Month: May 2019

The Decline of Religion in America

The Portly Politico2 Comments

A frequent topic of this blog is religion, specifically Christianity, and its influence on American society and Western Civilization.  Many of the problems we face as a nation are the result not only of bad government policy or dangerous ideologies, but are metaphysical and spiritual in nature.  As Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (KJV)

As such, two pieces caught my eye this week, both dealing with the decline of religion in the West generally and the United States specifically.  One is from Dissident Right blogger Z Man, “Religion Versus Capitalism“; the other is a syndicated column by Daniel Davis, “America is Still Highly Religious, So Why Do We Keep Liberalizing?”  Both offer different answers to the question posed by the latter question.

For Davis, the problem is that, while Americans are more religious than our European counterparts, and that we say we want a greater role for religion in society, our theology is bad—infected (my term) by the social justice and Cultural Marxist platitudes of our age.

Americans embrace “feel-good Christianity,” what I call the “Buddy Christ” version of our faith:  Jesus was just a cool hippie who wanted everybody to love each other, man.  In this distorted version of the Gospel, sin isn’t a grave threat, but simply “missing the mark”—you’ll do better next time, kiddo.  Keep practicing sinning and eventually you’ll hit that mark!

(I’ve actually heard this argument from some Evangelical preachers, mostly of the hip, non-denominational type.  They get so caught up in the root of the word “sin” as “missing the mark” in the context of target practice, they inadvertently give blanket license to sin, as grace is abundant, so God will forgive you—an early heresy that the Apostle Paul addressed directly.  “Missing the mark” trivializes the gravity of sin, making it sound like “oops! My bad!”  If the “mark” is righteousness, then missing the mark is pretty serious.)

Davis points out the pitfalls of this “feel-good Christianity,” and our propensity to make God fit our worldview, instead of us trying to accept and embrace His:

What we have in America is a radical separation of God from “reality”—the real world that we claim to live in. It’s not that we reject “God” per se, but we reject a God who comes with a certified worldview package—a God who orders the universe, sets moral norms, defines our being, and binds our consciences to a moral code in this world—today.

We’ve kept God, but jettisoned the traditional package.

The problem is, this is almost the same as rejecting God completely. If believing in God has no impact on the way we view realities in this world—whether they be gender, marriage, or who counts as a person worthy of dignity and respect—then what God are we even worshipping?

Could it be that the atheists are right when they accuse us of worshipping a God of our own making?

Davis also links to a website, The State of Theology, which highlights the disconnect between professions of faith and what Christians—including Evangelicals!—actually believe.  Part of the problem is “feel-good” theology, but a big part is simple biblical ignorance.  Americans pay lip service, according to The State of Theology, to core precepts of Christianity, but don’t seem to understand them at a deeper level or apply them to their daily lives.

Z Man—who I believe is Catholic and Catholic-educated, though he stated in one podcast that he hasn’t been to church in years—approaches the problem from a different angle.  He argues, essentially, that the proliferation of capitalist materialism is at odds, fundamentally, with Christianity and other religions, and the West has embraced materialism as its true faith.

He also links the decline of religion to a decline in fertility rates, and notes that as nations have become more integrated in the global economy, they’ve become less religious and less fertile.  There are myriad possible explanations for declining birthrates in developed societies, but Z Man’s theory is intriguing.  As material wealth increases and the profit motive becomes the “highest good,” religiosity declines.  With the decline of traditional religious values comes less of an emphasis on family formation.

For Z Man, the problem is that we worship materialism—he argues that libertarianism is the irrational, passionate “religion” of capitalistic materialism—in place of God.  To quote his piece at length:

In a system where the highest good is a profit, then all other considerations must be secondary. Lying, for example, is no longer strictly prohibited. The seller will no longer feel obligated to disclose everything to the buyer. The seller will exaggerate his claims about his product or service. Buyers, of course, will seek to lock in sellers into one way contracts based on information unknown the other seller. The marketplace, at its most basic level, is a game of liar’s poker, where all sides hope to fool the other.

Religion, in contrast, also assumes certain things about people, but seeks to mitigate and ameliorate them. Generally speaking, religion assumes the imperfection of man and sees that imperfection as the root cause of human suffering. While those imperfections cannot be eliminated, the negative effects can be reduced through moral codes, contemplation and the full understanding of one’s nature. Religions, outside of some extreme cults, are not about altering the nature of man, but rather the acceptance of it.

I would argue that capitalism does not necessarily lead to liars—how do you build business if you gain a reputation for dishonesty?—but capitalism definitely needs the traditionalism of orthodox religion to work for long.  In the absence of the moral framework that socially and religiously conservative values supply, capitalism can easily become an orgiastic free-for-all of mendacious exchanges and swindling.

