Category: Political Philosophy

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Barack Obama Law Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere

Replacing Souter

There’s a few different schools of thought on how Obama should go about replacing Justice David Souter. Dahlia Lithwick – a few months ago – called on Obama to make his next appointment “a hero, a bomb-throwing, passionate, visionary, liberal Scalia.” Others are just calling for Obama to place someone liberal enough to counter-balance the extreme conservatives appointed by Bush. Conservatives and right-wingers are calling on Obama to appoint someone “moderate” – though given the political circumstances, it is almost guaranteed that they will not accept any appointment, no matter how “moderate.” All of this is based on a rather direct analysis of the Supreme Court – presuming that decisions are and will be made based on political viewpoints. 

I’m not trying to say that we should accept Justice Roberts’s oft-cited analysis of the judge as umpire – just calling the law as he sees it. I thought Obama made an excellent point back in July 2007 when he critiqued this view:

 When Roberts came up and everybody was saying, “You know, he’s very smart and he’s seems a very decent man and he loves his wife. You know, he’s good to his dog. He’s so well qualified.”

I said, well look, that’s absolutely true and … in the overwhelming number of Supreme Court decisions, that’s enough. Good intellect, you read the statute, you look at the case law and most of the time, the law’s pretty clear. Ninety-five percent of the time. Justice Ginsberg, Justice Thomas, Justice Scalia they’re all gonna agree on the outcome.

But it’s those five percent of the cases that really count. And in those five percent of the cases, what you’ve got to look at is—what is in the justice’s heart. What’s their broader vision of what America should be. Justice Roberts said he saw himself just as an umpire but the issues that come before the Court are not sport, they’re life and death. And we need somebody who’s got the heart—the empathy—to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old—and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges. Alright?

Ed Whelan over at the Corner is trying to make a big deal out of what he’s calling Obama’s lie – which is that judicial philosophy is unimportant. He cites the above quote as proof Obama thinks judicial philosophy is unimportant – but he doesn’t seem to have read it closely, as you can clearly see Obama say:

[I]t’s those five percent of the cases that really count.

The person Whelan really should be attacking – if he believes judicial philosophy is unimportant – is Justice Roberts who sought to minimize the role of politics in his decisions (at least in his pre- and post-appointment rhetoric.)

But what I’m interested most in is a justice who can move the other members of the Court – either through personality or their compelling understanding of the law. One historical type that has moved the Court would be a politician – such as Sandra Day O’Connor or Earl Warren – whose personality drew other justices to accept some of their decisions, and gradually shaped the Court over time. This is why I think it’s a bad idea to appoint a liberal version of Justice Scalia – whose personality actually hurt his politics. Jennifer Granholm is a good possibility on this front. As would Hillary Clinton or Al Gore if they were only younger.

In the alternative, Obama could appoint an ideologically interesting thinker – who is liberal, but nevertheless, thinks outside of the box. The two people that come to mind on this score are Cass Sunstein and Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is probably too young yet – and Sunstein has not only encountered surprising resistance to his appointment to an obscure position, but he probably would like an opportunity to take a crack at enhancing that position and testing his theories on libertarian paternalism. 

Finally, I like Harold Koh for the post – even though it is unlikely he fits into any of the above two categories. He’s national security thinker with a great resume. I don’t know his record on most issues – but I’ve heard him speak on national security law – my main interest – and he has strong, nuanced positions, viewing our national security apparatus as a whole system rather than as a series of isolated issues. He would be a strong voice in reigning in an executive branch that has barely pulled back in terms of it’s assertions of power in the national security arena.

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Barack Obama Liberalism Political Philosophy Politics

Ten Principles of Liberalism

[digg-reddit-me]Barack Obama’s incipient presidency has set off a furious debate over what his administration’s principles are. George Will described Obama’s administration on this past Sunday morning as the Third Wave of government intervention and expansion (with FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society being the first two. Will, for some reason, declined to mention TR’s introduction of the regulatory state, as does almost everyone.) Right-wingers from Rush Limbaugh to Sarah Palin have described Barack Obama as a “socialist.” Meaghan McCain and Niall Ferguson deride what they characterize as a leftist agenda. On the other hand, supporters of Barack Obama’s candidacy have criticized him for betraying his progressive vision and defending the status quo. Others have defended him against charges of socialism and suggested he stands for good old-fashioned liberalism.

At this moment in history, as capitalism seems to have failed, as American international power is at an ebb, as globalization seems destined to continue, as the threat of terrorism continues to grow – evident both in our vulnerability and in the number of our enemies, as the nation-state which derives its legitimacy from providing for the needs of its citizens seems to be evolving into a market-state which is legitimated by the opportunities it offers its citizens – at this moment in history, Barack Obama has become president. The liberalism I am attempting to describe in this post is merely a sketch – but it is a sketch of what I see to be the right approach in this world – which as I have commented before, seems to have much in common with what I identified in the summer of 2007 as the Obama approach. As liberalism tends to be pragmatic rather than theoretical, many of these principles have regained prominence most specifically in response to recent problems in the world and with the Bush administration. I am focusing here on those aspects of principles which distinguish liberalism from other political philosophies – specifically, progressivism, various leftist movements, conservatives, libertarians, and extreme right-wingers. 

