I have a problem. It’s not a bad problem to have, considering all the other problems one could be burdened with, but it’s a problem nonetheless.
I have a book problem.
Yes, a book problem. I buy too many books, and finish too few. This isn’t to say that I don’t read, or neglect the books that I buy. I usually get through at least the first hundred pages or so with ease. The problem comes with the fact that once I hit that century mark, I usually find another book to pique my interest, leading me to snap that up and commence reading the first hundred pages of it, and so on. I think you see how this goes.
Last year, during the early part of the summer, my Internet connection became either nonexistent or so unreliable that it may as well be nonexistent. I don’t remember exactly which, but nonexistence seems to be the end result in either case, so it doesn’t quite matter anyway. But, the point I’m getting to is that being without the Internet was bliss.
Why? Well, because I had time to read. I quickly breezed through a number of books - the last three Harry Potter novels, One Minute to Midnight (re: the Cuban Missile Crisis), Brothers (re: JFK & RFK), The Last Campaign (re: RFK’s presidential campaign), The Post-American World (Fareed Zakaria’s look at the “rise of the rest”), maybe a few others whose titles escape me – and in general, the lack of the Internet seemed soothing and beneficial to my intellectual and spiritual peace of mind.
Sure, being without an Internet connection for any length of time is annoying. But, there’s a certain sense of relaxation that sets in when you detach yourself from the world and immerse yourself not in whirring and blinking gizmos and gadgets, but in the beauty of nature, the elegance of the written word, the friendly banter of fellow travelers on the long, often lonely path of life. I suppose we can get plenty of words, plenty of pictures and videos, and plenty of social networking through the miracle of the Internet, but it isn’t quite the same.
I used to read a lot more than I do now. Or, more accurately, I used to be able to read better than I do now. Now my room is littered with half-finished books, from the interesting yet ultimately mindless “thriller” Angels & Demons to the hefty academic analysis of counterterrorism policy by Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent (I highly recommend the latter, not so much the former, but unfortunately I would bet that most anybody who reads this will have not only read, but seen, the former and never heard of the latter). Now, my room is littered with a great many things that probably should be thrown out, filed away, or thrown out.
In a way, I yearn for the old days, when I was still in school. And not college, but before that. I can vaguely remember a time when I could go to class for 7 ½ hours a day, get some homework done, do some reading for fun, play some video games, eat some dinner, and basically have a well-rounded and satisfying existence.
The immediate conclusion one would make is that I’ve gotten older, and so this just isn’t possible anymore. But, I don’t think that’s accurate. I think I’ve fallen in a very innately human trap, faciliated to great effect, by the Internet and the omnipresence of super-connected technology. That is, the trap of trying to do too much, of thinking too much, of planning too much, of worrying too much. And doing too little.
I’ve resisted the apparent trend of forgoing print newspapers, which I find invaluable and much preferable to online newspapers. Sure, I scan the headlines on CNN.com like anybody else, but I find there to be something wrong with the concept of getting through and entire day’s New York Times with nary a page turned or finger stained with newsprint. That just isn’t right.
Before I went to college, and before the Internet really exploded, I was more creative, which I owe in part to not yet being faux-stressed by the coming rush of information overload. The print paper was my way of stopping the madness and being able to leisurely peruse the day’s news, the opinion pages, the culture articles, et cetera. One could strongly argue that this is all possible with the Internet, but let’s be honest – what man has the self-control not to open another tab and search Wikipedia for more details on some random person you just read about in the article you were reading. The next thing you know, there are two dozen tabs open, pointing to an even deeper immersion in pure data than the last, giving you all the pointless info you want to know. If you were writing a by-the-numbers high school essay or have a photographic memory and were going on Jeopardy, perhaps this would be valuable. In most cases, it turns into a waste of time.
My point in all this is simply to expound on the virtues of the slow and steady, tried and true, worn and proven methods to the great and perplexing thing we refer to as “living.” We live in a world of materialism, surrounded by people who value more rather than better, and all the trappings of that world can be all too easy a barrier to actual life. Life, after all, is more than working 100 hours a week to make a lot of money you can’t spend on a family you never see. I suppose perhaps it could be just that, but what kind of a life is that?
I’ve been reading a lot of conservative political philosophy lately, most notably Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, which I highly recommend to anyone with anything close to resembling intellectual curiosity. Anyway, I’ve been consistently struck by how rich intellectual conservatism is, at least compared to the usual political discourse one hears from the mouth of “conservatism” in the public sphere. Where a political (read: Republican) conservative screeches that the President is a “timid” Communist, a true conservative would sigh at such radical talk. One does not have to agree with the president on every issue to at least offer him a measure of respect, and challenge him on intellectual grounds rather than childish name-calling. I would argue that, like the back-and-forth on the President’s handling of the Iran situation, harsh yet ultimately empty rhetoric does nothing but harm one’s stated goals. The political world we live in today is conservative insofar as those in power do everything they can to conserve that status quo, but in almost every other respect, the reality is that politics in the public sphere has embraced a cynical, least-common-denominator, liberal quality to it. Radicalism and ideology trump ideas, common sense, and respect.
What the heck does this have to do with anything I said before about books?
Well, perhaps more people in contemporary America could bother themselves with a good, maybe even difficult, book. Intellectual breadth is not a liberal or conservative quality. It should be a quality of the human species. Slow down and stop being an information sponge – soak in some words and do some thinking. Challenge yourself with a book or serious thought on the other side’s ideas. Not the screamers and the radicals, but the rational and intelligent human beings. You might find they are not as crazy as you first thought. You might find that they are as much human beings as you and your partisans.
You might find the inherent beauty of life, of nature, of the human existence. It can’t be found in anger, rash action, harsh words, mounds of money, or all the materialistic achievements can rack up. At the end of the day, what lasts on through history will be more than all that.
We can strengthen the foundations of society, of culture, of the world we were given – or we can hasten it’s crumbling. Every good patriot should wish to do the first, and opening a good book, and closing an Internet browser, is a solid start.

