Categories
culture

Conspiracy of Confusion

Diet is about as far from my normal topics as I can imagine. Part of the reason for this is that I generally follow the world’s simplest diet:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (Michael Pollan January 28, 2007)

I have followed that basic idea for years without knowing anything about Michael Pollan or what he had written. Today I stumbled upon An Omnivore Defends Real Food and could not help but make some connections between the confusion surrounding nutrition (as opposed to the apparent simplicity of the dietary plan above) and the confusion surrounding so many other social, economic, and political issues.

I would not make the argument that everything could be simplified as much as that maxim on diet (or even that everything should be so simple in a perfect world) but the thing that struck me, and the very purpose of my advocacy for liberty, is that we need to be free to our own level of complexity or simplicity in most things. With diet I can choose to ignore all the advertising about the latest health fad, or I can choose to test or follow any given news about the dangers of whole milk or the virtue of Omega3 fatty-acids. On the other hand I am not free to opt out of social security and many politicians are talking about making it illegal for me to choose not to have health insurance.

The argument is that if I don’t get health insurance and something happens to me then I become a financial burden to society as I use government funded health care. The same argument is applied to whether I am allowed to pay in to unemployment taxes – what if I lose my job. The real problem is that government has created a system whereby people can freeload on the system so it does not matter how much someone protests that they won’t. Personal responsibility is a thing of the past because Uncle Sam can/will bail you out. Personal liberty is also reduced because everyone is required to participate (at least on the paying in portion – you can opt out on the receiving benefits side of most programs).

I can’t think of any of the entitlement programs that the government runs that would be a bad thing if they were based on voluntary participation. The universal problems they share are their coercive nature and the complexity that makes themboth inefficient and exploitable.

Categories
culture

The Electability Trap

In what is probably the best non-partisan political commentary I’ve read recently, Ron Klain at Campaign Stops (a New York Times blog) writes about the dangers of choosing a candidate based on electability.

Whether you are looking for the person you think would be the best president or the person with whom you agree on key issues; the person whose experience is best suited to the job or the person who is most likely to bring change to Washington, there are many good reasons to choose a particular candidate. Character, personality, leadership skills, resume or accomplishments are also good things to consider. Almost any reason will do, just please don’t pick someone because you think that he or she is the most “electable” candidate that your party can nominate.

Of course we would all like to vote for the winner, but voting is our chance as citizens to make a statement. We should be standing for what we believe by the way we vote, not hazarding a guess as to what the majority believes. Again, I like the way Ron makes his closing argument:

Taking something as sacred as your presidential preference and turning it into an act of political prognostication cheapens your choice: being a voter is a more important job in our system than being a pundit or a consultant. Why should you cast your vote based on how you think others will vote (even if you could guess that accurately)? Why should their choice matter more than your own?

Yes, ultimately, presidential campaigns are about winning: a candidate who does not win cannot achieve policy changes or make the country a better place. And being mindful of the consequences of our votes is important, as many people who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 — only to put George Bush in the White House, instead of Al Gore — have painfully learned.

If you want to back a winner in 2008, focus on persuading your neighbor to come over to your choice, instead of guessing how he will vote.

Categories
culture

Case for Absitnence

I was surprised as I read this Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Caitlin Flanagan. I doubt it was her intent, but I found a very strong argument in favor of abstinence as the preferred attitude toward extra-marital sex. She argues that there is a double standard related to the burdens of teenage pregnancy that falls more heavily on girls than on boys.

. . . the last scene [of “Juno”] brought tears to my eyes. To see a young daughter, faced with the terrible fact of a pregnancy, unscathed by it and completely her old self again was magical.

And that’s why “Juno” is a fairy tale. As any woman who has ever chosen (or been forced) [to give a child up for adoption] can tell you, surrendering a baby whom you will never know comes with a steep and lifelong cost. Nor is an abortion psychologically or physically simple. It is an invasive and frightening procedure, and for some adolescent girls it constitutes part of their first gynecological exam. I know grown women who’ve wept bitterly after abortions, no matter how sound their decisions were. How much harder are these procedures for girls, whose moral and emotional universe is just taking shape?

Of course those who disapprove of abstinence education also want to prevent unwanted pregnancies. On that everyone is agreed. The problem that they ignore is the fundamental fact that the natural result of sexual activity is pregnancy. We can lower the chances, but we can’t eliminate them. Regardless of what they may wish, there are side effects to abortion as well.

