Dueling World View Monday

I picked up a straight-from-the-shoulder definition of the left's world view over the weekend. It's from Danusha V. Goska. To the left there are three kinds of people: the oppressors, the oppressed, and the champions of the oppressed.

There's a soft version, of course. It says that there are the privileged, the underprivileged, and the activists.

The point of such a simplistic world view is to reduce all human life to politics, because if there are oppressors, they must be smashed. If there are privileges, they must be erased. And we, the evolved, the enlightened ones, the champions of the oppressed, are the ones to do it.

But the problem is that it reduces human life to war. Of course it does. If you reduce life to politics, it means you reduce life to us-and-them. It means that life is merely a fight between our kind and the other.

I suppose you can soften the paradigm down to mere advantage and disadvantage, with knowledgeable experts applying settled social science to fix the disadvantage.

But this is a world where something is missing. You know what's missing? Humans, the social animals.

Weird, isn't it, that the folks that talk endlessly about peace and justice are the ones that believe in societal war.

Now I have my own three-sector world view. In my world there are three kinds of people. There are the People of the Creative Self, who believe in the German cult of creativity. There are the People of the Responsible Self, who believe in responsible individualism. And there are the People of the Subaltern Self, who believe that they are the pushed-around.

But there's a problem. People who believe in creativity are usually going to be disappointed, because very few people get to be creative and create a new thing. I like to say that my ambition is to have one original thought in my life. That's almost impossible, because almost all knowledge is social, something we learn from other people or in combination with other people. So what are the not-very-creative also-rans among the People of the Creative Self going to do? It's obvious. They are the champions of the oppressed, the activists doing their advocacy. It's the dull person's way out of the creative problem, that many are called but few are chosen. If you can't create, then the next best thing is to break things.

By contrast, almost anyone can be a responsible individual. Individualism gets a bad rap as selfishness, but that misunderstands the situation of the human individual. Humans are social individuals whethet they like it or not; they must make their life in society. The question is: shall they be compelled in their sociality or shall they find their own way to contribute to society, by making and doing things that help other people?

The great problem is the under-people: the oppressed, the victims, the underprivileged, the disadvantaged, the dependent. Used to be that they were simply slaves and serfs in some hierarchical society with the big men on top and the subservient underneath. That was in the old days, when, as Eric Hoffer writes, work was dishonorable and the rulers told the people what to do. But in our days work is honorable and work is the responsibility of each individual worker. Those workers who have not joined the culture of work live indeed at a great advantage.

There are many different ways of thinking of the three Peoples: Creative, Responsible, and Subservient. We could think of their self-image: Evolved people, Responsible people, and "the" People. Or we could think of pejorative descriptions: Educated Snobs, Selfish Careerists, Slave People. But you get the point.

And you can see how our national politics breaks down. The Democrats are a coalition of the Creatives and the Subservient. The Republicans are the party of the responsible individuals. That's why Mia Love and Tim Scott are Republicans.

The thing is that to win the culture war we have to scotch the creatives as fakes and pseudos. And exalt the responsible individual as the best and noblest kind of person. And we have to find ways to help the Subservient lose their addiction to free stuff in the service of some great One and join the modern world as responsible individuals.

One good thing is the the liberals of 2014 seem to be Bourbon retreads. They seem to have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. But I suspect that in the next few years we will see something like the Clinton New Democrats, trying to look like Republicans only not so much.

Well that's all today, except that I thought of a real good word for the Under People, but I forgot it. Hopefully I'll remember and put in an update.

The Farmer and the Oilman Should Be Friends

Flying east on Thursday to visit my daughter and family I got to talking to a pleasant women from British Columbia. Her whole family seemed to be working in the oil business in Alberta.

Funny how you can learn something from anyone you meet.

I mentioned the Keystone pipeline and the safety and costs problems associated with the rail shipment of crude oil.

Oh yes, she said. And there's another problem. The farmers can't get their grain shipped by rail. It's too expensive.

Now there's something I'd never thought of. Imagine! The environmentalist war on pipelines doesn't just hurt the oil business so that it costs $12 per barrel to ship Bakken oil on Warren Buffett's trains to the West Coast, doesn't just hurt consumers who must pay more for gasoline, doesn't just put money into the pocket of Mideast jihadis, doesn't just pour money into the pockets of the world's richest man, Vladimir Putin, said, according to an official, to be worth $180 billion after a lifetime in business.

