I was reading a very interesting profile of Obama from the January 2005 Columbia College Today, and came across this:
As for speculation that he could be the country's first black president, Obama says that he will not run for anything in 2008. He is quick to temper high expectations and scrying [sic] about his lofty political future with quips about how he doesn’t yet know where the Senate bathrooms are, and how he'll be "sharpening pencils and scrubbing floors" for the first few years. "He says that the first thing is for him to learn to be a first-rate senator," says Jarrett, the finance committee chair. "If that leads to something else one day, fabulous. But first things first."
Politicians lie, or change their mind, about their ambitions every day, so I report this more for amusement than for the claim that it tells us anything about Obama.
Just one more disservice to the republic by the swimmer from Massachusetts.
Here's something else that happens every day: journalists paraphrase someone instead of providing a quote, and fail to be faithful to what the person really said.
Here's something else that happens every day: people read stuff and fail to remember that many paraphrases are faulty, and pass along the contents of a paraphrase as if it had the same weight as a quote.
Sometimes they even lie and explicitly claim that a statement is a quote, when in fact it's only a paraphrase. Obviously you did not do that, but one does not have to look far to find examples of this (as documented here; also, described here is an example of someone else making the same false claim; however, that person later took responsibility for the false statement, so it's not fair to call it a lie).
I'll believe that when this site starts nitpicking McCain to the degree it nitpicks Obama. On second thought, to one-tenth the degree.
Ah! NOW I see why jukebox thinks the reporter got the quote wrong.
Bernstein finds this amusing in the same way that McCain regards his campaign ads comparing Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as having a bit of fun. After all, they're all spoiled celebrities whose moods vary from moment to moment and whose ambitions are therefore unpredictable. Hah, hah, hah and ROFL.
Comments on Obama from Bernstein are an amusing measure of how the McCain campaign is faring. McCain appears to have changed his mind about negative campaign ads and is in desperation mode at the moment.
Number of occurrences of "Obama" currently on the Volokh.com front page: 115
Number of occurrences of "McCain": 3
Also, just a guess here, but I'm thinking conservatives don't like talking about McCain very much. Wonder why that is...
Well, he also suggested that maybe he lied.
The Corner
McCain: 132
Obama: 220
TalkingPointsMemo
McCain:45
Obama: 34
Part of me is wondering if there's a paper somewhere in here...
Yay! And if you count all the mentions of "God" in the post on Host Desecration as refering to Obama, you get even more!
Changing ones mind due to changing circumstances is not lying.
Judging from David's post, that seems to be how David thinks too. I wouldn't be surprised if we could "catch" McCain in something like this too (not this particular thing, since he's been a politician for a very long time... but that just means there's plenty of opportunity to "catch" him in something else!), but really any politician would do.
We have had an endless series of posts about the publication of Obama's prayer, his HLS record, his job offer, etc. Now we have this.
Is Bernstein picking on a "slight wrong?" I think he is. Contra your comment, he doesn't simply say Obama changed his mind. He says Obama may have lied. That suggestion seems to me to be a "slight wrong," if only in a probabilistic sense.
I remember gambling machines and football betting cards carrying notices that read "For Amusement Only." I take Bernstein's claim that his report is "for amusement" as seriously as I took those other statements.
Q. How do you know a politician is lying?
A. His lips are moving.
A politician may have lied? Stop the presses! Get Wolf Blitzer out of bed! Get ready for 24 hours coverage on Fox News! Why, the possibility that a politician may have lied, especially about their future political ambitions, is so unheard of, this will undoubtedly be the scandal of the year!
In my mind, lying is bad, even when done by politicians. It is no excuse that so many of them do it.
I also regret that our society has become so inured to lying by politicians. Shouldn't they be held to a higher standard, being powerful and influential?
On the other hand, as we all know, McCain is a straight-talking maverick.
However, for the many humorless readers out there, it's funny, or at least amusing to juxtapose the assertion in 2005 by Obama that for a few years he's going to be "sharpening pencils and scrubbing floors" with the fact that he has a 50-50 or better shot at being the next president.
Having said that, the argument made by some of the pro obama people has merit. The Obama v McCain word count for Volokh is accurate (i double checked* it because it looked so incredible). Surely McCain has done something worth talking about?
*In case anyone is curious: I pasted the entire contents of the page into word and did a replace-all search for each of their names (word tells you how many total replacements are made). There is probably a better way, but this works.
Unrelatedly, this was a genius: And if you count all the mentions of "God" in the post on Host Desecration as referring to Obama, you get even more!
I think Clinton made a point of promising to serve out her first term and was careful to avoid anything that could be construed as a promise not to run in 2008. I'm sure, however, that a very careful search could probably turn up something she lied about...somewhere...maybe :-P
OK... so tell me how you would change the government so that the President, or Congress, or a federal judge doesn't have so much power and influence?
You just walked into a check-mate, my friend. The way to give them less power and influence is to limit the size of government. Fewer government programs = less power and influence. QED, libertarianism all the way.
Liberals are the ones who want to expand the size of government - thus giving liars and thieves more power and influence. In some sense, we can say that liberals support political corruption. After all, since it's a given that politicians lie and abuse their power, it follows that liberals support political corruption.
Conservatives, too, support political corruption. They want to expand government, too (hello, no-bid contracts for reconstruction that is needed only because we first destroyed stuff).
The only folks wearing white hats are libertarians. We recognize the nature of politics for what it is. We see politicians as snakes. Accordingly, we would give them fewer mice to eat.
The suggestion that, given new information, it is bad to change one's mind is patently absurd. Tha alternative is to remain steadfast in belief even when presented with information to the contrary. That becomes pigheadedness (a/k/a Dubya-ness).
The fact that Obama's exploratory committee returned the verdict that The Time Is Now means that he would have been foolish to wait.
Liberals (real ones, anyway) don't support the unprecedented expansion of the military. Or the DHS. Or the Patriot Act. Or warrantless wiretapping.
If libertarians had been more vocal against the Iraq war, I would given them a lot more credit.
Oh, one more problem with libertarianism:
Take a look at the pollution in China. How would you like to live in a city like Beijing, where you can go days without seeing the sun because the smog is so bad?
I sure wouldn't.
Now tell me how libertarians would prevent that.
Yup. I didn't make a pro-con case, though, so that's a non-sequitor.
Now tell me how libertarians would prevent [pollution].
Tax polluters; maybe outlaw the pollution-causing activities. Libertarians are not against taxation and regulation. The literature is rich with discussions of how to deal with nuisances and negative externalities.
