Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

The Constitutionality of Obamacare: Liberals Still Don’t Get It

In my post on Sunday, I talked about how, prior to last week and the arguments before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of Obamacare, liberals just didn’t understand that there are real constitutional concerns about Obamacare.  And after reading Ezra Klein’s column in The Washington Post (here), it is obvious that at least some liberals still don’t understand.*

You can tell that Mr. Klein doesn’t understand from his first sentence: 

“Of all the arguments being waged over the Affordable Care Act … the one dominating the Supreme Court last week is perhaps the most conceptually trivial.”

Mr. Klein goes on to list three ways, other than Obamacare, that health care could have been provided.  Among them are a government-provided, single-payer plan a la Medicare and Representative Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) tax credits for buying private health insurance. 

Mr. Klein says that increasing taxes and providing Medicare-for-all would clearly be okay under the Constitution, and I think he is probably right.  He says the same for Paul Ryan’s tax credit plan, which he also says “is essentially indistinguishable from the mandate [in Obamacare].”  He quotes William Gale of the Tax Policy Center:

“‘The economics of saying you get a credit if you buy insurance and you don’t if you don’t [Rep. Ryan’s plan] are not different than the economics of saying you pay a penalty if you don’t buy insurance and you don’t if you do [Obamacare].’”

But what Mr. Klein misses is that the way things are done matters.  Process counts.  Conservatives believe the Constitution makes a difference.  But Mr. Klein doesn’t understand:

“Of course, this battle isn’t really about the constitutionality of the individual mandate. …

The real fight is over whether the Affordable Care Act should exist at all. … The argument against the individual mandate is a pretext to overturn Obamacare.”

Except it’s not.  Mr. Klein argues that the fact the constitutionality of the mandate was not raised in Massachusetts, when Massachusetts passed a state mandate to buy health insurance in the mid-2000s, shows that constitutionality is not the real problem with the mandate.  Actually, his comments show how badly he is missing the point.  Under our federal system, there is no federal constitutional problem with an individual state passing a mandate to buy health insurance.  States have the authority to do that under the U.S. Constitution.**  It’s the federal government thatmay not.  Just because something is unconstitutional when the federal government does it, doesn’t mean it is unconstitutional when a state government does it.

What Mr. Klein apparently doesn’t understand, and what so many liberals miss about conservatives, is that, for us, process matters.  Proper procedure counts.  We believe that the Constitution is not just a limit on what the government does, but it is also a limit on how the government does what it does.  Many liberals don’t get that, but it is critical to conservatives.  And it is a big difference between conservatives and liberals.***

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* Even though Mr. Klein’s column was published on Saturday, I did not see it until Monday,

** Whether they have it under their own constitution is a separate question, but it is not one being raised here.

*** Peter Suderman at Reason.com gives one possible reason that many liberals “don’t get it”.  I don’t know if it is true, but it is an interesting possibility:

“What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think. Haidt helped conduct research that asked respondents to fill out questionnaires about political narratives—first responding based on their own beliefs, but then responding as if trying to mimic the beliefs of their political opponents. ‘The results,’ he writes in the May issue of Reason, ‘were clear and consistent.’ Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. ‘Liberals,’ he reports, ‘were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as “very liberal.”’”

Newt Gingrich Is Not a Conservative

Newt Gingrich may have won the South Carolina primary yesterday.  Newt Gingrich may say things about the media that need to be said now and then.  And Newt Gingrich may have positions on certain issues that appeal to conservatives.  But Newt Gingrich is not a conservative.

On January 12, 2012, I talked about President Obama’s “recess” appointments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the NLRB, and I criticized Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page for missing the importance of process in what President Obama was doing:

“But the key to our democracy, and to the protection of our democracy, is not getting policy right but following proper and agreed-upon processes and procedures. 

… Our liberties are protected by making sure those who govern us follow the processes and procedures that have been established for running our government.”

Respecting process in government and understanding that the means are important than the ends is one of the ultimate conservative positions.  It is, in my opinion, one of the key differences between conservatives and liberals. 

I strongly criticized President Obama when, two years ago, he took the occasion of a State of the Union address to criticize the Supreme Court for its decision in Citizens United v. FEC.  The President directly attacked the justices of the Supreme Court, with congressional Democrats standing and cheering all around them.  It was almost as if the President was trying to physically intimidate the Supreme Court.  It was a terrible abuse of the State of the Union address and a disrespect for proper process in our constitutional system.