Here are the 10 principles of liberalism – whose three goals are to allow individuals liberty, opportunity, and community.

  1. Doubt v. Action. These two competing impulses are at the heart of all the rest of these principles. A Hayekian doubt about the efficacy of centralized planning coupled with a Rooseveltian (TR or FDR) need to act – to conduct “bold, persistent experimentation” while acknowledging that our “grasp on the truth is always provisional.” This balance was best articulated by Reinhold Niebuhr who wrote that while “We must exercise our power,” we must be remain aware that power corrupts even ourselves. Hayek similarly explained that “we needed to think of the world more as gardeners tending a garden and less as architects trying to build some system.” Liberalism was never utopian, but today’s liberalism has been tempered by the failures of big-state liberalism – as well as the failures of anti-regulatory “free” market fetishism. Only conservatism, properly defined historically, attempts a similar balance.
  2. The Market & the Government. Contemporary liberals reject the doctrinaire distinction between the “market” and the government that animated so much of the conflict in the 20th century. The free market should not be treated as some theoretical utopian ideal or as a perpetually lost state of innocence. And the government is not some evil force which must be reduced until it is of a size that it “could be drowned in a bathtub.” Rather the government and the free market exist together – and in a capitalist republic such as ours, each is dependent on the other. The free market does not exist in a state of nature but must be created by and maintained by the society and the state which provide the values and the rules and other conditions without which a market cannot be free. In other words, a free market is a product of a just government.
  3. Empower individuals. One of the key roles of government then – in creating a free market – is to empower individuals to participate in market freely, as individuals. A market is less than free if employees can be held hostage by large corporations and health care burdens ((As Daniel Gross explained in Slate, “An affordable national health care policy, which could allow people to quit their jobs and launch businesses without worrying about the crippling costs of premiums or medical costs, might be a better spur to risk-taking than targeted small-business loans.”)). To empower individuals then, the government must ensure that there is sufficient technological and transportational infrastructure; the government must ensure that basic needs can be met by individuals – for example access to health care; and the government must ensure that every individual has the opportunity to get an education. At the same time, individuals must be empowered to shape and control government more directly. Liberalism in a market-state must exhibit a preference for the individual over the corporation and government and must empower individuals against bullying and coercive measures of these large institutions.
  4. Predictability & stability. Government in a market-state must be predictable and the economy and society must be stable. Neither of these is an absolute good – both are contingent goods – as without predictability and stability, economic growth is impeded and liberty is impossible. Related concepts are sustainability and resilience.
  5. Reform. (Not revolution.) Liberalism has embraced a policy of reform – presuming that the status quo is not perfect yet acknowledging that rapid change could lead to worse. Reform is the balance liberalism strikes between stability and progress. This distinguishes them from conservatives who embrace the status quo over any change (standing athwart history yelling stop!) and leftists and right-wingers who embrace revolutions of various types to overthrow the current order as fundamentally wrong. The focus on reform is informed by the balance between doubt and action. Perhaps the best understanding of what reform means for a liberal can be found in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s advocation of the word “tinkering.”
  6. Preventing destabilizing concentrations of power and encouraging fair processes of distribution. Liberalism acknowledges that power tends to become concentrated – sometimes in particular branches of the government (for example, in the presidency in the unitary executive theory); sometimes in corporations (as they become too big to fail); sometimes in a particular class of individuals (as they control more and more wealth.) Liberalism sees that such concentrations of power are incompatible with democracy and liberty – and that while such concentrations of power will empower certain individuals – they do so at the expense of most people. While socialists and communists and other utopians believe equality must be created – liberals merely seek to prevent extreme concentrations of power in the hands of any minority. At the same time, as Confucius said, “In a country well governed poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed wealth is something to be ashamed of.” Which is why liberals must ensure that power is distributed through a fair process. Political power has been distributed by a constitutional order that needs to be tweaked now and then – and sometimes shaken up, as with the abolition of slavery. Economic power similarly is distributed in a market that sometimes is entirely unjust – as pollution imposes costs on some that are paid by others; and of course with the issue of slavery again. Government must step in to ensure that such unfair practices are not allowed. The goal is not to prevent someone like Bill Gates from having so much wealth, as his wealth is small enough to pose little threat to stability no matter what he does (almost) – it is to prevent 75% of the power from being controlled by 5% of the population – which does pose such a threat.
  7. The Rule of Law. Liberals embrace the fact that our nation was founded “as a nation of laws, not men” and that laws, while sometimes inconvenient are the foundation of our social bargain. Our leaders swear to uphold the law and to remain subject to it. That means if say, a President authorizing wiretapping in direct contravention of federal law, then he must be prosecuted.
  8. Aid to the disadvantaged. Liberals believe in the moral principle that a society and a government cannot be judged without taking into account how it deals with the disadvantaged – especially those who are disadvantaged as a result of the inevitable flaws in the system we choose to embrace. Liberals subscribe to the idea that “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”
  9. First among equals. Liberals acknowledge that America has often been and remains a force for good in the world – but they believe that it detracts from this when it considers itself unrestrained by any law or treaty and unilaterally imposes its will. This creates instability and unpredictability – as well as encouraging other nations to form collectives against us and to obtain weapons of mass destruction to prevent an invasion and provoke a standoff. Instead, liberals see that America has been most effective and done the most good when it acted as “first among equals” in the community of nations. As technologicaland macro-economic forces have been rapidly decentralizing power, America remains the single most potent force in a non-polar world – but it detracts from it’s power when it acts alone and delegitimizes the trust the world has given it to act responsibly.
  10. Diversity and federalism. Liberals – embracing their fallibility as human beings, and acknowledging that their grasp of the truth is always provisional – embrace diversity and federalism. Diverse viewpoints, diverse cultural, cultural, economic, etc. backgrounds all should be welcome and protected so long as they do not attempt to impose their specific view on those not willing. This is why liberals must embrace federalism – which has traditionally been a conservative principle. Liberals seem to be embracing the idea of federalism – at least with regards to the issues of gay marriage and medical marijuana.
Continue reading “Ten Principles of Liberalism”
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Barack Obama Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere

