Tuesday, February 26, 2013

The Sequester Versus The Baseline : Go Sequester Go!

Reader's Note


Those exploring my list of most popular posts may be pleased to know I've reformatted the post Enemies Of The American Revolution.  A change a few months ago in my blog's appearance had rendered much of it unreadable.  I'd like to add that I had to dig into the HTML to do it for technical reasons I wont bore you with, but be happy to share with anyone who asks.  If I can help a fellow blogger or programmer I am almost always happy about it.

Now for this week I thought I'd point out a couple news items and, of course, add my commentary and questions.


Obama's Sequester


Market Watch reports that Bob Woodward of Watergate fame is once again dogging a president.  In an article entitled Woodward sequester report hangs over Obama as cuts near  it is said that the sequester was President Obama's idea, not the Republicans as Obama has been trying to claim.

This is the sort of thing that tortures my logical mind.  The sequester, for all of its arbitrariness, is the best thing the federal government has managed to achieve in the area of responsible budgeting in decades.   The baseline mistake of the 1970's will finally get touched.

For those unaware of what I mean by the baseline, allow me to explain.  In the 1970's during the Nixon administration legislation was passed establishing that all future budgeting would be done using ten year projections and it would be assumed that all areas of government would receive automatic spending increases of about 6%.  Now consider that inflation is usually 3% so that means government must, according to this legislation, grow at rate twice that of inflation.  Thus it must double in terms of real dollars about once every 24 years.  Doing a little math one can conclude that if the economy grows at the rate of inflation, which it does on average, and government spending started at being  only 10% of the economy, in 240 years it would have doubled 10 times making it about 1000% of the economy.  Now consider government spending hasn't been as low as 10% since the aftermath of WWII and you can see the numbers get worse not better once we leave the realms of estimating.

So baseline budgeting is a very bad mistake we've been living with for way too long and the sequester, if it happens, will be the first time anything has ever been done to even begin to address it.  If Obama wasn't a proven economic dolt he'd be trumpeting his triumph instead of working so hard to hand credit for it to the Republicans.

Of course, given Obama's expressed determination to spend us into oblivion, giving Obama credit for the good side of the sequester would be like making a quarterback who throws an interception to the winning team the MVP.  So no matter how we turn this story to look at it, it still seems to torture my sense of logic.  The best we can say is, the sequester is a good thing but not enough (it doesn't even cut the baseline increase in half), and President Obama was stupid in proposing it, not because it was a bad thing but because he thought it was a bad thing.

A good question to ask here is how do we get to places like this in our public thought?  How do we get to a point where we are asking who to blame for a good thing that is only bad for not being enough and not being administered more smoothly?


Boehner's Quandry

Real Clear Politics offers us a comment from Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin where he's asked if he thinks Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner will make a deal with President Obama to avoid sequestration.  Johnson is quoted as saying, "I don't quite honestly believe that Speaker Boehner would be speaker if that happens. I think he would lose his speakership".

Well it will certainly be telling what this Speaker does or doesn't do.  I for one believe that if he's so distracted by the anti-logical spin that passes for public rationale right now that he would consider any deal to avoid sequester that doesn't do at least as much to address the problem of the baseline, he should lose his speakership.

Now I almost feel as if I haven't been fair to the Speaker here since if one looks at the entire interview in which Senator Johnson said that you could easily get the impression that Johnson doesn't believe Speaker Boehner is even considering such a deal and he made the quoted statement as a way to emphasize the strength of that belief, not as a threat to the Speaker.

But then I suppose that sort of misquoting is what has to be done by a media that is caught up in the anti-logical spin that is passing for public rationale.  That brings us back to the questions, doesn't it.

How do we get to a place like this in our public thought?  How do we get to a point where we suspect the Republican Speaker of the House may wish to avoid a good thing that is only bad for not being enough and not being administered more smoothly, even at the cost of worse policy?  Is perception really so much everything that we can get twisted that far?


Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Defining Liberalism : A Warning To College Students : Part II

Suggestions For Students And "Modern Liberals"


First let me offer some advice to modern liberals.