Indeed, China’s autocratic capitalism is a prime example of a state using the mechanism of capitalism in a moral vacuum to aggrandize its own power.  Wags and particularists will argue that China’s system is not true capitalism, but rather a corporatist perversion, which is certainly accurate—but the United States has its share of cronyistic arrangements.  To be clear, there is a world of difference separating China’s increasingly totalitarian brand of corporatism and America’s more mundane system of well-heeled lobbyists, but the Chinese example clearly demonstrates what happens when you value pure materialism at the expense of everything else.

While I don’t completely accept Z Man’s analysis, I do think he makes a solid point.  Christians should never subvert true faith in Christ to the false god of capitalist materialism.  Indeed, such faith is merely the more benign face of a two-sided Marxist coin.

Both unbridled libertarianism and full-throated Communism are premised on a materialist worldview that discounts the metaphysical.  The former allows religion to exist as a largely private, subjective concern, so long as it doesn’t get too insistent about its truth claims.  The latter seeks to destroy any loyalty to anything other than the state—or the “Party,” or “Dear Leader,” etc.  The former is certainly preferable to the latter, but both ultimately will leave followers unfulfilled.

The Church—Orthodox, Catholic, High Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, etc.—needs to commit itself fully to foundational biblical Truth.  We should be reading and debating Augustus and Aquinas, not to mention the Gospels and Paul’s Epistles.  Preachers need to move beyond the mega-church formula of glossy advertising campaigns, Sunday morning rock concerts, and blandly inoffensive, pop-culture-laden sermons.

Instead, unabashedly proclaim the Gospel.  Denounce abortion from the pulpit.  Call out homosexuality.  Call out radical Islamism and progressivism as the existential threats they are to Western Civilization.  Deus Vult!

Walls Work, Part II: Sailer on Walls

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Demographer Steve Sailer’s been nailing it lately in his book reviews.  On Wednesday, I wrote about his review of Spotted Toad’s new book on education.  Last week, Sailer reviewed another work, Walls: A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick, by David Frye.  The key insight of the book:  walls make civilization possible (a corollary:  barbarians and invaders build bridges).

The book sounds fascinating, and like Spotted Toad’s work, it’s one I intend to purchase and read soon.  Sailer hits some of the highlights:  walls were, for thousands of years, the thin line between civilized societies and barbarians.  Where walls ended, barbarians ruled.

Walls provided effective protection against attacks until the Age of Gunpowder and heavy artillery ended their efficacy.  Constantinople withstood conquest for a thousand years before the Turks breached its great walls with the mighty bombard.

The current mania for “building bridges” is at odds with most of human experience.  Sailer points out all of the instances in which invaders have used bridges to attack their foes:  Persians crossing the Hellespont lashed pontoons together—a feat repeated when the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453.

Indeed, walls don’t just keep bad guys out; they also protect the freedoms of those within.  To quote Sailer (with an embedded quotation from Frye in italics) at length:

Frye pithily sums up:

[Where] there are no border walls, there will be city walls, and where there are no city walls, there will be neighborhood walls….

Thus, Walls concludes with a quick history of the gated communities favored by Hollywood celebrities, such as the Malibu Colony, Hidden Hills, and Beverly Park.

Of course, where there are no neighborhood walls, there will tend to be walls around yards, often with broken bottles on top.

Granted, in the United States, the Jeffersonian tradition was to defend the country with a strong navy, which allowed, among many other benefits, houses to have open front lawns. But traditional American neighborliness seems racist now, so we’ve undertaken to import millions of people from more clannish and hostile cultures.

Put another way:  a strong national defense—bolstered with well-maintained, well-defended barriers—promotes freedom at home.  You don’t need a wall around your house when law enforcement protects against criminals, the military protects against foreign invaders, and sound immigration policy keeps out criminal riff-raff.

Hungary’s border wall is nearly 100% effective at keeping “refugees” out.  There is nothing un-American or unpatriotic about a wall, and open borders are a moral hazard for citizens and immigrants alike.

History—the sum total of human experience, not the “moral arc” dream-state of progressives—supports President Trump’s border wall.  The burden of proof is on the anti-border crowd.  History suggests that societies without border barriers cannot long remain free, and will soon become militaristic conquerors devoted fully to warfare.  Walls allow the people inside to be safe and free, and to specialize beyond a constant fight for survival.

Let’s hope many more Americans read Frye’s book—or, at the very least, Sailer’s excellent review of it—and come to support the border wall and a strong immigration policy.

TBT: Banned! Techno-Elites Deplatform Alex Jones

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It now seems like an eternity ago, but Alex Jones’s Infowars was banned from multiple social media platforms last August.  Given Facebook’s freedom-killing decision to deplatform “controversial” right-wing figures like Milo Yiannopoulos, it seemed germane to look back at the Infowars deplatforming, as it was an instructive moment.

