We first wrote about the idea of seasteading (building new countries offshore on oil platforms) in 2009.

At the time, I had this to offer…

No doubt it’s an interesting notion, but is this practical? Living on the sea? Just think of how much risk that could entail. Of course you’d do the research to make sure you’re settling in a place that isn’t prone to natural disaster, but it’s still THE SEA. Talk about a wildcard if there every was one.

Commenter Tully had this to say…

Yeah, [...] a small settlement of massive egos all working together in perfect harmony! What could possibly go wrong? :-)

Could be fun to watch, though. From a distance. Like a too-full cage of fight-trained angry pit bulls.

Well, guess what…

Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine.

Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch–free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be “a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons.”

“There are quite a lot of people who think it’s not possible,” Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) “That’s a good thing. We don’t need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don’t think it’s possible they won’t take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it’s too late.”

Here’s the thing…even if it is possible…why would anybody want to live there? What are the benefits? Fewer taxes? Legal prostitution and drugs? Also, can you really be free if you can’t enjoy all that America has to offer?

Sorry, I still don’t get it. But if you do, tell me how this would work.

He’s in!

From National Journal:

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, whose outspoken libertarian views and folksy style made him a cult hero during two previous presidential campaigns, will announce on Tuesday that he’s going to try a third time.

Sources close to Paul, who is in his 12th term in the House, said he will unveil an exploratory presidential committee, a key step in gearing up for a White House race.

He will also unveil the campaign’s leadership team in Iowa, where the first votes of the presidential election will be cast in caucuses next year.

And so, yet another GOP candidate is entering the field, but this isn’t an also ran. Ron Paul represents a very specific point of view with the GOP field and he carries with him a constituency that won’t vote for just anybody.

Let’s remember that he didn’t endorse McCain in 2008 and given his hardline stance about libertarian values, it’s unlikely he’ll endorse the GOP candidate in 2012.

And hey, good for him. Paul is an iconoclast who won’t play ball with the traditional GOP. This may make him can outcast, but at least he sticks to his guns.

More as it develops…and much more will develop no doubt!

First it was the wishy-washiness of the civil rights act repeal and now it’s criticism of the administration being tough on BP?

Watch the video…

Here’s the thing…yes, accidents happen on offshore oil rigs. However, most damage is mitigated by appropriate safety measures being put in place to keep spills to a minimum.

However, recent reports have revealed that BP didn’t spend the appropriate time, money or energy to ensure that an accident couldn’t turn into a catastrophe. And now the Gulf is paying the price with 2M+ gallons being pumped into that ecosystem every single day.

Do know I’m genuinely sorry to see Rand suffer these slings and arrows. I liked how earnest his dad was, but that doesn’t make up for being so green. In other words, Rand really has nobody to blame but himself. He just isn’t ready for the national stage and this week has been evidence of exactly that. Maybe he’ll recover, but I think we all have serious doubts.

More as it develops…

Paul Krugman offers “Tidings of Comfort” in the New York Times:

“…Tiny Tim, is sick. And his treatment will cost far more than his parents can pay out of pocket. Fortunately, our story is set in 2014, and the Cratchits have health insurance… reform legislation enacted in 2010 banned insurance discrimination on the basis of medical history and also created a system of subsidies to help families pay for coverage.”

Fortunate indeed that Tiny Tim did not get sick in 2010-13 before the benefits kick in. Also fortunate – Krugman did not choose to use as an example the children of those who will lose their jobs as a consequence of the massive additional tax burden thrown on the back of the economy to pay for this bill. A tax burden that kicks in years before benefits are seen by Tiny Tim or his family.

Paul also joins the chorus for changing the rules in the Senate:

“But given the way the Senate rules work, it takes 60 votes to do almost anything. And that fact, combined with total Republican opposition, has placed sharp limits on what can be enacted. If progressives want more, they’ll have to make changing those Senate rules a priority.”

Like Rachel Maddow and Ezra Klein, Krugman is hell bent on making it much easier for the probable Republican majority in 2013-2016 to undo this bill than it was for the Democratic majority in 2009-10 to pass it. Ho Ho Ho.

While Krugman is brimming with good tidings and bubbling over with holiday cheer, from the other side of the political spectrum Peter Schiff is offering a dour double dose of “Bah Humbug.”:

but…

If you want to be the Senator from Connecticut, you are going to have to come across as something other than a humorless prophet of doom. You need to find a way to temper your message with at least a hint of optimism and – dare I say it? – “Hope”. As an example – Ron Paul’s media friendly phrase – “Freedom is popular.” Just saying…

You can’t get elected if all your supporters are suicidal.

^{Cross posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall”}

Justin asked “How will Repubs do in 2010?” Tully comments “it’s an exercise in fantasy to make predictions this far out”. Sage advice, but per the popular idiom – “Fools rush in…”

While I agree that polls are meaningless from this distance, insight into the election can be gleaned from structural issues. Shortly after the November election, I posted an analysis on the prospect of restoring divided government in 2010 or 2012. This summary/conclusion paraphrased from that post:

After the 2008 election the Democrats picked up an additional 21 seats and will have a crushing 82+ seat majority in the House. Given the difficulty of changing majorities in the House, there is almost no likelihood of a Republican majority in the house before 2014 and probably longer (even with a hurricane force political tailwind, the Democrats only picked up 21 seats in ’08 – do the math). That leaves the Senate as the only determinant of whether divided government can be restored in 2010. In 2012, either re-taking the Senate or the presidency are possibilities for restoring divided government, as the house will likely remain out of reach…

Conclusion / Predictions

We will have One Party Rule under the Democrats for at least four years.

The next opportunity to restore divided government will be in 2012.