Which brings me to Newt Gingrich.  In December Mr. Gingrich said that, if Congress doesn’t like a decision that a court makes, Congress could subpoena the judge to testify before Congress to explain the decision and that, if the judge did not want to come, the Capitol police or a federal marshal could be sent to force him or her to appear.

Mr. Gingrich also said that, if the Supreme Court made a decision the President did not like, the President could just ignore it.  And that courts which make decisions that are unacceptable could be abolished.  Mr. Gingrich tries to claim there is historical precedent for this last idea, saying that Thomas Jefferson did it in 1802.  Except that what President Jefferson did was to abolish courts that had been established in the last few days of the John Adams administration (the famous “midnight judges”) and to do it before they decided any cases.  He did not abolish courts because he disapproved of specific decisions.

Mr. Gingrich’s comments about subpoenaing judges, ignoring decisions of the Supreme Court and abolishing courts are not those of a conservative, of somebody who respects the Constitution and who understands how all the parts of it work together to protect our liberties.

The Constitution provides for three branches of government, each with a specific role to play in our government.  Clearly, there are judges who make bad decisions and there are courts who overstep their proper role.  But the way to respond is by following the Constitution, not ripping it up.  If we want to preserve our liberties and protect our freedom, there are procedures to follow and processes to respect.  Conservatives understand that.  Newt Gingrich doesn’t seem to.  Which means Newt Gingrich is not a conservative.

The Missing Middle In the U.S. Senate; And Raising the Debt Ceiling

Thursday’s Wall Street Journal had an article by Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina arguing for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.  No surprise there, you might say.  Senator DeMint is a conservative and a Tea Partier.  It’s what you would expect.  Except that Senator DeMint’s co-author was – Olympia Snowe.*  In fact, all 47 Republican senators are co-sponsoring the proposed amendment.

Which points to an important fact about Congress today, and especially the Senate.  According to an article by Jay Cost in December of 2009, when he was still at RealClearPolitics.com, in the 110th Congress (and, I am sure, the 112th), all Republican senators, every single one of them, were to the right of all of the Democratic senators.  (The alternative phrasing of this sentence is that all Democratic senators are to the left of all Republican senators, even the ladies from Maine.)  As Mr. Cost said:  “[T]here used to be a sizeable ideological overlap between the two parties in the Senate. It no longer exists.”  But this isn’t, as the mainstream media would have it, just because there are no moderate Republicans any more.  There aren’t any Democrats in the middle, either.  Mr. Cost again:  “Put simply, the Senate parties have become ideologically polarized.” [italics in original]

What this means is that the talks this weekend on how to address the deficit and raise the debt ceiling are going to be difficult.

The solution, if they can reach one, is going to require less spending in the future, including less spending than current trends would forecast on entitlement programs, including Medicare.  And government needs to collect more revenue, i.e., more taxes.

The way to do the former is to change the way services are provided and/or paid for, so people can get what they need at lower cost to the government.  I think this can be done by figuring out ways to get people involved in the process.  Unfortunately, Democrats, believing that government knows best, think more government controls is the answer.  It isn’t, but that is a post for another day.  In any case, entitlement programs need to be modified because they need to cost less.  Those who don’t want to admit this, either because they think we can afford to just want to spend and spend or because they want to keep the political issue alive to beat Republicans with in 2012, need to be told that they are wrong and that the country comes before politics.

The way to do the latter is simple.  It’s not raising rates.  We can’t be sure raising rates will really get all that much more money – because people will figure out ways to avoid paying those higher rates.  The answer is to get rid of some of those stupid tax credits, deductions, and subsidies that give special tax treatment to all kinds of corporations and people and special interest groups.  We don’t have to raise rates.  We just have to broaden the tax base, get it back to where it ought to be.  And if people claim that this is a tax increase and Republicans can’t support tax increases, ignore them.  Because voters aren’t that dumb – and the country comes first.

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Olympia Snowe and Jim DeMint, “The Only Reform That Will Restrain Spending,” The Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2011.

The Left Coast’s Definition of Choice

Earlier this year, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that, basically, outlawed Happy Meals.*  Now, there will be an initiative on the ballot in San Francisco in November that would make it illegal, without any exception, to circumcise male babies.**

I assume on the other hand, that choice is preferred position by far in San Francisco when it comes to abortion.