Yeah. A pipeline-less world also hurts farmers, because the oil guys can outbid the farmers for rail capacity.

Of course, there are still a dozen grain ships on any given day anchored in Vancouver's outer harbor ready to load grain from Canada's prairie. But the farmers in Alberta are reduced to shipping their grain by truck, and they lose on every truckload.

That's not the only problem with shipping oil from Alberta's oil sands play. A lot of the oil gets shipped by heavy truck, according to my Canadian friend, and you should see the mess they make of the region's roads.

Nice guys, those environmentalists. They got their principles and other people have to suffer.

I mean, come on. Pipelines are safe, and they are buried underground, and they are way cheaper than railroads. Why in the world would anyone object to a pipeline?

Well, you can make an issue out of anything. You can gin up a crowd to object to anything; you can create fear and loathing with anything. See Race card, playing of.

I just wish that liberals would get themselves a real religion, one that's all about liberals committing themselves to a higher purpose, rather than committing other people to a higher purpose,keeping the little people poor and unemployed while liberals live off the fat of the land on ample stipends and lifetime tenure.

It's ironic. Used to be that the highest calling of a politician was building farm-to-market roads. Now the roads and the rails are clogged with crude oil because the politicians and liberal special interests won't let businessmen build pipelines.

Could we get back to basics, and just let the farmers get their produce to market?

Suppose the Democrats Run from Obama?

OK, so the GOP establishment won the Senate with groomed and trained candidates. We should congratulate them on that. Good play selection and good execution.

But I see movement conservatives worried that the new GOP Congress will go along to get along with the president -- and the MSM -- to avoid shutdowns and things that make Republicans look bad.

But, as Rush Limbaugh and Jeffrey Lord insist, the voters sent a message with the midterms. The message was simple and direct. It was Stop Obama. Here's the money quote from Rush:

[Americans] didn't think the president, when he was promoting Obamacare, meant that they were gonna get fewer hours to work. They didn't think it meant that they were gonna lose their health care. They didn't think it meant that their premiums were gonna skyrocket. The American people showed up yesterday and voted in numbers and voices with one message: "Stop this!" There is no legitimate alternative analysis.

That just about "nails it." Read what Rush said. "Fewer hours to work." "Lose their health care." "Premiums... gonna skyrocket." Americans are deeply worried about things like that. It really looks like the foundations of their lives in America are shaking.

When people are frightened they look for a leader. Our liberal friends sometimes like to sneer about this and talk about "demagogues" and "fascism." But it's a basic part of our nature as social animals to bind together when danger threatens.

Medium term we are talking about the Republican presidential nominee in 2016. Of course, my guy on all this is Ted Cruz, because I think that he is executing already on a plan to be that leader, articulating a route to the Promised Land of freedom and jobs and decency, and offering to lead us to that Promised Land.

What Cruz has to do is paint a vision of a better America. It doesn't have to be detailed. He just has to show that he has a plan and he is ready to lead.

And above all, I would say, he has to be the leader that will bring us together, men and women, married and single, black and white, young and old, and be the opposite of the narrow, mean, and divisive President Obama.

Meanwhile here's a thought for today.

We have already had Harry Reid's chief of staff briefing the media against President Obama. Because the Democrats are furious at losing the Senate. Job One for them is to get the Senate back in 2016. And if President Obama can't or won't help, then to hell with him.

Suppose the Democrats are about to throw President Obama under the bus? Suppose they will now vote in favor of pro-energy Keystone XL pipeline? Suppose they will now start voting to repeal the medical device tax? Suppose they are now ready to abolish the cruel and unjust provisions of Obamacare that are forcing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans into part-time jobs?

Yeah. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Democrats in Congress are looking at their majorities, and wondering how much worse it could get. For instance, what happens when people get their health insurance premiums increases in the next few weeks?

The present defeat could turn into a rout.

If the monolithic Democrats in Congress were to crack, and run from Obama and his cruel and unjust administration, then we wouldn't have to worry about go-along-to-get-along Beltway Republicans.

