and often well-founded critiques of government action to metastasize into a categorical rejection of all prospective government action, while continuing to deny the basic political economy of the welfare state, conservatives increasingly find themselves in an ideological and practical straightjacket.

I, for one, categorically reject the idea that conservatives categorically reject "all prospective government action."  What conservatives reject is unconstitutional government action.  Conservatives have either proposed or passed, to standing ovations from other conservatives, one prospective government action after another, from  "Cut, Cap, and Balance," to the Ryan Plan.  The Constitutional distinction is a basic tenet of conservatism, yet curiously absent from Dr. Hayward's lengthy article.   As to his assertion that conservatives, "…deny the basic political economy of the welfare state…" I know Dr. Hayward is aware of Paul Ryan's efforts in that very arena because he writes of them approvingly, so I'm at a loss to explain his assertion of a conservative denial.  Strike Two.  

One of the lynchpins of Dr. Hayward's argument that conservatism needs a restart, is something he describes as the failed "starve the beast" strategy.  This strategy purports to reduce the size of government by reducing revenues into the government.  Indeed, from a 1981 speech by President Reagan, we read;

Over the past decades we've talked of curtailing government spending so that we can then lower the tax burden. Sometimes we've even taken a run at doing that. But there were always those who told us that taxes couldn't be cut until spending was reduced. Well, you know, we can lecture our children about extravagance until we run out of voice and breath. Or we can cure their extravagance by simply reducing their allowance.

Conflating tax rates with tax revenues, Dr. Hayward continues; 

Rigorous analyses from centrist economists Christina and David Romer of UC Berkeley, and from libertarian economist (and Reagan White House alumnus) William Niskanen conclude that the starve-the-beast strategy fails. Strikingly, Niskanen's analysis found that lower taxes correlated with higher levels of federal spending. As a result, Niskanen argues that raising taxes may be the most effective way to reduce government spending.

And that's really what he seems to be after here; higher taxes.  The paradox of which he writes is really not so striking when you consider the fact that it was the tax rate that Reagan lowered, not tax revenue.  In fact, revenues to the government increased from $517 billion in 1980 to over $1 trillion in 1990, according to the Heritage Foundation.  Adjusted for inflation, that's an increase of 28%.  The beast, therefore, was never starved.  The government simply blasted through the additional revenue, over President Reagan's veto, and continued running a deficit.  Strike Three.  

"Thus, conservative attachment to a failing strategy has rendered the Right incapable of reducing government spending," continues Dr. Hayward, who prefers a "serve the check" approach framed in the manner of making Americans pay for all the government they receive.  In other words, an increased tax burden.  Dr. Hayward's statement that the current arrangement, "…allows Americans to receive a dollar in government services while only having to pay 60 cents for it," strikes a discord in the ear of a free man, presuming as it does that the taxpayer is somehow ripping off the government, when in reality it's the other way around.  From Tea Parties to town halls, from letters to newspapers and across the internet to the wave of citizen legislators we sent to Washington in the last election, we keep telling the government to spend less, and yet somehow we are being allowed some sort of unfair bargain when they spend more?  In the first place, we didn't order all this stuff off the menu, and we aren't terribly happy about paying the checks for almost 50% of the population.  Hell, we didn't even get to read the menu in the case of Obamacare, which was passed against the popular will.  Who, aside from leftists, demanded quantum increases in operating budgets for administrative agencies?  Secondly, increasing the tax burden depresses economic growth which, in turn, can actually depress revenue and further exacerbate the problem of debt, unemployment, economic stagnation, etc.  But in the final analysis, the beast will be starved because we are broke.  Across Europe, governments are, "running out of other people's money," as Margaret Thatcher so famously and astutely observed.  Raising the cost to the productive sector is not the answer. 

Again, from Dr. Hayward:

It may be that internal ideological reformation must precede bipartisan political compromise. Ideological extremists in both parties have repeatedly succeeded in scuttling tax and entitlement compromises pursued by moderate reformers in their respective parties, and at the moment, the prospects for any compromises seem remote. 

I'm always intrigued by this kind of language.  The left in general, and President Obama in particular, have shown outright hostility toward the Constitution.  Conservatives, on the other hand, have tried to restore and conserve it.  What is this "extremists in both parties" business, exactly?  I understand that working to undermine the law of the land is indeed extreme, but what is extreme about trying to preserve it?   What part of the Constitution ought we to compromise, exactly?  On a micro level, if we're going to compromise, how about doing so on the left side of the playing field for a change?  Regarding taxing and spending, the compromise always assumes that both taxes and entitlements will increase and so we compromise on the rate of increase.  This, we are told, is the smart and moderate thing to do.  We pat ourselves on the back, and continue toward the cliff though at a slightly adjusted speed.  Just once, how about telling the left that we will compromise on the rate of decrease?   I suspect that would be labeled, by both the left and some on our own side, as intransigent.  Conservatism doesn't need a re-boot, but rather a renewed fidelity to the enduring principles that made this nation great.  

When it comes to economics, if it is clarity you desire, Walter E. Williams (George Mason University) is your guy.  Professor Williams has been explaining the tenets of a free market economy, and articulating a proper understanding of limited government, for decades.  Now, to our delight, Dr. Williams has "brought his talents" to Prager University with this newest course "The Power of Profit."

Did you ever wonder why anything gets anywhere? How potatoes from Idaho, for example, end up in a supermarket in New York City? How Texas-raised T-bone steaks end up on the plate of a businessman out to lunch in Chicago?  Walter Williams explains why it all depends on one thing -- profit.

Given the current political and cultural climate, this is a controversial claim.  But watch the course for yourself, and let me know what you think.