Well I guess there are different degrees of libertarianism, but I thought the whole point is that generally, libertarians are against taxation and regulation.
If you're talking about a brand of libertarianism that allows for that level of regulation, or that opposes unnecessary wars, then you're not so far from where I am.
(I'm not a cookie-cutter liberal, BTW.)
all those libertarians in congress....
i can think of one who voted for (barr) and one who voted against (paul).
Only the idiot Randians.
Libertarianism is largely concerned with respect for private property - and your body counts are private property (hence why selling organs should be legal). If you are putting smoke into the air, you're creating a nuisance that interferes with my health. You've violated my right to autonomy just the same as if you'd punched me in the nose.
Other than pseduo-libertarians (a/k/a neocon), most I knew were against the War in Iraq. Here's a collection of stuff from the Cato Institute.
Cato even held an event that wasn't exactly supportive of the War.
On their blog, Cato is tracking spending on Iraq.
A Cato guy speaks out before Congress about the occupation of Iraq.
Heck, that was just the stuff I bothered to pull up on the first page of the search results for: [cato war in iraq].
Cato is pretty representative of small-l libertarian thinking. (It's small-l to distinguish from the weirdos in the Libertarian Party. Those are big-L libertarians, and they are freaking whackos.)
And to return to my original point: Even with that limited amount of government, you're still giving politicians a degree of power for which they ought to be required not to lie.
I think the standard answer here -- and someone correct me if I'm wrong -- is nuisance liability. Sue the polluters. To the extent that the polluters are heavy industries, this should be at least a feasible approach. It might not prevent pollution, but it would help to ensure that the pollution isn't forcing an exchange of value that leaves everyone worse off.
Pollution from automobiles is trickier. I think a rational libertarian might have to recognize that pollution caused by automobiles cannot be left to the free market to control. Requiring automobile drivers to pay a toll in order to drive in high-traffic parts of a city might be one libertarian-styled solution. That kind of solution would help to reach an optimal level of congestion, not pollution, however, so it would be imperfect, but I'm not sure how you'd best tax auto-emissions directly. What would a license-to-pollute system look like? I don't know.
I'm not an expert in this area, but I can think of a lot of pretty serious problems with this.
For one, I have just enough experience with civil litigation that leads me to doubt the wisdom of that particular approach to problem-solving.
Also, damages don't make the world any cleaner.
(Yes, one could read the question as "How do libertarians address pollution?", but what's with the gratuitous reference to China, then?)
Also I disagree with the idea that this is his time and that he has to strike now. He is 43 or 44 years old. He has plenty of time. Let's say for argument sake that he loses. What next? My view is that one of his biggest weaknesses is lack of executive experience. If he really wanted to make a difference he could come back to Illinois and run for governor in 2010. The guy we have now is a clown and probably will be indicted by then. He would get the D nomination easily and would win the general election handily. The R's here are a joke and would offer little resistance.
If he came back and was a good gov (especially if he promoted some conservative ideas and went against the liberal grain when expedient) for 8 years, help straighten out the budget mess, etc., he would set himself up for another run and be in a much stronger position with more ammo for the long haul and still only be 53 or 54 years old.
I also agree that we sell ourselves short when saying "they all do it." Not only is this statement inaccurate, it does a severe disservice to those who have sacrificed potential gain for the sake of honesty, from which we all gain.
It's like saying "no one believes that patriotism bullshit." Well, evidently McCain did, or he would have done whatever he could to get out of that prison camp, country and fellow prisoners be damned. Thankfully, he did not.
As for Obama, if he was lying in 2005, what did he have to gain by it? Clearly, circumstances changed and he changed his mind. That is no more a lie than Bush's acceptance of the WMD consensus was.
So what does a relatively young former President do with himself? I mean, we do have the Bill Clinton example (54 upon leaving office)--but his post-Presidential activities have hardly been stellar. Jimmy Carter was 56 when he left office and his post-presidential legacy has been, at best, a mixed bag.
(By comparison, John McCain was 46 when he first entered Congress, 50 when he became a United States Senator, and 63 the first time he ran for President).
:)
"As I said before, conservatives are obsessed with Obama!"
No. We just already know McCain sucks as a presidential candidate. We're trying to make sure that it's clear that the other guy sucks, too. That seems to be a point lost on many.
(the link is a short list of quotes)
I'll be waiting patiently while you look for an example of me responding to legitimate criticism by posting an illegitimate complaint. As compared with the reverse.
Actually, what you (collectively) can't handle is the reality that you (collectively) don't have a free pass to conduct all manner of shenanigans without being called on it.
And speaking of not being able to handle criticism, the irony is rich. It was you who accused me of "bigotry" for daring to point out that McCain is showing signs of age. Even though you soon admitted that it's actually possible for someone to be too old to be president.
Right. That's why places like VC and The Corner are giving much more attention to Obama. They're part of the vast liberal conspiracy. Makes perfect sense.
Here's someone else who is talking more about Obama than McCain: McCain. I guess he's also part of the liberal conspiracy.
Here's a clue: publicity isn't always positive.
There are numerous examples of catching McCain in something like this. But VC doesn't seem interested in that.
The subtext I see is this: 'please forget that Bush is seen as dishonest; please don't notice that McCain also has issues like this, if anyone would care to look; it's a big problem for us that Obama looks much cleaner, so we need to promote a narrative that says pols are all the same. Even though they're not.'
Indeed. But when was the last time you (or anyone here) wrote a post about that? And there's a new example almost every day. Like talking about how he supported the MLK holiday without mentioning all the work he did to fight it before he supported it.
McCain has this much: 13 months, 30 years ago. Doing a job that he didn't even mention in his campaign bio.
Bush et al made statements that were not truthful, and that went beyond "the WMD consensus." But this doesn't have to be another WMD thread. There was a fairly detailed one recently (start here and keep scrolling).
Yes, the GOP has a great reputation for building campaigns on humor. Those Purple Heart band-aids were a hoot, weren't they? I think the GOP is so good at humor we should give them permanent control of the Department of Humor. And it's pretty clear that McCain would the perfect choice for Humorist-in-Chief.
A longer list is here.
(I should stress, by the way, that I haven't had a single post on either McCain or Obama, because I'm not following the election! So I'm perfectly balanced! I should also note that demanding any sort of balance from bloggers sounds kind of silly to me -- we're just here to post on things that are of interest to us, without apologies. For example, one reason to criticize one blog more than others is because we like it so much and therefore read it more often; one reason to criticize a politician more than others is because he's more interesting; we respond to what we see, which tends to be somewhat random; and so on. And I should add, thirdly, that this isn't my post, so I apologize if I put up defenses here that David doesn't agree with.)