We could have a whole new ballgame.

Voters to Dems: You Suck!

Every society is ruled by a ruling class. That includes democratic societies. That means that, as Joseph Schumpeter wrote in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, democracy is not the rule of the people; democracy is the rule of the politicians.

In a democracy, all the people get to do is decide which people shall rule over them. In the US, the people get to decide whether Democrats or Republicans shall rule over them, or some combination of the two.

If we reduce this concept to the modern vernacular, the voters have a choice. They can say: "You Rock!" as they did to President Obama and the Democrats in 2008. Or they can say: "You Suck!" as they did to President Obama and the Democrats on November 4, 2014.

That is all.

This means that the people do not get to decide whether we shall have a welfare state or whether we shall recognize the Islamic State. The ruling class gets to do that.

The people had no notion, in the 19th century, of wanting free education and social insurance. They paid for education for their children, when they could, so that they wouldn't have to go down the mines. They joined labor unions and fraternal associations to share the risks of life with their brothers and sisters. It was the ruling class that came up with the idea of free education, and the ruling class that came up with the idea of government social insurance.

The ruling class said to the people: how would you like free education and free social insurance, paid for by the bosses that exploit you? The people said: Yay!

This was at least plausible in the middle-to-late 19th century, as advertised by Marx and by the Fabians. But then the science started to undermine their narrative.

In 1870, the marginal revolution invalidated the Marxian theory of surplus labor value by resolving dichotomy between "use value" and "exchange value." There was, it seemed, only "marginal value." But the Marxists went on as though nothing had happened.

In 1920, Ludwig von Mises showed that socialism could not work because the socialist planners could not compute prices. They would never know the real cost of things. Socialists argued the toss for a while and then just continued building socialism.

In 1944, Friedrich Hayek showed that the "man in Whitehall" could never approach the knowledge of the millions of consumers and producers in the market, so they could never deliver the goods as well as producers linked to consumers via the price system. Labourites in Britain and liberals in the US ignored this finding and continued building big government and big bureaucracies.

In 1944, Horkheimer and Adorno admitted that the enlightenment project had a problem. It was a project of domination over nature and other men. But liberals just ignored them and offered the people more free stuff administered by dominatory government bureaucracies.

Later, in the late 1970s, what with inflation and recession at the same time, liberals decided that the modern state was so complicated that nobody could effectively govern it. Then came Ronald Reagan, using the science listed above, and set the economy back on track. Liberals said it was all smoke and mirrors.

So here we come to 2008 and a young president who had never ventured out of the liberal ideological bubble. He and his associates in Congress pushed the pedal to the metal on big government health care, big government stimulus, and big government green energy. As though they had never heard of the science of big government.

So here we are. The big government stimulus was a failure. The big government Obamacare program has been a disaster of epic proportions. The big government green energy program has been a disaster of crony capitalism. Who could have seen it coming? Only someone who had read up on the science of big government.

And the people have said to the Democrats: "You suck!"

So what happens next?

The answer is: Nothing. Nothing can happen until the ruling class, the gentry liberals, wake up and say to themselves: "We Suck!"

And what chance is there of that? Liberals have convinced themselves that their big-government governance is the most just, evolved society that humans have ever conceived. The only thing in the way of the millennium is the bigoted racists, sexists, and homophobes that oppose them.

What about the conservatives? Why can't they offer a new way to the people?

We all like to rag on our Republican politicians, but they have a problem. If they were to propose a voyage to start slimming down big government and the welfare state that would mean reducing the amount of free stuff. You will note that whenever Republicans suggest such a thing the Democrats accuse them of pushing granny over a cliff.

So, really, nothing can be done until the gentry liberals change their minds about big government, until liberals cry "Uncle" and tell their Republican counterparts in back rooms that we need to do something about the cruel and unjust welfare state.

Most likely, nothing will happen until the government runs out of money. And maybe not even then, as Greece and Argentina seem to show.

But eventually, every ruling class that covers its eyes and refuses to see reality gets replaced. The problem is that when the ruling class gets replaced the people get wiped out by famine, war, and disease, or maybe a Dark Age. Because nothing is so blind as a ruling class that will not see.

