Government, Guns, and Max Weber

Max Weber, the German sociologist famous for his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, is not known as a gun nut.  But he had some interesting things to say about the relationship between armed citizens and big government.



In his posthumous General Economic History he does a tour d'horizon of the feudal era.  We tend to think of that era as a pretty fixed order, with landed aristocrats at the top and serfs at the bottom.  But of course things were much more complicated than that.  Some peasants owned land, others rented land, still others owed labor to their landlords.  But there is one theme that runs pretty clear.  People that owned their own weapons were accorded much more respect in the feudal era than people without the means to arm themselves.



I wonder why.



Weber also has interesting things to say about the rise of the cities.  Generally, when cities start up, the inhabitants still look to their blood kindred out in the countryside for identity.  They don't really form an urban community.  And often the local princes make darn sure that they don't.



But when the city inhabitants start to think of themselves as individuals that swear allegiance to the city--instead their blood kindred--then things start to change.  They especially change when the city develops its own citizen militia, armed with weapons provided by the citizens themselves.



Because, of course, the landed princes don't give no respect to people that don't have the power to make their presence felt in the calculus of power.  But when a city becomes an armed power, then the princes pay attention.



Now of course, when the Founders put in the Second Amendment to the Constitution they were 200 years closer to the old tradition of the citizen militia than we are. (Think of Rembrandt and his painting of "The Night Watch," a local Amsterdam company of musketeers).  So the Founders possessed in their cultural heritage the idea that involved citizens would naturally band together in armed companies to meet the exigencies of city life.



And there is no doubt that government at all levels respects people with the means to inject themselves into the power equation.  Government is force, after all.  So if you want to play in the game of force, you had better have credible reputation in the force department.



Something to think about as our modern ruling class attempts, once again, to disarm the populace.

Why Liberals Fight Inequality

Why do liberals keep banging on about inequality?  Look: per capita income has gone from $3 per day to $100 per day in the last two centuries.  After going nowhere since forever.  So why worry that some have too much when everyone is doing better?

It all comes down to my mantra: Government is Force.

Reduced to its essentials, government is an armed minority defending some territory from enemies, foreign and domestic.  And it doesn't matter if the government is a government of male chimps defending their territory for its food, according to Nicholas Wade in Before the Dawn, or American anti-communists defending the world against godless communism.  The point is you defend against foreign pirates and predators and against the domestic kind too, whether burglars or criminal gangs.

But liberals beg to differ.  They don't think we need to spend all that money on defense.  In fact, following chaps like Noam Chomsky, they believe that the problem in the world is US imperialism not godless communism or Islamofascism.  Nor do they believe that a vigorous pursuit of domestic criminals is appropriate since their violence and criminality is really due to "root causes" like poverty and discrimination.

Good.  So now we can dispense with government completely?  Because if government is force and the traditional functions of government are no longer front and center, then we don't need the armed forces to defend our borders.  Nor do we need the police forces to defend against criminals.

How wrong can you be!  Our liberal friends had already seen the problem a century ago when William James wrote his celebrated essay of "The Moral Equivalent of War."  Without the unifying and character-building of real war, he wrote, we would need to inculcate its virtues with the moral equivalent.  As in a war on want, a war on poverty, a war on cancer.

And now we have the war on inequality.  The president's Osawatomie speech was the official Obamian declaration of war.  And Alan B. Krueger, then Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, backed him up with a speech(pdf) on January 12, 2012.  The just war declaration depends on the following:

• Since "the 1970s income has grown more for families at the top of the income distribution".
• The "median household suffered saw a decline in real income in the 2000s."
• The "top 1% of families saw a 278 percent increase in their real after-tax income from 1979 to 2007, while the middle 60% had an increase of less than 40 percent."

Then Krueger gets to the causes, according to a poll of economists, in declining order of importance:

1. Skill-based technical change, and a "slowdown in the growth of the supply of relatively highly educated workers in the US".
2. "Other and unknown factors."
3. Globalization.  Some have benefited, "but other workers have been left behind by globalization".
4. Union membership has declined, and union membership raises the wages of the lower middle class "so they can make it into the middle class".
5. "Tax changes in the early 2000s benefited the very wealthy by much more than other taxpayers", and only three countries "have tax systems that reduce inequality by less than the U.S."

