Sunday, January 27, 2008

Two questions to ask yourself before voting

When libertarians cast their ballot this November, I would urge them to ask themselves two questions: Who shares my view of the world? Will voting for a third party candidate send a message, or risk electing somebody who is totally antithetical to my beliefs? This blog entry will deal with the first question. My next entry will deal with the second.

The Pew Research Center conducted a study of the electorate in 2005, and the results show real differences in the ways that Democrats and Republicans view the world. The study divided each group in to three separate subgroups (the actual descriptions from the study can be found here):

Democrats:
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1) Liberals (19% of Registered Voters): The hardcore lefties. Liberal on social issues, want to raise taxes and expand government until we can't poop without a permit.

2) Conservative Democrats (15% of Registered Voters): FDR Democrats. Conservative on social issues, generally favor welfare.

3) Disadvantaged Democrats (10% of Registered Voters): Poor Democrats. Very anti-business, very pro-welfare.

Republicans
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1) Enterprisers (10% of Registered Voters): Free trade, low taxes, small government, strong foreign policy.

2) Social Conservatives (13% of registered Voters): Conservative on social issues and welfare, otherwise moderate.

3) Pro-Government Conservatives (10% of Registered Voters): Poor republicans. Religious, tend to support more government help for the needy.

And now, a few comparisons:

A minimum of 65% of all Democrat groups wants government-run health care. A maximum of 65% of Pro-Government Republicans wants Hillarycare on the right. Only one-fifth of Enterprisers want to see government-run health care. (Here) Given that the health sector accounts for around 1/8 of our economy, the desire to nationalize it (de facto, if not de jure,) says a lot about what the Democrat Party thinks about the private sector.

This anti-private sector trend continues in the area of welfare. All Democrat groups favor a large expansion of the welfare state in several areas. Amongst Republicans, both Enterprisers and Social Conservatives are strongly opposed to more spending on the poor, and Pro-Government conservatives are in favor of more spending. (Here) These statistics support the findings of Arthur Brooks, in his book Who Really Cares?: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism that discovered that conservatives from every income class gave more money than liberals to charities, and worked more hours as a volunteer. Republicans clearly have more faith in the ability of private charity to solve problems than they do in government intervention.

Quite possibly the most important statistics come from the comparison of two very similar groups, the Disadvantaged Democrats and the Pro-Government Conservatives. Both are largely poor, Only 14% of Disadvantaged Democrats believe that people can get ahead in life through hard work, and only 44% believe that everyone has the power to succeed. 76% of Pro-Government Conservatives believe that hard work will let you get ahead, and 86% believe that everybody can succeed. Pro-Government Conservatives believe that they can get ahead in life through their own efforts. Disadvantaged Democrats do not.

The responses of the Democrats clearly demonstrate that they have little faith in the ability of the private sector to solve problems without government intervention, and that they do not believe that individuals can determine their own future. Republicans, across the board, not only believe in the individual and the private sector: They put their money where their mouths are.

For a moment, leave aside the questions of abortion, gay marriage and foreign affairs and ask yourself: Which party really believes in the individual and the private sector? Which side shares my most fundamental values?

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Fred Thompson: We barely knew ye.

When I heard Fred Thompson might get in to the race, I almost had to change my shorts.

Fred Thompson was a man who had a uniformly conservative voting record that spanned his whole time in office. With the sole exception of his vote for McCain-Feingold, Thompson was essentially the perfect candidate. He had experience speaking in the Senate, as well as his acting experience, and I was sure that if anybody could make the case for conservative policies, it was Fred.

Unfortunately, Fred Thompson ran a lackluster campaign, and put all of his eggs in one basket: South Carolina. His speeches were uninspiring, and his campaign ads were full of empty rhetoric. His debate performances improved towards the end, but most were so halfhearted that he probably turned more people off with them than he won.

I have seen Fred Thompson give a good speech. I know he can do it. Why he did not do so during the campaign, I cannot say.

Were I conspiracy-minded, I would suggest that he was a spoiler for McCain, intended to draw support from Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in the key early contests. However, I honestly can't bring myself to accuse Sen. Thompson of doing this. He's a good man, and given that his record is almost diametrically opposed to McCain's, I can't imagine that Fred would want to see him elected.

Que sera sera. Good luck, Senator, in whatever you pursue next.

Looking to the future, good luck Governor Romney! You are now the last conservative standing. I suppose I would turn out to vote if Rudy gets the nomination, but McCain or Huckabee? Not a chance. In the event that either one of those two R.I.N.O.'s gets the nod, I will be interested to see how many conservatives feel the same way...

