Archive for the ‘Political Philosophy’ Category
Ross Douthat’s War on Theory
I have been following the reporting out of Egypt with the same interest as other onlookers, and I share their ignorance. I know very little about Egypt and do not feel competent to offer predictions, much less advocate for one or the other position on the questions posed to the United States by events in that country.
While the events themselves are exhilarating to watch, of equal interest to me has been the parade of American commentators who know nothing about Egypt but nonetheless have been providing copious commentary on the subject. I thought Andrew Exum’s lament on this phenomenon was particularly righteous. Watching cable news, Exum reports that he was:
absolutely stunned by the willingness of the show’s guests to opine about Egypt without having any actual experience in or expertise on Egypt or the broader Middle East. Is it really that tough to say, “Hey, that’s a great question, Joe, but I am not really the best guy to give the viewers at home a good answer?”
Instead, guest after guest — most of whom are specialists in or pundits on U.S. domestic politics — made these broad, ridiculously sweeping statements about the meaning and direction of the protests.
It is in this context that Ross Douthat continues his war against those who make their foreign policy theories explicit:
Ross Douthat | photo by Josh Haner/The New York Times
The long-term consequences of a more populist and nationalistic Egypt might be better for the United States than the stasis of the Mubarak era, and the terrorism that it helped inspire. But then again they might be worse. There are devils behind every door.
Americans don’t like to admit this. We take refuge in foreign policy systems: liberal internationalism or realpolitik, neoconservatism or noninterventionism. We have theories, and expect the facts to fall into line behind them. Support democracy, and stability will take care of itself. Don’t meddle, and nobody will meddle with you. International institutions will keep the peace. No, balance-of-power politics will do it.
But history makes fools of us all…
Sooner or later, the theories always fail. The world is too complicated for them, and too tragic. History has its upward arcs, but most crises require weighing unknowns against unknowns, and choosing between competing evils.
The fact that theories are imperfect does not make them any less necessary. We take refuge in foreign policy theories because there is no alternative. As Ben Friedman pointed out in responding to Douthat previously, it is impossible to have foreign policies without foreign-policy theories. The same goes for economics, domestic politics, and a whole range of human behavior. People take (or oppose) various actions based on their expectations about what outcomes the actions will (or will not) produce. Whether people are conscious of it or not, our expectations are products of our theories. People disagree about which theories are good and which are bad, but we all have them.
Karl Rove’s Big-Government Myth
Karl Rove, the architect of Republican victories in 2000 and 2004 and Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008, denounces President Obama’s “spending binge” and “liberal activism” as described in the State of the Union address. The Wall Street Journal‘s tagline on the column is, “On Tuesday, Republicans offered an alternative to the president’s big-government vision.” What Rove omits is that he and President Bush started the spending binge, delivered big government, and indeed came into office with a big-government vision, as Ed Crane pointed out in 1999.
Just take a look at the analysis in Rove’s Wall Street Journal column:
Most of his hour-long speech was a paean to liberal activism, as the president called for redoubling outlays on high-speed rail and “countless” green energy jobs.
Liberal boondogglery indeed. But Rove’s former colleague, White House speechwriter Michael Gerson, wrote on the same day in his Washington Post column:
In his 2006 State of the Union address, which I helped write, President George W. Bush proposed a 22 percent increase in clean-energy research at the Energy Department, a doubling of basic research in the physical sciences and the training of 70,000 high school teachers to instruct Advanced Placement courses in math and science. I have no idea if these “investments” passed or made much difference. I doubt anyone knows.
Green nonsense is rampant in Washington.
Rove criticizes Obama for
a federal budget that’s increased 25% in two years, raising government’s share of GDP to 25% from roughly 20%.
Obama is a world-class spender. But spending increased 83 percent during Bush’s presidency, from $1.863 trillion to $3.414 trillion. He increased federal spending faster than any president since Lyndon Johnson. And yes, Obama is pushing the government’s share of GDP up; but Bush increased the federal government’s share of GDP by 2.2 percentage points, before the financial crisis, the bailouts, and TARP.
Is Obama Serious?
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Although President Obama proposed a five-year, $40 billion per year freeze in non-security, discretionary spending, and Republicans want to cut spending by at least $100 billion a year, is either side serious about real spending cuts?