Conservatives have been complacent on this issue.  Yes, many conservative bloggers and YouTube personalities have denounced the Facebook deplatforming, but there’s still this sense that, “Well, it’s just Milo and Gavin McInnes, they are pretty outrageous, and so dreadfully lacking in decorum.”  We can’t have that kind of cuckiness in the conversation.  Milo might be outlandish, and McInnes makes some over-the-top, overly general statements, but that’s the whole point of free speech.  Why are we giving these tech companies a pass?

It’s not going to stop at Milo.  Indeed, it’s unclear if it even started with him.  As I detail in the post below, even more mainstream figures like Stephen Crowder have struggled against YouTube demonetization and other “soft” forms of deplatforming.  I know Milo is crass and a bit of a troll—but he’s also right and factually accurate on almost every topic.

Note, too, how Facebook threw in anti-Semitic radical Louis Farrakhan as a clear smokescreen.  “Oh, we’re not just targeting conservatives—here’s a Leftist race-baiter, too!”  Nice try.  Notice that whenever there’s been a controversial conservative figure banned, the Right always points out that Farrakhan is still on [insert social medial platform here].  Facebook couldn’t have missed that, and went for the low-hanging fruit of Farrakhanean craziness.  But even Farrakhan should be able to say his wacky, hateful stuff—“sunlight is the best disinfectant,” as I wrote in August.

As for the cuckier types on the Right, I’m getting so sick of this excessive focus on presentation-as-message.  Milo and McInnes present their ideas in funny ways, but that doesn’t mean the ideas themselves are worthy of condemnation.  Further, we’re almost too good at policing our own on the Right.  Can’t we give Milo some leeway?  The stakes are too high to get caught up on semantics.  “Oh, he texted something mean.”  Who cares?  I’m not Milo’s mom, and Ben Shapiro shouldn’t be either.

This tweet from Dissident Right babe Lauren Southern sums it up nicely:

Free speech isn’t free, and just because Facebook is a “private company” doesn’t mean it should be able to trample our freedoms.  We’re in uncharted territory, but we have to do something to protect speech for all Americans.

So, here is August’s “Banned! Techno-Elites Deplatform Alex Jones,” sadly relevant once again:

The explosive news Monday was that tech giants Facebook, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple banned Alex Jones and Infowars from their respective platforms.  While Jones is a controversial figure who peddles in rumor, conspiracy, and innuendo, the concerted actionfrom separately-owned and -managed Silicon Valley entities is unsettling.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote a piece for National Review arguing that Silicon Valley giants should be regulated—or even busted up—to prevent monopolistic and anti-competitive practices, drawing parallels to the muckraking reformers of the early twentieth century who brought down Standard Oil.   I’m wary of such solutions-by-government, but Hanson was anticipating a problem that has become all-too familiar:  the massive social and cultural clout the unmoored tech giants wield.

Steven Crowder of online late-night show Louder with Crowder often pokes fun at—and complains loudly about—the various murky “terms and services” and “community guidelines” rules that are ever-shifting in continuously updated apps and platforms.  A slight change in a Facebook algorithm—or a Twitter employee having a bad day—can lead to massive reductions in traffic for a YouTuber or blogger.  Reduced—or eliminated—traffic means less revenue.  YouTubers like Crowder who helped build the platform now find their videos demonetized for the most mysterious of reasons.

Candace Owens was kicked from Twitter because she rewrote recent New York Times hire and anti-white racist Sarah Jeong’s tweets by replacing disparaging uses of “white” with “black” or “Jew.”  Razorfirst posted a video some months ago of him literally just talking about nonsense for five minutes… and it was immediately demonetized.

Now Alex Jones is banned across multiple platforms from multiple platforms—which is absolutely chilling.  Jones is certainly not without controversy, and I wouldn’t take his ramblings to heart without a heaping helping of salt, but just because he’s a kinda nutty conspiracy kook who enjoys ripping his shirt off doesn’t make his situation any less terrible.  If we write off Jones because he was “asking for it” by being kooky, then we’re missing the whole point of free speech.

And, yes, the usual objections are inevitable:  “but, TPP, the First Amendment speech protections only apply to the government!  Companies can set whatever guidelines they want!  You can use some other platform!  He still has his website.”  Yes, yes, yes, and yes—all true.  Nevertheless, the arbitrary power we’ve voluntarily—if unwittingly—yielded to these tech elites is staggering.  And this preponderance of power may be where Hanson has a point.