So, it would appear that, in at least certain parts of the left coast, the only time parents will have a choice about their child, is before it’s born.  You can choose whether to have it, but once it’s born, people in San Francisco aren’t going to let you choose what he or she should eat or, if this initiative passes, whether a boy can be circumcised.

An interesting approach on "the right to choose".

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PS Obviously, one response is that some would let you choose Happy Meals and circumcision, but not whether to have the baby.  I’ll let others make that comment.

* The ordinance doesn’t ban Happy Meals by name.  What it does is to ban toys from being given away with meals where the food and drink either exceed 600 calories or more than 35% of the calories come from fat.

** “Against the cut,” The Economist, May 21, 2011; Diane Cole, “Circumcision Save My Life,” The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2011.

Why Liberals Love High-Speed Rail

In last week’s Newsweek George Will analyzed why so many liberals (a/k/a progressives) like trains.  He concluded that liberals like trains

“[b]ecause progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.

… [T]he real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they – unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted – are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

Time was, the progressive cry was ‘Workers of the world unite!’ or ‘Power to the people!’ Now it is less resonant: ‘All aboard!’”

But I think Mr. Will may be trying too hard.  I don’t think that for most liberals the reasons are quite as dramatic as Mr. Will says.  Rather, I think the answer is because trains are so – European.

When Americans, or at least liberal/progressive Americans of a certain age, think of trains, they don’t think of the Empire Builder or El Capitan or Broadway Limited.  They think of the trains they rode on their trips to Europe after college and when they were young.  They would buy a Eurorail pass, and they would crisscross Europe (or at least the western part of it) on “holiday” (as they say in Europe).  Gas cost too much (because of taxes), planes were ridiculously expensive (because airline deregulation came so much later to Europe), and the trains ran on time.

It was fantastic – and so sophisticated (spelled “European”).  Back home we had these big old cars and pollution and sprawl.  It was so boring and wasteful, and it wasn’t European.

Except that things are different here because, well, we live in a different country.  In Europe gas costs more than double what it costs here.  People live closer together.  And there are more people in less space, which makes trains more practical there.

The fact that the trains in Europe don’t pay for themselves doesn’t matter for American tourists because we don’t stay long enough to pay the taxes that pay the subsidies.  And for that matter, the trains, at least in Germany, don’t run on time anymore.  Deutsche Bahn is now known not for punctuality but for being late (assuming it runs at all, which in some cases it didn’t this past winter).

But high-speed rail combines nostalgia for the train trips of one’s youth with “European sophistication” to become a slam dunk for liberals/progressives.  And the fact that federal and state governments, which don’t seem to have a lot of spare money right now, are going to pay to build it and will then have to pay to subsidize it, because it will lose money, doesn’t matter.  High-speed rail just feels good.

Ronald Reagan and the Liberals Who Now Claim to Like Him

Tomorrow is Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday, and the amazing thing for those of us who lived through his presidency is all the nice things that liberals and Democrats are saying about him.  Even President Obama, the epitome of the intellectual/liberal/post-American greatness wing of the Democratic Party, wrote an Op-Ed for USA Today praising Ronald Reagan.

I wonder how many politicians there are in Washington today who are more different than Ronald Reagan than President Obama.  Consider this excerpt from an article by Anthony Dolan:

“In office only two weeks Ronald Reagan had his 70th birthday party in the Roosevelt Room of the West Wing just across from the oval office. He walked in with Nancy Reagan, saw the cake and began as his staff knew he would.

‘Say, listen, I know some really funny stories about 70-year-old men’- and here he peered down at his wife who was vigorously shaking her head and then added – ‘but I don't think I'm going to get the chance’ -- and the staff began to laugh and Mrs. Reagan nodded emphatically – ‘to tell you any of them.’

Among the disadvantages of not having Ronald Reagan around for his own centennial is missing the jokes he would have made about it.

‘There are three ages of man,’ Reagan liked to say: ‘Youth, middle-age, and ‘You-look-terrific.’”

Can anybody envision Barack Obama making jokes about himself like that – and having fun doing it?

But beyond that, to properly remember Ronald Reagan, you have to remember the things that drove the liberals crazy, because those things were so much of the real Ronald Reagan.  Paul Kengor reminds us of what Ronald Reagan said about the Soviet Union and what media thought about it:

“On Jan. 29, 1981, barely a week into Ronald Reagan's presidency, the world got a no-nonsense education on how Reagan's America would differ from that of his predecessor. During the first press conference, ABC's Sam Donaldson asked the new president about Moscow's aims and intentions. Throwing diplomatic double-speak to the wind, Reagan calmly explained that the Soviet leadership had ‘openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat.’