My response:
With uncontrolled deficits well into the future and a debt exceeding $14 trillion, for Obama to propose saving only $40 billion per year in discretionary spending over the next five years, while “investing” in pie-in-the-sky things like high-speed rail, wind farms, environmentally destructive ethanol, and the like, is worse than unserious — it’s an insult to our intelligence. Like Obama, many Republicans too treat military spending, among other things, as sacrosanct, but at least they’re proposing more serious budget cuts.
The deeper problem, of course, is systemic. Socialism, a large dose of which we have in America today, brings out the very worst in people. In the name of collective responsibility, it saps and then destroys individual responsibility, leading to a war of all against all. No one wants “his” entitlement cut for fear that his neighbor might profit at his expense — because, after all, “we’re all in this together.” Suspicion and envy are the order of the day. Meanwhile, dreamers like Obama (at least that’s his pose), who promote our collective drift, either can’t or won’t grasp the hard reality until it crashes down upon them, and us, as it is doing now in several of our states and in Europe. For the “hard-hearted” realists among us, November 2012 can’t come soon enough.
Will the Tea Party Fade Away?
POLITICO Arena asks a second question today:
In three states over the weekend — New Hampshire, Washington, and Arizona — Tea Party candidates beat establishment candidates for state GOP party chairmanships. Does this signal that the Tea Party may not be fading away anytime soon or, as Harry Reid predicted, that as soon as the economy improves, “the tea party will disappear.”
My response:
It is not too much to say that if the Tea Party fades away, the country will fade away with it, because the out-of-control deficits and debt and the underlying unconstitutionalism that gave rise to those cancers and to the Tea Party itself have proven intractable for business-as-usual Republicans and Democrats alike. Far from a transitory focus on the economy, the Tea Party’s concern is systemic: It goes to the very foundations of the nation. Heaven help us if it fades.
Property Rights and the Takoma Park Tree Tussle
It’s enviro vs. enviro in Washington’s most “progressive” suburb, Takoma Park. Indeed, the Washington Post reports, “a potentially bough-breaking debate between sun-worshipers and tree-huggers.” That is, which is more environmentally desirable, solar power or tree cover?
The modest gray house in Takoma Park was nearly perfect, from Patrick Earle’s staunchly environmentalist point of view. It was small enough for wood-stove heating, faced the right way for good solar exposure and, most important, was in a liberal suburb that embraces all things ecological.
Or almost all. When Earle and his wife, Shannon, recently sought to add solar panels to the house, which they have been turning into a sustainability showplace, the couple discovered that Takoma Park values something even more than new energy technologies: big, old trees.
When they applied to cut down a partially rotten 50-foot silver maple that overshadowed their roof, the Earles ran into one of the nation’s strictest tree-protection ordinances. Under the law, the town arborist would approve removing the maple only if the couple agreed to pay $4,000 into a city tree-replacement fund or plant 23 saplings on their own.
So now the rival environmentalists are squaring off in front of the city council:
Takoma Park City Council members, who are considering revising the 1983 tree-protection law, listened Monday night as otherwise like-minded activists vied to claim the green high ground.
Tree partisans hailed the benefits of the leafy canopy that shades 59 percent of the town: Trees absorb carbon, take up stormwater, control erosion and provide natural cooling….
Solar advocates at the hearing said that they are tree lovers, too, but that scientific studies support the idea of poking select holes in the tree cover to let a little sun power through.
Being an environmentalist homeowner can become a full-time job:
But even some veteran solar users don’t like the idea of trading trees for panels. Mike Tidwell, founder of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, installed solar panels on his Takoma Park house 10 years ago. As the trees have grown, the panels’ effectiveness has diminished, and Tidwell now buys wind power credits to supplement them.
Still, he said, “I don’t believe you should cut down trees for solar.” Rather, he thinks neighbors should work together to place shared panels on the sunniest roofs.
The city’s “official arborist” turned down Earle’s application to tear down one rotting tree to accommodate his solar panels. Now the council is debating the issue.
The Earles’ council member, Josh Wright, said he was sympathetic to their plight. He said it should remain hard to cut down a tree, but he’d like to see a break for people installing solar power. Wright also wants all homeowners to get credit for trees they may have planted in the years before they remove a tree.
It all sounds very complicated. And who knows what the right answer is? Or if there is a right answer? Or if the right answer might change next year?