Monday, January 21, 2008

Who votes for the Democrats, and what impact does it have on Republican strategy?

The diagram that we all learn in Political Science 101 for the "political spectrum" in America goes something like this:

<================================+===============================>
Democrat...............................Centrist............................Republican

Pretty simple, right? It also makes election strategies simple: Move to the wings for primaries, move to the center for the general. Moreover, by moving your party as a whole to the center, you can get more votes!

However, when Republicans move to the center, it never works. Why not? The diagram suggests that moving the Republican Party to a centrist or center-left position on the spectrum ought to grab Republicans all sorts of extra votes. Yet, when Republicans have moved to the left (2006 rings a bell,) they lose, dramatically. When Republicans move to the right, as Ronald Reagan did, they win huge victories. Republicans that want to move the party to the left on questions like spending and social concerns are missing the point: Democrats will never vote for Diet Democrats, and Centrists will never vote for somebody who stands for nothing.

In order to help my fellow Republicans understand why Democrats vote the way they vote, and what can be done to steal some of these voters, I humbly offer this analysis of the four different groups of Democrats:

1) The Welfare Royalty: Welfare Kings and Queens vote for the candidate who will give them the most government money with the fewest strings attached. I include Social Security/Medicare voters, Trial Lawyers, union members and leaders, and anybody who gets an AFDC check in this category. Each one of these groups relies on Democrats for their meal ticket, at the moment, and will not abandon them until somebody offers them more money.

Why can't Republicans get the Welfare Royalty vote? If you don't have to worry about the calories (i.e. your taxes being raised,) then why drink Diet Generic Cola when they can have Generic Cola Classic? Unless Republicans abandon all spending restraint, and embark on a decades-long binge, they will never convince Welfare Royalty to vote for them. In the meantime, the base will grumble about the monetary wisdom of intoxicated sailors every time they see the budget figures, and justifiably stay home on election day.

2) The Special Privilege Separatists: The Special Privilege Separatists could be women, minorities, illegal immigrants, etc. They are members of groups that want special treatment from the government. Affirmative Action is probably the best example. It is a privileged status afforded to blacks because bad things were done to their ancestors. Illegal aliens suggest that our government is oppressive and racist because it occasionally deports people who are here illegally. Illegal aliens demand amnesty for coming here illegally, living here illegally, emptying the welfare purses nationwide, shutting down hospital emergency rooms with their demands for medical care, and for stealing Social Security Numbers and screwing up the credit of millions of people. Young women demand the right to kill unborn children so that they can avoid the inconvenience of adopting them out.

Republicans tend to believe in ideas like equality before the law, and the rule of law. Why would a working woman or a black man vote for a Party that has pledged to take away their special privileges? Why would an illegal alien vote for a Party that (might,) enforce the law and deport them? Republicans cannot get the votes from Special Privilege Separatists until there is a widespread recognition that these special privileges may not be deserved, may provoke resentment, and lead to these groups being perceived as "tokens" and unqualified for the positions they hold. We cannot grab this group immediately, but we can certainly oppose amnesty and avoid importing millions of new Democrats from Mexico.

3) The Compassion Fascists: Compassion Fascists are people who vote Democrat because of the warm, fuzzy feeling they get for doing so. Another important reason for their vote is the warm, fuzzy feeling they get from others. They perceive the Democrat Party as the Party of compassion, the Party that cares about the poor, minorities, and the environment. They parrot what they read in the New York Times and what they hear from Chris Matthews to win approval as an enlightened cosmopolitan from their fellow cocktail party attendees. Their affiliation with the Democrat Party has nothing to do with rational thought or evaluation of their positions, it is an emotional reaction to the way Democrats are perceived, and a burning desire to find acceptance.

So why do I call them Compassion Fascists? They know their beliefs are illogical and contradictory. They know that they don't live their own lives by the principles and values that the Democrats express, but they have to be able to ignore this fact to continue getting those looks of approval at the cocktail parties! Therefore, they crush whoever spouts reality at them. They club them down with implications of racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, dishonesty, murderousness, lack of moral right, etc. They use spokespeople that cannot be criticized, so that they will not be called stupid for making stupid suggestions (like the 9-11 widows, or Michael J. Fox.) They dance around questions like Madonna with a pole. They hurl food, or yell their opponents down. They shoot up the local Republican headquarters, slash tires, and hurl bricks. I have not even begun to discuss Liberal peace activists or environmentalists. (I debated with myself for a full two hours: What do I link to for these lunatics? There are so many options, I was paralyzed. I decided to continue ahead with this one, because it so effectively displays the total lack of thought on the part of these particular mental patients, and because I had other things to do.)

