Category Archives: Republicans

The Venerated Vote Discounted

Democracy, Elections, Individual Rights, Political Philosophy, Politics, Propaganda, Republicans

The other day I said to a (male) friend: “I would give up my vote if I could be assured all women would do the same.” He replied: “In that case, I would consider voting.”

So does the vote count? Or does every vote counts?

Not at all. In “Default and Dynamic Democracy,” Loren E. Lomasky observed that, “As electorates increase in size, the probability that one’s vote will swing the election approaches zero” … “[I]n large-number electorates, there is a vanishingly small probability that an individual’s vote (or voice) will swing an election … [F]or citizens of large-scale democracies, voting is inconsequential.”

The winner in an election is certainly not the fictitious entity referred to as “The People,” but rather the representatives of the majority. While it seems obvious that the minority in a democracy is thwarted openly, the question is, do the elected representatives at least carry out the will of the majority?

In reality, the majority, too, has little say in the business of governance – they’ve merely elected politicians who have been awarded carte blanche to do as they please. As Benjamin Barber wrote:

It is hard to find in all the daily activities of bureaucratic administration, judicial legislation, executive leadership, and paltry policy-making anything that resembles citizen engagement in the creation of civic communities and in the forging of public ends. Politics has become what politicians do; what citizens do (when they do anything) is to vote for politicians.

In Restoring the Lost Constitution, Randy E. Barnett further homes in on why genuinely informed individuals have little incentive to exercise their “democratic right”:

If we vote for a candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for, but we have also consented to the laws she has voted against.
If we vote against the candidate and she wins, we have consented to the laws she votes for or against.
And if we do not vote at all, we have consented to the outcome of the process whatever it may be.

This “rigged contest” Barnett describes as, “‘Heads’ you consent, ‘tails’ you consent, ‘didn’t flip the coin,’ guess what? You consent as well.'”

On a more pragmatic note, here is how my libertarian WND pal, Vox Day, explains why there will be “No Change After Nov. 2”:

“The reason we can be sure that the Republicans are going to betray the tea party once they come to congressional power is that we know that they are not going to even attempt to solve any of the four most pressing problems facing the nation at the moment. In some cases, Republicans are almost certainly going to try to make them worse. Consider:

1) The economy. Republicans have nothing to offer on the subject. They are almost completely silent on the subject of state bankruptcies, pension-fund shortages and the secrecy of the Fed. Trading fiscal policy-oriented Neo-Keynesians for monetary policy-oriented Monetarist Keynesians isn’t going to materially improve anything.

3) Immigration. Republicans are mostly on the wrong side of this as well, being self-destructive fans of unsustainable open borders.

4) The endless wars. Republicans still support invading and occupying other nations despite the overall cost of the Bush/Obama wars now exceeding one trillion dollars.”

(I omitted Vox’s second point, “The massive mortgage fraud.” As you all already know, as much as I abhor the fractional reserve system that embroils banks in fraud, I do not agree that the facts, to which one must cleave religiously, support the case of the deadbeat defaulters. But we’ve both written exhaustively—and respectfully–about our “foreclosure fracas” disagreement.)

To Vox’s list of Republican contributions to the political morass we’re in, Paul Gottfried adds some other intractable accomplishments.

The Twit Is Atwitter

Elections, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Intellectualism, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans, Technology, The Zeitgeist

Meghan McCain opened up her mouth to say nothing. There is nothing new about that. But media are aflutter—a sad fact that simply enforces what you already know about the state of American public life.

“Well, I speak as a 26-year-old woman and my problem is that, no matter what, Christine O’Donnell is making a mockery of running for public office,” McCain told anchor Christiane Amanpour. “She has no real history, no real success in any kind of business.”
McCain, daughter of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that the message, “that sends to my generation is: one day you can just wake and run for Senate, no matter how [much of] a lack of experience you have. And it scares for me for a lot of reasons.”

Note Meghan’s constant allusions to her tender age. In another universe youth would be a reason to shut up. In the country in which kids are imbued with mythical qualities (Rousseau’s Noble Savage applied to small savages), the words of the greatest ditz to date to emerge from that big tent that Republicans keep touting carry as much heft as said heifer carries on her person.

Meghan is like a dripping tap. If you’ve read the first few lines of any of her blog posts, you’ve read all two diarrheic pages of it. Buzzwords peppered with clichés, and prefaced with “I feel like,” convey Meghan’s mushy, thinking-averse, pop-politics: “I feel like we need to be reaching out to moderates and young people. I feel like we need to be reaching out to minorities.”

The creature gets away with calling herself a writer because America has facilitated her delusions of grandeur. Meghan has “written” for Newsweek, no less, and now adds to the political bestiality on The Daily Beast. Both publications accept Ms. McCain’s version of a premise and a conclusion. For example: “I, like, disagree with that completely, and think that’s, like, completely crazy.”

As hopeless, Republicans have failed to make the only valid case against Meghan, and that is that she is really really stupid. But how can they, when making the case for the GOP are members of the same, hubristic Millennial generation? If smart adults were in charge, they would refuse to address anything Meghan disgorges from her puffy, painted face.

Idiots have come into their own in a big way, courtesy of depraved consumers, and complicit TV producers and publishers, of pixel and paper alike. The duller you are and the louder you crow in contemporary America, the better you do. Meghan McCain is not working with much—and is eminently qualified to dim debate in the Age of the Idiot.

