Politics, Government & Public Policy: December 2004 Archives
Adam Felber at Fanatical Apathy attributes nefarious motivations to recent Republican calls for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
Donald Rumfeld's getting a lot of criticism from powerful Republicans, as you might have heard. From John McCain, yes, but also Trent Lott. And Susan Collins. And Chuck Hagel. And Norm Coleman. Many of them are calling for his resignation.Wow! What we can glean from this is that after 4 years of stellar, circumspect, admirable service to his country and deft prosecution of the war in Iraq, Rumsfeld has suddenly made a ton of unpardonably bad choices in the past five weeks. I mean, how else could you possibly explain all of these prominent and patriotic Republicans not speaking out beforehand?
There was the election of course. But who could ever believe that powerful public servants who've vowed to act in the best interest of our country would voluntarily remain silent while they watched the Secretary of Defense inadvisably put American lives on the line? Who could believe that? That would imply that they were willing to see our soldiers die in an ill-managed war rather than risk losing the White House. That would be almost treasonous. It's inconceivable!
He fails to realize that perhaps it wasn't anything about Rumsfeld that has changed, but maybe the circumstances in Iraq are different than they were two years ago. Perhaps it appeared to these senators that Rumsfeld was doing a great job winning the war, but that he hasn't been as successful "securing the peace" (as the new buzz-phrase goes). Maybe they got tired of waiting for improved performance?
Then again, perhaps these senators are from states that are poised to lose military bases in the 2005 round of BRAC; no final decisions have been made/released yet, of course, but the DoD has wide latitude in recommending closures and I'm sure the senators know who is on the chopping block. Additionally, many of the changes Rumsfeld has introduced over the past four years have had unpleasant side-effects on certain states, and maybe these senators are looking for payback. There are a whole host of potential political reasons for the newfound disapproval of the Secretary, and many of them don't relate to Iraq at all (as if that's the only thing Defense is doing!).
Furthermore, it's pretty standard for secretaries to resign after elections are over. DCI George Tenet's recent departure right before an election was very unusual, and it left a vacancy that was hard to fill. Few people are eager to accept an appointment to such a difficult job that they may lose within a month because their boss gets voted out, and when the bureacracy knows that it can be difficult to manage.
But anyway, even if Mr. Felber's worst suspicions are true, they definitely don't amount to "treason", which requires an actual intent to aid our enemies and harm our country. That accusation is best reserved for people who actually want our enemies to win.
(As a side note, remember my motto: Apathy is the key to happiness.)
Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) sounds pretty cool. According to a report by Brendan Miniter, he and his staff do all sorts of nifty arts and crafts:
In addition to ballistic glass, Mr. Hunter has been pushing the military to armor their vehicles. At the very least, he says, soldiers should be given steel plates they can cut for makeshift doors for their humvees. He even made a short video demonstrating how to do it. All soldiers would need is the steel, a couple of piano hinges, a few bolts and an acetylene torch. He was able to bolt on two doors in just two hours. (You can watch the video here.) ...One way to deter attacks on convoy trucks is to send along armored escorts. But there aren't enough armored vehicles to go around, so some soldiers earlier this year started using plywood, sandbags and any scrap metal they can find to armor up their trucks--"hillbilly armor." Mr. Hunter's office came up with an interim solution for this, too. By bolting a few plates of high-grade steel, ballistic glass and four machine guns onto a truck, his staff was able to convert a regular truck into an escort vehicle that can take on attacking insurgents. The Army initially resisted these gun trucks, saying they weren't needed. But now a handful of them are in Iraq, with more to be delivered Christmas Eve.
Sounds fun and useful! It kinda makes me want to run for office.
Ace writes that the leftist true believers still think their main problem is that they just haven't successfully articulated their message -- they don't realize that we've heard it, and we just don't like it. I figured that Howard Dean's dismal performance in the primaries was the death knell for the extreme left and that John Kerry's loss had sealed the deal, but now it looks like the Dems want to go down with the ship and stick a proven loser like Governor Dean at the head of the DNC. (Maybe it's because the Dems care more about raising money than winning elections?) So it goes -- you'll never go broke overestimating the idiocy of the left.
In my earlier posts about political sea change I indicated that I think we're in for a realignment. It wouldn't surprise me 20 years from now to struggle choosing between a libertarian-ish party on the left and a statist/religious party on the right. How would I vote? It would depend on the election in question, but my pro-life position on abortion would be a deciding factor wherever relevant, as would my hawkish position on national security. Both of those would likely make it difficult for me to embrace a hypothetical libertarian-ish party, despite my aversion to high taxes and government interference.