Reagan continued, explaining that the Soviets considered their relativistic behavior “moral, not immoral.’  This was something that the United States needed to ‘keep … in mind’ when doing ‘business’ with Moscow.  The assembled Washington press corps responded with what National Security Adviser Richard V. Allen described as ‘an audible gasp.’”*

But most of all, remember what President Reagan said in Berlin, at the Brandenburg Gate, on June 12, 1987:

“And now -- now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. …

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty -- the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.

There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev -- Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

How many of those liberals, how many of those Democrats, praising Ronald Reagan today praised him for saying that in 1987?  To ask the question is to answer it.  They thought it was foolish and unnecessarily provocative.  Or at least they would have if they had realized he really meant it.

Let’s face it.  Democrats and liberals did not like Ronald Reagan when he was President, and they are saying good things about him today because history proved him right.

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* Paul Kengor, “When Reagan Spoke Truth to Soviet Power,” The Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2011.

On Richard Nixon’s 98th Birthday

As Republicans around the country prepare to celebrate Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday on February 6, let me mark the 98th birthday of our 37th president, Richard Nixon.  We were watching a show about a book on Dwight Eisenhower, and there was a lot of discussion about how history’s view of President/General Eisenhower has changed.  When President Eisenhower left office he was viewed as an uninvolved and ineffectual president.  Since he left office, this view has changed dramatically, and President Eisenhower is now ranked, in those polls historians do, as one of our better presidents. 

With today being Richard Nixon’s birthday, the question arose, will Richard Nixon ever be rehabilitated?  Will history’s view of him ever change?  My answer:  Probably not, for several reasons.

First, Richard Nixon has no natural constituency.  To be rehabilitated, you need a constituency, a group who supports you and who will work to change history’s view of you.  Richard Nixon has no such group.  The Republican Party, which is mostly conservative today, has its hero in Ronald Reagan.  They don’t need Richard Nixon, and many (most-?) of them don’t like many of President Nixon’s domestic policies, especially in economic matters.

The left and the liberals haven’t liked Richard Nixon since Alger Hiss.  Many of President Nixon’s policies were moderate, if not bordering on liberal.  Consider, for example, affirmative action in the construction trades, the Environmental Protection Agency, Title IX, and more.  But the Democrats and the left will look at Richard Nixon not getting us out of Vietnam fast enough (and actually trying to give the South Vietnamese a chance), campaigning on behalf of the “silent majority,” etc., and will, therefore, never see Richard Nixon as anything other than their arch-foe.

Obviously, historians can lead a re-appraisal of a president, but academia today is, and for at least the foreseeable future will be, dominated by the liberal left.  If history is written by the winners, Richard Nixon will not be rehabilitated because he has lost in academia.

President Nixon’s reputation will also continue to be damaged by those tapes, the tapes which ultimately forced his resignation.  Bits and pieces of the tapes are continually being released, and they make him look as bad as any of us would look if our private thoughts and conversations were released for public consumption.  I don’t know if Richard Nixon could have saved his presidency by destroying the tapes when their existence first became public, but he might have helped his future reputation by doing so.

But should President Nixon’s reputation be rehabilitated?  Certainly, I disagree with many of his economic policies.  Wage and price controls were a terrible idea, but maybe each generation or two needs to be reminded of how bad they are so they won’t adopt them again. 

Reaganites do not like President Nixon’s policies vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.  They like President Reagan’s “we win-you lose” policy for the Cold War.  But the Soviet Union wasn’t ready to be beaten in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.  Détente was what we could do at that time.

Richard Nixon is always given credit for opening relations with China, but did he do anything else?  Yes.  A couple of examples:  For all of the talk by Democrats of civil rights, etc., it was Richard Nixon’s Justice Department that got the schools in the South desegregated.  It wasn’t John F. Kennedy, and it wasn’t Lyndon Johnson.  It was Richard Nixon, with his “southern strategy” and all, who got the job done.

When Israel’s existence was threatened by surprise attacks of Egypt and Syria during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, it was Richard Nixon who immediately came to Israel’s aid, sending them the arms they needed to save themselves.  Supporters of Ronald Reagan should compare President Nixon’s immediate help of Israel with President Reagan’s late and faltering support of Great Britain when Argentina’s military dictatorship invaded the Falklands in 1982.