Is not the function of the government to protect the rights of its citizens from threats and violations, both foreign and domestic?  In this case, arbitrary bans—particularly these coordinated attacks on controversial figures—seem to be a powerful means of preventing an individual and/or entity from delivering his message in the public square.  Like the street corner doomsayer, Alex Jones has a right to be heard, even if he’s sometimes insane (for me, the jury is out on Jones; I enjoy the entertainment value of his commentary, and I think he’s probably right about 80% of the time, but then he veers off into crisis actors, etc.—the danger of a man who is charismatic and convincing).

Today, it’s a relatively buffoonish character like Jones.  Tomorrow—who knows?  Do we really want to find out?  “Hate speech” is a code word for silencing conservatives.  It’s better to publish one racist screed from a lonely nut (not referencing Jones here, to be clear) than to muzzle millions because their innocuous, mainstream conservative viewpoint might been interpreted as a “dog-whistle.”

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and it’s often better to give madmen the rope with which to hang themselves.  When we try to silence them, they only gain in credibility (indeed, when I read the news, I immediately went… to Infowars!).

Sailer and Spotted Toad on Education

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Demographer Steve Sailer has a review on Taki’s Magazine of a new book from blogger Spotted Toad.  The book, 13 Ways of Going on a Field Trip: Stories about Teaching and Learning, is a narrative memoir detailing Toad’s decade teaching in public schools in the Bronx.

Sailer, a dedicated statistician in his own right, lauds Spotted Toad’s statistics-laden blog, but points out that his memoir eschews statistics in favor of narrative.  This focus on narrative, as Sailer points out, does not detract from the book’s insights about education, but makes them more viscerally real for the lay reader.

Based on Sailer’s summary of the book (which I plan to purchase and read soon), Spotted Toad’s teaching experience led him to insights similar to my own; that is, that administrators and school boards spend too much time chasing education fads and pushing a romantic narrative about teaching, rather than just getting out of the way and letting teachers… well, teach.

Toad was hired as part of the once-fashionable Teach for America program, which placed young, enthusiastic idealists into poor school districts, usually in tough inner city schools.  The theory was that bad or lazy teachers weren’t engaged enough, so schools needed an injection of Dead Poets’ Society-inspired young’uns who would bend heaven-and-earth to reach urban youths.

Sailer speculates about why Teach for America was so popular in the latter part of the last decade, and suggests that it’s because upper-middle class New York Times readers forwarded glowing articles about TFA to their out-of-work, overly-educated kids.

That somewhat comports with my own experience, as I briefly considered joining TFA upon finishing graduate school at the height of the Great Recession.  I think it’s even more accurate to say it was popular because it promised work during a time when few people could find it, and didn’t require lengthy additional years of education and training.

Sailer pooh-poohs the idea that TFA could create qualified teachers, and he’s not entirely wrong—the program was certainly overly optimistic about its own efficacy—but I think the apprenticeship model of “learning on the job” is one of the better ways to learn the craft.  Most education classes are a joke, and other than a few useful pedagogical insights, my impression is that many of them are indoctrination camps for the latest progressive educational fads.  I’d much rather have a “pure” young teacher learning the ropes with the assistance of battle-hardened veterans in the trenches than to have that teacher languish away in a series of Two-Minute Hates for another couple of years.

Indeed, that’s been my big complaint with the State of South Carolina’s alternative certification program.  We have a teacher shortage, but you want me to shell out cash and three years of my time to teach in a crummy public school?  No thanks.  How about adopt my proposal to grant automatic certification to any private school teacher with three years of teaching experience and a Master’s degree in a relevant field, or with five years and a Bachelor’s?  That would solve the problem more quickly, and would bring a number of qualified teachers into public schools quickly.

My premise is that credentials don’t make a good teacher; classroom experience does.  I’m generally anti-guildist, as I fancy myself a bit of a Renaissance Man.  Of course, that comes from my personal experiences professionally:  out of necessity, I’ve taught a slew of social studies courses, as well as music at different levels, for nearly a decade.  I would have benefited from some education classes to learn solid pedagogical methods in some areas (particularly music education), but I’ve picked up many of these methods through trial-and-error, and sheer force of will.  When you have to get twenty inexperienced middle school musicians to play a Christmas concert, you figure out how to make it work (and sound good).

Regardless, Spotted Toad’s experiences hit upon some common problems in education, particularly education policy.  Toad writes of the coming-and-going educational fads and programs, some supported by big-wigs like Bill Gates, that are championed, implemented hastily (and at great profit to the companies that market and develop these programs), and then abandoned in five years when some new, shiny trend emerges.

Take a moment to read Sailer’s review this morning, as it offers some interesting insights into the push-and-pull of education policy, and an interesting, if sad, retrospective on the bungled federal efforts in the Bush and Obama Administrations to address education in the United States.

That said, for all the doom-and-gloom surrounding discussion of education in America, Sailer ends on a positive note:

For example, as I’ve pointed out over the years, on the international PISA school tests, Asian-Americans do almost as well as Northeast Asian countries, white Americans outscore most white countries other than Finland and few other northern realms, Latino-Americans outperform all Latin American countries, and African-Americans beat the handful of black Caribbean countries that even try the test.

