Entries associated with the tag "Liberalism":

"All across the country, proprietors, landlords and residents associations are privately, voluntarily implementing smoking bans," says the Cato Institute's Tom Firey (surely no pun intended). "Because those actions are voluntary and private, market forces will lead to the provision of establishments and housing for both nonsmokers and smokers. This is fitting in a free society that values choice and respects the individual. It also protects public health -- people who don't want to be around tobacco smoke, whether out of health concerns or dislike of the smell and nuisance, don't ave to be around tobacco smoke.

"This legislation [banning smoking in apartments, as proposed in some California jurisdictions] does not respect individual choice and it is not motivated by concern for public health. It is social conservatism pure and simple -- some politicians want to use their office to impose their personal morality on other people."

My first thought was that this was a nice takedown of a characteristic liberal fallacy (all good things should be required by law), and a good example of how markets can promote live-and-let-live. My second thought was that it was also a nice example of a characteristic libertarian fallacy (we're all individuals with no more basic interdependency than a bunch of billiard balls).

How exactly does the market protect the health of smokers' children? I don't think that question refutes Cato's case, because not everything that's bad for kids can be outlawed without producing even worse effects -- but it does suggest that libertarians have a shallow understanding of the way people live together.

IOW, my decisions to smoke, or to leave my motorcycle helmet at home, rarely affect only me. Sometimes it's best to think and legislate as if they do, but exactly when is the question for political philosophers.

Tim Flannery, the Australian scientist who wrote The Weather Makers, has an interesting take on Michael Pollan and Bill McKibben in the New York Review of Books. But when he veers into media matters, he reveals that he's been drinking way too much liberal Kool-Aid:

"One suspects that were they confined to truly local radio, the likes of Rush Limbaugh would be more clearly seen as nothing but the offensive, bigoted buffoons that they are. If, that is, they could get anywhere near a microphone in the first place."

Deal with it: there really are very large numbers of Americans who adore offensive, bigoted buffoons. Not even a wildly impossible reform (like confining talent to a single local radio station) will make them go away.

I won't claim I read all the Obama coverage so you don't have to, but here are links that added to my knowledge rather than subtracting from it:

• Is Obama "too pious" for nonbelievers? PZ Meyers of Pharyngula thinks so, and Frederick Clarkson of Talk to Action has slagged Obama for echoing religious-right talking points in a June 28, 2006, speech. But Chicago blogger, grad student, and unbeliever Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist thinks their standard is unrealistic. Writing at the Institute for Humanist Studies, Mehta takes heart from that same speech: "Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers," concluding that "It will be some time before we see an atheist in the White House, but for many of us non-religious Americans, Obama might be the best candidate we will see for quite some time."

• Given that the liberal-conservative spectrum isn't very nuanced, how liberal is Obama's voting record? The indispensable Brendan Nyhan gives the gist using a more sophisticated measure than usual, developed by UCSD political scientist Keith Poole. Obama ties with Hillary as the 14th most liberal voting senator.

• Jameson Campaigne offers a surprisingly good analysis from Real Clear Politics by Jay Cost: "He seems to claim that he can move our political spirit beyond partisanship. If there was substantial evidence on his résumé that he can indeed do this, he would be better off. Barring that, it all boils down to his personality.... The wager Obama placed this week is that the country's desire for partisan transcendence will be greater than its skepticism about his capacity to deliver it."

Martha Nussbaum, a University of Chicago political philosopher, finds few opportunities to think carefully in public in this country because "the media are so sensationalistic and so anti-intellectual.... The New York Times op-ed page is very dumbed down, and I no longer even bother trying to get something published there, because they don't like anything that has a complicated argument."

But thanks to the Internet, even Americans can read what she thinks in a long interview in Eurozine, where, among other things, she contrasts liberalism and libertarianism.

"It's a hallmark of liberalism that ideas of choice and freedom are really very, very important.  Of course I think one has to stress that we don't have choice if people are just left to their own devices. The state has to act positively to create the conditions for choice. I think the libertarian position is actually quite incoherent.

"If you go out into the rural areas of Bihar in India, then you see what 'negative liberty' [a libertarian ideal] comes to. Total chaos, where nothing is being done, where there are no roads, no clean water supply, no electricity, and therefore where no one can do anything, no one has anything. I am sure my colleague Richard Epstein will agree, up to a point, that a state that's going to create liberty has got to act, has at least got to protect property rights and contracts and have a police force and a fire department. But then why draw the line at that? Why not also say that the State has to create public education, has to create the systems of social welfare that makes it possible for people to access health care, unemployment benefits, and so on? So I don't see any principled way of dividing those different spheres of state action.

"I have no objection to saying that the State could sometimes delegate part of its function to the private sphere when it judges that that's sufficient, but I do want to say that the State is the one that bears the final responsibility. The State is a system for the allocation of human basic entitlements. Its job is to promote justice and wellbeing for human beings; if it's simply delegated to private industry and that doesn't work, then the State hasn't done its job."

One short corollary: the people in charge of privatizing welfare or education or hurricane relief have to actually care that those jobs are done right, so that they won't hesitate to unprivatize them as needed.

(Hat tip to Butterflies & Wheels.)

• The war against science still has two fronts: PZ Myers, who teaches biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris, and preaches against religion at Pharyngula online, demolishes an ignorant column on genetics by Deepak Chopra, who's a regular at the Huffington Post. New Agers, anti-evolutionists, and climate-change deniers must all meet up somewhere around the bend. (Hat tip to Alon Levy.)