So what is to be done?  I'm glad you asked that.

• The "Affordable Care Act is already helping middle class families."
• It "is critical to take the steps necessary to ensure that the current economic recovery continues", e.g. through the extension of the payroll tax cut.
• "Regulate excess risk-taking and corrupt practices in financial markets."
• Adhere to the Buffet Rule, where those "making more than $1 million should not pay a lower share of their income in taxes than middle class families."

Oh yeah.  Big deal.

Krueger closes by asserting that "more fairness to the economy would be good for all parts of American society."  Oh by the way, "this isn't about class warfare."  But you knew that.

Notice what doesn't get a mention in this speech?  Right first time.  Government entitlements.  The collapse of the lower-income family.  The retreat of lower-income men from work and marriage.  The penal marginal tax rates on the poor.  The credentialization of work.  The meddling of government in the credit system.

And that's leaving out other things.  Maybe the inequality growth in the 1980s was a delayed reaction to the corporatism of the 1950s and 1960s that fast-froze economic relations.  Maybe it had nothing to do with government, but just reflected the computer and information revolution.  Maybe there were just astonishing profit opportunities (remembering that profit is always unexpected gain) out there and chaps like Gates, Jobs, Dell, Hamm and Co. saw an opportunity and took it.  Notice that, except fort Bill Gates, son of a prominent lawyer, the others were relative nobodies: Jobs the adopted son of a mechanic and carpenter; Michael Dell the son of a stockbroker; Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, started out pumping gas, and often missed school to help pick cotton.

But that's not the point.  The point is that government is force.  When you have decided that you don't need force to defend our borders, then you naturally turn to other things.  Like inequality.  And you never think that, wow, maybe our previous efforts at force haven't worked out too well.  You don't ever think of that.  Your mind just turns to increased taxes and increased entitlements.  And more regulation of the financial markets, which have been only recently wrecked by reckless government actions and subsidies.

Jonah Goldberg writes today that people are pretty commonsensical about local government.  But when we think about the federal government we get all religious:

we've come to see the federal government as some sort of mystical entity empowered to right all of the wrongs in society. If there's a problem, there "should" be a federal response, the costs or feasibility of that response be damned.

Notice the problem here.  We are mixing up church and state.  Mystical entities are supposed to be kept in churches.  Because government is force.  When you combine church and state and start legislating morality to "right all of the wrongs in society" then you get into trouble.

Government is about force.  Religion is about meaning.  When you mix the two you tend to get wars and crusades and the little people get crunched in the middle.

Assuming that you care about the little people.

Do Alinsky's Rules Work?

It's become patently obvious that President Obama's only modus operandi is Alinsky: demonize the opposition.  With a bit of Marcuse: "the systematic withdrawal of tolerance toward regressive and repressive opinions" added in for good measure.  That's what Daniel Henninger is writing today.



But here's my question.  Does it work?  Yes, let's say it works in the context of a community organizer wanting to rile up his followers.  Yes, it works in the context of academicians enforcing their liberal orthodoxy in the university.



But does tactics add up to strategy?



What does the community organizer achieve, long term?  In Zola's Germinal the radical suit Étienne gets the miners to wreck the mines, obliterating their livelihood, and then he heads out of town for his next radical gig.  Way to go, Étienne!



And really, what are the PC types and the Gramscians doing the Long March through the institutions really achieving?  I will tell you what.  They are wrecking the lives of everyone below the educated class.  They are using the minorities-and-women-hardest-hit for their votes, and making them into government dependents, and then wiping the floor with them.



And of course when the money runs out then the president's party will wave their hands and rage and fume and let their minorities and women get hardest hit.  No rocket science here.  It just obvious that anyone that relies on the government for their welfare is going to be badly hit when the government runs out of money.



