Monthly Archives: February 2009

Update II: Rush To Judgment: Limbaugh’s CPAC Speech

Conservatism, Constitution, Foreign Policy, Free Will Vs. Determinism, IMMIGRATION, Inflation, Republicans, Ron Paul

We want to give credit where it’s due. Rush Limbaugh at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. was charismatic, well spoken (he even corrects his mistakes mid-sentence, which points to a welcome fastidiousness about the language), passionate, and sincere.
As opposed to most pundits, Limbaugh doesn’t require lengthy de-Nazification efforts; he needs only a few weeks at the feet of Congressman Ron Paul.

I optimized the time Limbaugh talked by both listening and mopping the wooden floors. Here are some of the problems I have with Limbaugh’s impassioned CPAC speech. Feel free to add to them:

• I didn’t hear a word about the reliable role of Republicans as engines of government growth. And Bush, in particular. Bush set the scene for Barack. Bush began what BHO is completing. Stimulus, bailouts, a house for every Hispanic—these are programs Bush developed, or signed on to, as I and other libertarians have documented. For an account of the Republican’s “inglorious tradition” of growing government, I recommend “Republicans and Big Government,” by my pal Jim Ostrowski.

• Rush failed to religiously pair the need for tax cuts with a ruthless slashing of government. Bush grew government while, at the same time, cutting taxes. Deficit spending, however, is financed by borrowing or inflating the money supply. The latter is the most vicious and insidious of taxes. (Read why.) Until conservatives get beyond piss-easy populism and stretch their minds to learn some REAL economics, beyond the “tax cut” mantra, there is no hope for them. Rush mentioned von Hayek; why not read his work on the business cycle?

• When it comes to his view of human nature, Rush is a big egalitarian. What do I mean? As an impediment to individual achievement, he cited the disabling and crippling role of the welfare state. Fair enough. However, that is not a qualitatively different argument than the one advanced by left-liberals.
In the nature-nurture debate, liberals reduce man’s plight to adverse social conditions: Crime, they say, is because of poverty, patriarchy, powerlessness (I’ve lots count of the “P”s). Rush is merely rendering his deterministic complement to that of the liberals: they say too little intervention; he says too much of it. The conservative truth is that people differ in potential. Live with it! Phenotype or genotype: our genes encode both the way we look and, to a large degree, how well we can think. Once again, Rush’s view of human nature doesn’t depart significantly from the view his liberal foes hold.

Egalitarianism is the enemy of liberty. As I’ve said, just as most of us can’t aspire to Heidi Klum’s countenance, no amount of freedom will imbue us all with an equal standard of living, which is a function, to a large extent, of out abilities.
A conservative view of nature is one that acknowledges the kind if differences that make the reality of poverty and other evils inescapable. Capitalism may amplify differences in wealth as it allows the able to fully express their abilities. But it also reduces levels of poverty. The poor are richer under capitalism because employment and opportunity are optimized.

• Not a word did Limbaugh say about the Warfare State, which is every bit as corrupt and corrupting as the welfare state. We spend over a trillion annually on empire. What kind of a nation neglects its own borders while defending borders not its own? A nation of cowards. There is a war on the border with Mexico. It’s spilling over. Where is the brave military? This is quintessential neo-conservatism as I defined it on January 16, 2004 (mentioned here by Larry Auster): “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same neoconservative coin.” Rush did not denounce this borderless, expansionist agenda.

• I have news for Rush: contrary to his assertion, freedom is not the natural condition of the human heart. That’s liberal/neoconservative claptrap. All people want freedom for themselves, that much is true. But not everyone is willing to let his adversaries enjoy their freedoms. I wish Republicans would try thinking beyond clichés–the kind that led to their invasion of Iraq.

Update: Speaking of Larry Auster, this is what the traditionalist commentator writes under the heading, “This is our leader?”:

Rush Limbaugh is addressing the C-PAC conference. Am I supposed to care? Am I supposed to see this loud-mouth as the leader of conservatives against Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America? Where was El Slowbo for the last eight years? I’ll tell you where he was. He was, with all the energy and devotion of which he is capable, carrying George W. Bush’s water while Bush advanced such proposals as the “American Dream Down Payment Plan,” which landed us in our current situation.

Update II (March 2): Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, trashed Rush Limbaugh. Steele called the Talker an entertainer, and his show incendiary, ugly entertainment.

Ann Coulter has expressed her disappointment. The Conservative Queen Bee also spoke favorably about Steele being good on TV. I guess she meant eye candy, because she immediately launched, on the Glenn Beck Show, into a paean to the babes of the Republican Party. (Here is the story of one such brassy babe.)

