We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Instapundit, whom I revere for his relentless, industrial strength linkage (happy tenth anniversary Professor), has been in the habit, in recent times, of linking to pieces about how Americans are getting ever more disappointed by President Obama. But, as I am sure that Instapundit himself appreciates, the disappointment with Obama coming from Obama’s own former supporters is not because Obama’s preferred economic policies are now correctly understood by those ex-supporters to be disastrously destructive, but rather because Obama seems insufficiently determined and skilful in imposing these policies upon Americans who would prefer relatively sensible economic policies.
Obama’s leftist critics are not disappointed with Obama because they have come, reluctantly and through bitter experience, to share the opinion of his policies held by the Tea Party. Rather are such critics disappointed with Obama because he is not crushing the Tea Party, but instead haggling with them, and doing so, as these critics see it, with insufficient skill and nastiness.
Yes, Obama still seems to believe in the same daft policies that these leftist critics favour. But where is the passionate commitment to folly that he persuaded them he felt when he was getting elected, and that they still yearn for? Perhaps someone else (Hillary Clinton?), with greater energy, industriousness and human warmth, could lead America over the cliff with the proper amount of dash and determination, instead of Obama just leading the herd from somewhere in among it.
One should not, in short, confuse the fact – if fact it be – that President Obama is now being thought by ever more Americans to be doing a bad job, with the claim that all of America is coming to its senses in the matter of what it should do about its current economic woes, or what will happen to it, and to the world, if it does not do what it should do.
Notice how the loudest complaints about “broken politics” come from those who lost the debate. It’s understandable for sore losers to rage against the machine. But there’s no need for the rest of us to parrot their petulance.
– Charles Krauthammer.
Obama declares US is still a AAA nation, in his regard. Like when i would try & convince my parents that my C+ in math was pretty much a B-
– Mark Ronson (via Twitter)
I see that some Democrat politicians in the USA have taken to calling Tea Party politicians terrorists.
I wonder if this is wise on their part. It is clearly wrong and nasty; that’s a given. What I now wonder is whether such insults will be politically damaging to the Tea Party, or rather to any politician who uses such wrong and nasty language. Is this some kind of concerted effort by Democrat bigmouths to badmouth the Tea Party? Or are they just very angry, and individually blowing off steam? Being the optimist I am, I suspect the latter, or that if it is more the former, it may be a serious miscalculation.
Recently, in a comment here (I apologise for forgetting to which posting this comment was attached and for being unable to supply the link that the commenter did supply – perhaps he or some other commenter can rectify that and I will be able to add the link (by turning those last two words blue)) to a theory that once a “convinced minority” (I think that was the phrase) reaches about ten per cent of the population, its success from that moment on cascades, and soon part or even all of the agenda that this minority is pushing becomes a given of conventional discussion and debate. (I presume that this book was involved.)
This makes a lot of sense to me. I think the key to such transformations of opinion or behaviour are that individual members of the population, even though mostly not themselves already members of the convinced minority in question, are almost all of them quite closely connected to people who are.
The Tea Party, for the purposes of such analysis as this, doesn’t just mean all the good (I think) people who are spending every spare hour and spare dime they have forcing, by impeccably democratic methods, Tea Party opinions upon that great and greedy bi-partisan tribe of Washington tax-and-spenders. I include also the (much(?) greater) group of people who, when they hear a Tea Party opinion about government spending, government debt and so on, nod their heads and say: “Yeah that’s right. They may be … (insert insult of choice involving religion, science, abortion, witchcraft, guns, four-wheel-drive vehicles, etc.) … but these people are right about government spending. It’s too much. It’s got to be controlled.”
And, I’m guessing, a lot of Americans now know people like that. A lot are even related to such people. They may not agree with such sentiments themselves, but they know, and like, maybe even love, people who do now believe such things. So, when some Democrat politician calls a Tea Party politician a terrorist, a great many average Americans respond, not by making a note to not join the Tea Party and to agree about how mad they are when next they come up in conversation, but rather, by reacting with a thought like: “Hey, that’s my Uncle Freddy you’re talking about! He likes those Tea Party people. He may be a bit of an old grump, but he ain’t no terrorist sympathiser. He drove a truck in Gulf War 1. Last Christmas he bought me an iPhone. He’s okay. Take it back!”