The Real Obama Enigma

[digg-reddit-me]A thought-provoking essay by Liam Julian in the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review explores the relationship between Obama and Reinhold Niebuhr. The essay unsurprisingly concludes that Obama failed to learn the essential lesson of Niebuhr (unsurprising because it appears in the far-right Policy Review) – namely that: 

[M]an must act forcefully but humbly and free from naïve expectations.

Julian explains the appeal of this Niebuhrianism as a kind of balancing act:

[Obama] is a liberal, as was Niebuhr, and idealism smolders within even the most sensible liberals. The point is not to suffocate the idealism but to control its flames…

The conservative Julian sees Obama flaming idealistically in his first few months in office because any liberalism is too much for him. But E. J. Dionne – like most liberals – sees Obama as constantly balancing opposites, attempting to control the risks associated with progress while not yielding to a reactionary politics:

That’s the Obama enigma: boldness wrapped in caution rooted in an ambivalent relationship to the status quo. This is why Obama will, by turns, challenge not only his entrenched adversaries but also his natural allies.

The Obama enigma is about balancing opposites. It is an idealistic pragmatism, a conservative liberalism. This constant balancing is inherent in every aspect of the Obama administration. As James Surowiecki observes in the New Yorker with regards to the banking crisis for example:

[T]he Administration is trying to do two things at once. In solving the current crisis, it’s partnering with Wall Street, using the existing system to try to stabilize the economy. But in thinking about the future it’s trying to use hostility to Wall Street to bring about serious changes in the system. This is quite a balancing act: let’s hope the Administration can pull it off.

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Law Mexico National Security Pakistan Political Philosophy

The Soft Underbelly of the Modern State

[digg-reddit-me]In other periods of history, opponents of a state would assassinate leaders to force changes in policy. The leader was invested with such power that removing him or her from his position would create an opportunity to change a government’s policies and overall posture towards the world. Today, although assassination is still a tool, the focus of opponents of the state – who are mainly identified as terrorists today – is to attack the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law – the primacy of laws over all individuals, including those in power, a principle which prevents authoritarianism, the arbitrary use of power, and anarchy – is perhaps the most valuable and vulnerable asset a state can have. Without it, there can be no democratic discourse or free elections and no free market. Yet the Rule of Law is especially vulnerable as it relies upon a wide range of institutions and conditions – all of are required to achieve the public trust needed: an independent judiciary; a professional police corps; a relative peace; the transparency of laws and law-making; the right of every individual to be given a fair hearing if they are being held by the state; a sense of basic justice within the society. A single rogue cop, a corrupt judge, or an unjust law undermines the Rule of Law – and if it is not well-established, can destroy it.

Reading about Mexico and Pakistan – the two major nations the U.S. Joint Forces Command listed as major nations that could suddenly collapse in the next year – one is confronted again and again with what each has in common: the Rule of Law is being deliberately subverted by major groups within these nations. If either nation is not able to maintain some semblance of the Rule fo Law within it’s borders, they will have effectively collapsed.

In Mexico, the Rule of Law has been undermined for years but is perhaps now finally reaching a tipping point. As Marc Lacey reported in the New York Times:

The cartels bring in billions of dollars more than the Mexican government spends to defeat them, and they spend their wealth to bolster their ranks with an untold number of politicians, judges, prison guards and police officers — so many police officers, in fact, that entire forces in cities across Mexico have been disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.

