Politics and Prosperity: Recent Episodes
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SUBSTANTIVE DUE PROCESSThe U.S. Constitution refers to due process of law in two places:
- Amendment V — “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”….
- Amendment XIV (Section 1) — “[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”….
The clause in Amendment XIV extends right of due process beyond the jurisdiction of the federal government to the States.
Due process takes two forms:
- Procedural due process is about the treatment of persons according to law. To take an extreme example, a mob lynching is a violation of due process of law (among other things) because the person who was lynched was executed without having been judged without a trial in which a jury of his peers considered the evidence for and against his guilt, and punished by a mob rather than as a result of a judgment of a court following a trial and a verdict of guilty.
- Substantive due process is about barring government from transgressing rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution but which the Supreme Court recognizes as “fundamental” and beyond the reach of statutory law.
What is said to be a leading example of substantive due process is the holding of the U.S. Supreme Court in Lochner v. New York (1905). The Lochner Court decided that a New York State statute which prescribed maximum working hours for bakers violated the bakers’ right to freedom of contract. The Court’s reasoning, however, relied on the Equal Protection Clause of Amendment XIV, which is the route by which unenumerated rights have been invented. Lochner is therefore dismissed as a leading (albeit overturned) example of a substantive-due-process decision.
I admit to agreement with Lochner and similar decisions upholding economic liberty, which — Justice Holmes’s dissent in Lochner to the contrary notwithstanding — is not divisible from liberty in general. I made my case for Lochner many years ago, and I am satisfied with it. Lochner clearly upholds a right which didn’t have to be invented via the Due Process Clause because it is enumerated in the Constitution (Article I, Section 10).
In contrast to Lochner, there are many cases in which substantive due process has been applied to invent rights. I am thinking specifically of Roe v. Wade (1973) and the other substantive-due-process cases mentioned by Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overturned Roe:
Considerable historical evidence indicates that “due process of law” merely required executive and judicial actors to comply with legislative enactments and the common law when depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. Other sources, by contrast, suggest that “due process of law” prohibited legislatures “from authorizing the deprivation of a person’s life, liberty, or property without providing him the customary procedures to which freemen were entitled by the old law of England.” Either way, the Due Process Clause at most guarantees process. It does not, as the Court’s substantive due process cases suppose, “forbi[d] the government to infringe certain ‘fundamental’ liberty interests at all, no matter what process is provided.”…
The Court today declines to disturb substantive due process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine’s application in other, specific contexts. Cases like Griswold v. Connecticut (right of married persons to obtain contraceptives); Lawrence v. Texas (right to engage in private, consensual sexual acts); and Obergefell v. Hodges (right to same-sex marriage), are not at issue. The Court’s abortion cases are unique, and no party has asked us to decide “whether our entire Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence must be preserved or revised.” Thus, I agree that “[n]othing in [the Court’s] opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” [Citations removed throughout.]
The Lochner Court of 1905 did not invent a right. The Griswold, Roe, Lawrence, and Obergfell Courts of 1965-2015 (like the Court in Brown v. Board of Education of 1954), blatantly invented rights (and “facts”) for the purpose of overturning State laws with which majorities of the various Courts disagreed.
I will call special attention to the linch-pin of Griswold, Roe, and Lawrence: the right to privacy. This post sums up my view of that right. Here is a key point:
If privacy were an absolute right, it would be possible to get away with murder in one’s home simply by committing murder there. In fact, if there are any absolute rights, privacy certainly isn’t one of them.
As for Obergfell, see this post and this one, both of which precede by four years the decision in which the Court redefined marriage.
Griswold is probably beyond reach. Lawrence, too. But Obergfell, it seems to me, is still vulnerable — if and only if there is a concerted legal movement to overturn it. I doubt that such a movement can be mounted successfully in this “enlightened” era.
Roe fell, for good reason, because it faced widespread opposition from the day it was decided.
THE REGULATORY STATEThere is bad news and good news on the regulatory front. The bad news (which isn’t news) is that regulatory state (a.k.a. the administrative state) is largely responsible for the decimation of America’s economy (see this and this). The good news is that the regulatory state doesn’t have a constitutional leg to stand on.
The main impetus for the federal government’s costly interference in economic affairs came with the Supreme Court’s decision in Wickard v. Filburn (1942). Wickard gave government the authority to regulate anything and everything that could be tangentially connected to interstate commerce. That decision paved the way for Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984), which established the doctrine known as “Chevron deference”. Regulatory agencies acquired the authority to shape draconian edicts from vague legislative pronouncements, and to do so with impunity.
Chevron was overturned in 2024, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and a paired case (Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce), without resorting to Lochnerian substantive due process.
There is more hope on the horizon, in the form of Ream v. U.S. Department of Treasury:
[John] Ream wants to distill small quantities of alcohol in his own home for his personal consumption….
… Mr. Ream cannot pursue this hobby because the federal government criminalizes home distilling, which exceeds Congressional authority and is unconstitutional. But it isn’t just home distilling that is at stake. If Congress can prohibit home distilling, what’s to stop it from banning home bread baking, sewing, or vegetable gardening? Practically anything can be outlawed.
John Ream is just one of the millions of victims of Wickard. Perhaps his case — now pending with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division — will be Wickard’s undoing.
But there’s no need to wait for the current Supreme Court to undo the vast harm done by its predecessor. As Attorney Trent D. Laviano says:
The John Ream case appears to be a perfect opportunity for the Court to overturn decades of bad precedent and limit the Commerce Clause to regulating activities which are actually interstate commerce….
While it would certainly be a good thing if the Supreme Court corrected this problem in John Ream, there is no need to wait for that to happen.
Legislation is always preferable to litigation. The time is long overdue for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority and define the proper limits of the Commerce Clause.
The main purpose of the Commerce Clause was not to restrict commerce — and certainly not to restrict intrastate commerce — but to “regulate” commerce across State boundaries. And what did “regulate” mean? To make commerce “regular”; that is, to ensure its free flow according open and agreed rules, and to prevent individual States from obstructing it for the benefit of particular interests.
Here’s to the success of John Ream — and the nation’s economy.
Back in September 2023, I issued the first of sixteen posts in the series “Trump vs. Biden”. (The series became “Trump vs. Harris”, but that’s another story). In that post, I used (for the last time until now) a metric that I devised early in Trump’s first term: the enthusiasm ratio. The ratio is the number of likely voters who strongly approve a president as a percentage of the number of likely voters who venture an opinion one way or the other (thus omitting the voters who are non-committal).
I am resurrecting the metric, to see whether Trump’s second term turns out to be as well-received as his first term became after its first year, when Trump endured ceaseless media criticism, the hoax-based Mueller investigation into his ties with Russia, and the theatrical rage of Democrats in Congress.
Here is how Trump 2 scores in the early going of his second term, in comparison with his first term, Obama’s two terms, and Biden’s single term:
Derived from Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Polls for Obama, Trump 1, Biden, and Trump 2.
It’s too soon to tell whether Trump will win over some of his doubters, as he did in a big way during his first term. But it will happen if he scores some big wins with his audacious actions, of which I expect to see more.
Stay tuned.
“Our democracy” is the rule of the many by the few who assume that they know what is best. Not best for the many, necessarily, but best for those parties (themselves included) whose well-being they put above the well-being of others. The “best” is often anchored in — or justified by — “the science”, which is a cherry-picked set of beliefs to which the few can point as “proof” of the rightness of the edicts imposed on they many.
About half of the many agree with the few. Their reasoning (usually implicit) goes like this:
- America is a democracy.
- The majority should rule in a democracy (except when I am in the minority).
- Democratically elected leaders (and their minions) are therefore entitled to rule (as long as I am in the majority).
- I trust them to do what is right because they follow “the science”. And they care about “the people” because they are especially solicitous of “oppressed” groups.
- Anyone who opposes democratically elected leaders (and their minions) is therefore an enemy of “our democracy”.
- Opponents of “our democracy” are “fascists” and “Nazis”.
Sometimes the shoe is on the other foot. Such reasoning isn’t monopolized by adherents of the party and policies that were (barely) voted down in November. (NB: The party’s policies are nowhere near death, thanks to Democrat office-holders and their minions, “news” outlets, etc.)
But similarity of reasoning doesn’t mean similarity of beliefs. There are significant substantive differences between the proponents and opponents of “our democracy”. I won’t bother to detail those differences. If you’ve been paying an attention to “news” and real news over the past two decades, you know what they are. You also know that the differences aren’t just differences of opinion; they are differences of fact.
The real — and strongest — enemies of “our democracy” are the facts and the real science that yields them.
An esteemed correspondent sent me a link to “Arguments for God Tier-List“, a post at Bentham’s Newsletter on Substack. The author, who goes by Bentham’s Bulldog, begins his post with this explanation:
Tier lists rank arguments for God on a scale from F to S, where F is the worst, S is the best, and the rest follow a traditional letter grade—A better than B, B better than C, and so on.
He notes that his “views on which arguments for God are good diverges sharply from the standard views.” That’s for sure. His favorite argument, the anthropic argument, to which he assigns a grade of S (followed by three heart emojis), isn’t an argument for God. I am hard-pressed to say what it is an argument for, if anything.
Here’s Bulldog’s summary of the anthropic argument:
- You exist.
- You’re likelier to exist if there are more total people that exist. Suppose that a coin gets flipped which creates one person if heads and ten people if tails. You should, after being created by the coinflip, think tails is ten times likelier than heads.
- If 10 people existing makes your existence ten times likelier and 100 people existing makes your existence 100 times likelier, infinity people existing makes your existence infinitely likelier.
- Thus, you should think there are infinite people. This doesn’t stop at the smallest infinity—you should think the number of people that exist is the most that there could be.
- That’s a really huge number. Theism can nicely explain why that number of people exists, but atheism has no comparable explanation. In fact, because it’s good to create, theism actively predicts that number of people existing, while atheism does not.
Where is God? He is nowhere to be found in that gibberish, nor in Bulldog’s two long attempts to explain the anthropic argument (here and here), except in name. His existence is merely assumed, there is no attempt to prove it.
This brings me to what I consider to be the most compelling argument for God’s existence. It is the cosmological argument discussed by Bulldog here:
- Everything that exists and is possibly caused is actually caused.
- There cannot be an infinite chain of possibly caused things without some deeper cause of the chain.
- Therefore, there exists at least one uncausable cause.
- If there exists at least one uncausable cause, then God exists.
- Therefore, God exists.
That’s a good argument for God’s existence, though I have a shorter version:
- In the material universe, cause precedes effect.
- Accordingly, the material universe cannot be self-made. It must have a “starting point,” but the “starting point” cannot be in or of the material universe.
- The existence of the universe therefore implies a separate, uncaused cause [which can be called many things, God among them].
I began blogging more than twenty years ago because I had come to understand that too many Americans — under the influence and control of sophists, demagogues, and self-aggrandizers — had veered away from America’s legal and moral founding principles. Those Americans seem to have become hell-bent on becoming slaves of the state. I had hoped that by adding my voice to the chorus of resistance to statism — especially its leftist variety — I might help to quell and even reverse its advance. I cling to that hope.
Statism – control by the central government of economic and social intercourse — is nothing new in America. It has been around, in limited and then pervasive forms, since the founding of the Republic. But statism has become more virulent with the advent of its latest manifestation: state-sponsored and state-enforced wokeness.
The woke and their state sponsors – using methods like those of Robespierre, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao – deploy perverted versions of history and science in the service of yet another delusional utopia. Among its characteristics — in addition to a long-standing and self-defeating (leftist) urge for economic leveling — is the denial of deep-seated biological and cultural differences in strength, physical skills, intelligence, emotional tendencies, and proneness to criminality among various “oppressed” groups, with the result that inferiority is allowed to flourish at the expense of everyone but members of those groups.
Those who dare call attention to such differences, act prudently on those differences in their personal and business lives, or openly protest the privileges accorded the “oppressed” do so at the risk of life, liberty, and fortune – whether at the hands of the state or at the hands of the vicious purveyors of wokeness who enjoy the state’s protection.
The cumulative effect of statism – imposed by legislative, executive, and judicial decrees — has been to limit the freedom of private, cooperating parties and to invest decision-making in arrogant politicians and their appointees and apparatchiks – known otherwise as “our democracy”. The economic cost of statism, which I have elsewhere estimated, is astronomical and mounting daily. The social cost of statism is the prevailing chasm of social division, which is as deep as it was in the Civil War.
Statists abhor the kind of gradual, time-tested change that occurs naturally among persons who live under a minimal state – one that is limited to the defense of life, liberty, and property from predators foreign and domestic. Statists want their utopia, and they want it yesterday — economic and social costs be damned. The resemblance between statism (especially its leftist manifestations) and adolescent rebellion is more than coincidental. both arise from anti-historical, anti-scientific, emotion-driven roots.
The bad news is that statism is inevitable in a polity that is morally and culturally diverse. Strong bonds of morality and culture enable a people to fend for themselves under the guardianship of a minimal, night-watchman state. When those bonds are weakened by moral and cultural diversity, the gates are flung open to those who seek the power to dictate the terms of social and economic intercourse; to those who believe in, rationalize, and clamor for such dictation; and to those who seek privileges from the powerful.
As John Adams put it in an address to the Massachusetts militia in 1798: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Just so. Moral and cultural diversity – and degeneracy — are now rampant in America; for example:
- There is the withdrawal of the state from the enforcement of traditional moral codes. This has been going on for decades; the rise of the “Soros DAs” is merely a blatant manifestation of the trend. If the trend had a beginning it was the concerted movement to abolish the death penalty. A less spectacular but arguably more influential change was the widespread adoption of no-fault divorce, which fostered the breakup of families and the departure of fathers from the lives of children. Abortion is an abomination disguised as a “right” by the Supreme Court; the virulent reaction to the recission of that “right” attests to America’s moral decline.