I would suggest that the adherents to modern liberalism just drop the “liberalism” from their description entirely and call it what it is, “collectivism”, but that I'm sure would make matters too clear for their convenience. It seems better for their cause to continue muddying the word “liberalism” so they can trick more college students into thinking they are something they're not.

They are not the inheritors of the American revolution, but rather the latest and greatest counter-revolutionaries ever to be identified in human history.   They stand for many of the same things we declared our independence from in 1776 and and tried through the ratification of the Bill Of Rights in 1791 to make certain would not come back to beset us.  As much as the founders may have wished to, they could not find a sure way to prevent people from using lies such as “the greater good” and “social justice” to bring the individual back under the tyranny of the collective.  Instead they left us letters reminding us of how fragile the revolution is and how we must be steadfast in our faithfulness to basic principles.
 

The definition of classical liberalism is that of a good liberalism.  One consistent with what the American Revolution was all about.  Indeed what many self-proclaimed conservatives say they believe in, at least they say, and to whatever extent they are not collectivists they're probably telling the truth.
 

My words of advice to college students is to never trust anyone who is eager to inform or teach you, not even me.  Learn from them as much as you can, but test their words, both in your own mind and against other sources. Control of information is too much power to trust with any one person, so control what you accept and reject, yourself.  Never become passive or deferential. If anyone ever says to you, “who are you to disagree with ...”, answer them, “reason”, for there is nothing rational about simply deferring to an expert who isn't making sense to you.  Maybe you're just not seeing something, but you'll never see it if you pretend you do when you don't.  That's part of why it's said that humility is the beginning of wisdom. It's also entirely possible the expert is wrong or at the very least not being relevant to the actual issue at hand.  Academic experts being found wrong has happened so many times in the last couple decades I'm almost surprised the Ivy League's ratings haven't in some way been downgraded.  Point being their wrong often enough that it's far from silly to challenge them, and failing to challenge them, at least inside your own head, is irresponsible if you are serious about learning and pursuing knowledge.

And as this two part discussion of the word “liberalism” shows, some of them may even try to trick you.  Keep an eye out for social and political agendas, and yes even personal ones. Some of the things taught in history and the various social sciences like psychology, sociology, and education match up far too well with certain agendas to be taken in without suspicion from a critically trained and active mind.

Here are some examples of questions of conclusions in education classes often discouraged that should be asked and that effect most people's lives today.

Do children really learn best in a diverse group?

Could students' learning improve if they were in a classroom of students of only their own gender?

What if students were segregated by learning styles?

What if they were segregated by aptitudes? Would the benefit of the improved learning outweigh the potential image issues caused by using a tracking system like this?

Is socialization a side effect or a goal of public education?

Is socialization only reliably achievable through public education?

If there was a better way to educate children but it lacked opportunities for socialization, would it be worth implementing?

Note now that none of these questions would be so hard to ask if those who claimed to be liberals were liberals in the true classical sense, that is they were truly aligned with the spirit of the American Revolution. An individualist approach as opposed to a collectivist one would emphasize choice over uniformity and would not consider socialization towards diversity to be a goal appropriate for government and as such necessary for public schools. Socialization towards diversity and socialization in general are best left as individual  and private goals, not that of some sort of social engineering. At least that's the way of the revolution, the American one.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Defining Liberalism : A Warning To College Students : Part I

High on my list of things I'd want a college freshman to know is that words don't always mean what you think they mean, or even what you're told they mean. Some times words evolve into new contexts like the word “sin” for example. It originally meant “to miss the target”. It still means that, just in a context other than archery. Some times words evolve over time to mean something else entirely, like “nice” which meant “stupid or naive” and now means “being kind”. It's amusing to ponder how the speakers of the English language got from one meaning to the other.

More to my point though there are also words who's meanings have been changed in order to serve certain social and political agendas. The word “liberalism” being the most annoying to me. While some fret that “conservatives” have been successful in vilifying “liberalism” to the point that few dare to use the “L-word” in political discourse (in the United States), I am actually some what relieved at this. No, not because I hate liberalism, but because the word's meaning has become so distorted by those commonly calling themselves liberals that it's become almost impossible to see what they are and what they are not.