Casualties in the Left's Gender Politics

I was a little disappointed in Joni Ernst. In her response to retiring Sen. Tom Harkin's (D-IA) remarks about her as "attractive" she played a straight base hit, staying precisely on message, saying that she was "offended" by his remarks.

And she got the chance to note on Fox & Friends that, if a Republican had said something like that, there would have been hell to pay.

And in fact when conservative radio host Dennis Prager poured scorn on the left's current rape-on-campus campaign the lefty blogosphere went incandescent with rage. How dare he make light of the claim that one in five college women experience sexual harassment!

What's going on, says Prager, is the Democrats trying to gin up division.

"On issue after issue, these are manufactured divisions: the black-white division, the male-female division, and the old-young division. These are all manufactured. There is no 'war on women.' It's absurd. It is just an absurdity. It is a lie. It's a gargantuan lie to get votes. It's as big a lie as 'culture of rape' on your campuses. What nonsense. There is a 'culture of rape' on campuses run by the feminist left? Why are you trying to sell me this nonsense?

The germ of truth in the left's campaign is that, of course the "hook-up" culture is demeaning to women. In fact I remember Dennis Prager interviewing a group of college girls on his radio show a few years ago. What they missed was romance and courting.

Now, how could romance and courting have disappeared from the life of young people? Why, because of the left's sexual revolution, that's how! Now we are seeing the "unanticipated consequences" destroying the old culture of courting leading to marriage. And now the foolish virgins of the feminist establishment are trying a government band-aid to heal the sucking wounds of young women in the meat market of today's college scene. See Tom Wolfe, as usual, in I am Charlotte Simmons.

But back to Joni Ernst, U.S Senate candidate in Iowa. I wish she should have made light of it. I wish she could have been sarcastic.

I wish she could have said something like: "I don't believe that a Democrat could have said that! Because everyone knows that only Republican men are capable of sexist remarks. Surely an ur-liberal like Tom Harkin could never have said that. Tell me it ain't so!"

Or she might have said: "Earth to Tom Harkin: most politicians need to be physically attractive to get elected. Humans like physical beauty and they like it in their leaders. I expect that, back in the day, even the young Tom Harkin was known for his good looks."

But, of course, she can't say intelligent stuff like that. Because running for office is a deadly serious business and you cannot go off-script, not even for a moment.

The reason we got Tom Harkin saying stupid stuff is that he's about to retire. He doesn't have to worry about staying on-message all the time. He's outa there.

Pity that he couldn't keep his mouth shut to help his fellow Democrat accede to his seat in the United States Senate.

But who ever imagined that a career politician like Tom Harkin cared about people like Bruce Braley?

Dems Dig Their Political Grave

The big problem with the Obama administration is its foolish way of doing things in backrooms. The problem is that the Obamis never manufacture a political consensus for their policies.

There is a word for this kind of politics. It is "chickens**t."

As I keep saying, politics is division. There's a problem with division.  The more you divide the more you provoke people into fighting each other. Eventually it could end up as civil war. That's why I paraphrase Clausewitz and say that "politics is civil war by other means."

That's why I have a problem with the idea of the "permanent campaign" proposed by Jimmy Carter's pollster, Pat Caddell, after Carter's presidential win in 1976. Sidney Blumenthal renewed the idea in 1980. You remember him; he was a hit man for the Clintons.

If you have a permanent campaign it means you are permanently dividing people. You are permanently getting people mad at each other. What would that mean in practice?  Exactly: civil war.

The art of governance, on the other hand, is to take a divisive issue and solve it by creating the notion of a "consensus" and trying to give everyone something to take home. As Noam Chomsky says: manufacturing consent. He's sneering at the idea, but that's what politicians do when they get home from winning the election. That is why presidents are famous for calling congressmen and "arm-twisting" them. The idea is to get a super-majority in favor of the president's program and end up with a bipartisan signing statement at the White House.

Yes. How did Ronald Reagan pass his program in 1981, including defense budget increases, tax cuts, and domestic spending cuts? How did he do it with a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives? And how did he manage a tax reform act in 1986 with the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Dan Rostenkowski?