Finally, there were the prisoners of war in Vietnam.  President Nixon’s Vietnam policies were not as good as they could have been, and things turned out very badly in Vietnam (to a large extent because the Democratic Congress failed to live up to the promises of support that the United States made to the South Vietnamese people).  But our prisoners came home with honor.  Many of us may not have honored them as we should have once they came home, but President Nixon made sure that they could home with their heads held high – and that they came home.

Happy birthday, President Nixon.

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Note:  I apologize for not including any links.  I want to get this posted today (for obvious reasons), and I do not have the time to add links.

Following Democratic (Small “D”) Norms – The Experience of the Obama Administration

The Obama administration seems to be having trouble with the concept of the people’s elected representatives in Congress actually getting to decide things.  Consider these recent examples:

The version of Obamacare that passed the House in November of 2009 contained a section providing for Medicare to pay for consultations for “advance care” planning once every five years.  When Sarah Palin and others called these “death panels,” the provision was deleted from the bill and was not in the law that finally passed.*  The Obama administration, however, has now used another section of the law, which provides for Medicare to pay for annual wellness visits, to adopt a regulation authorizing payments to doctors for the very same kind of consultation – and to do it annually.  The administration and their supporters realized that this new regulation was contrary to the spirit of what passed Congress, so they have kept it all very quiet.  (No openness and transparency on this one.)

The “net neutrality” regulations that the Federal Communications Commission adopted just before Christmas could have never passed Congress.  Congress held hearings on the issue and wound up doing nothing.  Over 300 members House and Senate (that’s a majority) signed a letter to the FCC opposing FCC regulation of the Internet.**  But FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a law school classmate of President Obama, and the other two Democrats on the commission didn’t care.  They adopted the regulations anyway.

In 2009 the House of Representatives passed a cap-and-trade bill that would have regulated carbon dioxide emissions, but the Senate didn’t consider the bill, and no law was ever passed.  That didn’t matter to the Obama administration, however.  They decided to have the Environmental Protection Agency do what Congress decided not to do.***  In logic akin to that of many liberals (n/k/a “progressives”), the Miami Herald justified this as follows:

“Last week [the EPA] released a timetable for issuing rules for emissions from new or refurbished power plants and new oil refineries, the nation's top emitters of carbon dioxide. …

[T]he announcement angered House Republicans, who will be in control next year. Some GOP lawmakers have vowed to cut the EPA's funding as a way to scale back its regulatory powers. But someone in Washington has to tackle global-warming threats head-on, and the U.S. Supreme Court, hardly a liberal bastion, has decided that it should be the EPA.” [Emphasis in original]

Contrary to what the Miami Herald said, however, “someone” did not have to do something.  In fact, not doing something is a decision.  It is a decision to not do something.  That was the decision Congress made.  But because the Obama administration did not like that decision, they had the bureaucracy do what Congress wouldn’t do.

Speaking of Congress, the Obama administration wasn’t happy with some of the new people that the voters elected to Congress on election day, so the Administration decided to deal with the Congress that had been elected over two years ago and which had been repudiated by the voters on November 2.  Repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell”.  Approval of the New Start treaty.  In both cases the Administration was apparently afraid that the representatives the voters had just elected might not vote the way the Administration wanted.  So the Administration got retiring and defeated legislators to help pass things that might not have been approved by the people who won the election.

Some people commented that these decisions of the lame-duck Congress were okay because they were bipartisan.  Republicans voted for them, too.  But that’s not the point.  The point is we had an election, and elections are supposed to have consequences.  After an election, decisions are supposed to be made by the people we elected, not the ones who lost or who are retiring but are still in office for a few more weeks.

Beyond this, why did the Democrats in charge of Congress only call these bills for a vote after the election?  They probably did it because they were afraid that, if they voted for them before the election, the voters would not like it.  But the voters defeated them anyway, even without those votes.  Still, the Democrats came back to pass them in spite of the election and in spite of the fact they did not have the political courage to vote for them before the election.

Democrats will claim that I am just being a sore loser (or sore winner, given the results of the November election).  They will say that if the situation was reversed and the Republicans were doing the same thing, I would not object.  Obviously, there would be Republicans who would not object (see here), but I hope I would not be among them.  For conservatives (or at least some conservatives), the protection of our liberty lies in process.  Following proper process is more important, in the long run, than passing proper policies.  Policies can be changed, but the safeguards of process, once violated, can be hard to reestablish.  The means is more important than the ends.  The end does not justify the means.