In any event, I say let Limbaugh and Steele have at it. I’ve listened to Steele; he’s utterly eager to pacify, placate and attract the ethnic vote. This is a black John McCain. The Republicans have a deficit in principles, not diversity. Yet Steele keeps carping about the need to “appeal” to those voracious minorities. With what? More stolen stuff?

Yes, stealing Steele is among the cadre of Republicans (a Rovian) calling for a more upbeat and diverse GOP, when in fact that GOP has gone all out for minorities (to no avail) and stuck it to the base.

I hope the two men smart for some time to come, and that more chasms open up like gashes in the GOP. Out of chaos maybe some order will come, by which I mean an articulation of a rightist, ordered liberty. Let the rightist faction break away, recapture the base and then the Party.

Updated: Looking To Children To Lead

Conservatism, Education, Family, Intellectualism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Pop-Culture, Private Property, Republicans

Speaking of spooky children, the hallmark of a progressive or left-liberal is a philosophical adulation of The Child. The Child is said to possess uncanny prescience; a primordial, pristine, un-spoilt wisdom. The same awe is accorded to the Nobel Savage, and to the natural world.

This explains why Republicans often have a “wunderkind” in the wings to parade and look up to. These days, it’s the barely-out-of short pants CPAC star, Jonathan Krohn, who’s precocious and off-putting. Krohn is an author no less. The treatise is “Define Conservatism.” From the mouth of the babe himself, the book sounds childish and simplistic in tone and in metaphor. Just what Boobus loves.

Understandably, left-liberals have been slobbering over Krohn as well. To their credit, they’ve not produced a prototype of their own yet.

It’s a repulsive specter. It’s not new. I commented on it in a three-pronged column, in 2002. The column is “The Importance Of Boundaries.” The sub-heading is “Crossover Kids”:

“Permissive liberals and people who need Braille to understand a well-aimed barb will fume at the words of author Florence King: ‘…children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, ‘Do you have enough room in the toes?’ But true-blue cultural conservatism puts a premium on the proper boundaries between children and adults. Such boundaries are essential to the moral hygiene of a society. It is from the progressive, libertine parent that we would expect a child of such narcissism and precocity that he or she thinks of adults as his peers, and takes to preaching to his elders.”

“But no, some of the most hubris-stricken kids are emerging as commentators from so-called conservative quarters. The real cultural conservative knows that even in the unlikely case that the child is the new H.L. Mencken, and is smarter than all the adults around him, respect necessitates that he bide his time. Even the intellectually gifted take years to synthesize intellectual material and make it their own. This process is a culmination of insight, life experience, humility, and authentic intelligence.”

“The cultural conservative adult who lets a kid be a pal and peer is a liberal. He cannot claim to be a cultural conservative. He must, moreover, own up to being mired in self-contradiction. Writing on the topic of Western Civilization, historian Alan Charles Kors reminds us that avoiding self-contradiction is the touchstone of truth—being mired in self-contradiction, the touchstone of error. To the Greek philosophers, to be mired in self-contradiction was to be ‘less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.'”

Update (Feb. 28): I just can’t win, can I? The reader hereunder vows to seek out the kid’s coloring-in book in the library. Lost is my meta-argument against the process of looking to a kid for answers, however endowed in IQ he might be.

Seeking sagacity in a child’s words is perverted, unconservative.
The whole point of this post is that you NOT be piqued by a child; that you not be proud of such precocity. Look to real philosopher Kings for eternal truths. Take the time to rediscover The Federalist or Anti-Federalist papers. So long as you have not read the the words of real sages, you have no business looking for kicks in the kibitzing of kids.
Of course, you have every right to, but little reason to.

THEY MUST BE HOMESCHOOLED. Blogger John was alluding to this delightful clip (I’m posting it hereunder), making the rounds on YouTube. Two precious, fiscally conservative cuties hear that they owe $800 billion. The little boy is especially eager to tease out the details, and is outraged when he gets the goods. Unlike creepy, adult-emulating Krohn, these babes act their age, and are absolutely natural. There is nothing put-on or fake about their conduct. These are kids getting some bad news about a stolen piggy bank.

I would agree that children are naturally acquisitive and, like all normal people before entering the public school, guard what is rightfully theirs.

But there’s more to it. What you have here is an example of decent parenting. In fact, this clip very clearly exemplifies the boundary argument made in this post. The adult is teaching the children a lesson about private property and its theft.