We Americans do spend a lot to achieve these educational results, but our outcomes by global standards are much less terrible than most Americans assume. (In particular, Indian states that have tried the PISA bomb it, scoring at sub-Saharan levels.)

At least we’re beating our peers in other countries—usually.

Washington’s Hardball Model

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History blogger SheafferHistorianAZ at Practically Historical shares a piece from American history blog Almost Chosen People containing letters exchanged between General George Washington and British General Thomas Gage regarding the mistreatment of American POWs in British camps.  In the exchange, Washington warns Gage that British prisoners will be treated the same way American prisoners are, so that if the abuse of Americans continued, British POWs would endure the same mistreatment.

Washington made good on his promise for a short period, then resumed normal, humane treatment of POWs under his care.  Washington was known for his magnanimity, but “had his limits,” as Almost Chosen writes.

This bit of American history caught my eye because it seemed germane to yesterday’s post about Attorney General William Barr and the threat of the Deep State.  Such serendipitous connections are almost routine, I’ve learned, the more I read and blog.

What does one have to do with the other?  Washington here gave us an excellent example of how President Trump and AG Barr can approach the difficult task of holding Deep State traitors accountable, while avoiding a total breakdown into institutional civil war.

In essence:  treat your foes mercifully—until and unless they violate the rules of gentlemanly engagement.  The Left long ago ceased to follow any such restraint, and the Right’s major mistake is that, rather than combating it, we’ve attempted to operate within the Left’s increasingly narrow, insanity-driven frame.

Instead, the Right should hit back—and hard—against the Deep State.  Make a quick, decisive, coordinated strike and bring criminal charges against Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok.  Prosecute them and their ilk swiftly, and make noise about investigating the Clinton Foundation under RICO jurisdiction.  President Trump could imply that such investigations and probes will cease once the Left decides to treat conservatives fairly again.

Such a “Washington Model” of measured-but-decisive action against the Deep State would send a powerful, unmistakable message to the swamp critters in D.C. and the Democratic Party:  play by the rules of “loyal opposition,” treat your opponents with dignity, or endure a dose of your own medicine.

We’ve depended on empty appeals to “decorum” and “taking the high road” for too long.  We shouldn’t swing wildly like a drunken pugilist, but should strike devastating blows on critical targets.  Drain the Swamp!

Barr and the Deep State

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Blogger photog at Orion’s Cold Fire has an excellent analysis of Attorney General Bill Barr’s handling of the Mueller Report, as well as an hysterical Congress’s insistence that he somehow lied about the Mueller Report because his summary didn’t adequately convey the tone of the report.  Apparently, the Democrats consider an accurate, straightforward summary constitutes “lying to Congress” because Barr didn’t include Mueller’s anti-Trump rhetoric.

The Democrats are grasping at straws here.  They’ve lost the collusion battle, which was supposed to be their Waterloo against President Trump.  Instead, it’s turned into their Gallipoli (and Trump’s Battle of Tours).  Their panic is palpable, so now they’re resorting to the “Trump-is-a-meanie-and-unpresidential” line, and that the president’s angry outbursts at news of the probe suggests he was up to no good.

Foolishness.  As AG Barr noted, you’d be mad, too, if you’d been accused of a crime you didn’t commit, and one that would hobble your presidency in its infancy.  The Democrats are essentially attacking President Trump for being a normal human being—all the more reason to oppose the Democrats at every turn.

photog’s piece is a reevaluation of Barr in the wake of his strong resistance to the Democrats and their perfidy.  In an earlier essay, photog argued that Barr was likely another swamp creature, and would wilt under the heat of his Deep State peers.

In the wake of his Senate testimony, however, that no longer seems likely.  The question now, as photog writes, is whether or not Barr will strike back against the Deep State and go after McCabe, et. al.—or even the Clinton crime family.

photog poses another interesting question:  are McCabe and Peter Strzok “fall guys” for the Deep State, the public figures willing to fall on their swords to save the whole rotten apparatus?  It’s an intriguing notion, and one I had not considered.

If they aren’t stooges, however, the implications are staggering.  To quote photog at length:

If McCabe turns state’s evidence then Comey, at least, is dead meat.  And after watching Jim Comey over the last few years I would be very surprised if he didn’t roll over and give up everyone involved up to and including his boss, Loretta Lynch.  After that, who knows?  Could these people be rolled up all the way to Obama.  I guess it’s possible.  But a thing that has to be remembered is that just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be.  Convicting a former Attorney General of the United States of conspiracy to undermine the election of a U. S. President would be tantamount to starting a civil war between the left and right.  And I’m not saying it would be unjustified.  Basically, what has been done is treason.  But the consequences of pursuing this all the way will not be without severe consequences for both sides.