A region of confusion is generated by the twisting of the word “liberalism” that allows things to be done in its name that are completely contrary to what the world's first liberals believed in. The current usurpers, who are counter-revolutionaries as I see them, get to advance collectivism while getting credit for being in the spirit of great anti-collectivists such the founders of the United States. It's a perverse propaganda coupe on a grotesque scale and it's played out on university campuses across the nation, year in and year out.

Allow me to explain.

dictionary.com provides the following definition of “liberalism”(emphasis added by me).

“a political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavor, and governmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties.”

I consider this definition, while one that would be very acceptable in and typical of a university classroom, to be flawed for a number of reasons. I'm leaning on logic here.

    Political minds that typically describe themselves as “liberal” are far too collective in their mindset to ever sincerely advocate the freedom of the individual. Collectivism and individualism are opposites on the political spectrum, and serious examination of most self-proclaimed liberals' agendas will show a clear bent towards collectivism (see my post on social justice for one such example).

    The same seek to use powerful government institutions to force changes they wish upon social institutions. This badly misses the point of what true liberalism should be. The liberalism of the founders seeks to make sure individuals simply need not associate with social institutions they disagree with, like religions for example, and thus need not abide by them. The institutions are free in a truly liberal society to change with public sentiment or to resist. Those that resist public sentiment will then either be proven right or wrong by the events of time. The typical self-proclaimed liberal however, would have the government dictate desired changes to institutions. i.e. Forcing Roman Catholic hospitals to provide contraception for their employees. Thus the freedom of the individual who wishes to be faithful to the religion or other social institution of their choice is completely disregarded. Clearly that contradicts “advocating the freedom of the individual”.

    The same self-proclaimed liberals seek to use powerful government institutions to force changes they wish on economic institutions, with similar logical inconsistencies as respecting “the freedom of the individual”. While it is the proper role of a true liberal government to provide some regulation of economic institutions in order to prevent some sort of private tyranny that can't otherwise be escaped through reasonable choice, the self-proclaimed want the government to do far more than that. They want policies that force wealth redistribution, rather than just encourage it or discourage wealth concentration. Their governmental policies confiscate private property, i.e wealth, for redistribution, and fail to provide just compensation. The individual paying twice the percentage of income taxes isn't getting extra services from the government for that higher rate. The argument that this individual makes more and thus benefits more from the system could be valid if everyone payed the same percentage, but the added percentage in a progressive income tax is nothing else but the government deciding to make a wealthier individual poorer. The freedom of the individual to seek greater wealth, if they so wish, is curtailed and the government violates individual property rights in the process.*

    Finally, the definition itself runs off the proverbial tracks when it says, “and governmental guarantees of individual rights”. What should be meant is that government guarantees that it wont interfere with or violate individual rights, but the wording here instead strongly implies that government should enforce individual rights. While it is true that government has a role in protecting individuals from other sources of potential tyranny, like labor unions, neighborhood associations, lending institutions, land lords, and employers, the only thing government needs to do is protect the individual's ability to choose not to participate in any of these. As long as these potential sources of tyranny can be reasonably avoided there is no actual tyranny happening (I want to vent on the actual tyranny of many neighborhood associations in a later post but for now I'll stay on topic).

    The problem with saying, “and governmental guarantees of individual rights” here is that it both implies government as the source of individual rights, and that individual rights are something government can and should play an active role in. This ignores the whole concept of the “tyranny of the majority” as discussed in Tocqueville's Democracy In America. An institution such as a government that is controlled by a collective (the majority) cannot be counted on to respect the freedom of individuals, and will inevitably curtail individual rights. This is because the majority by definition, is in some way set against the wishes of some group of individuals known as the minority. Of course the minority ruling would be wrong as well. The solution of true liberal government is to allow the majority to rule in governmental affairs but with a government that is forced by contract not to violate or abridge individual rights. That is the government cannot abridge the individual's right to be a practicing voluntary member of a minority unless that minority directly threatens civil order or core individual rights such as life, liberty, and property.

    In true liberalism government is the necessary and lesser of evils, to be restrained and limited whenever and wherever reasonable. It cannot be a champion of anything but order, and perfect order has no room for individual freedom. The mere implication that government should be the champion of individual rights causes this definition to promote dysfunction.