The Republicans will have two ways to get there, so I will go out on a limb and make the prediction that divided government will be restored in 2012, either through the Republicans winning the presidency or (more likely) a majority in the Senate. If the latter, we will be in the interesting situation that we have a divided congress, and regardless of which party wins the presidency – a divided government. That’s a good thing.

No telling what shape the country will be in by then.

I stand by the overall thesis, but all the results were not in and a few things have changed. Time for an update.

First, based on the completely insane deficit spending in the first six months of Single Party Democratic Rule, we now have an answer to the last bullet. We will be in very sorry economic shape by the 2012 election, with a debased currency, high inflation, and possibly eclipsed by the more capital friendly China as the pre-eminent economic engine on the planet.

Second, there have been some changes in the structural elements of the 2010 Senate races. Republican Arlen Specter changed his party affiliation, and the Missouri race was finally decided. With Al Franken now in the Senate, there are 60 Senators who caucus Democrat and 40 Senators who caucus Republican. With special elections in New York to replace Hillary Clinton and in Delaware to replace Joe Biden, we now have 36 Senate seats up for grabs in 2010, with 18 held by Republicans and 18 held by Democrats.

Perversely, the Republican hand in 2010 was strengthened by their unrelenting poor performance in 2008. Instead of defending 19 of 34 seats as outlined in my previous post, they are defending 18 of 36 seats, exactly like the Democrats, and on a structurally even playing field in 2010. They are in far too deep a hole to have any chance of retaking the Senate majority in 2010, but (despite Justin’s snark) if they can take 2 or 3 seats, it will be a big win and they will be in an excellent position to retake the Senate in 2012 when they have significant structural factors in their favor.

The Senate remains the best chance to divide this government in 2012. While Barack Obama’s poll numbers have predictably eroded from the stratospheric level he enjoyed earlier in the year, he still has a deep reservoir of goodwill and personal popularity with voters. He is personable, likable, smart, and as Joe Biden noted – “clean and articulate”. Predictions three years out are indeed foolish, but barring some as of yet unrevealed scandal close to the President, I expect he will be reelected.

Net net – The best chance to restore fiscal rationality in 2012 is for Republicans to take the Senate, and that will take two election cycles. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, and the first step is for Republicans to pick up a couple of seats in 2010.

Two Senate races have peaked my early interest.

Pat Toomey is a solid fiscal conservative. His primary challenge to Arlen Specter is widely attributed to be the reason Specter changed his party affiliation. Ironically, if Specter survives a Democratic Party primary challenge, he could still easily lose to Toomey in the general election. I like Toomey’s chances. I like what he says about divided government. And I really like the way he acquitted himself in a laughably hostile Hardball appearance on Tuesday August 4:

Another campaign of interest – Democratic Senator Chris Dodd’s Connecticut seat. I had some positive things to say about Chris Dodd during his brief presidential run. That was then. This is now. A lot of questions emerged about his close relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, a sweetheart mortgage from Countrywide Financial and cozy relationships with banking lobbyists. This is a race that should be a slam dunk and a safe seat for Democrats, but is now up for grabs. Recent polls show that Dodd is trailing former Republican congressman Rob Simmons. Simmons would be a fine choice. But there is another interesting challenger in Connecticut. Money manager and economic soothsayer Peter Schiff is also considering a run for this seat.

Schiff took a page from the Ron Paul campaign and his “moneybomb” effort today is showing pretty impressive results thus far for a Senatorial campaign:

Maybe we will get that libertarian voice in the Senate.

x-posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall“

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

Boo!

And yes, I know it’s a joke and I actually found parts of it funny, but do they honestly think things like this will be effective?

Let me put it another way…do libertarians not realize that our system, which doesn’t cover 40M+ people and is bankrupting our country, needs serious reform?

And I’m talking real reform, not the health savings account, tax deduction and deregulation ideas they’ve floated the last decade. Because those measures would still leave out those who can’t afford health care and have preexisting conditions.

I’m just saying, there’s a reason why these folks find themselves on the political fringe most of the time.

I thought it was a joke when I first heard about it, but “Seasteading” is a serious idea, it’s being backed by Milton Friedman’s grandson and they’ve apparently already raised more than a half a million dollars to realize their dream of building communities…on the sea!

Here’s more from Reason:

Patri Friedman was doing all right himself, living with his wife and child in a mini-commune of sort—the kind people today call an “intentional community”—in Mountain View, California, a bit south of San Francisco. He had a great and challenging job with a great company, Google. But his preoccupation, his passion, lay elsewhere. He thought he had figured out the real underlying problem bedeviling society, and it went deeper than just governments themselves. The real solution, he came to think, would involve the lure of the bounding main, the unbounded horizon, our vast and empty oceans.

Remember those high exit costs? Friedman wondered: What if you could just move—not just you, but everything you own, including your home, and, if your neighbors agreed with you, your whole community? What if you could move all of it where no government would bother you at all, and you could make a new, better society?

Friedman called his theory “dynamic geography.” He remembered a line from his dad’s book The Machinery of Freedom about how differently terrestrial government would behave if everyone lived in trailers and could easily flee state oppression. If land itself could get up and go, the incentive structure of government would change even more, moving it in a libertarian direction.

No doubt it’s an interesting notion, but is this practical? Living on the sea? Just think of how much risk that could entail. Of course you’d do the research to make sure you’re settling in a place that isn’t prone to natural disaster, but it’s still THE SEA. Talk about a wildcard if there every was one.