Those are some sobering conclusions.  What would it mean for the health of the body politic and our political system if we start imprisoning former AGs—and higher?  If legitimate crimes have been committed, they need to come to light and be prosecuted, but would doing so begin a treacherous round of tit-for-tat?

I understand photog’s concern here—I share it—but the lesson of recent political history seems to be that the Left will do whatever it takes to win, damn the consequences.  In a healthy system, such high crimes would be unfortunate and shocking, but they could be prosecuted fairly.  In our current system—the kind that enables such corruption and abuse of power—the Democrats would just be biding their time until they could purge the government of any remaining dissident patriots.

Just look at the purging of conservative and Dissident Right voices from the public square.  Facebook purged major Dissident Right figures, some of whom merely talked with Gavin McInnes outside of Facebook!  McInnes says some outrageous (and hilarious) stuff, but he’s not a hatemonger.  The Proud Boys are not a white supremacist group, much less a terrorist organization.  Yet claiming that Western Civilization is the best and that women are usually happier having children (but, of course, are free to live their lives as they choose) is somehow “hate.”  Yeesh!

Take some time this afternoon to read through photog’s reassessment of Barr.  It’s nuanced and thoughtful, and poses some interesting questions.  Here’s hoping Barr takes the fight to the Deep State, and begins rolling back the Deep State.

Lazy Sunday IX: Economics, Part I

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I followed a fairly standard political-philosophical trajectory to where I am now. Back in my salad days, I was a big Milton Friedman fanboy (in many ways, I still am).  His works, particularly Capitalism and Freedom, compelling made the case for many things I already believed, and made me love liberty even more.

I skewed heavily into libertarian territory (without every fully becoming a capital-L Libertarian), and came to believe that, in most cases, free markets could (and, in some golden future, would) solve virtually all of humanity’s problems, as history Whiggishly improved more and more with each passing year.  Efficiency would free humanity from drudgery, and we’d all have plenty.

Indeed, that is, in many ways, the story of the modern West:  greater efficiency and economic fluidity has yielded material wealth unparalleled in human existence.  Capitalism works quite well at alleviating material misery.

But there’s the rub:  as I’ve grown older, gradually amassing a nest egg and hustling constantly, I’ve come to understand that, as nice as material abundance is, it is a false god (as is the neoliberals’ lust for ever-greater efficiency).  Despite our great wealth and our cheap, shiny, plastic baubles from China, America’s are culturally, morally, and philosophically miserable.

So, for the next two Sundays I’ll be featuring posts on economics, a topic I believe should be regarded as one of the humanities, rather than a social science.  I still believe capitalism is the best possible economic system ever devised, and does a great deal to secure liberty for individuals and nations (as Milton Friedman wrote, economic freedom is a necessary precursor to political freedom).  That said, I’ve adopted Tucker Carlson’s formulation that capitalism should work for us, not the other way around.

To that end, here are this week’s pieces on economics:

  • “4.8% Economic Growth?!” – this very short post relaunched this blog.  The TPP 3.0 Era, as I call it, kicked off with my move to WordPress.  It trumpets the incredible growth of the Trump Administration and its economic policies. After years of sluggish “recovery” under President Obama, the Trump Renaissance breathed fresh life into our moribund economy.
  • “Q&A Wednesday – Tax Cuts, Trade Wars, Etc.” – I adapted this post from a response I wrote to some Facebook comments from two of my most loyal readers.  It details my evolving views on tariffs—essentially, that instead of opposing nearly completely, I now see their utility.Towards the end of this essay, I address an idea I’ve been kicking around:  that it’s better to subsidize workers through protective tariffs (thereby giving them work, and a sense of purpose) than simply to hand out money or administer costly welfare programs.

    I developed that idea more fully in the next essay on this list.  It goes to the idea that people—and, I would argue, specifically men—derive a great deal of their sense of self from their work.  This understanding is closer to the term vocation than it is merely to “work,” the distinction being that vocation is work that is both productive and fulfilling—it’s work in a higher sense, beyond merely providing for one’s basic needs.

  • “The Human Toll of Globalization” – this post was inspired by a lengthy Breitbart piece about the costs of globalization, and is of a piece with the previous essay.  Therein I explored the idea, mentioned directly above, that work is ennobling, and its benefits go beyond a paycheck.  There is a quiet, affirmative satisfaction to doing something and doing it well.  Why else would I blog daily with zero revenue?
  • “Global Poverty in Decline” – lest you think I’ve jettisoned the old Friedmanian views completely, this short post—based on a Rasmussen Number of the Day—deals with the decline in global poverty in the last few decades.  That decline is, truly, astonishing.  A good chunk of it came with economic liberalization in China, which has come, in part, at the expense of the United States, but it also reflects the benefits of economic liberty across the globe, particularly in the former Soviet bloc countries.For all the potential moral hazards of excessive material wealth, there’s no denying the inherent morality of a system that prevents starvation, malnutrition, and homelessness, all with only minimal government coercion and interference.  That’s pretty remarkable, and one reason we should be careful to protect capitalism, even as we seek to rein in its more destructive tendencies.