I could summarize the problems with this definition by saying it doesn't describe what we typically call liberalism today, and to the extent it describes the liberalism of the United States' founders it invites a huge misconception of the proper role of government.

I would offer two improved alternative definitions based on this one. One defines what is typically called liberalism today, modern liberalism, and the other defines the liberalism of the founding fathers, classical liberalism.

modern liberalism,

a political or social philosophy advocating democratic systems of government, governmental modification of political, social, or economic institutions designed and intended to assure progressive social development in all spheres of collective human endeavor, and governmental guarantees of civil liberties.

Note the absence of 'individual rights' as this term means nothing when modern liberals say it.

classical liberalism,

a political or social philosophy advocating the freedom and liberty of the individual, democratically limited government, individually voluntary modification through civil discourse of political, social, or economic institutions to maximize individual liberty within minimally required civil order, and the contractual binding of governments to not violate or infringe upon individual rights and civil liberties.

It's important to note that classical liberalism is not absolutist but rather seeks the best possible balance between individual liberty and civil order.  That best possible balance being that which allows for as much individual liberty as possible while still having enough civil order to make exercising one's liberty reasonably possible.


It is this, classical liberalism, that should capture the imagination of college students and challenge them to work for a better future.  One full of individuals doing what their own well educated and raised sensibilities tell them is the best way for each to best contribute.  Not full of people trying to tell others how to live according to some theories hatched in only the last couple centuries.  Collectivism is the necessary evil that we want only enough of to live in peace with others.  Individualism is the flower we should cherish.

[Next week I will offer advice to the modern liberal and the college students who must endure them.]
 

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

A Solution To Illegal Immigration In The United States

[This is a re-publishing of a post I wrote several months ago that is probably much more relevant to current issues than when it was first published.  I originally entitled it Cutting The Baby In Half.  Now it seems perhaps there are some who have come forward who care about both halves.  Back when I first wrote it, things weren't looking quite as good.  Let's hope President Obama's blind ambition for personal glory or his harsh partisan scheming don't get in the way.]

Can a nation exist without borders? Is it possible to humanely uproot millions of people and send them back to a country that lacks resources and opportunities for them? The answer to both of these questions, unfortunately, is no. So the United States seems to be presented with a choice where both options are wrong. It is as if we must either forfeit our property rights and rule of law, or go ask Balkan governments to instruct us on the do's and don'ts of ethnic cleansing in the modern world. Although in this case, since the United States is an ethnically diverse nation it would be more of a civic cleansing. With options like these it should be no surprise we can't find a consensus on what to do. We are a nation that has fought and worked too hard to just stop existing and with too much moral certainty to suddenly lose that either.

As you may have guessed from the title I'm going to attempt to use one of King Solomon's tacts to move the dialogue on this closer to a solution. I'm going to intentionally propose a solution that should equally horrify elements of both of our political parties. Some of these elements, I suspect, are not so much tied to the core issues of national sovereignty and treating people humanely as they claim with their rhetoric, and how they may react to the following solution could reveal that.

My proposal requires that we pass laws contingent on the United States and Mexico (the primary source by far of our illegal immigrant population) signing a treaty. The laws and the treaty together would solve both the sovereignty and human rights problems.

The Treaty And The Laws

The treaty would make it so citizens of both countries can freely travel, live, and work in both countries without the need of visas. Both nations may require these foreign residents and workers to register for purposes of tracking taxes and government services but unlike visas the registrations would have no standards for issuance beyond the registrants being law abiding residents or workers. This would make all Mexican illegal aliens in the United States effectively legal.

The laws that should be passed in the United States before the treaty is signed would be as follows.
  1. Require all former illegal immigrants to register with the government. Failing to register would result in deportation and possible jail time.  Due to the ease of registration, the number of those failing to register would be very small and manageable.
  2. In order to assure that illegals don't cut ahead of legal immigrants, all formerly illegal immigrants would be required to wait an amount of time equal to the time they were in the country illegally before they could apply for citizenship (exemption for military service).
  3. All federal agencies must cooperate with states endeavors to remove and keep non-citizens from their voter rolls.
  4. Require all United States employers to report the citizenship of all of their employees.