Steve Fainaru and William Booth reported in the Washington Post that:

The government is attempting to vet and retrain 450,000 officers, most at the state and municipal levels, employing lie detectors, drug tests, psychological profiling and financial reviews to weed out corruption and incompetence. Nearly half of the 56,000 officers vetted so far have failed.

Police corruption is clearly endemic in Mexico. It is for this reason that President Felipe Calderón has tasked the military with taking on the drug cartels – and it is also for this reason that many local police forces are now run by former military officers. But as the Lacey article makes clear, even the military is compromised – both from within by informants paid off by the cartels – and by the army-sized force of former soldiers that works for the cartels:

Although Mexico’s military is regarded as significantly less corrupt than the country’s police forces, defense officials estimate that 100,000 soldiers have quit to join the cartels over the past seven years.

As evidence that Mexico is even more compromised, Lacey reports that:

The reach of the drug kingpins has even the army fearful. Many soldiers cover their faces while on patrol to avoid being identified and singled out by the drug cartels. The army also recently began allowing soldiers to grow their hair longer, because military-style crew cuts were believed to be putting off-duty soldiers at risk.

Sam Quinones writing for Foreign Policy described how thoroughly Mexico had changed in the past decade, recounting anecdotes about the flagrancy of the cartels’ violation of laws.  Mayor José Reyes Ferriz of Ciudad Juárez lives across the border in Texas because he is not safe in the town he was elected to govern. The cartels have brought Mexico almost to a breaking point because they have undermined the Rule of Law through large portions of the country. The law is obviously a barrier to their illegal activities. Fainaru and Booth reported a senior advisor to President Calderón explained the motivation behind the desire to use the military to attempt to combat the cartels:

The executions, the decapitations, the confrontations between the drug gangs. There was a perception in society of lawlessness, that there was no state.

This perception is enough to destroy a nation – which is why the Mexican government has taken such drastic measures to combat it. At the same time, the steps taken by President Calderón – using the military – have themselves undermined the Rule of Law. As Monte Alejandro Rubido, a senior public security official explained the tradeoff:

It can be traumatic to have the army in control of public security, but I am convinced that we don’t have a better alternative, even with all the risks that it implies.

It is good that Calderón realizes that there is a tradeoff. His judgment remains that this is the least worst option – and his goal is one that we in America must share – the restoration of the Rule of Law in our neighbor. 

Similarly, in Pakistan, the Rule of Law has been undermined by the central government – as former President Musharaff disbanded the Supreme Court, as President Zardari refused to restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry for a time and seemed to use the Court for partisan purposes – while at the same time, the Rule of Law is being directly attacked by the religious extremists who have now taken to attacking police academies.

The Rule of Law is a nation’s most valuable asset – and unfortunately it is also most vulnerable. It faces threats from government overreaction, from rogue forces within the government, from unjust laws, from corruption, and from extremists who violently oppose the state itself. Mexico and Pakistan are becoming destabilized because large groups are attacking the Rule of Law – and each government’s own reaction to these groups additionally undermines the Rule of Law.

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Criticism Economics Political Philosophy The Opinionsphere

The Government Role in a Capitalist Economy

[digg-reddit-me]Robert J. Samuelson does a pretty good job in his column from last week of illustrating the incoherence of “the Establishment’s view” of government’s role in capitalism.

He begins his article discussing the prescient observations of Joseph Schumpeter, a 20th century economist who predicted that capitalism “sowed the seeds of its own destruction.” He described Schumpeter’s understanding of capitalism:

[Capitalism’s] chief virtue was long-term – the capacity to increase wealth and living standards. But short-term politics would fixate on its flaws – instability, unemployment, inequality. Capitalist prosperity also created an oppositional class of “intellectuals” who would nurture popular discontents and disparage values (self-enrichment, risk-taking) necessary for economic success.

Samuelson observes that Schumpeter’s observations seem to get to the heart of capitalism – yet he says, their conclusion is wrong – because capitalism survived. It survived Samuelson observes because:

We have subordinated unrestrained profit-seeking to other values. “We’ve gradually taken into account the external effects (of business) and brought them under control,” says economist Robert Frank of Cornell University. External costs include: worker injuries from industrial accidents; monopoly power; financial manipulation; pollution.

Samuelson goes on:

Successful capitalism presupposes three conditions: first, the legitimacy of the profit motive – the ability to do well, even fabulously; second, widespread markets that mediate success and failure; and finally, a legal and political system that, aside from establishing property and contractual rights, also creates public acceptance. Note that the last condition modifies the first two, because government can – through taxes, laws and regulations – weaken the profit motive and interfere with markets…

Now we’re really getting somewhere. Capitalism, it seems, must not be a matter of pure natural forces. It is not “unrestrained profit-seeking” in Samuelson’s view – nor does it exclude government intervention, as legal and political structures must modify markets and profit-making in order to “create public acceptance.” That’s a bit of an odd formulation, as anything could be justified as being done in order to “create public acceptance.” Circuses, beheadings, propaganda, war, large-scale confiscation of property – whatever. What Samuelson must mean – although it has to be inferred – is that measures designed to “create public acceptance” can only go so far before the essence of capitalism is destroyed – as he warns is imminently possible in his concluding paragraph. There is only a “thin line” he explains between capitalism and socialism – because:

If companies need to be rescued from “the market,” why shouldn’t Washington permanently run the market? That’s a dangerous mindset.