That’s it for this XXL (that’s “Extra-Extra-Large”) edition of Lazy Sunday.  Enjoy!

–TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Bernie’s (Cell) Bloc Voting

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Blogger jonolan at Reflections from a Murky Pond has a post about Bernie Sanders’s recent suggestion that convicted, incarcerated prisoners should be able to vote. The piece, “Bernie’s Folsom Pledge,” points out not just the absurdity of such a position, but the devastating political outcomes it would have.

We all understand the former implicitly: incarcerated felons are paying their debt to society, so their usual rights—freedom of movement (now “arrested”), the ability to vote, etc.—are forfeit. There is a fruitful discussion to be had about when, and under what circumstances, former convicts might be restored their right to vote, but the notion that inmates should be able to cast ballots undermines the very concept of punitive imprisonment.

The latter point—what would the political impact be if we allowed prisoners to vote—is not considered as frequently. In part, that’s because the idea was, until relatively recently, completely ridiculous. But we live in an age in which what was once decent, traditional, and commonsensical (and, therefore, never seriously questioned or in need of articulate defense) is challenged constantly, if not already destroyed utterly, so we have to engage in mental exercises that were once entirely abstract and academic.

jonolan does a great service here in a very succinct post way. Here he details the terrifying impact a prison population could have on local elections:

Focus on the State, County, and Local elections.

Imagine, if you will, the great harm that incarcerated felons could do in those elections, especially ones for: Police Chiefs, Sheriffs, District Attorneys, Prosecutors, and/or Judges. Remember, these are elections with a much smaller electorate and, hence, the population of a prison there could and likely would greatly impact the outcome(s).

Convicted felons voting for their jailers and captors: only slightly removed from the old cliche of the insane running the asylum. Turnout in these county elections (as sheriffs are usually elected at the county level) is so low that sometimes even a dozen (or fewer) votes can swing the outcome.

According to World Prison Brief, the prison population in the United States is around 2,121,600. I couldn’t find the average population of a typical American prison—perhaps a more patient and enterprising reader can—but imagine in a rural, low-population county what impact the prison population could have. Granted, prisoners might not even be registered to vote in the county in which they find themselves incarcerated (opening up another question: where, how, and in what precinct would prisoners be registered to vote?), but if they were, they could easily elect ne’er-do-wells to key law enforcement positions.

jonolan also points out the constitutional error implicit in extending voting rights to criminals:

Voting, be it for offices within each state or for elected federal offices is a matter that is wholly within the purview of each state. The federal government can only step in to prevent certain broad abuses, e.g., denying the “right” to vote based on race (15th Amendment), sex (19th Amendment), or advanced age (26th Amendment). As such, it is grossly inappropriate for any Presidential candidate to weigh in on this matter and to use it as a plank in his campaign’s platform.

As such, Bernie’s pro-prisoner proposal would require a constitutional amendment. That would mean proposal by 2/3rds of both chambers of Congress, then ratification by 3/4ths of the States. Of course, that’s Bernie’s shield: he knows it’s insane (and, as jonolan argues, it’s probably an attempt to shore up his iffy support among black voters), but he can call for it, virtually risk-free, while gaining some brownie points with progressives.

The whole proposal is yet another tiresome example of the destructive ideology of progressivism. In its endless thirst for new “rights” to grant and extend—always at the behest of government, of course—the Left forever pushes beyond any semblance of an orderly, sane society. It would be humorous if they weren’t so effective.

Distrust in National Media

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Longtime readers know that I’m a big fan of Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day feature on Ballotpedia.  These pithy daily posts give a snapshot of the nation’s mood, occasionally with some historical content or relevant tidbits tossed in for good measure.

This week, Rasmussen highlighted two poll figures regarding Americans’ distrust of national news media.  On May 1, Rasmussen reported that only 38% of Americans consider national political news accurate and reliable.  On May 2, he reported that 66% of voters believe national political reporters often get the story wrong.

These figures will come as no surprise to conservatives, who have long distrusted the mainstream media, or “MSM” (Rush Limbaugh calls them the “drive-bys,” for their tendency to spew disinformation before fleeing the scene, then burying corrections or mea culpas on the back pages or in thirty-second sound bites).  The “Great One,” Mark Levin, ran through just a handful of the most recent media hoaxes on his radio program one night this week, and it’s astonishing how frequently the media is either wrong (as in the “hands up, don’t shoot” Michael Brown myth) or outright mendacious.