As for “Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware,” I don’t know a lot about her, except that in the snippets I’ve caught from her debates, she has acquitted herself quite well.

Meghan’s cretinism and cringe factor far outweigh those of poor Christine’s, who seems sweet enough.

UPDATE IV: A National Reviewnik Thinks He’s "Contrarian"

Debt, Inflation, Journalism, Media, Neoconservatism, Paleoconservatism, Pseudo-intellectualism, Republicans

He’s trillions of dollars and a decade too late, but Kevin D. Williamson of National Review can assure himself he’s “contrarian” for advocating an about face in the Federal Reserve Bank’s fiddling.

Williamson may be reading Austrian economics. By that I mean the reality based thinking of Ludwig von Mises (taught at the Mises Institute); preached by Ron Paul (whom the neoconery mocked during the Bush years), practiced by financier Peter Schiff, written about by Tom Woods in Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse; as well as by Vox Day, and in this writer’s columns and blogs over the past decade.

Being of the establishment, however, Williamson can just put his hands over his ears and tell himself over and over again “I’m contrarian,” and this will be so.

“So here’s a contrarian take,” Williamson assures himself: “The Fed should stop trying to drive down interest rates. It should instead work to raise them. Why? Our economy needs savings and investment. …”

As I said, trillions of dollars and a decades too later … (“PUNDITS, HEAL THYSELVES!”)

Your host, writing in “Those Invisible Jobs,” did not anoint herself a “contrarian” for advocating that Fed supremo Ben Bernanke raise interest rates.” Not then, and not in 2000 (“The Central Bank’s Game is the Same, Whoever’s the Name”), and on all those occasions in-between.

Why? Because in the Austrian community, represented by some very prominent people, this is common wisdom.

Bloody annoying…

UPDATE I: I’ll be honest: it’s hard to know from Mr. Williamson’s wishy-washy articles exactly where he stands on matters of political philosophy (or if he is a neoconservative or not). However, this post’s point was pretty clear. It expressed annoyance that someone can call himself contrarian for proposing less quantitative easing. Granted, it’s a prickly post, but Mr. Williamson can understand, surely, why writers like myself get a tad testy? We’ve been marginalized for being right on foreign policy and fiscal matters our entire careers, such as they are. Then, when the rest catch up with us, a decade down the line, they pretend that truth began with them.

If I’ve learned anything about the American Mind it is this: Truth doesn’t exist until someone in the establishment pronounces it, usually a decade or so after it has been in circulation. I guess, better late than never, but why not acknowledge those who went before?

I saw Mr. Williamson go up against one or the other left-liberals on TV, and I remember thinking: much better than Rich. Still, I do not believe there is a sufficient amount of information to conclude that “better than Rich” is a meaningful statement.

Mr. Williamson is young (and presentable). He has plenty of time to correct any mistaken impressions I might have formed, not least of which is his sharing that horrible habit common among the Republican establishment of never admitting to being Johnny-come-latelies on Iraq, Bush, economy, QE, etc.

UPDATE II: Mr. Glisson, first, why don’t you provide hyperlinks and particular quotes in substantiation of your position that Mr. Williamson is never a neoconservative? Second, why misconstrue the point of this writer’s post, encapsulated again in the last two sentences of “UPDATE I”? Moreover, from a parenthetic statement about the neoconservatives’ attitude toward Ron Paul, Mr. Williamson concluded that I had called him a neoconservative. You do the same, for some reason.

Again, Mr. Williamson is better than Rich; way better. I am still unsure as to what kind of badge of honor this really is; or if Mr. Williamson is or is not a neoconservative. Isn’t that a condition of employment at National Review? John Derbyshire is NRO’s only paleoconservative (sort of). I’d love to see John thrust into the spotlight, but they keep him in the basement, so to speak.

UPDATE III (Oct. 17): We thank Kevin D. Williamson for responding to the intrigue he has generated on Barely A Blog. He remains a man of mystery, and that is not half bad. In the age of too much information (and letting it all hang loose), mystery is a good thing. We agree that Mr. Williamson ain’t Rich. Has Rich employed a non-neoconservative in the hope of generating some oscillation in the static National Review? Or because the readership has little patience with that old guard? Who knows? We also understand that a man has to make a living. To do so, he must often walk an ideological tightrope.

Nevertheless, those who went before—and remain permanently frozen out of mainstream—deserve mention. It gets terribly cold out here. Mr. Glisson seems to think I’m some kind of intellectual missionary, spreading the good word, pleased to turn the other cheek just so long as the new guard can adopt the gospel, even if they falsely pretend to be pioneers.

Rubbish. Nonsense on stilts. I’m all about justice. Intellectual justice included.

UPDATE IV (3/5/2016):

“NRO Writer’s ‘UnFollow’ Leads To Musing About The Manners-Morals Connection.”

Dog Fight

Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Regulation, Republicans

Can you get worked up about the latest fight between the Democratic and Republican bloodhounds and their hangers-on?

“Honing a campaign message,” the WSJ reports, “President Barack Obama and Democratic Party officials have in recent days strongly suggested the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups, including two run by Republican strategist Karl Rove, are illegally using money from foreign nationals or companies to fund U.S. political advertising. The groups have repeatedly denied the charges.”

And if not for this small matter, the elections—this “advance auction sale of stolen goods,” in H. L. Mencken’s words—would be just dandy.