It would be helpful for the pro-life groups to admit that their preference for adoption over abortion is not without side-effects either. The reality is that regardless of the course taken afterwards, the universal result of unwanted pregnancies is emotional pain and suffering for the mother if not for anyone else.

Ms. Flanagan wonders if there is a way to level the difference in the burdens between teenage fathers who can escape the consequences in many cases and teenage mothers who can’t. Even her own words seem to promise that the answer is no.

Pregnancy robs a teenager of her girlhood. This stark fact is one reason girls used to be so carefully guarded and protected — in a system that at once limited their horizons and safeguarded them from devastating consequences. The feminist historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg has written that “however prudish and ‘uptight’ the Victorians were, our ancestors had a deep commitment to girls.”

We, too, have a deep commitment to girls, and ours centers not on protecting their chastity, but on supporting their ability to compete with boys, to be free — perhaps for the first time in history — from the restraints that kept women from achieving on the same level. Now we have to ask ourselves this question: Does the full enfranchisement of girls depend on their being sexually liberated? And if it does, can we somehow change or diminish among the very young the trauma of pregnancy, the occasional result of even safe sex?

The trauma that will always accompany unwanted pregnancy has become more common as we first accept that “boys will be boys” and then we glorify that attitude, excusing (and demeaning) young men as being unable to control themselves. We have followed that moral irresponsibility by trying to teach our girls to be boys in adopting a callous attitude about sex. Sexual activity was never meant to be taken lightly which is why it was meant to be reserved for a marriage relationship. Any other relationship and it does not matter what precautions you take, you are flirting with the consequences of pregnancy and STDs.

This is why we must teach young women to guard themselves and we must teach young men to guard the young women they care about. This teaching is not meant to be done publicly. It should be undertaken within the setting of family. No other setting can ever be fully satisfactory for the intimacy of discussion that is warranted on this subject.

Categories
National

The Pull of Youth

I can’t really explain why the following passage stuck in my mind from Frank Richs’ column in the New York Times yesterday. Something about it just caught my attention and has been hanging on in the background ever since. Speaking of the winners of the Iowa caucuses:

The two men are the youngest candidates in the entire field, the least angry and the least inclined to seek votes by saturation-bombing us with the post-9/11 arsenal of fear. They both radiate the kind of wit and joy (and, yes, hope) that can come only with self-confidence and a comfort in their own skins. They don’t run from Americans who are not in their club. Mr. Obama had no problem winning over a conclave of white Christian conservatives at Rick Warren’s megachurch in Orange County, Calif., even though he insisted on the necessity of condoms in fighting AIDS. Unlike the top-tier candidates in the G.O.P. presidential race, or the “compassionate conservative” president who refused for years to meet with the N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Huckabee showed up last fall for the PBS debate at the historically black Morgan State University and aced it.

The “they” who did not see the cultural power of these men, of course, includes not just the insular establishments of both their parties but the equally cloistered echo chamber of our political journalism’s status quo. It would take a whole column to list all the much-repeated Beltway story lines that collapsed on Thursday night.

One thing that struck me was the admission that the established leaders of the parties and the professionals of political journalism can’t grasp what is happening in this year’s primaries. The second thing was the comment that these are the two youngest candidates. I had known that Obama was the youngest candidate, but I had never really considered the age of Huckabee. Back before Huckabee was a top candidate I noticed in my study of the candidates that Mitt Romney was the youngest of the major Republican candidates and he was a couple of months older than Hillary who was the oldest of the major Democratic candidates. That was an interesting split between the two parties in my mind.

Looking into the ages now I find that Huckabee is two years younger than the next youngest candidate (John Edwards) and only 6 years older than Obama. I wonder if part of this is more than just the rhetoric of change, but the evidence that the electorate is ready to pass the reins of leadership over to a younger generation. If Huckabee goes on to get the Republican nomination there is only one viable Democrat left who could represent the Baby Boom generation in the general election – that would be Hillary Clinton (unless by some miracle Rill Richardson can leap from 4th place to 1st among the Democrats).

Categories
National

A Tax Debate Would Be Wise

Apparently the New York Times would like to have a public debate about taxes. The editorial board expresses their despair that none of the presidential candidates talk about taxes. I think that they are completely right that such a debate is necessary. Beyond that it seems that there is hardly anything that we agree about on this subject. When they turn to discussing their views as opposed to the positions and rhetoric of the candidates they start by saying:

Still, going forward, competent governance, let alone achieving great things, will require more revenue, period.