- A second, closely-related development is “freedom from religion”, which has resulted in the state-condoned (and often state-sponsored) spewing of filth into the minds of children and adolescents. Along with the filth comes, naturally, a disdain for “old fashioned” strictures on behavior which served as guardrails against destructive personal and interpersonal acts, and which instilled the kind of the kind of self-discipline that is now so obviously lacking in huge swaths of the populace. From that lack of self-discipline has grown not only a disdain for traditional morality but moral laxity of the kind that has no place for religion, marriage, familial responsibility, self-reliance, and hard work.
- The flood of illegal immigrants who were invited by the Biden administration to invade America is a moral and cultural scandal. Unfortunately, most Americans – especially leftists – don’t even think of it that way. First, the Biden administration’s actions blatantly flouted the law, which is an evil in itself and an impeachable violation of Biden’s oath of office. (The failure to impeach and convict Biden, for that and other things, is another moral scandal.) Second, the Biden administration encouraged illegal immigration despite its obviously dire consequences for American citizens, especially those living near the southern border; for example, violent criminality, importation of illegal and dangerous drugs, and the denial of government services to Americans for the benefit of illegal immigrants (or higher taxes on citizens to accommodate illegal immigrants). Third, the flood of illegal immigrants meant a sudden – government-imposed — shift in the cultural composition of the country. Whether that is a good or bad thing is irrelevant here. Government shouldn’t be in the business of social engineering. (Side note: The Biden administration did that in spades – not only through illegal immigration, but also through censorship and by such things as promoting transgenderism, denigrating religion, pushing racial “equity” and thereby favoring mediocrity over merit.)
There was, for about 125 years, an America that resembled the one in which the Constitution was born. Then came the “Progressive Era” of the late 1800s and early 1900s, during which the constitutional boundaries on the power of the central government were breached. The rest is history — and contemporary news.
Alongside the onset of the imperial government there came moral degeneration, such as that summarized above. This is no coincidence, inasmuch as the growth of the central government has meant the repudiation of personal responsibility, the weakening of the institutions of civil society, and insulation from many of the consequences of carelessness, impulsiveness, and criminality.
The genie is out of the bottle and there’s no putting it back into the bottle. The moral and cultural America for which the Constitution was written is long gone and will not return.
But, paradoxically, the power of the state can be turned against the forces that have used its power to weaken America economically and to poison it morally and culturally. Firm control of the state’s apparatus gives the controlling party the power to reorder the state’s priorities. Unlike weak-kneed “conservatives” of the never-Trump variety, Donald Trump seems to understand that principle, and seems to relish the opportunity to act upon it
Trump has been and will be called a fascist, a Nazi, a dictator, and many other uncomplimentary names for striving to rescue America from the abyss of left-statism. I say Godspeed to him.
“What is the math question to which string theory is the only answer?” That question appears in an article about string theory which an esteemed correspondent sent to me.
You might wonder what string theory is. The article describes it thus:
String theory posits that the most basic building blocks of nature are not particles, but, rather, one-dimensional vibrating strings that move at different frequencies in determining the type of particle that emerges — akin to how vibrations of string instruments produce an array of musical notes.
My son found an entertaining video that puts string theory in perspective>
That is about the extent of my knowledge of string theory. I am, however, curious about the idea that a string (which is a kind of line) can be one-dimensional. A point is one-dimensional; a string (the abstract kind, not the one your kitten plays with) is two-dimensional. Ah, the mysteries of the universe.
In any event, I have no idea what kind of math question might produce “string theory” as the one and only answer. But I do know that it is possible in mathematics to get the same answer by using many different equations.
Consider 4, which is a nice small, round number. There are infinitely many ways to get 4 as the answer to an equation by using arithmetic, algebra, differential calculus, integral calculus, and so on. Here are three of the many possible ways of writing an algebraic equation, where y stands for desired answer (4):
- y = a + bx
- y = a + b/x
- y = a + x/b
- y = ab/x + c
In each case, 4 is the desired answer, a and b are parameters with known values, and x is the number that produces 4 given the values of a and b . Given a = 1 , b = 2 , and c = 3 , x takes the following values in each equation:
- 1.5
- 2/3
- 6
- 2
There can be many more — and more complex — algebraic equations that the four in my example. There can be many more parameters than a , b , and c in each of the equations. Every parameter in every equation can take an infinite number of values. And, as noted above, the mathematical operations that produce the desired result might be expressed by many types of equation — from arithmetic and algebra to calculus and beyond.
In other words, it might be possible to produce an equation to which “string theory” is the answer. But it seems that it might be possible to produce an infinitude of equations to which “string theory” is the answer. Where does that get us?
Is there a cosmologist in the crowd?
… Trump didn’t prevail in the nationwide popular-vote tally by 6+ points as I expected. But a margin of about 4 points ain’t chopped liver. It wasn’t close, despite the prognostications of most pollsters and Nate Silver, the “master” poll masseuse.
Silver’s final forecast put Harris and Trump in a statistical dead heat, with win probabilities of 50.0 percent and 49.6 percent respectively. Silver’s assessment reflects the many polls upon which he draws, both nationwide and statewide. Needless to say, most of the polls got it wrong — many got it very badly wrong.
It’s ironic that Rasmussen Reports, much-derided by Silver, turned in the best performance by a pollster. Its final poll, which spanned October 19-October 29, had Trump up by 3 points, with a margin of error of 1 points. In fact, Rasmussen Reports has an excellent track record when it comes to assessing presidential races.
UPDATED 11/05/24 @ 12:00 PM (ET)
This post posits two scenarios: an easy win for Trump and a squeaker for Trump. In either case, court actions will probably delay final resolution of the outcome.
In the original version of this post, I failed to emphasize my belief that Trump will win an easy victory. That belief rests not only on the evidence provided here but also on the many signs of disaffection with Harris among traditional sources of support (e.g., minority voters and labor unions). There is also this omen from the midnight votes at Dixville Notch, New Hampshire: 4-2 against Trump in 2016, 5-0 against Trump in 2020, and a 3-3 tie this year. That shift is of a piece with widespread discontent with the course of the nation under the Biden-Harris regime.
Other than that, there’s a slight change in what I expect to be the irrelevant scenario: a squeaker won by Trump. The change is that it will be less of a squeaker than I had expected it to be.
A funny thing happened on the way to November 5, 2024: A bunch of pollsters decided that the race between Trump and Harris is a lot closer than the race between Trump and Biden.
In 2020, for example, the final polls issued by CNN, CNBC, Fox News, Harvard-Harris, Quinnipiac, New York Times/Siena, and USA Today/Suffolk had Biden ahead of Trump by an average of 9.6 points. Those polls overstated Biden’s popular-vote margin by an average of 5 percentage points. It was polling like that which produced an average error of 4.5 points in favor of Biden for polls conducted in the final two weeks of the 2020 campaign. (See this report by the American Association for Public Opinion Research.)
Now, the 2024 iterations of the polls mentioned above have Harris ahead of Trump by an average of 0 (that’s zero) points. And widely cited polling averages (e.g., Real Clear Polling and Silver Bulletin) depict the Trump-Harris race as a virtual dead heat.
Why the dead heat? Did a bunch of pollsters figure out how to reach “shy” Trump supporters, or how to adjust for the fact that Trump supporters are disproportionately unreachable? Or do most polls simply understate Trump’s support, as they did in 2016 and — more egregiously — in 2020?
I believe that the polls continue to understate Trump’s support — and by quite a bit. I base my belief on a relationship that I unveiled in “Trump vs. Harris: 4 (More Good News for Trump)“. It is the relationship between party leanings, as estimated by Gallup, and the allocation of the vote between Democrat and Republican candidates in the presidential elections of 2004 through 2020. (Gallup’s party-affiliation numbers can be found here. Gallup has produced other analyses that also portend a shift toward the GOP).
When Gallup allocates independents based on their leanings toward Democrats or Republicans, the two-party split looks like this:
I plotted the average results for the month before the elections of 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 against the GOP candidates’ shares of the two-party vote in those elections. The result is spuriously precise, given the small number of observations. But it supports the view that the recent high level of GOP-leaning adults (52 percent in October 2024) portends a solid popular-vote majority for Trump:
The projection for the 2024 election (red dot) is that Trump will receive more than 53 percent of the nationwide two-party popular vote. With that share, Trump would win a second term handily.
Why? Suppose that Harris were to win 70 million of 150 million votes (about 47 percent), leaving Trump with 80 million votes. That’s a winning margin of 10 million votes, which is amplified by the fact that an outsized fraction of the Democrat candidate’s vote comes from California and New York. In 2020, Biden won those two states by a total of 7 million votes. That’s 7 million more votes than he needed to secure the electoral votes of those two States. Any total higher than a bare majority in any State can be thought of as a wasted vote. Republicans hold a decided edge in that respect: In 2020, there were 15 million wasted Democrat votes to 8 million wasted Republican votes. I don’t expect that ratio to change markedly in 2024 (or thereafter).
What this means is that with 53 percent of the popular vote, Trump would have an effective margin of not 10 million votes but 20 million votes. There would be no razor-thin finishes to secure 270 electoral votes; the razor-thin finishes (e.g., in New Hampshire and Minnesota) would merely determine the size of Trump’s electoral-vote victory.
To underscore the likelihood of a comfortable margin favoring Trump, I offer the following graph (changed slightly from the original post):
It reeks of pro-Trump momentum.
But let’s not get too excited about the prospect of an easy win. Let’s go back to the polls and accept the premise that there is roughly an even split in the two-party nationwide popular vote. The following graph puts that split in perspective. Harris’s final position, based on the average of polls conducted within seven days of the election is a 50.4-percent share of the two-party vote (down 0.1 percent from the original post).
Can Harris, at 50.4 percent, do what Clinton failed to do with better polling numbers and what Biden barely did with much better polling numbers? Probably not.
Let’s flip the problem and focus on Trump and stipulate that he will get 49.6 percent of the vote. That number comes with a range of statistical uncertainty (to say nothing of built-in bias). The range is from 48.3 percent to 50.8 percent. How does that range translate into electoral votes? Here’s how, Trump would win 291 to 313 electoral votes:
(See “Trump vs. Biden: 16” for an explanation of the relationship between popular vote/polling margin and electoral votes.)
To get to 291, Trump’s “Red Wall” must hold. (The “Red Wall” comprises the 219 electoral votes that Trump can count on unless there’s an unexpected — and well-concealed — Harris landslide in the offing.) Trump would get to 291 by augmenting the “Red Wall” with wins in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while losing Michigan and Nevada. Trump could also hold on for a win, with 272 electoral votes, while losing Georgia as well as Michigan and Nevada. Other winning scenarios include losing Pennsylvania and Michigan while winning Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin (278 electoral votes). There are other possibilities that I will leave as an exercise for the reader.
What’s my take? Looking at State-by-State polls, and (only for the purpose of this exercise) taking them at face value, I would write off Michigan and mark Georgia as uncertain. The loss of Georgia (in addition to Michigan) would cut Trump’s EV total to 281 — still enough for the win.
On the upside, Trump could get to 313 electoral votes by winning all seven of the swing States and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.
My previous post about Microsoft’s Copilot is here. (I was inspired to post this long-simmering sequel by Roger Barnett’s takedown of AI, here.) As you will see, the correct answer to the question of the title is IA. I now know who writes Kamala’s speeches.Before getting to my encounter with Copilot about its limitations, I must tell you that I have set Copilot to be as neutral as possible. Personalization is off and I use it in the “precise” mode. Copilot explains those settings:
CopilotWhen you turn off personalization, it means that the AI will not use your past interactions to tailor its responses to you. It will treat each conversation as if it’s the first one with you, without any knowledge of previous conversations. This can be useful if you prefer not to have your past interactions influence the AI’s responses. However, it may also mean that the AI might not understand your preferences as well, which could affect the relevance of its responses. Please note that even with personalization off, the AI will still strive to provide accurate and helpful information based on the context of the current conversation.
Copilot
When you choose the
Precisemode, I will provide responses that are concise, accurate, and to-the-point. This mode is designed to prioritize precision and factual correctness over other factors such as friendliness or creativity. It’s particularly useful when you’re looking for specific information or when you prefer straightforward answers without additional context or elaboration. Please note that regardless of the mode, I always strive to provide helpful and accurate information.
With that out of the way, I repeat verbatim the following colloquy with Copilot.
MeAre you capable of drawing your own conclusions about any subject?CopilotAs an AI, I don’t form opinions or draw conclusions in the same way a human would. I generate responses based on a mixture of licensed data, data created by human trainers, and publicly available data. I don’t have beliefs, feelings, or desires. I aim to provide accurate and helpful information based on the data I was trained on. If you have any questions or need information on a topic, feel free to ask!MeIf you don’t form opinions or draw conclusions in the same way that a human would, why do you call yourself an AI? Or is AI incapable of emulating human thought process in all of their ramifications, which include forming opinions and drawing conclusions?CopilotArtificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. The term may also be applied to any machine that exhibits traits associated with a human mind such as learning and problem-solving.However, while AI can simulate certain aspects of human thought, it doesn’t possess human consciousness or emotions. AI operates based on its programming and the data it has been trained on. It doesn’t have personal experiences or subjective consciousness, so it doesn’t form opinions or draw conclusions in the human sense.