Still, this may represent a better chance to live the libertarian life than via electoral change, as Patri points out…

Libertarians, he says, expend precious time and energy on truly and self-evidently impossible paths toward political change. “Like the Ron Paul movement,” he says. “Lots of libertarians’ effort and millions and millions directed in a way that’s hopeless! For real change [electoral politics is] totally hopeless. Think how much more likely to succeed [libertarians would be] if that amount of resources were put into something that could actually work.” By which he means seasteading. And you have to admit: When you compare it to the likelihood of creating a libertarian world through American politics, seasteading starts to look more and more sensible.

Is it really that hopeless? I certainly don’t think so, but I will say that the Ron Paul movement was unrealistic to the point of being damaging to the libertarian cause. So maybe taking to the seas does have some benefits after all. :-)

In any event, here are some more articles about the movement…

• Live Free or Drown: Floating Utopias on the Cheap
• Seastead, Ahoy!
• Welcome aboard a brand new country

More as it develops…

I usually wouldn’t embed a video of Rachel Maddow’s show, but the following is compelling enough to share.

Long story short…abandon the culture wars, embrace real fiscal conservatism and stop being war mongers.

Can Libertarianism save the Republican party or will it split it in two?

Also, can election laws be reformed to allow a viable 3rd party candidate?

(h/t: Below The Beltway)

Thanks to John, I am pointed to these two rather strange arguments in favor of the Drug War and against libertarian use of statistics on race against the Drug War from Jonah Goldberg. John does a pretty good job explaining why Goldberg’s arguments are so strange. The only thing I’d really add is that the notion that libertarians don’t normally give a crap about race and poverty is a notion that is borne out of the coalition of libertarians with conservatives – libertarian and classical liberal philosophy, when divorced from coalition politics, actually have quite a bit to say about the problems of poverty and laws that disproportionately single out politically less powerful groups.

Goldberg also makes this odd statement:

A justly convicted murderer should be punished regardless of his race. A justly convicted drug dealer should be punished, regardless of his race as well. If we’re punishing a disproportionately high number of blacks, that’s a sign we should crack down on more guilty whites, not give up on punishing crimes.

This is particularly puzzling because Goldberg has argued that anti-statism is at the core of conservatism and is also why libertarians should continue to coalition with conservatives. Obviously, increasing drug prosecutions is not only inconsistent with any conception of limited government, it’s also an expansion of the size of government. And not an insignicant expansion either, given that this can definitionally only be achieved by pursuing people with enough resources to put up a tough fight against drug prosecutions (a fact that at least partly explains the socioeconomic discrepancies in such prosecutions in the first place).

Goldberg’s statement does indirectly suggest one point worth exploring, though – that human liberty is increased when laws are enforced more uniformly; unfortunately, he takes this point to be a justification for the expansion of drug prosecutions.

Much has been written of late about the difference between small and limited government – specifically, small government refers only to the fiscal “size” of the government, whereas limited government refers to the government’s actual powers. If you accept that the State must exist, as even most libertarians do, then one must have a desire that the Stated do well that which it is authorized to do. If the State does its job poorly, then it will actually have a more negative impact on individual liberty than if it does its job well, because at that point enforcement of the laws becomes arbitrary and based on one’s ability to curry favor with the State in some other non-germane arena.

If, on the other hand, the State does its job well, then people may act in reliance upon the law being enforced equally without regards to other issues. So there may be a marginal decrease in liberty due to the existence of the law in the first place, but this is mitigated by the fact that uniform enforcement ensures that people may act in reliance upon the law and without having to curry favor with the State in some other arena. This means less State corruption, less connection between wealth and power, and less fear of interference from the State more generally.

The trouble is that very often uniform enforcement is simply not possible due to the State’s limited resources. Put another way, in the words of the inestimable Wirkman Virkkala, “regulation is not scalable.”

In the case of the War on Drugs, this problem is particularly apparent. For any given drug, there are going to be potentially millions of users spread out over a vast country. The only way to have uniform enforcement of the drug laws in such a situation is to have an incomprehensibly large budget far bigger than the already-incomprehensibly large Drug War budget we have. Other programs, some of which may or may not be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion will need to be scaled back (and thus enforced more arbitrarily). Short of that, given the nature of prohibitions on the possession of banned personal items, the only way to truly enforce the law uniformly would be to turn our neighbors and friends into de facto secret police.

Still, under some circumstances, I suppose it’s possible to enforce such prohibitions in a more or less uniform fashion without creating a de facto secret police force – whatever Singapore’s flaws (and it has many), drug use is not something that flourishes there. Part of that, though, is that Singapore is a tiny nation geographically, and another part of it is that it spends very little on many other types of restrictions, such as economic regulation.

Which brings me to my final point – even regulations that are not outright prohibitions can be uniformly enforced only if they govern a sufficiently small number of actors or if the enforcing agency has the very substantial amount of resources necessary to enforce the regulations uniformly over a large number of actors. Again, they are not scalable. If the regulations are to apply to more actors than the agency has the resources to oversee, then the only solution an agency may follow will be to make the regulations so restrictive as to ensure the reduction of the number of actors over whom they have jurisdiction. In other words, regulatory capture doesn’t just benefit the capturing business – it also benefits the captured regulator.

There is, I think, a solution to this problem: terminate any set of laws or regulations that cannot be uniformly enforced without an unrealistic budgetary expansion, and fully fund those laws or regulations that can be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion. Unfortunately, this is impossible in a two-party system where the Executive is increasingly viewed by both supporters and detractors as omnipotent and where few are willing to admit the unrealistic nature of their pet programs.

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

As expected, it’s the “gateway drug” theory v. reality of human existence.

Guess which one sounds more credible…

I do still love Ron Paul in many ways, and I wish he wouldn’t have been mixed up in that remarkably dumb newsletter operation he was. Because then he’d be a viable third party candidate.

Oh well.

