Posted on March 17, 2009 by thehappycon
How fun would it be to be right if no one were ever wrong?
At least that’s how I get through my Argumentation class. I have to take it, because all Arts and Sciences students have to take a “writing intensive” course during their junior or senior years. Naturally, since everyone has to take the course, all the courses are taught to the lowest common denominator. (See “levelling, failure of”.)
Tomorrow is libertarian day. That’s great. She’s being “unbiased.” She gave us two articles from The New Republic. “Angry White Man” and “Pimp My Ride.” One article for and another against Ron Paul. Except she poisons the well by telling us that Tucker Carlson acts like he’s never met Ron Paul before, when in truth he simply must be in the tank. And then there’s the Kirchick article.
Kirchick argues that Paul is a racist, based entirely on his affiliation with the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the assorted newsletters that bear his name. Certainly, some of the newsletter quotations are pretty crude. Unfortunately, Kirchick makes little effort to verify that Paul either wrote or approved them. I’m not arguing that Paul isn’t a racist; he might be. But surely there must be a conservative or libertarian who isn’t somewhere, right?
The mischaracterization of the Mises Institute is much worse. Kirchick suggests, not terribly subtly, that because one believes in the right to secede, one must be a racist. I don’t know much, but I’m pretty sure that anti-federalism predates the association of slavery with race. But I don’t write for the New Republic, and I certainly don’t teach argumentation to students at a consistently-tied-for-top-12 university.
We’re very progressive at this school – so much so that we almost got past the idea that all libertarians must be racists. I could keep my head down, read my copy of IBD quietly in the back of the class. But I probably won’t. I’ll probably dust off my stars and bars, whistle a little Dixie, and prepare to defend myself with a rolled-up copy of Reason. After all, this is libertarian day, and my teacher has no bias at all.
Filed under: College, Education, conservative | Tagged: argumentation, conservative, dixie | Leave a Comment »
Posted on March 17, 2009 by thehappycon
I’m moving to a hosted account. Please be patient while I move over to wordpress.org.
Thanks!
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Posted on March 16, 2009 by thehappycon
I recently entered a post on my other blog. I’m having trouble deciding which of them to keep. The interface here is certainly better, but blogger is more flexible. Please mark your opinion – I’ll be combining the posts, so this is simply a matter of aesthetics.
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Posted on November 5, 2008 by thehappycon
I recently occasioned on another three day stint with my Tory pals, and I have to say that it will likely be my last. I had a nice run, I suppose. They’re not fond of disagreement, and I’m not fond of watching two people out of twenty debate minutiae while the rest of the group masks their embarrassed ignorance with a pose of educated dispassion. Out. Standing.
Today I take issue with one of their favorite complaints – that of the Interstate Highway System. In Toryland, things were better before the mobile society, Wal-Mart, globalization, airplanes, telephones, and electricity. While they do love to beat on Wal-Mart (and who doesn’t), they seem to hold the Interstate Highway System in a special and almost rabid sort of contempt. How dare we make it easier for people to travel from place to place? Worse yet, “haven’t we lost something?”
“Haven’t we lost something?” This from a Georgetown U. professor of political theory. He advocates a return to the agrarian lifestyle, where we lived in small towns in New England, surrounded by nice large trees to keep the world away, and thought about how great it was to live in small towns in New England, where the trees kept everything away.
But have we really lost anything? America, unlike Continental countries, has always been characterized by a nearly inexhaustible supply of land and a shortage of people to use it. Our Fathers had lots of children, and when the land around the Fathers filled with other Fathers, the children pitched their homesteads on the frontier. We are a nation of eternal frontiers – any given piece of land in America was once the frontier. We never stayed indolent and ignorant in our New England villages. That simply isn’t what Americans do. We’re the most mobile society in the world, and have been since Jamestown.
I believe that place is special. I hold a spot in my heart for my hometown that I could never feel for another place. But the suggestion that we lost something by building the Interstate Highway System, that it has altered our culture for the worse, is nothing more than fallacious fuedalist revision.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: ISI, small towns, Tory | 2 Comments »
Posted on August 25, 2008 by thehappycon
The Obama spokesman called McCain “out of touch” because he has so many houses.
A perfect opportunity to highlight a difference between Americans and Europeans in general and Republicans and Democrats in particular.
I’m really not bothered by the fact that John McCain has numerous houses. As hard as I try, I can’t find a single iota of ire or seed of self-pity. I actually admire the guy; I want to have lots of houses. I want to live in the Keys in the winter and Wyoming in the summer and travel to Virginia to my house on the ocean. Why would I begrudge McCain what I myself desire?
A corollary describes why taxes on the wealthy are generally unpopular: we want to be wealthy someday. We want to be wealthier than our parents and give our children more than we had. We like promotions. We like responsibility and its associated return. Why would we want to punish people for achieving a dream similar to our own?