I’m currently reading Russell Kirk’s magnum opus, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, widely considered the “bible” (small “b”) of the conservative movement   in the twentieth century. Published in 1953 by a rather obscure professor at the Michigan State College (later University), the book perturbed many a liberal and enlightened many a disheartened and adrift conservative. Soon after, the success of the book led to the success of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s National Review which led to the not-quite-success of Barry Goldwater’s campaign which led by degrees to the success of Richard Nixon’s second attempt at the presidency in 1968 and the Republican domination of the White House, and, later, federal government, for the duration of the twentieth century.

Reading Kirk’s book has been quite the fascinating exercise. As I contemplate graduate school in politics to indulge my natural and ever-present interest in the art of power-attainment and the philosophies behind it, my desire to reacquaint myself with a more academic and intellectual look at those theories led me to Kirk, first. Having completed his chapter on Burke, and now a good twenty pages into his essay on John Adams as America’s first true conservative, I find my own political philosophy congealing in a much clearer way than it had before. Granted, I should probably not make such a radical pronouncement prior to completing the book or endeavoring to learn about more theories of governance. But in Kirk’s treatise on Burkean conservatism, for example, I found intact my own personal belief of the world, perhaps not perfectly mirrored, but the general principles so alike in essence that I am much more comfortable in calling myself the “c”-word than I may have been prior to cracking the hefty tome.

First, a primer on myself and my political background. I have never voted for a Republican. Some may infer from this that I always vote Democratic; that is a logical fallacy, since there are alternatives, but in my case, it is true. Despite my apparent loyalty to the Democratic Party, I have been an ostensible conservative for years. Many find my politics confusing. I attribute this to the predominance of absolutism and ideology in modern political discourse and thought, which precludes the traditional values of thought, principle, and general intellectual curiosity that should be required of people who bother themselves with matters as fundamentally integral to human existence as the political art and its actuation.

In any case, my politics are not confusing to me. I do not believe in everything the Democrats stand for. I believe abortion, for example, is not a matter of “choice,” so postulated by the artful masters of political wordsmanship who count as their source of education and inspiration the warnings of Orwell. I also find myself somewhat wary of the federal largesse and Leviathan’s wading to the aide of failed business.

However, I find the alternative, mainly the Grand Old Party, to be a rather repugnant one. To wit:

A party which considers itself “conservative” and yet follows so closely the whims of radicals, who shall not be named, content with spouting abstract absolutist dogma with no apparent goal save self-promotion and wealth accumulation, implies a disconnect with both reality and the goals of public service and government. This is not conservative.

A party which decries the Liberals of the opposition as promoters of a dangerous and un-American uniformity akin to the Marxist regimes so despicable to our national character, through the unfortunate and unwise practice of economic planning, and yet appoints itself the High Priesthood of the Material World, by virtue of its own absolutist devotion to the extreme alternative, believes in the primacy of Man, and that Man can create Utopia through material means. In short, this sentiment denies any transcendental purpose to human existence. This is not a conservative sentiment.

