Separation of Advocacy and State

Tiverton's public hearing on charter-related questions potentially to be placed on the next ballot didn't let out until after 11:00, Monday night, although many in the audience (including the Providence Journal's Gina Macris) left after the headline-grabbing debate over the future of the financial town meeting had ended. I stayed so late — despite dying stealth-blogger-gear batteries and a lack of worthwhile reading material — out of interest in the penultimate question, the passage of which would result in the insertion of the following language in the town charter (with the deleted text removed, per Monday night's vote, I believe):

No officer or employee of the Town, including the School Department, shall use, or cause to be used, Town property, goods, money, grants, or labor to influence the outcome of or encourage or discourage elector voting with respect to, an election, ballot question, Financial Town Meeting, or referendum; the foregoing shall not prohibit the distribution or publication of election, ballot question, Financial Town Meeting, or referendum information by the Town Clerk, the Board of Canvassers, or a Charter Review Commission.

During the discussion period, Town Council President Louise Durfee let it be known that she had consulted an ACLU attorney who believed the question to be sufficiently broad that a suit could be brought against the town on First Amendment grounds even before the rule had been invoked in response to an alleged violation. Inasmuch as she must file a W2 with the town, and is therefore an employee, she is concerned that she might be restricted from offering her opinion to a constituent while waiting in line at CVS on the grounds that she had expended town "labor" to promote her side.

Thus do lawyers leverage their own proclivity for distorting plain understanding to argue that reformist legislation might be subject to invidious interpretation beyond the scope of its language. By constitutional law, the argument goes, all town employees must be free to speak their minds, and some judge might interpret the above language in contravention of that right, so the law must be unconstitutional.

One needn't be a lawyer (indeed, it might help not to be) to comprehend that no judge could produce such an interpretation because the First Amendment forbids it. The language clearly does not explicitly propose a restriction of free speech, and I believe that a fair reading cannot do otherwise than conclude that it doesn't implicitly do so.

To illustrate this point, I asked Ms. Durfee whether she is currently permitted to respond if a constituent in line at CVS asks her whether she believes there to be a God. Her response, in concert with Councilor Brian Medeiros, was that, as a secular servant of the people, her opinion on theology is irrelevant. It is not. That only seems to be the case because church/state boundaries in the law have been so thoroughly traversed, thereby illustrating the legal delineation of public "labor," specifically by precedent allowing public officials to express opinions on religion, whether in the course of their duties or in their private lives.

If Louise Durfee, as an always-on-duty public servant, can speak her mind about religion despite clear proscriptions against her implementing such views via the resources and privileges available by virtue of her office, then certainly she could offer her views on a budget despite a charter rule intended to "prohibit the use of Town resources to influence the outcome of a voting contest."

Trash Day Rant Redux

Given past experience with the vulnerability of our trash receptacles on garbage day, we should have known better. We shouldn't have run out of garbage bags. The children shouldn't have filled an unlined can. My wife shouldn't have put that can out on the street to be emptied into the truck.

But it seems to me that it ought to have been perceivable that the whole thing wasn't meant to be taken, and I'm close enough to that line of work to imagine that we were on the receiving end of a lesson about pushing the boundaries of those who serve us. Personally, were I a garbage man in a sour mood, my instructional method would have been to leave the can untouched. Moreover, were they garbage men who stood to lose my business, they might have been more circumspect about the conclusions to which I might come, and were their employer not assured of my payment no matter my personal impression of his company, I'd be more confident that a complaint would be justly addressed.

Links from a Busy Blogger

I've been busy with "life" (work, family, volunteering, recreation, Citadel board meetings;) and haven't had a chance to post much of substance. That trend continues, so here are a couple things I've found interesting over the last few days.

Jim Lindgren has looked into--and exposed--the activities and agenda of a group calling itself Service Nation that is trying to implement compulsory volunteerism. Heh.

A recent "random thought" by Thomas Sowell comes to mind:

Some of the most emotionally powerful words are undefined, such as "social justice," "a living wage," "price gouging" or a "fragile" environment, for example. Such terms are especially valuable to politicians during an election year, for these terms can attract the votes of people who mean very different-- and even mutually contradictory-- things when they use these words.

Apparently, we've now gotta put "volunteerism" (and "change") into this category.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains why Europeans Love Obama.

The Tax Foundation has found 15 ways to define "Income" and explains that its no wonder we can't agree on whether it's going up, down or staying the same.

Finally, I've yet to read it, but Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam have written a new book, Grand New Party, in which they seek to chart a course for the 21st Century GOP. (Here's an article based on the book). Basically, they argue that the future is in appealing to so-called Sam's Club voters. Here are two (one - two) reviews.

Lessons to Be Drawn

In response to Mary Eberstadt's thought-provoking piece about the accurate prognostications of Humanae Vitae, Todd Zywicki notes (and Glenn Reynolds seconds) the possibility of a cost-benefit analysis with respect to the sexual revolution. It's difficult to draw a boundary around the topic; to put it in the form of a question that I posed a few years ago: "Would a married couple requesting the pill for the first time [in the 1960s] have believed anybody loony enough to suggest that gay marriage — let alone cloning — would be the result?"

If we seek common ground beyond all of those sticky issues, though, we might salvage a common point from among the rancor. Specifically, we might note that a different procedural course of implementing the sexual revolution might have preserved that which has been lost as "unintended consequences," while allowing exploration of the benefits of change. Had the Supreme Court not made contraception a positive right, with Griswold v. Connecticut, perhaps the people of the United States would have pursued their federalist experimentation in the way that is only possible when there are actually territories to be gained and lost. Thus would our national community culture have swirled around between drastically different sets of priorities, bringing what was common to the fore.

That is to say that we might accurately be able to include among the "unintended consequences" of the sexual revolution the undermining of a political philosophy that allowed the blending of subcultures to the benefit, ultimately, of all.

Open Thread: The Future of America and the Future of Conservatism in America

New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks believes that the government needs "to act in gigantic ways over the next few years"...

We’re entering an era of epic legislation. There are at least five large problems that will compel the federal government to act in gigantic ways over the next few years.

First, there is the erosion of the social contract. Private sector firms are less likely to provide health benefits, producing a desperate need for health care reform.

Second, there is the energy shortage. Rising Asian demand strains worldwide supply, threatening industry and consumers, and producing calls for a bold energy initiative.

Third, there is the stagnation in human capital. During the 20th century, Americans were better educated than the citizens of any other power. Since 1970, that lead has been forfeited, producing inequality and wage stagnation. To compete, the U.S. will require a series of human capital initiatives.

Fourth, there’s financial market reform. In an intricately connected world, even Republican administrations cannot allow big institutions to fail. If government is going to guarantee against failure, then it is inevitably going to get more involved in regulating how businesses are run.

Fifth, there’s infrastructure reform. The U.S. transportation system is in shambles and will require major new projects.

Has Brooks set the right priorities? Has he missed anything or overstated anything? And how will conservatism fit into the future domestic policy agenda, Brooksian or otherwise?