What the Obama administration did, and what Congress did, was legal.****  Whether it was proper is another question.

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* I do not think the references to this advance planning as “death panels” are accurate.  This is not to say that the concept of “death panels” is not implicit in the healthcare legislation.  It is, of course, but it is not in the advance planning provisions.  The death panels come elsewhere, particularly where the legislation provides for federal government bureaucrats to decide whether certain treatments should be reimbursed or not by the federal government.  If you need a treatment that federal bureaucrats decide is too expensive for the benefit it provides, then that decision is going to feel like a death panel to you.  Obviously, these decisions are already made being, by governments and insurance companies, but as the federal government’s power in the area grows, the ability to get around an adverse decision is going to become more difficult.

** John Fund, "The Net Neutrality Coup," The Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2010.

*** I should note it was the U.S. Supreme Court that told the EPA to decide whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were a danger to human health and safety under the Clean Air Act.  However, the Supreme Court did not tell the EPA that they were a danger.  That was up to the EPA to decide that question.  It seems to me that it would have been legitimate for the EPA, in the circumstances, to decide that Congress’s decision to not act was a basis for the EPA to decide not to act either; i.e., to decide that these gases were not, at this point, a danger to human health and safety such that they needed to be regulated under the Clean Air Act.  (For a contrary view, see here.)

**** One caveat to this statement:  It is not at all clear whether the FCC has the authority to regulate the Internet as it is trying to do.  (Amy Schatz, "'Net Neurality' Rules Set to Pass," The Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2010.) 

Note: For some general historical background on lame-duck sessions, see “Lame-duck sessions supposed to be a thing of the past, historians say”.

Another Inconvenient Truth from Al Gore: We Can’t Trust Our Politicians

In 2007 Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize (jointly with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) for his work on climate change (formerly known as global warming), including his documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth.”  

Doubts have been raised about the accuracy of former Vice President Gore’s film, but Mr. Gore told, or should I say admitted to, another inconvenient truth last month at green energy conference in Athens, and this inconvenient truth is absolutely true.  This truth is simple: we can’t trust our politicians when it comes to giving government subsidies, passing special tax breaks, etc.  But let Mr. Gore explain this inconvenient truth in his own words:

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol.

First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.

It's hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going.

One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

Some of us realized this was true, but for many people, and for lots of our politicians in Washington, this discloses a most inconvenient truth.  It is a most inconvenient truth for liberals and big government conservatives because they like to think our government knows what it is doing when it supports things like ethanol.  Some people like to think government is smart enough to decide the best way to fuel our cars.  Others like to think government officials can pick winners when it comes to new ways to do things.  Still others think the government can identify the growth industries of the future.  In fact, some of them even like to think there really are shovel-ready projects the government can fund to stimulate the economy.

But in the vast majority of cases, these things are not true.  Government can pick winners now and then.  It can make the right choice every once in a while.  And liberals and big government conservatives use those examples to justify subsidizing more programs, funding more projects, and giving out more tax breaks.  But the law of averages and the law of unintended consequences eventually catch up with those programs and projects and subsidies.  Money is wasted, and outcomes are worse than if the government had just left things alone.

Sometimes these subsidies and projects are done with the best of intentions.  Other times, as former Vice President Gore admitted, they are not.  And that is another reason why we can’t let our politicians make these kinds of decisions.  Not only don’t they know enough to make these decisions, but based on what former Vice President Gore’s said, they can’t be trusted to even try to make the right decision.  We have ethanol because of farmers and Archer Daniels Midland – and because politicians like Al Gore wanted to be president.*

This is definitely an inconvenient truth.  But it also shows us the solution.  The solution is not more rules or better politicians.  That won’t work.  Rules can’t cover everything, and most politicians are no better than the system they participate in.  The solution, instead, is simple:  Stop the subsidies; stop the tax breaks; stop trying to pick winners.  Because our government – and politicians – can’t do it. 

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* In 2008 there was one major presidential candidate who both knew ethanol subsidies were not good and had the courage to oppose them in Iowa.  The rest of the candidates either didn’t know it or they didn’t have the guts to say so.  It was encouraging that this candidate got his party’s nomination.  It was discouraging that he didn’t win.