Well, comparing the US to the Eastern Bloc and, as you say, Communist China, I'd say that the argument that relatively more libertarian governments do better than more authoritarian ones is pretty well supported.
Come back hen you['re ready to give it your A game, this was clearly a slip.
Actually, you wrote:
I don't think the rhetorical order was accidental.
I live on the north side of Chicago in an area where, it is not too much of a stretch to say, Karl Marx is considered a conservative Republican. But there is something unique about BO's supporters. They cannot handle any counter argument to their hero, his life's story or his political beliefs. Which makes me wonder what it is going to be like should he lose the election. It could get ugly, especially in some black areas.
Dave N thanks for the correction. What I was trying to say, is that if BO loses this election and he comes back to Illinois and runs for Gov, he would be around 57 or so after two terms as Gov and then be in a prime position to run for POTUS.
Here's something else that happens every day: journalists paraphrase someone instead of providing a quote, and fail to be faithful to what the person really said.
Except of course you can in no way demonstrate that is the case in this instance. Which is why you go on to link to other posts you've made on this site demonstrating you have no life.
Laugh out loud funny. A link to a left wing site with no links to the alleged quotes.
Par for the course jokebox.
Yes, but not nearly as funny as Democratic campaign ads regarding burning churches and James Byrd being "dragged to death all over again." Those were real knee-slappers, right jukeboxgrad?
However, I admire your eight consecutive posts in this thread, that must be some kind of record.
And McCain gets hassled because of an offhand comment about not having a complete grasp of the most complicated machine in history of world - the US economy.
Yes, it's a pretty minor issue. I think my reaction depends on two things:
1. I don't see what's so amusing. It's true that politicians and others routinely lie about their ambitions and change their minds. Even the lies, as you argue, are nor exactly serious offenses, though I will say that they are not really admirable, either. Given all that, why pick out one trivial and unexcptional example to highlight? Surely there are millions of others.
2. Consider the context. Of course the conspirators can post on whatever they like. But the recent history suggests that what they like to post about, at great length, is trivia that makes some sort of negative point about Obama. It does seem a bit obsessive.
I guess it's understandable. If were a distinguished law professor supporting McCain, I'd be emabarrassed to talk about it too.
What arrogance. What hubris.
Really?
Obama is a liberal.
What I especially like is when the party of regulating flush toilets, smoking bans, and now in Chicago banning text messaging while walking, implies they are "civil libertarians." That continues to crack me up.
So please, stick with it!
Obviously he's not a "Charmed" fan.
A link to a left wing site with no links to the alleged quotes.
did you even bother to look at the site? let me guess, a "left wing site" is any site that goes against your incredibly biases.
i'll note the irony of you asking for links.
That's not exactly what I meant to say.
Still it's clear that McCain's campaign strategy is pretty heavily aimed at stupid people.
I almost surely was never going to vote for McCain, though I used to think it wouldn't be a disaser if he won. His disgusting - there is no better word for it - campaign has changed my mind on the latter point. He has made himself an embarrassment.
That includes his video on "The One," which you seem to admire.
I'm not trying to say China is libertarian, I'm pointing to it because it is a particularly vivid example of what happens when no/few limits are placed on pollution.
I thought that was obvious.
It's clear Obama's strategy is heavily aimed at stupid people. Unless you consider those uneducated urban blacks he's courting as "smart."
Yes. It has no links to the alleged quotes.
For the record, I don't have "incredibly biases" nor do I understand what that is supposed to mean.
I'll note the irony of you noting some alleged irony.
How do you know when something is effective?
When liberals get all indignant like this.
Keep going, I love it!
But this is excellent news for Obama supporters! It proves he's running because he Heard His Nation's Call, not out of sordid personal ambition. ;^)"
Sort of.
He's really running so that jukebox will stop leaving hortatory messages on his voicemail.
A candidate should have at least one year of experience for each state in the union.
I like your use of quotation marks in the title though. That's not misleading or anything.
(I say this more for amusement than for the claim that it tells us anything about David Bernstein.)
did i ask for links?
you might want to brush up on that essential skill known as reading.
When liberals get all indignant like this.
I think Ace's approval of McCain's tactics is strong evidence for my assertion as to who his campaign is aimed at.
I believe there were actually two posts on McCain's statements on national service that accompanied that discussion.
That said, I think libertarian blogs would naturally pay more attention to Obama than McCain because we often see our role as counteracting the illiberal left, sometimes even from within the left and/or Democratic party itself. We're often not in any substantive sense of the "right", unless in a Burkean sense. Burke himself was a Whig, not a Tory, so don't assume we are therefore all voting McCain.
Somehow I think McCain will get enough scrutiny from the usual suspects when the time comes.
No, there's not. Equally obviously, readers are entitled to draw inferences from the lack of balance.
I think libertarian blogs would naturally pay more attention to Obama than McCain because we often see our role as counteracting the illiberal left, sometimes even from within the left and/or Democratic party itself. We're often not in any substantive sense of the "right", unless in a Burkean sense. Burke himself was a Whig, not a Tory, so don't assume we are therefore all voting McCain.
Why not counteract the illiberal right? I am one of those who is quite cynical about libertarians. I do see them as substantively on the right because of their heavy, if not unanimous, support for Republicans, and their amazing silence about Republican abuses of power. Your point would be more convincing if libertarians were more consistent in their criticisms.
scry [intr.v.]: To see or predict the future by means of a crystal ball."
Hmm.
I have a crystal ball. And a glass eye.
(Just trying to lighten it up around here, my friends.)
Interesting.
I consider myself conservative, but NOT libertarian. Burke was a "*Rockingham* Whig," which did not make him terrible "Whiggish" as we use the term. It's hard to see him as a libertarian. Hard to think he would have seen eye-to-eye with Jefferson all that much. Or Mill. More like Jay and Henry Adams, I would think.
We conservatives are a diverse group, despite what some on VC seem to think.
First, let's look at the main Washington think tank, Cato. Here's a page of Cato writings on Iraq, for instance "Iraq: The Wrong War" (2003) and "Escaping the Trap: Why the United States Must Leave Iraq" (2007).
Second, let's take another libertarian think tank, the Mises Institute in Alabama. You can search for "Iraq" on the site; one sample article, by Lew Rockwell, is A Plan for Iraq: Leave.