I consider it to be a very safe bet that they mean that on an perpetual basis. As a proponent of fiscal responsibility I could be sold on the idea that we need more revenue for the time being (meaning the next few decades) to help us dig ourselves out of the financial pit we are in (as a result of our spending in the last few decades). But I think that part of the solution will have to include reducing the spending on some government programs this should include increased efficiency in such programs, but wisdom dictates that it also include a reduction in some programs or services.

The editorial board suggests three opportunities that we can address in the necessary tax debate. Of those three, only one really strikes me as a real opportunity rather than empty dialog:

  • To create a system that does not disproportionately favor investment income over income from work.

I think we agree that the idea that the Democrats gave lip-service to when they gained the majority of both houses of Congress – paying for new programs with reductions elsewhere or new taxes – is a nice idea. The problem is that it really makes little difference if they do that without also making sure that they are actually paying for existing services as well, rather than allowing for deficit spending where it already exists.

The bias of the New York Times is irrefutable when they make statements such as:

. . . the exorbitant cost of the flat tax would likely be paid by cutting Medicare, Social Security and other bedrock government services.

If Medicare and Social Security are “bedrock government services” then I wonder how our nation survived its first 150 years without those services. Though I may easily be accused of being willing to punish poor people for being poor by cutting these government programs, I promise that I would happily support any such program if we did not have debts in the Trillions and if Congress were not deficit spending to implement the programs. Though I believe that these programs are not necessary for government, I am not one to believe that government can never do any good with such programs. The problem I see is in allowing our federal government to use illusory tricks such as deficit spending that even state governments (let alone private individuals) are not allowed to do. The fact is that if a business operated like the government the leaders of that business would be prosecuted and jailed in a truly just society.

More difficult than tax reform itself may be the search for a candidate with the political courage to speak frankly to the American people about the nation’s budget problems and the leadership skills to solve them.

There is a candidate with the political courage to speak frankly about our budget problems – his name is Ron Paul. They might decide to argue that he lacks the leadership skills to solve the problem but nobody can credibly argue that he lacks the political courage to speak frankly about it. I think that this is a debate we should have. Perhaps the New York Times could start it by hosting a debate or forum in which they could invite Dr. Paul to participate. They could also invite David Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States, who is also anything but timid in speaking about this subject. They can invite whoever they want to defend their positions where they obviously differ from these two men, but with their influence the debate would be hard to ignore once they got the ball rolling. We might even get all the candidates talking about it like they should be.

Categories
National

NYT On Health Care

I was impressed with the New York Times editorial The High Cost of Health Care. I don’t really have time to review it here right now (it’s quite long) but it is well worth the read and I would like to come back to it later to review it. They talk about some of the approaches to lowering our health care costs, but they don’t attempt to endorse any particular approach. I hope, and believe, that this was an attempt to paint a broad picture in advance of future articles which will explore the issue in more depth.

Categories
National

Many Primary Ideas

There are a variety of ideas for how we can fix our primary election process. They range from a lottery system proposed in comments and a post earlier on my site to more authoritative proposals such as rotating regional primaries as outlined by Trey Grason (go to page 25 of the PDF – hat tip the Senate Site)

Unfortunately, it is too late to fix the process for 2008, but steps can be taken for 2012. The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) is hoping to generate support for rotating regional primaries as a step toward that goal. The association’s bipartisan proposal, created by the nation’s chief state election officials, divides the country into four regions and establishes primary windows in March, April, May and June.

I was also interested in the proposal published in the New York Times by Jonathan Soros suggesting a national primary day where individual voters could opt to vote early.

There is, however, a simple way to establish a national primary and yet still allow retail politicking to meaningfully affect the course of the campaign over several months: allow early voting, with regular reporting of the tally.

Here’s one way it could work. Set a national primary date of June 30 and create a window for early voting that opens on Jan. 1. The early votes would be counted and reported at the end of each month from January through May. . .
If we began counting and reporting the interim results in advance of a national primary, the voters who cast early ballots would play the same role as voters in Iowa and New Hampshire do now: they could signal viability or create momentum for their favored candidates. These early voters would be self-selecting, trading the opportunity to watch the campaign unfold for the ability to demonstrate early conviction.