John Adams

Ed Achorn had a piece yesterday on John Adams and recommended taking in the HBO mini-series that is now out on DVD (I hope to). Coincidentally, I had been thinking about Adams thanks to Matt Allen's (gratuitous plug!) Independence Day show over the past weekend, during which he read the Declaration of Independence and extolled the virtues of our great nation. The conversation was wide-ranging, and along the way he made an off-the-cuff remark along the lines that John Adams was a Democrat and Thomas Jefferson was a Republican.

Wha.....? I thought. I suspected it was based on the fact that Adams was a prominent member of the post-Revolution Federalist Party (along with George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, incidentally), which advocated a strong central government. Given Matt's, shall we say, inclination against big government, I can understand why he'd think that anyone for a strong national government--no matter the time or place, I suppose--was akin to what we would call a contemporary, big government Democrat.

Unfortunately, I think Matt is anachronistically attributing the Federalist's desire to centralize power as the equivalent of today's conception of "big government." But he's missing the historical context surrounding the rise of the Federalist philosophy of government, which was based on a belief that they urgently needed to strengthen and tighten the internal ties of their nascent nation so it could survive in a belligerent world.

If anything, Adams is considered by most conservatives to have been the first American conservative; one of their own, much less a Founding era Democrat! He wasn't interested in encroaching on the rights of the population or imposing arbitrary taxes or monetary redistribution or instituting a vast bureaucracy or creating programs to address every ill, whether real or perceived. In fact, neither were his political opponents, Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans. I guess the truth of the matter is that, in the Founding era, there really was no equivalent to the modern conception of a big-government Democrat. They came along with Woodrow Wilson and, later, FDR.

If so inclined, read on for a little of the historical context I mentioned.

After the Revolution, it was becoming clear to many of the Founders that the Articles of Confederation simply didn't have enough teeth. The government they provided for was very weak and the particular interests of the various states trumped those of the nation to the detriment of all. European powers played the states off of each other and threatened to economically, or even militarily, divide and conquer the young nation. For example, on economic problem was the inability of the national government to place duties on imports. This was a key economic weapon against great powers like Great Britain who restricted imports from America. In 1781 Congress, under the Articles, asked the states for permission to enact duties, but all such actions required "unanimous consent" and--would you believe it--Rhode Island refused.

As for foreign affairs, with no national army, Great Britain made excuses for not abandoning their forts in the American west; with no navy, the Barbary Pirates attacked American merchant ships and put their crews into slavery; with no consolidated diplomatic "vision", virtually no national treaties could be signed (again, because of a high hurdle of approval) while individual states made their own treaties. The colonies had won independence together, but in their freedom, they were drifting apart as each state viewed itself as a sovereign nation. In reality, they were setting themselves up to be cherries ripe for the picking. The states had become their own worst enemies.

In the debate over the creation of a new government, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers to explain why the new Constitution, one that described a stronger central government than that of the Articles of Confederation, was required for a young and vulnerable nation. They were opposed by the Anti-Federalists, who argued against the centralization of power put in place by the Constitution. (Eventually, the Anti-federalist inspired Bill of Rights were thrown in as a compromise to get passage of the Constitution).

During this debate, Adams was in Great Britain, and was asked to hastily compile something to help convince the states of the wisdom of passing the new Constitution. His A Defence of the Consitution of Government of the United States of America helped elaborate further on the principles of the balance of power within government and how a more complicated government guided by laws was necessary to maintain the liberty so desired by the American people. (In this, he was informed by his own work as the chief personality involved in the drafting of the Massachusetts Constitution). A selection from Defence--in this case Adams' theory on the importance of property--is probably enough to show why many consider him a conservative:

Suppose a nation, rich and poor, high and low, ten millions in number, all assembled together; not more than one or two millions will have lands, houses, or any personal property; if we take into the account the women and children, or even if we leave them out of the question, a great majority of every nation is wholly destitute of property, except a small quantity of clothes, and a few trifles of other movables...if all were to be decided by a vote of the majority, the eight or nine millions who have no property, would not think of usurping over the rights of the one or two millions who have? Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Sound like a modern day "Democrat" to you?

But it does get more complicated as we look away from political philosophy and towards actual politics. During Washington's first term as President, two factions emerged with different ideas and priorities as to how the new government should operate. Washington, Adams and Hamilton eventually identified themselves as Federalists, which wanted a strong army and navy, central banking (especially consolidation of state debt into national and the establishment of national credit), strong courts and also favored Great Britain in trade and foreign affairs. Jefferson and Madison would dub themselves Democratic-Republicans and they and their party opposed a strong central government, banking, a standing army--and especially navy--and looked to France for political and philosophical inspiration.

In reality, Washington mostly tried to stay above the partisanship. He was all about noblesse oblige and, as Father of the Country, he could pull it off (though he still came under some criticism for being too "kingly"). Hamilton was the heart-and-soul of the Federalist Party and leader of the so-called High Federalists, who, without pushing it too far, thought that Great Britain had the right idea with an aristocracy and all. For his part, as indicated above, Adams believed in the balance of power, but also in the necessity of a strong central government to facilitate the unification of the disparate colonies and factions when needed. Such was, according to Russell Kirk, Adams' "practical conservatism."

After the nasty election of 1796, Adams, who didn't get along with Hamilton and his allies, was a man very much alone as President. He was left to carve his own path during his single term. But with no allies in either party, he weathered a few crises (XYZ affair and the Quasi-war with France most notably) and served only one-term, losing to the popular Jefferson in the election of 1800 (sometimes dubbed the second revolution).

The legacy of John Adams is hard to encapsulate, and a scattershot blog post can't do him justice. But his writings and political philosophy as well as his determination in the face of personal unpopularity stand out for me. And I've got a soft spot because he managed to keep a foundering U.S. Navy afloat when so many, including Thomas Jefferson--who would later benefit from Adams investment in the Navy against the Barbary Pirates--wanted to sell it off. Adams believed in a strong national defense and strong financial institutions and a central government that could stand up to enemies "foreign and domestic." His idea of a strong national government was meant to deal with these issues, not to encroach into every aspect of Americans' lives.

ADDENDUM: Conservatives have long pointed to John Adams as the first prominent proponent of an American-style conservatism. Russel Kirk and Peter Viereck both wrote histories of American conservatism and each regard Adams as an American conservative touchstone. Many historians--Joseph Ellis, David McCullough and Richard Brookhiser come to mind--regard Adams as essentially conservative, too. They base their classification on Adams' on political thought as expressed in his voluminous writings.

The Encyclopedia Britannica offers a helpful and concise summary of Adams' political thought (the entry was written by Joseph Ellis):

Adams wished to warn his fellow Americans against all revolutionary manifestos that envisioned a fundamental break with the past and a fundamental transformation in human nature or society that supposedly produced a new age. All such utopian expectations were illusions, he believed, driven by what he called “ideology,” the belief that imagined ideals, so real and seductive in theory, were capable of being implemented in the world. The same kind of conflict between different classes that had bedeviled medieval Europe would, albeit in muted forms, also afflict the United States, because the seeds of such competition were planted in human nature itself. Adams blended the psychological insights of New England Puritanism, with its emphasis on the emotional forces throbbing inside all creatures, and the Enlightenment belief that government must contain and control those forces, to construct a political system capable of balancing the ambitions of individuals and competing social classes.