The bottom line is that the conservative bid to reform the welfare state has failed.  The voters voted to continue things-as-they-are.  OK.  Then all we can do is be there when the default comes and say look: if you want a decent society where the poor are relieved and the average person can get ahead then you cannot vote for big government.  Because big government always ends up eating the seed corn.



Alinsky and Obamian divisiveness are tactics.  But right now I'd say that the Democrats are flat out of strategy.  They can't reform the entitlements because if they did then people would stop voting for them.



So they haul out Alinsky and bellow that the Republicans are monsters.  But don't forget women-and-minorities, that when the government runs out of money your community organizer types will do just fine.  It will be you and yours that end up paying the piper.  And why?  Because you gave up your birthright for a mess of pottage.

The Culture of the Invisible Hand

The great contest of world-views is the battle between the Invisible Hand narrative and the Exploitation narrative.  It's simple really.  The Invisible Hand narrative says that in order to get ahead you have to serve other people.  The Exploitation narrative says that without the right politics to curb economic greed it is Katy bar the door.

Frankly, it is the Exploitation narrative that seems closest to common sense.  Hey, it's a brutal world out there: people are looking for the opportunity to screw you and yours.  How then is it possible that a sober-sides like Adam Smith ever proposed the Invisible Hand as the reality of economic exchange?

For that we turn to Max Weber.  After writing his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Weber wasn't done with capitalism.  He had seen that the Puritans had developed the idea of work as a calling and had trained the minds of men to work for economic gain in an ascetic way, without wanting to end up in a life of luxury and power.  But he wanted to know more.

In his General Economic History he went back and mined the step-by-step development of the capitalist economy.  He found some remarkable nuggets.

For instance, Weber found that the Puritan sects separated themselves rigidly from society.  They were, in Rodney Stark's model of religions, very strict in controlling members' behavior.  You would expect that this rigid separation from society would legitimize an ethic of honest dealings with insiders and exploitation of outsiders.  But no.  Many sects prided themselves on acting in a trustworthy manner even towards the "sinful children of the world."

Here's another interesting nugget.  The Puritans so prized the "calling" in work that they preached that men should be "sober" in love for family and associates.  As Reinhard Bendix writes in Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait,

This emotional detachment from the community also reduced the social distance between its members and the strangers beyond the "gate."  Hatred is as dangerous to the soul as love, and where the relation to one's kindred and associates is detached the rejection of the stranger becomes less imperative.(p70)

This goes back, according to Weber, to the "development of mutual trust among men as individual members of a Christian community."   Then Bendix retails Weber's history of the city, which begins with associations of people that still retained their primary identification with their kinship group and only later--in the west--developed into the "burgher [that] joined the citizenry and swore his civic oath as an individual." So the city eventually developed into

an association of local property owners whose goals were: the amicable settlement of disputes; an administration of justice and a monopolization of economic opportunities that would safeguard and enhance the interests of the town residents; a reliable allocation of the obligations due to the local lord in lieu of arbitrary taxation; and, finally, the institution of a military organisation that would enhance the political and economic power of the community.(p75)

The whole urban "package" involved several items:

• "a single standard of ethics in all business transactions"
• an "oath-bound fraternal association [as] an important precedent for the congregational form of church government.
• the city as an association of individuals with weakened kinship ties and rituals

We can see how the rule of the educated class in our modern era attempts to turn back the clock on these developments.  It tries to create a distance between political ethics and business ethics, privileging political values over economic values.  It privileges group affinities in race, class, and gender, over the individualistic transactional exchange relationship of the city that even extends to family relationships.  And it tries to break up the congregational notion of, e.g., the New England town meeting, with the mobilized factions of modern democratic politics.

The problem for conservatives, who mostly follow the "urban package" of fair dealing, associational government, and individual responsibility, is that the working class didn't get socialized in the old ways of the Burgertum.  Instead the new educated ruling class took them into its government schools and taught them to be go-along-to-get-along clients of the regime.

How do we persuade the regime clients that they are getting royally screwed by their liberal political masters?

The answer is, of  course, that we don't.  We can only wait until the administrative welfare state crashes and burns.  Only then will the people be ready to listen to us and our radical notion of the Invisible Hand.  

