I am no fan of populism of either the left or right-wing variety. In my view, most populist movements exploit voter ignorance and irrationality to promote policies that tend to do far more harm than good. That said, I have been pleasantly surprised by the right-wing populist reaction to the economic crisis and Obama’s policies. With rare exceptions, right-wing populists such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and the Tea Party protesters, have advocated free market approaches to dealing with the crisis, and have attacked Obama and the Democratic Congress for seeking massive increases in government spending and regulation. They have not responded in any of several much worse ways that seemed like plausible alternatives a year ago, and may still be today.
True, much of their rhetoric is oversimplified, doesn’t take account of counterarguments, and is unfair to opponents. But the same can be said for nearly all political rhetoric directed at a popular audience made up of rationally ignorant voters who pay only very limited attention to politics and don’t understand the details of policy debates. On balance, however, the positions taken by the right-wing populists on these issues are basically simplified versions of those taken by the most sophisticated libertarian and limited-government conservative economists and policy scholars. There has been relatively little advocacy of strange, crackpot ideas or weird conspiracy theories. Indeed, efforts to paint the Tea Partiers and others as merely closet racists usually have to rely on unsupported claims about “unspoken” assumptions and subtexts. Most, if not all, of the right-wing populists would have reacted in much the same way if the policies advocated by Obama had instead been put forward by a hypothetical President Hillary Clinton or President John Edwards.
Things could have been a lot worse. For example, the right-wing populists could have reacted to Obama and the financial crisis by embracing the kind of big government social conservatism advocated by Mike Huckabee during the presidential campaign. Still worse, they could have flocked to the protectionism and nativism advocated by people like Pat Buchanan. This latter possibility would have been in line with the anti-illegal immigration hysteria that swept the populist right just two years ago. One can easily imagine a right-wing populist movement blaming high unemployment on illegal immigrant “criminals” who “steal” American jobs. By and large, however, none of this has happened. Given the inherent constraints of popular political discourse, right-wing populists have reacted to the crisis and Obama about as well as one could reasonably hope.
We should not be too optimistic. If the crisis gets worse, right-wing populism could still go off in a more unsavory direction. There is a great deal of latent prejudice and irrationality in public opinion that a nastier version of right-wing populism could exploit. For example, some 25% of Americans blame “the Jews” for the financial crisis. While racism has declined greatly in recent decades, it is still present in a significant minority of the population. Other studies show that large numbers of people embrace a wide variety of conspiracy theories about government and politics, including some that could easily be exploited in dangerous ways during times of time of crisis. In addition, I still think that right-wing populists are seriously mistaken about many important social issues. Like many other conservatives, such as Robert Bork, they often seem unaware of the contradictions between their critique of government economic regulation and their advocacy of sweeping social regulation. Here too, one can imagine some dangerous developments. For example, right-wing populists could take the position that the economic crisis is some kind of divine punishment for our immorality, and advocate stricter morals regulation as a “solution” — exactly the sort of argument that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson made in the aftermath of 9/11, which they claimed was God’s punishment of America for abortion, homosexuality, and feminism.
Despite all these caveats, I still believe that the right-wing populist response to the crisis and Obama is a positive development. Obviously, that’s an easy conclusion for a libertarian like me. But even if you think that their pro-limited government position is wrong, it’s still better to have an opposition that advocates free markets than one that promotes racism, protectionism, nativism, or crackpot conspiracy theories. To that limited extent, even liberals have reason to be happy about the present state of right-wing populism.
UPDATE: Some commenters think that my argument is refuted by the fact that Beck, Limbaugh and other right-wing populists were at the forefront of the anti-illegal immigration hysteria two years ago, and have not retracted their nativist statements. I am well aware of their record in this regard, and even linked an op ed that criticized Beck’s statements from that time in the original post. My point however is that this has not been a major part of their response to Obama and the economic crisis. I do not claim that they have actually become libertarian on immigration issues. I would say the same thing with respect to various other stupid or offensive things that Beck and the others have said on other issues. It is not my purpose to argue that these people are generally praiseworthy, merely that their response to the economic crisis has been a lot better than many (myself included) could have expected.
UPDATE #2: I should note, as a counterexample to my argument, Beck’s stupid remark that Obama is a “racist” who has a “hatred of . .. white culture.” Is it a counterexample I should have noticed before? Absolutely. Does it invalidate my general argument? I think not. Other right-wing populists have hardly taken up this remark or others like it as a rallying cry, and indeed Beck was immediately pounced on by the Fox News interviewer (see above link), even though Fox is surely the station of choice for right-wing populist viewers. Since then, Beck himself has had to downplay this remark and try to pretend like he didn’t really mean what he said.
seattle law student says:
I’m a Democrat, and I think I’m down with what you have to say in theory —
But I would contend that, for example, the “death Panels” line of argument advanced by many of the people you listed above — is a crackpot conspiracy theory. If what you are saying is it could be much worse, then I agree. But that’s as far as I’ll go.
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November 24, 2009, 12:51 amIlya Somin says:
But I would contend that, for example, the “death Panels” line of argument advanced by many of the people you listed above — is a crackpot conspiracy theory. If what you are saying is it could be much worse, then I agree. But that’s as far as I’ll go.
It is a badly flawed and unfair argument. But I think it’s actually just an extreme version of a genuine point against government control of health care: that government would have to ration care and make decisions denying life-saving treatment to many people — as actually happens in socialized medicine systems. In that sense, it is a step up from crackpot theories that have no basis in reality at all.
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November 24, 2009, 1:04 amRicardo says:
The anti-free trade, nativist right hasn’t gone anywhere, though. They seem just as vocal as they were two years ago.
As far as conspiracy theories go, according to two separate opinion polls, only somewhere between 42–49% of self-identified Republicans believe that Obama was born in the U.S. The rest are either unsure or believe that he wasn’t. By contrast, 70% of all Americans, 90% of Democrats, and 75–80% of independents believe Obama is American-born.
Glenn Beck, to his credit, has insisted birther conspiracy theories are idiocy. That doesn’t appear to make them go away, though.
Sources:
Angus Reid Strategies
Research 2000
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November 24, 2009, 1:04 amLongwalker says:
Nice article. Just two comments. When you say 25% of all Americans blame the current economic crisis on the Jews, did the original data give a political breakdown? Such as percent Republican, Democratic and Independent or Liberal, Conservative or Moderate? As to the “birther’s,” it does not matter whether President Obama was born in the United States or Kenya. Since his mother was an American citizen, under the statutes concerning the birth of children born overseas, he is considered a “natural born citizen” and is legally eligible to be president. I may be, to some, a “rabid right-wing conservative” but I am also a lawyer and, in any challenge to President Obama’s citizenship, I believe that, as SCOTUS is now composed, there is no Justice who would find otherwise. SCOTUS is not the Florida Supreme Court.
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November 24, 2009, 1:25 amunhhyphenatedconservative says:
Nice scare quotes on illegals. Can you please point out how they are not, by virtue of being in this country illegally, not committing a crime?
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November 24, 2009, 1:27 amAllen says:
I actually do appreciate one aspect of the birther movement, they shed light on the fact that no one apparantly has standing to ask for proof of birth. From the way the cases were dismissed by Dem party members, opposing political party candidates, citizens, etc. no one can raise the issue. With no one allowed to actually demand proof, what’s to stop someone from being born outside the country or running before their 45th birthday? All they need is a fake ID and the judges seem to have ruled that no one has standing to sue for verification.
As far as the fiscal populism being dumbed down goes, I actually understand it and accept it. They’re talking in short formats to a population that hasn’t been school in econ. Busting out the full charts and equations on radio isn’t really pracitcal. Econ has really been a neglected field for high school and college students, half my grad level econ class can’t apply econ principles to real world macro scenarios because of their background biases. I’d also point out that the dems and liberals I talk to generally aren’t educated in econ or business either. So the dumbed down stuff gets people started, they go online and pick up books that dive deeper into theory and actually turn out fairly educated for it. Worked for me anyway.
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November 24, 2009, 1:38 amDavid Welker says:
The fact that you actually like the simplistic advocacy of the likes of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh shows that your own supposedly sophisticated ideas are flawed.
That a parrot could be trained to explicate the conclusions of your political philosophy is not a good sign.
Libertarianism, even in its most sophisticated form as expressed by famous writers like Robert Nozick begins from fundamentally simplistic premises that fail to take into account the realities of human nature and certainly are not based on a realistic account of human history.
I would say that there really is not so much distance between say, Robert Nozick and yourself on one hand and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh on the other. Your views are only slightly more sophisticated. I tend to find your conclusions to be completely predictable. Your arguments always lead to the same destination. And even the arguments you make are based on simplistic and wrong assumptions.
Do you really think your simplistic argument about how, for example, voter ignorance supposedly justifies libertarianism makes you intellectually more sophisticated than Glenn Beck? It really doesn’t. You are basically on the same level. In fact, in the case of your tired voter ignorance argument and the simplistic conclusions you derive from it, it is at exactly the same level of sophistication of other arguments made by Glenn Beck. It doesn’t take a genius to say X is ignorant, therefore X’s views should be discounted. Adding the word “rational” to the word “ignorant” adds nothing to your argument, but does reveal your wrong view that such ignorance is inevitable.
You know what else is irrational as you define the term? For young men and women to take up arms and fight wars on behalf of the United States or any larger cause whatsoever. But for that sort of “irrationality,” liberty, even as you wrongly define it, would be non-existent. If people can be persuaded to fight wars on behalf of the United States, they can be persuaded to become informed voters.
As you have mentioned, you decided to become a libertarian when you were a teenager. You have stuck with that rigid ideology ever since. Your arguments constitute slightly sophisticated by rather predictable rationalizations for your predetermined conclusions rather than reasons.
Contrast yourself with Eugene Volokh or Orin Kerr. I may disagree with them in many instances, but the quality of their arguments compared to yours is like night and day. I could actually imagine Eugene Volokh or Orin Kerr making an argument that surprises me.
Basically, your arguments are predictable, tired, and lame. No wonder you like Glenn Beck.
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November 24, 2009, 1:46 amMahan Atma says:
Yeah, it’s not like Glenn Beck is exploiting racial prejudice or anything...
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November 24, 2009, 1:54 amDavid Welker says:
Instead, it is better for insurance companies to ration care and make decisions denying life-saving treatment to many people.
That you can say the “death panel” argument is anything more than a crackpot theory says a lot about you.
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November 24, 2009, 1:55 amDavid Welker says:
should be
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November 24, 2009, 1:58 amKirk Parker says:
David Welker,
Even in today’s hellish America, it’s still a little bit easier to change your insurance company than to change the government.
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November 24, 2009, 2:02 amDavid Welker says:
Kirk Parker,
For whom?
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November 24, 2009, 2:03 amMahan Atma says:
Somin Haiku:
I think they’re stupid
But I really do love those
Useful idiots
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November 24, 2009, 2:11 amRicardo says:
As I understand it, to run for public office you do have to sign a statement under oath that you are a citizen of the U.S. Not sure if presidential candidates have to sign a statement that they are natural born.