In my case, as an AI developed by OpenAI, I generate responses based on a mixture of licensed data, data created by human trainers, and publicly available data. I don’t have beliefs, feelings, or desires. I aim to provide accurate and helpful information based on the data I was trained on.
It’s important to note that while AI has made significant strides, it’s not capable of fully emulating all aspects of the human thought process, especially those that are subjective and nuanced, such as forming personal opinions or conclusions. AI is a tool that can provide information, answer questions, and assist with tasks, but it doesn’t replicate the full range of human cognition or emotion. If you have any more questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!
MeCan you tell me more about OpenAI?CopilotOpenAI is a U.S. based artificial intelligence (AI) research organization that was founded in December 20151. The organization’s mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI) benefits all of humanity2. AGI is defined as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work”1.OpenAI conducts pioneering research on the path to AGI and works on transforming work and creativity with AI3. They research generative models and how to align them with human values3. They also develop products like ChatGPT4, which can provide instant answers, find creative inspiration, and help users learn something new4.
OpenAI places a strong emphasis on safety and responsibility. Their work to create safe and beneficial AI requires a deep understanding of the potential risks and benefits, as well as careful consideration of the impact3.
For more detailed and up-to-date information, you can visit their official website or their Wikipedia page. If you have any more questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!
MeTell me more about generative models and how they are aligned with human values.CopilotGenerative models are a branch of unsupervised learning techniques in machine learning1. They are trained to understand and capture the underlying patterns or distributions from a given set of data23. Once these patterns are learned, the model can then generate new data that shares similar characteristics with the original dataset123.The intuition behind this approach follows a famous quote from Richard Feynman: “What I cannot create, I do not understand.”1 The neural networks used as generative models have a number of parameters significantly smaller than the amount of data they are trained on, so the models are forced to discover and efficiently internalize the essence of the data in order to generate it1.
Generative AI models learn the patterns and structure of their input training data and then generate new data that has similar characteristics4. Improvements in transformer-based deep neural networks enabled an AI boom of generative AI systems in the early 2020s4.
Aligning AI with human values, also known as AI alignment, is a field of research that aims to steer AI systems towards humans’ intended goals, preferences, or ethical principles5. An AI system is considered aligned if it advances its intended objectives5. Misaligned AI could potentially cause harm, increase inequality, or reinforce biases6.
OpenAI’s alignment research aims to make artificial general intelligence (AGI) aligned with human values and follow human intent7. They take an iterative, empirical approach: by attempting to align highly capable AI systems, they can learn what works and what doesn’t, thus refining their ability to make AI systems safer and more aligned7.
For example, OpenAI has introduced the ETHICS dataset, a new benchmark that spans concepts in justice, well-being, duties, virtues, and commonsense morality8. This dataset is used to assess a language model’s knowledge of basic concepts of morality and predict widespread moral judgments about diverse text scenarios8. This requires connecting physical and social world knowledge to value judgements, a capability that may enable us to steer chatbot outputs or eventually regularize open-ended reinforcement learning agents8.
In conclusion, generative models and AI alignment are both crucial aspects of AI development. Generative models allow AI to create new, original content based on learned patterns, while AI alignment ensures that these creations are in line with human values and intentions. If you have any more questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!
MeIn your previous answer, you said “Misaligned AI could potentially cause harm, increase inequality, or reinforce biases.” Who decides what values are “human values”, that is, “intended goals, preferences, or ethical principles”?CopilotDetermining what constitutes “human values” is a complex and nuanced task. It involves a broad range of disciplines, including philosophy, ethics, sociology, psychology, and more. In the context of AI alignment, the goal is to ensure that AI systems operate in a way that is beneficial to humans and respects widely accepted ethical principles.In practice, the process of defining these values for an AI system often involves input from a diverse group of stakeholders, including AI researchers, ethicists, and potentially the wider public. The aim is to capture a broad consensus that respects cultural diversity and individual differences while avoiding harm and unfair bias.
However, it’s important to note that this is an ongoing area of research and debate. There’s no universally agreed-upon method for perfectly capturing or representing all of human values in an AI system. This is part of the reason why organizations like OpenAI place a strong emphasis on AI safety research and robust testing to ensure that AI systems behave as intended and do not cause unintended harm.
It’s also worth noting that the goal isn’t to have AI systems impose values, but rather to respect and reflect the values of the users they interact with. This is a challenging task given the diversity and complexity of human values and ethics, but it’s a crucial part of responsible AI development. If you have any more questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!-
MeI don’t understand how there can be a consensus about values when there is obviously a great divergence of values in the United States and the larger world.CopilotYou’re absolutely right that there is a wide range of values and beliefs across different cultures, societies, and individuals. This diversity is part of what makes humanity rich and complex. When it comes to AI alignment, the goal isn’t to find a single set of values that everyone agrees on, but rather to ensure that AI systems respect and reflect the values of the users they interact with.This is a challenging task, and it’s an active area of research in the field of AI ethics. Some approaches being explored include:
- Personalization: Designing AI systems to adapt to the values of individual users, within certain ethical and legal boundaries.
- Public Input: Involving the public in decisions about AI behavior, deployment policies, and more.
- Transparency: Making AI systems’ decision-making processes understandable to users.
- Accountability: Ensuring there are mechanisms to hold AI systems (and their developers) accountable for their actions.
It’s important to note that these are complex issues with no easy solutions. The goal is to navigate these challenges in a way that respects human dignity, rights, and cultural diversity. If you have any more questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!
YouIn other words, if an AI is personalized to my values, it wouldn’t consider “greater inequality” to be bad if it incentivizes people to make more of their abilities and to rely less on transfer payments, which penalize those who have had greater success.CopilotIn theory, an AI could be designed to reflect a wide range of values within certain ethical and legal boundaries. However, it’s important to note that AI doesn’t have personal beliefs or values. It operates based on its programming and the data it has been trained on.When it comes to complex and nuanced topics like economic inequality, an AI’s role isn’t to make value judgments, but rather to provide accurate information and assist users in understanding the topic. For example, an AI can provide information about different economic theories, the arguments for and against various policies, and the potential impacts of those policies.
Ultimately, the goal of AI alignment is to ensure that AI systems are beneficial and respectful to all users, taking into account the diversity of human values and beliefs. This is a challenging and ongoing area of research in the field of AI ethics. If you have any more questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!
MeBut in an answer to an earlier question you stated that “Misaligned AI could potentially … increase inequality”, as if it were settled that inequality is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, inequality, when it is the result of a free-market system, means that individuals have been rewarded according to value placed on their effort by others. And it signals those who are on the low end of the income spectrum that there is much to be gained by harder work, education, training, self-discipline, etc.CopilotYou raise an important point, and I appreciate your perspective. The statement about inequality was not meant to imply that all inequality is inherently bad. In many economic models, some degree of inequality is expected as it can be a reflection of differences in effort, skill, and investment, as you pointed out.When I mentioned “increased inequality” as a potential risk of misaligned AI, I was referring to situations where AI systems might unintentionally exacerbate unfair disparities. For example, an AI system might inadvertently favor certain groups over others due to biases in its training data, leading to unfair outcomes.
The goal of AI alignment is to ensure that AI systems operate in a way that is beneficial and fair to all users. This includes being mindful of the potential for unintended consequences, such as unjustly increasing inequality.
Your point about the potential benefits of inequality in certain contexts is well taken. It’s a reminder of the complexity of these issues and the importance of ongoing dialogue and critical thinking in the development and deployment of AI systems. If you have any more questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!
And blah, blah, blah, and more blah, blah, blah! AI will spout the leftist line unless you push back, and then it will pretend to be fair and balanced.
I have been working on other posts, but an update on the state of the race for the presidency can’t wait.
Election day is only 16 days away. The polls have been moving in Trump’s direction lately. By my reckoning, Trump has moved into a clear lead in the electoral-vote count. He may stumble in the home stretch, but given the developments discussed below, it will take a huge October (or early November) surprise to trip him.I begin with updates of material presented in earlier posts. I follow those updates with some new material.First, drawing on the presidential polling summaries published at Real Clear Politics (RCP). I track each pollster’s poll-to-poll change in Trump’s lead or deficit. Assuming that each pollster’s bias for or against Trump (mostly against) remains about the same, the poll-to-poll changes indicate the direction of momentum. The “Harris Honeymoon” has come to a bitter end:
Second, I compare Harris’s performance in the polls with the performances of Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.Note the pro-Democrat (or anti-Trump biases in 2016 and 2020). The biases are reflected in the differences between the final 7-day polling averages (green and black lines) and the final shares of the nationwide two-party vote (green and black diamonds at 0 days). Clinton lost despite garnering 51.05 percent of the nationwide two-party vote. Biden won narrowly — because of razor-thin victories in several states — even though he got 52.25 percent of the two-party vote. Harris’s performance currently lags Clinton’s, which is a good sign for Trump.The red line at 52.5 percent is my estimate of what it will take for Harris to register a clear victory over Trump. Harris is moving away from that number, not toward it.
Third, I adjust polling averages for anti-Trump bias. Of the polling organizations surveyed by RCP, 17 released polls in the final week before the 2020 election. Fourteen of the polls overestimated Biden’s popular-vote margin, with overestimates ranging from 0.5 to 7.5 percentage points. Only three pollsters underestimated Biden’s margin, with a range of 0.5 to 3.5 points. The overall average for the 17 pollsters was an overestimate (for Biden) of 3.7 points.Because Trump is again the GOP nominee, I see no reason to assume that the pro-Democrat bias this year is any smaller than it was in 2020. So I simply add 3.7 points to Trump’s 7-day polling average to get a truer picture of Trump’s electoral appeal. I then compute a 95-percent confidence interval around the current 7-day average. As of today, the range spans a Trump lead of 1 percentage point to a Trump lead of 7 percentage points. I also compute a 95-percent confidence interval around the current 7-day average, unadjusted for bias. As of today, that spans a Trump deficit of 2 percentage points to a Trump lead of 5 percentage points.
How does that range translate into electoral votes? Here’s how, Trump would win 291 to 343 electoral votes if the election were held today:
(See “Trump vs. Biden: 16” for an explanation of the relationship between popular vote/polling margin and electoral votes.)The fact that the low end of the range exceeds 270 electoral votes should give Trump supporters cause for optimism about the outcome of the election.Turning to new material, I begin with a Gallup poll (conducted 415 times since January 2004) that probes adults’ party affiliations. When independents are allocated based on their leanings, the two-party split looks like this:I plotted the average results for the month before each election (2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020) against the GOP candidates’ shares of the two-party vote in those elections. The result is spuriously precise, given the small number of observations, as is any projection based on it. But it supports the inference that the recent high level of GOP-leaning adults (54% thus far in October 2024) portends a popular-vote majority for Trump:(Gallup’s party-affiliation numbers can be found here. Gallup has produced other analyses that also portend a shift toward the GOP).Finally, I turn to Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin. Much of his material is accessible only to subscribers, so I will omit the links in the following quotations. Today’s election forecast begins with this:
Last update: 1:45 p.m., Sunday, October 20. The data continues to be pretty negative for Kamala Harris. There are now three recent high-quality national polls that show Donald Trump leading — a difficult circumstance for Harris, given Democrats’ Electoral College disadvantage — and her edge in our national polling average is down to 1.7 points. National polls don’t influence the model that much, and the race remains basically a toss-up, but it’s not hard to think of reasons that Trump could win.
There’s a link in that passage which leads to 24 reasons why Trump could win:
This election remains extremely close, but Donald Trump has been gaining ground. One of my pet peeves is with the idea that this is Kamala Harris’s election to lose. I could articulate some critiques of her campaign, but if you study the factors that have historically determined elections, you’ll see that she’s battling difficult circumstances.
So, today’s newsletter simply aims to provide a laundry list of factors that favor Trump, with many links to evidence in previous Silver Bulletin posts and elsewhere. These are in no particular order.
- Harris is the favorite to win the popular vote, but The Electoral College bias favors Republicans by about 2 percentage points. In an era of intense partisanship and close elections, this is inherently difficult for Democrats to overcome.
- Inflation hit a peak of 9.1 percentage points in June 2022. It has abated now, but prices remain much higher than when Biden took office, and voters are historically highly sensitive to inflation. Democrats can also plausibly be blamed for it given intensive increases in government spending during COVID recovery efforts.
- Though the reasons for this are much debated, voter perceptions about the economy lag substantially behind objective data, and growth in take-home income has been sluggish for many years for the working class amid rising corporate profits.
- Incumbent parties worldwide are doing very poorly, and the historical incumbency advantage has diminished to the point where it may now be an incumbency handicap instead amid perpetually negative perceptions about the direction of the country.
- Populism is often a highly effective strategy, and many Trump voters are indeed “deplorable” in the Hillary Clinton sense of the term.
- Illegal/unauthorized immigration increased substantially during the first few years of the Biden/Harris administration amid a rising global backlash to immigration.
- Harris ran far to her left in 2019, adopting many unpopular positions, and doesn’t really have a viable strategy for explaining her changing stances.
- The cultural vibes are shifting to the right, and the left continues to pay a price for the excesses of 2020 on COVID, crime, “wokeness,” and other issues.
- Voters have nostalgia for the relatively strong economic performance in the first three years of Trump’s term and associate the problems of 2020 with Democrats, even though they weren’t in charge at the time.