His insistence that elites were unavoidable realities in all societies, however, made him vulnerable to the charge of endorsing aristocratic rule in America, when in fact he was attempting to suggest that the inevitable American elite must be controlled, its ambitions channeled toward public purposes. He also was accused of endorsing monarchical principles because he argued that the chief executive in the American government, like the king in medieval European society, must possess sufficient power to check the ravenous appetites of the propertied classes. Although misunderstood by many of his contemporaries, the realistic perspective Adams proposed—and the skepticism toward utopian schemes he insisted upon—has achieved considerable support in the wake of the failed 20th-century attempts at social transformation in the communist bloc. In Adams’s own day, his political analysis enjoyed the satisfaction of correctly predicting that the French Revolution would lead to the Reign of Terror and eventual despotism by a military dictator.

By the way, Jefferson was decidedly pro-French Revolution, along with the rest of his party, the Democratic-Republicans. Ellis also wrote the EB entry forJefferson, which includes this bit about the Adams and Jefferson retirement correspondence:

The reconciliation between the two patriarchs was arranged by their mutual friend Benjamin Rush, who described them as “the North and South poles of the American Revolution.” That description suggested more than merely geographic symbolism, since Adams and Jefferson effectively, even dramatically, embodied the twin impulses of the revolutionary generation. As the “Sage of Monticello,” Jefferson represented the Revolution as a clean break with the past, the rejection of all European versions of political discipline as feudal vestiges, the ingrained hostility toward all mechanisms of governmental authority that originated in faraway places. As the “Sage of Quincy (Massachusetts),” Adams resembled an American version of Edmund Burke, which meant that he attributed the success of the American Revolution to its linkage with past practices, most especially the tradition of representative government established in the colonial assemblies. He regarded the constitutional settlement of 1787–88 as a shrewd compromise with the political necessities of a nation-state exercising jurisdiction over an extensive, eventually continental, empire, not as a betrayal of the American Revolution but an evolutionary fulfillment of its promise.

These genuine differences of opinion made Adams and Jefferson the odd couple of the American Revolution and were the primary reasons why they had drifted to different sides of the divide during the party wars of the 1790s. The exchange of 158 letters between 1812 and 1826 permitted the two sages to pose as philosopher-kings and create what is arguably the most intellectually impressive correspondence between statesmen in all of American history. Beyond the elegiac tone and almost sculpted serenity of the letters, the correspondence exposed the fundamental contradictions that the American Revolution managed to contain.

Wait a Second, Mr. Marx

Some aspects of Marxism have a sort of common-sense appeal on first reading. Those of a conservative bent may feel something to be awry, but it takes some sifting to raise, and even then the subtleties foil discussion with those of differing inclinations. Consider Mickey Kaus's confession of Obamaesque snobbery (via Instapundit):

If Democrats had delivered on the economy, Obama suggests, all those GOP cultural "wedge" issues would lose traction. This idea--that the economy trumps culture--isn't new. It's "materialism." The economic "base," Marxists would argue, determines the cultural "superstructure." If the economy changes (i.e. if small town Pennsylvanians get well-paying jobs) then the superstructure will change (Pennsylvanians will feel less intensely about their religion). ..

The problem for me is that I'm a Vulgar Marxist too. I've always believed that people need to eat, and want to get ahead and prosper. If you give them an avenue that lets them do that, they aren't going to let their religion, their music, their sexual habits, their families or their educational system stand in their way for long.

Speaking to the generality first, one should realize that Kaus is shuffling two decks together, here: one insisting that prosperity will ultimately drain the passion from a particular group of values (centrally, religion), and one treating prosperity as a trumping concern. The latter emphasizes that people will not let anything stand in the way of material comfort; the former assumes that religion inherently stands in the way. The former declares what economic success will do; the latter suggests how it may be used.

Thus do Democrats and liberals attempt to make their sheaf of cultural priorities seem necessities riding along with their promise of economic health. They'll claim that right wingers, with the intention of manipulating us economically, distract the masses with immigration, same-sex marriage, and terrorism, but the left-wingers want to market economic balms so that they can impose amnesties, cultural redefinitions, and multiculturalism.

Moving to the specific expectations of a comfortable population, the modern Marxist's assumptions aren't true. Wealth, for example, does not negate religion per se. Indeed, in the long run, a stable home life, defined by sexual control (for one thing) is a more sure avenue toward success than libertinism, but liberals eschew what they see of the judgmentalism of such expectations. It might be more accurate to suggest that they promise their economic fixes to distract from the economic hindrance of their social policies.

If progressives truly believed that their preferred cultural innovations would follow economic success, as a sort of social default, they'd be civil libertarians (and, of course, some are). Modern conservatives, by contrast, tend to believe that their cultural values are compatible with economic prosperity and freedom, but by no means assured. Therefore, they pursue the freedom of other social institutions, such as churches, to have a substantial effect on citizens.

High Rollers on the Hill

I get that winning clients sometimes requires wooing them — especially in the glamor-obsessed entertainment industry. As a government activity, however, this makes me very uncomfortable:

When Steven Feinberg entertains people in the television and moviemaking industry, he entertains them in style.

He sprang for the Ravioli al Filetto at Venda's Café, the rib-eye special at Zooma, the 16 oz. center-cut sirloin at Siena , a filet mignon at The Capital Grille and along the way bottles of wine costing up to $39. He hired chauffeured cars to shuttle some of the stars of the Showtime series Brotherhood back and forth during nights out that ended at 3 a.m.

He treated actor "Joseph Pantoliano and family" to $203 worth of gondola rides along the Providence riverfront.

In his role as director of the state Film & TV Office, he sent $1,375 worth of gift baskets from Wickford Gourmet to the cast and crew of Evening, before they decamped.

And when Feinberg flew to California last summer, he stayed in a "premier ocean-view room" in the newly renovated Huntley Hotel in Santa Monica, that one magazine likened to "the city's hottest club ... a vision of movie-set cool." Though city-view rooms went for much less, his room cost fluctuated from $419 to $499 on different nights.

Every step of the way, Rhode Island taxpayers paid the bills.

Sure, other states do it, and RI House Speaker Bill Murphy (D, West Warwick) argues that Feinberg's activity has yielded "a tremendous return on the investment," but the whole effort is beyond the boundaries of what government ought to be about. I'd venture to suggest that few voters consider the dedication of their representatives to charming Hollywood; government isn't structured to behave that explicitly as a business. Frankly, the leadership on the Hill ought to turning over with sufficient frequency to make the company-legislature distinction clearer.

If, as a public collective, we wish to bring movie makers to Rhode Island, our government's appropriate approach is to get out of the way, not to fly a caviar charmer out to California.

China and the Olympic Spirit

My grimly favorite reaction to the protests which dogged the Olympic flame through London, Paris and other cities was by a Beijing Olympic official, curiously not named in this government sanctioned article, who said that the protests "blasphemed the Olympic spirit." The irony that the actions of the goons and thugs who have ruled China for many decades have exemplified the antithesis of the Olympic spirit seems to have completely escaped him.

In the meantime, since those protests abroad, the government has permitted days of counter-demonstrations within China.