But it is not true that there is no remedy. If a non-natural born citizen was elected President, Congress could investigate him for perjury and could pursue impeachment proceedings against him. With 70% of country convinced Obama was born in the U.S., most Americans would see this as a waste of time and would punish those who pursued it in the next election.
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November 24, 2009, 2:12 amFlash Gordon says:
I don’t think the populist definition fits any of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin or the tea party protesters (at least you didn’t call them tea baggers). None of them are trying to exploit ignorance or irrationality. They all stand for the exact opposite, it seems to me. You admit as much yourself in that you acknowledge they advocate the free market as the fix for current problems rather than central planning. None of these people are running for any office. They aren’t seeking power over us. They don’t have any power over us. They cannot raise our taxes or tell us what doctor we can see or what health care we can have or not have. They all advocate that we be allowed to make our own decisions about the most intimate aspects of our lives.
Populism pits ordinary people against privileged elites. The people you are calling populists do not set up any so-called privileged elite class as the enemy of the common people. They merely point out that many of out current leaders are elitists who think they can run our lives better than we can. Unlike the imaginary elite class populists rail against, these self-appointed elitists are real and they are doing great harm to this country. The only real populists on the order of William Jennings Bryan that have come along lately are John Edwards and Mike Huckaby.
We don’t have an elite class in America. We do have elitists, which is an attitude held by some people about themselves.
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November 24, 2009, 2:19 amOrin Kerr says:
David Welker,
There is a nastiness, arrogance, and ad hominem quality to many of your comments — not only in this thread, but in multiple threads over the last few months — that makes it singularly difficult to benefit from reading them. I think you might benefit from pausing for a bit to stop and think about how you come across in these threads. Perhaps you could try expressing your views in a more civil and generous way?
Just a thought.
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November 24, 2009, 2:21 amRicardo says:
Glenn Beck regularly rails against Wall Street. That sounds like imputing a position of privilege and elite status to me. And the rhetoric pitting “coastal elites” versus “Real Americans” is straight out of the old Populist playbook.
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November 24, 2009, 2:28 amKirk Parker says:
David,
For anyone who hasn’t mounted a successful coup.
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November 24, 2009, 2:31 amdhlii says:
I would challenge the contention that what we are seeing is right-wing populism. There is a distinct vaguely libertarian shift in the values of a large segment of the population. It will be interesting to see if the depth and breadth of that change is preserved when the economy improves — as it must eventually regardless of the ineptness of our government overlords. That said while the GOP is the prime beneficiary, that appears to be more by default than actual effort to capture it. Democrats keep calling this astro-turf but may want to consider that in November 2008 it was this dis-effected astroturf that put them into power. Republicans are in as much disarray as ever. No GOP leader can seem to get more than tepid support — beyond “the enemy of my enemy is not my enemy”. Fox seems to have the most handle on this — despite administration claims Fox is increasingly less republican friendly and more libertarian freindly. They have a long way to go, but they do seem to have chosen a direction.
As an aside. Mr. Welker might wish to consider that libertarianism is the ONLY political philosophy where humans are not chattel and it is acceptable for two people to behave differently without requiring one to be evil. You seem be claiming predictability as a vice — if your system of values does not provide direction in addressing complex problems I think it is useless. There is no fundamentally “right” decision on health-care. But every choice has consequences. The consequence of even heavier government involvement will be higher costs and less choices for most. It may provide better care for some. If you can not grasp that one of the costs of government control is loss of however little individual choice you might still have then you should not be criticizing Beck’s intelligence. Whenever I start questioning the intelligence of ordinary people someone comes along and restores my confidence in their wisdom.
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November 24, 2009, 2:48 amD.O. says:
I am not following the Glen Beck/Rush Limbaugh shows and have a very faint idea of what they do, so probably I should not comment about them at all. But I want to. So here’s the thought. They are just an anti camp. If Obama pushes stimulus, down with stimulus, if Obama wants health-care reform, down with health care reform and if Obama would pursue free trade they will be against evil foreigners stealing our jobs. Too bad Obama does not seem to have any libertarian economic policy proposals to test that theory.
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November 24, 2009, 2:57 amPerseus says:
Members of both the left and right have loudly denounced “greed” on Wall Street for playing a large role in creating the boom and bust. As for regulating morals, recent efforts at limiting “usurious” interest rates is a tried–if not true–way of attempting to restrain greed.
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November 24, 2009, 2:59 amCornellian says:
Nice scare quotes on illegals. Can you please point out how they are not, by virtue of being in this country illegally, not committing a crime?
Can you cite the statute that makes it a criminal offense to be in the country without a visa, green card or some other sort of enabling documentation? I’m curious.
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November 24, 2009, 3:15 amRicardo says:
On the other hand, Larry Summers — a lifelong Democrat and current Obama adviser — made a public comment that now the problem is that there isn’t enough greed in the economy. People in the private sector are stockpiling cash at low-rates of return instead of taking risks that could potentially pay off big-time in the future.
Nobody here has denied that left-wing populism exists. And unlike Ilya in his above post, nobody has yet offered a (limited or otherwise) defense of left-wing populism so saying “the left does it too” isn’t really a response to the subject at hand. I’m against either strain of populism.
I don’t watch either Fox or CNN so I don’t know whether this is true or not. Do you have any examples of things that indicate a libertarian shift? The libertarianism I grew up with always strongly defended civil liberties, advocated strict separation of church and state, was deeply suspicious of non-defensive wars like the current war in Iraq (which the Cato Institute opposed, for instance), opposed the drug war and supported patients’ rights in end-of-life decision-making. The libertarians I did and still do know did not just express these opinions in a hushed or apologetic tone or say “I don’t focus or think about those issues very much” but made them front and center.
If this is the kind of libertarianism Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are embracing then it is surely welcome news from my perspective. I haven’t seen any information to lead me to believe this is the case, though.
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November 24, 2009, 3:24 amD.O. says:
I am not a libertarian, but I do not consider people to be chattel and very much like that people behave differently. I am not sure what is my political philosophy if any, but it certainly not an economic libertarianism. I like governments playing a role in maintaining and improving social structure, providing safety nets and curbing excesses (or side effects) of free enterprise. In your libertarian views, may I keep mine without being evil?
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November 24, 2009, 3:38 amDavid Welker says:
Orin Kerr,
You are entitled to your opinion regarding the quality of my commentary. Just as I am entitled to an opinion regarding the quality of Somin’s commentary. Just as I am entitled to the view, whether or not you delete it, that your post that consisted of the one-liner “Wait, you mean we’re expected to pay all that money back?” was sarcastic and an unpleasant way to introduce that particular topic of discussion.
I do mean it when I say I find his arguments completely predictable. That is the truth.
Also, I for one believe that a lot of argument is ultimately derived from pre-existing beliefs and that this is worth mentioning. That is so-called reasons are sometimes really rationalizations.
When slaveholders in the South cited the Bible in justification of their enslavement of blacks, this was an argument driven more by ideology (which in this case was a product of self-interest) than an honest assessment of the Bible. They did not read the Bible and find reasons for slavery. They started with the institution of Slavery, which they viewed as enormously beneficial, and tried to use the Bible to rationalize their beliefs. Likewise, when Southerners made arguments about the inherent inferiority of blacks, this was driven by their ideological need to feel superior and also justified in enslaving blacks.
Here, Somin’s interest is different. There is no real economic interest here, but rather an ideological interest in defending the rightness of views that he chose as a teenager. Obviously, while Somin’s beliefs are not as evil as that of slaveholders, the process of defending them is quite similar.
Now, I am not trying to single out Somin or slaveholders in particular. I think this is a recurring pattern in human history. So-called reasons are often the product of interests, whether economic or ideological. Instead of beliefs being the product of reasons, ratonalizations are the product of desired beliefs. This is true of libertarians, conservatives, liberals, socialists, communists as well. Still, I do not think people are equally liable to this problem and think it is more common in some ideologies on the fringes, such as libertarianism and communism, who are obligated to defend an all-encompassing top-down view of how society should be organized, than others.
You might argue that I shouldn’t say what I think is true because of that assessment that I should be more “civil” and “generous.” My view is that one should not sacrifice the truth to these considerations in this context. I am not saying that in all contexts, the truth should be the primary agenda. For example, in personal relationships, it is not wise to always mention unpleasant things about another person that are true. However, when truth is the focus of one’s agenda, I don’t feel it should be compromised.
If Somin finds my comments unpleasant, he can delete them.
Now, maybe you think my perceptions of the truth are wrong. But that is a different argument.
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November 24, 2009, 3:41 amLeo Marvin says:
David Welker,
At least as to this thread I have to agree with Orin. Your first comment was hostile and rude. I usually find what you say informative and worthwhile, so I hope you’ll take this to heart. I doubt this is how you want to be perceived.
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November 24, 2009, 3:48 amDavid Welker says:
Kevin Parker,
It seems to me that if you have successfully mounted a coop, then you would not need insurance, because you can just use the money provided by taxpayers for your healthcare.
Seriously, your argument that one can change insurers is absolutely useless to someone who has been denied coverage for a particular serious claim. You think they can just sign up with a different insurer to pay for their cancer treatment?
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November 24, 2009, 3:48 amDavid Welker says:
In this context, I am more interested in truth than perceptions.
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November 24, 2009, 3:49 amDavid Welker says:
First of all, libertarianism, despite its utter failure as a philosophy, does have some advantages. It does protect some sorts of liberty for some people (while totally discounting the importance of other types).
That said, I don’t think that conservatives or liberals believe that humans are chattel either.
As far as providing guidance for complex problems, there is an important distinction between guidance and providing canned solutions. If you can train your parrot to give you the answer to the vast majority of public policy problems, that is probably not a good sign.
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November 24, 2009, 3:56 amLeo Marvin says:
David, that’s a false choice. If you imagined you were addressing a court, I’m sure you’d make the same arguments a lot more courteously without sacrificing any of the substance.
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November 24, 2009, 4:16 amcatchy says:
Things could always be worse, Illya.
Every single GOPer could view Obama’s presidency as illegitimate vs. a mere majority.
Beck could be openly advocating violence vs. merely inciting it.
Really, the fact that you praise Beck, however faintly, shows you’re either unfamiliar with his record, have no meaningful standards for public discourse, or both.
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November 24, 2009, 4:20 amDavid Welker says:
I am seriously done with this blog. I am tired of the crazy posts by a minority of conspirators whose “arguments” are consistently beyond irritating.
I just wish the name volokh.com were not so easy to remember and type... Also, the high quality of some posts seem to keep me coming back, and I am naturally drawn to ideas I disagree with. I am slightly addicted. Hell, maybe even seriously addicted.
However, overall I have had enough. I am only making this decision public, because that is probably the only way I will follow through with it. I have thought this before. Now I am taking action, through an act of supreme will power.
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November 24, 2009, 4:26 amSteve Jacobson says:
That survey showed that 32% of Democrats, but just 18% of Republicans, thought the Jews responsible for the financial crisis. If you fear anti-semitism, and are equating right-wing with Republican and left-wing with Democrat, shouldn’t your fear be of left-wing populism?