How this deals with both core problems

The sovereignty issue is solved both in the short and long term. The treaty makes it so the only illegal aliens from Mexico would be those who refuse to register or who break other laws and thus can't be registered. The currently huge number of illegal aliens is the greatest challenge to enforcing our immigration laws and that would go way with this treaty. Also, the treaty would make it such that no new illegal influx from Mexico would be at all likely. The ease of registration when compared to the potential consequences of not doing so would make it very unlikely that someone wanting to live or work here would choose not to register.

The laws protect and restore currently lost sovereignty by registering the foreigners, penalizing those who were here illegally in terms of a path to citizenship, and requiring federal agencies to help rather than hinder state efforts to make sure foreigners can't vote. The requirement that employers report their employees citizenship is already being applied in places with great success through E-verify, and it assures that employers don't attempt to use an employee's illegal status as a means to pay them under the table. The combination of E-verify and a foreign worker registration system would discourage this from both directions.

Now as for treating the millions of illegal immigrants humanely, that is also achieved. The treaty would legitimize their current struggles just to make a living, just as long as they weren't getting payed illegally small wages or breaking other laws. The laws would all be fair and of minimal burden to the people involved. They're only suffering would be from having a longer path to citizenship than those who came here legally, and from the inevitable consequences of formerly illegal employment practices suddenly having to meet legal standards or go away.

Sources of expected opposition to this proposal

Now that I've proposed cutting the proverbial baby in half, let's hear from those who would object. Of course I'm only speculating here but I've heard enough from all sides of this issue over the last six years to make a pretty good guess.  After each number I will first state the objection and then after a "↔" I will make my own comment about what I suspect the motives behind the objection are.

From the right, the side I'm most familiar with, would come the following objections.
  1. Amnesty is amnesty, no matter if you delay their path to citizenship or not. They broke the law so they shouldn't have any path to citizenship at all. ↔ The anti-amnesty hardliners are clearly wanting to be uncompromising on the national sovereignty half of the baby, and seem willing to let the other half be harmed.
  2. A treaty like that effectively eliminates our border with Mexico. That's a loss of sovereignty pure and simple. ↔ Those who object to foreign treaties in general have their hearts in the right place, and I suspect they aren't even thinking about any other part of this issue, just a general principle. It's tough to determine their motives towards the baby because they just aren't thinking on that small a scale. They probably should but they aren't.
  3. We need to be able to pay the people who pick lettuce and other crops less than the legal requirements in order to keep produce prices from shooting sky high. ↔ Any real solution that addresses both halves of the baby will probably force farmers to pay their pickers more than they do now. These farmers are similar the cotton farmers before the Civil War. They seem to depend on a source of labor working under conditions morally unacceptable to most Americans.
  4. Programs like E-verify are too onerous on smaller businesses. ↔ E-verify is only onerous if your typical employee will leave if you use it. The treaty part of the solution makes this objection just misguided, and as for the added work for the business, the E-verify system is a national database that any business with internet access can use in minutes. As added paperwork from the government goes, this is insignificant.

From the left would come the following objections.
  1. The registration process would be intimidating and smacks of oppressive practices in other countries. ↔ Concerns about how the registration process will look seem aimed at protecting the human rights half of the baby, but human rights is not a superficial thing. Rejecting a workable solution to a huge problem, just because it reminds one of something it clearly is not, suggests a less than sincere interest in solving the problem.
  2. The registered foreign worker would be an institutionalized second class person. ↔ The second class nature of the registered foreign worker should only be problematic if one doesn't care about the sovereignty half of the baby (note #1 from the right). Of course citizens should have it easier in their own country than foreigners.
  3. Registration enforcement would inevitably tend to profile people based on their ethnicity. ↔ The idea that the role played by the ethnicity of Mexicans is some how significant implies that if poverty stricken lite skinned Canadians made up most of the problem, few would see the problem as significant.  This seems silly to me.  It's as though they don't believe sovereignty is a real issue. As if we invented it to cover up our bigotry. For the sake of the proverbial baby the issue isn't whether they respect us, it's that they don't seem to care about sovereignty. That's half the baby.
  4. The loss of jobs for people working for illegal pay would cause too much suffering and could result in a sort of de facto ethnic cleansing where the former workers leave the country for lack of income. ↔ The issue of hardship for those currently employed illegally who would lose their jobs if their employers had to pay them legally is a legitimate concern for the human rights side of the baby, but like the #3 from the right, any real solution will probably result in these low pay situations ending. There is something inherently unsustainable about an industry that requires workers with clearly inferior labor rights to the rest of the country.
  5. Purging the voter rolls will result in errors which will intimidate some citizens from voting. Those wrongly purged will be disproportionately from disadvantaged minorities. ↔ Voter intimidation is when poll workers try to close the polls while people are waiting in line, or when mean looking thugs stand outside polling places. It is not the inconvenience of having to vote with a petition because one was mistakenly purged from the voter rolls. This concern is suspect as to the sincere concern the objector has for both halves of the baby. A potential inconvenience to a voting citizen cannot compare to the potential that a non-citizen may be able to vote.