Don't just sit there with your hand out.  Make something for others; do something for others.  Then worry about what you get in return.

Inequality: Good Cop, Bad Cop

When you and I think of inequality we think of Charles Murray and Coming Apart.  How the lower 30 percent is turning away from marriage and work to live on the government dole.  But when the Washington Post's chappie Jim Tankersley looks at inequality, his mind turns to "skills training"--after it has properly digested the importance of more progressive taxes and better health care.

After writing about the fatuity of this, I got to thinking of the good cop, bad cop duality of the inequality game.

If you are a gentry liberal, living the good life in your government sinecure, whether as a government funded NGO, a government bureaucratic manager, or a government university professor, you think of inequality as a call for compassion, for devising better programs to deliver benefits to the traditionally marginalized who have lost out in the greedy grab for loot in the last 30 years since Reaganomics started.

But there is an ugly side to the inequality game, and the world-historical role of President Obama is to remind us of this.  It's all highlighted in my three point broadside: Government is force; politics is division; system is domination.

Government is force, you gentry liberals.  Every one of those wonderful programs they write about in The New York Times and they talk about on NPR is based on force.  Because the only way that government gets its hands on money to spend is by force.

Politics is division, you gentry liberals.  Politicians win elections by dividing the electorate.  No doubt the Republicans use heinous methods to do this, but Democrats are just as bad.  Democrats do it by sowing race, class, and gender hatred in the lower orders and not-so-lower orders.  There is a simple test for this: how could blacks be voting 90 percent for Democrats, in numbers usually only experienced in dictatorships?  We learned how in 2008 when we read about preachers like Obama's Reverend Wright spewing race hatred in their black churches.  And of course Democrats nod and wink at similar efforts in the Hispanic community.  Think about feminism and abortion; gays and gay marriage.  I don't reckon the divisiveness of this politics as deliberate, although it probably is.

No.  When you use inequality as the basis of your politics you are choosing it willy-nilly because it calls for government action, and you want to use the power of government to do good.  Society is unequal; something must be done.  Obviously it must be government action.

But the politics it takes to build support for that government action is divisive.  Then it just gets worse.  The government action you legislate to solve the problem is force.  And the system, the one-size-fits-all rational bureaucratic system that you devise to implement your program of force based on your politics of division, is bound to be a program of domination.  Why?  Because, as Horkheimer and Adorno wrote decades ago: "What men want to learn from nature is how to dominate it and other men."  It's a daunting thought that we mostly don't want to admit.  We develop science and technique so we can dominate nature and the world.  So every rational system is a program of domination.

Liberals recognize this when they put on their environmentalist hats.  We are exploiting the world; we are destroying the forests; we are killing animals; we are eliminating species diversity.  But then they put on their class-warfare hats and resume their project of political division and domination without even a moment of hesitation.

The liberal over-under coalition is a remarkable work of human creativity--and hypocrisy.  It satisfies the yearning of the gentry liberal Übermensch for sweetness and light, and it provokes the hatreds of the underclass Untermensch. Then wonder of wonders, it all delivers political power to the good guys, the Übermenschen.

And all in the service of "equality."

How Obama Guys Worry About Inequality

I know.  You'd hardly credit it, what with the trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.

But the Obamis are worried, according to Jim Tankersley, that the president is concentrating too much on the deficit and not on  poverty and inequality.

[B]y tapping Lew as Timothy Geithner’s successor at Treasury, the president is signaling clearly that budget negotiations with congressional Republicans will dominate economic policymaking in his second term.

Oh really?  In 2011 the president got a hot new chappie on inequality, Alan Krueger.

Krueger says Obama will propose more steps to address inequality. “The president is genuinely motivated by concern about growing inequality and the stress it puts on the middle class and those struggling to get into the middle class,” he said. “That really animates his views on the economy.”

OK.  What steps, exactly?