A party which believes legislation can be used to rectify the sins of man is one which believes man is capable of creating a Paradise on Earth. This is not a conservative sentiment.

In sum, this party, the so-called “conservative” party, is nothing of the sort. It exists to conserve solely its own power structure and organization, not the traditions and values of the nation it claims to adore. How can a conservative party claim that the best way to battle an enemy of the state is to throw out legal precedents, drastically reorder the structure of government, and deny and reject centuries-old traditions and values, upon which the government, and the society it governs, have been built?

So why am I a conservative? What does the word mean to me?

I am a conservative because I believe that the traditions of society, built up over generations, are precedents which should not and cannot be safely tossed out and replaced by over-night “change.”

I am a conservative because I reject the notion that rigid ideologies are sound bases for political and philosophical discourse.

I am a conservative because I believe in the value of humanity and diversity, that individuals of every background offer society something of value because of their different aptitudes and life experiences.

I am a conservative because I find the attempt by demagogues, of any stripe and to any end, at conforming opinions and perspectives of society and the individuals who comprise it, to be a radical and dangerous one.

I am a conservative because I believe that there is indeed a transcendental purpose and design to the course of history, which makes our lives worth living and denies the value of radicalism, chaos, and anarchy, to which the world would and should naturally tend if such a purpose did not exist.

I am a conservative because I believe that the human condition is one which demands the individual, born with a free will, pursue his interests and aptitudes as part of his destiny, one tied to human history.

I am a conservative because I believe that the cold, scientific study of humanity and society, and the worthless pursuit of materialism that such an empty theory promotes, is against human nature.

I am a conservative because I believe that men cannot be made gods, and attempts at this are absurd and misguided.

I am a conservative because I believe that a government exists to maintain order and provide for the wants and concerns of its citizens.

I am a conservative because I do not deny progress or change, nor the liberal goals of the American Revolution, but distrust radical attempts to alter society quickly and without debate, discussion, thought, or reflection.

I am a conservative because I believe in being mindful of the world as it is and not as we wish it to be.

These are just some examples of what makes me a “conservative,” or predisposed to think conservatively. Many people, especially today, may have different views of what makes one conservative. For those who profess rigid loyalty to the Republican Party or any other edifice of supposed conservatism, and those who demand agreement on certain points of policy, you and I part ways on the question of whether we are “conservatives.”
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I will try to spend more time here on the philosophical basis for the arguments advanced by the different sides of public debates. There seems to be a general lack of conservative thinking and a tendency to ideology and talking points in the modern era. Whether I succeed in promoting a purer form of conservatism, a political philosophy I particularly find to be rich and intellectually satisfying, will be up to the critical reader to determine.

I’ve become a considerable fan of The American Conservative, a slim bi-weekly magazine that espouses the kind of libertarian intellectual conservatism I’m fond of and has little taste for the neocon brand in charge of the GOP. The current issue features a cover story that typifies the insightful and challenging writing I have come to appreciate.

“How Right was Reagan?” questions the conservativism of the 40th president, the standard Republican hero. People who today devoutly kneel at the altar of Ron because of his “conservatism,” as the article points out, are misguided. The man may have had many admirable qualities, but his rhetoric and his record both have more in common with liberal presidents and agendas than a true champion of the people and republicanism.

This is a point I often try to bring up when people ask how I can be a “conservative” or sound like a Republican but am generally a Democrat. The GOP can talk a lot about limited government and all that, but their actual record while in power (and they have years to go by) either betrays the old maxim that “power corrupts” or  that they don’t actually believe their platform, or (probably most accurately) both. Democrats, and especially the curren administration, seem a bit more competent in actually following through with some of the agenda they ran on. Meanwhile, history has shown they move more moderate or even conservative in many policy areas, such as moving from deficit to surplus under Clinton, where the GOP seems to become much more statist than their campaign rhetoric would indicate. If my choice is between two big government parties, one which is generally honest about it and the other which isn’t at all, and the honest one also happens to be open to a more varied ideological spectrum among its members, then I suppose the choice of which party to support in general is fairly simple. To me, anyway.

But, as far as the notion of Reagan as an idol of conservatism is concerned, it irks me to no end when so-called conservatives decry the idolatry of the liberals while placing their own heroes on pedestals which rival them with ease. No idol is more revered than Reagan. He’s a false idol, though, and for a movement which supposedly values tradition, institutions, and the rule of law over passion and iconography, allowing thoughts and hopes to rest on a man long out of office and since gone to eternal rest is not only hypocritical, but a simple example of the ridiculous nature of the dying conservative cause. Dying, because it came to rely on outmoded liberal ideas and expansive statist rhetoric while espousing a very different agenda. Hypocrisy and contradiction only gets you so far. Even in a more apathetic and media-driven world, voters don’t take kindly to that after a while.