People gathered in front of [French retailer] Carrefour stores, chanting slogans of "Oppose Tibet independence" and "Oppose CNN's anti-China statements," referring to the international broadcaster, the official Xinhua news agency said.

They also chanted "Support the Olympics," "Play up! China," and "Condemn CNN" through loudspeakers.

More than 1,000 people assembled in front of a Carrefour store in the northwestern city of Xian holding protest banners, Xinhua said.

The Chinese government dispatched troops to protect Carrefour stores and now seems to be signaling for the protests to end.

But in recent days state media have called for calm in commentaries that have underscored the need for social stability ahead of the Beijing Olympics, the first time the nation has hosted such a prestigious event.

China's dictatorship is too insecure to endure the passion of protests, even pro-Chinese and, by extension, pro-government ones. This insecurity has now infected the Nepal government, which has prohibited the climbing of Mount Everest beyond Camp 3 until May 10, when the Olympic torch is to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

The Nepal government's stand comes in the wake of a heightened concern of the Chinese government towards ensuring a safe passage for the beleaguered torch.

The restrictions imposed on the mountaineers include prohibition of taking pictures or sending out any news clipping about their Himalayan expedition to the world outside. Moreover, they cannot proceed beyond Camp 3, at a height of about 7,000 metre. Liason officials have reportedly been posted at various points to ensure that the restrictions are strictly adhered to.

* * *

A senior NTB official confessed the western media, in particular, was piqued at these restrictions imposed by the government on the request of the Chinese government.

"But the Olympic Torch has to be protected at all cost. It is unreasonable on the part of westerners to make such a fuss about these restrictions, which are only temporary. In any case, people should respect the laws of the land they are travelling in," said the official.

And The Kathmandu Post, via New Delhi Television, reports today that Nepalese security forces have been deployed to Everest with orders to "shoot if necessary"

Nepal government has deployed dozens of security personnel on Mount Everest with orders to shoot if necessary to thwart possible anti-China protests by Tibetans during Beijing's planned Olympic torch run to the summit.

The security personnel equipped with logistics and mountaineering equipment have already moved to Camp II situated at an altitude of 6,600 metres above sea level, according to officials.

Also, the soldiers have been given orders to shoot if necessary, The Kathmandu Post daily reported on Sunday, quoting officials.

Can we get confirmation from that unnamed Chinese Olympic offical that this climbing restriction, not to mention the shoot-first-ask-questions-later order, are in keeping with the Olympic spirit?

A Further Thought

But let's not lose sight of a principle that looms pretty large in conservative philosophy: that social pressure is often the appropriate means of guiding individuals toward behavior that is healthy for society. This concept puts conservatives at the obvious political disadvantage of giving liberals cover to declare that they judge nothing but judgement and untruth (which is a lie), while conservatives must have the courage of their convictions and step forward in the face of error, even when doing so is difficult and involves skirting tricky lines and making one's self a target (which, by the way, arguably reinforces the healthy social pressure on the pressurer).

Popular interpretation of Jesus' admonition about being the first to cast stones has, I think, treated the stones as too broad a metaphor. In specific, they were instruments of execution. To treat them as representative of mere disapproval ignores the fact that Jesus' instruction to the woman was to go forth and sin no more, which required that she knew what was sinful, which required that her culture informed her.

Will it hurt a child, one day, to read judgemental language on the Internet regarding his parents and the circumstances of his childhood? Probably. But much more profound was the harm to the child done by those who determined the circumstances. Worse is the harm to victims of the legitimization of irresponsible behavior.

Principle Begets Innovation

Tom Sgouros decries the lack of worthy investments for people with money. The problem, he's arguing, isn't that the wealthy don't have the money to invest; it's that they have nowhere to invest it; they're holding it or directing it to safer investments. Me, I'll take his argument at face value, because I think he points to a more fundamental, and ultimately more important, discussion:

To be sure, there are still niches to find and exploit, but in a world with the global competition we have now, those opportunities are narrower and more elusive than they once were. Our problem isn't a shortage of investors or funds to invest, but a real shortage of places to invest them.

Instead of showering our largesse on the investor class, shouldn't we instead be focusing our resources on all the other essential parts of the equation: the inventors, the markets, the workers, the supply chains? Just as an example, recent talk about finding renewable energy opportunities, like building blades for giant wind turbines at Quonset, or creating local markets for clean electricity, seem much more on target to address these problems than current state policies. If you understand our economic issues this way, slashing school and university funding to benefit investors hardly seems to answer the needs we face, but that's what's in store this year.

Just to be clear, we're not talking government subsidies for investment; we're talking "cuts in corporate and income taxes," as well as capital gains. That being the case, conservative readers will surely pick up on, and object to, Sgouros's view that allowing people to keep money that they've earned is equivalent to "showering our largesse" on them. To the contrary, as a key matter of principle, it isn't "our" money; it's theirs, and if they were to remove themselves from our tax base (speaking especially in the context of Rhode Island, here), then we'd have none of it.

I agree, however, that we have to focus (our intellectual resources, anyway) on "the inventors, the markets, the workers, the supply chains." The question is how we do such a thing. Sgouros makes a somewhat oblique reference to the fashionable green energy industry, but he doesn't explain what it would mean to "focus our resources on it."

Curiously absent from these discussions, it seems to me, is any mention of what motivates our ostensible targets. What do inventors and workers want? What creates markets and facilitates supply chains? Well, workers want to make a living. Inventors are the same, but are often driven by intellectual curiosity to chase specific ideas. Markets arise when people want or need something, and supply chains develop to... err... supply them and their components.

These are all intentions and actions that arise unbidden. They do not need government bureaucrats and special interests to get together around a mahogany table in an air-controlled room so that they can step beyond the door to a pool of waiting microphones and announce to the society what direction would prove profitable. Inventors will solve problems and seek applications for their innovations. The people who comprise markets will look for what they want. Businesspeople will attempt to marry available technologies with apparent demand. Marketers will work to coax that demand along. And workers will calculate their own equations of need, interest, and ability to find the best opportunities for themselves.

An elite Board of Social Direction can only retard this process. By its nature, such a body begins with a priori requirements (which are ultimately political), and the only market that it can promise, it must wrest from all of the above citizens for reallocation. As much as that approach may periodically be necessary (in times of calamity and war), it is by no means efficient and too often proves irrevocable.

It oughtn't be controversial to suggest that the class of people who exist somewhere between neediness and opulence are so positioned that they will, by opportunity and necessity, make the most productive use of resources, but only rarely is a public entity most advantageously positioned to decide what that use ought to be. In attempting to allocate resources, that entity will more often overlay unnecessary and counterproductive obstacles.

To maximize a system of competition, the proper role of government is to facilitate the removal of obstacles that create unequal barriers to entry. That can mean physical obstacles, such as those literally lying in the path of transportation, but it can also mean regulatory obstacles — minimum wages and benefits, mandatory coverages, insurance, and other costs imposed by government.

People love to imagine that they can determine specific and ideal courses for their local societies, and many have direct interests in particular political outcomes, but even if one takes the tack that all wealth is ultimately "our" wealth, a largesse that we dispense at our pleasure, it's a whopper of a presumption that we can collectively elect or appoint a board with sufficient good will, objectivity, and intelligence to direct our economy.