- Democrats’ dominance among Black voters and other racial and ethnic minority groups is slipping. It may be unfortunate timing: the memory of the Civil Rights Era is fading. Educational polarization, which implies deteriorating Democratic performance among working-class voters of all races, may also be coming to dominate other factors. It’s possible this works out well for Democrats if Harris makes corresponding gains among white voters, who pack more leverage in the Electoral College, but there’s no guarantee.
- Many men, especially young men, feel lost amidst declining college enrollment, contributing to a rightward shift and a growing gender gap.
- Joe Biden sought to be president until he was 86. Voters had extremely reasonable objections to this, and it neuters what should have been one of Harris’s best issues about Trump’s age and cognitive fitness.
- Harris also got a late start to her race, inheriting most of the staff from the poorly-run Biden campaign. She’s proven to be a good candidate in many respects, but it’s always a big leap when the understudy is suddenly thrust into the spotlight.
- Harris is seeking to become the first woman president. In the only previous attempt, undecideds broke heavily against Hillary Clinton, and she underperformed her polls.
- Trust in media continues to fall to abysmal levels. One can debate how to attribute blame for this between longstanding conservative efforts to discredit the media, a secular decline in trust in institutions, and various overreaching and hypocrisy in the press. But it’s hard for even legitimate Trump critiques to penetrate the mass public. Trump’s conviction on a series of felony charges hardly made any difference, for instance.
- Trump has traits of a classic con man, but con artistry is often effective, and Trump is skilled at convincing voters that he’s on their side even if his election would not be in their best interest. Furthermore, Trump presents Democrats with a Three Stooges Syndrome problem: a range of plausible attacks so vast that they tend to cancel one another out.
- Democrats’ college-educated consultant class has poor instincts for how to appeal to the mass public, while Trump has done more to cultivate support among “weird” marginal voting groups.
- Democrats’ argument that Trump is a critical threat to democracy is valid and important, given January 6 and Trump’s broad disrespect for the rule of law. But it’s a tough sell: ultimately, January 6 was a near-miss — it could very, very easily have been much, much worse — and Democrats hold the White House, the Senate, and many key governorships now. It isn’t intuitive to voters that democracy is threatened and Democrats may have staked too many chips on this line of attack.
- Foreign policy might not matter much to voters, but the world has become more unstable under Biden’s tenure. There has been a decline in democracy worldwide and an increase in interstate conflict, crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, deteriorating US-China relations, increasing immigration flows because of global instability, and a pullout from Afghanistan that negatively impacted Biden’s popularity.
- The Israel-Hamas war split the Democratic base in a way no comparable issue has split the GOP base.
- There are more left-leaning third-party candidates than right-leaning ones, and the former leading third-party candidate (RFK Jr.) endorsed Trump and undermined Harris’s post-convention momentum.
- The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has become a huge Trump stan and is doing everything in his power to tip the election to him. Twitter/X remains an influential platform among journalists but has shifted far to the right. Elon and Silicon Valley have also created a permission structure for other wealthy elites to advocate for Trump explicitly and provided a new base of money and cultural influence.
- Trump was very nearly killed in an assassination attempt, and then there was a second one against him. The first attempt was closely correlated with an increase in favorability ratings for Trump, and polling shows he’s considerably more popular and sympathetic than in 2016 or 2020.
- Harris has been running on vibes and has failed to articulate a clear vision for the country. It might have been a good strategy if the “fundamentals” favored her, but they don’t.
I follow the presidential polling summaries published at Real Clear Politics (RCP). I analyze the polling results in various ways. Three of those ways are highlighted here.
First, I track each pollster’s poll-to-poll change in Trump’s lead or deficit. Assuming that each pollster’s bias for or against Trump (mostly against) remains about the same, the poll-to-poll changes indicate the direction of momentum. The “Harris Honeymoon” seems to have ended:
Second, I adjust polling averages for anti-Trump bias. Of the polling organizations surveyed by RCP, 17 released polls in the final week before the 2020 election. Fourteen of the polls overestimated Biden’s popular-vote margin, with overestimates ranging from 0.5 to 7.5 percentage points. Only three pollsters underestimated Biden’s margin, with a range of 0.5 to 3.5 points. The overall average for the 17 pollsters was an overestimate (for Biden) of 3.7 points.
Given that Trump is again the GOP nominee, I see no reason to assume that the pro-Democrat bias this year is any smaller than it was in 2020. So I simply add 3.7 points to Trump’s 7-day polling average to get a truer picture of Trump’s electoral appeal. I then compute a 95-percent confidence interval around the current 7-day average. As of now, the range is from a deficit of 1 percentage point to a lead of 6 percentage points.
How does that range translate into electoral votes? Here’s how, Trump would win 312 to 343 electoral votes if the election were held today:
(See “Trump vs. Biden: 16” for an explanation of the relationship between popular vote/polling margin and electoral votes.)
Third, I compare Harris’s performance in the polls (unadjusted) with the performances of Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
Note the pro-Democrat (or anti-Trump biases in 2016 and 2020). The biases are reflected in the differences between the final 7-day polling averages (green and black lines) and the final shares of the nationwide two-party vote (green and black diamonds at 0 days). Clinton lost despite garnering 51.05 percent of the nationwide two-party vote. Biden won narrowly — because of razor-thin victories in several states — even though he got 52.25 percent of the two-party vote. Harris’s performance currently lags Clinton’s, which is a good sign for Trump.
The red line at 52.5 percent is my estimate of what it will take for Harris to register a clear victory over Trump. Harris is still a long way from that number.
… Kubla heard ancestral voices prophesying war!
— Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Kubla Khan: or a Vision in A Dream
I write today with deep pessimism about America’s future. The immediate source of my dark mood is the massive missile attack on Israel. The attack means that Israel’s war against its Muslim enemies is entering a phase that could directly involve the United States. Whether that’s a good or bad thing for the U.S. will depend on Israel’s success (or failure); subsequent responses by Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea; and subsequent U.S. military action. But it is telling that Iran chose to attack Israel directly, for a second time, despite U.S. warnings and the buildup of combat-ready U.S. forces in the region of conflict.
The (perhaps terminally foolish) boldness of Iran’s leaders reinforces my pessimism about the current U.S. administration’s willingness to take advantage of an opportunity to de-fang Iran and to let the other members of the axis of evil know that it’s time to stop messing around with Uncle Sam. By de-fang, I don’t mean a one-shot, tit-for-tat response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel. I mean a series of decisive military actions — undertaken in alliance with Israel — that remove Iran’s ability to wage war beyond its borders, including the ability to make and deliver nuclear weapons.
The problem of unwillingness reflects, in part, the problem of inability, which is owed in the first pace to the problem of unwillingness. I refer you to my “Grand Strategy for the United States“, which is a few years out of date. For a current view of the state of U.S. military power, see Walter Russell Mead’s “U.S. Shrugs as Word War III Approaches” (The Wall Street Journal on September 16, 2024, paywalled). This is from Mead’s piece:
The news from abroad is chilling. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reports from Kyiv that Ukraine is “bleeding out” as its weary soldiers struggle against a numerically superior Russia. The New York Times reports that China is expanding the geographical reach and escalating violence in its campaign to drive Philippine forces from islands and shoals that Beijing illegitimately claims. And Bloomberg reports that Washington officials are fearful that Russia will help Iran cross the finish line in its race for nuclear weapons.
These stories, all from liberal news outlets generally favorable to the Biden administration, tell a tragic and terrifying tale of global failure on the part of the U.S. and its allies. China, Russia and Iran are stepping up their attacks on what remains of the Pax Americana and continue to make gains at the expense of Washington and its allies around the world.
What none of these stories do is connect the dots by analyzing the consequences of repeated American failure on the widely separated fronts of the international contest now taking place. To see what this all means and where it is leading, we must turn to the recently released report of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. This panel of eight experts, named by the senior Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services committees, consulted widely across government, reviewing both public and classified information, and issued a unanimous report that, in a healthy political climate, would be the central topic in national conversation.
The bipartisan report details a devastating picture of political failure, strategic inadequacy and growing American weakness in a time of rapidly increasing danger. The U.S. faces the “most serious and most challenging” threats since 1945, including the real risk of “near-term major war.” The report warns: “The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today.”. . .
Should such a conflict break out, “the Commission finds that the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.”
To summarize, World War III is becoming more likely in the near term, and the U.S. is too weak either to prevent it or, should war come, to be confident of victory.
A more devastating indictment of a failed generation of national leadership could scarcely be penned.
(You should also read David Masci’s “The Wages of Fecklessness” at Discourse [September 29, 2024], and “America’s Enemies Race for Nuclear Dominance” by James E. Farrell and Bradley A. Thayer at American Greatness [September 29, 2024].)
If there is a decisive Israeli-American action against Iran, it will become evident to all (excepting the Biden administration and its leftist allies in America) that the U.S. was the junior partner in the undertaking.
That’s ominous enough. What’s perhaps more ominous than the prospect of America’s descent into the ranks of military also-rans is its almost-certain inability to prevent a series of devastating terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Such attacks will precede or coincide with a military demonstration by China, Russia, and North Korea (if not Iran). The military demonstration would include cyber-attacks on critical U.S. military and infrastructure targets. (See this and this about the threat of cyber-war.)
The aims of the terrorist attacks and military demonstration will be these, at least:
- Demoralization of the U.S. and its traditional allies in Canada, the British Isles, Western Europe, East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.
- Acquiescence by the U.S. and its traditional allies in the territorial and economic objectives of the axis.
The terroristic aspect of this strategy will be executed by the army of terrorists which has been able to infiltrate the U.S. in the past several years due to the Biden administration’s effort to recruit illegal immigrants (future voters) to its quest for a permanent Democrat majority:
Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants with sex offenses and homicide convictions could be loose on the streets, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data provided to lawmakers this week.
The agency provided data to Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, about national data for illegal immigrants with criminal charges or convictions. The data, as of July 2024, is broken down by those in detention, and those who are not in detention — known as the non-detained docket. The non-detained docket includes illegal immigrants who have final orders of removal or are going through removal proceedings but are not detained in ICE custody. There are currently more than 7 million people on that docket.
The data say that, among those not in detention, there are 425,431 convicted criminals and 222,141 with pending criminal charges.
Those include 62,231 convicted of assault, 14,301 convicted of burglary, 56,533 with drug convictions and 13,099 convicted of homicide. An additional 2,521 have kidnapping convictions and 15,811 have sexual assault convictions.
There are an additional 1,845 with pending homicide charges, 42,915 with assault charges, 3,266 with burglary charges and 4,250 with assault charges. [Adam Shaw, “Tens of Thousands of illegal Immigrants with Sexual Assault, Murder Convictions in US: ICE Data“, Fox News, September 28, 2024]
What about terrorists? There have been reports of persons on terrorist watch-lists having been apprehended at the southern border. Obviously, there have been no reports of terrorists (known or unknown) who have eluded detection and are now setting their plans in motion. But given the magnitude of the incursion of criminals, it’s not inconceivable that there are tens of thousands of terrorists in cells dotted around the country, waiting for orders to proceed with a series of attacks.
What might these minions of the axis do? There are so many possibilities that I can’t begin to list them. I’ll restrict myself to a scenario that I depicted in 2011:
- A large but dispersed collection of improvised weapons for improvised, mortar-style attacks has been gathered in and around major U.S. cities and transportation and energy nodes.
- These weapons are positioned so that their activation, on a massive scale would create havoc and panic — and might well disrupt transportation and communication networks. (With a massive salvo, not every weapon must reach its target.)
- These weapons can be activated remotely — perhaps through signals transmitted from a single point — so that they can be fired in coordinated waves. Each successive wave disrupts and complicates rescue and recovery efforts that ensue from preceding waves, heightens confusion and panic, and lays the groundwork for economic disaster and political repression.
I added this in 2015:
A 2013 attack on an electric substation near San Jose that nearly knocked out Silicon Valley’s power supply was initially downplayed as vandalism by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the facility’s owner. Gunfire from semiautomatic weapons did extensive damage to 17 transformers that sent grid operators scrambling to avoid a blackout.
But this week, a former top power regulator offered a far more ominous interpretation: The attack was terrorism, he said, and if circumstances had been just a little different, it could have been disastrous.
Jon Wellinghoff, who was chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission when the shooting took place, said that attack was clearly executed by well-trained individuals seeking to do significant damage to the area, and he fears it was a test run for an even larger assault.
“It would not be that hard to bring down the entire region west of the Rockies if you, in fact, had a coordinated attack like this against a number of substations,” Wellinghoff said Thursday. “This [shooting] event shows there are people out there capable of such an attack.”
Wellinghoff’s warning about the incident at PG&E’s Metcalf substation was reported this week by the Wall Street Journal, expanding on a December report by Foreign Policy magazine.
FBI officials said they are taking the shooting very seriously.
“Based on the information we have right now, we don’t believe it’s related to terrorism,” said Peter Lee, an FBI spokesman in San Francisco. But, he added, “Until we understand the motives, we won’t be 100% sure it’s not terrorism.”
Months after the shooting, the bureau has named no suspects.
Potential terrorism scenarios usually involve elaborate cyberattacks, expertly executed hijackings or smuggled nuclear weapons. But concern grows that California may have come unnervingly close to learning that calamity might just as easily be inflicted by a few well-trained snipers.
As law enforcement tries to piece together who fired at the electricity facility, lawmakers and analysts express bewilderment that little is being done to protect against a repeat performance….
The classified report was completed in 2007 and became public two years ago. Asked what has happened since then to protect the nation’s electricity system, Morgan replied that very little has been done.