For a society based upon the rule of law to function in a consistent and orderly fashion, it must have sufficient safeguards against the passions of the masses. The founders of the United States created a system of government which contains departments and individuals constantly jockeying for power. This system may at times be maddeningly slow, but this slowness is a sign that it is working as intended - no one side should be able to set a long-term policy agenda through a momentary fit of passion. Rather, reason and knowledge should guide intelligent policymaking.

In such a system, laws are enacted after lengthy and sometimes frustrating debate. These laws will not be amenable to every person to which they apply, certainly, but the process must be respected in order for change and progress to occur in a productive manner rather than a disruptive and disorderly fashion. Example: Nobody likes paying taxes, and while outright protesting is within the rights of all people, one must ask how productive a solution that is to the problem of wasteful spending of one’s hard-earned tax dollars; signs demeaning the president, for example, are counterproductive, and so is the principle of replacing active civic engagement through running for office or becoming an active participant in a real dialogue between public servants and their constituents with the simple act of screaming one’s head off at the evil of the man in the White House (notice this is applicable to either side and any president).

Simply put, there are avenues one can take to rectify perceived wrongs, without resorting to seemingly real discussion of civil war or accusations of treason on the part of the other side. It is supremely odd that so-called “conservatives” have decided that since a Democrat is in the White House, they can throw off the concept of respecting the institutional process and replace that with the same apparent radicalism as the “hippie liberal” contingent is known for brandishing in their own expression of grievances.

But anyway, my point is not about taxes and protesting. My point is that in the current back-and-forth about the torture memos and whether or not President Obama is endangering America by releasing them, the most important thing to remember is the idea that we are a nation not of fleeting passions but of measured reason and the rule of law. It has been said that his predecessor broke the law, if not the Constitution, through the endorsement of torture. Not to mention the fact that in a primarily psychological war such a decision is awfully odd and wrong-headed. But in the end, the question of how an entire contingent of government officials can be acknowledged to have broken the law and, in the same breath, their crimes be absolved by an act of naked political contrition, is one which must be asked and deserved to be answered.

I understand why the president would want to avoid such a circumstance. First, this argument, at least in the active political realm,  is not based on ideological questions but rather on the age old tussle between the legislative and executive branches of government. Perhaps it is more obvious since a different party controlled the Congress over the past two years, but the idea of torture being approved without properly checking with the other branches for its legality and constitutionality, is one which is anathema to any legislator with a pulse. This not an artifact of the Bush administration but rather of the long-run history of the office. Presidents of either party have been trying to expand their power, always running into opposition from the Congress. This is natural, and a function of the way our government was structured.

So from a political perspective, the argument is one of executive authority. Not surprisingly, the current president was trying to appease the howling masses while also maintaining his own present and future power. This should not be surprising, nor is it cause for accusations of flip-flopping or hypocrisy. No one with any serious understanding of the office of the presidency would misunderstand it as such.

However, the idea that we can acknowledge something as blatantly wrong - both immoral and illegal - and brush off the guilt of those responsible as a means of “moving on” is a major concern for a functioning republic of laws.

This seems to be another example of how we use contemporary “crises” to justify our unspoken desire for a master. There are justifiable ways of dealing with the terrorist threat that are outside of the Constitution or our system of laws. Because if there are such solutions, then it means that our system as constituted is broken and wrong-headed. If that is true, then the terrorist complaints against our way of life and our system of government are justified. And if that is true, then our entire worldview and motivation for breaking the law to fight terror in the first place are completely baseless.

Simply put, you cannot break the law to preserve the law, and expect to make a healthy habit of it. A republic based on the rule of law is sure to fail should the principle of equality before the law be thrown out the window for infrequent (becoming frequent) “emergencies.”

Politicians of every party and political persuasion are crying foul over the latest scandal involving the government’s bailout money: AIG’s payout of million-dollar bonuses to 73 employees.

I continue to be baffled by the utter refusal of so many to understand that throwing money at people, or otherwise using government policy to incentivize the status quo (e.g., lowering taxes to ostensibly keep employed or “create” jobs). The usual outburst of anger at the stupidity, greed, etc. that always follows these plans leaves me scratching my head. The U.S. government has been bailing out Detroit automakers for decades, with nothing to show for it but more requests for cash…why can’t anybody see the pattern?