In short, if we truly are to the point that further "tax cuts for the rich" only serve to give them money for which they've no productive use, it shouldn't fall to government to fabricate areas of investment. Rather, just as it has let out the monetary leash, so to speak, for an investor class, it must now let out the regulatory leash such that innovators and workers can more easily slip through the door.

William Felkner: Freedom Is the Cost of Social Justice

On January 28, the London Telegraph reported that 10 percent of the city's hospitals had denied surgeries to smokers and the obese. Doctors were warning the elderly that they were next; "the health care system cannot afford to give free health care to everyone."

In Canada, citizens weren't allowed to use anything but government healthcare. But so many people died waiting for care that the Supreme Court reversed the law and ruled, "access to a waiting list is not access to health care." Yet, this legal battle continues.

For many of us, this is no surprise. Socialized medicine is devoid of competition and consumer investment, and therefore costs rise out of control. But the issue here isn't the fallacy of universal health care; it's how much freedom we are willing to give up for the benefits we receive.

Ayn Rand once said that the difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time. It appears that that time is now in many parts of the world. London decides who is worthy of care, and Canada holds its market captive like America holds the poor in public schools. Oppression sells its wares under the guise of "social justice" demanding that the government's safety net instead become society's fabric. Once people become dependant, individual freedom is lost.

So, when Governor Caricieri announced that some of our tax dollars would be used to discourage out of wedlock childbirths and promote marriage, the reception was less than homey. Government isn't supposed to help people make choices; it is simply supposed to write them checks.

But for those of us who truly relish freedom, this is indeed a perplexing situation. It is beyond debate that two biological parents constitute the preferred environment for a child. But does government have the authority to influence lifestyle, or, dare I say, "moral" choices? The governor's response was the only logical statement anyone might accept: "If taxpayers must pay for other people's lifestyle choices, we have the right to influence those choices."

In a market driven social service world, people put their money with groups representing the values they support. Secular or not, donations were a way for people to "make the world a better place" in a manner the donors found worthy. But it's not like that anymore — at least not in RI.

Rhode Islanders like to say they are compassionate, but that compassion isn't voluntary. In 2005, the Catalog of Philanthropy released a report called the Generosity Index that ranked states on their "giving." Rhode Island ranked second lowest in the nation on the amount of money donated to charity according to itemized deductions. During that same year, RI spending on public assistance programs was the third highest in the country. And this is nothing new. Our "giving rank" from 1997 to 2004 (most recent year reported) was either 49th or 50th.

So now that we have developed a system that dictates a high level of government-enforced charity, whose morals will we use to administer it? Even if the proceeds are derived by coercion and government charity is given without condition, it becomes a value system that sends serious economic and moral signals. Rather than representing the absence of judgment, the evaporation of stigma within our politically correct, amoral government welfare state is a choice of values.

For all the ink that has been spilt deriding the president's insistence on "staying the course" after four years of resistance in the Iraq War, you would think progressives so critical of Bush would have recognized the same problem after 40 years of failure in the War on Poverty.

Welfare reform was nibbling around the edges of entitlement. For a real surge in morals, charity would have to be, well, charitable. The best we can hope for with government in the driver's seat is the finger-in-the-air test. Seventy-nine percent of American parents want teens to be taught abstinence until marriage, or at least until they are in adult relationships leading to marriage. They've got a much taller challenge on the other side of the pond, where 80 percent of the overtaxed Brits still want to pay for "social" abortions as medical entitlements.

First of all, I'm very glad "social" abortions are not yet in the RI lexicon, and I'm not even sure what they are, but I know I don't want my money paying for them. On the other hand, I also don't want to tell others how to spend their money, as long as it's legal, even when I'm with the majority, I fear its tyranny.

Society can strike a balance between The Scarlet Letter and Murphy Brown. It is far better that this dynamic process takes place without the fear that the government will pick the winner. Instead competing value systems can exist simultaneously, and their successes and failures can inform one another. The best deal we can possibly hope for is for government to recede a bit, making space for private action to strengthen the fabric of society with the safety net remaining just that.

If society does continue government-administered charity, we must accept a little totalitarianism. Me, I prefer freedomism.

William Felkner is the president of the Ocean State Policy Research Institute.

Knotting Some Public/Private Threads

One can hear, in the expected quarters, the admonition that Eliot Spitzer's $80,000 whoring habit is a private matter. I wonder how many who'd make that argument also see David Richardson's travails in Providence — where he recently requested proof of the citizenship status of an Hispanic customer to his store — as private.

I imagine that a sizable number of them would insist that Richardson's act, as a manifestation of racism, was a blight on our society and has repercussions beyond the individuals involved. But then, I'd say the same of adultery and prostitution.

Perhaps they'd take the tack that his business transactions are a public matter. But then a prostitute's business transactions would be the same, and a marriage is even more explicitly so.

The circumstances are different, of course, one involving an elected official and the other a store owner, but I don't see anywhere to draw a line between the two that makes one act private and the other public.

A Rationale Behind Corruption

In 2002, Mwai Kibaki was elected President of Kenya primarily on an anti-corruption platform. Once in office, he appointed as Kenya's Permanent Secretary to the Office in Charge of Governance and Ethics (an anti-corruption czar) a man named John Githongo and specifically included his own government in Mr. Githongo's purview. This week on The Interview, the BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones interviews Mr. Githongo, now in exile for attempting to discharge the duties of his office as corruption in President Mwai Kibaki's administration ramped up.

In describing the situation he was forced to walk away from, Mr. Githongo also provides some good definitions of public corruption:

Top leaders in Kenya became corrupt or decided to acquire resources by abusing their public office. ... The abuse of public office for private gain became quite normal.

While he acknowledges that corruption is endemic in Kenya, Mr. Githongo rejects the excuse that the problem is cultural, correctly noting that "culture is made" and that the people of Kenya do not have an "inbuilt kind of corruption gene" (a note that I would apply to all people).

What was fascinating, however, was the excuse or justification usually given when Mr. Githongo would approach a minister or member of government about his corrupt activity. The minister would respond, "This is us."

Mr. Githongo elaborates:

And who is us? Typically, us is a small group of individuals predominantly from one ethnic group around the president.

"Us." Whether an ethnic "us" or a party "us," it's "us," so we are entitled to receive, bestow, or trade resources for personal gain.

The concept that "us" would have a much broader meaning and that the power voluntarily ceded by all citizens through free elections is to be exercised solely for the greater good seems to be entirely missed from this reasoning.

So What Difference Does Dictatorship Make, Anyway?

Perhaps a new Cuban declaration could assert the right of all people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of par (paragraphs rearranged):

Golf had been played on the island since the 1920s. At the time of the 1959 revolution, Havana boasted two award-winning courses, at the Havana Country Club and the Biltmore, which hosted such greats as Sam Snead and the rookie Arnold Palmer. A third course, where Mr. Castro would lose to Che Guevara, had just opened. U.S. tycoon Irénée du Pont had a private nine-hole course in Xanadu, his fabled Varadero beach estate. ...