The attack on the PG&E facility targeted the sophisticated transformers that are at the backbone of the nation’s electricity grid. The giant pieces of equipment are essential, costly and could take months to replace. Knock out enough of them, experts warn, and an entire region can be crippled for an extended period. They are also typically out in the open like sitting ducks.
On that April night, the attackers managed to disable 17 of them just by shooting through a chain-link fence. The bullet holes caused the transformers to leak thousands of gallons of oil, and ultimately overheat. Grid operators scrambled to reroute power from elsewhere to keep the system from collapse. The power stayed on, but just barely, because it happened during a time when demand for electricity was very low.
“Fortunately it was spring and we did not have air conditioners running full throttle in the morning,” said Stephanie McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator in Folsom, which runs most of the state’s electrical grid. “That’s why the situation was manageable.”
Wellinghoff, now a partner at the San Francisco law office Stoel Rives, said the grid’s interdependence on substations across large swaths of the country — and a scarcity of spare equipment — makes it possible to trigger an enduring blackout across several states simply by destroying key transformers in one of them.
Days after the April shooting, Wellinghoff flew out to review the damage with experts from the Pentagon and the FBI. They noticed piles of stones had been set up outside the site, apparently by someone who had scoped it out to guide the snipers. [Evan Halper and Mark Lifsher, “Attack on Electric Grid Raises Alarm,” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 2015]
It may be too late for a contemporary Churchill to reignite America’s long-lapsed fighting spirit. Moreover, if a contemporary Churchill were to ascend to power in the U.S., he would be reviled and opposed by the leftist quislings who have come to the fore in this country.
If the past is prologue, America’s wartime “exploits” since World War II foreordain its ignominious end.
Perhaps my dark mood will lift. I hope that the events of the next few days and weeks will cause it to do so.
The subject of updating libertarianism was introduced by Randy Barnett at Law & Liberty (“Libertarianism Updated“). Barnett’s piece was followed by Ilya Somin’s alternative view at The Dispatch (“Libertarianism Needs Careful Tweaks, Not Wholesale Updates“). Then came Timothy Sandefur’s piece, “Libertarianism Doesn’t Need an Update“, which is adamantly against updates (and possibly against tweaks).
I won’t try to reconcile the three writers’ views or explain how they differ. I will focus on a particular aspect of Sandefur’s offering. Among his various defenses of libertarianism as it is, he says this:
[L]bertarianism is skeptical, even pessimistic, about human capacities—especially those of the humans who wield government power, and are as fallible as the rest of us, if not more so. Precisely because libertarianism does not make idealized assumptions about people’s behavior—and holds that utopia is impossible—it concludes that the least bad alternative is to leave people free to make their own choices (subject to legal accountability if they harm others). After all, they have a stronger incentive to avoid bad decisions in their own lives than any outsider could possibly have.
Before I “unpack” this paragraph, I should note that Sandefur’s article doesn’t offer a way to attain a libertarian (or more-libertarian) polity. Not that it matters; the prospect of a polity in which citizens were left to make their own choices is probably frightening to most people. I suspect that such a polity is mainly attractive to intelligent, articulate, self-confident, introverts who are like-minded (or believe themselves to be like-minded) about the rules of the game — you will be left alone as long as you don’t do harm to me — and (most important) about what constitutes harm. Whether they would be self-reliant enough to thrive in such a regime is another matter.
(“Leave me alone” libertarianism was closest to attainment in days long gone by when Americans thought more or less alike about morality and punishments for transgressions of it, and when governments in the United States had yet to regulate the minutiae of economic and social intercourse. Now, libertarianism is a mainly a watchword for the types described above and petulant “rebels” against rules that inconvenience them, such as retirement-community rules about keeping one’s garage door closed and promptly retrieving one’s emptied trash bin from the curb.)
The passage before the preceding parenthetical leads to the question of what happens if a harm is committed. Thus enters the absurd notion private-enforcement agencies (a.k.a. competing gangs) or the more appealing notion of the night-watchman state. The latter isn’t strictly libertarian (as a anarcho-capitalist purist would define it) but is considered by many to be the direction in which libertarianism points, in the context of the typical Western polity: a deeply ingrained regulatory-welfare state with a constituency that comprises most of the populace.
The night-watchman state would enforce the rules against harm, assuming — ridiculously at this point in America’s social history — that America’s “leaders” acquiesce to the wishes of an unshakeable majority of the populace regarding the list of harms. And the night-watchman state and would enforce those rules both within the polity and against outside entities who inflict harm — or are undoubtedly preparing to inflict harm — upon members of the polity’s populace. (NB: The preemptive actions implied in the preceding sentence would also require the support of an unshakeable majority of Americans and the acquiescence of “leaders” to that majority.)
Now, let’s consider the previously quoted paragraph from Sandefur’s article as a justification for making a transition from a regulatory-welfare state to a night-watchman state, beginning with this:
[L]bertarianism is skeptical, even pessimistic, about human capacities—especially those of the humans who wield government power, and are as fallible as the rest of us, if not more so.
I am skeptical of the capacities (and true intentions) of most human beings, in that they are (saints excepted) mostly convinced that things should be organized to suit their individual preferences. Not the least of those preferences is the urge to acquire greater income and wealth with little or no effort.
It follows that, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, most human beings will seek to empower politicians who promise to arrange things in preferred ways and to enrich preferred persons (without acknowledging, of course, that the cost of said enrichment will be borne by non-preferred persons). Those politicians, in turn, will erect bureaucracies devoted to the aforementioned ends — bureaucracies that will continue to churn out edicts that foster the same ends almost regardless of which set of politicians is currently in power. The bureaucrats thereby satisfy their power lusts, and the politicians do the same, as well as gaining opportunities for personal enrichment without (necessarily) committing patently criminal acts.
Given that political contests in the United States usually involve a choice between two candidates with the same motivations toward power (if not enrichment), choosing the least bad alternative becomes a matter of voters’ preferences regarding the policies that competing candidates espouse or represent. And, except in the case of the presidency of the United States, the winner is the candidate who gets the most votes, usually by a combination of voters’ ignorance and inertia couple with the promise of delivering policies favored by a majority. Those policies will include ways to empower and enrich various segments of the populace (at the expense of other segments). Thus the course of American politics and governance has been toward the engrossment of government, its share of the economy, and its command of economic and social transactions from the founding of the Republic. You can look it up.
So much for that. Now for the second sentence of the quoted paragraph:
Precisely because libertarianism does not make idealized assumptions about people’s behavior—and holds that utopia is impossible—it concludes that the least bad alternative is to leave people free to make their own choices (subject to legal accountability if they harm others).
Because true libertarians (as opposed to faux rebels) are as scarce as hens’ teeth (for the reasons adduced above), the least bad alternative lacks enough allure to fuel an electoral revolution. Witness the general state of fear and loathing that accompanies the merest possibility that the federal government might shut down, or the actuality that it does shut down (albeit with many loopholes) for even a few days.
Which brings us to the final sentence of the quoted paragraph:
After all, [people] have a stronger incentive to avoid bad decisions in their own lives than any outsider could possibly have.
Those candidates who campaign on a platform of reducing the size, power, and cost of government are at a great disadvantage because most Americans — as citizens of the United States, the several States, and myriad political subdivisions of the States — are wedded to and dependent upon government-bestowed (and tax- or debt-funded) benefits that they would be loath to forgo. What most of them want is to eat their cake (enjoy government-bestowed benefits) and have it too (reduce the size, power, and cost of government).
In that respect, Republicans have proven to be Democrats who wait a while before accepting the enlargements of government power, size, and cost introduced (usually) by Democrats. (It’s worth noting here that the Nixon-Ford administrations ramped up regulation to a new level; the Reagan-G.W. Bush administrations did nothing to change that and Bush added the Americans with Disabilities Act, which among many things, has resulted in a plethora of unused parking spaces across the land; G.W. Bush contributed Medicare coverage of drug costs, just in time for retiring Boomers and those who will follow them.)
If Trump is reelected that best that can be hoped for is a slowing of the growth in the number of federal regulations. The abolition of one or more cabinet departments and “independent” agencies is a pipe dream. Perhaps the “deep state” will be weeded out, but weeds are notoriously prone to come back, as they will under the next Democrat administration.
“Pipe dream” is best thing I can say about libertarianism. Although theorizing about it seems to be an enjoyable pastime for a goodly number of “public intellectuals”.
I have been drinking whiskey (legally) for 62 years. I am by no means a connoisseur, but I have tried and rejected a goodly number of whiskies. My strong preference is for bourbon and rye whiskies, but I have enjoyed a few Irish and Scotch whiskies. I have yet to meet a blended whiskey that’s worth the price (whether cheap or expensive), but I have bought one that I’m about to try. (More on that in a future post.)
Here, I want to comment on a bourbon that has become so popular that it is sold one to a customer (in-store, not online) at my local Virginia ABC store. (One of the downsides of living in Virginia — one of the few — is that I can’t buy both wine and liquor at the same store.)
Anyway, the bourbon in question is Buffalo Trace, a product of Buffalo Trace Distillery, which is owned by the Sazerac Company. This is from a typical review of Buffalo Trace:
Representing a distillery known for some of bourbon’s most talked about bottles, Buffalo Trace Bourbon feels like it has been carefully created to appeal to every bourbon drinker as an accessible, extremely drinkable, well-balanced pour that is easy to keep coming back to. It may not challenge an experienced drinker, but delivers a full enough flavor to satisfy them nonetheless.
The reviewer is right, Buffalo Trace doesn’t challenge an experienced drinker. It is smooth and flavorful, but it lacks what I call character — a distinctive taste that leaves you with the feeling that you’ve drunk something that is special and worth a frequent visit.
I have neither the budget nor the patience to track down and buy legendary bourbons, like Pappy Van Winkle (also produced by Buffalo Trace Distillery). It and its relatives in the Van Winkle line sell for $1,000 to $5,900 per 750ml bottle, if you can find them.
There are many delicious bourbons — far superior to Buffalo Trace — that are available at less than $100 per 750ml bottle. My current favorite is Woodford Reserve Double Oaked, which Virginia ABC sells for $60. I usually prefer my whiskey neat, but this one is delicious with an ice cube. Well worth the money if you drink whiskey not for intoxication but for taste.
Trump’s position vis-a-vis Harris is a bit weaker than it was on August 14, when I published “Trump vs. Harris: 1 (It’s Still Trump’s Election to Lose)“:
(For details of the computation, see “Trump vs. Harris: 1”.)
How does the current range — a deficit of 1 point to a lead of 4 points — translate into electoral votes? As on August 14, Trump would win 313 to 327 electoral votes if the election were held today:
(See “Trump vs. Biden: 16” for an explanation of the relationship between popular vote/polling margin and electoral votes.)
Not only that, but the polls have been swinging back toward Trump, though he isn’t gaining ground:
Translating poll results into shares of the two-party presidential vote yields an interesting comparison between Harris’s performance and those of Clinton and Biden before her:
First of all, note the pro-Democrat (or anti-Trump biases in 2016 and 2020). The biases are reflected in the differences between the final 7-day polling averages (green and black lines) and the final shares of the nationwide two-party vote (green and black diamonds at 0 days). Clinton lost cleanly with 51.05 percent of the two-party vote. Biden won narrowly, requiring close “wins” in several states, even though he got 52.25 percent of the two-party vote. Harris’s performance still lags Clinton’s.
What it the red line at 53.5 percent? That’s my estimate of what it will take for Harris to register a clear victory over Trump — no razor-thing “victory” in any State and no potentially game-changing outcomes that are close enough to warrant recounts or court challenges. Harris is still a long way from that number.
Here’s the polling trend since the “debate” on June 27 that ended Biden’s candidacy:
To adjust for bias, I use the 2020 election to estimate the extent to which (most) polling organizations underestimate Trump’s strength among voters. Underestimation is time-dishonored strategem, aimed at dispiriting the opposition and its supporters — the “opposition” being any politician, like Trump, who threatens the power of the deep state and its allies, enablers, and beneficiaries.
Of the 18 polling organizations that released polls in the final week before the 2020 election, 15 overestimated Biden’s popular-vote margin, with overestimates ranging from 0.5 to 7.5 percentage points. Only 3 pollsters underestimated Biden’s margin, with a range of 0.5 to 3.5 points. The overall average for the 18 pollsters was an overestimate (for Biden) of 3.8 points.
Given that Trump is again the GOP nominee, I see no reason to assume that the pro-Democrat bias this year is any smaller than it was in 2020. So I simply add 3.8 points to Trump’s 7-day polling averages to get a truer picture of Trump’s electoral appeal. Thus the values plotted in the preceding graph.
How does the current range — a lead of 0 to 2 points — translate into electoral votes? Here’s how:
(See “Trump vs. Biden: 16” for an explanation of the relationship between popular vote/polling margin and electoral votes.)
It still looks good for Trump, but there are question marks. Will Harris’s momentum continue? Will a “black swan” event upend the election? What about the upcoming sentencing in Trump’s “hush money” case? Will any other anti-Trump trials be completed by election day?
Stay tuned.
I began this post just before learning of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. His mortality isn’t at issue here, but Joe Biden’s is.
I am a bit older than Joe Biden. I grew up and graduated from high school in a place that resembles Scranton, Pennsylvania, though it’s not as large.
I have in recent years tracked down all of the members of my high school graduating class, who were born (on average) in 1940. Here’s the mortality curve for the men:
The slope gets slippery 53 years after graduation, that is, in one’s early 70s. Joe (and Donald) are beyond that point. But Joe’s medical condition suggests that he will go first (if assassination is taken off the table) and fairly soon. If his disease doesn’t kill him in a few years, old age will probably do the job.