Common sense is the commodity we’re solely lacking. Society seems to be remembering the value of work and the values which drove the golden age of the middle class in the post-WWII period, which is a good thing to be sure. But we need to start realizing that while government has a role to play, that role does not consist of short-run cure-all policies, whether it be to “fix” the economy or “defend” us against terrorism.

The bottom line is that there is no easy way out, ever. I have confidence we’ll learn our lesson and rise from this morass, but we should start realizing we’re in for a long class.

To wit:

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

This is the definition of “doublethink” from Orwell’s seminal work Nineteen Eighty-Four. This concept is particularly instructive in the current economic crisis, since the debate is basically doublethink in action.

One side has promoted “tax cuts,” the other “stimulative spending.” Both sides seem to agree that “nationalization” is bad. This is ironic, since by all reasonable definitions of the concept of public-private capital marriage, we have passed that road long ago. And I do not mean FDR and his New Deal.

The idea that private businessman, and by extension private interests in general, are separated from public, or government, action and policy is naive in the extreme. The government is essentially an aggregate of private interested, weighed against each other and compromised to create something which nobody likes. Further, individuals always act to curry favor for their interests with the political class. Whether it be the average person pleading with a politician during a campaign, an interest group’s lobbyist wining and dining a congressman, or an executive going hat-in-hand to be skewered by suddenly righteous professional administrators of the public interest while asking for a handout he will surely receive, we all want what we want.

I want lower taxes, so I yell loudly about it. Or maybe I want equal rights for some disaffected group, so I yell about that. Et cetera.

This idea that large corporations especially are independent capitalists is absurd. These organizations take extra pains to pocket politicians for their own benefit. The game continues on and on, embarassed exec meets the man of the people, man of the people gives the embarassed exec a stern talking-to, and then the man of the people takes the people’s money and gives it to the suddenly relieved exec, who was never really concerned in the first place. Worst case, he loses his job and goes to an island somewhere with millions while the world falls apart.

This situation has existed not for decades, but for centuries. Power is an addictive drug, and men like power. The problem we face today is the same which the Founders faced and which the Romans faced in the changeover from republic to empire: how to create institutional barriers to individual ambition and its eventual product, a destructive lust for ever more power. For some reason, we do not like facing reality. We concern ourselves with ideals which can not be easily attained in short order, and with buzzwords and doublethink, arguing points which when boiled down are the exact same concept. Think too long about anything, and the pretense falls away and the cynicism takes firm root.

What we need to do is solve the problems, and correctly identify the root of the problem. Let’s, for once, understand that greed and corruptible power are not only real, but constant threats to the idea of republicanism and the rule of law. And then let us equally understand that individuals can rise without becoming despicably corrupted. But let us not allow either extreme to cloud our judgment and forget our purpose. That is the greatest sin any patriot can commit.

I woke up the other morning to find this little item sent to me from one of my friends via Facebook. The sensationalist headline piqued my interest, but since this particular friend has a somewhat unnerving tendency to notify me of every piece of biased anti-Obama writing he can find, I didn’t expect to find much to be angered or enlightened by.

Lo and behold, my expectations, as too often is the case, were met exceedingly.

Since my father notified me of this alleged absurdity, I suspect it has been broadcast to the world over the television news outlets since I first read that article. So you may or may not have heard about this little study. Basically, Harris Interactive conducted a poll where they asked 2,634 adults who their hero was. They did not offer a list of candidates. The question was framed thusly: “Now I’d like to ask you some questions about heroes.  First of all, please tell me who you admire
enough to call a hero?”

Since President Obama ranked number one in their list of the top twenty-five most-named “heroes,” it apparently is logical to assume that Americans in general think Obama is a more important figure than Jesus, who was a poor second. The headline above states “Obama over Jesus.” America is obviously wasting away.

Well, America may in some cases be wasting away, but I don’t think this particular survey is cause for alarm. The answer was unprompted and purely spontaneous. If I was asked the same question, I doubt I’d answer “Jesus.” I’m a God-fearing Christian, but excuse me for considering a “hero” to be a normal human being who has risen above and beyond to do something profoundly  unselfish an, well, heroic. Jesus Christ is the Messiah. He set an example which, when followed by normal sinful human beings, can certainly be a template for heroism. But, how can a god be a hero?