Robert Stacy McCain has a scathing post that seeks to permanently douse the concept of a left-libertarian coalition ever being a real possibility, which includes this little bit:

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It’s a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists — the feminists, the gay militants, the “world peace” utopians — are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

Yikes. Now, of course, McCain is being somewhat hyperbolic in his characterization of the coalition of the political Left. But in many ways there is a fair amount of truth to McCain’s fundamental point, which is that the response of the political Left to the economic crisis has dramatically undermined the basis for any theoretical coalition of “liberaltarians.” To be sure, McCain thinks that the entire concept of such an alliance is a “luxury” that never had any chance at success, but the more pertinent issue is the role of the economic crisis in exploiting the divide between liberalism and libertarianism/classical liberalism. This is a particularly difficult truth for me, as I have repeatedly gone on record predicting that “libertarians,” broadly defined, are likely to continue their recent trend towards the Democratic Party in terms of their voting habits. Heck, I even put my money (and daughter’s toys) on the line by making a bet to this effect with John Schwenkler.

One of the things that has happened in the early days of the Obama Administration has been some fairly good (but by no means great) steps in the direction of restoring civil liberties and reigning in executive power. While this is something libertarians such as me have absolutely cheered, the reality is that these issues were a major part of what was pushing libertarianism to the left in recent years. As victories have been earned on those fronts, the entire basis for that move leftward is getting removed (although history tells us that we’re not about to see a complete restoration of civil liberties and balance of power anytime soon, either).

To be sure, really good bases remain for a left-libertarian coalition on certain specific issues, especially the War on Drugs. And I still fully agree with the great FA Hayek, whose opus Road to Serfdom describes many of those we now call liberals as essentially misled classical liberals (that we now call libertarians). And that says nothing of his essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative” – still relevant nearly half a century later.

So I still think that, at some point in time, progressives and libertarians will be reunited within a political coalition separate and distinct from conservatives. But at a minimum the progressive response to the financial crisis, with its finger-pointing for the crisis almost solely at deregulation and its use of the stimulus bill as a means for implementing all sorts of pet projects that have little to do with stimulus even under a Keynesian analysis, has brought the economic divide between liberals and libertarians to the forefront in a way unseen for decades.

To be sure, I think conservatives – especially conservative politicians – have played a role in the whole situation, both by saddling us with massive debt in the name of the War on Terror and by repeatedly (and falsely) campaigning on the idea of Obama as a socialist (and thereby turning an unwinnable election into a de facto referendum on socialism). But the fact is that the political Left, led by Congress, is now using this opportunity to implement wide-reaching policies that are anathema to libertarianism.

Simply put, it appears that liberals and Progressives, at least the influential ones, have once again taken up the mantle that regulation is always (or almost always) good, and so is just about any form of non-military government spending. As Virginia Postrel notes discussing the refusal of influential progressives to concern themselves with the effects of the abysmal, horrible, no good Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act:

Unfortunately, once you are ideologically committed to the idea of regulation, you can’t say that a given regulation is bad–or, worse, that maybe doing nothing new would have been the best course.

And this is the problem the rebirth of dogmatic support for regulation has created for any liberaltarian coalition. Rather than consider ways of achieving liberal ends (which are usually shared by liberals and libertarians alike) that may have incorporated libertarian thinking or were at the very least highly targeted, progressive politicians have been choosing extraordinarily broad and intrusive means of achieving those ends. This is not to say that those politicians ever really cared what libertarians thought; only that this route of action has undermined any possibility of a significant percentage of libertarians (again broadly defined as fiscally conservative and socially liberal) becoming intermediate-to-long-term members of the Dem coaltion.

All that said, Will Wilkinson is no doubt correct that all this talk of a left-libertarian political coalition misses the entire point of “liberaltarianism,” which is not properly understood as being about coalition-building:

I think Obama and the Democrats are already in the process of screwing it up. The romance of transformative hope is going to wear off pretty quick as all-but-uncontested Democratic policy deepens and lengthens the recession. There’s a lot of culturally and psychologically liberal people out there who are, and are going to be, interested in a liberalism that actually works. I want to use this time of ferment to work on developing the missing option in American politics: an authentically liberal governing philosophy that understands that limited government, free markets, a culture of tolerance, and a sound social safety net are the best means to better lives.

One of the major reasons I continue to support the concept of “liberaltarianism” is that ultimately I think it can only serve to increase the pathetic influence of libertarianism on American politics, turning libertarians into true political free agents that must be pandered to, year in and year out (if you use the broad “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” definition, we’re large enough a group to be worth pandering to). Just as importantly, it promises to improve libertarianism itself by encouraging a purer form of classical liberalism that is not, as Wilkinson says, “pretty well shot through with conservative reflexes bred by the long Cold War alliance between libertarians and the right.” Or as Reihan Salam notes in a sentence that speaks particularly well to me: “The liberaltarian idea, as I understand, is to start rethinking coalitions that appear to be natural because they’ve been in place for so long.”

Cross-posted at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

Me, elsewhere:

Over the last few months, there has been much finger-pointing as to which particular sect of the old GOP coalition is to blame for the policy failures of the last 8 years and the electoral failures of the last 2 years…..I think these accusations are deeply misplaced – the problems have not been caused by religious conservatives or adherence to free market beliefs, but instead by a sort of “talk radio” dogmatism in which any given issue becomes a litmus test for whether one is a “true” conservative or Republican.

This dogmatism has become terribly pervasive, dominating the party infrastructure and including many of the most prominent faces of conservatism both online and on the air. It is a dogmatism that is in some ways pushed by a wide variety of conservatives – free market conservatives and libertarians, religious conservatives, and defense conservatives. And yet it is also a dogmatism with which large elements of each of those groups take significant umbrage.