Third, let's take the main libertarian monthly magazine, Reason. Here's a debate on Iraq between libertarians in 2003. Reason has had a mix of different views on Iraq (here's an index of foreign policy articles — there doesn't seem to be a convenient way of pulling up an Iraq category), but I think that overall the sentiment on the Reason site has been more negative than positive.
Fourth, let's take Liberty magazine, which is the smaller-circulation but harder-core libertarian monthly magazine. Here's a representative article: Iraq: Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong War. I found an article in the archives supportive of the war (here), but its title ("Am I Libertarian?") and subtitle make it clear that this is a not typically libertarian position (the subtitle is: Brink Lindsey thinks war against Iraq may be a good thing. Should he be read out of the libertarian movement?).
Fifth, let's take the views of the Libertarian Party. The LP party platform calls for an as-quick-as-possible withdrawal from Iraq, and has been anti-war for quite a while (including during the First Gulf War and during the Cold War).
Sixth, let's take the views of Ron Paul, the presidential candidate most closely associated with libertarianism (and who ran for president as a libertarian in 1988). Here's an article from him sharply critical of the war and calling for withdrawal.
Seventh, let's take the current LP candidate, Bob Barr. He thinks the invasion and occupation of Iraq were two separate mistakes, though he did support it as a Republican congressman.
O.K., I'll just stop here. I could also mention, anecdotally, that very many of my D.C. libertarian activist friends have been anti-war and anti-occupation. Now there are various people who either tend libertarian or who are fairly associated with libertarianism who have been supportive of the war. For instance, some on this blog; Objectivists; some people who have written for Reason; the so-called "warbloggers." Big deal; this just shows that there's a diversity of views among libertarians, just like there's a diversity of views among conservatives or among liberals. But the idea that libertarians, as a whole, haven't opposed the Bush Administration on meaningful issues is not, strictly speaking, correct.
Yes, because the takeaway for any impartial observer reading everything on this site would be the irrational, excessive jumping to Barack Obama's defense. Have fun with that.
You've convinced me that some libertarians opposed the Iraq War and others supported it.
I found the LP platform section on civil liberties encouraging. I wonder how many of the posters and self-proclaimed libertarian commenters agree with it.
You explained why earlier, when you said this:
You're basically saying what DB said: a post insinuating that Obama is a liar is not "reflecting negatively" on Obama, because we all know that all pols are liars, and everyone knows there's nothing wrong with that, and everyone knows Obama is just the same as all the rest.
I'm disappointed to see you take this position. I agree with what others have said, about how we've become inured to lying. All relationships are built on trust. Therefore, lying is highly toxic to a relationship. Democracy and civilization are, in a way, just a kind of relationship, on a large scale. They are also built on trust. Lying in public discourse is toxic to democracy.
The corporate elite that runs the GOP obviously likes the idea of power and wealth being concentrated in a small number of hands. This group (video) is happy to see a political discourse that's dominated by dishonesty. Why? Because vast numbers of ordinary people lose interest in politics when they come to believe that the lying is inevitable, and all pols do it, and there's nothing you can do about this, and it will never change.
This same corporate elite hates government, and has declared its intention to destroy it (see Grover Norquist), and has been hard at work destroying government from the inside (by making it increasingly untrustworthy and incompetent). This group wins when the public loses faith in government, just like this group wins when the public loses faith in the process of democracy itself. And normalizing a culture of dishonesty is a great way to convince the public to lose faith in the process of democracy itself.
The Bush presidency has been an experiment in testing how much dishonesty Americans are willing to tolerate. Here's the answer: a lot. This guarantees that future governments (sooner or later) are going to push that limit further and further. Where this leads is very good for a certain small group, and very bad for everyone else.
When I point out the imbalance, my objective is not particularly to demand balance. My objective is to highlight the imbalance. Readers who have been alerted to the imbalance are in a better position to interpret what they read here, because they can give consideration to the attitudes which lead to the imbalance.
That's one reason. Here's another one that's probably even more parsimonious: one reason to criticize a politician more than others is because you're interested in helping his opponent.
That statement is true, but think about how weak it is. Yes, not every single Obama post has been negative. Only most of them. Wow!
There's definitely "no duty of balance" if you don't mind making it really, really clear that you're biased in favor of McCain.
This kind of reasoning is priceless. You're basically saying that the fact that so many people think he's different is proof that he's not different.
This reminds me of what we heard about WMD. The fact that none was being found by the inspectors was seen as proof of Saddam's evil, because it indicated that he was doing such an excellent job of hiding it.
With regard to China, you're wrong, because the current Chinese attitude toward large-scale capitalism is more libertarian than ours, in certain important ways. China's political system is still Communism, but its economic system looks more and more like capitalism. And it's a relatively unregulated capitalism, compared to ours. That's why corporations have been moving their factories from the US to China. For example, China gives corporations the 'liberty' to employ children.
Obama announced his campaign in 2/07. The article we're discussing was published in 1/05. More than two years is 'very shortly?'
You don't know how many weeks or even months elapsed between the time of the interview and the date on the magazine (especially because monthly magazines are often post-dated).
And you should show your evidence that "he had already begun that run before the midterm elections in 2006."
I find it quite remarkable that the BT's of the world are so surprised by the fact that certain Americans think it's finally time to put a stop to the lies and distortions that the BT's of the world insist on injecting into our political discourse.
You're saying what Hoosier already said. Let's see if you can handle my response to him.
I see that your fantasies are a lot like Rush Limbaugh's. What a surprise.
You're implying that one or more of the quotes here are phony, even though the dates and sources are given. Really? You should make yourself into a hero and prove an example of a phony quote on that list. We'll be waiting patiently.
Anyway, this is rich coming from you, since you've been caught lying about a source. And it's not hard to find other examples of you posting lies (as documented here and here).
Show me the ads.
He didn't just say he didn't have "a complete grasp." What McCain actually said is this:
And he's proven how little he knows. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center figured out that there's a $2.8 trillion gap in his economic plan. The gap is so obvious that the McCain campaign had to admit that he's been making statements that shouldn't be considered "official." In other words, "McCain may not speak for the McCain campaign." Inspires confidence, right?
I'm not sure which is a better predictor of GOP support: stupidity or dishonesty. But there's a lot of evidence that it's a close contest.
The bill "regulating flush toilets" was the Energy Policy Act of 1992. It was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, and signed into law by Bush I. Why are you suggesting that the GOP was not in favor of "regulating flush toilets?"