• Ian Bassin explains a lot: "I grew up in New York City, attended a liberal high school, and then moved on to a liberal [change of meaning] arts college in New England. . . . For the many liberals who grew up in such circumstances, it was easy to maintain the hold on our beliefs without ever having to explore them, explain them or defend them. . . . Compare this with what a conservative at many of today's left-leaning law schools must experience. In most of her classes, the only conservative voice she hears is her own. . . . Confronted with a chorus of opposing arguments, her education is an intellectual boot camp. . . . While the conservative emerges muscular and defined, the liberal is paunchy and a bit slow." Note 1: probably not true at the University of Chicago. Note 2: John Kerry, call your office. Read more about Bassin's proposal at Harvard Law & Policy Review.

The MSM and blogs are coevolving into . . . who knows what. I'll leave the details for the techies to sort out in the future, but right now no one with even a passing interest in politics can keep up with the conversation without reading certain blogs--or talking to someone who does.

• In Illinois, Rich Miller's Capitol Fax Blog and its cousin Illinoize--a metablog incorporating many points of view--are the best. This morning Miller drew on Tribune reporting to make clear the fact that Gov. Blagojevich's administration is setting up the same defense that Mayor Daley patronage chief Robert Sorich tried. Sorich claimed he only made "recommendations." That defense didn't save him, and Miller thinks it's unlikely to work for Blago.

• In the U.S., Brad De Long's Semi-Daily Journal is a gateway drug. Thursday morning he drew on New York Times analysis and other sources to explain why the upset of incumbent Senator Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut primary was an uprising of "irate moderates." In the process he pulverized what little is left of Washington Post columnist David Broder's reputation.

• For those who'd rather think about politics than commit it, Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution has a splendid post ("The Libertarian Vice") explaining how libertarians often beg the question: "The libertarian vice is to assume that the quality of government is fixed. . . . But sometimes governments do a pretty good job, even if you like me are generally skeptical of government. The Finnish government has supported superb architecture. The Swedes have made a good go at a welfare state. The interstate highway system in the U.S. was a high-return investment. In the area of foreign policy, we have done a good job juggling the China-Taiwan relationship. . . . It is possible to agree with the positive claims of libertarians about the virtues of markets but still think that improving the quality of government is the central task before us. One could love markets yet be some version of a modern liberal rather than a classical liberal. This possibility makes libertarians nervous, thus their desire to fix the quality of government in advance of making an argument."  Oh, just read the whole thing.  (FYI:  He links to his May 2, 2005, post on the characteristic vice of liberalism:  "The modern liberal vice is to think that everyone can be taken care of.")

A few years ago, I had to subscribe to multiple magazines--and wait up to a month--to find this much great reading. Now all this and more is at our fingertips every day.

So veteran conservative Tom Roeser doesn't like my calling him "Old Man" (August 4)?  Well, if he can't take it he shouldn't dish it out -- "the soft, tiny hands of Ms. Sweet create momentum on her word-processor" (July 22), indeed!

Henceforth I will try to be nice, as I'm not the Rude Pundit nor ever will be.  I really do appreciate that Mr. Roeser can remember even farther back than me.  I also appreciate his characterization of the Reader as publishing "the most scatological stuff in the city," even though that surely wasn't intended as an endorsement.  We argumentative types need each other.

I think we can agree that much of former governor Jim Thompson's record is neither liberal nor conservative but just bad -- the corporate welfare, for instance, as documented by Good Jobs First in 2003 and covered in the Reader at that time.  ("Most of the bad systemic trends began under Thompson.")

But I have no problem with Mr. R's challenge to "point to one thing that Thompson has done as governor that is conservative."  Actually, I thought I already did.  In the 1970s he ran on ethics reform and a get-tough crime package including "Class X" felonies.  When the chips were down, he let the ethics stuff go and beat the bushes for Class X.  To me that's conservative.

Even if I agreed with that choice and thought it had done anything other than drain the state's budget, I'd still call it conservative.  Or did I miss the memo?  Is lock-em-up  the new "liberal"?

Oh yes -- we also agree that Joe Moore v. Ron Gidwitz on the City Council's big-box minimum wage should make for interesting radio on WLS 8 pm Sunday.  I've set my alarm.

Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative inspired John Dean to become a conservative; Dean became Richard Nixon's attorney/hatchetman, and later switched teams to become a key whistleblower on the most unconstitutional presidency until the current one.

Glenn Greenwald reviews Dean's new book, Conservatives Without Conscience:

"The central premise of Dean's argument is that the current 'conservative' movement shares none of the core principles of the political conservatism which attracted Dean to its movement  . . . .  [it] has nothing to do with restraining government power or preserving historical values. Instead, it has transformed into an authoritarian movement which largely attracts personality types characterized by a desire and need to submit to and follow authority."

So what holds today's conservative movement together?  Hatred of "liberals."  Attacks on enemies, writes Greenwald, "have become the conservative movement's defining attribute. And that is sufficient to maintain allegiance because, argues Dean, what Bush followers crave more than anything else is submission to a powerful authority as a means of alleviating their fears of ambiguity, uncertainty and complexity -- the same attributes which are common to all followers of authoritarian movements on both the right and the left."

In Illinois, the online Illinois Review ("crossroads of the conservative community") recently saw fit to publish an op-ed by William Beckman of the Illinois Right to Life Committee, which is a good example of this phenomenon.  Beckman doesn't refer to a single individual or blog, but simply asserts that all "liberals" believe "absolutely" in a laundry list of a dozen positions, all of which he asserts without argument to be absolutely wrong--dividing the world into black and white with no ambiguity. 

Beckman ultimately makes no argument at all, even though he could have made a good one. Sadly, it's all about the hate.  Fortunately, not everything at Illinois Review falls to this level.