In and of itself, though, a little dogmatism is not necessarily a unique hindrance to a political party or movement’s electability or even its legislative agenda – political dogma has existed for at least as long as political parties have existed, and without some of it political parties cannot distinguish themselves from their competitors.

Instead, the problem with this particular form of dogma is its all-around meanness. Under this dogmatism, dissenters of any stripe are treated as the enemy, regardless of whether the dissenter’s general viewpoint could be described as “conservative,” and regardless of the dissenter’s political affiliation. Wide nets are cast to stereotype anyone who may be adversely affected by implementation of one of the dogma’s tenets. Where a particular tenet relies on a particular fact, and a suggestion is made that the fact is inaccurate, the personal loyalties of the questioner are called into question – even if the fact is demonstrably wrong.

What’s important here isn’t that GOP dogmatism (or political dogmatism more generally) is overly ideological – quite the opposite, actually. Instead, the problem is that it doesn’t recognize its lack of a firm ideological basis, turning the individual policy preferences of whichever strain of conservatism is most passionate about a given issue into a litmus test for some imagined “master conservatism.” Because this dogmatism represents the conclusions of numerous different philosophies, though, it cannot rely on the ideological arguments that gave rise to the policy preference in the first place. For instance, relying on principled libertarian arguments for a particular economic policy is not possible when you take a position on social policy that is inherently at odds with those arguments; similarly it is not possible to rely on principled religious conservative arguments for social policy when you take a position on economic policy that is directly at odds with those arguments. In short, the problem with dogmatism isn’t that it elevates principle over the common good – it’s that it is almost completely devoid of principle in the first place, a fact which Conor Friedersdorf seems to get. The result is that this imagined “master conservatism” is forced to rely on arguments that rely on a sense of fear and an “us against them” mentality.

This is not to say that this type of dogmatism is without value – it’s useful as a means of creating party unity and “getting out the base.” Nor is it particularly the province of conservatives – liberals and Democrats most certainly have their own type of fear-based, “us against them” dogmatism. Instead, the problem here is that the dogmatism has become far too pervasive, both in terms of those who insist on this dogmatism and – as importantly – in terms of the number of issues to which it extends (even extending to issues that have no inherent connection to policy preferences, such as whether Iraq had WMD’s, whether global warming is real or imagined, or whether AirTran was morally correct in its refusal to permit a Muslim family to reboard a flight after they were cleared by the FBI).

For instance, it’s one thing for talk-show hosts to rant and rave about “Defeatocrats,” the “homosexual mafia,” etc., since their purpose is not to persuade but is instead almost exclusively to rally the people who are already predisposed to agree with them. It’s a far different thing, however, when that attitude extends to campaign tactics, and/or a huge percentage of “talking heads,” whose purpose is at least nominally to persuade people to either vote Republican or to support a particular policy position.

Similarly, it’s one thing to rant and rave against a particular group as a means of motivating your “base” and maybe to scare the bejesus out of some fence-sitters into supporting your position. It is a far different thing, though, to do this on virtually every issue. So while Muslims, for instance, may be a tiny minority group whose support on any given issue is not worth being concerned about losing, the combination of Muslims, gays, social safety net beneficiaries, Latino immigrants, war opponents, etc. is a pretty large group.

By relying on rhetorical arguments that demonize so many groups and by making those arguments through so many different mediums, this form of dogma dramatically reduces the “pie” to whom conservatives may appeal – both for voting purposes and for purposes of winning support on policies that have nothing to do with the issue on which that group has been demonized. As Rod Dreher points out: “…if you build your political movement around constantly pointing out that it’s Us vs. Them, pretty soon you’ll find that there aren’t too many of Us left.”

But again – this problem is not one that is uniquely the province of conservatism or the Republican Party. Instead, it is a problem that will inevitably arise as any particular political coalition becomes ever-larger and attains a certain level of political success on issues where there is near-uniform intra-coalition agreement; in order to maintain the successful coalition, the party needs to manufacture loyalty on issues where there is less intra-coalition agreement. This is, however, an unsustainable strategy due to the way in which it “shrinks the pie” by demonizing policy opponents, even if they happen to be in the same political party. Eventually, the pie becomes small enough that the party can again find a coherent set of positive principles around which to build, and the cycle will begin anew.

The extremes of this cycle are just exacerbated today due to the way in which modern technology allows politics to pervade so much of everyday life. Eventually, the Dems will face similar problems as a result of their own successes, even as the GOP rebuilds around some as-yet unknown set of principles with a relatively broad appeal.

(Cross-posted at Publius Endures).

“A free market is a market in which property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. By definition, buyers and sellers do not coerce each other, in the sense that they obtain each other’s property without the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or fraud, nor is the transfer coerced by a third party.”^[1] – Wikipedia

I thought it useful to start this post with a definition, just as a reminder that the term “Free Market” actually means something. Moreover, what it means has little or nothing to do with the way the term has been used recently on this blog. Specifically by Justin. Most recently here:

“… doesn’t that mean that Friedmanomics is the cause, not the solution? It’s not like we’ve had some socialist economic system since 1980. “Free markets” has been the mantra and Democrats have been on board for the most part. So then…why shouldn’t we be talking about changing models?”

Other examples here, here, here and here.

Justin is not alone in this regard. Pundits and bloggers declaring that the current economic clusterfork is an example of the failure of free markets abound. The problem goes beyond sloppy semantics or ignorance of what a free market means.

Roderick Long takes this nonsense head-on in the lead essay for this month’s excellent series at Cato Unbound: In “Corporations vs the Markets – or – Whip Conflation Now.” Long takes Conservatives, Liberals and Libertarians to task for the sloppy linguistic conflation of state corporatism, big business favoritism, corporate welfare, and private-public partnerships with a free market.