At the ballot box, racism is most obviously demonstrated by black voters, who overwhelmingly block vote for left-wing Democrats. Here again, if your fear is of racism, shouldn’t you be fearing left-wing populism.
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November 24, 2009, 4:35 amRicardo says:
Can you explain how black people voting for Democrats (most of whom are Caucasian) is an example of “racism”?
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November 24, 2009, 4:44 amP Snowden says:
“With rare exceptions, right-wing populists such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and the Tea Party protesters, have advocated free market approaches to dealing with the crisis, and have attacked Obama and the Democratic Congress for seeking massive increases in government spending and regulation.”
These are the same individuals who shilled for the statist Bush. They’re having a temporary change of heart now that a Democrat is in office, but will reverse course once the GOP recaptures the White House, just as Democratic pundits who shrieked over budget deficits during the Bush administration are strangely silent despite the Obama administration’s even more profligate spending habits.
Pundits say they’re paid to say. They’re paid to say it for the sake of undermining the political opposition with FUD, rather than articulating any sort of coherent (or even incoherent) policy alternative. So it’s rather silly to praise a certain set of pundits simply because their hot air happens to agree with you at this moment in time. Coming from you, it also strikes me as somewhat disingenuous, as I’m sure you knew what these people were saying just a year or two ago.
Lastly, for what it’s worth, you should like populism. Contemporary libertarianism is a populist movement in the sense that pits the ‘little guy’ against top-down control by (invariably corrupt) elites. It also shares a border with more traditional populism because, while mainstream politicians sometimes make use of rhetorical flourishes that recall one or the other, they’re both poison to our institutionalized kleptocracy.
“Like many other conservatives, such as Robert Bork, they often seem unaware of the contradictions between their critique of government economic regulation and their advocacy of sweeping social regulation.”
It’s contradictory from a libertarian perspective, but what if they’re not libertarians?
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November 24, 2009, 5:00 amIlya Somin says:
The fact that you actually like the simplistic advocacy of the likes of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh shows that your own supposedly sophisticated ideas are flawed.
I didn’t say I “liked” them, merely that, in their response to the economic crisis, they were better than I expected, and a lot better than various possible alternative paths they could have followed.
That a parrot could be trained to explicate the conclusions of your political philosophy is not a good sign.
Any political philosophy that has a chance of being sold to the general public has to be able to be boiled down to a few simple points. That doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it. Is liberalism reducible to Obama’s campaign slogans? Does the existence of those slogans discredit it? I think not.
Do you really think your simplistic argument about how, for example, voter ignorance supposedly justifies libertarianism makes you intellectually more sophisticated than Glenn Beck? It really doesn’t. You are basically on the same level. In fact, in the case of your tired voter ignorance argument and the simplistic conclusions you derive from it, it is at exactly the same level of sophistication of other arguments made by Glenn Beck. It doesn’t take a genius to say X is ignorant, therefore X’s views should be discounted. Adding the word “rational” to the word “ignorant” adds nothing to your argument, but does reveal your wrong view that such ignorance is inevitable.
Perhaps my arguments are “simplistic.” But they are apparently still too complicated for you to understand, even after commenting on dozens of my posts. My argument is not that X’s (the voters’) views should be “discounted” because they are ignorant. Rather, my argument is that people acting as voters are systematically likely to be MORE ignorant than people acting in private sector settings, and that therefore we should reduce the number of issues decided by government and increase the range decided by other settings where the incentives to acquire knowledge are better. That, of course, is why the “rational” part is important. For voters, it is actually rational to be ignorant and to engage in poor reasoning. For most private sector actors, the incentives are better.
You know what else is irrational as you define the term? For young men and women to take up arms and fight wars on behalf of the United States or any larger cause whatsoever. But for that sort of “irrationality,” liberty, even as you wrongly define it, would be non-existent. If people can be persuaded to fight wars on behalf of the United States, they can be persuaded to become informed voters.
The people who fight wars on behalf of the United States are paid to do so and receive many other types of nonmonetary compensation. No one is paid or otherwise compensated to become a better-informed voter. If it is so easy to persuade people to become well-informed voters just through moral exhortation, it’s a wonder that so much voter ignorance persists.
As you have mentioned, you decided to become a libertarian when you were a teenager. You have stuck with that rigid ideology ever since. Your arguments constitute slightly sophisticated by rather predictable rationalizations for your predetermined conclusions rather than reasons.
Contrast yourself with Eugene Volokh or Orin Kerr. I may disagree with them in many instances, but the quality of their arguments compared to yours is like night and day. I could actually imagine Eugene Volokh or Orin Kerr making an argument that surprises me.
I hate to disappoint you, but Eugene has been a libertarian for about as much of his life as I have of mine. In any event, my goal is not to make arguments that “surprise you,” but to make ones that are right. I should also note that silly (or even accurate) speculation about the reasons people have for making arguments proves absolutely nothing about those arguments’ validity.
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November 24, 2009, 5:28 amIlya Somin says:
“Like many other conservatives, such as Robert Bork, they often seem unaware of the contradictions between their critique of government economic regulation and their advocacy of sweeping social regulation.”
It’s contradictory from a libertarian perspective, but what if they’re not libertarians?
As I explained in the linked post, the contradiction resides in the fact that most of the arguments they make in criticism of economic regulation apply just as strongly against social regulation. It’s not just matter of it being contradictory from a libertarian perspective. It’s a matter of failing to fully consider the implications of their own ideas.
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November 24, 2009, 5:37 amIlya Somin says:
Things could always be worse, Illya.
Every single GOPer could view Obama’s presidency as illegitimate vs. a mere majority.
I don’t see any proof that the majority of GOPers view Obama’s presidency as illegitimate.
Beck could be openly advocating violence vs. merely inciting it.
I’m no fan of Beck’s. But when has he ever incited violence in his attacks on Obama, except in the sense that any harsh criticism can be seen as an incitement to violence?
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November 24, 2009, 5:41 amIlya Somin says:
Pundits say they’re paid to say. They’re paid to say it for the sake of undermining the political opposition with FUD, rather than articulating any sort of coherent (or even incoherent) policy alternative. So it’s rather silly to praise a certain set of pundits simply because their hot air happens to agree with you at this moment in time. Coming from you, it also strikes me as somewhat disingenuous, as I’m sure you knew what these people were saying just a year or two ago.
The pundits in question are mostly paid by radio and TV stations for the purpose of driving up ratings. They’re not paid by the Republican Party to simply “undermine the political opposition.” It’s possible, of course, that Beck, et al., are simply saying what they’re saying because that’s what their audience (at this time) wants to hear. If so, then the audience deserves (limited) praise for reacting to the crisis and Obama in a better way than they very easily could have.
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November 24, 2009, 5:43 amRicardo says:
Nothing strange about the silence if you would read up on the economic policy arguments. There’s been a long-standing consensus that even the most fiscally conservative governments can run budget deficits during wartime or national emergency (e.g. Britain during the Napoleonic Wars or WWI). Keynes — and it’s fair to say that the views of Keynes are fairly influential for said Democratic pundits — argued that it should be similarly permissible to run budget deficits during a severe recession until there is a full recovery.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, which generally has the last word regarding the start and end dates of recessions — dates the start of the current recession at December 2007. During the second half of 2008 when it became clear to everyone that we were in a recession but before the election, most of the aforementioned Democratic pundits were demanding a stimulus package that never materialized.
The policy advocated here is run surpluses in boom years and deficits in recession years. If we make a full recovery by 2011, I don’t know a single informed liberal economist who would not strongly push for Obama to balance the budget. But this attempted gotcha falls flat since the economic situation today (e.g. 10% unemployment) is just a little bit different from the situation in 2005 through early 2007.
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November 24, 2009, 6:22 amArkady says:
@Ilya
Well, Ilya, if you can provide any evidence that the Tea Party folks are anything other than a bunch of populist rent-seekers I’d been interested in seeing it. “Keep your hands off my Medicare!” does not inspire much confidence in their free market proclivities.
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November 24, 2009, 6:33 amBrett Bellmore says:
I agree with Allen, I’m fairly confident Obama IS a natural born citizen, but I’m very troubled by the demonstration that the natural born citizen clause is yet another clause of the Constitution the courts won’t allow to be enforced if the political elite find it inconvenient. (Right up there with quorum requirements, or the enrolled bill rule.) The continued survival, (At this point, the revival...) of the rule of law requires that citizens be permitted to demand that the law be followed even when officeholders find it inconvenient.
I’d also say that only somebody who didn’t listen to Rush for the last 8 years would have thought he was shilling for the Bush administration. But then, I’ve got that a lot myself, just for not despising Bush as much as Democrats thought appropriate.
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November 24, 2009, 6:38 amRicardo says:
The Constitution does not give the courts power to remove a sitting President. That power has long been understood to rest solely with Congress — see William Rehnquist’s book on the history of impeachment, for instance. It seems to me that if courts left the standing issue aside, they would next have to confront the issue of an available remedy under law. Then, finally, there is the issue that Obama has already produced an official document issued by the State of Hawaii certifying that he was born in Honolulu and that this document says at the bottom, “This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.” How can a court disregard that wording?
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November 24, 2009, 7:01 amPersonFromPorlock says:
IS, I wonder if you aren’t missing an important point, that the right-wing populism you’re describing (which I equate in my own mind with the Tea Party movement), isn’t especially right-wing. Rather, it’s composed of a broad spectrum of Americans who’ve become disenchanted with Big Government. That makes the movement libertarian-by-default, not, say, social conservative.
Of course there are social conservatives within it but they’ve grasped the idea that keeping the coalition going means not pushing their views onto other Tea Partiers who won’t agree with them — and those others have learned the same lesson, showing a reciprocal moderation. Hence the overall absence of stridency.
As far as racism, anti-Semitism and other prejudices go, you’re presuming them to be sins of the Right and there are certainly people on the Right who lean that way: but there are also people on the Left who do, and I suspect more of them.
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November 24, 2009, 7:11 amLongwalker says:
The inverse proportion rule still holds in politics. People with the least knowledge hold the strongest opinions. Only someone who never listened to Limbaugh during the Bush years could say that Limbaugh “shilled” for Bush. Limbaugh was highly critical of Bush during the entire period when he thought that Bush was wrong. As to Beck, I have only caught portions of two of his shows. However, I believe that I have seen enough to state that ordinary political critism, ala Bastiat, cannot be called an “incitement to violence” by a rational observer.
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November 24, 2009, 7:27 amjrose says:
With rare exceptions, right-wing populists such as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and the Tea Party protesters, have advocated free market approaches to dealing with the crisis [...] True, much of their rhetoric is oversimplified, doesn’t take account of counterarguments, and is unfair to opponents [...] On balance, however, the positions taken by the right-wing populists on these issues are basically simplified versions of those taken by the most sophisticated libertarian and limited-government conservative economists and policy scholars
If we ignore their hyperbolic ad hominems and scare tactics, somewhere underneath lies an honest argument worth debating. But, you can’t ignore their methods which intentionally stoke the masses (just like strange crackpot ideas do) and obliterate any chance of a reasoned debate.