It's clear there would be considerable opposition to this proposed solution from both sides. What I want to determine is which objections stem from a legitimate concern for national sovereignty and human rights and which don't. In other words, who should get the baby before it's cut in half?

So who gets the baby?

Solomon gave the baby to the mother who was willing to lose the baby in order to save the baby's life. Where's that mother in this?

No one side of this issue, as the political lines are currently drawn, completely owns that proverbial mother.  Who is willing to let their own partisan or financial interests go in order to protect both national sovereignty and human dignity?  While both sides have their extremists who keep insisting on hard lines that make consensus impossible and lose at least half the baby, there are those who show sincere concern for both national sovereignty and human dignity.

To get to a real solution both sides must make some of their members unhappy. They both can start with those who don't want the underground illegal labor market to end. Some on the right don't want certain industries to incur the greater labor costs and some on the left don't want to lose the incentive that draws in a new underclass for their political exploitation. Both are placing their own financial and political interests ahead of national sovereignty and human dignity. Both poison the dialogue.

Those who should be talking are those who sincerely care about at least half the baby. They should be able to convince each other that both halves are needed. National sovereignty and respect for individual human dignity are inseparable. You can't respect individual human dignity unless you respect a person's right to own things and keep the things they own. You can't ensure this right without some degree of government and that government must have a sovereign jurisdiction in which it operates. If that sovereignty is threatened so is the protection of the individual's property that it provides, and thus the individual's human rights.

Another way to look at is this. Governments exist to serve the individual. Thus a government cannot justly be more important than the dignity of the individual. If a government is preserved at the expense of individual dignity, for example, forcibly relocating millions of people, that government's legitimacy is potentially compromised. While if having to choose between its own citizens and that of another country it should choose its own, it should also sincerely seek the lesser of all potential evils. One group's interest may be more legitimate than another's in a given situation but no group's interests outweigh the dignity of the individual.

By now you should see where I as a third person individualist come from on this issue, nations are important because they protect individuals but the individual is paramount.

I fabricated this solution to illegal immigration intentionally to be objectionable to some on both sides. I strongly suspect the Mexican government would also never agree to such a treaty either, based on their current restrictions on foreigners. It is my hope this exercise will reveal who the ones on both sides are that don't actually want a solution. They would rather let the baby be cut in half. I believe if we could weed them out of the discussion those remaining would have a reasonable chance to achieve a reasonable solution.

Those who dream of new voting blocks or don't want to lose cheap labor, no matter what you think of their motives, have no interest in a solution here. They benefit from the problem continuing. Anyone who cares to listen to them should obviously feel free, but never forget their motives. The solution is going to come through a dialogue amongst those who actually want one. They are the people who care about the issues of national sovereignty and individual dignity.

By the way, I strongly suggest caution when it comes to the social justice crowd. Their respect for national sovereignty is conditional depending on whether the nation involved is advantaged or disadvantaged, and their respect for individual dignity is self-delusion at best. The phrase, “their heart is in the right place” was practically invented for them, as almost nothing else of theirs, when it comes to true justice and individual dignity, is in the right place (see The Heresy Of Social Justice, from Tuesday, June 19, 2012).

As I believe with all civil and international issues, cherish individual liberty and dignity and the best human solutions possible can be found. Put any other natural or human thing ahead of the individual and the Tower comes crashing down and we stop understanding each other.