Recently in Politics (general) Category

Libertarian writer Shikha Dalmia says Ayn Rand was right about so much, but fatally wrong about an essential aspect of human nature: the impulse to selflessness and compassion. This explains why she's a cult figure for younger people, but eventually is outgrown. Excerpt:

Most people read Rand when they are young and are deeply moved by her, only to outgrow her by mid-life. Her adherents like to blame this on the moral pusillanimity and irrationality of the readers. But the real problem is perhaps with Rand herself: Her ideology of self-actualization speaks much more to the concerns of the young than the mature--again, because she ignores the "other-interested" side of human nature.

More:

For example, under Rand's schema would a person who abandons some passion in order to look after an elderly parent have a higher or lower moral standing than someone who doesn't (assuming that the parents are equally worthy)? Will the former be happier? More at peace? Rand gives us no real reason to believe so. In fact, the distinct impression one gets from her work is that an individual's first duty is to cultivating his own passions rather than nurturing his interest in the flourishing of those around him (with the possible exception of one's romantic partner). No surprise then that the virtue of generosity or benevolence, though it has pride of place in the work of Aristotle--the only philosopher to whom Rand acknowledges any intellectual debt--occupies a second-class status in her own work.

The fact is that Rand gets harder to take as one grows older and concerns about those around us become more important than our own personal project of self development. The relentless, single-minded dedication to one's passions that Rand seems to favor requires a coldness of the soul, a narrowing of one's humanity--the natural interest in the fortune of others that Smith alludes to--that most people find is not exactly conducive to their happiness.

This has profound and unfortunate political consequences. On the practical level, it makes it difficult to build a strong and growing anti-government movement based solely on Rand's philosophy, because the older cohort of her followers is falling off on a regular basis. On the theoretical level, Rand's ideas offer no real possibility of developing robust civil society responses to address the needs of those down on their luck. It is difficult to imagine a Randian qua Randian, say, volunteering in a soup kitchen to feed the hungry, or even founding the Fraternal Order of Fellow Randians to provide free health coverage and housing to jobless and homeless Randians. Since misfortune and distress are a normal part of the human condition, a philosophy that offers no positive, private solutions to deal with them will just have a harder time making the case against government intervention stick.

George Will takes up one of this blog's longtime concerns: how liberal activists use disclosure requirements to intimidate people who donate to initiatives they dislike. Excerpt:

In the 1950s, Alabama tried to compel the NAACP to disclose its membership list. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disclosure would burden the freedoms of expression and association that the First Amendment protects.

Advocates of compelled disclosure predictably invoke Louis Brandeis' axiom that sunlight is the best disinfectant. But what is the supposed infection?

The Supreme Court has held that disclosure requirements serve three government interests: They provide information about the flow of political money, they deter corruption and avoid the appearance thereof by revealing large contributions, and they facilitate enforcement of contribution limits. These pertain only to financial information in candidate elections. These cannot justify compelled disclosures regarding referendums because referendums raise no issues of officials' future performance in office -- being corruptly responsive to financial contributors. The only relevant information about referendums is in the text of the propositions.

In 1973, Washington's secretary of state ruled that signing an initiative or referendum petition is "a form of voting" and violating voters' privacy could have adverse "political ramifications" for those signing. In 2009, some advocates of disclosure plan to put signers' names on the Internet in order to force "uncomfortable" conversations.

I've pointed out in previous blog posts how the Eightmaps creeps in California ought to think about how difficult life would be for pro-same-sex-marriage donors in places like the rural South if their opponents chose to make their names public. I agree with Will: compelling disclosure of people who give to one side or the other in matters like referendums poses an intolerable burden to freedom of expression and association. If you disagree, put yourself in the position of a white NAACP member in 1950s Alabama, someone who gave money discreetly to the NAACP because you hated segregation, but were too afraid to go public because it would have threatened your livelihood, or even your life. What if there had been a public referendum on Jim Crow, and you had given money as a white person to the "overturn" side? I can tell you, as someone who has a dear white friend whose aunts had a cross burned on their lawn in the 1960s for their voter registration activity in Louisiana, that this was by no means a theoretical threat. There were no such referendums in our history, obviously, but if you grant that under those conditions donor disclosure would overburden freedom of speech and association (as it plainly would), then you must grant that there are, and always will be, cases in America, depending on time and place, where ordinary people could suffer unjustly for the causes they support financially. Keeping donor lists to causes private protects all of us, liberals and conservatives, from zealots. We ought to all support this kind of privacy protection.

a) good news for conservatism, because it shows that conservatives are fed up with the same old same old from the Republican Party, and are willing to vote third party when given the chance.

b) bad news for conservatism, because it shows that conservatives are willing to throw their support behind someone who is ideologically correct even if he knows little or nothing about the practical issues relevant to a constituency (and, similarly, good for liberalism because it shows conservatives have no intention of allowing candidates appealing to moderate voters rise).

c) irrelevant beyond the 23rd Congressional district of New York, because Scozzafava was such a flawed candidate no broader lessons can be drawn from her being driven humiliatingly from the race by Conservative Party insurgent Doug Hoffman.