Sorry, not even limited praise has been earned.
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November 24, 2009, 7:29 amDaniel Chapman says:
No more Welker... good. It’s difficult to read threads while skipping past all of his posts when a lot of the other comments are responding to him.
I’ve been skipping past them for a LONG time now. Surprised he wasn’t just banned.
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November 24, 2009, 7:38 amDesiderius says:
“their advocacy of sweeping social regulation”
cite?
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November 24, 2009, 7:40 amcorneille1640 says:
Mr. Somin,
re: your comment about the “death panels” argument being “a step up from crackpot theories that have no basis in reality at all.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of–maybe even most of–the crackpot theories around have at least some basis in reality. The common practice of conspiracy theorists is to take facts out of context and use them to make vapid generalizations and/or to take facially valid arguments and indulge in “slippery slope” reasoning without providing a mechanism by which the slippery slope is supposed to be so slippery.
Just because they’re all out to get you doesn’t mean you’re not paranoid, and vice versa.
However, you did state that your praise for right-wing populism was “limited,” so I’ll take you at your word that you’re not necessarily endorsing conspiracy theories.
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November 24, 2009, 8:02 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
There was a tea party here but I didn’t go. I tend to hold back from those madness-of-crowds things, but that’s a personal preference.
I see the tea parties, and the death-panel rhetoric, as kind of the equivalent of certain types of temper tantrums.
It’s like when you’re at the grocery store, and you see a small child with a perfectly reasonable request: “Can we get some bananas?” The parent ignores the child’s repeated request until finally the kid throws a screaming fit.
“What! What is it!”
“I WANT SOME BANANAS!”
The parent gets the bananas and the tearful, exhausted child is dragged on for the rest of the grocery shopping.
So you have Joe and Jane Not-a-democrat who see the Democratic-majority House and Senate, the Democratic President, and the news media except for Fox in complete ecstasy, having drunk the koolaid and gone back for more; they’re reading things about the takeover of the auto makers, and the complete overhaul of the health care system, that seem unprecedented to them and perhaps not carefully thought out; and they are very aware that no one of influence cares to hear their thoughts and preferences about anything. It’s like being on a runaway train. Under these circumstances, one does what one must to get the attention of somebody.
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November 24, 2009, 9:03 amCountDuckula says:
And has happens in, you know, MARKETS. The only difference is the basis upon which the care is rationed out. “Death panels” are absolutely a crackpot conspiracy theory that relies on mass ignorance of the fact that insurance companies already engage in this sort of behavior. It is not a genuine point and it stems from the same line of Beckthought that spawns things like, “Well, I don’t know that FEMA isn’t building concentration camps for Obama’s enemies.”
It is extremely disappointing to see someone who is supposed to be a professional intellectual rationalize away demagoguery out of political expediency.
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November 24, 2009, 9:03 amCountDuckula says:
Beck is a perfect example of that very nativist hysteria! Do you even have any clue what Beck has said about immigration?
http://archive.glennbeck.com/realstory/10–04-06.shtml
http://archive.glennbeck.com/realstory/08–31-06.shtml
The only thing more disturbing than Beck’s own nonsense is that you support him without even knowing what he’s talking about. He’s more than willing to engage in anti-immigration hysteria when the need suits. And when Beck says that Obama’s policies are “all driven by President Obama’s thinking on one idea: reparations”, what’s your opinion on that? Legitimate point, I suppose?
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November 24, 2009, 9:18 amB.D. says:
But they ARE racists. MSNBC told me so!
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November 24, 2009, 9:18 amEric S. says:
Considering the profligate Bush Administration, who is being won over by this populism? Certainly no one from the base, who are voting GOP now matter how much the government spends/expands. That leaves swing/independant/libertarian voters. Are there really that many non-base voters who sincerely believe the next GOP administration will somehow have a handle on the size of government? I don’t think so.
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November 24, 2009, 9:19 amCountDuckula says:
Are you aware of the Research2000 poll that 28% of Republicans believe Obama was born outside the United States and another 30% “aren’t sure”? I hate to cite a poll commissioned by DailyKOS but Research2000 is a legitimate polling outfit, no?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/31/760087/-Birthers-are-mostly-Republican-and-Southern
I’d be happy to see a comparable poll if anyone is aware of another.
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November 24, 2009, 9:23 amAssistant Village Idiot says:
If Mr. Welker, and apparently some others commenting, are interested in truth, they might note the very simple truth of how much of their posts they are devoting to being merely insulting, without providing supporting evidence.
IS, I thought it was an excellent post despite my disagreement with portions of it. And perhaps, revealing that merely dropping the names of Beck and Limbaugh into a post provokes vaudevillian rave-offs of the “Niagara Falls!” variety, you have performed an additional service.
“The dark night of fascism is always descending on the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” Eugene had a 2006 post about Tom Wolfe’s comment: here. I don’t think you need to fear where right-wing populism will go.
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November 24, 2009, 10:23 amMark Field says:
I have this memory that, a few years ago, Prof. Volokh responded to a comment by Marty Lederman and said he did not describe himself as a libertarian. Am I imagining this?
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November 24, 2009, 10:44 amleofromlansing says:
With birtherism, 9/11 conspiracies, teabaggers, climate change deniers, etc. do you not think that it already has gone of in an unsavory direction?
What about the fact that some 46% of the American population thought that Sarah Palin was sufficiently qualified to be Vice President (and perhaps president if McCain would have died)?
Look, if you think that having someone lead this country who can’t recite off the cuff what newspapers she reads isn’t “unsavory” then you are truly clueless.
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November 24, 2009, 11:00 amBob from Ohio says:
What a patronizing post. It boils down to “whew, those idiots are not acting as idiotic as I feared” but “they still might because they are really deep down Jew and/or brown people hating racists”.
As for Death Panels, anyone following the new official positions on mammograms? Cost cutting is the sole basis and even NPR personalities are getting worried about the future after ObamaCare.
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November 24, 2009, 11:02 amThales says:
Ilya writes:
I don’t see any proof that the majority of GOPers view Obama’s presidency as illegitimate.
There is some data to indicate that a majority of Republicans believe President Obama to not be a citizen (obviously without any compelling evidence themselves), and thus that his presidency is unconstitutional:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/07/a_minority_of_republicans_beli.html
I might agree with Ilya’s read of tea-partyism if I didn’t see massive evidence that it is indeed frequently accompanied by crackpot theories and *explicit* racism, incoherent paranoia or violent rhetoric and the sowing of doubt about even the good intentions of their opponents (really, is every Democrat not just wrong, but also evil?). Also by fairly naked self-interest: Glenn Beck scares people about the Federal Reserve System (in the absence of strong evidence that the Federal Reserve in general and Ben Bernanke in particular are not committed to controlling inflation and their mandate of price stability), while at the same time peddling gold funds, which are of course driven by inflation and dollar weakness fears (rational or otherwise). I have yet to see a serious economic theory behind anything the tea-partiers and their ilk say. There’s simply no answer put forward, just a naked assertion that everything that Keynes and his followers believed is wrong, when in fact the deflationary environment, drop in aggregate demand and liquidity trap that we’ve all been living through is exactly what he predicted–I see no practical suggestion of a solution from the tea-party crowd beyond the paraphrase of Treas. Secretary Mellon’s “liquidate [everything].”
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November 24, 2009, 11:17 amMartinned says:
Herman van Rompuy Rules!
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November 24, 2009, 11:17 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
leofromlansing, you appear to conflate “unsavory” with “having priorities, ideas, and opinions that differ from leofromlansing’s, and espressing them”.
BTW, it isn’t right-wing populists who advance 9/11 conspiracy theories.
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November 24, 2009, 11:25 amFloridan says:
I find it somewhat disheartening that an academic defends Beck, et. al., as not as bad as they could be.
Other than Hitler, Charles Manson and a select few, I suppose this is true of just about everyone.
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November 24, 2009, 11:42 amyankee says:
Since when is being in this country without government-issued papers a crime? Unauthorized entry is a crime, but unauthorized presence is not. Can you cite any authority to the contrary?
There’s a common situation of a foreign national whose parents bring them here as a child. Bizarrely, federal law subjects such people to deportation even if they’ve lived virtually their entire lives here. They are not, however, committing a crime by failing to leave.
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November 24, 2009, 11:48 amIlya Somin says:
Beck is a perfect example of that very nativist hysteria! Do you even have any clue what Beck has said about immigration?
Of course he engaged in it 2–3 years ago. My point is that it has not been a major part of his response to the financial crisis.
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November 24, 2009, 11:48 amOrin Kerr says:
David Welker,
Unfortunately for you, our remedy for a repeatedly obnoxious commenter is not to delete an individual comment, in the hope that perhaps we will all get lucky next time and the commenter will post something less nasty. Rather, our remedy is to ban the commenter from commenting entirely.
I have warned you before about your obnoxious and nasty tone. As before, you were entirely unapologetic, seeing your nastiness as justified because you are so correct and others are so clearly wrong. If there is a reason why we should continue to let you coarsen the VC’s comment threads with your ad hominem and arrogant tone, it presently escapes me.
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November 24, 2009, 11:56 amGordo says:
The libertarian point here is that it shouldn’t be considered a crime. It should be considered the results of a free market in labor to match the free market in other goods and services, and the inputs into those goods and services.
The opposite result is exemplified by the “Americans would pick lettuce if they were paid $50 per hour” brouhaha a couple of years ago. If Americans (or anyone else) were paid $50 per hour to pick lettuce the price of lettuce would skyrocket. Most people would stop buying lettuce. And the $50 per hour jobs picking lettuce would disappear.
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November 24, 2009, 11:59 amcatchy says:
Well Ilya, perhaps you’re just not very well/misinformed vs. having no standards for public discourse whatsoever.
I don’t see any proof that the majority of GOPers view Obama’s presidency as illegitimate.
“... 26% of Americans think ACORN stole the election for Obama last year, including 52% of Republicans.”
I’m no fan of Beck’s. But when has he ever incited violence in his attacks on Obama, except in the sense that any harsh criticism can be seen as an incitement to violence?
Re: the Obama admin. on giving GM a bailout: “The only way to stop these bloodsuckers, is to drive a stake through their hearts”
The anti-defamation league on Beck: In March 2009, as a guest on another FOX News show, Beck also promoted an anti-government conspiracy theory popular among right-wing extremists—that FEMA is building concentration camps to house “dissidents.”
There are many other examples. Anyone paying attention knows Beck isn’t just another ‘harsh critic’.
The charitable read is that you don’t know that of which you speak.
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November 24, 2009, 12:08 pmYankev says:
It is clumsy and misleading shorthand for an inevitable result of the bill — the bureaucratic rationing of care in order to conserve funds, resulting in the denial of care deemed to expensive to patients deemed to be of little societal value. This has already occurred in the UK, and has been proposed by some of Obama’s advisors.
