Kill The Messenger!

The great Thomas Sowell writes today on National Review Online about the lack of economic knowledge driving Obamania:

In an election campaign in which not only young liberals, but also some people who are neither young nor liberals, seem absolutely mesmerized by the skilled rhetoric of Barack Obama, facts have receded even further into the background than usual.

Sowell, as a distinguished economist, is understandably offended by this proclivity of mature democracies. The man (the legend!) exposes some of Obama's worst statements about economic policy, including those regarding the capital-gains tax and minimum wage laws.

Several comments about facts. We live in a post-modern age in which truth is, to put it mildly, not what it once was. The mass of people are barely able anymore to see propositions, especially those regarding politics and religion, as true or false; rather, they are mean or not mean. They make us feel good, or they make us feel bad. Perhaps more precisely, they make us feel what we want to feel--bad when we want to feel guilty, and good when we want to feel good. Obama comes out on the advantageous side of this: he makes us feel the appropriate amount of guilt for our country's racial sins, but also makes us feel good that his election can absolve us. Rhetorically, his waffling and distortion are not so much due to his arrogance as to his insistence on simple pandering--he can do nothing but reflect everyone's passions, and so he comes out on every side of everything. The man is all sentimentality, and no substance.

He isn't a liar, like Bill Clinton; he simply values propositional truth at nothing. Feelings are everything. Because the basic tenet of rationalism--that man is ruled by reason--is false, this seems the inevitable end of democracy. Observe our current election, pitting a Third Way, know-nothing, feel-good charlatan against a Third Way, know-nothing, tough-guy charlatan. People don't want to believe that governance is about balancing goals; instead, they want to believe in easy, low-cost solutions to problems. Too often, the hidden costs of the actions thence undertaken are in the categories of property rights and individual liberties, non-sentimental concepts that do nothing more than provide the foundation for civilization.

We set ourselves a dangerous precedent. Hard truths are immovable objects, and civilization is not an unstoppable force.

Morning Links, 7-15-2008

Jay Nordlinger: Impromptus (Tell It, Phil, &c.) -- Everyone should read Impromptus. Rich Lowry: Anti-Fact Consensus. Barack's Iraq senselessness. LA Times: Cover Charges. New Yorker cover heresy sparks outrage Bret Stephens: Descent From Entebbe. Fall o' civilization stuff. Scott Johnson: Let's Party Like It's 1984. Barack's Iraq revisionism. Ed Morrissey: Mother Nature, The Biggest Oil Polluter On Earth. An inconvenient truth. John Hinderaker: Obama's Dishonest Op-Ed. Barack's Iraq dishonesty.

The Prospects Of The Political Right

PowerLine Blog's Paul Mirengoff continues a debate between himself and Peter Wehner over the prospects for conservatism. Read his entry here.

Real conservatism recognizes the truth that a moral citizenry is more important to a nation than good laws. It also understands that bad laws can encourage vices among the citizens that create problems that legislation is unable to remedy. Conservatism is a force for stasis, whereas liberalism is a force for decadence, and the nation--with rare exceptions--lurches leftward politically because it lurches downward morally.

Liberalism, at worst, calls on your desire for material comfort and security, and at best on your wish for material comfort and security for others. In no case does it--or can it--call on something higher than the self, than the individual, and its material wants. Implicit in its arguments is the fact that moral progress is impossible without economic comfort.

Conservatism, on the other hand, calls relentlessly on something higher than the self. It insists that the moral fiber of the nation is more important than its economic stat sheet. It believes that family, community, religion, and tradition are more important to the encouragement of responsibility and morality than economic security.

Our laws have increasingly operated under the assumption that pain is the only absolute evil, and it has taught us as a people to be cowards. A nation in which a quarter of high school girls has contracted an STD regards an economic depression as the worst imaginably calamity, but doesn't realize that it is more than halfway under the quicksand already. Can such a nation turn back and reject the idolatry of comfort?

The smart money is, long-term, on "no." And the evidence is a striking lack of conservative principles among modern "conservatives." John McCain is running against the big-company CEOs who shouldn't earn so much more than you and against big money in politics, crowding out the "little guy"; his appeals are purely to envy. It was George W. Bush who said that when someone hurts, government needs to move. Congressional Republicans and their please-the-people pork binges are hardly distinguishable from Democrats anymore, and they pay the price at the polls. We've come a long way from the stirring words of Ronald Reagan.

But appeals to a higher principle don't work in a democracy except in times of crisis. During our last major national crisis, a leader stepped up and inspired a nation. How long will we have to wait for the next such crisis? And when the next one does come, will we have the moral strength to stand up under it?

Morning Links, 7-10-2008

--Victor Davis Hanson: Barack W. Bush? Bush's sinister plot for a third term? --Christopher Booker: Our Leaders Are In Carbon-Cloud Cuckoo Land. Western civilization suicide watch. --George Will: Beer: Is There Anything It Can't Do? Survival of the drunkest. Fascinating column about the role of beer in the history of humanity. --John Nichols: Obama Votes To Silence Debate And Pass FISA. In which I link to The Nation. Seriously. See link number one.