To illustrate this dangerous mindset which is empowered by an equally dangerous populism, he points to interjections of the government into the economy in the past half-century that have not been for the good – that is, those interjections in which the benefits are concentrated and the costs are dispersed, for example, ethanol subsidies and the promotion of the advantages for politically-connected companies; and those interjections that have scapegoated various groups – such as the anti-bonus tax bill. This implies – if nothing else – a confusion on Samuelson’s part.

Political actions in which the benefits are concentrated and the costs are dispersed are – as George Will put it “the supreme law of the land.” They have been the main business of American government since shortly after it’s founding – from subsidies for railroads to the laws enabling the various cartels of the Gilded Age to the military-industrial complex to agriculture subsidies in general to the bailouts of various industries. Only a few presidents have ever taken on this “supreme law of the land” and decided to extract costs from the politically influential few for the good of the many – Teddy Roosevelt as he sought to bust the trusts; FDR as he re-wrote the social contract. Most other presidents have tried to have it both ways – to give the politically influential few what they want while also attempting to achieve some common good. This has often been the source of their failure. The populist scapegoating is an entirely different matter – and is generally fleeting and while distasteful does little real damage. 

Both of these have been part of American capitalism since the beginning. Yet for some reason, Samuelson believes that capitalism is more under siege today than in the past. He never makes the case why – except to point to distasteful and inefficient aspects of American capitalism that have been around since it’s inception. This is little reason to believe that either populist scapegoating or actions with concentrated benefits and dispersed costs have increased significantly. And Samuelson does not try to make that case. Rather, he reveals the same unease that the rest of “the Establishment” has with any significant change. 

The incoherence and of this worldview is clear. What is less obvious is why. The answer is a theme I have been coming to again and again in this blog: that the free market is not a natural phenomonen, but a creation of a society and government. Thus – we did not really “[subordinate] unrestrained profit-seeking to other values” as Samuelson suggests – rather the government created costs to balance the marketplace. If a company was polluting, it was damaging those around it just as much as if it had been stealing from them. By imposing costs, the government was not so much “subordinating unrestrained profit-seeking” to some other values – but preventing one party from stealing from another. So, the government enacted regulations to reduce that pollution – and exacted costs if companies did not follow those limits. The cap-and-trade legislation promises to be an even clearer interjection of the government in this manner. The government and the society of which the government is a part together create the circumstances in which a market can truly be free.

Capitalism – alone, without a society to provide a marketplace – is a meaningless concept. Pairing a capitalist economic model with a democratic state has become a long-term successful model for progress because the “seeds of destruction” that capitalism produces are mitigated and sometimes used by the democratic state to the confer legitimacy on the model. The problem with capitalism has proved to be not as much the “instability, unemployment, inequality” that Samuelson describes – but the concentration of power among a monied and politically-influential elite that has attempted to protect the status quo and their own interests at the expense of the legitimacy of capitalism itself. Once the concentration of power reaches a certain tipping point, the market becomes less free. Which is why the government must, from time to time, step in to allow some sort of balancing to take place and to create rules for the market which allow it to operate freely.

Samuelson is concerned that this means that Washington may take it upon itself to “permantly run the market.” In this he demonstrates his lack of understanding. The government – and the society at large – have always created the rules by which the market is run – have always sought to mitigate the damage wrought by robust competition and worse. What is different now is that once again the government failed to adequately police the market. Or alternately, you could argue that the government failed to ensure the market stayed free, allowing firms to become so big and powerful they posed a systematic risk. Either way, while it would be dangerous to have a government declaring it would “run the economy” – that is not the situation we are now facing. Samuelson’s unease seems more the result of a desire to protect the status quo than any real regard for or understanding of capitalism and free markets.

Categories
Conservativism Economics Financial Crisis Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere

The Only Credible Response to Globalization

Niall Ferguson in The Telegraph:

Underlying this tremendous growth in financial markets was a fourfold liberalisation of international markets for goods, services, capital and labour. This was not, of course, peculiar to the English-speaking world: globalisation, as its name suggests, is ubiquitous. But its implications for those on the Anglophone Right were distinctive. Unremarked by conservatives in Britain, America and even Australia, these great shifts created a new and much greater trilemma.

Suppose that a government can have any two of the following things, but not all three: globalisation, in the sense of openness to international flows of goods, services, capital and labour; social stability; and a small state. Or, to put it differently, conservatives can pick any two from an open economy, a stable society and political power – but not all three.