Will patients appear before an actual tribunal to plead for care? Of course not, and I’m not sure that Sarah Palin thinks so either. In that sense, the term is misleading. But will there be an inevitable denial of care to those who need it? Yes, unless you believe in Santa Claus. The biggest problem with the term is not that it posits and unreal danger, it’s that the term makes people think too literally, reach a rational conclusion that the literal meaning of the term is not going to occur, and overlook the inevitable danger that will occur.
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November 24, 2009, 12:20 pmCountDuckula says:
Immigration decreased significantly since the financial crisis, which is why I found your statement
so mind-boggling. I don’t see how you could make this argument in good faith.
I mean, just because Beck has temporarily found more profitable topics doesn’t mean he won’t return to them in the future, or doesn’t sometimes still use them when they fit his narrative.
I just find it insane that you are willing to praise him, however faintly, for basically not being a hysterical nativist at the moment, regarding a specific issue. You know perfectly well he still holds those opinions. Or is he excused from expressing them 2 years ago because “everybody was doing it”?
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November 24, 2009, 12:21 pmCountDuckula says:
and where in the bill was anything about “social value” discussed? It wasn’t. You’re just making that up.
Please, continue to imply that it is not an inevitable result of ANY allocation of resources, whether by a market or a bureaucracy. It’s ok to admit you think it’s ok to kill people based on their ability to pay.
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November 24, 2009, 12:25 pmYankev says:
That you can call what insurance companies do “rationing” says a lot about you. First, that you have no idea what the word “rationing” means. One might with equal validity (i.e. none) say that collision insurance rations auto repairs and replacement cars. Second, that you do not understand the distinction between refusing to pay for something and prohibiting it. Third, that you prefer decisions to be made by bureaucrats and political pressure rather than by the market. Fourth, that while you realize (as do I) that the market may be imperfect, you do not seem to realize that government’s track record in superseding the market is not inspiring.
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November 24, 2009, 12:27 pmYankev says:
For everyone except George Soros and his stooges at ACORN.
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November 24, 2009, 12:28 pmYankev says:
And yet you chose to compare him with slaveholders and not with abolitionists, who read the Bible with similar aims. But as I do, you sympathize with the aims of the abolitionists, and preferred to associate Ilya with a view that you know everyone would consider repugnant.
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November 24, 2009, 12:33 pmYankev says:
I would like to believe that, but you are not making it easy.
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November 24, 2009, 12:34 pmDavid Nieporent says:
I guess that depends on one’s definition of “right-wing populists,” but it often is; it was a common belief among the self-described libertarians I peripherally associated with. Many of these libertarians might have been more appropriately called paleocons, though, and they were definitely Truthers.
It was a common conspiracy theory on the fringe left, as well, of course.
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November 24, 2009, 12:36 pmYankev says:
No, there is a huge difference between rationing and allocating.
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November 24, 2009, 12:39 pmMartinned says:
All of this would be true, except that the health insurance market in the US clearly does not work. (And yes, I know that isn’t really the topic of this thread, that’s why I’m keeping my response this short.)
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November 24, 2009, 12:40 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I thought it was mostly Rosie O’Donnell’s ilk. Would like to see her reaction to being called “right-wing”.
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November 24, 2009, 12:44 pmMartinned says:
Maybe it is because I agree with him a lot of the time, but I’ve never understood why David Welker should somehow stand out among the regular commenters on this blog. His alleged “ad hominem and arrogant tone” isn’t any more ad hominem or arrogant than any of a dozen others I could name (but won’t). I’d appreciate it if mr. Welker could be left to comment as he pleases.
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November 24, 2009, 12:44 pmbob says:
I thought it was mostly Rosie O’Donnell’s ilk. Would like to see her reaction to being called “right-wing”.
Perhaps you should look into these things called facts before your post?
And your post above, stating that these folks just have a different point of view (or whatever you said) is equally silly. Look people can argue about policy all they want, but when they start creating their own facts (birthers, 9/11 crackpots, etc.) they are just being idiots.
There is a difference.
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November 24, 2009, 12:48 pmYankev says:
I’m sure it’s comforting for you to think so. The bill delegates the authority to determine what treatments are cost effective. In the UK, life expectancy is factored into the equation. Care and even nutrition and hydration have been wrongfully denied to people incorrectly diagnosed as terminal. Where in the bill does it say the delegated panel cannot take those factors into account in creating the standards?
Then in your point of view, supermarkets kill people who cannot pay for food. People have successfully raised money for treatment via charity or family contributions. (Ironically, there are federal statutes that can send doctors to prison for giving free care if the doctor accepts Medicare or Medicaid funds. Perhaps someone more familiar than I with existing health care law can furnish more detail.) But when government is the only source of payment and refuses to pay for care, the result IS a death sentence.
I will grant you there are many flaws in the current system. But the proposed cure is worse than the disease. Try working as hard to solve the problem as you do to demonize those who point out the many fatal flaws in the proposed solution.
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November 24, 2009, 12:51 pmYankev says:
I agree. It does not. Some claim that it worked much better before government got progressively more involved. I am sure that is true but am not informed enough to know to what extent. But I am informed enough to know that the proposed cure would exacerbate nearly every flaw in the existing system, including high cost, inefficient allocation of resources, loss of patient autonomy, insufficient respect for human life, and over-politicization of decisions.
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November 24, 2009, 12:56 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
and immediately after
Ha, thanks for the laugh.
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November 24, 2009, 1:01 pmLeo Marvin says:
It’s like old home week at VC. How goes the quest? I trust you’re post-porcine, and hope you’re otherwise doing well.
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November 24, 2009, 1:11 pmMartinned says:
@Yankev: That’s the problem with the health insurance market. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t work as well as the fire insurance or life insurance markets, except that ethically health is in an entirely different ballpark than the other two. As a result, the choice for the health insurance market isn’t between “market” and “government”, but between different degrees and modes of government. And you can say what you will about “over-politicization of decisions”, but no one ever won an election by letting someone’s granny die, or generally by having “insufficient respect for human life”.
Politics means transparency. That’s what they’re doing now: arguing ad nauseam about the same things that, under the present system, are dealth with by private companies behind closed doors. (Is abortion covered? Mammograms?) Once the politicking is over, there will be a (voluminous) law, that people can sue under the same way they sue over ERISA: Judges applying laws to facts.
Because of the political ignorance analysed so well by prof. Somin, we’d normally prefer to have the more knowledgable private actors take such decisions. But in this case, the relevant private actors are powerless to affect the outcomes: you can’t argue with your insurance company about their decision not to cover something. (Or rather, you can’t argue and expect to win.) And if you have something, the laws regarding pre-existing conditions bars you from switching insurers. The only people who buy or don’t buy health insurance are healthy people, who are as rationally ignorant in their capacity as consumers as they are in their capacity as voters.
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November 24, 2009, 1:21 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
No. The law only bars this in that it doesn’t prevent insurers from refusing to insure pre-existing conditions. Insurers can insure these if they choose. I’ve switched jobs more than once, gotten the new insurance, and found that there was no pre-existing condition exclusion at all.
I would like to see insurance companies cover people who have these conditions but who can show continuous coverage. Don’t know if I’d go so far as having the government make them do it, but if that would stave off more drastic reforms, I could live with it.
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November 24, 2009, 1:29 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
it doesn’t prevent insurers from insuring pre-existing conditions = it doesn’t prevent insurers from refusing to insure pre-existing conditions.
The edit function timed out w/o accepting my edit.
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November 24, 2009, 1:35 pmDavid Nieporent says:
First, if you read that as “inciting violence” then you read A Modest Proposal as inciting cannibalism. Second, he’s clearly referring to GM, not the Obama administration.
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November 24, 2009, 1:46 pmJohn Moore says:
Try starting your own individual business and getting insurance for yourself. You will find it impossible if you have any of a wide number of common pre-existing conditions.
The current individual insurance market is totally broken. Obamacare involves substituting an even worse pre-broken system for the one we have, rather than attempting to correct the problems with the existing one.
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November 24, 2009, 2:00 pmJohn Moore says:
Illegal aliens fall into several categories... so let’s take a look at the social impact:
1) workers. Studies have shown that the vast majority of these are guilty of felony identity theft/fraud
2) dependents of workers — see #1 — they are dependent on felons
3) others — who cares?
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November 24, 2009, 2:01 pmMartinned says:
Fair enough, I apologise for my short hand. My point was merely that the law on this point, like the law making health insurance premiums tax deductible for employers, takes away the power of the private actors to punish their health insurance providers for being bad, thus undercutting the normal rational ignorance argument against government interference.
Incidentally, the government isn’t really doing all that much, certainly not if the public option remains dead. You can’t have a requirement to accept all comers without a requirement that everyone should buy insurance. (Oddly there is no Wiki article on the insurance paradox...) Those two combine to create the closest health insurance is going to get to an actual market. (The only thing left standing in the way of all Americans shopping around for the best insurance deal they can find is that employment link.) All the other things that are in those billions of pages are just detail compared to this.
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November 24, 2009, 2:02 pmJohn Moore says:
The problem with this observation is that it lacks context. Most Americans have been forced to pay into the Medicare system all of their working lives, so in fact it is their Medicare. Furthermore, the modern economy has led to a dramatic decline of company pensions with associated medical plans, leaving primarily government workers as the ones who do not need medicare. Finally, the costs of medical insurance are not pro-rated over a lifetime, so if one buys personal insurance, it is likely to be unaffordable when one becomes a senior.
Hence these folks have no choice but to defend Medicare, as they are as hooked on it as any addict — unless they are so wealthy that we can afford to pay for the medical care out of our own pockets.
So here’s my question: who of those attacking the tea party folks for still wanting to protect their Medicare benefits is ready to pay for their own (or their parents) health care in their “golden” years.
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November 24, 2009, 2:06 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Sure, John. My point was that insurance companies are not barred by law from offering insurance to people with pre-existing conditions. They may elect not to, but they can if they want to.
And I think that is an important distinction. I’d rather offer insurance companies some kind of incentive to stop refusing people who’ve had continuous coverage, with a grace period for the first couple of months for people who couldn’t have gotten coverage before, than make them do one thing or the other.
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November 24, 2009, 2:06 pmJohn Moore says:
On the topic of the post.. why is this labeled “right wing” populism? The tea partiers are angry at the capitalists who have screwed up the financial system and are angry at both parties for all sorts of stuff.
So how are they right wing as opposed to, oh, wingless?
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November 24, 2009, 2:07 pmJohn Moore says:
I agree with you.
The insurance companies do medical underwriting (i.e. pre-existing conditions) because otherwise they would be subject to adverse selection (cf Massachussetts plan). In adverse selection, only sick people, or those with known short term needs (such as pregnancy), buy insurance. In Mass, they found many who would jump on and off of insurance. When they were on, their cost to the insurance company was 300% of ordinary policyholders, a sure sign of adverse selection.