Education and intelligence are not the same thing. If you had some of either you would probably know this. And how eager are you to prove that you're a racist?
I guess you must be talking about the 'liberal' media that has virtually never mentioned his SF-180, even though we know almost nothing about his only executive experience: 13 months, 30 years ago, that are completely omitted from his official campaign bio.
You did a nice job of proving that, thanks. But let me provide one counterexample. I remember years ago being on some righty blog, where I wrote a post making reference to Glenn Reynolds as a Republican. A bunch of people jumped up to announce that he's not a Republican, he's a libertarian.
Trouble is, on a long list of important issues, he has been very much in Dubya's corner (unlike, say, Cato). And he is very visible as a blogger (maybe less so than years ago). So I think he has single-handedly convinced a lot of people that libertarian is a synonym for Republican.
And our government -- not designed to be a democracy, of course -- is built on checks and balances, not "trust."
About Glenn Reynolds, as I mentioned in my post, the so-called "warbloggers" have been hawkish on the war. Glenn, in particular, is plenty critical of conservatives on many points -- he's pro-technology, non-anti-gay, etc. It so happens that he's hawkish on anti-terrorism and war-related issues. Those who call him libertarian are only half right: he's just a libertarian-leaning conservative. Nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that he takes some libertarian positions but not necessarily all of them.
In particular, when I listed all those libertarians being anti-war, I didn't at all mean to endorse them -- I'm not particularly anti-war myself, and I consider myself a moderately hard-core libertarian. I actually think there's no unique libertarian position on the war (or even on anti-terrorism civil-liberties measures); libertarianism is just a framework for posing questions, not a fully determinate system for producing the answers.
So the war is an example where very many libertarians (but not all) spoke out against the Bush Administration, but as a libertarian, I think they may have been wrong to do so. I think it's no critique of libertarian principledness to claim they haven't sufficiently opposed the Bush Administration, for the simple reason that some of the Administration's stuff (even the stuff the LP doesn't like) may actually be consistent with libertarianism.
You keep talking about his 13 months as command as if Senator McCain has something to be ashamed of (and I would note it is 13 months MORE of executive experience than Senator Obama has, but I digress). You keep making the talking point about not releasing his service records, but two things stand out: First, the unit itself was "turned around" and earned a meritorious unit citation (at least according to that Republican rag, the New York Times.
Second, he received a coveted assignment as Navy liason to the U.S. Senate as his next assignment.
But of course, without evidence, you will say all of this was because of his father, who retired several while McCain was a POW. When I called you on this canard before, you cited a book that, itself, provided no names or authority for the proposition--just gossip and rumor.
I agree with your take on lying. My own somewhat simplistic rule of thumb is if someone being lied to would feel deceived if they knew the truth, it's almost always wrong. Beyond that it's more complicated. But that's a pretty atypically nuanced view. To most people, lying is wrong, period (their own behavior notwithstanding).
I assume a lot of generalized hostility toward lawyers can be explained by ignorance of the constraints a lawyer's ethical duty imposes on his right to be completely "honest" by usual standards. Most of what the public considers dishonesty by criminal defense lawyers is taken in stride by judges and DA's, as not merely appropriate, but required. (In other words, they don't feel deceived).
In politics it's not so clear-cut. Yes, certain kinds of lying ("I have no interest in being vice-president") are so commonplace that it may be impossible to be a successful politician without practicing them. A lot of the general public may take that for granted, but that doesn't mean they consider it morally neutral. There's nothing analogous to a lawyer's code of professional responsibility that a politician can hold up in his own defense. Anyway, the point for this discussion is that insinuating Obama is a liar just like every other politician -- "not that there's anything wrong with that" -- is predictably pejorative in effect, even if that's not its primary purpose.
(BTW, our inability to have any sort of constructive national discussion about how much candor we should be entitled to expect from political leaders on vital issues, e.g., war, is a byproduct of the partisan divide I find very disturbing.)
What then is there a unique libertarian position on? Motorcycle helmets? This is the basis of my criticism. If libertarians can't even manage to condemn things like torture and indefinite detentions without anything resembling due process, where is all their zeal for individual liberty, their opposition to excessive government power? Or is it really just about lower taxes and dope?
I don't quite understand your point. Is there a "Republican" or "Democratic" or "liberal" or "conservative" view on any issue that reaches the level of absolute consensus?
I was going to attempt a response to jukeboxgrad, but I fear I lack the quarters to keep up with her...
As for Reynolds, his wife is a conservative, with somewhat predictable results, but there have been very few times or places where he himself would be considered one. His focus is decidedly forward (often far forward), not backward.
How do libertarians differ? Some are, essentially, anarcho-capitalists, i.e., they take a deontological view of rights: you should never violate them. The Patriot Act is immoral regardless of whether it's highly effective against terrorists, and regardless of how many people would die without it. Drug legalization is likewise always morally required. Others are like that but with exceptions for extreme circumstances, and my main critique of those people is that they don't spell out what makes an extreme circumstances, and a specification of the exceptions is, in my view, necessary for a complete description of the theory. Objectivists also take a deontological view, but the principles are different; thus (depending on who you talk to), it's not only morally permitted but almost required to fight evildoers, with armies if necessary, and with scant regard for collateral casualties. Then there are the efficiency libertarians who believe in balancing. And so on....
So here's my own view, which may not represent anyone but myself. First, start with a standard libertarian specification of rights, which roughly speaking is life-liberty-property in ways you'll find familiar from what you already know of libertarians.
Then, the principle is that you can't violate any right unless you're protecting a right to some greater extent. This principle gets you out of anarcho-capitalism, because it means coercive taxation is permissible for defense, police, courts (for example); but the "to some greater extent" provides a built-in brake, so you can't fund the police with 100% taxation, because at some point you're violating more rights through additional taxation than you're protecting through additional policing. (This exercise requires that one believe in a "moral calculus" by which you can compare degrees of rights-violation in order to choose the lesser one.)
If you can't violate rights unless you're thereby protecting rights to a greater degree, that means that all potential government interventions are divided into two types: Those that don't result in any rights protection, and that do. In Category 1, you have, for instance, things like "You shouldn't be allowed to have sex with someone of another race, so as to protect racial purity." (You have to consult the initial list of rights to check whether a right to racial purity of the society at large is one of the rights. I think all libertarians would agree that it's not.) Category 2 includes any policy where there's a claimed rights protection resulting, including wars against bad people that are or might be a threat (defense or preemptive), policing, anti-fraud laws, environmental protection, etc.