In 1962, Mr. Castro lost a round of golf to Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who had been a caddy in his Argentine hometown before he became a guerrilla icon. Mr. Castro's defeat may have had disastrous consequences for the sport. He had one Havana golf course turned into a military school, another into an art school. A journalist who wrote about the defeat of Cuba's Maximum Leader, who was a notoriously bad loser, was fired the next day. ...

The famous game between Messrs. Castro and Guevara took place shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, according to José Lorenzo Fuentes, Mr. Castro's former personal scribe, who covered the game. Mr. Lorenzo Fuentes says the match was supposed to send a friendly signal to President Kennedy. "Castro told me that the headline of the story the next day would be 'President Castro challenges President Kennedy to a friendly game of golf,'" he says.

But the game became a competitive affair between two men who did not like to lose, says Mr. Lorenzo Fuentes, who recalls that Mr. Guevara "played with a lot of passion." Mr. Lorenzo Fuentes says he felt he couldn't lie about the game's outcome, so he wrote a newspaper story saying Fidel had lost. Mr. Lorenzo Fuentes says he lost his job the next day, eventually fell afoul of the regime and now lives in Miami.

It's an iffy thing to live in a society in which one must constantly fear that the supreme leader's tastes will run afoul of one's own.

(via Instapundit)

The Soft-Peddling of Castro's Tyranny

Ken Shepherd of the media blog NewsBusters has an excellent post about the noticeable absence of a certain word in main stream media reports about Fidel Castro's announcement that he is stepping down as ruler of Cuba.

The level of excusing and tip-toeing around the truth about Castro is staggering. As of 2:13 ET when you do a Google News search for "Fidel Castro" you come up with 7,520 results. Add the word dictator after it and you come back with 1,417. That's 81 percent less.

* * * *

None of those articles directly referred to Castro as a dictator.

Some quick history so we're all on the same page. The US Department of State summarizes Castro's ascension to power thusly:

Although he had promised a return to constitutional rule and democratic elections along with social reforms, Castro used his control of the military to consolidate his power by repressing all dissent from his decisions, marginalizing other resistance figures, and imprisoning or executing thousands of opponents. An estimated 3,200 people were executed by the Castro regime between 1959-62 alone. As the revolution became more radical, hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled the island.

To this day, there is a complete absence on the island of free speech, a free press or anything ressembling a genuine justice system demonstrated, for example, in 1989 by the kangaroo court trial and swift execution of Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez and his associates.

Turning back to one of the themes (the locale?) of Anchor Rising, I stumbled across some Castro sympathy here in Rhode Island completely by accident last week. In the process of researching late night eateries in Providence for the sake of Senator Juan Pichardo (there are none open past 1:00 am on a weeknight so it looks like the Senator will have to continue using his Pichardo Card to obtain after hours restaurant service), I clicked on the website of a Providence restaurant called the Cuban Revolution. After checking out their hours, I glanced over the rest of the front page, where I was a little dismayed to find the following:

Borne of a desire to rid Cuba of the US supported dictator Fulgencio Batista who ran Cuba as a Mafia-controlled "Latin Las Vegas," the Cuban Revolution was a popular rebellion of the masses led by the charismatic Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Athough it’s primary goal was to rid Cuba of decades of corporate and political corruption fueled by the heavy hand of American imperialism, it sought to restore basic human rights and an identity to a beautiful land of proud and distinguished people completely independent of the corporate interests of the United States. Although we sympathize with those whose lives may have been horribly disrupted by the Revolution, we blame a failed and misguided US policy that for decades supported the tyranny of Batista while allowing the Mafia to run wild... notwithstanding the subsequent failure of the US to embrace the Cuban Revolution and the US historical inability to support an independent and vibrant Cuba.

My understanding is that the food at the Cuban Revolution is excellent. The problem is the views of the Cuban revolution expressed on their website, to wit: Is the writer of these words under the impression that basic human rights were restored to Cuba when Castro (literally) took office? Are we to understand that corruption is acceptable in the pursuit of some things but not others? Do evil deeds - in this case, of certain US officials - justify evil deeds? If so, does that mean that evil deeds hypothetically provoked by Castro are in turn justified? Suppose another coup occurred in Cuba, one which employed the same violence as Castro, Guevara and the gang, and a pro-capitalist dictatorship were installed in Cuba. Would the writer pen the same words of sympathy and justification about that coup as s/he did about Castro's? As for the last phrase, I'm sure I speak for lots of Americans and American politicians when I say, we most certainly do support an independent and vibrant Cuba. How would embracing a dictatorship advance that vision?

The sentiments in the above excerpt are not exclusive to their author; that was the point of referencing them. On the contrary, they are representative of an unfortunate tendency seemingly to adhere to a section of the political spectrum instead of to principles.

Parsing Regularity

In the comments to my Sides Taking Shape post, RI Future's Matt Jerzyk objects to my characterization of Bruce Lang and Ryan Curran as "regular Rhode Islanders." According to Jerzyk, the former is a "longtime Statehouse activist" (founder, apparently, of Operation Clean Government) and the latter once ran for a General Assembly seat. I simply did not know either's history, and the names did not ring any bells. I think the characterization still applies, though.

But the objection does raise an interesting question: What circumstances disqualify one from being a "regular Rhode Islander"? I imagine, for example, that Matt would disqualify we Anchor Rising contributors, while by my estimation, we're precisely "regular" — simple taxpaying citizens who've taken an interest in the betterment of our state. Does becoming vocal automatically make one not regular?

There's certainly a line to be crossed — somewhere between Anchor Rising and RI Future. Somewhere between citizens making arguments, even advocating policies, even running for office and coordinated activists tapped into the major pipelines of influence in the state. To be sure, it's far easier to cross this line on the Left than the Right in Rhode Island.

One sure marker, though, may just be the ability to recognize and allocate even minor players in the state's civically involved community. Personally, I hope never to take up as much of my brain with such information as would be required to transcend regularity.

On the Weakness of Prim 'n' Proper

In a tangential comment to Marc's post about population loss, "Chalkdust" issued the following multipart critique of Anchor Rising's comment sections:

"Of course, once NOW stayed on its knees for Bill Clinton"

Another reason (along with "brown babies") that Anchor Rising MIGHT be an interesting place to debate issues, if one can manage to close one's ears to this trash.

Does anybody in charge here ever try to actively disassociate from this crowd? I don't mean censor, I just mean say loudly that they're over the top and unwanted. Just curious. ...

... I hadn't realized until now that "conservative talk" actually requires crude sexual and racial references. Maybe I was reading too much Buckley, Safire and Scalia, but thanks for the clearer picture of what conservativism in RI means. ...

... It's just that being raised by very, very conservative parents (Goldwater Republicans) , I was taught that, at least in public discussion, vulgarity, name-calling and hubris were not only improper, but sinful. I guess it's a different game today.

Monique left a subsequent comment explaining that we do pull the trigger, from time to time, when comments shift out of bounds, but I think a somewhat more involved answer might be useful.

I can't speak for the other contributors to Anchor Rising, but I grew up on the highway side of town in Jersey — by the exit, if you get what I mean. Nobody was poor in my town, but neither were the cardigans plentiful. Now, I live in a working-class neighborhood, which is fitting considering that I spend my days on the construction site and need a driveway in which my work van won't look out of place at night. This is all to say that, while I appreciate — and enjoy — restrictive, rules-based conversations that seek to address ideas and issues with viscera at arm's length, colorful language has its attractions and uses in certain contexts.