Some “incentives” are in place. For example, if you lose your job, your employer must cover your for 18 months as long as you pay for your cost (+2%) for their coverage; when you go off of COBRA, insurance companies are REQUIRED to sell you insurance. Unfortunately, they can, and do sell it at 400% the normal rate (that’s the legal limit), and are quite adept at avoiding selling it alltogether.
I know this from my own personal experience, BTW. Blue Cross (a non-profit!) wanted 4x the normal rate for individual insurance, which is a crushing burden (family of 2 = $60,000/year 5 years ago).
Oh, and there are subtle rule traps in the COBRA situation, and the companies pass of the COBRA administration to services which do their very best to disqualify you. I was once on COBRA and the service company refused to take payment in advance, while giving a narrow window when payment would be accepted. This was a clear attempt to cause people to miss payments and thus be dropped. I used to send my payments certified mail just so they wouldn’t drop me!
So, what incentive would you give? The one that makes the most sense is the individual mandate, and that causes howls of rage all over the place. The reason it makes sense is that if you want to provide coverage for all, you need everyone to pay for it (big risk pool). Also, it discourages a lot of dodges that would otherwise take place. However, the ObamaCare mandate is insufficient — it would cost less to pay the tax every year than to buy the insurance, so only those who felt they would have expenses (and the minority with reasonable prudence) would buy in, thus still creating adverse selection and driving up the costs to the insured.
Needless to say, there are good reasons for the howls of rage — and we have seen them all here.
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November 24, 2009, 2:17 pmMatthew Bilinsky says:
Soooo, Ilya is ok with know-nothing demagogues advocating “free-market” approaches even if they use the term as nothing more than a buzz-word with no understanding of the actual policies and consequences that certain approaches will yield in certain situations????
The so-called “free market” approaches that Beck and Limbaugh champion are not approaches at all. They are marketing slogans. This is yet another distortion of true capitalism by the fringe right. And if you haven’t noticed, distorted and dogmatic notions of “free-market” are many times detrimental to capitalism.
I don’t always agree with the views of the Volokh bloggers, but I respect and cherish them as conservatism with an intellectual basis. Unfortunately, this post betrays that intellectual basis and I’ve lost a little respect for this blog as a result.
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November 24, 2009, 2:22 pmThales says:
John Moore: I think that observation attributes a degree of coherence and theory to what is on my reading of the available evidence, an anti-intellectual (though this is an attribute of all true populism) and essentially paranoid movement. And yes, it is oxymoronical to in the same paragraph assert the thoughts: No socialized medicine! and Hands off my Medicare!
Though I realize that some of this sentiment comes from La Rouchites and even crazier people, the frequent comparisons of President Obama to Hitler that show up at tea party rallies and town hall meetings (and on Glenn Beck’s show–look around YouTube for his infamous tree diagram purporting to tie the President and some of his advisors to eugenics) are really just insane and detract from any credibility or coherence that might give purpose to the tea party movement. The recasting of Dick Armey as one of their de facto leaders is especially rich, given that he’s about as inside Washington as it’s possible to get.
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November 24, 2009, 2:23 pmLeo Marvin says:
Ummm... because they call themselves conservatives, not liberals? Because pretty much the only complaint they have with anyone on the right is that they aren’t far enough right? Code Pink denounced Obama’s Afghanistan policy. That does mean they aren’t left?
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November 24, 2009, 2:25 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I agree with John here. All of these labels — right/left, conservative/liberal — mean “in my tribe” or “not in my tribe”. It’s why that person a few days ago assumed I was a liberal when I disapproved of his mangling Obama’s name on purpose.
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November 24, 2009, 2:39 pmJames T. Carrington says:
They make money exploiting ignorance, period, end of story. You don’t need to run for anything to exploit people. Nice try though. He’s just “giving to us straight” or is a “plain-talker”. Right.
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November 24, 2009, 2:39 pmAllen says:
So the Democratic Congress has to go through an impeachment to remove a Democratic President if he lied on his affidavit? I could be really snarky, but I’ll just say it doesn’t make sense that the Judiciary is charged with weighing the Constitutional and statutory qualifications of every candidate for every office except the President.
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November 24, 2009, 2:44 pmMartinned says:
No dice. Apparently, it works the same way for members of Congress. If the people of a state see fit to elect a senator younger than 30, no one has standing to sue over it.
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November 24, 2009, 2:50 pmJames T. Carrington says:
Because they showed up to complain only after Obama took office and started pushing the second stimulus package, even as the financial crisis was in full layoff display with TARP and other wonders during Bush’s last months. That doesn’t pass the spontaneous reaction smell test.
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November 24, 2009, 2:55 pmYankev says:
And that’s why the administration and the speaker of the house attempted a few months ago to force adoption of a bill that ran well over 1,000 pages, only hours after introducing a 300 page amendment?
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November 24, 2009, 2:56 pmDesiderius says:
LM,
Not bad. Lots of work, but good work. Good health. As for the quest: some bites — no whoppers yet.
BTW, where’s my cite, Ilya?
= )
P.S.
Martinned,
Welker’s turgid bloviating wasn’t doing your/our side any favors. He’d mastered some of the forms of intellectualism without evidently having ever considered the function. He reminded me of Cahill’s Ausonius.
Good riddance. O for the day when our Liberal Penelope can finally be rid of such asinine suitors! Odysseus is much missed.
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November 24, 2009, 3:00 pmYankev says:
But once the bill passes, these decisions will be made behind closed doors by unelected bureaucrats who do not have to seek reelection after letting someone die. That’s an intended feature of the bug. And in both cases, there is a systemic risk that decisions will be made on policy grounds rather than medical grounds. Yes, insurance companies make these decisions on economic grounds, but this bill will not take economics out of the mix. And the absence of competition will exacerbate, not cure, the ills of the current system.
Not to mention the feature that sends people to prison for not carrying insurance, and the one that imposes a tax on citizens living abroad, even though those citizens may be covered by foreign insurance. Repugnant does not begin to describe how I feel about the whole idea of criminalizing the failure to carry health insurance.
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November 24, 2009, 3:02 pmYankev says:
Bingo, and amen. Except I would have said the current system is seriously flawed, rather than totally broken.
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November 24, 2009, 3:05 pmMartinned says:
1. That would have been wrong.
2. They failed.
3. Even if they had succeeded, the bill would still have been a matter of public record. (In fact, presumably it still is.)
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November 24, 2009, 3:18 pmIlya Somin says:
I don’t see any proof that the majority of GOPers view Obama’s presidency as illegitimate.
“... 26% of Americans think ACORN stole the election for Obama last year, including 52% of Republicans.”
The linked poll, I think is to a large extent simply tapping people’s reaction to ACORN. The only options given are “legitimately won the election” or “ACORN stole it for him.” For some people, answering the the former seems like accepting that ACORN did nothing wrong. If a third option were offered “ACORN stole some votes, but Obama would have won anyway,” many of those who chose the more ACORN stole it option would have picked that.
I’m no fan of Beck’s. But when has he ever incited violence in his attacks on Obama, except in the sense that any harsh criticism can be seen as an incitement to violence?
Re: the Obama admin. on giving GM a bailout: “The only way to stop these bloodsuckers, is to drive a stake through their hearts”
I think it’s pretty obvious that he wasn’t referring to a literal stake through the heart, merely a political defeat.
The anti-defamation league on Beck: In March 2009, as a guest on another FOX News show, Beck also promoted an anti-government conspiracy theory popular among right-wing extremists—that FEMA is building concentration camps to house “dissidents.”
This crackpot theory, of course, long predates both the Obama presidency and the econoimc crisis, and is not a major part of the right-wing populist reaction to either.
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November 24, 2009, 3:20 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Easy ehough to say “broken” because there’s no definition that needs to be adhered to.
Conspiracy theories are popular because once in a while there really is a conspiracy.
“Death Panels” will not have “Death Panel”
on the letterhead. In the UK, they’re called, for the love of God, “National Institutes for Clinical Excellence” “NICE”, get it?
They did their work, fixed up the templates and the ‘crats go about their vile work.
But even the Brits are smart enough not to call them “Death Panels”.
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November 24, 2009, 3:21 pmChrisTS says:
In re. Welker:
I have to agree with martinned: Welker is often sharp-tongued, and possibly rude, but he hardly compares with some others who grace this blog. If he is to threatened with banning, why not ... certain others?
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November 24, 2009, 3:22 pmMartinned says:
Speaking of rational ignorance and populist misinformation. There is aboslutely no way no how that anyone’s going to prison for not having health insurance. For not paying their taxes, maybe, but not for any absence of health insurance coverage. So unless you have a problem with the government having the power to tax (which is actually not impossible, viz. a recent VC post about art. I(9) of the constitution), could you please drop this one?
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November 24, 2009, 3:23 pmLeo Marvin says:
Yes, political labels can be abused that way, usually to disparage someone by association who takes an objectionable position, e.g., the example you gave. (And see the discussion of “Likud” on this thread, starting here.) But they’re also legitimate descriptors when used properly, typically for the general makeup of a group. Do you really doubt most Tea Partiers would self-identify as right of center, or most Code Pinkers would self-identify as left of center?
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November 24, 2009, 3:25 pmMartinned says:
- As I explained above, part of the point here is to improve competition by making it easier for people to switch insurance companies.
- If it is set up right, the bill will establish procedures and substantive rules which can be applied by bureaucrats and, if necessary, judges, to sets of facts. That’s how government works. Not having read the ungodly thing, I cannot of course offer any guarantee that the whole thing isn’t a monstrosity, but that’s a different story.
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November 24, 2009, 3:27 pmJohn Moore says:
How is this wrong... let me count the ways... oh, never mind...
The comparisons are NOT frequent and are made by the fringe of the fringe. On the other hand, the comparisons of Bush to Hitler, by the left, were so common that it was abbreviated to Bushitler!
Glenn Beck connects too many dots — he is a classic conspiracist. He is not, however, the tea party movement, although he is one of the driving forces. His conspiracy theories do not, per se, discredit the movement.
As I have commented before, this movement is somewhat inchoate. It reminds me to some extend of the anti-war movement of the late ‘60s in that regard. There are folks with all sorts of different motivations and attitudes and beliefs. It is overly simplistic to try to “discredit” something this diverse. It is even wrong to call it a movement — it’s more of an emergent social phenomenon.
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November 24, 2009, 3:28 pmBrian K says:
Apparently you are not following the same debate that sane and rational people are...unfortunately that seems to be par for the course of most right wingers on this site.
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November 24, 2009, 3:37 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
They probably would. What they would mean, specifically, when they self-identify that way, I would not venture to guess.
Reckon what definition Brian has of “right wingers”?
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November 24, 2009, 3:55 pmShelbyC says:
He’s often pretty rude, and can drift into personal insults. Of course, that doesn’t bother me becaue I’m better at the personal insults, but it might not be the content you want on the blog. And others are worse, be less frequent.
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November 24, 2009, 4:15 pmPerseus says:
This is a bit off-topic, but here’s the official VC comment policy that used to be displayed near your comment box:
We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we’d rather you went elsewhere. We’re happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can’t possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don’t read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it’s a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) — or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach — there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.