Ferguson is extremely articulate (and credible) in his explanation of why conservatives have no “articulate” answers to globalization. He believes that conservatism will be able to once again thrive once it chooses to sacrifice social stability, which he links to social mobility. Although the two concepts certainly are related, it’s hard for me to accept the re-branding of one as the other – and it seems a bit too pat on Ferguson’s part. On the other hand, Ferguson describes the other side of the argument:

Only the Left appears to have a credible response [so far]: globalisation, plus social stability, plus a strong, interventionist state.

The set-up Ferguson proposes then would be:

The Left

In favor of:

  • Globalization
  • Social stability
  • Strong, interventionist state

Accepting as necessary evils:

  • Government interference
  • Less social mobility

Conservatives

In favor of:

  • Globalization
  • Social mobility
  • Small (but “smart”) state

Accepting as necessary evils:

  • Inequality
  • Booms and busts of the financial cycle
  • Social disorder

Ferguson avoids all the tough questions – such as what “smart” means – and how this would relate to regulation – and just presumes that governmental actions, inequality and social mobility are directly related – and that somehow, more inequality leads to more social mobility. I think perhaps Ferguson is attempting to create a scenario when he can plausibly oppose the man he describes as “the most Left-wing Democrat ever elected to be President of the United States.” This seems to me to be a rather implausible description of the pragmatist that Obama is. But this points to what is distorting Ferguson’s extremely interesting and insightful view of political ideologies and the current world trends. 

Let me propose an alternate party – one that it seems Barack Obama is already leading:

Liberals

In favor of:

  • Globalization
  • A strong, interventionist state to aid in the creation of and to police the market
  • A state that balances the need for a social safety net and individual incentives
  • A balance between social stability and social mobility

Accepting as necessary evils:

  • Inequality (but not extreme inequality)
  • Government interference
  • A level of social disorder
  • The boom-and-bust financial cycle (but mitigated)

The idea is to maximize certain goods while balancing against the evils that are their side effects. Extreme inequality can decrease social mobility at least as much as government distortions. A social safety net of the right type can act both a great equalizer and as an incentive for individuals to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions. 

My problem with Ferguson’s critique is that he seems to view the debate between the Left and conservatives as an either/or proposition – which it often is – but given the situation he describes, it’s more an argument of degree rather than kind. The Left that Ferguson is arguing against may favor social equality over social mobility but both sides agree that both goals are worthy. It’s a question of what the right balance is.

Categories
Criticism Political Philosophy Politics

Ruminations on the Egg and the Wall

[digg-reddit-me]About a month ago, one of my two favorite living novelists, Haruki Murakami, went to Jerusalem to accept an award. He had been advised, he said, by many of his friends and admirers in Japan, not to go to accept this award because of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. From this point in his speech it was clear he could go one of two places – to stand forthrightly with Israel (as Rupert Murdoch recently did) or to use his place of honor to criticize. Murakami apparently struggled with what to do – and it was apparent in his speech. He tried to do neither. But he laid out this basic tenet of his philosophy:

“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

Murakami explains that the wall can be many things, and the egg many things – but that more than anything else, the wall is the System, and the eggs are individuals:

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called the System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong — and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made the System. That is all I have to say to you.

I’ve struggled with this critique of Murakami’s since I read it a month ago. I wanted to dismiss it as too simplistic, too easy. It struck me as – to some degree – embodying the worst of Western leftist movements. At the same time, it reminded me of the critique Ann Coulter, that shrill harpy, made of liberalism in her Treason:

Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy.

In her view of history, liberals sided with criminals over law enforcement, terrorists over counter-terrorists, Communists over patriots, Vietcong over the American military, hippies over the cops bashing the hippies in the head. And, though Coulter neglects to mention these: blacks over racist Southern mobs and sheriffs, the poor against a system that allowed them to be impoverished, and the public against faceless, greedy corporations. There’s a certain logic and appeal to Coulter’s view – but to accept it one must first be wiped of all knowledge of American history and liberalism – which is the story of tough, pragmatic choices by men and women trying to uphold the system by reforming it and protecting it. Reform – not treason or revolution – has been the rallying cry of the American liberal.

There is a strain of thinking on the left that is and has been mainly marginalized in America that sees the “System” as the problem. In many other countries in the world, this strain of thinking is more mainstream – as are the leftist movements in those countries. I think what Coulter was referring to in her comment is the attitude that Murakami displayed in his speech – siding with the egg over the wall, regardless of “right” and “wrong.”

And yet, I still struggle with Murakami’s construction. It reminds me of the Catholic Church’s “preferential option for the poor.” And at the same time, it’s modesty appeals to me. Murakami does not say that he is “right” – only that it is his duty, his role to take the side of the “egg.” I believe it is important to have the worldviews of everyone articulated – as it is the only way to understand. 