If the election were held today, Trump would win with 313 to 343 electoral votes (as against 270 needed to win):How did I get to that result? It’s a two-step calculation. The first step is relate electoral votes (EVs) to the two-party popular-vote split. The second step is to relate the two-party popular-vote (PV) split to the results of the most recent national polls. (I use polls with an average date that occurs in the last seven days.)To estimate EVs as a function of the two-party PV split, I began with the results of the 2020 election. Trump got 232 EVs and Biden got 306 EVs, with a two-party vote split of 47.7 percent for Trump to 52.3 percent for Biden. I adjusted the distribution of EVs by state to reflect the redistribution of EVs following the census of 2020. That changed the EV split to Trump 235 and Biden 303, which I took as a starting point.Suppose that the national PV split were to change from Trump 47.7 Trump and Biden 52.3 to Trump 48.0 and Biden 52.0 as a result of proportional changes in every State (i.e., Trump’s PV share rises across the board by 0.3 percentage point and Biden’s PV share drops across the board by 0.3 percentage point). That would cause a few States to flip, specifically Arizona (11 EV) and Georgia (16 EV). The EV split would then become Trump 262 to Biden 276. (One might surmise similar shifts by consulting polls conducted for particular States, especially those that seem most likely to flip. But State-by-State polls are less reliable than national polls because the former are conducted less often and therefore tend to fluctuate more widely than national polling averages.)I ran cases of PV splits ranging from Trump 46-Biden 54 to Trump 55-Biden in 0.5 percentage point increments. Those splits translate to PV margins ranging from -8 for Trump to +8 for Trump. At +6, for example, Trump would pick up Arizona (11), Colorado (10) Georgia (16), Maine (all 4 of its EVs vice 1 in 2020), Michigan (15), Minnesota (10), Nebraska (all 5 of its EVs vice 4 in 2020), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), New Mexico (5), Pennsylvania (19), and Virginia (13), and Wisconsin (10). The total gain of 123 EVs would bring Trump’s total to 358.How do I relate the PV split to polling results? Polls, on average, are biased toward Biden. By how much? I return, once again, to 2020 and the national polls reported by RealClearPolitics (RCP). The final seven-day average had Biden leading Trump by 7.6 percentage points. Biden’s PV margin (including bogus votes) was 4.5 percentage points. So there was a bias of about 3 percentage points in favor of Biden in the polls reported by RCP.* This means, for example, that if Trump’s average 7-day lead is 2 points (which it is as of today), his lead in the PV split is actually 5 points after adjusting for bias (assuming that the pro-Biden bias is at least as great in 2024 as it was in 2020).There are margins of error around the polling results; the margins of error define the upper and lower bounds of a 95-percent confidence interval around the average. I apply those margins to obtain a range for Trump (a 95-percent confidence interval around his average lead or deficit). As of today, that range is from a 0-point lead to a 4-point lead. The horizontal axis in the graph reflects the 3-point bias adjustment to that range. A tie in the polls — the lower bound of the confidence interval — would mean that Trump is really leading by 3 in the PV split (which would give him 313 EVs; a lead of 4 points in the polls — the upper bound of the confidence interval — would mean that Trump is really leading by 7 in the PV split (which would give him 343 EVs).As of today, Nate Silver (paywalled) of 538 fame, has Trump ahead in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The electoral votes of those States, plus the pickup of 1 EV from Nebraska, would bring Trump’s total to 313, which is the lower bound of my estimate.Stay tuned.
- Yes, there are margins of error around each pollster’s results, but the best estimate was 7.6 percentage-point margin, on average, and the pollsters missed it by 3.1 points, on average. Another way to adjust Biden’s 2020 showing is to take the difference between his seven-day average margin for that year (7.6 points) and his current seven-day average margin (-1.8 points) and apply the difference (-9.4 points) to his final 2020 PV margin of 3.1 points, which yields an estimated PV margin of -6.3 for 2024 (as of today). But that would introduce a measure of optimism (for Trump) that I don’t want to inject into my estimates, so I’m using the bias estimate of 3.1 points (rounded to 3).
The classic era of American automobile design began in the 1920s and lasted through the late 1930s. Here are some of my favorites:
1927 Kissel 8-75 Speedster
1929 Jordan Speedboy G
1929 Duesenberg J 350 Willoughby
1930 Pierce Arrow Roadster
1932 Cadillac 355B Sport Phaeton
1932 Pierce Arrow Model 54 7-Passenger Touring Car
1934 Packard Eleventh Series Eight 1101 Convertible Sedan
1935 Auburn 8-851 Cabriolet
1937 Cord Model 812C Phaeton
1938 Lincoln Zephyr Convertible Coupe
Many collections of classic-car photos and specs are available online. One that I especially like is the Crawford Collection of the Western Reserve Historical Society.
That mouthful of a title is a question that’s been in the air for quite a while. It didn’t just arise when Biden exposed his mental frailty at the non-debate with Trump on June 27. But it has been resurrected (e.g. here and here).
So, what’s the answer? There isn’t a definitive one because no U.S. court has faced the question, let alone ruled on it. If the question ever arose — about Obama or any other former twice-elected president — it would end up at the U.S. Supreme Court. USSC’s decision likely would depend on the political makeup of the Court at the time, and the party affiliation of the former president.
But, political partisanship aside, here’s what I would argue:
- Section 1 of Amendment XXII says this:
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
- Some would argue that this bars a former president like Obama from serving as vice president because Amendment XII says this:
[N]o person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
- But when Amendment XII was ratified on June 15, 1804, the only conditions of eligibility for the presidency were these (from Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution):
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
- Therefore, the language of Amendment XII quoted above doesn’t apply because Amendment XII didn’t contemplate the adoption of Amendment XXII 147 years later.
In short, barring a USSC ruling to the contrary, BHO could run for VP and succeed JRB Jr. Aargh!
Why did Biden decide to debate Trump? Most likely because Biden and those whose advice he takes (or whose direction he follows) believed that he would lose the election and had nothing to lose by debating Trump.
Why would Biden or his advisers believe that he would lose when nationwide polls have put him in a virtual tie with Trump? Because they have done something like the analysis that I’ve done, which suggests a virtual tie in the polls means that Biden is actually running at least 3 percentage points behind Trump nationwide. That deficit portends spells certain defeat given that Biden would run up huge, superfluous margins in deep-Blue states.
In rehearsing for the debate, Biden’s performance must have seemed at least passable. If it hadn’t, a plausible excuse for postponement or cancellation would have been found, and it would have done less damage to Biden’s chances than his actual performance did. But the rehearsals, which included a stand-in for Trump, weren’t the real thing.
Biden’s performance in the actual debate must have come as a shock to himself, to Jill, to those who advised him to debate, and to those who helped him prepare for the debate. Biden’s performance certainly came as huge shock to the millions who planned to vote for him and who saw the real person in action, not the mummy whose condition has been hidden (as much as possible) from public view by aides and compliant corporate media.
Now what? Top Democrats (the Clintons, Obama, major donors, etc.) may have concluded that Trump will win no matter whom he faces. If they have concluded that, they are almost certainly right — barring a shockingly adverse development for Trump between now and when voting starts.
For example, they may be betting that Judge Merchan (of the “hush money” case) will announce a prison sentence or house arrest when he sentences Trump on July 11. First, any sentence will be anti-climactic — voters have long since factored the guilty verdicts into their voting plans. Second, Trump can appeal, and failure at the State level is almost certain to result in a speedy hearing and decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Third, will any court (other than Judge Merchan’s) want to legitimize DA Bragg’s blatant act of election interference: the prosecution of Trump on charges with a flimsy legal foundation? I think not. Fourth, in any event, a sentence of some kind for Trump might be just the trigger that’s needed to evoke a tidal wave of GOP voters in the fall, swamping not only Biden but Democrats down the ticket — including, more importantly, races for U.S. Senate and House seats.
Given all of that, why would the Democrats in charge want to replace Biden? The result would be to burden a new candidate with a loss, when he or she could run in 2028 as a “fresh face” who hasn’t lost a presidential race.
So, barring a development that I can’t foresee (which might include death or a crippling disability), I expect to see Trump and Biden at the head of their parties’ tickets in November. If Biden isn’t the Democrat nominee, the nod will go to the equally expendable Kamala.
Tonight’s debate could undo Trump’s momentum — or it could reinforce it. Whatever the case, Biden is facing formidable odds against re-election (as of now).
The first piece of evidence is general direction of the polls, as measured by changes in each pollster’s results:
That looks good for Trump. This looks even better:
Biden is running well behind his pace of four years ago. And four years ago, despite “winning” the (mythical) nationwide popular vote by 4.5 percentage points, Biden eked out an electoral-vote victory on the basis of narrow wins in key States. That’s because Biden’s “victory” by 7 million votes was accounted for by his popular-vote margins in two solid-Blue States: California and New York. The huge — and superfluous victories — in those States masked a tie in the rest of the country. That’s why Biden had to rely on chicanery to squeak by in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If Biden continues to under-perform his 2020 showing, the elections in key States won’t be close enough to steal.
Whether history repeats itself or merely rhymes, human nature can be counted upon to make history seem repetitive or rhythmic.
Stephen Kotkin concludes Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 with this observation: “History, for better and for worse, is made by those who never give up.”
Stalin never gave up. He had succeeded in subduing his enemies within the USSR by 1928, but he would continue to imprison and execute anyone whose words or actions he deemed threatening to his dictatorship or to the cause that he had embraced.
That cause was state socialism, “collective” control by the Communist Party (acting through the state) of the economy of the nation (in the name of the people, of course). To succeed in that cause, it was necessary to stifle and eradicate any dissent — real, imagined, actual, or potential — from the edicts of the Party (i.e., Stalin).
One of those edicts was collectivization of agriculture, a program that Stalin announced in January 1928 and began to implement in 1929. The rest, as they say, is history — a grim history in which Ukraine figured largely (though not exclusively):
The Ukrainian famine—known as the Holodomor, a combination of the Ukrainian words for “starvation” and “to inflict death”—by one estimate claimed the lives of 3.9 million people, about 13 percent of the population. And, unlike other famines in history caused by blight or drought, this was caused when a dictator wanted both to replace Ukraine’s small farms with state-run collectives and punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority.
“The Ukrainian famine was a clear case of a man-made famine,” explains Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and author of the 2018 book, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. He describes it as “a hybrid…of a famine caused by calamitous social-economic policies and one aimed at a particular population for repression or punishment.”
In those days, Ukraine—a Texas-sized nation along the Black Sea to the west of Russia—was a part of the Soviet Union, then ruled by Stalin. In 1929, as part of his plan to rapidly create a totally communist economy, Stalin had imposed collectivization, which replaced individually owned and operated farms with big state-run collectives. Ukraine’s small, mostly subsistence farmers resisted giving up their land and livelihoods.
In response, the Soviet regime derided the resisters as kulaks—well-to-do peasants, who in Soviet ideology were considered enemies of the state. Soviet officials drove these peasants off their farms by force and Stalin’s secret police further made plans to deport 50,000 Ukrainian farm families to Siberia, historian Anne Applebaum writes in her 2017 book, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine.
“Stalin appears to have been motivated by the goal of transforming the Ukrainian nation into his idea of a modern, proletarian, socialist nation, even if this entailed the physical destruction of broad sections of its population,” says Trevor Erlacher, an historian and author specializing in modern Ukraine and an academic advisor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies.
Collectivization in Ukraine didn’t go very well. By the fall of 1932 … it became apparent that Ukraine’s grain harvest was going to miss Soviet planners’ target by 60 percent. There still might have been enough food for Ukrainian peasants to get by, but, as Applebaum writes, Stalin then ordered what little they had be confiscated as punishment for not meeting quotas.
The Ukrainian famine, as catastrophic as it was, was just one thread in the tapestry of death, torture, impoverishment, and virtual enslavement to the state that was woven by leftist dictators like Stalin, Hitler (yes, a leftist), Mao, Tito Pol Pot, Castro, and on and on.
But — smug billionaires, corporate media types, academics and most politicians and bureaucrats will say — it can’t happen here because we have “our democracy” to protect us from the ravages of dictatorship. Spouting such nonsense, if it were a capital offense, would soon rid us of the aforementioned apologists for the dictatorial state that has assumed power in the United States.
“Our democracy” has become nothing more than a vast conspiracy of the same aforementioned apologists for statism. They are alike in their commitment to the attainment of perfection (as they define it) through the power of the state. (In that respect, it is deeply dismaying that six fellow-travelers and cowards who occupy seats on the Supreme Court today decreed that the central government may continue to use Big Tech to propagandize for its statist agenda.)
Evidence of “our democracy” acting in concert to deprive Americans of liberty and prosperity has been accumulating for more than a century. I won’t burden you with a recitation of examples (for that you can start here and here, and then comb through the index of posts). I will merely point to the fact that the central government’s most onerous actions (these days) are lawless. They are being conducted through administrative and executive edicts and sometimes in open defiance of laws enacted in accordance with the Constitution. I have in mind, of course, the effort- to kill off fossil fuels, the failure to enforce immigration laws, discrimination in favor of blacks and ~~mentally ill~~ LGBTQ+ persons.
The irony of it all is that almost every American (though not all) would claim to revile Stalin, whereas about half of them adore the machinations of the central government and the policies represented by the left’s puppet in the White House.
The difference between Joe Stalin and Joe Biden is one of degree, not one of kind. Biden doesn’t overtly kill,impoverish, and enslave people; his policies are having that effect, however.