Now of course almost everything goes into Category 2, because you can always come up with some claimed rights-protecting rationale. (For instance, even if one rejects the paternalistic justifications for the FDA, you can still justify part of the FDA's mission as being about fraud prevention. Same with drug laws -- you can make claims about people being dangerous while on drugs, etc.) This is where, in my view, all the action takes place -- at this point, you have to evaluate the claimed rights-protective rationales, figure out which are real and which are bogus, and if real, how much rights-protection you get out of them and whether that exceeds the rights violations from the policy itself.
In other words, almost every policy issue, in my framework, becomes an empirical question. (Except that not everything gets to be considered in this framework -- you rule out everything except what can be considered a rights protection. Thus, the "national greatness" or "make people feel good about America" rationales for space exploration are off limits, but the "give us an edge in defense" rationale is O.K. Or, for assisted suicide restrictions, you'd rule out a priori the "no one has the right to kill themselves because everyone's life is sacred" rationale, but you could consider "there's too much of a risk that murders will be dressed up as suicides.")
And because everything's an empirical question, people can differ on whether a policy will work and whether it outweighs the rights violation caused by the policy itself. The Iraq War would be morally permissible and maybe even morally required if our leaders are highly competent, if Iraq under Saddam is a huge risk, if we can expect the government that follows him to be better, etc. If you believe the opposite of all these, then no. If you believe that each of these is somewhere on a continuum, then you can come to some different conclusion. (Libertarians tend to take a dim view of the competence of government officials, but I wouldn't say that's a necessary component of libertarianism.)
My conclusion is that very few policies can be ruled out of bounds a priori on libertarian grounds. That includes all sorts of wars, civil liberties violations, restrictions on drugs/immigration/guns, regulation of business, torturing criminal suspects' small daughters, etc. But that doesn't mean that it's all fair game -- once you get to the empirical analysis, some of these policies may be no-brainers for rejection on the merits. Other policies are tougher, so I'm not at all surprised to see different libertarians disagreeing on them. And I don't think that that sort of disagreement reflects badly on libertarianism or the libertarian movement. If you're expecting no disagreement, then either you hold to a more determinate version of libertarianism than I do, or you're just being unrealistic about how determinate a high-level political philosophy can be.
Overly defensive cultic fervor (as evinced by the numerous, dogged comments in every thread -- even this harmless one). Get a life already.
Yawn. Arguing with cultists isn't worth it. Please carry on frothing. :)
I was agreeing with you and cheering you on--right up until the point you wrote, "Anyway, the point for this discussion is that insinuating Obama is a liar just like every other politician -- 'not that there's anything wrong with that' -- is predictably pejorative in effect, even if that's not its primary purpose."
At that point, you veered a bit off. I didn't read the post as implying that Obama was lying. I read it as Obama changing his mind--which I think people are allowed to do, even politicians.
Indeed, to the extent it may be a lie, I think it qualifies under the "so commonplace that it may be impossible to be a successful politician without practicing them" rubric. No politician wants to look overly ambitious. It is considered unseemly.
No, make that a lot OCD. Not just here but many places he pops up on this blog. JBG went hog wild with the anti-Catholic screeds over on Prof. V's CCC commentary about PZ Myers from a few days ago. Probably single-handedly responsible for over 100 comments on just that one post.
Jokeboxgrad, old friend, be a bit more reasonable. Try to condense your responses into one point, rather than making the same point over and over and over and over and over by rebutting every commentator you disagree with, by expressing essentially the same viewpoint. Better yet, you really do need to find another hobby. Get away from your keyboard and go enjoy the nice summer weather before Global Warming ruins it all, eh?
Maybe Prof. V needs to set up a "max permitted comments" filter so his blog hosting fees don't spin out of control from excessive bandwith use by guys like that?
It's no surprise that you would have a hard time grasping the importance of trust, since you've shown yourself to be untrustworthy.
It's hard to believe that I'm on a legal blog reminding a lawyer why trust is important and why lying is bad.
Thanks for explaining. I think we get into a lot of trouble when lying is excused too easily, and I think that's what you're doing.
He has other things to be ashamed of. With regard to the 13 months, I'm not claiming he has something to be ashamed of. I'm claiming we don't know much about what happened, and we should.
McCain's supporters make a big deal about how Obama is allegedly not experienced. Therefore it's relevant to know that with regard to executive experience (which is obviously highly relevant), McCain only has 13 months, himself. 13 is greater than zero, but not by much. And with Obama, the proper number is not zero, because for roughly a year he's been organizing a large and effective campaign. This demonstrates skills in leadership, management and organization. Meanwhile, McCain's campaign is like a train wreck. We should expect McCain to manage the presidency as well as he manages his campaign. That is, not well.
There are indeed signs that NYT is a "Republican rag," as I have documented (start here and keep scrolling).
You shouldn't put those words in quotes because they don't appear in the article you cited.
That's nice to know, but it's hardly a complete, detailed account of what happened during those 13 months.
That's nice, but it's not executive experience. If he was doing so well as a commanding officer, why did it last only 13 months?
I have not made this claim "without evidence." I have cited the evidence before (although not in this thread). From John McCain, An American Odyssey. p. 123:
The author is a Naval Academy graduate, Marine, and Vietnam vet.
The author is credible. Therefore the claim merits further investigation. McCain's failure to open his records creates the impression that he has something to hide.
31, as of now. Which means I have a ways to go before I catch up to several other posters in that thread. Sorry to confuse you with the facts.
Your reading skills are lacking. Taking the Timberg quote as written is hardly evidence of anything. "Some people" believing something makes a claim credible? Give me a freaking break. That is not evidence. Heck, that isn't even hearsay.
Timberg has enough background to realize what's obvious even without his background: the Navy doesn't put someone in charge of their largest squadron if they have had no prior executive experience. Unless they are enjoying the benefits of AA (Admiral Action).
Anyway, McCain can address this very easily. What is he ashamed of?
My impression was somewhat equivocal until I read
and
That pretty much dispelled my doubts.
That's my reaction too, but I think a lot of people don't make that allowance. To be clear, I have no problem with DB's post. I've said many times I don't get the objection to opinion pieces on blog sites. And DB doesn't pretend he's a fan of Obama, so it's all fair game. I was only taking issue with Sasha's argument that the post doesn't reflect negatively on Obama, wholly apart from whatever DB had in mind.
You assume that being a different kind of politician is a good thing, or at least that DB thinks so...
As for myself, I do.