I take issue with a lot of names on that list. Of the top 25, I’d probably only personally consider Lincoln,Chesley Sullenberger (the pilot who landed the plane in New York), Mother Theresa, and Mahatma Gandhi “heroes.” Maybe Washington. JFK and FDR overcame illness to inspire and lead millions, so perhaps there could be some justification there too. I am an unabashed JFK fan, but I personally wouldn’t consider him any more or less heroic than anybody else. Compared to people who lead basically uneventful lives, like the pilot Sullenberger, and act in genuinely heroic ways  when crisis hits, I think you have weigh those who choose to lead eventful, crisis-filled lives a bit less. That, of course, begs the question of whether seeking situations that demand heroic or braver actions on a regular basis makes one any less of a hero.

My purpose here is not to debate what a “hero” is, though. My problem with this article and the reactions most people seem to reflexively take from it is that the facts being described do not support those reflexes. There is a clear note on Page 2 of the Harris Interactive press release:

The fact that President Obama is mentioned more often than Jesus Christ should
not be misinterpreted.  No list was used and nobody was asked to choose
between them.

The only clear conclusion to draw from this is that Americans in general consider  larger-than-life figures to be heroes, regardless of whether they actually have done much in terms of overcoming adversity. Obama, for all his virtues, has not had to overcome much adversity of the kind that makes one a “hero”; difficulties during election season, yes, heroic responses to international crises, no (unless signing the stimulus bill could be considered such an act, which I do not believe it is). General Patton had a dangerous ego which nearly undermined any good he might have accomplished - succeeding in something and then creating your own adversity is not heroic. The Clintons, Powell, Rice, Oprah, Palin, Gates, etc. - all admirable figures, but heroes?

The one thing they have in common is that we all know their names and admire their success. Otherwise, this list is nothing to write home about. Pretending otherwise serves no productive purpose.

Another shot was fired in the war over censorship this week when the U.S. Appeals Court in San Francisco ruled against a state law banning the sale of violent video games to minors. The three-judge panel unanimously struck it down as unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.

Besides the issue of free speech, there is another issue here. Many in the media hyperventilate over matters like this, saying on the one hand that these laws violate the right to free speech and on the hand that they promote a horrible culture of violence. Those who usually scream to the high heavens about the evils of government have no problem inserting themselves into such a debate on the side of the righteous, all-knowing, all-seeing police state. For some reason, if the government taxes you, that is immoral and unjust, but if the government tells you what you can or cannot watch then it is perfectly okay.

Yesterday, I was listening to Michael Savage on the radio, which is one of those things were you are disgusted/annoyed by what you are witnessing but cannot pull your eyes or ears away. Savage, like most “conservative” talk radio hosts, has some good points usually, but always comes across in a manner which makes me wish I was a wholeheartedly committed big government “liberal” instead. Politics is image, and their image is frankly put-offish. Anyway, the point is I was listening to his show and agreed with some of his rantings about big government, blah blah blah, until he suddenly decried the ruling of the Court of Appeals and bemoaned the evils of liberalism which force this evil violent material down our children’s throats.

He was so disgusted that he turned on some old school rock and roll so he could, apparently, cool down. Ironic, since back in the day, rock and roll was the horrible plague corrupting our innocent youth. Elvis Presley’s hips caused quite a stir back in the Fifties…

My point is that the same people who decry the evils of culture today are usually always who perverted their youth with the evils of yesterday’s culture, usually to the horror of their parents. So, these arguments, from a historical perspective are more amusing than anything.

But, in a more direct legal and political comment on the ruling, I just have to say I agree wholeheartedly. The parents of these supposedly victimized children should be the ones determining what they see, not the State. The State should step in when people cannot help themselves, but in the case of what a child watches or plays or buys, a minor is the responsibility of the parent. Making them de facto wards of the State is a ridiculous response.

On the question of whether or not some of this entertainment is too violent and may teach bad behavior, sure, I suppose it may happen. But, this is no more true than the westerns of the 1950s which taught kids that going West to live alone on the frontier and settling things with guns drawn is a fun and exciting way to live one’s life. Or the comic books of the same era which were burned and villified for a time because Superman instructed kids to jump off buildings to their deaths and Batman and Robin were obviously tools of homosexual propaganda. Or the evil of rock and roll and Elvis’ gyrating hips, as I mentioned earlier. Oddly, all those crises eventually passed without much incident or detriment to society, and those kids who were so obviously victimized back then are now crusading to eliminate the evils their own children face.

Perhaps, we should take a step back and judge each piece of entertainment on its own merits, and then decide on a case-by-case basis whether our own kids should be able to watch, play, or read such items. A free society cannot last long if censorship in the name of moral righteousness or social engineering is allowed in even a few cases. And a responsible citizenry can never be developed if they are coddled and stripped of their responsibilities to themselves, their families, and the rest of society.