Most important, every voter, no matter where he or she lived, would have the freedom to make this choice. Right now, when one votes is determined by where one lives.

The national primary day has drawbacks, but I’m sure there are detractors to the rotating regional primaries as well and I know there are those who gripe about the lottery idea. I’m not ready to advocate for one idea over another, and I’m sure that all of them would offer an overall improvement over the current mess. What I would really like to see is an widespread, active, and public conversation now – not sometime after 2009 – to decide how we would like this system to operate because the current setup is going to lead to perpetual campaigning (like having candidates declaring six months into the four year cycle) unless we take steps to rein it in.

Categories
National

Smart Presidential Candidate

LaVarr Webb commented today in Utah Policy Daily on a great column by David Brooks at the New York Times called The Happiness Gap. Brooks was talking about the gap between how happy people are with their own lives and how optimistic they are about government. I think Brooks is right that people are beginning to see through the fallacy that government solutions can fix personal problems, or that one level of government can solve the problems in another level of government. The more we trust to the federal government the more apparent it is that the federal government is not equipped to solve problems created by poor state governments. The same logic holds true with each level of government – state government can’t solve county problems, county government can’t solve city problems, etc.

The thing that really got me was Webb’s concluding paragraph:

I’ve written many times that the job description of the federal government has gotten so immense that it’s impossible to accomplish, hence the deep cynicism about the federal government. The nation’s founders intended for the national government to focus on a few things and do them very well. We need a national resorting of the roles of the different levels of government. A smart presidential candidate would do well to pick up on the mood of the people. (emphasis mine)

Webb was right on except that his last sentence left one thing out – there is a presidential candidate who has picked up on this mood. Ron Paul’s campaign is based on the principle of resorting the roles of the different levels of government – primarily reducing the role of the federal government and allowing states to take their proper place in addressing more of the issues they face. Right now the federal government is doing so much that it can’t even adequately address those issues that are properly in the sphere of the federal government, like national security and immigration. So he may not have known it, but Webb just endorsed Ron Paul as a smart presidential candidate.

Categories
culture

Put Virtual Politics on the Ground

I have been thinking about the words of Tom Friedman when he wrote about what he calls Generation Q.

I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be. . .

The Iraq war may be a mess, but I noticed at Auburn and Ole Miss more than a few young men and women proudly wearing their R.O.T.C. uniforms. Many of those not going abroad have channeled their national service impulses into increasingly popular programs at home like “Teach for America,” which has become to this generation what the Peace Corps was to mine.

It’s for all these reasons that I’ve been calling them “Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.

But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country’s own good. . .

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.

I am among those who feels right at home in the world of the internet whether I am pursuing my political interests, searching for some bit of information or trying to decide about my next major purchase. I see lots of political dialog on the internet, but I also realize that all the blog posts in the world don’t have the same power as a meeting with candidates or elected officials to discuss an issue. I know that talking about liking one candidate or position will never have the same reach of influence that speaking with my wallet has.

The main stream media is spending more and more time talking about the power of internet based politics and the parties and candidates are getting better at engaging within this new medium of communication. Perhaps it is easy for us “digital natives” to mistake this as evidence that this has become the primary mode for political action. We put ourselves and our views in danger unless we take time to remember that the primary means of achieving political influence is and always will be the same as it was when our country was founded. Writing posts may have replaced writing tracts or pamphlets, but the real power to make things happen comes in gathering together to share ideas so that people will be energized to go out and vote at the ballot box and also lend their resources (time, energy, and money) to bring about the goals that they had previously only talked about.

Categories
National

Congress – Do Something

A month into the fiscal year and Congress has not presented an appropriations bill for the President to sign because they don’t care enough about making things work when there are accusations to be flung, fights to pick (like SCHIP), and post offices to be named. The New York Times takes issue with the fact that they are putting the 2010 census at risk by failing to fund it.

The sad part of all this dithering in Congress is that there are more funding issues like the census, where there is little disagreement about how much funding it should receive, than there are like SCHIP where there is much disagreement about funding. The other sad thing is that the things where there is little disagreement are generally more important for keeping the government functioning than the bills where there is contention. The New York Times suggests that Congress should fund the census with their emergency appropriations bill for the California fires. They also offer a decent reason to explain the combination.

I agree and I think that Congress should also set about submitting an appropriations bill on all the other issues where there is little disagreement on the funding – at least we could ensure that parts of the government are funded while issues such as SCHIP are being “discussed.”