Thank you for the explanation. I don't buy into the framework, (or probably the libertarian definition of rights) but I appreciate the comment.
As an empirical matter, I remain skeptical of libertarians, because they do seem to lean heavily Republican, and I find the view that Republicans are more respectful of individual rights than Democrats dubious.
Seriously, people need to relax on this thread. Millions of others? Should he have made a post about John Smith in Des Moines, IA who assured his coworkers that he had no interest in the supervisor position at the local plastics factory and promptly took that position, or is it perhaps a little more noteworthy when this little quib applies to the Presidential frontrunner?
And the amusement here stems from the fact that this is the stock and trade of politicians - saying one thing and doing another. It's amusing when it's relatively harmless. This happens all the time in sports. A player says he's retiring or that he will never leave in free agency and then, almost invariably, performs the exact opposite of what he said. Look at the Brett Favre fiasco. We knew this was coming. Why? Because great athletes never stay retired. It's so bad in boxing that whenever a fighter announces his retirement, the room erupts in laughter and the next question is always "so, who is your comback fight going to be against".
And Jukebox, you need to get a grip man. If you are this politically sensitive and paranoid, you are going to be in for some rough sledding in life.
Given that winner-takes-all elections can only support two stable parties, I think the smartest strategy for libertarians is to try and become influential in one or both parties, and individual libertarians should vote for lesser evils among the two parties. Because what party is in control has an importance greater than the personalities of individual politicians, it also makes sense to support a party generally based on the characteristics of the party as a whole, and only secondarily based on the characteristics of individual politicians.
Therefore, it makes sense (though it's not the only sensible strategy) to figure out which party generally is the lesser evil. A lot of libertarians have allied themselves with Republicans, even though they find the moral agenda distasteful, either because they think economic stuff is more important in an absolute way, or because they think economic stuff is more important in a marginal way (i.e., the contribution of the party to economic stuff this electoral cycle exceeds the harm that they'll do in the moral dimension this electoral cycle), or because they think the moral wing is doomed to failure generally, or whatever.
During the Cold War, anti-communism also played a big role, and now, anti-Islamic-fundamentalism plays a role. But the War on Terror has reduced the appeal of Republicans to a lot of libertarians. Still, the fact that they lean heavily Republican isn't a reason to be skeptical of them -- there are plenty of valid reasons why someone who's libertarian as I've described it would conclude that supporting Republicans is more important at this moment in history. Just as an example, I vote Republican in national elections but during the three years I lived in Virginia recently, I voted Democrat in state elections (and may continue to do so now that I'm living in Texas and later in Georgia, but I have to look into that).
Just to be clear what I'm saying, you can disagree with their priorities and empirical judgments that make them conclude that supporting Republicans is a good idea, but this is different than being "skeptical" of them, unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by being skeptical.
As someone who grew up standard liberal (and went to libertarianism without passing through conservativism), I had the same stereotypical view of Democrats/Republicans. The former were the great defenders of civil liberties, while the latter were proto-fascists. The problem was, in all the areas where Democrats were supposedly better, they weren't very good either. Speech? Yeah, unless it was against a minority group or a woman, in which case it was hate speech or harassment. Right to privacy/bodily autonomy? Yes, if we're talking about sex/procreation, but not if we're talking about anything else. The war on drugs? Democrats were just as enthusiastic about it, even if their motives were more touchy-feely and focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Moreover, I want to endorse Sasha's reply above, in particular the third paragraph of his post. Most of the areas in which Republicans are so bad -- in particular religious conservatives -- don't really pose a serious threat. (I see liberals occasionally getting hysterical at the notion that conservatives' anti-abortion, anti-Roe arguments apply to contraception, too. Well, maybe. But there's as much chance of contraception being banned in the U.S. as of George Bush getting a third term in office.) But Democrats want to take over the health care system. Not only is that a much bigger deal, but it's likely irreversible.
Good Lord! I have OCD and I don't do stuff like that.
But jukebox is big into the idea of th Catholic Church's fallibility, and Obama's perfection. So what'cha gonna do?
I do agree with it. It's one of my main objections to libertarianism.
I think the point of some of the commenters is "How has alliance proven out over the past 8 years, 6 of which were governed entirely by Republican leadersip?"
I think some of the frustration of readers who really appreciate this blog (even those of us who lean further to the left) is its (occassional) intellectual honesty. But the disproportionate attacks on the Demoncratic politicians when the Republicans have behaved so anti-liberterian over the last several years just doesn't live up to what is (usually) one of the highest standards of intellectual honesty on the web.
One interpretation is that this guy's a hack, not really a libertarian.
Another interpretation is that this guy thinks that libertarianism is actually consistent with a bunch of Republican policies, even though a superficial "anti-government" interpretation of libertarianism would suggest otherwise. For instance, this guy might think that the war in Iraq, anti-terrorist measures at home, a strong view of executive power relative to Congress, etc., are in fact the more libertarian policies.
As I mentioned in my lengthy comment above about libertarianism, I think almost every public policy issue, from a libertarian point of view, should come down to an empirical judgment, which means that there's virtually nothing that can be ruled out a priori based on libertarian principle. When it comes to policies that violate rights but that also claim to protect rights, like police and military policies, it's quite plausible that libertarianism would support them, especially when what the policies are fighting are really bad. Of course, nothing relieves one of the duty to look at the empirics (e.g., the policy won't work, the implementers are incompetent, the threat isn't so bad), but different people can validly have different views about those empirical facts.
Therefore, when I see bloggers who call themselves libertarian but support the Bush Administration on everything related to war and anti-terrorism, I would almost never call them intellectually dishonest (perhaps one of the most serious allegations against an intellectual), and just call them mistaken on the facts, or perhaps disagreeing with me on the relatives weights to be assigned different rights violations (i.e. death by terrorism vs. invasion of privacy by government).
So my only point here is that one shouldn't be so quick to brand people intellectually dishonest, when libertarianism is flexible enough that it can accommodate a huge variety of honest political positions. All these positions can be mistaken, but let's just not call them dishonest unless we know something about the guy's subjective state.
I think you're overlooking what accounts for much of what's called "intellectual dishonesty" across ideological lines. For many people emotion precedes analysis, and that emotion can be determinative. And once the opinion is set, the mind, rushing to catch up, does what it can to avoid cognitive dissonance by finding a rational consistency with one's ideological views. To take an extreme semi-hypothetical example (i.e., I don't pretend to know what she actually believes), when Ann Coulter says Hillary Clinton is more conservative than John McCain, it wouldn't surprise me if she means it. She hates McCain too much not to oppose him, so the analytical rationale falls into place involuntarily. That's blind, not dishonest. I'd venture that a good deal of comment thread flame wars reflect that sort of honestly held argument by enemy, not by idea.
question isn't whether libertarianism is flexible enough to accomodate a huge variety of honest political positions. It's whether, AFTER taking one of the positions, one remains true to it.