As a word guy, I'd suggest that choice imagery — emotion-drenched though it may be — can more fully convey a thought than antiseptic descriptions and abstractions. Comme il faut faux civility has actually become a useful mechanism for the Left. It's not "sucking the brains out of a just-about-born baby"; it's "partial-birth abortion." (Sometimes, it's not even "abortion"; it's "dilation and evacuation.") Racist, bigot, fascist, sexist, homophobe... these are all words that purport to be descriptive, but are wielded in such a way as to beat back and dismiss an opponent without staining one's white gloves with any taint of irrationality.

I suppose the writer of the "trash" could have avoided the fellatial metaphor and written, instead, something like: "Of course, NOW once compromised the integrity of its ostensible message." But that loses something of the justified scorn and the curiously stained irony of the empowerment group's fawning passivity before an alpha male.

I suppose that, if a reader's tender sensibilities are such that he or she cannot filter through the inevitable range of voices in an open online forum, then, yes, the Anchor Rising comment sections might not be the place to seek conversation. For my part, I figure that Carnegie Mellon called one of its required freshman English courses "Argumentative Writing" for a reason.

The Nation's Job Proficiency Test

Lee Drutman has an excellent idea for an additional (or substitutive) practice for evaluating presidential candidates:

How about, just for once, instead of a short-answer debate, we let our candidates take a long-essay test where we get to see the quality of their actual decision-making? The format could work like this: The candidates show up, and they each get an office with a computer, hooked up to the Internet, and a phone. They also get a full scenario. For example, What would they do if radical Islamists staged a coup in Pakistan and began initiating military action in Kashmir? How would they respond if China's economy went into a tailspin and Asia began following? How would they respond if a particularly virulent flu started showing up in the United States? What would they do if a group claiming to be affiliated with al-Qaida blew up a bus in Chicago?

Then they get an hour to craft a response. They can call whomever they like, do what research they like, and talk to the scenario experts as much as they like. But every move is recorded on video, so we can see how they approach a problem. At the end, they each get 10 minutes in their office to explain how and why they would respond (this way they do not get to hear what other candidates have said).

This would be different. But it would be serious. It would give onlookers a chance to see how the candidates think through a situation, what questions they ask, and how they present a solution, given time to think about it. After all, we want a creative problem-solver in the Oval Office, not a mere regurgitator of rehearsed pabulum.

His second idea — an anonymous survey of government types — is less attractive, telling the public more who's side has better stacked the careerists than which candidate would be effective within their world. On the other hand, it might be nice to be able to vote against their preferences.

Take Away the Incentive

Lee Drutman's musing against the scourge of lobbyists is telling in the solution that he fails to consider:

The challenge then is two-fold. One is to figure out ways to make public service more of a career in itself and less of the stepping-stone it is increasingly becoming. This may mean such things as better salaries, better benefits and better hours. The other challenge is to find a way that more groups can get adequate representation in Washington, not just those who can afford to hire the megaphone of an über-connected Trent Lott type. This is much harder.

Perhaps it is time to think about regulating the prices that lobbyists can charge for their services (ideally to achieve some rough parity with government). Doing so would not only provide a more level playing field for different outside groups. It would also help to depress the salaries of lobbyists, and thus reduce the lure of lobbying to public servants. This is, of course, a radical solution. But perhaps drastic times call for drastic measures.

Thus would he further ensure that career politicians have incentive to grow government and otherwise encounter situations in which the career might benefit from that which the country does not, and that the lobbying advantage will go to those able to spend around the regulated lobbying prices (perhaps by electing their lobbyists, as it were). Why is the solution always to grow and solidify the magnet of corruption? To increase the prize? Drutman may have titled his book The People’s Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy, but the masses will never benefit from increasing the exclusivity of government.

A better solution would be to shrink it. If the state's fingers are not on every aspect of local, national, and international life — at least at a centralized level — then organizations have less need of high-priced lobbyists.

The Entitlement Mindset of Rich and Poor

A relevant thought for the day from Claremont's Richard Reeb:

Entitlements ought to be understood only as goods or honors that we have earned, not something we think that we, or someone else, ought to have. That necessarily and unavoidably entails taking from one person or group and giving to another. The impolite word for that is theft. It impoverishes the victim and corrupts the beneficiary...

There is no point in being charitable toward what is truly not a charitable, but rather a greedy and a covetous, impulse, this political game called income redistribution. People who advocate it call themselves liberals (or progressives since liberalism got a bad name in the 1980s), but liberal people don’t demonstrate any moral virtue by forcibly taking someone else’s money instead of donating their own.

...the words of the Declaration of Independence clarify the matter: one is entitled only (though this is no small thing) to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, meaning that all must respect, and the government that we establish should secure, the free exercise of those rights.

The pursuit of happiness is not merely following one’s passions or inclinations but making the decisions and forming the habits which sustain one’s life, enhance one’s liberty and attain one’s happiness. None of this is easy, nor can it be, but it is easy to understand: one works to enrich oneself and not a king, aristocrat, dictator or bureaucrat, not to mention citizens who choose not to work and expect you to support them.

The entitlement mentality is so strong and pervasive that both the well off and the poor have fallen prey to it. In this democratic country, it has become a political creed that there is a permanent "underclass" that deserves to be supported. But no less a force are the wealthy farmers, businessmen and bureaucrats whose subsidies, write offs and sinecures fill their pockets and distort the marketplace.

Decent people are rightly critical of what they call "crazy" government programs that waste billions of taxpayers’ dollars. But the recipients of those giveaways are not crazy by any means, except perhaps crazy like a fox.

But maybe the foxes watching the Rhode Island hen house have finally out-foxed themselves.

Post-Modern Conservatives

Over at Spinning Clio (two mentions in a week!), I've posted about the Post-Modernism of Russell Kirk. I know, I know...but if your interest is pique, please take look.

The President and Popular Opinion in a Republlic

In number 71 of The Federalist, Publius (Alexander Hamilton) makes an important point about the relationship between popular opinion and the executive. He argues that there is a difference between “the deliberate sense of the community” and “transient impulses.”

There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the Executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the legislature, as its best recommendation. But such men entertain very crude notions, as well of the purposes for which government was instituted, as of the true means by which the public happiness may be promoted. The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests. It is a just observation, that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.

Republican government requires that the actions of the president reflect the deliberate sense of the community rather than transient impulses because the former is in accordance with the interests of the community, properly understood. To ”deliberate” and thereby determine the “the deliberate sense of the community” means to free oneself from the passions

When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.

Over at The Remedy, the blog of the Claremont institute in California, Richard Reeb applies this reasoning to the war in Iraq. Here is the key passage:

Our government was not designed to fall prey to the most powerful faction or to be dominated by the most powerful branch. This is not a government by plebiscite but one of three separate branches, each as independent as possible of the others. Thus, Congress is free to pass any bills it wishes, the president is free conduct foreign policy and wage war as he determines, and the courts are free to decide cases on the merits.