Obamacons

Thomas Sowell pens an article today on RealClearPolitics about the appearance of "Obamacons":  Conservatives who are voting Obama this November.  Here's a bit:

Partly what is going on is that, in recent years, the Congressional Republicans in general-- and Senator John McCain in particular-- have so alienated so many conservatives that some of these conservatives are like a drowning man grasping at a straw.

The straw in this case is Obama's recent "refining" of his position on a number of issues, as he edges toward the center, in order to try to pick up more votes in November's general election.

Understandable as the reactions of some conservatives may be, a straw is a very unreliable flotation device.

It seems to me that many evangelicals of late have decided to vote for the candidate who makes them feel the best, the one who talks the best game.  Mike Huckabee did in the primary, and won their thorough support.  Barack Obama may well make inroads among evangelicals, because talking--well, not off the cuff, but in general--is what he's best at.  Feeling has too much replaced thought in evangelical circles, and this is as true in politics as anywhere else.  Childish action has been mistaken for childlike faith.

If anyone could tell me what Barack Obama's views are on, say, Iraq, Iran, entitlement programs, or taxation, I'd be surprised.  (And Obama himself is included in "anyone.")  Failing that, does anyone know what he's done in the last two years in the Senate, or in his years in the Illinois state senate before that?  Failing that, does anyone know what his associations were outside of politics?  When all these data are taken together, it paints a picture, not of a devout Christian dedicated to a God-honoring politics, but a left-wing secular radical with a plan to remake America along watered-down Marxist lines.  That such a man could gain the support of any conservatives at all is a testament to the power a politician has when he simply makes someone feel good.

Morning Links, 7-8-2008

MuskegonPundit: Claim:  Kids who say yuck may be racist.  (!)  British nanny state stuff.

MuskegonPundit: No New Power!  Green Fascism on the march in Georgia.

Ed Morrissey: McCain:  I'll balance the budget by cleaning up entitlement programs.  Pipe dreams.

Michelle Malkin:  Treasury Dep't:  Chavez's government is funding and assisting Hezbollah.  But Chavez is secular and Hezbollah is religious...

Ed Morrissey:  Study:  Gays in the military would not be disruptive.  Typically thoughtful and balanced comment by the Cap'n.

Obama's New Regime Of Morality

Hello, gentle readers!  I'm back after a hectic Independence Day weekend, bringing you all the news that I cared to comment about.

And here's the result:  PowerLine's Paul Mirengoff writes today about Barack Obama's plan to inculcate civic pride in our nation's youth.  That is, use the federal government's coercive power to force high school students to do 50 hours of local community service and college students to do 100 hours.

Mr. Mirengoff's comments are excellent.  (So go read them!)  But, naturally, I'd like to add a few things.

A community service requirement strikes me as a secular way of using the state to enforce morality.  Research also shows that heavy drinking and divorce lead to social problems, and that attending church regularly is correlated with greater happiness.  Should the former be banned, the latter required?  Of course not!  The logic is flawed.

And it is flawed because you cannot legislate morality that is not already in the national character; otherwise, it becomes a cynical parody.  This is precisely the case with community service requirements now.  As Mr. Mirengoff points out, it is difficult to define "community service" exactly, and in my experience in high school, those who don't care will find ways to accumulate hours while doing hardly anything.  Additionally, requiring students to do community service to graduate will turn "volunteer" work into a paid job, for all intents and purposes.  Combined, these two effects will actually cheapen community service to the point of cynicism.  This is often the result of coercive moral legislation:  obedience to that moral principle becomes a point of self-interest rather than real morality.

Instead of engaging in hasty, ill-considered federal projects, we need to think about the societal forms and institutions that foster good citizenship and responsibility.

Independence Day

I've been really bad about posting lately, hm?  Well, it's Fourth of July week, and at a grocery store that means WHOA SLOW DOWN HOW CAN ANYONE EAT THIS MUCH FOOD?  And stuff.  That's right, I'll be working tomorrow, a full shift.  Woot.  But for all those of you who get the day off...

Independence Day is a great day.  Most people don't call it "Independence Day" anymore, of course.  We, as a people, have lost much history that should not have been lost.  In 1776, the American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain--not in order to tear down authority, but to establish just authority, exercised by our own people and through our own particular cultural institutions.

Even in 2008, when we've forgotten and forsaken many of the reasons why the Founders fought one of the most destructive and difficult wars in our nation's history, most Americans will include in their celebrations traditions that tie us to our country and to those who preceded us.  We'll sing the patriotic songs that arose from our own soil, we'll gather with families and communities, we'll watch fireworks displays together.  From the Atlantic to the Pacific, we'll put on a grand display of American culture to shame those who insist there's no such thing.  And those of us who are so inclined will take a moment or two to reflect on the great land that produced us and the blessings that God has given us as a people, and not because we specially deserved it.

Remember, too, when you celebrate Independence Day:  when Jefferson and his compatriots declared this nation's independence, it was not an independence from obligation.  After all, they proceeded to fight a long and devastating war at great personal sacrifice.  Tomorrow is a day to strengthen the sense of duty that freedom entails and civilization requires.