Neither Social Nor Democratic

The folks at the British Spectator are having a grand old time this week in the aftermath of the Labour Party's wipeout in local and European elections. People are even talking about the end of the Labour Party.

We've heard that one before, of course. Pundits are always prophesying the end of political parties when they suffer at the polls.

Maybe this really is the end of the Labour Party. But probably not. Anyway, every nation has its Gimme-stuff-for-free Party. If Labour fades away then another social democratic party will appear to take its place.

But that won't change the fact that social democratic parties are a lie. They are neither social nor democratic.

The word "social" comes from the Latin "socius." It means "companion, ally, associate" according to Online Webster. But that is exactly what a social democratic party is not. It is not social, but statist, with the natural cooperative instincts of mankind brutally chopped down by overweening state power. Democratic? Well, the only way the people would get to rule is by minimizing the power of government so that they could rule themselves in their private families, churches, and associations. Otherwise democracy is the rule of the politicians.

But we don't get that, do we? And the reason we don't get it is the power hunger of the progressive educated elite. They want a political system where they rule, benevolently of course, through vast national bureaucratic administrative structures staffed by their tame experts. But when you get a gigantic hierarchy like that you cannot have a "social" system, characterized by companions, allies, associates. You have a top-down oppressive system obsessed with rule-making and control.

In Britain, this has reached parody, where people openly laugh and sneer at the "target culture" of the Labour government. The target culture is the hopelessly ineffective attempt to force some kind of accountability downwards from the top onto the people actually delivering public services. But it always ends up being a system to make the chaps on top look good, rather than actually direct the people at the bottom to deliver effective social services.

The real joke, or the tragedy, is that we don't need all this government power and oppression. We already have an workable system of social democracy, the system of voluntary cooperation we call capitalism. It forces powerful people to work for the benefits of the consumers. It controls economic power by the system of profit and loss. Screw up enough, and you go out of business.

But that is the last thing that the social democrats in the Labour Party or the US Democratic Party would ever think of supporting.

You can understand their point of view. What would happen if The People just didn't know enough, or care enough, to make the right decision? And what would the progressive educated elite do if it didn't have the power to boss people around--in their own best interest, of course?

Here's another question. What happens if The Progressive Educated Elite doesn't know enough, or care enough, to make the right decision?

The sad thing is that, when the whole system crashes down, it will be the supporters of the social democratic parties that will suffer most. The skilled middle class will do fine, because it has the talent and the skills to thrive whatever happens. But the folk who put their trust in politicians will pay a terrible price.

And that is a crying shame.

Auto Bailouts Give the Lie to Obamanomics

The folks that voted for President Obama felt that Obama would bring a new culture to American politics. John R. Talbot's Obamanomics: How Bottom-up Economic Prosperity Will Replace Trickle-down Economics provides a look at what a pro-Obama partisan thinks an Obama economy would look like. Today, America is a travesty.

The rich buy boats and cars and diamonds and jewels and throw lavish parties, while their fellow citizens scrape by trying to pay the rent and feed their families.

Under Obama, things will be different.

In a bottom-up economy, the rules of business and government are fair and apply to all... They feel that their personal success will be determined by their hard work and effort, not by who they know or who they are related to.

It's difficult to characterize the auto bailouts, perhaps the biggest US government intervention into industrial policy ever, as bottom-up Obamanomics. Not when school-teachers and pensioners, holders of auto company bonds, are getting the shaft while the UAW and UAW members are getting 55 percent of Chrysler.

Newt Gingrich calls this a scandal, on a par with the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s when oilman Harry Sinclair got drilling rights to the Teapot Dome in Wyoming after giving Interior Secretary Albert Fall a hefty bribe.

My guess is we are in the early stages of a huge backlash against the Democratic Party. The American People hate the bailouts. They hate the stimulus. They hate the huge deficits. And in the months and years to come, politicians will find out how to lead them and give electoral muscle to this rage.

In the Bush years, liberals convinced themselves that Bush was bad and Dems were good, and that was all you needed to know. But I think that they are living in Fantasyland. Americans hate the bailouts; they will hate federal control of health care; they will hate renewable energy and cap-and-trade.

It will take time. But one day liberals will wake up and find that the American people want them out of there, fast. It is one thing to talk about wonderful health care. It is another thing to change the relationships that American women have with their doctors. It is one thing to talk about bottom-up economics. It is another thing when you've just paid off your supporters with a crony-capitalist deal. It is one thing to talk about wonderful green energy and millions of green jobs. It is another thing to increase taxes on energy.

The reality check on all these liberal notions is right ahead. And it won't be pretty.

"Far Right" Party Wants Nationalization

Why does the left-wing media call national-socialist parties like Britain's BNP a "far right" party? The answer is pretty simple. Because they can. And because they need to. Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism, notes that Britain's BNP has a left-wing economic agenda. He quotes British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan:

Look at the BNP's manifesto: it wants nationalisation, subsidy, higher taxes, protectionism and (sotto voce) the abolition of the monarchy. And look at where its votes came from. The BNP is a symptom of Labour's collapse.