I would further argue that the parent eliciting the little people’s outrage by telling them of the $800 billion they are about to be robbed of—he is the good guy in all this. He probably home schools the two tots. This is clearly a man who, while not indoctrinating his kids, does instill in them right from wrong.

Pay attention to the disparaging comments the filming father gets from YouTubers. Addled by psychobabble, posters protest the emotional harm done to the children; the sentiment shared on the chatboard is that upsetting children is wrong.

Well, the clip has been removed. My guess is that the dad who posted it thought Obama’s New New Deal outrageous, and his kids’ outburst appropriate. The cretins watching it disapproved and disagreed with dad. Maybe father feared Big Brother would removed his kids. … Not that it has happened before.

Voodoo Child Talks Up A Storm

Barack Obama, Economy, Political Economy, Republicans, Socialism

The excerpt is from my new WND.com column, “Voodoo Child Talks Up A Storm”:

“Because consumption is its be-all and end-all, consumer confidence is crucial to the Cult of Keynes. If the consumer is not crazy confident—even when he ought not to be—goes the ‘thinking,’ he’ll quit consuming until he drops”:

“We will act with the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times,’ barked Barack. ‘This administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to break this destructive cycle, restore confidence, and re-start lending.'”

“Our economic animists are hoping that the holy spirit of ‘confidence’ will enter the once bitten, twice shy lender, and make him lend. The same spell is supposed to mysteriously move the unemployed and penniless to spend.”

“In his wonderfully learned book, The Failure of the ‘New Economics,’ Henry Hazlitt (a favorite of mine, as you might have guessed) summed-up the essence of Keynes’ “General Theory”:

“The great virtue is Consumption, extravagance, improvidence. The great vice is Saving, thrift, ‘financial prudence.'” …

Read why the “Voodoo Child is true to the mores and methodology of Keynes,” in “Voodoo Child Talks Up A Storm,” now on WND.com.

Pundit, Heal Thyself!

Conservatism, Economy, Inflation, Journalism, libertarianism, Media

Today was the day MSNBC located the word debt in the dictionary. Michael Smerconish—who calls himself conservative, but isn’t—was asked by Obamahead David Schuster whether our foreign debtors might call it quits and stop funding the orgy.

Smerconish looked surprised, and said he had no idea, which was honest enough. Then he quickly padded the ego by adding: Let nobody claim he has an idea, or that he foresaw the current crisis.

When you shut serious libertarians (Neal Boortz and Treason Magazine are precluded, naturally) out of the discourse, you are also able to pretend they don’t exist or have not been warning of a meltdown. (And then steal their insights to present to mainstream when the time is ripe.)

This column was warning in 2003, if not earlier, of the consequences of endless debt and the dangers of hyperinflation. An example is “Bring ‘Em Home, Mr. Bush”:

“This means we’re into Keynesian deficit spending—the government is borrowing and inflating the money supply to fund its profligacy, a practice that will accelerate the depreciation of the dollar, and may even lead to the horror of hyperinflation.”

At the very least, is the ignorant Smerconish not aware of one congressman who ran for president, Ron Paul, and who’s been speaking about the day of reckoning for decades?

Investors may be aware of Peter Schiff’s spot-on predictions. They too go back years.

Smerconish is bright in that gabby, establishment-friendly way, so “speechless” did not look good on him.

Here’s a suggestion: in the future, if MSNBC brings up the topic of debt financing and the future of the dollar, suggest that the Us beg for debt forgiveness. Like a Third World country.

Seriously, when will America pull the plug on these pathetic pundits and seek out those of us who have a record of accurate predictions on the defining issues of the day?

To plagiarize myself:

“Suppose your doctor misdiagnoses your condition – he tells you that six months hence you’ll be stone-cold dead, pushing up the daisies. As it turns out, however, you did not have leukemia after all, but were only suffering from Lyme disease. Would you not consider switching practitioners?

Say your stockbroker’s picks leave you with a portfolio more volatile than Vesuvius and an eviscerated bank account. Short of buying shares in a Baghdad bed and breakfast, he did everything wrong. Would you still entrust him with your money?

Imagine you’re a fisherman. Your local weatherman predicts calm, but you lose your boat in treacherous seas. (Thankfully your life is spared.) Then he forecasts a storm, but the sea is as calm as glass, and you miss out on the biggest catch ever. How long before you stop trusting his “expertise”?

These analogies came to mind as I listened to a different sort of failed “expert,” for whom public goodwill runs eternal.”