The only practical difference between the Nazi Brownshirts and these Democrat thugs is that these thugs are not official.

Can Republicans get these votes? It will require a public relations campaign on a scale that dwarfs the movement I suggested against the Special Privilege Separatists, and it will not be quick. These people need the approval of others, so they will need a conservative intelligentsia to join for this strategy to work. This strategy also requires massive PR campaigns to highlight facets of Islamofascism like the Saudi woman who was gang-raped and sentenced to 90 lashes for being with a man who was not her husband, the stoning to death of gays and adulterous women in Iran, or the recent "honor killings" in Texas. It can be done, but it has to be done via emotional appeals, not via logical argument.

4) FDR Democrats: FDR Democrats vote for Democrats because their parents voted for Democrats, and so did their grandparents, and so on. These people tend to believe that the Democrat Party is the Party of FDR, and not of George Soros, the DailyKos and MoveOn.Org. Their association with the Democrat Party is based on a picture of that Party as it once existed, not as it currently exists.

Any of these voters who pay even scant attention to the news have already noted the loony tilt their Party has acquired. They are ready to head for the hills, but they do not currently have anywhere to go. Republicans consistently fail to make the case for their policies, and to live up to their promises. These people do occasionally vote Republican for President, but only when their candidate is so obviously insane that they need to find refuge, or when there is a Republican out there making the case for conservatism. We can win these folks if we can convince them that the Democrat Party has changed from what they believe it to be. If this is combined with somebody who is not afraid to make the case for what the Republican Party is supposed to stand for, we can sweep these people in to the Party.

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Finally, there are the Centrists. Centrists are generally driven by gut feelings. Note that this is not the warm, fuzzy feeling of the Compassion Fascists. It is an instinctive impression of the people involved. When somebody displays clear leadership abilities, and can make a case for what they believe, the Centrists tend to pile in to voting booths to cast a ballot for them. All that is required to get the Centrist vote is to nominate somebody who doesn't retreat every time they are attacked, and can lay out a consistent philosophy that they will follow in office.

When Republican move to the left to gather votes from the middle, they will fail. They will alienate their own base, while managing to confuse Centrists and present a less-than-convincing pitch to the FDR Democrats. What Republicans need to do to win is to present a clear, consistent case for their ideas. We learned in 2006 what happens when our Party ignores the base and goes after moderates, we should not repeat this lesson in 2008 if we want to see a non-socialist elected.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Who amongst us has never wanted to fling poo at his enemies?

Interesting article from January 10th, on Tech Central Station, written by Lee Harris.

Mr. Harris does an excellent job posing an important question: Why have other scientific revolutions that challenged some point of religion been accepted everywhere outside of the Flat Earth Society within a short time period, while evolution has not?

Mr. Harris comes to the conclusion that a visceral dislike for monkeys is to blame for the rejection of evolution, and that this visceral dislike stems from the revelation that they are very much like we would be if we were stripped of civilization. As Mr. Harris puts it:

"... the basis of this revulsion is none other than "the civilizing process" that has been instilled into us from infancy. The civilizing process has taught us never to throw our feces at other people, not even in jest. It has taught us not to snatch food from other people, not even when they are much weaker than we. It has taught us not to play with our genitals in front of other people, not even when we are very bored. It has taught us not to mount the posterior of other people, not even when they have cute butts.

... It is by refusing to accept our embarrassing kinship with primates that men have been able to create societies that prohibit precisely the kind of monkey business that civilized men and women invariably find so revolting and disgusting. Thou shalt not act like a monkey—this is the essence of all the higher religions, and the summation of all ethical systems."


I have to hand it to him, Mr. Harris makes an excellent point. Apes are a reminder that, while we are we are capable of much more than they ever will be, we are capable of reverting as well.

Unfortunately, there is an entire political movement in this country dedicated to eliminating the consequences of behaving like monkeys. We call it liberalism.

Consider the number of conservative speakers on college campuses who have had food hurled at them by angry liberals. Food is only a brief passage through the digestive tract away from fecal matter, and no different in its message when hurled. Like with monkeys, food throwers are motivated by an emotional instinct to lash-out, not by a rational desire to disprove the speaker's arguments by means of a witty torte. The most disturbing aspect of this is not the pie-throwing, but the fact that Liberal prosecutors in most of these towns dropped the charges against the assailants.