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November 24, 2009, 5:11 pmKirk Parker says:
leofromlansing,
Is that supposed to convince us of something? The larger share of the voters had no qualms with Biden, for ghu’s sake, and unlike Palin he can’t claim inexperience for his idiotic foreign policy statements (e.g. the one about France and the US joining together to drive Hezb. out of southern Lebanon), so presumably idiocy is the only explanation left.
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November 24, 2009, 5:16 pmLeo Marvin says:
Chris, this comes up perennially, so in case Orin doesn’t check back, based on prior incidents here’s how I understand his view:
Why David, and not other more egregious offenders? That’s like asking why one speeder gets pulled over instead of another. There aren’t enough bloggers or time to enforce the comment policy consistently.* Every time someone gets warned or banned it seems capricious to somebody. I can personally attest that in the three or four years I’ve been reading this blog regularly, I’ve seen Orin and Eugene, who do most of the enforcing, ban more right wingers than left. I assure you Orin didn’t single David out on ideological grounds.
I’ve also never seen anyone get banned who, when warned, promised to do better. On the other hand, people who righteously defend their incivility can almost always be counted on to continue it, so they get banned sooner or later — may as well be sooner. I’m not sure whether David got banned this morning or not, and I certainly can’t speak for Orin, but if he is banned I’d be surprised if he couldn’t get himself reinstated if he committed to being more courteous.
Finally, we’re all human. I’ve written things that are probably worse than what David did, but, not that this is an excuse, it’s always been in response to some jerk who was going out of his way to provoke and insult people. To go off like David did on Ilya, who whatever you may think of his politics (I disagree with most of them), is so unfailingly civil, well, I have to say I did find it extremely offensive.
(*Where did the comment policy go?)
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November 24, 2009, 5:18 pmKirk Parker says:
Martinned,
And clearly the solution is more government intervention? How about not...
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November 24, 2009, 5:19 pmMartinned says:
Normally the solution would be less government intervention, except maybe a bit more antitrust enforcement. The problem is that, for reasons connected with widely held ethical beliefs, the health insurance market is not like other markets.
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November 24, 2009, 6:26 pmMartinned says:
And regarding the commenting policy: Clearly the Conspirators are entitled to enforce the rules in whatever manner they see fit. I have no problems with the (old?) policy. That’s why I asked prof. Kerr nicely not to ban David Welker. I can ask, can’t I?
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November 24, 2009, 6:29 pmYankev says:
Exactly. Because they are not calleed death panels and because they are rulemakers rather than tribunals, the Ministry of Truth feels vindicated in saying that only crackpots would think there will be death panels.
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November 24, 2009, 6:32 pmYankev says:
That would be a reasonable fix. But many other provisions of the Democratic plan as originally conceived would have resulted — intentionally or not — in reducing the number of competing private plans.
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November 24, 2009, 6:36 pmLeo Marvin says:
I guess if you don’t show up for work tomorrow, nobody ever hears from you again, and when the cops come to investigate they find tonight’s dinner still on your dining room table, untouched, we’ll know the answer was “no.”
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November 24, 2009, 6:43 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
FWIW, I thought Welker’s comments on this thread were egregious. There is some incivility on this site, perhaps unavoidably, but I was really kind of surprised at the venom he expressed.
It’s probably necessary to whack that sort of thing from time to time, pour encourager les autres.
...
One difference betw. mandating auto insurance and health insurance: Say that Person A has a clunker and buys the minimum insurance: liability only, not collision. She crashes her car and she is at fault. Well, Person A will go and buy another car. It was a calculated risk she took, that her car isn’t worth the premiums on the collision insurance. If Person B has a very expensive car and also buys liability only, and he wrecks his car and he is at fault, then he’s out a lot of money, but nobody will cry for him. He made a poor decision and must suffer for it.
If Person C buys the minimum health insurance mandated, and goes off and gets some exotic kind of cancer whose cutting-edge treatment her insurance won’t pay for, I don’t think that poor-decision dog will hunt very well. Because people aren’t cars. So we’ll be back to square one.
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November 24, 2009, 7:25 pmwolfefan says:
Re: banning commenters — to add to what Leo Marvin said earlier, sometimes banned commenters are permitted to return after a time. We’ve seen that here in the very recent past. Welcome back, Richard Aubrey!
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November 24, 2009, 7:31 pmJohn Moore says:
Rarely do I agree with Marytinned, but in this case, the comment is correct. The health insurance (and underlying health providing) market is substantially unlike other markets.
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November 24, 2009, 7:50 pmArthurKirkland says:
The original message was disappointing, causing me to conclude that either
1) Prof. Somin has not devoted enough attention to the work of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and similar ‘right-wing populists’
or
2) I have devoted too much attention to the work of (and to the ‘I’m a libertarian rather than a conservative’ assertions of) Prof. Somin.
I shall root for the former.
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November 24, 2009, 8:15 pmmattski says:
Orin Kerr wrote:
There is a nastiness, arrogance, and ad hominem quality to many of your comments — not only in this thread, but in multiple threads over the last few months — that makes it singularly difficult to benefit from reading them.
But that sounds like...
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November 24, 2009, 8:42 pmDesiderius says:
Yes, he’s exactly like Dangermouse, which makes it odd that he’s inspired such defenders. I wince whenever Dangermouse advances an argument to which I’m sympathetic, and would not be at all disappointed were he and his ilk to beat a general retreat.
The problem with Welker/Dangermouse is similar to the one with Rush. Even if one happens to agree in a general sense with where he’s coming from, he comes in such a way to create two enemies for every convert. He (Welker) doesn’t actually engage with libertarians/libertarian ideas/libertarian self-understandings, but rather a caricature he’s constructed for his own self-aggrandizement/doubt-dispersal.
The contrast with other non-libertarians here could not be more stark. OK has done you a favor with this particular culling.
Relurking.
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November 24, 2009, 9:55 pmgerbilsbite says:
I think more troubling is an example like Glenn Beck hosting a show with “medical experts” who were actually members of a far-right advocacy group, including one who infamously mass emailed an undeniably racist photoshop of Obama as a communist witch doctor (complete with bone through his nose). Now, perhaps YOU don’t consider that a sign of a racist undercurrent within the mainstream of the anti-Obama discourse, but I do. And as for the movement in general, see: all of these examples from Tea Partiers and Republican luminaries.
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November 24, 2009, 10:10 pmRicardo says:
Without any data, I don’t see how you could say it was “mostly” left-wing. My experience is similar to Mr. Nieporent’s: the Truther movement was a coalition between the Ruby Ridge/Waco right (and some even more unsavory elements, like white supremacists and the militia and Christian Identity movement) and the Noam Chomsky left.
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November 24, 2009, 10:47 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Ricardo, I didn’t say it was without any data. I saw speculation that Bush was behind 9/11, or at least that he knew about it and did nothing; and that the Jews were behind it, because supposedly no Jews died, having been warned. If you think anti-Semitism is owned by the right wing, I don’t know what to tell you. No, I don’t have a tally sheet where I’ve kept track of what crackpot theory came from where.
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November 24, 2009, 11:10 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
And see the problem that comes in with those labels. If the tea partiers are right-wing, and Ruby Ridge/Waco folks are right-wing, and white supremicists are right-wing, then we conflate all of those people. Then you have us linking the Ruby Ridge/Waco right wing with the Noam Chomsky left. Now the labels do nothing but further obfuscate and prevent meaningful conversation.
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November 24, 2009, 11:14 pmOrin Kerr says:
I didn’t ban David Welker. I also don’t think I need to, as he said that he was not planning to comment further. Further , if David Welker would start commenting in a civil and respectful way, I would love to have him: The choice is really his. (I should also add that Mr. Welker has said some pretty nasty things before that I have quickly deleted, so it’s not clear they were seen.)
More importantly, Leo Marvin hits the nail on the head here:
I have never banned, and I don’t think I ever would ban, a commenter who actually expressed willingness to comply with our comment policy. The commenters who get banned are the ones who either (1) make clear that they think the comment policy is dumb and simply refuse to comply with it or (2) insist that they are the true victims because they are being treated unfairly, and demand an immediate and complete accounting of the editing decisions concerning all of their past comments. Life is just too short for that.
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November 24, 2009, 11:15 pmtom swift says:
I’m afraid this blog has taken a serious intellectual dive lately. Too much is airily dismissed as “stupid” when it should more accurately be described as “annoying”.
Beck’s remark isn’t stupid at all. Incendiary, even ill-advised, perhaps. But the claim that Obama is our most racist president since Wilson is not without historic foundation and obvious logical merit. There are arguments to be made either way. But mere dismissal is not an argument.
And the breezy assertion that those concerned about the trend to pack illegals into the country are guilty of hysterical anti-immigrant nativism is just jejune. Again, there are things to be said, and no real advantage in refusing to say them.
That’s just for starters.
And the comments need work. Maybe a recruitment drive for quality commentors is needed. Perhaps Obama’s magic wand — the one which will make the oceans recede — can supply some. So who is this Welker guy, and why can’t he get to the point? I’m not interested in his appraisal of the author and other commentators. I couldn’t care less that he thinks they’re dumb. What is his argument, and why can’t he make it? Weirdo.
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November 25, 2009, 12:16 amOrin Kerr says:
Tom Swift,
When you say “the claim that Obama is our most racist president since Wilson” has “obvious logical merit,” I would instead substitute, “is so stupid that whoever says it is either a fool or just trying to get a reaction out of people.”
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November 25, 2009, 12:28 amArthurKirkland says:
Speaking of intellectual dives:
Enjoy this Google search: Nixon abortion “when you have a black and a white”
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November 25, 2009, 12:30 amJohn Moore says:
Orin writes:
Let me suggest a substitution of “racialist” since “racist” and it doesn’t look so dumb.
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November 25, 2009, 12:49 amMatthew Bilinsky says:
Ok John Moore, substitute “racialist”. Of course he’s racialist, he’s the first president of mixed race. No matter how much he tries to downplay it, it’s innate and inevitable that race will be a bigger issue for Obama than for any other president.
He’s handled this inevitability with grace and intelligent discourse, as evidenced by his race speech during the campaign.
So by inserting “racialist” for “racist” it doesn’t look so dumb, it just looks obsolete and irrelevant.
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November 25, 2009, 2:42 amRicardo says:
Laura, you claimed the 9/11 Truthers are of “Rosie O’Donnell’s ilk.” If you want a meaningful conversation, I suppose one could start with defining what exactly “Rosie O’Donnell’s ilk” is. I’m not much into labeling either but the clear implication of your comment was that there were relatively few “right-wing” Truthers without any actual evidence to back it up.
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November 25, 2009, 2:54 amtheobromophile says:
Unless I’m mistaken, Bush 43’s approval rating was in the low 20s when he left office, meaning that approximately half of conservatives/Republicans did not approve of the job that he was doing. Presumably, the supermajority of independents also disapproved.