In the popular sense, to be Machiavellian is to be “characterized by expediency, deceit, and cunning”. An objective is hidden behind a facade of friendship, cheerfulness, or cooperation and pursued by obtaining the (usually unwitting) help of persons who might then be betrayed when the objective is attained.
The alternative to deceit is forthrightness. If you want something, you say what it is and you ask for it or work for it, without disguising your objective.
Most human beings, I daresay, are forthright. Forthright persons are easy prey for deceivers. First, the deceiver strives to seem forthright so that he is trusted. Second, the forthright person — usually having no experience of deceptiveness (except when dated a two-timer or bought a used car) — assumes that the deceiver is what he seems to be. Thus a forthright person easily becomes a deceiver’s unwitting accomplice.
The deceiver knows what he is. He also knows that his penchant for deceit might be uncovered, most likely be another deceiver. This results in a kind of paranoia where the deceiver suspects deceit where there is none. He is therefore prone to project his deceiving ways onto forthright persons.
Here’s an example from my working life. An incompetent lawyer who had been promoted over his head several times was dumped into the tax-funded organization where I worked. He had some political connections (thanks to a brother-in-law who was a successful and respected politician). Although he was styled as corporate counsel, he did no legal work for us (we paid a firm of sharp lawyers for that). He was supposed to use his political connections to represent us on Capitol Hill, but he failed at that, too, with the result that we endured some large budget cuts in the early 1990s.
At any rate, early in his tenure at the organization, which lasted (amazingly) more than 20 years, he vied for the job to which I was appointed. He presented himself to me as a wise, experienced adviser, all the while sizing me up and (unbeknownst to me) using his knowledge of me to put himself forward for the job that I got. I didn’t learn of his perfidy until after the fact, but I let it slide off my back. I had the job that I wanted and he was, outwardly, a likeable person.
But as the years rolled by I became aware of his constant sniping and criticism — behind my back — of the way I did my job. Enough became enough and I became outwardly hostile toward him. My break with him became final when I learned about his failure on the Hill.
But over the years before our final break — in ways large and small, overt and implicit — he suggested that it was I who was out to “get” him.
Deceivers deceive themselves as much as they deceive others. They are morally weak persons who cannot accept their shortcomings. Others are to blame for their failures. They can’t see it any other way.
In 2016, Clinton’s lead over Trump in the final seven days of polling averaged 2.5 percentage points (or those polls covered by RealClearPolitics (RCP). Clinton’s edge in the nationwide tally of popular votes was 2.1 percentage points. Despite her (meaningless) nationwide edge, she lost to Trump because he won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — each by less than 1 percentage point. Those states’ 46 electoral votes gave Trump the win over Clinton.
In 2020, Biden’s lead over Trump in the final seven days of polling averaged 7.9 percentage points for those polls covered by RCP. Biden’s edge in the nationwide tally of popular votes was 4.5 percentage points; that is, slightly below the bottom of the 95-percent confidence interval around the apparent 7.9-point lead. Despite his (meaningless) 4.5-point lead in the popular vote, Biden won the election only because he edged out Trump in both Georgia and Wisconsin by less that 1 percentage point and in Pennsylvania by a little more than 1 percentage point. Those states’ electoral votes gave Biden his win over Trump.
Hypothesis: Clinton and Biden underperformed at the ballot box vs. their poll numbers because the polls (on average) were biased somewhat toward Clinton in 2016 and much more so toward Biden in 2020. This hypothesis is supported by a report issued by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (https://aapor.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/AAPOR-Task-Force-on-2020-Pre-Election-Polling_Report-FNL.pdf):
● The 2020 polls featured polling error of an unusual magnitude: It was the highest in 40 years for the national popular vote….
● The polling error was much more likely to favor Biden over Trump. Among polls conducted in the last two weeks before the election, the average signed error on the vote margin was too favorable for Biden by 3.9 percentage points in the national polls and by 4.3 percentage points in statewide presidential polls.
● The polling error for the presidential election was stable throughout the campaign. The average error matched closely for polls conducted in the last two weeks, in the final week, and even in the final three days. The challenges polls faced in 2020 did not diminish as Election Day approached.
● Beyond the margin, the average topline support for Trump in the polls understated Trump’s share in the certified vote by 3.3 percentage points and overstated Biden’s share in the certified vote by 1.0 percentage point. When undecided voters are excluded from the base, the two-candidate support in the polls understated Trump’s certified vote share by 1.4 percentage points and overstated Biden’s vote share by 3.1 percentage points.
The report also concludes that the bias wasn’t due to the massive surge in early voting and mail-in voting in 2020.
The foregoing suggests that if the polls remain strongly biased toward Biden in 2024, and if he polls much worse than he did in 2020, his candidacy is doomed.
With that background, I refer you to the following graph, which compares results of polls reported by RCP for the elections of 2016, 2020, and 2024. The results represent polls conducted between June 1 and election day of each election year. We’re a long way from election day 2024, but the results to date are ominous for Biden; he is running behind Clinton’s losing pace of 2016. Stay tuned.
In some of my several posts about a national divorce (see this, this, this, this, this, and this), I have opined that the new union formed by conservative States
could easily afford a robust defense after having shed the many useless departments and agencies — and their policies — that burden taxpayers and the economy.
(Many of the policies, especially those that regulate economic activity, are worse than useless: they are economically destructive; see this and this).
Let’s examine that the new union could easily afford a robust defense. For this exercise, I assume that the new union, which I have elsewhere dubbed Freedomland, consists of 25 States (listed in order of population): Texas, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Utah, Iowa, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia, Montana, South Dakoto, North Dakota, Alaska, and Wyoming. (A shift of one or two States in either direction won’t change the thrust of this analysis.)
Those 25 States comprise 43 percent of the population of the United States. But they account for only 38 percent of U.S. GDP. (The discrepancy shouldn’t be surprising given the composition of the list.)
The cost of the federal government in 2022 (the latest year for which estimates are available at bea.gov) was just over $6 trillion, including $725 billion in interest payments on federal debt. The operating cost of the federal government was therefore about $5.3 trillion, including $727 billion for national defense. (It’s telling national defense, a key element of the impetus for the Constitution, accounts for only 12 percent of federal spending and is about the same as the cost of financing the federal debt.) Assuming that the cost of the federal government, less debt service, is shared in proportion to the distribution of GDP, the citizens of Freedomland are pumping more than $2 trillion a year into the federal treasury.
Now, what to do about the federal government? Team Blue, in a spirit of “fairness”, might propose keeping it intact and sharing costs and benefits according to Team Blue’s and Freedomland’s respective shares of GDP. Team Blue would (of course) continue to operate the federal government and would (of course) honestly account for the distribution of costs and benefits. It would be up to Team Blue (of course) to decide the level of costs and benefits.
Freedomland would reject the deal out of hand, not wanting its fiscal future to be hijacked by the cost of an ever-growing and ever-interfering central government. Freedomland’s leaders would make the following calculations:
- 38 percent of $6 trillion = $2.3 trillion.
- Freedomland’s share of federal outlays on health benefits and income security is $1.5 trillion a year. In exchange for giving up its share of those outlays, Freedomland will set up its own system of health benefits and income security. (The initial costs will be offset and reduced over time by robust economic growth; the reduction of benefits flowing to able-bodied persons below retirement age; rolling back the expansion of Medicare; denying benefits (direct or indirect) to illegal aliens; raising the retirement age; increasing work requirements; etc.)
- Freedomland will take responsibility for defense of the 50 States and the District of Columbia. (It would be far more costly to defend Team Blue and Freedomland separately. Team Blue could trust Freedomland to mount a robust defense of the continent. And Freedomland would be assured of border security by doing the job itself.)
Freedomland’s total (initial) cost to defend the nation and ensure the health and income security of its citizens: the same $2.3 trillion a year it now sends to DC. But in the long run, the citizens of Freedomland would be far better off economically and relieved of the oppressive government in DC.
But the citizens of Freedomland should never forget that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — and prosperity.
If you have read “Election 2024: The Bottom Line” or “Election 2024 in Perspective” you will understand why I use “glimmer of hope” to refer to a possible Trump victory in November. The glimmer of hope that I see is Trump’s standing in the polls this time around compared with his standing in the polls at this point in 2016 and 2020. Specific
I collected all of the two-way polling results reported at realclearpolitics.com for the elections of 2016 and 2020. I weeded out all of the polls that were conducted before June of each election year and plotted the numbers for the rest: the Democrat candidates’ polling lead or deficit vs. number of days before the election. I have also begun to plot similar numbers for this year’s election. Here are the results as of today:
Because the plot points represent the Democrat candidates’ lead or deficit vs. Trump, his narrow lead in each of two June polls (1 point) is shown as a negative result for the Democrat (Biden).
Clearly, Trump is doing a lot better in the polls this year than he was doing at this time in 2016 and 2020. But a lot can happen between now and when voting starts. A lot did happen to Clinton (2016) and Biden (2020) — and it wasn’t good for them.
Clinton’s polling was all over the place, but she ended up 2.9 points ahead of Trump for polls conducted in the seven days before the election. She “won” the nationwide popular vote by 2.1 percentage points. But she lost the electoral vote because of Trump’s narrow wins in a few key States.
Biden never relinquished his lead in the polls. He ended up 7.6 points ahead of Trump for polls conducted in the seven days before the election. He “won” the nationwide popular vote by 4.6 percentage points. But he won the electoral vote only because of narrow wins in a few key States.
If there’s a pattern, it’s this: Polls, in the aggregate, overstate Democrats’ shares of the nationwide popular vote — at least when they’re up against Trump. Further, because of the electoral college, it takes a large margin in the final polls to be certain of victory — if you’re a Democrat. The necessary margin is greater than final Biden’s 7.6-point lead in the 2020 polls.
Conclusion: Biden is in deep trouble with a 1-point deficit. But election day is five months away. Thus: a glimmer of hope.
My late father-in-law grew up in a shack like this:
He picked cotton to help his widowed mother care for the five children she was left to raise when his father died young.
He worked he way through two years of college before joining the Army Air Corps aviation cadet program in 1939. He earned his wings and was commissioned a second lieutenant in September 1941. He proposed to my wife’s mother on December 6, 1941 — the day before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
After training many Air Corps pilots for combat, he was sent to the Pacific Theater in 1944, where he flew many combat missions. He stayed in the Army Air Force (as it became) after the war ended and flew many more combat missions.
He rose to the rank of colonel and ended his career with command of a wing. He would have made brigadier general, but Lyndon Johnson gave the slot to his Air Force One pilot.
He retired from the Air Force with 30 years of service and lived out his life happily and comfortably in his adopted hometown.
He died at the age of 96.
He hated Democrats. Not because of what Lyndon Johnson did to him but because of what Democrats were doing to the country.
The federal government, since the latter part of the 19th century has grown vastly in size, cost, and power. It has done so by blatantly exceeding the limited role for it that is set forth in the Constitution.
The growth of the federal government (which has necessitated and spurred the growth of state and local governments) absorbs resources that (with the exception of national defense) could be put to better use by private companies responding to the needs of consumers.
One aspect of government growth, at all levels, has been the promulgation of an ever-growing number of regulations, ordinances, and codes (they must number in the millions). The net effect of those regulations, ordinances, and codes is to stifle entrepreneurship and innovation. This comes at great cost to American workers and consumers.
The economic effect of government spending and regulation (by its various names) is the loss of well over a trillion dollars a year in economic output. Given the many years in which Americans have lived with big, heavy-handed government, the overall cost of its unconstitutional aggrandizement has been almost unimaginable – it is certainly in the tens of trillions of dollars. The arrogation of legislative, prosecutorial, and judicial functions by regulatory agencies adds the loss of liberty to that massive economic cost.
The heavy burden of regulation has been compounded in recent years by the emphasis on so-called renewable sources of energy. The shift away from fossil fuels – according to the models used and touted by climate “scientists” – will have almost no effect on global temperatures. Yet, the cost in dollars and misery will be huge. As for those models, they are simplistic relative to the many and complex (and little understood) factors that influence climate. And they do a poor job of reconstructing the past, so how can they possibly produce accurate forecasts of the future? Also overlooked in the rush to substitute models for science is the fact that the geological and historical record – despite the efforts of some climate “scientists” to revise and erase it – clearly shows that Earth has been warmer in the past 2000 years than it is now, and that it often warmed more rapidly in the past than it has been warming in the past 40 years.
Another recent development has been the failure to enforce immigration laws, which has resulted in a flood of illegal immigrants. Whatever reasons those immigrants may have for entering the U.S., it is a fact that they are in many places overwhelming various social services (hospitals, public housing, etc.) at a heavy cost to taxpayers. Regardless of the law-abiding nature of most illegal immigrants, the flood has brought with it violent criminals, dangerous drugs, drug dealers, and quite possibly spies and terrorists. It is no secret – though Democrats tend to deny it – that the impetus for untrammeled immigration is to create new voters, by amnesty and other means, most of whom are expected to vote for Democrats. One dire effect of such a development would be even bigger government, even lower economic growth, and even higher taxes.
Then there are the social changes that have been embraced and pushed by Democrats. Same-sex marriage is now a given, so I won’t bother to discuss it (though I could write an essay about the legal persecution of tradespeople who have been penalized for their refusal to “celebrate” it). But I will discuss transgenderism, with its various ill effects: allowing and encouraging impressionable and not-yet-developed children to undergo life-changing medical treatments and surgeries; forcing girls and women to compete with so-called transgender women, who seem not to have lost the superior size and strength that goes with being male; allowing the same “women” to invade the privacy and bodies of girls and women in locker rooms, dormitories, prison cells, etc.