Indeed, CNN essentially traded its reputation as the “centrist” news network to indulge in anti-Trump hysteria, trumpeting every crumb of the Mueller investigation as manna from impeachment heaven.  The results speak for themselves:  its credibility is utterly in tatters.

The very same media decries President Trump’s attacks on “fake news”—itself a clever appropriation of a slur the MSM attempted to apply to Trump—as an assault on the First Amendment.  Such concerns are hysterically overwrought.  President Trump has done nothing to curtail press freedom; he’s merely had the temerity to call out bad reporting.  The First Amendment is not a magical talisman that protects media outlets from criticism, even from elected officials.

Indeed, that same amendment protects the president’s right to denounce media outlets.  Unless and until he uses the power of the government to silence the media—and he won’t—President Trump is entirely justified in labeling bad, inaccurate, or outright false reporting as “fake news.”

The real danger is that ostensibly objective journalism is anything but.  If anything, opinion programming on the major television and cable news networks is more authentic and reliable, as it doesn’t seek to hide the hosts’ views behind a smokescreen of presumed neutrality.  When biases are stated outright and upfront, it allows viewers to assess a host’s claims in that light.

Of course, increasingly we can’t even agree on the facts, or we’re not allowed to express certain facts aloud.  That’s the real threat to free speech, not President Trump blasting CNN for negative coverage.

TBT: A New Hope

The Portly Politico1 Comment

The TBT two weeks ago was about former South Carolina Governor and Congressman Mark Sanford, whose political career was a roller coaster of (often humorous) controversy.  While going through the deep-but-scant archives from the TPP 1.0 era (circa 2009-2010), I came across an old TPP “Two-Minute Update” about Sanford’s successor in the governor’s office:  Nikki Haley.

The post, which dates to 17 June 2009, was about the then-unknown Haley, at the time a State Representative from Bamberg, South Carolina.  I remember reading about Haley and being impressed immediately.  I assumed she was a long-shot—remember, this was before Trump and only shortly after Obama, so political upsets by unlikely outsiders were still considered rare—but I had an inkling that she could win it all.  As is rarely the case when calling elections, I was right.

As I’ve noted many times in these TBT pieces, it’s fascinating looking back to just ten years ago and noting how much the political and cultural landscape has changed.  Nikki Haley would go on to win the South Carolina gubernatorial election in 2010 after a tough primary, in which she suffered a number of malicious, mendacious attacks (one blogger even claimed to have had an “inappropriate physical relationship” with her).

I remember even lifelong Republicans voting for Haley’s Democratic opponent, Vincent Sheheen, in a fairly close election.  I can’t fully remember what the concern was, although the sense I got was that she was perceived as too much of a firebrand.

You have to recall:  these were the early days of the Obama Administration, when people still believed in the possibility of political compromise with the Left.  Ideological conservatives like Sanford and Haley were seen as a bit “tacky” (the same way Trump is by Establishment Republicans now), and I suspect that VP candidate Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Haley probably made her gauche-by-association.  Also, Sheheen cast himself (as a statewide Dem in SC must) as a congenial moderate.

Long-story short:  Haley destroyed Sheheen in a 2014 rematch, and then famously was appointed the United States’ United Nations Ambassador when President Trump took office in 2019.  That elevated Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster—the first public official in South Carolina to endorse Trump during the campaign—to the governor’s office.

Haley had been opposed to Trump, favoring Florida Senator and robot Marco Rubio in the SC primaries in 2016, but she served as one of our gutsiest UN Ambassadors since Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

After Trump, I’m hoping that Haley throws her hat into the ring for the Republican presidential nominations in 2024.  Isn’t it time we had a woman president?

So, here is 2009’s “Two-Minute Update: A New Hope,” which is shorter by far than this preamble:

I was pleasantly surprised to read about a fresh new face in South Carolina politics, gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley, a State Representative from Bamberg. The daughter of immigrants, Haley appears to be the philosophical heiress-apparent to Governor Mark Sanford’s brand of fiscal conservatism. While it’s still pretty early in the game–the next gubernatorial election isn’t until 2 November 2010–Haley looks to be a promising candidate for supporters of Sanford’s commitment to limited government and political responsibility.

Again, it’s too early for The Portly Politico to give its support to any one candidate, but I will certainly have my eye on Haley’s candidacy over the next seventeen months. Hopefully she will be spared the ire that is so often heaped upon conservative female politicians by the liberal news media (see also: Sarah Palin).

For more information on State Representative Haley, check out this excellent write-up by Moe Lane at www.redstate.com: “Speaking with Nikki Haley – (R-CAN, SC-GOV).”