There really isn't much water between Labour and the BNP, except that Labour is racist in a pro-immigrant way, rather than in an anti-immigrant way. You could say that Labour is an "anti-national" socialist party, whereas the BNP is a full-on national socialist party.

But both Labour and the BNP hate freedom, hate responsibility, hate capitalism, hate business. They both want to return to a pre-modern world where people are completely cocooned by the community and the political.

There's only one big difference. The Labour Party gets away with its atavisms. The BNP does not.

Meanwhile the left-wing media get to call the BNP a far-right party. Hannan, again.

It's a brilliant media trick in Europe to always refer to them as “the far right”. The target of that is the mainstream right... When somebody reads that, it doesn't make them think any worse of the BNP, it makes them think worse of the right. Which, of course, is why they do it.

One day, of course, the left-wing media won't be able to define the terms of discourse. But that time is not yet.

Conservative Common Sense

Candidate Obama got all the way from the US Senate to the White House on the strength of "Hope" and "Change." Hugh Hewitt's tame ad guy, Bear in the Woods, thinks that we can and should learn from the president.

I've written a lot here about the need for an encompassing mantra that can accommodate the range of conservative positions, yet at the same time speak to individual, single issue niches.

Bear tries out a few notions, like "Truth" and "More Than a Feeling," but he settles on "Common Sense."

Common Sense speaks to reason, wisdom, and truth. Common Sense has broad appeal, and applies to conservative positions on every single policy. Common Sense tells us you can't get out of debt by spending more, you can't alienate achievers and hope to achieve, you can't protect from a position of weakness, and you can't improve the efficiency of anything by applying more government. Common Sense has strong roots in history, and is a strong statement of purpose for conservative values today. Common Sense makes sense, across the board.

Absolutely. Modern conservatism starts with Edmund Burke and his critique of extreme rationalists, "sophisters, economists, and calculators," he called them. It is well to recall exactly in what terms he excoriated them,

The age of chivalry is gone. -- That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold a generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom.

He is, of course, celebrating a certain degree of hierarchy. And in the two centuries since he wrote you can see his point. It is all very well to design all human institutions according to a rational administrative model. But you don't really get rid of hierarchy in your thirst for equality. What you do is strip hierarchy of its reciprocal obligation. You make it into a mechanical thing.

But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland simulation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of her naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.

This is not to say that traditional society does not have its oppression and its cruelties. Of course it does. But we can certainly see that the modern era, with its vast bureaucratic, rational, administrative state and its huge corporations, is no stranger to oppression and cruelty.

What Burke argued for was a moderation in the march to the future. In other words, he argued for Common Sense. And so do we.

Sowell on Costs, Markets, and Governments

When people petition the government for a social program or a subsidy, they are not fools. They are acting completely rationally. How so?

Suppose you have developed a 2 MW wind turbine. It's a very good turbine, but nobody wants to buy it. But you are convinced that the future belongs to wind power. What do you do? Do you give up your dream of wind power for everyone, or do you put together a wind-power movement and lobby the government for "affordable wind power?"

Because it seems obvious to you that if only you can get past the prototype stage and actually get wind turbines out into the market that people will see how beneficial your turbine can be, even if, in the short term, wind power is more costly than conventional power.

Thomas Sowell analyzes how this dilemma applies to housing in his new book, The Housing Boom and Bust. He writes (p.114):

One of the biggest differences between economic decisions in the market and politcal decisions in government is that costs are an inescapable factor in economic decisions, while political decisions can often ignore costs[.]

That's why our wind power advocate is eager to turn to government. He wants to escape from the inescapable factor of cost.

What our wind power advocate also forgets is the Law of Unintended Consequences. There is no telling who may have to pay the costs that he is trying to escape.

In fact, in the housing debacle, the costs of the housing interventions fell most heavily on exactly the people that "affordable housing" policies were meant to help (p.108):

For example, skyrocketing housing prices in particular communities with severe building restrictions hit blacks especially hard, even though many of these communities have been overwhelmingly liberal in their politics... In fact, however, each of these groups, for whom much concern has been expressed, have been precisely the groups disproportionally forced out of these high housing cost communities.

Here is more:

[M]arkets usually leave no choice between changing mistaken notions or paying big-time in lost money or even outright bankruptcy... But there is no such renunciation of pet notions in Washington.

Got a pet notion? Take it to Washington DC.

OK. So what is going on? What should we learn from all this? It is really rather simple.

The market is a social arrangement that forces each individual to adjust their actions to the needs of other people, expressed through buying and selling under the price system.

Mostly, we should get what we want from adjusting our actions to the needs of other people.

Government is a social arrangement where a ruler or ruling group can force other people to adjust their actions to the needs of the rulers.

Sometimes we need force, but not often. And not usually outside the defense against enemies foreign and domestic.

Liberals understand this, just like you and me. They were withering in their criticism of President Bush for his obstinate refusal to face defeat in Iraq. They wanted him to be much more willing to adapt to changing conditions on the ground.