To put the above story another way, the key to all this is that once the population as a whole starts to have its own personal face-to-face take on what it thinks about that convinced minority with its previously off-the-chart-of-respectability opinions, no amount of political and media insults can change how they see things. They now have their own personal versions of the story, and they ain’t going to be told what to think by a mere politician on TV.
If that’s right, and if all this convinced minority stuff does now apply to the Tea Party, then bigmouth Democrats calling their Tea Party enemies “terrorists” is cause not for fear, but for rejoicing, among all those of us who want the finances of the US government to be something vaguely like sane in the years to come. Such insults are not evidence of an argument being or about to be won by such Dems; it is evidence that they are at least beginning seriously to lose this argument, and that they are starting to realise this. They know that a great many people will feel personally insulted by all this terrorist talk, but, … Grrrrrrrr!!!! What the hell is happening to the world, when a politician can’t spend other people’s money any damn way he likes? Screw the damn world!!! Screw you all, you bastards!!! When Dems call Tea Partiers terrorists, they are being honest, in the sense that they are truly saying what is on their angry, confused, wrong, nasty minds.
Does the above make any sense? It does to me. Or am I being, as I so often am, too optimistic?
By the way, while typing in this posting (on an unfamiliar computer) I noticed that I had at one point put the “Teat” Party. But actually, I quite like that phrase, to describe all the kind of people who think that Tea Partiers really are terrorists.
This paragraph from a good posting by Victor Davis Hanson, at the National Review’s Corner blog, applies not just to the US, but also to the UK:
“The strangest thing about the current paradox of cash-flush companies and little or no economic growth is the administration’s puzzlement over the lethargy — as if no one outside Washington ever listened to what the administration has said or noticed what they have done the last three years.”
Exactly. I’d also add to VDH’s list of things that have stymied recovery: the still-lingering and damaging impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley law on things such as initial public offerings and the foolish FASB tampering with share option payments that have crimped venture capital startup businesses. (I can, by the way, recommend this book by Dale Halling about why US entrepreneurship is stalling – it controversially argues that a key problem has been the erosion of patent law in the US, an argument that is bound to get some libertarian opponents of IP excited).
VDH’s points apply in Britain, too, such as what he says about demonisation of some businesses, as well as things like bailouts, Green regulations and so on. Of course, a key problem here is the European Union and all the red tape that comes from that.
Regime uncertainty, if I can use that term, is a big problem. We have a tax authority (HMRC), given the power to decide, as it goes along, what constitutes tax “avoidance”, so that avoidance is now seen as wrong, as is tax evasion. This relates to a wider problem of uncertainty. Even the daftest tax laws are more tolerable if they are predictable. The problems get even worse, though, if officials have the ability to retrospectively decide that this or that business practice is wrong and should be shut down. Our tax code remains one of the longest and most complex in the world.
We need far fewer laws, and those that remain should be simple, easy to understand and enforce. Sometimes though, doing things the simple way seems to be so hard.
American government spending will be higher in 2011 than it was in 2010.
Government spending will be higher in 2012 than it was in 2011 – much higher.
The above is all that matters – everything else is piss and wind.
The deal is one great big shining lie.
– Paul Marks
“Little does Barack Obama understand that he has forever branded himself as an incompetent and failure. His narcissism and lifelong history of receiving public adulation will not allow him to comprehend the damage. He does not understand that now few will listen to his speeches, no matter how well delivered; that few will believe what he is saying, as he has lied and obfuscated the facts so often. Many world leaders have already arrived at the conclusion that Barack Obama is a leader that cannot be trusted, the citizens of the United States are beginning to understand that he is a man without a core set of principles thus incapable of guiding the ship of state. The media, increasingly realizing their culpability in the nation’s current state of affairs, has begun to ask more penetrating questions and grudgingly question Obama’s fitness for office. Columnists once infatuated with his ability to deliver a speech and skin color have finally begun to admit their error. The Left has become more open in their criticism, as they now understand that the hero upon whom they vested so much hope is a hollow shell.”