A progressive tax code provides incentive to under perform. It raises the return to leisure and discourages people from working to own several houses. Which, naturally, explains its popularity with Democrats: a progressive tax code keeps people poorer by lowering the return to the next hour of labor.
Entrepreneurial people tend to vote Republican. People who aspire to that house on the beach, cigars in the humidor, and Cardinals season tickets. In a box. Behind home plate. People who understand that wealth creates wealth. Economics is not a zero-sum game. Just because Jones wins doesn’t mean Smith loses. And unless Smith is a Democrat, he probably doesn’t want Jones’ taxes to go up either. Someday, he’d like to keep up with Jones.
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Posted on August 25, 2008 by thehappycon
The Obama spokesman called McCain “out of touch” because he has so many houses.
A perfect opportunity to highlight a difference between Americans and Europeans in general and Republicans and Democrats in particular.
I’m really not bothered by the fact that John McCain has numerous houses. As hard as I try, I can’t find a single iota of ire or seed of self-pity. I actually admire the guy; I want to have lots of houses. I want to live in the Keys in the winter and Wyoming in the summer and travel to Virginia to my house on the ocean. Why would I begrudge McCain what I myself desire?
A corollary describes why taxes on the wealthy are generally unpopular: we want to be wealthy someday. We want to be wealthier than our parents and give our children more than we had. We like promotions. We like responsibility and its associated return. Why would we want to punish people for achieving a dream similar to our own?
A progressive tax code provides incentive to under perform. It raises the return to leisure and discourages people from working to own several houses. Which, naturally, explains its popularity with Democrats: a progressive tax code keeps people poorer by lowering the return to the next hour of labor.
Entrepreneurial people tend to vote Republican. People who aspire to that house on the beach, cigars in the humidor, and Cardinals season tickets. In a box. Behind home plate. People who understand that wealth creates wealth. Economics is not a zero-sum game. Just because Jones wins doesn’t mean Smith loses. And unless Smith is a Democrat, he probably doesn’t want Jones’ taxes to go up either. Someday, he’d like to keep up with Jones.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 19, 2008 by thehappycon
While I was undercover among the capital-C Conservatives, I learned that they find themselves in a very unique position: they’re against the war in Iraq.
Without waxing at length, the position seems to be that:
- the desire of liberty is not a human trait. It is a cultural oddity of the American only.
- exporting culture by force cannot be defended unless it is the collateral damage of a just war.
I’m not really qualified to debate this position. I can, however, present a compelling argument for its irrelevance.
Let’s say I’m a member of the 82nd Airborne. I just jumped out of a plane… one thousand – two thousand – three thousand – four thousand – oh #@$%! My chute didn’t open! I better go back and get a different one! I had better elect a different rigger to pack my new chute! In fact, it would be best if I had never jumped out of the plane in the first place!
All of those things may be true, without being even remotely relevant. What matters is that I pull my reserve chute in the four seconds I have before I’m doomed to burn into the ground. I can’t go back to the plane. I can’t go back to the chute shed. I can’t go back to St. Louis and drink beer. The only decision that matters is the one on the margin.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: conservative, Iraq War, ISI, Major Owens | Leave a Comment »
Posted on July 2, 2008 by thehappycon
I spent last week with the real conservatives at ISI. They’re much, much smarter than I am.
But I heard a few very disturbing things while I was there, not the least of which was a chemical dislike of the Interstate Highway System. They berate it for its alleged homogenization of American local culture. Never mind that homogenization is a word borne of a questionable parentage, the real problem here is one of marginal ignorance.
Whatever the cost of the interstate system with regard to local culture, and it doesn’t even matter what the cost was, the correct decision is the decision at the margin. What are the costs of the interstate to local culture now? An infinite number of variables have changed in an infinite number of ways since the interstates were created; we can’t go back there. What matters to this discussion is an assessment of the relative value of the interstates today. Note that this approach doesn’t require the assessment of purely mercenary variables. That is, one can be consistent in caring about local culture and still using an economic approach. Tories are burning Hayek as I speak, but economics isn’t just about money and pleasure. Sorry, gents.
Should we shut down the interstates and keep everyone at home on the farm? Absolutely not. Without the interstate, there would be no local culture. What is unique to Tarkio would disappear; we would reduce to subsistence or abandon the town altogether, and it would begin to look like every single other town in America. Cities would feel no pain; airports are a good substitute for the interstate. But the good people of Tarkio, Fairfax, and Rock Port would leave. Local culture would die.
The real evil here runs throughout the Tory rhetoric. I love tradition as well, but the evils of the day are a sunk cost. Decisions are made at the margin. What can we do now to encourage the good society? Whatever it is, it probably stops short of confining most of America to the local county blacktop.
Filed under: conservative | Tagged: conservative, interstate, ISI, Tarkio, Tory | 2 Comments »