And that’s where property rights come in. They allocate both jurisdiction and liability over scarce resources, like roofs, trees, and access to sunlight. A little “law and economics” can help to understand the Takoma Park Tree Tussle. Nobel Laureate in Economics Ronald Coase, who just turned 100, brought law and economics together to study the way that people externalize costs (make others pay for them) or internalize them (take them into account when making decisions). When property rights are well defined and legally secure, and rights can be exchanged at low cost, resources will be directed to their most highly valued use. In fact, the initial allocation of property rights doesn’t affect the allocation of resources, if the transfers are freely and easily negotiable.
That, unfortunately, is no longer the case in Takoma Park, where instead of a fairly straightforward transaction (facilitated by a purchase), there is a tussle over ill-defined rights and obligations that have little or no legal security, in a very expensive and costly process of negotiation that will almost certainly consume more wood pulp for memos than is contained in the tree in question. Well-defined and legally secure property rights save us the rather substantial trouble of sitting down like the Takoma Park City Council and trying to judge the advisability of every proposed purchase, all the while consuming large amounts of paper and exuding large amount of hot air.
Ask Not What Frankenstein Can Do for You…
Today is the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, where he implored, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” People are commemorating the anniversary in various ways. Google is paying tribute to JFK’s address in its logo:
I thought it might be worth reprinting Milton Friedman’s assessment of JFK’s memorable line, taken from the introduction to Friedman’s 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom:
IN A MUCH QUOTED PASSAGE in his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” It is a striking sign of the temper of our times that the controversy about this passage centered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. The paternalistic “what your country can do for you” implies that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view that is at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny. The organismic, “what you can do for your country” implies that government is the master or the deity, the citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served. He recognizes no national goal except as it is the consensus of the goals that the citizens severally serve. He recognizes no national purpose except as it is the consensus of the purposes for which the citizens severally strive.
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through government” to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.
An Imaginary Federal Election Commission
Jeff Patch and Zac Morgan of the Center for Competitive Politics report on the storm that is brewing at the Federal Election Commission over regulations to implement Citizens United. The three Democratic appointees propose regulations that would impose significant elements of the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that failed to pass Congress last year. The three Republican appointees, in contrast, propose to clarify existing law and clear away defunct regulations, all with an eye toward the holdings in Citizens United. The FEC seems unlikely to adopt the proposals by the Democratic appointees. After all, the Democratic commissioners do not have and are unlikely to obtain majority support for their agenda.
Imagine if the Federal Election Commission were directed by a seven-member board where one party or the other held a working majority. Imagine also the Democrats had a majority on this fictional commission. The regulations proposed by the three current Democratic commissioners would become the law of the land. They would become so despite the fact that Congress itself did not pass the DISCLOSE Act and the regulations contravene the spirit and perhaps the letter of a major Supreme Court decision.
How would that (imagined) outcome be compatible with American constitutional democracy? How would it comport with the rule of law?
Democracy in Tunisia?
In the wake of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s abdication in Tunisia on Friday, both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stressed the need for quick elections in a country that has never known democracy, freedom of the press, or the rule of law:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton . . . reacted Friday to Ben Ali’s departure with a statement condemning government violence against protesters and calling for free elections.
“We look to the Tunisian government to build a stronger foundation for Tunisia’s future with economic, social and political reforms,” she said. . . .
President Obama condemned the use of violence against the protesters and urged the government to hold elections that “reflect the true will and aspirations” of Tunisians.
I’m reminded of Fareed Zakaria’s concerns about the blithe promotion of elections in his article “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy” (pdf; later expanded into a book, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad):
…for almost a century in the West, democracy has meant liberal democracy—a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. In fact, this latter bundle of freedoms—what might be termed constitutional liberalism—is theoretically different and historically distinct from democracy. As the political scientist Philippe Schmitter has pointed out, “Liberalism, either as a conception of political liberty, or as a doctrine about economic policy, may have coincided with the rise of democracy. But it has never been immutably or unambiguously linked to its practice.” Today the two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, are coming apart in the rest of the world. Democracy is flourishing; constitutional liberalism is not….
Constitutional liberalism, on the other hand, is not about the procedures for selecting government, but rather government’s goals. It refers to the tradition, deep in Western history, that seeks to protect an individual’s autonomy and dignity against coercion, whatever the source—state, church, or society. The term marries two closely connected ideas. It is liberal because it draws on the philosophical strain, beginning with the Greeks, that emphasizes individual liberty. It is constitutional because it rests on the tradition, beginning with the Romans, of the rule of law….