But after struggling I cannot say I am on the side of the egg or the wall. What I finally realized is that the problem with this construct is not in the description of the egg or the wall – but in the lack of empathy for either side. I think in a real sense, this attitude – “May the egg always be right, but the egg, right or wrong!” – explains and motivates a great deal of the left, with it’s sympathy to any group or individual who presents themselves as attacking the “System” or as a victim of the “System.” Whether that individual be José Bové or a Gazan covered in blood or Hugo Chávez. The problem for me is that this egg versus wall scenario provides no meaningful distinction between Mohandas Gandhi and Osama Bin Laden.

The failure of this metaphor seems to arise – for me – in it’s lack of empathy. The “wall” – or the “System” is itself fragile – and individuals are far more than mere shells containing souls – they interact with the environment, they see, they hear, they make choices. This split between self-contained, solitary individuals and a menacing system is a basic theme of Murakami’s work – and the lack of culture or society within these works is actually what makes them so accessible to a Westerner like myself. At the same time, it makes them surreal. The heightened reality in these novels reveals something true about the nature of our world – but it is incomplete.

Categories
Political Philosophy

Economics, Fairness, & Stability

[digg-reddit-me]A friend asked me recently in response to my Reagan Revolution posts:

A. Would you rather have sustained economic growth where 90% of the growth goes to the rich and 10% to everyone else?
or
B. Economic stagnation and contraction where everyone stays at the same level except the rich lose a chunk of their proportionate wealth?
[edited slightly for clarity]

I think my friend may be surprised at how close America already is to Situation A. The top 20% of Americans own over 84% of America’s wealth and make just under 50% of each year’s income. Of the growth in America’s economy in the past 10 years, most of it has gone to the richest 5%. (See the Federal Reserve’s Chartbook – warning – a massive pdf. Also, for easier to read charts, see this and this.)

The question my friend seems to be proposing is: Is this disparity inherently wrong? Not necessarily. But it raises a number of difficult questions.

Fairness

Do you really believe that the top 20% of Americans has done work or provided value to society sufficient to deserve 84% of the wealth? If you’re just looking at income – do 20% of the people do 50% of the work each year? Or do these 20% of people provide 50% of all things of value? Is it possible that this distribution can be just? It does not seem to me that it can – unless you postulate that a day’s work for the average person in the top 20% is worth a week’s worth of work for the average American. 

Stability

A second question is whether a system in which such a high percentage of income disparity is sustainable. Certainly, when wealth is concentrated to such an extent, it undermines both the freedom of the market and democratic institutions. The freedom of the market is based on competition – which is undermined by the concentration of wealth. Democratic and market institutions are based on a free flow of information which can be controlled with sufficient wealth. For a time, as long as enough people benefited, this might be sustainable – but at some point, the concentration of wealth would reach a tipping point that would force a change. And that is only if all goes well – if growth ceases, or ceases for the majority of the people, then such a system would collapse. (This is what we are facing now.) The only way such a lopsided system could be sustainable would be with massive government intervention to maintain those institutions and mechanisms necessary for stability or intervention to spread the wealth around. 

It sometimes seems to me that conservatives forget that the free market exists because of – not in spite of – government interventions. And that some percentage of an individual’s success is due to the society and market created and maintained at least in part by the government.

The real problem I have with the construct of the question is that it might be asked another way: Would prefer massive injustice or collective misery? I’d like to think we can do better than either.

Categories
Economics Financial Crisis History Political Philosophy Politics

The Reagan Revolution

[digg-reddit-me]In which I discuss a repeated theme of this blog – the two domestic revolutions of the past 50 years that undermined the ever-evolving “American way of life” and caused profound social, economic, and political anxieties. The Reagan Revolution did for money what the ’60s did for sex – and today we are paying the price. 

The 1960s are remembered today – for better or worse – for the social, cultural, and sexual revolutions which roiled the nation between 1960 and 1972. The iconic images and movements of the later, more radical years of the time period primarily involve forces that undermined American mores and traditions. Flower children, the Summer of Love, LSD, marijuana, rock and roll, SDS, teach-ins, Black Panthers – the cumulative force of these challenges to the American way of life led to a backlash, which Richard Nixon and his counterparts rode to power. By 1968, many Americans felt as if their way of life were under siege from radical forces – oftentimes, a radicalism embraced even by their children. Riots broke out in major American cities; illegal drugs were consumed conspicuously and without shame; sex was given freely and openly; the legitimacy of the military, of the government, and of the academy were all questioned and often attacked – all of this in the name of freedom and in protest against the societal structures and rules that had heretofore defined the American experience. By the end of the 1960s, the “silent majority” felt their way of life under attack by these sixties revolutions, as Richard Nixon explained in a speech connecting major societal problems to the “sixties” experience:

We are reaping the whirlwind for a decade of growing disrespect for law, decency and principle in America.

Aside from Richard Nixon, the most prominent beneficiary of this counter-revolution, this reaction against the sixties revolution, was a second-rate actor turned politician, Ronald Reagan. He ran for governor on a law and order platform – pledging to beat back the forces of chaos and freedom to protect the compromises that were the basis for the American way of life. Reagan made a national name for himself by taking aggressive measures to quash the college demonstrations of the “communist sympathizers, protesters and sex deviants” at the University of California, Berkley campus.