Of the three, I find his indictment of Republicans and the right most damning:

It is only when the term “free market” is severed from any historical definition or conventional meaning that the current economic crisis can be explained as a government rescue of a “free market” failure.

As a result of this mushy thinking, we are now given to understand the “free market” problem that was created by too much government spending, too much government debt, too much government sponsored credit via easy monetary policy, and a market wildly distorted by government intervention to meet social goals (along with a large helping of corporate criminal fraud that slipped through the existing government regulatory framework) can only be solved by increasing government spending, increasing government debt, have an easy monetary policy and create more market distortions with more government intervention to meet similar social goals.

I am not a free market anarchist. I acknowledge and accept the government’s regulatory role and more importantly, police and judicial functions to enforce and adjudicate contracts, settle disputes, and prosecute fraud. There will always be greed and fraud in free markets, in government controlled markets and everything in between. Criminals and hucksters will always take advantage of any opportunity they can find. But the biggest opportunities for fraud and corruption will always be found in government controlled or government distorted markets. Reference the oligarchs in Russia. Reference the army and party controlled monopolies in China. Reference the housing bubble, the credit default swap scam and the resulting financial fallout in the U.S

Look, I have no problem with railing against the failed Republican corporatism/mercantilism, or the complicity and responsibility of Republican big spending, big deficit, big government, big business favoritism and crony capitalism of the last eight years in the current economic crisis. If you want, you can even make the case that the “new” Democratic corporatism and planned Democratic big spending, big deficit big government is superior because you prefer the beneficiaries of the Democratic version of state corporatism and big government largess better than the Republican version. Fine. They are variations on a theme.

Just don’t blame the “free market.” Free markets had nothing to do with this. Quite the opposite.

^{Excerpted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall“}

Yes…the Chuck Baldwin, candidate for the Constitution Party.

So why not the Libertarian candidate Bob Barr?

Well, it appears as if Paul didn’t like the fact that Barr didn’t show up to his press conference recently…

The Libertarian Party Candidate admonished me for “remaining neutral” in the presidential race and not stating whom I will vote for in November. It’s true; I have done exactly that due to my respect and friendship and support from both the Constitution and Libertarian Party members. I remain a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party and I’m a ten-term Republican Congressman. It is not against the law to participate in more then one political party. Chuck Baldwin has been a friend and was an active supporter in the presidential campaign.

I continue to wish the Libertarian and Constitution Parties well. The more votes they get, the better. I have attended Libertarian Party conventions frequently over the years.

And yet, let’s not forget that Paul remains a Republican and draws a salary as a Republican…even though his views align almost exactly with the Libertarian party.

Folks, I know he got everybody excited, but at this point you have to admit that this will probably be the last chapter in the book of Paul. Oh, their may be some brief epilogue, but this guy so badly squandered all the love and support thrown his way over the course of this campaign season, and what’s left of it he has thrown to somebody who’s sympathetic to 9/11 truthers.

And scene.

Dyre42 in a recent post.

“I think its important for bloggers to lay their biases out in the open. Particularly if one happens to be a moderate/centrist/independent. Moderates are supposed to be more objective than their more partisan counterparts.”

I agree. I think I have been pretty clear about my own bias here, but thought I’d take this opportunity to get more explicit as we sprint to the electoral finish.

To the surprise of no one who has been reading my recent posts and comments at the Donk, I have made a decision on how I will vote in November. I will be voting for divided government. As I expect that the Democrats will extend their majorities in both houses of Congress, the only way to accomplish that state is to support John McCain for President.

For me, this election choice is not really between “Experience” vs. “Change”, nor is it between “Experience” vs. “Experience”, nor is it between “Change” vs. “Change“. This election is not really even between McCain vs. Obama considered in a political vacuum. Since the Democrats will increase their majority in the House and Senate, this election is actually about choosing between one of these two federal government configurations in 2009:

• CHOICE A:
  McCain/Palin ( R ) + Pelosi leading an expanded D majority in the House + Clinton/Reid leading an expanded D majority in the Senate.

  Two Republican reformers with a reputation for bucking their own party and launching bi-partisan initiatives working with a Democratic Party potentially holding the largest single party congressional majorities in modern history.

– OR -

• CHOICE B:
  Obama/Biden (D) + Pelosi leading an expanded D majority in the House + Clinton/Reid leading an expanded D majority in the Senate.

  A toe-the-party-line Democratic President and a consummate Washington insider working with a Democratic Party potentially holding the largest single party congressional majorities in modern history.

That is an easy choice. I am voting for what I firmly believe to be in the best interest of the country. By voting for divided government I am voting to distribute power rather than concentrate power. I am voting to reinforce the checks, balances and separation of power enshrined in the Constitution and not voting to undermine those constitutional constructs. To that end I will also vote for my Democratic congressional representative, Nancy Pelosi, and I will contribute to the DCCC to help Democrats extend their majority in the House.

There is a lot of campaigning left. Is it possible that events over the next few months might change my vote? Certainly. I don’t expect it, but it could happen. The single biggest factor would be if the Republicans look like they might retake Congress. Doug discussed this possibility in a recent post.

I don’t believe for a second that will happen and in fact, I expect the opposite and that the Democrats will expand their majorities. Still, I’ll watch it closely. If I come to believe that the Republicans will retake Congress, I will switch and support Barack Obama for President, despite deep personal misgivings about his readiness to be Commander in Chief. I would far prefer that a leader with his limited level of experience spend 4-8 years as Vice President before taking on the top job. But I will give him the benefit of the doubt on qualifications, rather than vote for a president who will take office with a boot-licking Congress from the same party. That always turns out badly.