This constitutional distribution of offices gives this government of, by and for the people its distinctive character. A large body like the Congress is best equipped for deliberation, a single executive for decisive action and a small number of supreme judges for jurisprudence. The object is not to cause deadlock but to enable each department to have a will of its own and to ensure that the actions the government takes are based on what the founders called the “deliberate sense of the people” rather than transient impulses.

More specifically, the health of our republic depends less on the popularity of decisions, although no policy can be maintained for long in the teeth of determined popular opposition (the recent immigration bill is a case in point), but on the wisdom of those decisions.

President Bush is not defying the will of the American people by prosecuting the war in Iraq but is following the consent he was given when he was re-elected in 2004. He was elected to exercise his best judgment for four years, not for four months or four weeks, or however long his political opposition believes, or professes, to be his limit.

Here is the whole thing:

Victory in the War Depends on Our Nation's Character

Deliberate Sense of the People v. Transient Impulses

A nation’s character, like that of a human being, is clearest when hard decisions must be made. The present moment, when the United States is committed to winning the war against Islamo-fascists at home and abroad, may well be the occasion for making or breaking us. We must prevail in Iraq or we will face fearful consequences.

Following the 2006 congressional elections, President Bush abandoned the soft footprint strategy that limited us to winning back regions held by the enemy without holding them, and replaced it with what has been called a “surge.” This entailed increasing substantially the number of troops and authorizing them to seek out and destroy al-Qaeda terrorists, die-hard Baathists from the old regime, and sectarian militias.

Our object remains to facilitate self government by the Iraqi people, be they Shiite, Sunni or Kurd, not only to defeat their most dangerous enemies but to demonstrate that success depends ultimately on their accepting more of the responsibility, as policemen and soldiers, yes, but also as loyal citizens, in that effort.

The most encouraging developments have included clearing out Baghdad and provincial areas and winning over the suspicious and the wary elements of the population. Our forces have routed the enemy more than once, but the greatest challenge has been to prevent them from returning or simply moving on and terrorizing another region.

The key to holding areas taken is local support, which entails Iraqis alerting coalition forces to the identity and/or location of hostile forces, followed by the movement to the coalition side of militias that had formed to fill the void left by departing Iraqi or coalition forces.

It strikes critics of the war effort as odd, if not shameful, that people who once opposed us are now fighting with us on the same side, but surely it is wise to accept support from wherever it comes. The more Iraqis turn against those who terrorize them and join forces with their liberators, the better off they are and the more likely that our combined efforts will be successful.

However much progress we make in Iraq, none of it counts for anything unless our nation supports the effort. Even though the evidence is growing that the surge is working, the vast majority of Democrats in Congress are writing it off as hopeless, regarding defeat as inevitable, if not desirable. That a few Republicans have joined them makes the situation more perilous because the Democrats may thereby override presidential policy or overturn presidential vetoes of congressional restrictions, deadlines or funding cutoffs.

Our government was not designed to fall prey to the most powerful faction or to be dominated by the most powerful branch. This is not a government by plebiscite but one of three separate branches, each as independent as possible of the others. Thus, Congress is free to pass any bills it wishes, the president is free conduct foreign policy and wage war as he determines, and the courts are free to decide cases on the merits.

This constitutional distribution of offices gives this government of, by and for the people its distinctive character. A large body like the Congress is best equipped for deliberation, a single executive for decisive action and a small number of supreme judges for jurisprudence. The object is not to cause deadlock but to enable each department to have a will of its own and to ensure that the actions the government takes are based on what the founders called the “deliberate sense of the people” rather than transient impulses.
More specifically, the health of our republic depends less on the popularity of decisions, although no policy can be maintained for long in the teeth of determined popular opposition (the recent immigration bill is a case in point), but on the wisdom of those decisions.

President Bush is not defying the will of the American people by prosecuting the war in Iraq but is following the consent he was given when he was re-elected in 2004. He was elected to exercise his best judgment for four years, not for four months or four weeks, or however long his political opposition believes, or professes, to be his limit.

The unpopularity of the Iraq war with Democrats and others has not made it any less in our national interest to have allies in the heart of the Middle East in the war against Islamo-fascism. Nor does it make any less likely the consequences of our defeat.

However tragic the loss of even one American life in that effort truly is, we must keep our perspective, remembering that thousands more were lost in Vietnam and Korea, not to mention the two world wars. The news media, more than any other institution in America, magnifies the costs of the war and caters to the “transient impulses” rather than the deliberate sense of the American people.

It has taken, and will take, longer to defeat the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere than anyone imagined, but that is no reason to give up. The American nation grew to prominence, both moral and political, because of the character our people. As long as we love liberty and appreciate the virtues of self government, we will prevail. But if we permit ourselves to be misled by demagogues and narrow partisans, we will reap the whirlwind.

"Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?"

Former RI Senate Majority Leader and CCRI Professor David Carlin (D, Newport) has written a new book, Can a Catholic Be A Democrat. Here's a summary:

When author David Carlin was a young man, it was scandalous for a good Catholic to be anything but a good Democrat. In the pews, pubs, and union halls of America's cities, millions of poor European immigrants and their children pledged allegiance to the Church of Rome and the party of FDR. All that changed in the 1960s, with the rise of a new kind of Democrat: wealthy, secular, ideological....So complete this transformation has been that we no longer speak of a natural alliance between Catholics and the Democratic Party. Indeed, Carlin here asks whether today it's even possible to be both a faithful Catholic and a Democratic true believer....On issues of human life, sex, faith, morality, suffering - and the public policies that stem from them - the modern, secularist Democratic Party has become the enemy of Catholicism; indeed, of all traditional religions. Carlin shatters the excuses that Catholic Democratic politicians employ in a vain attempt to reconcile their faith and their votes, and then, with what he calls the "political equivalent of a broken heart," he examines his own political conscience. As a faithful Catholic and a Democrat approaching his seventieth year, must he now leave the party he's called home since birth? David Carlin's arguments challenge all religious Democrats to ask themselves the same question.

Here's a review.

Little Segue Is Needed

It's somewhat surprising how little segue is deemed necessary, in America's letters to the editor sections, to bash the president or the pope. On the death of Kurt Vonnegut, Ivan Wolfson from Riverside explained:

Vonnegut’s novels explored, often with humor, the inexhaustible ability of humans, as individuals, governments and corporations, through their greed, thoughtlessness, stupidity and plain cruelty, to cause misery and destruction.

What could follow more naturally from the annunciation of humans' greed, thoughtlessness, stupidity, and plain cruelty than the following?

I imagine his reaction would have been the same, as was mine, had he read the only other headline on the page with his obituary: “Pope says evolution not proven.”

I suppose it would be fruitless to note that the Pope Benedict's statement appears to have been more that the broad historical claims of evolution can't be proven, in the laboratory sense, within the context of his larger argument that:

The question is not to either make a decision for a creationism that fundamentally excludes science, or for an evolutionary theory that covers over its own gaps and does not want to see the questions that reach beyond the methodological possibilities of natural science ... I find it important to underline that the theory of evolution implies questions that must be assigned to philosophy and which themselves lead beyond the realms of science.

Although, it might be surmisable that Mr. Vonnegut would have found fodder in the notion that we ought to trust the global media to properly handle such a subtle thing as context when it comes to matters of religion.