But what they are not willing to do is face the failures of their endless failed government programs.

Some might call this obstinacy. But that misses the point. Obviously, government is a social system that is designed to be persistent. You choose government for a social activity if you want to set it in place and not change it without good cause.

The market is the social system that is designed to change and adapt to changing circumstances.

Our problem that that in many cases we have put government to work on problems where we need adaptability. We get a rigid institution when we really need an adaptable one.

And that is a shame.

The Liberal Housing Crash

Conservative writer, economist, and icon Thomas Sowell has just published a new book on the housing crisis. It is simply called The Housing Boom and Bust.

I'll be writing a full review this weekend, but let's just hit the high points of his argument.

• The housing boom was not nation-wide. It was centered in a few places where land-use restrictions make it very difficult to build houses for people.
• The problem was not a lack of regulation. There was plenty of regulation. Most of it was bullying banks into lowering their credit standards to offer loans to people that were bad credit risks. Some politicians attacked regulators that reported on the developing problems at Fannie and Freddie.
• There was no significant discrimination against minority borrowers. There were corrupt politicians that took contributions from banks, insisted on lower credit standards, and then blamed the banks for greed. Think Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, for starters. There were liberal activists shaking down banks for cash by accusing them of racism.
• Political actors never have to deal with costs. Political activists with a "vision" never have to deal with reality. They can blame and shame and posture and order people around. But when things go south, they refuse to face reality.
• Business has to face reality. Unregulated banks can't just loan money to anyone. They have to think about the costs of risky action. But when the government insists they act recklessly, on pain of political sanction, what can they do?
• The derivatives mess grew out of the government's reckless policy. Given that the banks were forced to load up on risky debt it made sense to lay the risks off. But nobody had any experience with the new financial instruments, not the rating agencies, not the banks, not the analysts. So people made mistakes in pricing risks. But then the finance players wouldn't have invented the new instruments unless there was a need to spread the risk around.

It all points up the importance of limited government. It's all very well for the government to plunge off with its mega programs. But what happens if things go wrong? Since government is very bad at recognizing and dealing with the costs of its initiatives, there is always a chance that government will make a complete mess of things. Then it will try to patch up the mess with another mega program that makes things worse.

So we get back to the "too big to fail" conundrum. If it is too big to fail, then it is too big! That applies to banks and automakers, and it also applies to government.

Maybe, after a century of anti-trust bumbling and fumbling we have an anti-trust principle. If it's too big to fail, then it's too big! Whaddya think, Senator?

But does this make any difference? Will liberals ever learn? Never mind blaming them for the crisis. Can we at least get them to see how their interventions hurt the poor that they are trying to help?

Probably not. That's why we have politics. You don't need the liberals to realize their error. You just need to persuade enough moderates and independents so you can repeal stupid liberal programs that lead to a stupid liberal housing crash.

But nobody said it was going to be easy.

Empathy and the Double Standard

Just about on the same day two political assassins struck and killed Americans in America.

Abortion doctor George Tiller was killed on a Sunday in church and anti-abortion Christian extremist Scott Roeder is the suspected killer.

On Monday two military recruiters were killed in Arkansas. The suspected killer is Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a black convert to Islam.

Everyone from President Obama to pro-life groups has condemned the murder of George Tiller. Everyone from President Obama to anti-war Code Pink has NOT condemned the Arkansas killing.

It just shows the problem with the "empathy" approach to the law advocated by President Obama and mainstream liberals everywhere.

You see, when you have empathy for someone then you might be willing to understand why they were driven to murder an evil abortion doctor. Or, you might be willing to understand, from another perspective, why they might feel driven to kill an evil military recruiter.

People are social animals; they pick up cues from their peers and from authority figures. So when President Obama hurries to condemn the terrorist killing of an abortion doctor, he sends a message. When he doesn't hurry to condemn the murder of recruiter Pvt. William Long, he sends a message.

When President Obama talks about "empathy" as an aspect of judging, he is sending a message. He is launching the notion that, where certain favored groups are concerned, he would hope that his judges would nudge the scales of justice. What does that mean for people not included in the warmth of his empathy?

Judge Sotomayor is a woman who has talked about the special qualities of a "wise Latina woman." But statements like that raise questions about her impartiality when she participates in a appeals case on race and turns down one side or another flat without formal review.

Justice must be done, and also justice must be seen to be done. The process is as important as the result.

If I were advising our liberal friends, I would tell them that they have a problem on this. Liberals have had a grand old time for the last half century running around accusing people of being racists, sexists, and homophobes. There is almost no way of rebutting such accusations without getting into the "when did you stop beating your wife" situation. The trouble is that with that sort of talk you make enemies every time you open your mouth.

Life was easy for liberals when they were running around calling Bush a liar. When you are in opposition, you got a right to get a bit of slack.

But when you are the government, then your careless accusations get taken very seriously indeed. That's when people start looking at your actions and your rhetoric and discovering a double standard.

Pretty soon they decide it is Time for a Change.