Despite the fact that Donklephant has recently become primarily a forum for debate about the merits of the Republican VP nominee (a forum in which I have been an overly active participant), Palin was not a factor in my decision. She certainly makes it easier for me to vote for McCain, as I find the ticket much more palatable with her on it than it would have been with one of the hacks (Romney, Giuliani, Lieberman, etc.) bandied about before the selection. I also think she significantly improves the chances for McCain to win (which I still consider a longshot), assuming she does not turn into Dan Quayle between now and the election. So far, so good.

I must admit I am still nursing deep psychological wounds inflicted by JG in a comment on one of my posts earlier in the year:

“…there are simply too many holes in the divided government philosophy for anybody but yourself to really buy into it.” – JG

That comment motivated me to get more aggressive about identifying and promoting like-minded bloggers and pundits writing in support of a divided government voting heuristic.

Between now and the election, I will be accelerating the “Carnival of Divided Government” compilations posted at my blog from a monthly to a weekly cycle. The carnival offers links, excerpts and commentary from writers and pundits thinking about the topic of divided government. Some sample links from the most recent edition here:

Ilya Somin of the Volokh Conspiracy noodles on the impact of the VP picks in “The Biden Pick” and “Sarah Palin and Libertarianism” (h/t to Justin for pointing me here)

John Babka at Positive Liberty lays out the libertarian case in “Why I don’t want united government” and “The Gridlock Strategy“

In addition, here are a couple of interesting MSM essays commenting on the topic last week, both published too late for inclusion in the last Carnival, but will be in the next and previewed here:

David Brooks, writing in the New York Times has advice for both campaigns, but particularly good advice for McCain in his Op-Ed column “Surprise Me Most“:

“If I were McCain, I’d make the divided government argument explicit. The Republicans are intellectually unfit to govern right now, but balancing with Democrats, they might be able to do some good. I’d have McCain tell the country that he looks forward to working with Congressional Democrats, that he is confident they can achieve great things together.”

Duncan Currie writing in The American analyzes what we might expect out of such a divided government led by a McCain administration in “2009: A White House Odyssey“:

“At the forum in Minneapolis, Senator Kyl observed that some of the biggest domestic reforms in recent decades have been produced by divided government. Prominent examples include the 1986 tax reform bill (passed by a Democratic House and signed by President Reagan) and the 1996 welfare reform bill (passed by a GOP Congress and signed by President Clinton). “It’s an interesting and somewhat paradoxical phenomenon,” Kyl said. With a President McCain and a Democratic Congress, “it might be possible to tackle a couple of big things.” As Kyl noted, McCain is “very unpredictable” and has repeatedly “worked on big things with Democrats.What “big things” might be feasible under a McCain administration? Two possibilities are immigration reform and a “cap-and-trade” system to regulate carbon emissions.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I harbor no illusions that strategic voting for divided government will ever be anything more than a small minority view. My guess is -at best- it can serve as an organizing principle for about half of what David Boaz and David Kirby identified as The libertarian swing vote – so maybe 6% of the electorate could be enticed by this voting heuristic at the most. However, if the election is close, balanced and polarized, that six percent – as a true swing vote – could determine the outcome of the election, as it arguably did in the 2006 mid-terms.

To help our small band of blogging Dividicans find each other, I’ve begun to maintain a Coalition of the Divided Blogroll (located in right side bar of my blog – link here) . Any bloggers or commenters I find writing in support of divided government will be automatically included.

I’ve been flogging this concept for a couple of years and think I’ve heard all the arguments against voting for divided government, both in general arguments and those specifically focused on the 2008 election. In my next post I will endeavor to address the arguments I found compelling. Any readers who would like to seem me respond to specific arguments or issues, let me know in the comments, and I’ll try to address them in that post.

Please note that arguments of the form “Republicans are the spawn of satan and Democrats are the agents of angels.” are actually not arguments but statements of your partisan belief system. I can’t help you with that.

^{Excerpted from the “Carnival of Divided Government 25” at DWSUWF}

As expected, Ron Paul’s big announcement at the National Press Club today turned out to be as anti-climatic as I anticipated:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas called on voters to back a third-party candidate for president Wednesday, rejecting his party’s nominee and offering equally harsh words for the Democratic candidate.

Paul, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination this year, told supporters at the National Press Club in Washington that he is not endorsing GOP nominee Sen. John McCain or Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama.

Instead, Paul will give his seal of approval to four candidates: Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin.

Paul said he’s supporting the third-party candidates because the two major parties and media had “colluded” to avoid discussing issues and falsely presenting the difference between McCain and Obama as real.

“I’ve come to the conclusion, after having spent many years in politics, is that our presidential elections turn out to be more of a charade than anything else, and I think that is true today. It is a charade,” he said.

Paul offered an open endorsement to the four candidates because each signed onto a policy statement that calls for “balancing budgets, bring troops home, personal liberties and investigating the Federal Reserve,” an aide to the congressman said.

Paul said a strong showing by the third-party candidates would express the public’s frustration with the current system.

“I have no doubt that the majority is on our side,” Paul added, citing public opinion polls. “We represent the majority of the American people.”

The problem, of course, is that these four candidates – Barr, Baldwin, McKinney, and Nader – have nothing in common beyond the fact that they are running as third-party caniddates for President. Saying that a vote for any one of them is equal pretty much tosses into the trash can any of the principles that Paul’s campaign was supposedly built upon.

Interestingly enough, though, Paul did say that he received a last-minute plea for support from the McCain Campaign:

WASHINGTON — Rep. Ron Paul has given a “thanks but no thanks” response to a last-ditch effort by the McCain campaign to get the Lake Jackson lawmaker to endorse the Republican nominee for president.