Since 1945 Western governments have, for the most part, embodied both democracy and constitutional liberalism. Thus it is difficult to imagine the two apart, in the form of either illiberal democracy or liberal autocracy. In fact both have existed in the past and persist in the present. Until the twentieth century, most countries in Western Europe were liberal autocracies or, at best, semi-democracies. The franchise was tightly restricted, and elected legislatures had little power…. Only in the late 1940s did most Western countries become full-fledged democracies, with universal adult suffrage. But one hundred years earlier, by the late 1840s, most of them had adopted important aspects of constitutional liberalism—the rule of law, private property rights, and increasingly, separated powers and free speech and assembly. For much of modern history, what characterized governments in Europe and North America, and differentiated them from those around the world, was not democracy but constitutional liberalism. The “Western model” is best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge….
It is odd that the United States is so often the advocate of elections and plebiscitary democracy abroad. What is distinctive about the American system is not how democratic it is but rather how undemocratic it is, placing as it does multiple constraints on electoral majorities….
While it is easy to impose elections on a country, it is more difficult to push constitutional liberalism on a society. The process of genuine liberalization and democratization is gradual and long-term, in which an election is only one step. Without appropriate preparation, it might even be a false step….
Today, in the face of a spreading virus of illiberalism, the most useful role that the international community, and most importantly the United States, can play is—instead of searching for new lands to democratize and new places to hold elections—to consolidate democracy where it has taken root and to encourage the gradual development of constitutional liberalism across the globe. Democracy without constitutional liberalism is not simply inadequate, but dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the abuse of power, ethnic divisions, and even war.
Let’s hope that the new leaders and the newly active citizens of Tunisia focus on developing freedom of the press, civil liberties, the rule of law, and constitutional limits on the power of government–including economic policies (pdf) more conducive to growth and progress–even as they move toward holding elections.
Congress: Where 20 Jobs = $580m
When talking to groups about the political economy of trade protection, I always mention concentrated benefits versus diffuse costs. Public choice theory explains many bad policies, of course, but tariffs and subsidies are excellent examples of interventions that benefit the few at the expense of the many.
Congress, or specifically two members of that esteemed body, have recently provided me with a textbook example. The Generalized System of Preferences is a federal program that offers duty-free access to the U.S. market to certain goods from certain developing countries. Or, I should say, was a federal program, because it expired on December 31. My opinion of the program is ambivalent at best, but one cannot deny that the program brings real cost savings to American consumers and businesses — to the tune of $580 million a year — through lower import duties.
But those duty savings are, apparently, worthless in the face of special interest politics. From Inside U.S. Trade on January 6 [$]:
An Alabama sleeping bag manufacturer that benefited from the expiration late last year of the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program is now taking further steps in an attempt to ensure that Congress does not renew the program this year in the same form.
Exxel Outdoors CEO Harry Kazazian this week said his company is in the process of expanding its U.S. plant by adding workers and increasing production, and that this expansion is occurring as a direct result of the fact that Congress allowed the GSP program to expire on Dec. 31.
Under GSP, Bangladeshi sleeping bags that competed with the Exxel Outdoors product were able to enter the U.S. duty-free. On behalf of Exxel Outdoors, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) last year refused to let any renewal of GSP pass that would not remove at least some sleeping bags from the scope of the GSP program (Inside U.S. Trade, Dec. 23).
Behind the Political Rhetoric Are Profound Differences
Today POLITICO Arena asks:
Post-Tucson will campaign trail rhetoric change in any discernible way? Should it change? What phrases or words should be considered out of bounds? Or is that approach a way of silencing legitimate criticism of political candidates?
My response:
Post-Tucson campaign trail rhetoric won’t change because, as Charles Krauthammer put it brilliantly in yesterday’s Washington Post, fighting and warfare are routine political metaphors for obvious reasons: “Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power — military conquest. That’s why the language persists,” why we speak of “battleground states” or “targeting” opponents.
That doesn’t mean that no charge is “out of bounds.” It’s perfectly all right for Sarah Palin to “target” 20 potential swing districts — Democrats do the same. And her use yesterday of “blood libel,” as Alan Dershowitz explains, is entirely acceptable too. What is out of bounds is the kind of scurrilous charges we’ve seen from The New York Times, the Paul Krugmans, E.J. Dionnes, Jonathan Alters, and their ilk, that the Tea Party and the political discourse around it contributed to the Arizona shooting — when there isn’t a shred of evidence to support that, and every indication that a lone mentally disturbed individual was responsible.