If I were a voter in that district, I'm not sure what I would have done. Granted, I haven't been following that race much, but from what I know, it would have been difficult for me to have voted for Scozzafava, given her pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage views. On the other hand, it would be hard for me to have pulled the lever for Doug Hoffman, given that he doesn't seem to know much about his district, and skipped debates; I don't want to reward Palin-style candidates, because I don't want to encourage Palin-style candidates. I agree with Marc Ambinder:

One lesson that conservatives shouldn't take from the Hoffman example: running unprepared candidates who don't know their districts very well is the way to harness populace [populist? -- RD] energy. That's not true. Hoffman is an exception; unless the GOP is prepared to descend into its Bush twilight anti-intellectualism again, they'll need to recruit smart candidates who, as one Florida GOPer says, can read the New York Times even though he disagrees with it. This is too serious a time for shallow candidate.

Via David Frum, it turns out that Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party favorite in the hotly contested New York Congressional race -- the one in which the official Republican Party candidate is being rejected by conservative voters in favor of the third party guy -- doesn't actually know much about the practical concerns of the district he hopes to represent in Congress. From a local newspaper editorial about a disastrous editorial board meeting:

Mr. Hoffman spoke only generally about the need to improve the country's economy and to create jobs but provided no details, which were also lacking as well in his broadly stated willingness to help our military personnel. Help in what way he could not say.

Mr. Hoffman had no opinion about winter navigation and widening the St. Lawrence Seaway with their potential environmental damage. He was not familiar with the repercussions of a proposed federal energy marketing agency for the Great Lakes, which could pay for Seaway expansion contrary to district interests.

A flustered and ill-at-ease Mr. Hoffman objected to the heated questioning, saying he should have been provided a list of questions he might be asked. He was, if he had taken the time to read the Thursday morning Times editorial raising the very same questions.

Coming to Mr. Hoffman's defense, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who accompanied the candidate on a campaign swing, dismissed regional concerns as "parochial" issues that would not determine the outcome of the election. On the contrary, it is just such parochial issues that we expect our representative to understand and be knowledgeable about, if he wants to be our voice in Washington.

That's just pathetic. I sit in on these kinds of meetings all the time, and it's very easy to discern which candidates understand the issues in their districts. If Hoffman can't handle an editorial board asking about bread and butter stuff important to the district, he doesn't belong in Congress. And come on, Dick Armey! Is it really "parochial" to expect a guy who wants to be Congressman to understand economic and development issues that will affect his district. Maybe Hoffman is better on balance than Scozzafava, the despised Republican, but if I were a voter in that district, I'd be extremely wary about casting a vote for a candidate who couldn't answer basic questions about ordinary governance, even if I agreed with his views on big-picture issues. The problem with Sarah Palin is that she was easy to identify with on big-picture issues, but when the press started talking specifics with her, her lack of knowledge relevant to the job she was seeking (vice president of the United States) was laid bare. That seems to have happened to Hoffman in this interview as well.

I know, I know, people tend to vote on a sense of shared values with a particular candidate, not evidence of competence. I wonder if that's true this year, though.

Caleb Stegall republishes at Front Porch Republic a Dallas Morning News essay on populism he penned a few years back. Here's how it begins:

In the 1980s, the historian and social critic Christopher Lasch pronounced dead the conventional political categories of right and left and argued for a revitalization of politics through a redefinition of terms.

"The idea of a 'left' has outlived its historical time and needs to be decently buried, along with the false conservatism that merely clothes an older liberal tradition in conservative rhetoric."

Since that time, a number of third-party candidates have tried to do just that - from Pat Buchanan to Ross Perot to the perpetual candidacy of Ralph Nader - with a mixed record of success and virtually no electoral victories.Yet there remains a growing sense that the times finally have caught up with the prophetic Mr. Lasch. Could it be that the old political stereotypes and national parties are no longer capable of addressing the needs of the nation? Could we be on the verge of a tectonic shift in American politics?

There are signs.