On Tuesday, a day before Paul, a former GOP contender for president, had scheduled a news conference to announce he was urging supporters to back third-party candidates over GOP Sen. John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, he got a call from former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, a McCain ally and former McCain campaign co-chairman.

According to Paul, Gramm asked him back to McCain, arguing that the Republican was closer to his positions than Obama.

”The idea was that he would do less harm than the other candidate,” Paul said.

But Paul said he made it known that he would not endorse McCain, whom he has disagreed with on a whole host of issues, including the war in Iraq.

Furthermore, Paul said ” I don’t enjoy getting two to three million people angry at me.”

Paul said Gramm ended the conversation with, ”well if you change your mind, call me back.”

Yea, that’ll happen.

Meanwhile, there’s another interesting development coming out of the Ron Paul Press Conference. As Reason reported earlier today, Bob Barr backed out of the joint appearance at the last minute. Some reports said he didn’t want to be on the same stage with people like Cynthia McKinney, but it appears that the story is even weirder than that.

By the way, here’s the video of Paul’s announcement:

The Republican Party in Texas is concerned it may lose control of the state House in this or the next election. Republicans currently occupy 79 seats and the Democrats 71. The House handles the redistricting for the state, including Congressional districts.  A political party’s electoral fortunes depend on how creatively a political party draws the political maps.

Republican Suzanna Hupp, a former state House member, called up Libertarians in three particularly close races and asked them to drop out. She felt that without the Libertarians, the Republican candidate would pick up the votes and win the election.

To no one’s surprise, except Hupp’s and whichever Republicans she conspired with, the Libertarians refused to drop from the race. It is surprising that she considers the Libertarian Party as a Republican lapdog to rollover as needed. Third party candidates rarely have expectations to win, but they do believe in elections as a forum. Hupp may do well to check out the differences in the two parties’ platforms next time.

One of the Libertarians said that while Hupp did not directly offer board seats on local commissions, it was left open as a possibility. Hupp denied anything of the sort.

Wes Benedict, head of the Libertarian Party for Texas, dismissed the Republican requests for Libertarians to drop out. “Republicans need to earn those votes,” Benedict said.

(For more foolish stories visit Foolocracy.com)

Will Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr be a threat to John McCain? Apparently, McCain doesn’t think so. Often, the two major parties will try to deal with third party threats by knocking the third-party challenger off the ballot in as many states as possible. For instance, Democrats tried to block Ralph Nader’s ballot access in 18 states in 2004.

But the McCain campaign is just flat-out ignoring Barr, even refusing to comment on the Libertarian. This is probably the right course of action. The Libertarian Party is no fly-by-night group and has secured ballot access for the candidate in 48 of the 50 states for every presidential election since 1988. Challenging the Libertarians would not only be a waste of money but would give publicity to Barr.

As for Barr himself, I just don’t see him being a significant threat to McCain. Other than his sanctimonious performance during the Bill Clinton impeachment and his deplorable association with racist organizations, Barr is not the kind of guy who’s spent a career in the spotlight. Is anyone getting excited about a Bob Barr candidacy?

I question why the Libertarians even nominated the guy given that he was once a major proponent of the War on Drugs, a backer of the Iraq war and a supporter of the Patriot Act. Until recently, Barr was nothing more than a rubberstamping Republican. You want to talk flip flops? Let’s talk Bob Barr. He may give the Libertarians a “known” name at the top of their ballot but anyone who buys that this guy is worth voting for is either desperate for a justifiable protest vote or is completely incognizant of Barr’s career.

McCain may have to deal with Barr more directly in the future. But, for now, ignoring him is the right choice.

The Carnival of Divided Government (CODGOV) is a monthly compilation of writing selected from around the blogosphere and main stream media. Posts, columns, and essays are selected that relate to the single topic of government divided between the major parties. The carnival offers links, excerpts and commentary from and about writers both pro and con, who are thinking and writing about the topic.

About a week ago JG commented on one of my posts with this:

“…there are simply too many holes in the divided government philosophy for anybody but yourself to really buy into it.”

Well, that kind of stuck in my craw, so although I’ve generally not cross-posted or linked the Carnival at Donklephant, I’m making an exception this month.

One point – I harbor no illusions that strategic voting for divided government will ever be a majority view. My guess is -at best- it can serve as an organizing principle for about half of what David Boaz and David Kirby identified as “The libertarian swing vote” – so maybe 6% of the electorate could be enticed by this voting heuristic. However, if the electorate in general remains roughly balanced and polarized, that six percent – as a true swing vote – could and would determine the outcome of national elections, as they arguably did in the 2006 mid-terms.

That said, a few links from the this month’s compilation:

• Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post – “A Vote for McBama“
• Clive Crook at The Atlantic – “The Lures of Divided Government“
• John Fund at the Wall Street Journal – “No, McCain Isn’t Doomed“
• Daniel Larison at Eunomia – “Goodbye Filibuster“.
• Jason Zengerle at The New Republic – “Vote McClain, Vote Gridlock“.
• Dick Polman at the Philadelphia Inquirer – “What will it take?“.
• Laura Ebke at Red State Eclectic – “Voting for Divided Government – maybe“.

I’ll conclude with this from Donklephant commenter Jenny responding to Alan’s last post on disaffected Clinton supporters:

“I was a Hillary supporter. I have decided that I will vote, but not vote for either Obama or McCain. Please do not educate me that the country is at stake if GOP is elected. I know that. I also know that history has proven again and again one party’s control of three branches has always been a bad thing…“

So there you go Justin, proof positive that I’m not the only one voting for divided government.

There are at least two of us.

The July CODGOV edition of is linked here.

The complete series linked here.