The Enlightenments (French and Scottish) and Their Meaning for Us

Last week David Brooks wrote about the Enlightenment ("Two Theories of Change"), and how the different approaches of the French Enlightenment (which is what most people think of when they hear "Enlightenment") and the Scottish Enlightenment relate to our politics today. Let me comment on a few of the things Mr. Brooks said. (The quotations from Mr. Brooks’ article are indented.)

"When I was in college I took a course in the Enlightenment. In those days, when people spoke of the Enlightenment, they usually meant the French Enlightenment …. Their great model was Descartes. … What Descartes was doing for knowledge, others would do for politics: sweep away the old precedents and write new constitutions based on reason. This was the aim of the French Revolution.

But there wasn’t just one Enlightenment, headquartered in France. There was another, headquartered in Scotland and Britain and led by David Hume, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke. As Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote in her 2004 book, ‘The Roads to Modernity,’ if the members of the French Enlightenment focused on the power of reason, members of the British Enlightenment emphasized its limits."

I would call it the Scottish (instead of the British) Enlightenment because so many of those who were part of it were located in Edinburgh.

"[Thomas] Paine saw the American and French Revolutions as models for his sort of radical change. In each country, he felt, the revolutionaries deduced certain universal truths about the rights of man and then designed a new society to fit them."

Thomas Paine was wrong about our revolution. The American colonists believed in universal rights, but the colonists already had those rights, both because their governments were based on the British model and because they were so far away from the center of British power. In fact, being so far from London, new rights began to develop in America The colonists had rights; they revolting in order to keep them once Britain started, in their opinion, to take some of them away.

"Burke, a participant in the British Enlightenment, had a different vision of change. He believed that each generation is a small part of a long chain of history. We serve as trustees for the wisdom of the ages and are obliged to pass it down, a little improved, to our descendents. That wisdom fills the gaps in our own reason, as age-old institutions implicitly contain more wisdom than any individual could have."

Instead of the wisdom of the ages "fill[ing] the gaps in our reason," I would say that what we do is merely to try to improve the wisdom of the ages around the edges.

"If you try to re-engineer society on the basis of abstract plans, Burke argued, you’ll end up causing all sorts of fresh difficulties, because the social organism is more complicated than you can possibly know. We could never get things right from scratch."

Here is where I get confused. While Mr. Brooks seems to admire Burke, during the 2008 campaign, Mr. Brooks liked Barack Obama, who is an unreconstructed Paine-ian. Obama apparently talks about Reinhold Niebuhr, but Obama has, in Thomas Sowell’s terms, an "unconstrained" view of what man and government can do. President Obama may, from time to time, talk like, or claim, he is a Burkean, but he is not governing that way. People like Mr. Brooks get so excited about the way Barack Obama talks (after eight years of George W. Bush) that they miss what his actions say.

"We Americans have never figured out whether we are children of the French or the British Enlightenment. Was our founding a radical departure or an act of preservation? This was a bone of contention between Jefferson and Hamilton, and it’s a bone of contention today, both between parties and within each one."

There is no question: We are children of the Scottish Enlightenment. Our founding was a "departure" only in the sense that we were departing from the English king. Abandoning a king had not been done before, at least not often, so it was radical. But it was a radical move to preserve rights the colonists already had, not to gain or create new ones.

"Today, if you look around American politics you see self-described conservative radicals who seek to sweep away 100 years of history and return government to its preindustrial role. You see self-confident Democratic technocrats who have tremendous faith in the power of government officials to use reason to control and reorganize complex systems. You see polemicists of the left and right practicing a highly abstract and ideological Jacobin style of politics."

The difference is that the "self-described conservative radicals" are just one part, a relatively small part, of the Republican Party, while the "self-confident Democratic technocrats" are in control of Democratic Party, the White House, and the Congress.

"The children of the British Enlightenment are in retreat. Yet there is the stubborn fact of human nature. The Scots were right, and the French were wrong. And out of that truth grows a style of change, a style that emphasizes modesty, gradualism and balance."

The children of the Scottish Enlightenment are in retreat, if that is what it is, only because Barack Obama and the others of the French Enlightenment won the last election. But there are many people, whether in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the Tea Party or no party at all, who understand this truth. Where Mr. Brooks goes wrong, as he did with Barack Obama, is to look more at how some of these people talk instead of what their beliefs mean in practice.