Obama campaigned for fiscal conservatism and, presumably, got a lot of his vote from people who were unhappy with the Bush Administration. So, at this point, you have small-government conservatives who were unhappy with Bush and have every reason to be unhappy with Obama, independents who feel as if they were lied to, and a few Democrats who don’t approve. Obviously, with Obama’s approval rate at about 47% and Bush’s at 25ish%, there’s a solid quarter of the country (at least) that disapproved of both.
Find the common element between the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration and you probably have figured out what upsets these people. Dismissing it all as racist, reactionary, or foolish seems to be an overly simplistic and unjustified way of looking at a movement that consists of over a million people (counting local events, national events, etc).
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November 25, 2009, 3:05 amjosil says:
There is a tendency among some libertarians to sneer at those who are opposed to same sex marriage on moral grounds or opposed to illegal immigration because it is, well, illegal.
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November 25, 2009, 3:32 amRichard Aubrey says:
To get back to populism, do I get the feeling that the lack of right-wing brownshirts surprises some?
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November 25, 2009, 7:19 ammattski says:
10–4.
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November 25, 2009, 7:22 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
No, look at what I said:
See that word “thought” in there?
I did a cursory search of 9/11 truthers. I found names like Martin Sheen, Ed Asner, Cynthia McKinney. These are not right-wingers, Ricardo. I found nothing to support the initial assertion that 9/11 truthism is to be laid at the door of right wing populism. So I stand by my original statement, that it is not the right wing pushing 9/11 trutherism. Perhaps you have some data to show that it is.
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November 25, 2009, 9:44 amMikey says:
Your article typifies the attitude of the supposedly educated elites, who sneer at the populist movement to get back to adherance to the US constitution. I still don’t see any word from you about the Constitutional ineligibility of Obama due to the already admitted FACT that he was a dual citizen at the time of his birth, and thus is not a Natural Born Citizen (see Minor v. Happersett). Although the Birther movement clouds this issue (and it is supposed to), they still have a point. Do you, as a lawyer, really take the word of a biased, and unsworn website as legal word for Obama’s Hi. birth?
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November 25, 2009, 9:49 amRichard Aubrey says:
Thinking about populism made me think of Obama.
Populism is convincing lots of folks that their misfortunes are the fault of The Big Guys.
It’s convincing them that the ordinary run of luck is the fault of The Big Guys.
It’s convincing them that their lives can be immeasurably improved by giving the pol appealing to populism lots of power (votes, money, demonstrations) to go after The Big Guys.
Just like community organizing.
Which, for some reason, doesn’t get as much knee-jerk bad press.
For some reason.
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November 25, 2009, 10:35 amMark Field says:
Getting back to the subject of the post, I take it Prof. Somin disagrees with the ADL.
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November 25, 2009, 12:01 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Your article typifies the attitude of the uneducated nut, who so desperately wants to escape his own feelings of inferiority for being uneducated that he latches onto a theory which educated people don’t believe, thus supposedly showing that he’s actually superior to them. The problem is, education counts, and reading a few websites does not make one competent to opine on legal issues. For instance:
The only problem is that those web pages you read lied to you; Minor v. Happersett doesn’t say what you think it says. Nowhere in there does it say that
(a) “Dual citizens” are not “natural born”; or
(b) Children of one citizen parent and one non-citizen parent are not natural born.
Those websites give you a quote which
(a) doesn’t mean what you interpret it to mean; and
(b) is cut off in the middle, making explicit that you’re interpreting it wrong.
As I’ve explained to you several times, saying that children of citizen parents are natural born citizens — which the case says — does not mean that children of non-citizen parents are not natural born citizens.
By your ‘logic,’ the Soviet Union could have defeated the United States in the Cold War at any time simply by passing a law declaring every American born thereafter to be a Soviet citizen. Then every child born in the U.S. would be a dual citizen, thus none of them would be “natural born,” and so nobody would be eligible to be president. With no commander-in-chief, the country would be in trouble.
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November 25, 2009, 12:34 pmYankev says:
At least he’s not claiming to have proof that Mr. Obama was delivered by C Section.
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November 25, 2009, 12:47 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Suppose a republican Glow-in-the-dark-he’s-so-white candidate for POTUS had spent twenty years attending a church whose pastor repeatedly railed against blacks, black culture and the damage both did to America.
Would there be any reluctance to call the republican candidate a racist?
Of course not.
Even though we could not see into his soul as we cannot see into Obama’s soul.
In one case, church attendance would serve as a perfect proxy for racial attitudes, and in the other, not so much.
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November 25, 2009, 2:29 pmBrian K says:
followed by:
and:
This says a lot about laura, unfortunately none of it is good. the word hypocrite comes to mind, as do other things.
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November 25, 2009, 4:50 pmJohn Moore says:
And his pre-judging of the breaking and entering incident with his old processor — where he instantly assumed the officer was racist (there were two officers, one black, IIRC), and then had to patch it all up with the absurd “beer summit.”
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November 25, 2009, 5:46 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Brian, so when you said this:
what do you think that said about you?
Also, I’ve read the three quotes of mine that you picked out upside down and sideways, and I can’t get “hypocrite” out of them. I think you need to spell that out.
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November 25, 2009, 6:44 pmDesiderius says:
Mattski,
Over and out.
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November 26, 2009, 1:19 amBrian K says:
laura,
apparently reading comprehension is not your strong suit.
it says nothing about me. i made no claims about people who use overbroad generalizations, you did...right after you used them yourself. i only made claims about people who make claims about doing something that they themselves do (i.e. you).
if you want the definition of hypocrite, use google. the “define:” function (the colon needs to be there) is very useful. you should have learned how to do independent research long ago.
and i’ll note you’ve so far only called out those who make overbroad generalizations about people you self identify with (i.e. right wing). i’ve yet to see you call out someone for the gratuitous use of “leftist”, “left-wing” etc. it seems that some overgeneralizations are more acceptable than others to you....don’t worry, given the general quality of your posts it didn’t surprise me either.
and yes, if you have some actual problem with my original statement i’d love to hear it. just remember, you’ll be discussing it with a surgeon who has not only read the new recommendations, but has read much of the underlying research and practices it when on the surg-onc service...so i don’t want to hear any of the made up BS that has formed all of the republican talking points so far.
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November 26, 2009, 1:19 amLeo Marvin says:
Chomsky pooh-poohed the 9/11 conspiracy theories. He’s scorned by truthers.
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November 26, 2009, 1:47 amMikey says:
To Nieporentt,
Of course you’re are wrong, and the straw man argument about a foreign power saying that American citizens are also their citizens is a typical non argument (not based in the real world) of the left. Minor v. Happersett said CITIZEN PARENTS, it didn’t say A Citizen PARENT. Wong Kim Ark said the the child of an alien is as much a citizen as the NATURAL BORN CHILD OF A CITIZEN (women were citizens if married to a citizen automatically then). Perkins v. Elg (1929) also said that Miss Elg and Mr. Steinkauler were “Natural Born Citizens” (with the ability to be POTUS), born of Citizen parents, but Mr. Bohn, born of an alien father was declared “citizen”. There is NOT ONE SCOTUS case that says that anything less than 2 citizen parents can produce a Natural Born Citizen. NOT ONE.
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November 26, 2009, 9:34 amDavid Nieporent says:
What do you mean that it’s a “straw man”? It’s the exact argument you yourself made: that since Britain — a foreign power — decided to say that Obama was also their citizen, he was a dual citizen, and therefore not a natural born citizen.
Well, there’s Wong Kim Ark. (Oh, that’s right, you’ve invented an imaginary third category of citizenship for Wong Kim Ark that exists only in your mind.) There are numerous court cases, like Wong Kim Ark, that say that a child born in the U.S. is a citizen regardless of the citizenship of his parents. If there were any doubt about the source of that holding, that’s what the 14th amendment says.
(How you read Wong Kim Ark’s claim that “the child of an alien is as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen” to say that the child of an alien is not as much a citizen as the natural born child of a citizen is beyond me.)
Here’s the problem: you’ve never read any of the cases you’re citing. Elg was the child of “A citzen PARENT,” not “CITIZEN PARENTS.” And Minor v. Happersett explicitly says that “Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents.”
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November 26, 2009, 11:25 amLeo Marvin says:
You’re a lefty. That’s what lefties do.
Three times in one week (more or less) is pretty impressive. You should get a set of steak knives.
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November 26, 2009, 2:51 pmDelmar Jackson says:
“Still worse, they could have flocked to the protectionism and nativism advocated by people like Pat Buchanan. This latter possibility would have been in line with the anti-illegal immigration hysteria”
I follow the Immigration topic very closely. Most of the “hysteria” I have seen comes from the advocates of unlimited immigration for an unlimited time when real and effective solutions to immigration are proposed. Sen Barbara Jordans immigration commission in 1995 came up with many solutions all of which were lauded by the Clinton administration and then dismissed, sandbagged and forgotten, leaving proponents of massive immigration to drag out their constant nation wrecking Amnesty solution to immigration yet again.
As far as any worry of rising anti semitic percentages go, in poll after poll immigrants to the USA are shown to be at least twice as anti semitic as the native born population, and some segments of new immigrants are extremely anti semitic. It baffles me why so many Jews are in favor of more and more immigration that daily increases the population of those hostile to Jews.
And finally, and quite sadly,there are no other people in the mainstream media “like Pat Buchanan”.
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November 27, 2009, 4:07 pmzuch says:
Yes. One has an “r” and the other has “l“s. Maybe if you’re Asian, the distinction is rather subtle.
Insurance companies will size the benefits to not exceed the premiums (or raise the premiums), with as much profit on the side as possible for their owners. They do this in many ways: excluding high risks and pre-existing conditions, denying benefits (justly or unjustly). They may increase co-pays, or length of stays, or cap yearly or lifetime benefits. To say they don’t look at the bottom line when deciding what benefits to provide is foolish.
Governments may also have to manage benefit levels if a program is running low on money ... or if someone wants to rip off that program to pay for other things (see, e.g., “Social Security”). But governments don’t have to make a profit, and they can even run programs that are not breaking even ... if we decide that’s a
‘good thing to do’ (see, e.g., “The Pentagon”). So the level of benefits won’t have to be the same under a government plan as under private plans.
Cheers,
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November 27, 2009, 5:37 pmJohn Moore says:
Err.. in the absence of government regulations, and especially those that reduce competition, private insurance will provide a variety that people can choose from. They can also be sued if they improperly deny benefits (if the ERISA government regulation were corrected).
Government gives us a one-size-fits-all. Notice how the Dems are trying to kill any vestige of private involvement (and hence, choice and competition) in Medicare.
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November 27, 2009, 6:25 pmMartin Bento says:
Mr. Somin, the study you cite arguing that 24% of Americans blame the Jews for the economic crises has a number of problems which have been outlined here, in a discussion in which co-author Malhotra took part. Co-author Margalit has disavowed the 24% figure, saying it should not be taken literally. The point of a metaphorical statistic eludes me. Given these facts, I don’t see the justification for stating the 24% as fact and think you should retract that statement.
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November 28, 2009, 6:28 pm