I agree with Clayton Cramer in thinking that Arthur Kellerman's desire for the government to ban private ownership of automated external defibrillators is ridiculous. Dr. Kellerman gives a few silly reasons that illustrate the leftist mindset:
On the other hand, AEDs might make real families in a real emergencies waste precious time, says Arthur Kellermann, MD, MPH, chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Atlanta's Emory University."Having an AED in the home might make a person less likely to call 911...," Kellerman says. "It might make a family focus their efforts on frantically looking for the thing -- 'Is it under the bed? In the closet?' -- rather than calling 911. We don't know. That's why more studies are needed." ...
Kellerman says. "If you have $2,000 burning a hole in your pocket, join a health club; get help stopping smoking; get help lowering your cholesterol. Sure, AEDs have saved hundreds of lives. But we have saved hundreds of thousands of lives with primary prevention of heart disease. And we don't know whether having an AED in the home will make a family less interested in prevention."
I don't know about you, but I'd rather choose my own risks than have the government do it for me. I can train my friends and family to call 911 first and search for the AED second, but if there's no AED to be found I can't train them to deliver electric shocks with their bare hands.
And this illustrates one of the defining characteristics of the left: they think you're stupid and need to be protected from yourself, and they're willing to endanger and enslave everyone to protect idiots. Sure, smart people who call 911 before looking under the bed for the AED will be made less safe if they can't own an AED, but hypothetical stupid people will be protected from having to make a decision. Even if that theory is correct -- but who would be dumb enough not to call 911 immediately? should they be allowed to live? -- who cares? There's no reason to restrict my liberty and my ability to protect myself just because some other people are stupid. Plus, should we as a society be making decisions that increase the survivability of morons at the expense of everyone else? Won't that breed a society of imbeciles? (Look around, it may be too late.)
Jay McCarthy over at makeoutcity.com notes a couple of interesting pieces that highlight the mystical regard in which some hold democracy. He links to James Wilson who writes about the power of the Constitution:
The Constitution is powerless against the claims and wants of the people, especially if those wants are moral and religious in nature yet cloaked in secular, "public good" language. No Constitution can protect the people from a charming demagogue that the people themselves support.If the ethics and the faith of the vast majority of the people favor liberty and decentralization, they will get it and enjoy it regardless of what a Constitution says. But if they want to control other people in other places through the National State, they will get that also, regardless of the paper restraints on the government. And if the people are indifferent, the government will recognize that as well. [...]
I'd rather fight for liberty rather than for a Constitution, just as I'd rather give my life to God than to the State.
The Constitution is a procedure, a means to an end and not an end unto itself. We'd do well to remember that.
Jay also links to Chris Coyne who quotes from an interview with the illustrious Francis Fukuyama in which he says:
NPQ [New Perspective Quarterly]: Mustn’t a state be democratic to develop?FUKUYAMA: Well, before you have democracy you have to have government. Period. You have to have a functioning state that can, first of all, provide security and the economic basics. It can be authoritarian and still develop. Most of East Asia has done well under authoritarian governance. It is only over the longer term as the society grows more prosperous and there are greater social demands for participation that not having democracy becomes problematic from a development standpoint.
The cutoff is usually about $6,000 per capita. At that point a country has usually transformed itself from an agricultural, raw-materials-exporting country to a largely urban, industrialized one.
As I've argued before, voting is not a right. Democracy is useful, but only as a tool to protect our essential rights, such as speech, thought, religion, assembly, self-defense, and so forth. Voting, like the Constitution that defines and protects it, is morally neutral -- we can only judge it based on the results it delivers.
I don't think Terry McAuliffe really understands what elections are supposed to be about.
DNC Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe declared: "Even though the pundits called the DNC 'dead' after McCain-Feingold, the American people said otherwise. Thanks to our strong grass-roots support, the Democratic Party surpassed every fundraising goal by a factor of three."
That is impressive, but not quite as impressive as, you know, getting people elected.
(HT: James Taranto.)
As a homeowner with a nearly-due bill, I'm not a big fan of property taxes. One good thing about them, though, is that they're flat instead of progressive. That means that everyone gets hit with them evenly, and people realize exactly how much their government-of-choice is costing them.
With progressive systems you have non-payers voting to tax other people, but with a flat system you spread the burden evenly -- but proportionally -- across all voters. If voters think the burden is too high they should vote to cut spending, not just shift the cost to other people. (On another note, wouldn't it be nice if people could only vote to raise taxes on themselves rather than on others? Taxation with representation was one of the key selling points of this little Republic we've got going here, back in the day.)