To those who want a video game ban: give the people the freedom to be responsible, and stop advocating for a State which protects us from what we are more than capable of protecting ourselves from. And worry about you and your own family’s entertainment choices.

Perhaps the anti-intellectualism of the last eight years is the cause of the Republican Party’s ineptitude at crafting a solid, innovative stimulus plan to counter the Democrats’ pork barrel Frankenstein. There’s not really any other reason to be parroting “tax cuts” around the airwaves as if that’s a cure-all. We’ve seen idealistic policies, whether they be neo-socialist or neo-capitalist, be proven ineffective to any end other than promoting waste, inefficiency, sloth, greed and corruption.

The truth is that we already live in a society which is, for all intents and purposes, a corporate-government socialist duopoly. Those who flail about in a fit of rage when the government dumps billions in the economy do nobody any good by decrying “socialism” - that isn’t socialism, it’s called cronyist waste. Socialism is group ownership of the means of production, i.e., capital, which one could argue can be found in any publicly-traded corporation, not just when the government nationalizes something.

That isn’t to say we should expect a reversion to mom-and-pop capitalism anytime soon. This would be nice, and I think my National Entrepreneurship Bank idea from my last post would be a good way to encourage such a free market spirit (although perhaps the word “bank” should be replaced by “fund” for political purposes). But the truth is that we’ve lived with “creeping socialism” for decades, perhaps since the 1930s, perhaps earlier. Since the earliest days of the Republic, there have been tensions between those who wanted stronger, more centralized government and those who wanted more decentralized government; I don’t have to tell you which side usually won.

The problem, though, is not that the wrong faction won in these arguments. It is, rather, that power tends to corrupt, as the saying goes. A man with free market principles and an anarchic sensibility may be elected president, but who honestly believes that such a man, once assuming an office to which the adjective “imperial” has been used in recent years, will be able to live up to his campaign rhetoric? Perhaps those are truly his ideals, but in the broader historical, cultural, and (most importantly) political contexts of his term, he can only do so much to advance such a noble cause.

Conservatism is not a radical revolutionary ideology. No, it has usually been cautiously progressive, preferring to weigh options and advance the goals of society through the imperfect but tested and true institutions of national tradition. A conservative does not reflexively demand a law banning something as the solution to the problem he identifies; a conservative studies the problem and, in the context of the society he lives in, formulates a solution amenable to tradition and conducive to the progress sought.

I certainly adhere to the conservative school of thought in politics, that personified by Constitutional fealty and belief in the free market (not the reactionary liberal orthodoxy of modern “conservatism”), but in a broader philosophical context, conservatism does not demand or even wish a swift collapse of the social order as it currently exists. It seeks to establish the most approximate version of that ideal utopian world in the reality that we live in. It is realism mixed with a healthy sense that we cannot change the fact that live in a less-than-ideal world, but we might as well try to make it better. Lacking the intellectual will or politically strategic mindset to seriously wage such a campaign, politicians speak up their ideological talking points, hold firm to their imaginary ground, and eventually compromise based on how they can get the maximum benefit for their donors, supporters, or provincial interests.

We are faced with an opportunity today to actually solve a crisis, not just legislate and pray until the next election. Laws solve very few problems, except perhaps that of how a particular individual or group will get funds. The most disappointing aspect of this whole charade is that the ostensibly conservative political party is engaged in a less-than-serious manner. I agreed with their opposition to the wasteful nature of the stimulus bill, but their overriding insistence on tax cuts is embarassing. Everybody likes tax cuts, but massive cuts are as fiscally irresponsible as the plan they deride now. Until we pay off debt, a tax cut can be explained as such: we are essentially borrowing money to subsidize American consumption. In other words, tax cuts are effectively Keynesian fiscal stimulus, irresponsibly breaking the social contract between government and citizen by absolving the citizen of his financial responsibility for the right to basically own his or her financial well-being.

There are no easy answers, but for a political philosophy which is predicated upon the notion that  progress can come within the existing institutional structures society has built over generations, rather than swift, violent, and messy revolt, this is a crisis worth relishing for its intellectual opportunities. Liberalism offers any number of easy fixes that smack of get-rich-quick schemes you might find advertised on a late night infomercial. Conservatism, real old-fashioned conservatism, demands thinking - how to help along the economy given the reality of the world we live in, not the one we wish we did? In many ways, this coincides nicely with the realism inherent in economics, making a conservative philosophy appropriate for the times.

