Tag: Cato

Individualism vs Collectivism

Post author By David
Post date November 5, 2009
6 Comments on Individualism vs Collectivism

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photo credit: 416style

It seems that the churning within the GOP is a conflict at various levels between the forces of individualism and collectivism. There is the question of whether the party faithful should do what they think is best or what the party determines to be best. There is the question of whether the national party should be uniform, or whether the local parties should be more autonomous, and there is the question of whether government should enforce the collective good, or allow for more individual choice in society.

With all the jockeying within the GOP there have been plenty of calls for a return to small government principles within the party and generic statements about various groups spoiling the supposed conservatism of the party but in a Los Angeles Times article yesterday Edward Crane sounded a call I never thought I would hear – The GOP Should Dump the Neocons. The first thing I had to do as I read that was confirm the accepted definition of “neocon” to decide if I could believe what I was reading and if there were any implications that I would disagree with. It turns out that I think I can fully agree with this position.

Tags Cato, connections, Elevated, parties, Republican

General

An Inside View on the Honduran Situation

Post author By David
Post date July 10, 2009
2 Comments on An Inside View on the Honduran Situation

It’s always nice to have my positions validated by someone with more inside information than I have. I just learned that Tegucigalpa Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga has taken the same position as I have expressed on every point of the situation in Honduras. (You have to read my posts and my comments afterwards to see me express each of these positions.)

Rodriguez issued a statement in a televised address declaring Zelaya’s ouster legal.
He recommends seeking a peaceful solution to the political crisis.
He has rejected international criticism of Zelaya’s ouster.
He has condemned the manner in which Zelaya was kicked out of the country.

To me that’s even better than scouring the Honduran constitution to back up my views on the situation (although that has been done as well).

Tags Cato, connections, current events, Honduras, international

National

Oath of Ignorance

I thought the following idea was laughable in light of something I heard recently:

[Charles Tiefer, whom Congress appointed earlier this year to the new Commission on Wartime Contracting, which oversees Pentagon contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan] says, federal employees take an oath to [support and defend] the Constitution, while private contractors are just motivated by their own economic interest. It’s a lovely vision, and apparently some people actually believe it.

Of course David Boaz is rightfully skeptical of that fairytale view of federal employees. I have a friend who used to work for a federal government agency. He told me last week that he recently read the Constitution for the first time – long after he quit working for the government. He did take the oath mentioned above, but did so without ever reading the Constitution despite high school and college educations here in the United States. I am not blaming my friend – he’s hardly unusual in what he did except that now he has read the Constitution.

The idea that federal employees deserve some special trust for taking an oath of office is laughable. Most of those employees (like so many elected officials above them) have never read the Constitution they have sworn to protect in that oath. How can we expect them to fulfill their oath and defend the Constitution when they are ignorant of what it says?

Personally, I view federal employees (as a group) just like private employees – they’re just earning a living and doing a job. I don’t think that they have a clearer vision of what they are doing or why they are doing it than anyone else.

Tags Cato, connections, government, media, Oath of Office