But far deeper issues are at play here, and they’re brought out in a penetrating piece by Daniel Henninger in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, “Why the Left Lost It.” He points first to the devastating, potentially sea-changing midterm elections — “Republicans now control more state legislative seats than any time since 1928” – which “came atop the birth of a genuine reform movement, the tea parties.” And the debt crises, state and federal, that animate the Tea Party pose a mortal threat to a liberal agenda that stretches back at least to Goldwater.
As Henninger writes, the divide between today’s left and its conservative opponents “is deep, and it will never be bridged. It is cultural, and it explains more than anything the ‘intensity’ that exists now between these two competing camps.” Read it.
Judicial Takings and Scalia’s Shifting Sands
Last term, the Supreme Court decided what could end up being an important precedent for protecting property rights — even as the Court ruled unanimously against the property owners in that particular case! How is this possible? Read the new article by Cato legal associate Trevor Burrus and me, “Judicial Takings and Scalia’s Shifting Sands.”
Here’s the background: Seeking to restore beaches damaged by hurricanes, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection began dredging sand from the Gulf of Mexico ocean floor and transporting it to Florida’s gulf coast. The expanded area of the beach became state property, depriving beachfront landowners of their littoral rights. In reviewing the landowners’ lawsuit against the state, the Florida Supreme Court (SCOFLA, if you remember your Bush v. Gore trivia) departed from long-established state law principles protecting littoral property rights and held that littoral rights are an ancillary concept subsumed by the right of access. In so doing, the court effectively discarded 100 years of property law and rewrote the definition of property.
The U.S. Supreme Court had never formally addressed whether state court rulings eliminating formerly established property rights can effect a taking, or violate an owner’s due process rights, under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Cato joined the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center and the Pacific Legal Foundation on a brief supporting the landowners.
In June, Court finally decided Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The decision waded through a jumbled mass of arcane waterfront law to reach a very simple and unanimous holding: the Florida Supreme Court did not subvert an existing property right to such an extent that its decision constituted a “judicial taking.” The state won. The property owners lost. SCOFLA was vindicated.
Still, while all eight justices ultimately ruled for the state — Justice Stevens recused himself because his Florida property is subject to the renourishment program — six accepted the idea that judges can violate the Constitution by reinterpreting pre-existing property rights (albeit under two different theories), and the other two declined to reach the question. Although the Stop the Beach Court found that SCOFLA had not departed from sufficiently established state property law to constitute a taking, the idea of a judicial taking — whether through the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause or the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause — is very much alive.
And that’s where our article in the Vermont Law Review picks up. In this article, Trevor and I examine the background of the judicial takings doctrine, react to the Court’s decision here in light of Cato’s amicus brief, and contrast Justice Scalia’s views of Substantive Due Process as expressed in Stop the Beach with that in another high-profile case whose plurality opinion he joined, McDonald v. City of Chicago, to argue that the judicial takings doctrine is necessary to a robust constitutional protection of property rights.
New Cato Unbound: Culture, Tradition, and the Modern World
Conservatives often talk about the modern world in terms of decline. Old traditions fall victim to market dynamism, integration, and globalization, and our society is the poorer for it. Newer isn’t better — it’s more superficial, less rooted, and less secure.
Those who make this type of argument are frequently tempted toward the creation of group rights or privileged statuses for traditional identities, behaviors, or social norms. Oddly, the left has at times agreed on just this critique, and on just these sorts of privileges in response. The authentic past, the authentic identity must be preserved, even at the cost of classical liberal ideas of rights. Marxist critiques of capitalist culture have long made just this point. As Marx himself famously said, industrialism means that “all that is solid melts into air.” To many, stopping it from doing so seems possibly a good idea.
In this month’s lead essay, political theorist Russell Arben Fox sounds a cautionary note. Traditions have always evolved, he argues; there is no pristine, fully authentic past out there to be found. In a sense, for a tradition to be authentic at all is for it to be flexible and subject to change. The way to honor the past, he suggests, is to be conscious of it, yes, but also of the world in which we live, today. Both straightforward traditionalism and the Marxist-inspired critique of it commit the same error. They both seem to believe that the truest, most unvarnished past is out there, waiting to be found, somewhere. (Somewhen?)
Is he right? Obviously, we are dealing with questions that involve culture as much as politics. To help sort them out, we have invited journalist and blogger Eve Tushnet, historian John Fea, and doctoral candidate in government James Poulos, known for his extensive freelance journalism and blogging, notably at Postmodern Conservative and Ricochet.com.
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