In defending his extreme measures that resulted in the death of a student in the aftermath of a police riot, Reagan drew a line in the sand:

If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with. No more appeasement.

Reagan’s popularity stemmed in a large measure from how he was able to harness his populist law-and-order stands with a sunny optimism about America. But when Reagan finally took power in 1980, he did not merely attempt to reverse the 1960s revolutions. He unleashed a new revolution, undermining American values and traditions just as radically as the 1960s revolutions had. As Stephen Metcalf explained in Slate:

The ’80s did for money what the ’60s did for sex.

Metcalf goes on:

They told a miraculously tempting lie about the curative powers of disinhibition. It took AIDS, feminism, and sociobiology a while to catch up to our illusions about free love. It has taken cronyism, speculation, and manic overleveraging a while to catch up to our illusions about free money.

Reagan himself revered Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal but the forces he unleashed were determined to overthrow not just the Great Society programs of the 1960s and the social, cultural, and sexual revolutions of that decade, but the New Deal of the 1930s and the social and economic structure that sprang from the Depression and the government involvement in its aftermath. The Reagan administration unleashed a neoliberal revolution. While Reagan’s support and popularity was to a large degree a result of his stands against the social, cultural, and sexual revolutions of the 1960s against the commonly accepted American values and traditions, his administration unleashed its own revolution which likewise attacked and undermined commonly accepted American values and traditions.

As Stanley Fish recently described neoliberalism in the New York Times:

Whereas in other theories, the achieving of a better life for all requires a measure of state intervention, in the polemics of neoliberalism (elaborated by Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek and put into practice by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher), state interventions — governmental policies of social engineering — are “presented as the problem rather than the solution” (Chris Harman, “Theorising Neoliberalism,” International Socialism Journal, December 2007).

The free market was seen by these neoliberals as a natural phenomenon that was destroyed by government involvement rather than the government- and society-tended creation that it actually is, as has commonly been understood by Americans from Alexander Hamilton to Theodore Roosevelt. This neoliberal revolution began with much less fanfare and demonstration and less popular support and revolt than the sixties revolutions, but its effects were at least as profound. There were not the same iconic or disturbing images of radicalism and culture war, or catalyzing events like Woodstock, in this second domestic revolution, but the impact on the fabric that bound and organized the nation was just as profound. By explicitly seeking to undermine the “American system” of capitalism and especially the changes to the social contract since the New Deal (which involved the government regulation of businesses, a focus on local and small corporations rather than consolidation, a focus on labor and manufacturing instead of high finance, and a strong, robust middle class that was the focus of a growing economic prosperity) the Reagan revolution accelerated the trends that had begun to appear in the 1970s. Income inequality soared, middle and lower income stagnated while the wealthiest rose, businesses combined and became ever larger, and regulations were relaxed. In what became known as the Great Divergence, the wealth produced by American society stopped being spread out to the middle class and became concentrated in an ever smaller percentage of the population. The very shape of our society changed as a result of Reagan’s revolutions – and American families began to feel squeezed, until the effects of this revolution became more pronounced. By the 2000s, this “silent majority” again felt under seige – though without the same sense of focus as neoliberals actively sought to shift the blame for these economic attacks on the middle class to the 1960s revolutions in a manner that was still resonant for older Americans.

And while the effects of the sixties revolutions have been widely discussed, the effects of the revolution of the 1980s have been largely unspoken. The concentration of wealth in ever smaller percentages of the population, the economic focus on finance over labor, manufacturing, or industry, the slashing of the social safety net, the push for ever bigger corporations, and the relaxation of any type of regulation. 

Thus Reagan, opposing the cultural, social, and sexual revolutions of the 1960s overthrowing conventions that held together American society, unleashed a new economic, financial, and governmental revolution that overthrew the social contract of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the economic and governmental conventions that held American society together.

Categories
Foreign Policy Libertarianism Mexico National Security Politics The Opinionsphere War on Drugs

The Unintended Consequences of a War on Drugs

American libertarian Alan Bock at Antiwar.com:

The most efficacious approach [.pdf] to stemming the violence in Mexico is to recognize that just as what most newspapers blithely call “drug-related crime” is actually drug-law-related crime or even drug-law-caused crime, the wave of violence in Mexico is not caused by the inherent viciousness of the Mexican underclass or the physiological properties of drugs deemed illicit, but by the set of perverse incentives that arise when governments treat adults like children and dictate what they can ingest, attempting to prohibit plants and substances that are easily grown and formulated and for which there is a steady demand. The violence in Mexico is not “drug-related” but “drug-law-related” or even caused directly and indirectly by the laws attempting to prohibit the use of some substances.

While I do not agree with the moral aspects of Bock’s approach – which attribute the moral failings of individuals to government policy – and place the moral blame for these actions on the government – his policy analysis here strikes me as fundamentally sound.