– Steve McCann.
Ideas matter, and especially to intellectuals like President Obama. He is not a rigid ideologue and is capable of flexible maneuvering. But his interpretation of history, his attitude toward sovereignty, and his confidence in multilateral institutions have shaped his views of American power and of American leadership in ways that distinguish him from previous presidents. On Libya, his deference to the UN Security Council and refusal to serve as coalition leader show that he cares more about restraining America than about accomplishing any particular result in Libya. He views Libya and the whole Arab Spring as relatively small distractions from his broader strategy for breaking with the history of U.S. foreign policy as it developed in the last century. The critics who accuse Obama of being adrift in foreign policy are mistaken. He has clear ideas of where he wants to go. The problem for him is that, if his strategy is set forth plainly, most Americans will not want to follow him.
– The Obama Doctrine Defined by Douglas J. Feith and Seth Cropsey
At this point it might be useful to clarify precisely what the dispute concerns. The question is not whether the federal government should grow. As Reason’s Nick Gillespie pointed out a few days ago, nearly nobody in Washington has actually proposed shrinking the leviathan. To the contrary, the dispute is whether to raise federal spending from the current $3.8 trillion to $4.7 trillion over the next decade (the Paul Ryan plan) – or to $5.7 trillion (the Obama plan). Bear in mind that those increases would come on top of one of the fastest expansions of federal spending in U.S. history. When President Obama took office, the budget stood at $2.9 trillion. Two. Point. Nine.
– A. Barton Hinkle
So the USA is screwed… and does this remind you of something?
Reading about the arrest of what appears to have been an extremist planning an attack on Ft Hood, Texas, I was struck by the contrast with the Oslo attack last weekend.
Private First Class Naser Jason Abdo, was arrested Wednesday after making a purchase at Guns Galore in Killeen, Texas, the same ammunition store where Maj. Nidal Hasan purchased the weapons he allegedly used to gun down 13 people and wound 32 others on Nov. 5, 2009.
The point being that a legal gun shop owner is more likely to call the police than a black market arms supplier would. Now if we could only get all the gun rights people in America to realise the advantages of legal outlets for drugs as well…
A few years back, I proposed an alternative budget for the UK. IIRC, it involved cutting taxes by a quarter, spending by a third. Even assuming no increase in economic growth (that would boost sales tax revenue), this would have created a massive budget surplus that could have cut the UK national debt by over 10%.
I opposed default then for what I still think were good reasons: first, many private individuals and institutions bought bonds in good faith; but second, because the UK nearly had to surrender to Nazi Germany in 1940, and had refused to confront Hitler when war was still not necessary partly because of the consequences of a partial default on war bonds from the First World War. In essence, appeasement was the necessary policy of 1930s British governments because they could not expect to borrow so had to pay in gold and whatever the British public could be persuade/forced to raise (yes I know pacifism was big too, but the financial imperative meant that it was the only option).
Whether we take an interventionist view or not, the re-militarization of the Rhineland in 1936 was the moment when, without firing a shot, Hitler could have been stopped.
What does this have to with events in Europe and the USA today? In short, I think the financial situation is so dire, and the political solutions on offer so inadequate, that default is now the only credible outcome. I therefore conclude that it needs to happen very soon, rather than after wasting more resources on more “bail-outs.”
We will just have to take our chances that no one decides to, invade the Falklands, or grab Gibraltar, or build nuclear weapons and give them to terrorists, or blow up US embassies. I explain why below. → Continue reading: The debt ceiling should be cut not raised
A reminder, the problem isn’t the debt ceiling – it’s the debt, …
– Rand Simberg
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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