Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

Is Thomas Friedman a liberal fascist?

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Consider this post from extremely left-wing NYT.

Excerpt:

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

Our one-party democracy is worse….

Jonah Goldberg adds:

So there you have it. If only America could drop its inefficient and antiquated system, designed in the age before globalization and modernity and, most damning of all, before the lantern of Thomas Friedman’s intellect illuminated the land. If only enlightened experts could do the hard and necessary things that the new age requires, if only we could rely on these planners to set the ship of state right. Now, of course, there are “drawbacks” to such a system: crushing of dissidents with tanks, state control of reproduction, government control of the press and the internet. Omelets and broken eggs, as they say. More to the point, Friedman insists, these “drawbacks” pale in comparison to the system we have today here in America.

I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it’s the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn’t picky in this regard). This is the argument for an “economic dictatorship” pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It’s the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.

All of this is courtesy of Muddling Towards Maturity.

Commentary

How the siege mentality of Christians hurts us all

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Here is a profile of the undisputed champion of gay rights activism, Tim Gill. (H/T Jennifer Roback Morse)

Read the article, and then answer this question: where is our Tim Gill? Why are we raising the next generation of Christians to build higher and better walls between faith and knowledge?

Excerpt from the article:

Tim Gill is best known as the founder of the publishing-software giant Quark Inc., and for a long time was one of the few openly gay members of the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. He was born in 1953 to one of Colorado’s well-known Republican political families. (The town of Gill in the north-central part of the state is named after them.) After earning a degree in applied mathematics and computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Gill founded Quark in his apartment in 1981, in the manner of other self-made computer magnates like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, with a $2,000 loan from his parents.

[…]In 2000, he sold his interest in Quark for a reported half-billion dollars in order to focus full-time on his philanthropy.

Even as he has shied from the spotlight, Gill has become one of the most generous and widest-reaching political benefactors in the country, and emblematic of a new breed of business-minded donor that is rapidly changing American politics. A surge of new wealth has created a generation of givers eager to influence politics but barred from the traditional channels of participation by recent campaign-finance laws designed to limit large gifts to candidates and political parties. Like Gill, many of these figures are entrepreneurs who have made fortunes in technology.

[…]Gill’s principal interest is gay equality. His foundations have given about $115 million to charities. His serious involvement in politics is a more recent development, though geared toward the same goal. In 2000, he gave $300,000 in political donations, which grew to $800,000 in 2002, $5 million in 2004, and a staggering $15 million last year, almost all of it to state and local campaigns.

Not everyone has to be like Tim Gill, be we all have to try to have an influence in the most effective way possible. And that means being realistic about what it takes to have an influence. Some things just don’t work.

Commentary

Can a social conservative support social safety net programs?

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The full text is available in a PDF here. (H/T Stephen Baskerville)

I highly recommend this essay to social conservatives who do not yet understand why limiting the size of government is vital to preserving the autonomy of the family.

Every social conservative should be in favor of limited government, even in fiscal matters, not just on social issues. In my view, any social conservative who wants the government to tax “the rich” or big corporations is in reality undermining social conservatism.

The more money is taken from individuals, families and corporations, who have no political power to influence your family, and given to secular-left government bureaucrats who cater to left-wing special interest groups, the more the family is endangered.

Excerpt:

State controlled programs today in developed countries, almost universally, are polyamorous-friendly and monogamy-hostile. This is unjust from every perspective of political analysis because those who choose monogamy are, generally, the most effective, the cheapest and the safest in raising the next generation.

But they are unjust mainly because it is a universal, inalienable right of parents to raise their children as they see fit, including raising them in their culture.

Further, the social welfare state asks the monogamous to support the polyamorous, and uses the universal safety net insurance scheme (or taxes) to ensure that the monogamous pay more to support those who choose the polyamory culture. This is plainly unjust, but even more so because the monogamous do not have their own culture-friendly programs and their own children are the target of the culture of polyamory’s “Janissary” scheme. Justice will increase and tensions decrease when that culture of polyamory begins to pay its own costs.

One way to progress in this direction and to make the behavioral bureaucracy to serve both cultures is to give all parents, parents of both cultures, and control over the program money set aside for their children. That is giving parents vouchers, in one form or another for all three program areas

The social welfare safety net will still be in place but the parents (be they monogamous or polyamorous) will choose who holds the net in place for their children.

This requires a huge political effort on the part of the monogamy culture. Diverting the flow of money from the special interest groups (organized doctors, teachers, schools) and instead directing the voucher money (cost per child served) to the parent– who can then choose the individual doctor, teacher or school they want. The professionals will still receive the same amount of money. But instead of serving a bureaucracy they will be cooperating with the parents. But such a change is a big one in the political order and the culture of monogamy must harness itself to the task.

The whole thing is worth reading.