 But the policy options Obama has talked about — such as tax reform — tend to work around the edges and focus on the budget. Raising tax rates a few points on the rich or limiting their charitable deductions won’t do much to help middle-class wages break out of their decades-long stagnation. Protecting federal spending on education and innovation is an attempt to keep the middle class from slipping even further, but it’s nowhere near the fundamental overhaul in skills training that many economists believe is necessary to help workers thrive amid global competition.

So that is the big liberal idea: "fundamental overhaul in skills training."  Oh please!

It just shows that conservatives are foolish to get panicked about the future.  These liberals don't have a clue.

You want to know why inequality is going up?  It's all there in Charles Murray's Coming Apart.  The administrative welfare state has created a world that works pretty well for the top 20 percent.  But it has visited a murrain on the lower income folks, where marriage is going down for women and work is going down among men.  Now why would that be?  Lack of "skills training?"  Ya think?

Look liberals.  You geniuses have turned society into a system.  You have blitzed the self-powered lower income family and plugged it into the state.  Of course inequality is going up.  Of course lower income people are suffering.  And things will get worse.  And no amount of "skills training," let alone taxing the rich, or any new administrative "system" is going to make a blind bit of difference.

It all comes down to this:  Government is force.  Politics is division.  System is domination.  Until you liberals read, learn and inwardly digest that, you are going to be making things worse and worse for the people you claim to represent: the eternal "minorities and women hardest hit."

Your silly political interventions are pathetic.  But there will come a day when "pathetic" won't quite cut it.  There will soon be people in the public square raging about "injustice."  And it won't be pretty.

Bobby Jindal's Hat in the Ring

Bobby Jundal threw his hat into the ring Thursday with a speech to the Republican National Committee.



He said that Republicans should stop arguing about government and start arguing about  America.

Instead of worrying about managing government, it’s time for us to address how we can lead America… to a place where she can once again become the land of opportunity, where she can once again become a place of growth and opportunity.

Well yes.  Only there's a problem with that, despite the use of the feminine pronoun.  When you talk about "growth and opportunity" you are talking guy talk.  No, check that.  You are talking career-guy talk.  Nope.  Not even that.  You are talking middle-class white-career-guy talk.



What about the guys in the 'hood?  What about women in general?



It reminds me of a grand old WWII Vera Lynn song. It begins:

When the lights go on again all over the world

When the boys are home again all over the world

And rain or snow is all that may fall from the skies above

A kiss won't mean "goodbye" but "hello to love"



When the lights go on again all over the world

And the ships will sail again all over the world

Then we'll have time for things like wedding rings and free hearts will sing

When the lights go on again all over the world

You can see that Bobby Jindal's message completely misses the idea of "hello to love" and wedding ring things and the whole feminine experience.



But that's all right.  President Obama, Julia's pal, missed the boat too in his second inaugural.  Entitlements forever, global warming forever, and equality/liberation forever misses the point too.  That misses the masculine experience, the feminine experience, the freedom lover's experience, and just about every experience in the world except the cramped meanness of the equality/liberation agenda.



All I am saying is this.  Men are fighters and women are lovers.  When you talk about growth and opportunity you are talking about the sublimation of the manly fighting role in the modern world, fighting for market share rather than pillage and plunder.  But what is utterly missing in Jindal's message is love and marriage, sharing and caring.



Of course, the Democrats talk about fairness and sharing and caring.  If only they meant something other than pillage and plunder.  They mean that the government's revenue men will come and strip income and assets off good working people to give to the supporters of what Rush Limbaugh calls the "regime."



Here's what I want to hear.  We conservatives and Republicans are in favor of growth and opportunity, sharing and caring, love and marriage.  That's why we believe we must stop talking about government. Government is force; politics is division.  The more government, the less growth and opportunity.  The more politics the less sharing and caring.  The more government and politics the less love and marriage.



Let me tell you this.  If you are a Final Glide American, who is planning to cut the engine and glide into a landing on that gigantic aircraft carrier the USS Entitlement, I'd advise against it.  Anyone who thinks that they can organize their life around the government check in the next thirty years is going to get a nasty shock.  Some people will find they are reduced to eating the paint off the walls.