We could also talk about sex, since the Liberals do so frequently. Medical professionals at the Mayo Clinic suggest beginning to teach kids about sex when they are toddlers or preschoolers. Barack Obama stresses the need for age-appropriate Sex Ed for kindergarteners. Exactly what qualifies as "age-appropriate" for a five year-old is hard for me to understand, and apparently Barack had some trouble, as well, since he has refused to elaborate beyond the need for "study." Perhaps he meant discussions of anal sex, oral sex and "fisting" (I will let you figure it out from the context...) like these Massachusetts activists did. Maybe he thought we should teach kindergarteners about masturbation, like Jocelyn Elders? Doubtless, he meant more along the lines of this precious (but poorly transferred and edited,) moment from Kindergarten Cop.

Sex Ed trains children to avoid the consequences of sex, without ever asking whether they should be having it in the first place. Putting a condom on a banana is a time-honored tradition of the Sex Ed teacher. Thus fortified, the banana can engage in all of the casual sex it wants without any trouble! But of course, there are those times when a condom breaks, so the Libs advocate passing out birth-control to 11 year-olds. If a girl as young as ten years-old still manages to get pregnant, the U.N. seems to think it is time to head to the Planned Parenthood clinic for an abortion. (Remember: It's not a potential new life you have created. It's a non-viable tissue mass, like cancer!) If our hypothetical ten year-old mother decides to keep the baby, the government has over 900 programs to keep her comfortable.

Kids are exposed to sex on a daily basis on TV and in the movies, and much of this sex is casual and meaningless. This constant exposure has the effect of creating a patina of social legitimacy. Combined with the easy availability of birth control and abortion, does anybody wonder we see as many kids mounting every cute behind they see?

We could talk about the massive failure of our public schools to teach children trained in basic history, math and science, leaving a generation of children incapable of applying rational thought to a problem. We could talk about the interest-group politics that seem to define the Left in America that sounds more like tribalism than civil rights. We could talk about the juvenile justice system, and how it treats criminal miscreants below the age of eighteen as gently as possible, and in doing so, never teaches these kids that there are consequences for breaking the law. Liberalism seems designed to produce a generation of children that have no idea that they are not supposed to fling food or feces at people they do not like. It is designed to produce a generation of kids who have such freedom from moral restraints on sex and the capability to avoid its consequences that they will hop on whatever willing behind they find. It is designed to produce an ignorant bunch of dolts who cannot even recognize a specious argument, or separate emotion from fact. It is designed to produce monkeys.

Why Libertarian?

I have been a Republican since I turned fourteen. What convinced me? A trip to the DMV for my Learner's Permit, followed by a trip to the insurance office to add my name to the policy. Every time I step in to that dark and depressing DMV office, I am more convinced that it was designed by the Marquis de Sade as a test of stamina. How soul-sucking can you get? Row after row of identical chairs, ponderous manuals filled with the legal minutiae of driving, half of the office's union employees sitting around and eating their lunches as the lines back out of the office and around the block. Your only hope to avoid a slow-descent in to feeble-mindedness and drooling is to manage to nap in line without falling over. When you do get up to the front of the line, your hopes build: Am I done? Could it be?!

No, you are not. You now get to chat with Surly Employee #1. SE1 is a union worker, who knows that she is paid by the hour, not by the speed and efficiency with which she does her work. She knows that you have no other option if you want to renew your license, so she does not care if you are enjoying your visit. When she finally stops chatting with her co-worker, she will bestow upon you the same look that Kings used to bestow upon people asking them for a loan from the Royal Bank. You are a nuisance, a pebble in her shoe. Her only concern is sending you where you need to go so that you will leave her presence, and she can get back to her chat. After forking over to Caesar what is Caesars (the license fee,) you will be given a gift: paperwork.

Those who manage to haul the stack of papers from the counter to their seat in one of those endless rows of identical chairs without a hernia are strong, indeed. They may be strong enough to make it through answering three, even four duplicative sets of questions that they already answered for SE1. If you finish the paperwork, you now face the wait. Re-check your paperwork all you want - you will run through it all in a minute, maybe two. You need to wait for the one person capable of operating the camera to get back from lunch. This person, having just eaten, will probably need a half-hour siesta to decompress and ready themselves for their grueling day of pressing a button. If they have not yet gone to lunch, the wait might be longer - after all, they are weak from the hunger that builds up after a full two or three hours of pressing a button. It make take them twenty, thirty minutes just to review your paperwork and tell you to stand in front of a screen.