The answer is that Ronald Reagan didn't spend most of his two terms bad-mouthing the opposition. He put out the idea that he and Speaker Tip O'Neill could battle all day on politics, but they could still share a joke after work was done. (Actually the two didn't like each other).

But that was back in the day before average lefty minds had been hopelessly infected with tropes from Herbert Marcuse and Saul Alinsky. Today young lefty heads full of mush think that "activism" and getting in peoples' faces is the alpha and the omega of politics.

Now we are hearing that President Obama plans to introduce his immigration amnesty plan as an executive action after the election. And it sounds like his people are thinking up ways to get in the faces of the Republicans and make them look bad and provoke big clashes over the budget.

Maybe so. A lot depends on whether the Republicans win the close ones or lose them in the Nov 4 election. But I'd recommend that the president ease up on the executive action and the budget crises.

The job of the president is to play the hand that's dealt him and do the best he can for his country. He and his party don't seem to understand that the permanent campaign is not a sure thing that is bound to benefit the president's party. It could just as easily stir up a rebellion.

Remember Winston Churchill? He recommended: in victory magnanimity; in defeat defiance.

I wonder what he meant by that, Barack.

Three Big Things We Must Do

Let's face it: the Democrats are tapped out. Back in 2008 they thought they were going to roar to a generational dynasty. Their Obamacare would give everyone affordable health care; their Keynesian stimulus would bring the economy back, and their green energy program would heal the world.

In fact Obamacare has been a experimental verification of Hayek and Buchanan: big government bureaucrats cannot organize the economy. Stimulus has been yet another proof that Keynes is all wet. And the death of fossil fuel has been greatly exaggerated. And has for wind and solar, words fail me.

That's why Democrats are reduced to beating their base voters to the polls with wars on women and returns to Jim Crow. And I thought the cowskin whip went out with slavery.

It's not just the big things where liberal are wrong; it's the little things too, as Kate Bachelder writes in the Wall Street Journal, listing "The Top 10 Liberal Superstitions."

1. More money helps education
2. Government spending stimulates the economy
3. GOP candidates have more money than Dems
4. Raising minimum wage helps the poor
5. Global warming causes violent weather
6. GM food is dangerous
7. Voter ID laws are racist
8. Obamacare is gaining popularity
9. Keystone XL pipeline will cause oil spills
10. Women are paid 77 cents on the dollar

But never mind all that. What should Republicans do if they get into power in 2014 and 2016? What three big things? Here's my agenda.

Get out of QE and ZIRP. That's the Fed's "quantitative easing" and its "zero interest rate policy." I don't know exactly how we are going to do this without another recession, but it is essential to get back to a "normal" economy. That means normal interest rates, declining debt as percent of GDP, and an end to the subsidy for home mortgages with Fannie and Freddie.

Fix the economy. I'd say that a tax reform package to balance rate cuts with tax loophole elimination would be a start. Then a redo of the hyper-regulation in Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank. Then an end to green energy subsidies and frack, baby, frack.

Redo Obamacare. I'd say the thing to do is to turn the subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges into "mini-med" plans that subsidize routine health care for the working poor. Since the working poor don't have assets they don't need catastrophic insurance coverage, because they can just declare bankruptcy. For the rest of us, just clear out all the mad mandates and regulations and let us buy the insurance coverage that makes sense. For a real stretch, slowly remove the tax deductibility of corporate health plans so that corporations push health care onto their employees who then have an interest in getting the best bang for the buck.

I'm in the middle of reading Charles Murray's In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State. His idea is to replace all social programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, student loans, housing subsidies (but not K-12 education) with a simple $10,000 per year grant paid to each American over 21 for as long as they live. Of this, $3,000 would be a lifelong health insurance plan. He thinks it would encourage the poor to work (because they wouldn't be facing their current 50% plus marginal tax rate) and also encourage the poor to marry (because there wouldn't be an advantage to single-motherhood). It's pretty intriguing, but it's clearly a "nuclear option" that looks like pie in the sky. At least for now. Here's The Atlantic saying it won't work 'cos the numbers don't add up.

Never mind about the nuclear option. What we can do is make a start: on the Fed, on growth and energy, and Obamacare. Let's do it.