So, when someone writes on a blog about the importance of "Pork Busters" because government waste is bad, but only applies that standard to the Democratic party (despite 6 years of such gems as the Bridge to Nowhere, the Medicare drug bill, etc.), that's intellectually dishonest, and emprically so.
What makes it intellectually dishonest is the establishment of the principal first, the application of that principal to one political party, and then the abandonment of the principal for the sake of political hackery (or just the childish inability to admit being wrong).
For instance, people often complain about the double standard used against Israel, where Israel is criticized more heavily for doing certain things while its neighbors aren't. I think this MAY be dishonest, but isn't necessarily. For instance, one could be applying the double standard out of respect for Israel: roughly speaking, the theory would be "We're criticizing Israel because they're civilized enough to listen to us, while the Arab states are savages and it would be useless." Or, a variant of the above: "We're criticizing Israel for infidelity to its own Jewish values." And so on.
Similarly, let's suppose someone criticizes pork from the Democratic side but not from the Republican side. It could be because they're a political hack and don't care about the principle as such but are just using whatever serves for political advantage. Or it could be that they're choosing how to use their scarce blogging time and space -- if, all things considered, they still think it's more important to point people's attention to how bad Democratic policies are, then that's a potential neutral principle. Or it could be that they're ignorant of the bad things that Republicans do -- mere ignorance is not necessarily dishonesty. Or it could be that they think (perhaps wrongly) that Republicans do it less than Democrats -- being wrong on the merits deserves criticism on the merits but isn't dishonesty. Or it could be that they're choosing what they think their readers will find more interesting -- and pandering to your clientele (even if that clientele is dishonest, which it may or may not be) isn't dishonest.
Dishonesty is a subjective state. Especially on blogs, people write what they have time to write and what they find interesting and rewarding to write about. I wouldn't say someone is dishonest unless they treat two events different which they know are indistinguishable under the criteria they adhere to publicly. That is, they knowingly distinguish based on some criterion that's privately held but not admitted.
Otherwise it's just inconsistency or mistake or something else, not dishonesty. I think calling it dishonesty when it could just be an honestly held wrong view is needlessly insulting.
It sort of seems like you're saying any issue (99.9% of issues anyway) can be subjected to some sort of (forgive me) balancing test. What use is it calling this an "ideology" if two or three or fifty people can come to two or three or fifty different conclusions based on the "same ideology"?
Some variants of libertarianism are probably fairly determinate. A Murray Rothbard-type anarcho-capitalism is probably pretty determinate: all taxation is immoral, all regulation is immoral, anything is immoral as long as it's non-voluntary. Though even that strand of libertarianism probably has some wiggle room. My strand of libertarianism -- the rights-balancing kind -- is fairly indeterminate; not that there aren't any right answers, but that finding the right answer is damn hard and people of good faith can differ fairly radically within the system. Some versions of libertarianism that are more economic-efficiency-based and allow balancing of everything, not just rights, are probably even more indeterminate.
What use is it calling it an ideology? Well, I don't insist on the word "ideology." I think of it as a framework for thinking. It doesn't tell you what the answers are, but it tightly constrains how you can formulate the questions. In my view, you have to go through the exercise of justifying any imposition on rights by showing how that imposition would protect rights to a greater degree. Even though lots of answers are in principle possible, it could turn out that, given the empirics, few answers are in practice plausible.
So the theory could be more determinate in practice (once everyone is looking at the facts) than it might seem in theory (when the facts could be anything). But even if it's indeterminate, to me, the value of libertarianism is in the way it forces you to formulate questions, making you rule out certain goals a priori and making you focus on certain other goals. For instance, national greatness can never be a goal in itself; but a policy that furthers national greatness might also end up furthering individual rights by some other argument. Creating a cohesive national community can never be a goal in itself; but you could make an argument that a cohesive national community might end up furthering rights. Respecting the sacredness of trees and rocks can never be a goal in itself, and environmental protection has to be justified by how well it protects individual rights. It's all about formulating questions, and getting us on the same page where we can then have our empirical debates.
In other words, determinacy in terms of bottom-line results isn't important to me as a test of whether a normative framework can usefully be called an ideology. (Nonetheless, there is enough commonality in practice that one can actually say something about the tendency of the theory to lead to bottom-line policy positions.) Conversely, if you gather up all people who agree on policy X but all come to that view based on philosophically incompatible worldviews, it's great for a political coalition, but not interesting if you want to talk about the ideology behind policy X (there isn't any).
Not sure I'd have the stomach for quantifying all the angles.
Anyway, once you go into that aspect of the philosophy, you can answer questions like which possible options of actions are ones you're entitled to, and which aren't. (For instance, a standard libertarian view is that you have a right to choose what business to patronize, even if the result is that the business you don't patronize goes out of business. That's because you have a right to choose where to go, whereas the business has no entitlement to having you come there.)
Plus, the details aren't important here. You can treat my framework as an "insert your own rights theory" framework. You can disagree with me on what the rights are, and still agree on the idea of rights-consequentialism, where you act so as to maximize total rights-protection (under your own view).
As to the issue of quantification, I did say: "This exercise requires that one believe in a 'moral calculus' by which you can compare degrees of rights-violation in order to choose the lesser one." If you don't believe in such a moral calculus, then of course that approach isn't for you. (For instance, one could believe that you always act morally as long as you don't do things from a certain list, in which case your actions are always "moral" or "immoral," with no degrees.)
But I think most people do have an intuitive sense that there is a moral calculus, in the sense that we can rank different states of the world by how moral they are. Nazi Germany had rights violations, and so did Roosevelt's New Deal, but we have the intuition that Nazi Germany had a greater degree of rights violation than Roosevelt's America. If I could press a button and change Nazi Germany into New Deal America, I'd do it. I also believe that changing Nazi Germany into New Deal America would justify at least a small amount of extra rights violation. (For instance, what if an alien offered to change Nazi Germany into New Deal America, as long as I stole someone's wallet?)
So are you saying that George Marshall was an alien?
;-)
Income Tax withholding took care of the wallets without getting into any of that messy moral agency....