Once before the screen, the photographer will wait for the worst possible moment to take your picture. For some people, they have their face scrunched-up as they prepare to sneeze. For me, it is the "shiny moment," where my face is at just the right angle so that the light is glinting off of my nose, and I look as oily as an Alaskan beach after the Exxon Valdeez has passed. Either that, or the "guaranteed felon" picture. This is the sort of picture that makes any police officer who sees it certain that the subject is a homicidal maniac who should be shot on sight (probably with an extra Y chromosome, too...)

After all of this, you are given a piece of plastic with your name on it, that is so easy to fake that any illegal immigrant can obtain one in fifteen minutes at a Home Depot.

This is government at work - employees guaranteed union wages who have no motivation to make your life any easier, and cannot be fired for incompetence or a refusal to actually do their jobs without months of hearings and depositions.

Insurance companies, on the other hand, know that they need to hustle to keep customers. There is rarely, if ever a line when you walk in to the well-lit, comfortable atmosphere in an insurance office. Chances are, there is water or even coffee available. Surly Employee #1 would be fired in a few hours at this office, because she might hurt business. The people who are left recognize that pleasing customers is what keeps their office open and operating, so they go the extra mile to make sure you are happy with your experience. Everything will be made as easy and pleasant as possible for you, because you have the option of going elsewhere.

Hyperbole aside, whom would you rather deal with for renewing your driver's license? The insurance company, or the DMV? Who would you trust to ensure safer roads? The people paid by the hour who cannot be fired for anything short of shooting-up the office, or the people who lose money when you have an accident?

When government steps in, you get all of the problems Liberals love to discuss with monopolies, and one additional problem: The government doesn't ever have to worry about competition, because they have guns that they can legally use against you if you try to compete. Would you want the idiots who designed the DMV to put the same union-mandated breaks and incentive structures in place for health care? If your child had leukemia, would you rather trust them to a private clinic, or to the Surly Employees of the DMV?

Many of the people in the Republican Party seem to have abandoned the idea of personal responsibility in favor of the idea of an "efficient" welfare state. They have forgotten that government can only move at the speed of legislation, that it is only as flexible as the union rules that bind the hands of managers will allow, and that no degree of regulatory oversight can produce the efficiency or the motivation to satisfy customers produced by a person risking their money for a profit.

Government should be the agent of last resort, for any purpose but administering the law, and trouncing our enemies abroad, because it will inevitably lag-behind the private sector, no matter what we ask it to do.

Everybody who has to visit the DMV knows this - why did the Republicans forget? More on this tomorrow.

Why XYY?

Some of you may remember Al Gore and his comments about "Extra-Y-Chromosome Conservatives" during the 2000 Campaign, or Maureen Dowd's inept attempt to repeat his phrase. He was referring to a condition where a boy is born with an extra Y chromosome, causing increased stature and frequent learning disabilities.

He wasn't accusing conservatives of having a learning disability, but of being testosterone-fueled criminals. He was talking about a British study from the mid-1960's that found that men with the extra Y chromosome were slightly overrepresented in mental hospitals, and suggested that they were a bunch of violent crooks. A team of Scots later discovered that the Brits were totally wrong, but the damage had been done. The XYY mutation was forever associated with aggression and criminality.

Algore was trying to paint conservatives as a bunch of violent lunatics because we believe insane things like "the military is a necessary institution," or that "people who are executed generally do not kill again."

Pacifists seem to believe that all of the peoples of the world really just want to live-and-let-live. The 20th Century examples of the Nazis and Communism did not shake the confidence of the pacifists that there philosophy is still correct, despite a few mishaps, and they are determined to keep trying it with the Islamofascists.

When we are attacked by others, the pacifists generally make the same excuse: We were asking for it. Mike Tyson used this excuse when he was on trial for rape: "She was wearing a short skirt, so she was asking for it." The pacifist international-version of the Mike Tyson Rape Excuse goes like this: "They are poor, non-white, and they are angry that we do not share our wealth with them, so we were asking for it." They generally keep quiet when people point out that the United States is the main source of income for most Islamic nations, or that Osama was a billionaire and Ayman al-Zawahiri was a rich doctor.

Pacifism and isolationism fail every time they are tried, but the pacifists never seem to change their minds. So thanks, Algore. I'd rather be learning-disabled than incapable of learning from history.