We don’t need tax cuts or pork spending, nor do we necessarily need new agencies and programs (how many potentially appropriate ones do we already have that we don’t even know about?). What we need is somebody to study the problem diligently and offer some novel answers within the framework of society as it exists. Real social, political, or economic progress does not come from an election or a law, but from hard work, much thought, and - most importantly - time.

Few days go by without more bickering and squabbling in D.C. over the “stimulus” bill. One version was passed along a mostly party-line vote in the House last week and another is now up for debate in the Senate, but its chances seem to be slimming. The House version was just over $800 billion and the Senate version is over $900 billion, combining tax cuts and spending in a variety of areas.

Both versions have come under criticism, much of it deserved, over the question of whether or not the spending contained therein is actually worthwhile. Frankly, it seems like much of what is in these “stimulus” bills can be classified as either pork or other items better suited to their own legislation because they offer little in the way of quick, massive economic stimulation. Example: millions for hybrid vehicles to federal employees? That might stimulate the American auto industry, but only minimally and temporarily - those cars are not actually naturally demanded, but artificially demanded by the government, so buying them won’t necessarily spur production on a scale big enough to drive the price down and kickstart a hybdrid auto revolution.

The two options on the table seem to be massive pork packages and massive tax cut packages, neither of which can or will help the economy. I’m generally in favor of cutting taxes, provided it’s affordable, and raising taxes now would certainly not be a good idea. But, I’m confused as to the GOP argument that what is needed is massive tax cuts.

How does a tax cut provide an incentive to businesses to create workers when demand is severely diminished? The slowdown, as depicted in economic indicators like decreasing GDP, prompts firms to slow production as orders for goods decrease. This leads to two things: (1) adjusting production so as to decrease supply (layoffs, decreasing orders for production technology, etc.) and (2) excess inventory in the retail sector, leading to more layoffs as sales diminish, but not necessarily price cuts (price cuts come when stores and suppliers want to clear inventory to replace with newer models, not when they are trying to make a profit on something which does not sell and has no ready replacement). In this environment, tax cuts won’t cause a retail firm to hire more salesmen, since the layoffs there are due to not having a major need to sell, while a production firm will have no incentive to increase supply (and thus the number of jobs) if nobody is ordering its goods.

Of course, if everybody receives tax cuts, then you would think aggregate demand - the sum of all demand in the country - would see an uptick. So, there is a possibility that tax cuts will have an effect, but one has to remember the root of the problem lies in debt accumulation by individuals and firms who should not have accumulated that debt to begin with, so giving people more incentive to spend money they don’t really have is not the smartest idea. Remember that getting a tax cut when you have a mountain of debt does the economy no good; if you took out a loan to buy a house or something else, the money was accounted for in that transaction, so until that is paid off, there is a hole somewhere and future expenditures go in to fill it. When a large chunk of the money supply is tied down to debt accumulation and failure to repay those debts, adding to that supply only decrease the value of the dollar and increases the price level - inflation.

Since the constitutionality of federal fiscal stimulus is not an issue - hopefully we will revisit that during future good times - the question becomes how to craft something that helps the general economy, not specific industries or localities. Massive investment in infrastructure or NASA-esque science and technology initiatives can stimulate a number of industries, from old school manufacturing and hands-on work to innovative technologies. This can help put to work displaced citizens from every walk of life, whether its due to plant closures or losing white-collar jobs. Plus, it fits a national need for improved infrastructure and spurring new innovation and technologies.

I would also advocate something to the effect of a National Entrepreneurship Bank. Instead of propping up failing, uncompetitive old companies (e.g. Detroit), a NEB could provide loans to individuals who wish to start their own business but are discouraged for economic reasons. The NEB would not provide any money to people over a certain income level, say $100,000, and would require repayment beginning after about five years. In a sense, this could be seen as similar to the federal college loan program and the land grants given to people as enticements to move west in the 1800s. This would be an investment  in the people and encourage entrepreneurship. They key would be to ensure limited bureaucratic governance, so as to ensure the people are free to make their own business decisions.

The idea as outlined above is basic and rough, but I think something along these lines would work better than a patchwork of pork projects. Instead of catering to special interests, perhaps the congressmen should start giving grants to their constituents and encourage a healthy sense of competition and activity among the people. Combined with investment in infrastructure, science and technology,  an investment in the entreprenuerial spirit would be a welcome and inspiring program. And that is just the sort of program the country needs.