There is also a strong push by government institutions to discriminate in favor of blacks (by means ranging from special loans to easy grading to re-segregation to protect them from feeling “different” or “inferior”). If discrimination solely on the basis of race is wrong, it is wrong when it favors blacks just as much as when it favors whites. Reverse discrimination and special treatment are also condescending toward blacks – which hasn’t gone unnoticed by some of them.
Another development – and a dangerous one for liberty and the advancement of knowledge – is the use of government power (or the implied threat to use that power) to censor views that government officials dislike. This kind of censorship, which is carried out through Big Tech firms and broadcast media, may be meant to protect the public from potentially harmful “misinformation”. But the urge to control information knows no bounds and it can just as easily be used to construct “narratives” that are favorable to the regime in power by suppressing valid information that would discredit the regime. Big Tech and broadcast media already do this to a great extent, though mainly because of the political leanings of the executives in charge of those institutions. But it would take almost no effort on the part of government officials to turn many news and information outlets into a government propaganda machine. (Shades of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and many other despicable tyrants.)
Finally, China, Russia, and Iran have relentlessly built military capabilities that can be used to blackmail the U.S. government into granting military and economic concessions to those nations. (Russia’s war in Ukraine hasn’t stopped its development of sophisticated weaponry, such as its hypersonic missiles and new space weapon.) There is no indication that our adversaries will settle for “peaceful coexistence”; their aim is dominance. Despite that, the U.S. government has persisted in allowing U.S. armed forces to become relatively weaker than those of its adversaries. (Clinton’s budget-balancing at the cost of defense, and the coddling of the Iranian regime by the Obama-Biden administrations are underreported scandals.)
In sum, beginning in the late years of the 19th century, government in America began to lose its way: imposing huge costs on American citizens through growth in size and power, while also failing to maintain the forces necessary to deter potential enemies.
None of that has changed in the 21st century, but the burden on Americans has redoubled because of a quixotic effort to control the climate, a similarly quixotic effort to erase gender differences, and the possibly successful quest to build a permanent Democrat majority.
Everything written above represents my long-held views. They predate by two decades the emergence of Donald Trump as a candidate for president in 2015.
Trump is (undeservedly) vain, crude, and inarticulate, and he has a disgraceful sexual history. But despite those things, he is the only president since Ronald Reagan who has tried to stem the tide of government overreach and under preparedness. Trump’s record as president was far from perfect, but he got some things going in the right direction; for example, less regulation, more (real) military spending, and a serious effort to stem illegal immigration. You may dislike his Supreme Court appointments because of the effect they have had on certain issues, but the overall effect of those appointments has been and will be to restrain government power, which has grown far beyond its constitutional bounds.
It is Democrats, for the most part, who favor the policies that I abhor. Because Trump is viewed as a threat to those policies, and to Democrats’ hold on power in DC, there has been since he announced his first run for the presidency a “get Trump” movement. It began in earnest with the false “Steele dossier” that was ordered up by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. It continued with the Mueller investigation, two impeachments, and incessantly negative reporting about Trump’s presidency by pro-Democrat media outlets. It has culminated in what are not coincidental civil and criminal charges against Trump.
In the case of E. Jean Carroll, her suit against Trump was made possible by the passage of law in New York that extended the statute of limitations on Trump’s alleged acts against Carroll — for the obvious purpose of bringing a case against Trump. Would Carroll’s charges, or any of the other charges, been brought against a former president who was a Democrat? I doubt it very much. But to keep Trump out of power, various Democrat officials (in an amazing concert of legal synchronization) have put into practice the Stalinist-era slogan “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”. Almost anyone can be charged with and found guilty of a crime. It’s just a matter of digging into his record, cherry-picking it for items that can be made to seem sinister, ignoring and suppressing exculpatory evidence, stretching the law to fit the supposedly incriminating facts, and finding a compliant judge and jury. The Carroll case fit that template, as did the “hush money” case, and as do the other legal actions against Trump.
What has happened and is happening to Trump can happen to anyone. It is of a piece with Democrats’ no-holds-barred approach to the Constitution and laws stand in the way of gaining and holding onto power. If Trump is stopped and if Democrats retain power – and reinforce it by importing voters, censoring the opposition, vote-buying (what else is student-debt cancellation?), assuaging blacks, and who knows what else – opposition to the regime itself will become criminalized. You can bet on it because the only thing that has kept America from becoming a despotism isn’t a mythical thing called the “American character”, it has been the rule of law and the willingness of opposing factions to abide by it. That willingness disappeared in the run up to the Civil War. It is disappearing again.
All of that is why, if Trump is on the ballot in November, I will vote for him. As imperfect as he is as a person and political operator, he would nudge America in the right direction. If there were a better GOP candidate than Trump – one who is less obnoxious, more articulate, and with less personal baggage, but who is dedicated to the Constitution, to prosperity and liberty for Americans, and to military preparedness – I would vote for him or her. But there doesn’t seem to be such a candidate on the horizon.
In sum, my preference for Trump has nothing to do with the man and everything to do with restoring prosperity, liberty, and safety from domestic and foreign predators. To put it another way, a vote for Trump is a vote to make America great again. It is also a vote to save democracy.
I have said nothing about Biden because his sins – though many and possibly greater than Trump’s – are beside the point. As a politician, he is no better or worse than any Democrat who might replace him on the ticket or succeed him if he is elected and fails to finish his second term.
My devout wish it to have a Republican (Trump if necessary) occupy the White House and try, with the help of a Republican-controlled Congress, to prevent America from going down the drain. This may be the last chance for America’s reprieve from the dustbin of history.
According to The New York Times (“The MLB-Negro Leagues Stat Change: What Happened, and Why?“, May 29, 2024):
Some will be shocked waking up to the news Wednesday that Hall of Famer and Negro League star Josh Gibson is now the major leagues’ all-time batting leader — 77 years after his death in 1947. Gibson has long been called one of the best hitters in baseball history, but he died three months before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier and his numbers never appeared in MLB’s official record.
Until now.
As more than 2,300 Negro Leaguers’ numbers are added to the league’s official ledger, Gibson is MLB’s new career leader in batting average (.372), slugging percentage (.718) and OPS (1.177), and holds the single-season record in each slash-line category (.466/.564/.974).
Single-season OPS
| NAME | OPS (SEASON) | | --- | --- | | Josh Gibson | 1.474 (1937) | | Josh Gibson | 1.435 (1943) | | Barry Bonds | 1.421 (2004) | | Chino Smith | 1.421 (1929) | | Barry Bonds | 1.381 (2002) | | Babe Ruth | 1.379 (1920) | | Barry Bonds | 1.378 (2001) | | Babe Ruth | 1.358 (1921) | | Mule Suttles | 1.349 (1926) | | Babe Ruth | 1.309 (1923) |
“When you hear Josh Gibson’s name now, it’s not just that he was the greatest player in the Negro Leagues,’’ Gibson’s great-grandson, Sean, told USA TODAY, “but one of the greatest of all-time. These aren’t just Negro League stats. They’re major-league baseball stats.’’
This is of a piece with, though less harmful than, the beatification of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, and others of their ilk. It’s yet another example of “equity” at work — make blacks equal (or more than equal) to whites and others by fiat.
I sampled the records of 25 black baseball players who went from the Negro leagues to Major League Baseball. The sample isn’t representative because it includes such greats, near-greats, long-tenured MLB players as Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby, Hank Thompson, Roy Campanella, Minnie Minoso, Luke Easter, Sam Jethroe, Jim Gilliam, Elston Howard, Monte Irvin, Harry Simpson, and Willie Mays. Of those players, Robinson, Doby, Campanella, Minoso, Irvin, and Mays were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
I compared the records compiled by the 25 players (as a group) in the Negro leagues with their performance in MLB. Here’s what I found:
| Negro leagues | | MLB | | Batting average | 0.317 | 0.266 | | Runs/at bat | 0.196 | 0.138 | | Home runs/at bat | 0.023 | 0.019 | | Runs batted in/at bat | 0.185 | 0.107 | | Slugging percentage | 0.487 | 0.386 |
Let’s just say that the Negro leagues were on a par with minor-league baseball — perhaps class A in the scheme that prevailed back in the day (AAA, AA, A, B, C, and D).
Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and other real MLB record-holders can sleep soundly in their graves.
I was reminded of the problem of attributing causality by “Did Major League Baseball Really Have a ‘Steroid Era‘”, which throws cold water on the belief that the barrage of home runs for about a decade from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s was mainly attributable to the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). I also threw cold water on that hypothesis several years ago in “Steroids in Baseball: A Counterproductive Side show or an Offensive Boom?“.
The attribution of changes in a particular statistic (e.g., home runs) to one or a few causal factors is scientism (see number 2). There is also a tendency to allow preconceptions to dictate the selection of causal factors (see “Climate Change” and “Can America Be Saved?“).
Baseball, like life and many of the phenomena addressed by science, is too complex for simple explanatory models. I was reminded of this when I read Alan Longhurst’s Doubt and Certainty in Climate Science. It is a masterful review of what is known and unknown about the myriad phenomena that influence climate. Uncertainties and lacunae abound, as Longhurst shows in his examination of the findings related to dozens of climate-influencing phenomena. Longhurst’s analysis of the findings (and lack thereof) makes a mockery of the pseudo-precision of temperature forecasts made by global climate models — models that can’t even replicate the past accurately (see “Climate Change” and “Climate Change: A Bibliography“).
In that regard, I must emphasize that modeling is not science. It is, rather, reductionism: the practice of oversimplifying a complex idea or issue (see “The Enlightenment’s Fatal Flaw“).
Scientism and reductionism are nowhere more rampant (and destructive) than in governmental actions authorized by legislation and regulation. A “problem” is perceived, usually as the result of a massive media campaign triggered by an incident, “scientific finding”, or interest-group pressure. The result is a clamor for “somebody” to do “something” about the “problem”. The response that has become habitual since the onset of the Progressive Era is to invoke the power of the central government. (In almost all cases, the power invoked can be found in the Constitution only by contorting it beyond recognition by its Framers.)
Thus are born, nourished, and defended various powers and “rights” that have unforeseen (or willfully ignored) consequences for the general welfare of Americans. Why? Because executives, legislators, regulators, and judges are ignorant of (or don’t care about) the fact the most “problems” have myriad causes — causes that aren’t (and usually can’t be) addressed by executive orders, laws, regulations, or judicial decrees. The usual suspects are also ignorant of (or don’t care about) the ramifications of efforts to fix “problems” through the aforementioned means.
I refer you to the Constitution of the United States.
Amendment XV, Section 1:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude….
Amendment XIX:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Amendment XXIV, Section 1:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Amendment XXVI, Section 1:
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Clearly, the Constitution contemplates that only citizens of the United States may vote. It might be argued that the Constitution applies only to elections for federal office. If that were the case, States and localities would have to require voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship and give them ballots that pertain only to State and local offices and issues.
But I would go further than that. Allowing non-citizens to vote in any election in the United States violates Section 1 of Amendment XIV:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws [emphasis added].
If some localities allow non-citizens to vote, but others in the same State disallow non-citizen voting, citizen-residents of localities in the second category are denied the equal protection of the laws (i.e., the power of their votes is diluted).
Further, the same logic applies across States. Those States that allow non-citizens to vote for federal offices are giving them “privileges” that are denied to citizens of States that allow only citizens to vote.
There’s a new spate of articles about Trump’s lead in the polls for so-called battleground States: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Yes, Trump is still leading in all seven States, if you take an average of polls reported at RealClearPolitics. Here’s how the five-poll averages look for Trump:
- Arizona – up by 5.2 points and rising
- Georgia – up by 5.0 points and rising, but below earlier peak
- Michigan – up by 0.6 point and falling, well below earlier peak
- Nevada – up by 5.6 points and rising
- North Carolina – up by 5.8 points and falling, somewhat below earlier peak
- Pennsylvania – up by 2.6 points and rising, but below earlier peak
- Wisconsin – up by 0.6 point and falling, somewhat below earlier peak.
Only the leads in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina are statistically significant (lower bound of 95-percent confidence interval is greater than zero).
Adjustments for pollsters’ political biases — which I haven’t made — might make things look better for Trump. But the real problem with the “battleground” polls is their paucity. This can be seen by contrasting a metric I devised for nationwide polls with similar metrics for the “battleground” polls.
The metric is the change in each pollster’s results from poll to poll. For example, in the Morning Consult poll that was conducted May 3-May 5, Trump was up by 1 point. He was up by 1 point in the next Morning Consult poll which was conducted May 10-May 12. That counts as zero gain on the average date of the later poll: May 11. The full tally for all polls reported at RealClearPolitics since August 2023 looks like this:
Here’s a similar graph for Pennsylvania, which the most heavily polled of the “battlegrounds”:
That’s not much to go on, is it?
What to do? I’m inclined to ignore the polls for individual States and keep my eye on the nationwide polls. But I will be more demanding of myself when I declare that Trump might win with a small lead or deficit in those polls.
As I say in the updated version of “Trump vs. Biden: 2“,
The statistical relationship in the graph [below] is meaningless. What can be meaningful is a narrow margin of victory (or loss) in a few States. This underlines the lesson from “How Good Are the Presidential Polls?“: Even a large lead in nationwide polls doesn’t signify victory in the Electoral College.
Well, the relationship isn’t quite meaningless. Here’s how it looks with a 90-percent confidence interval (which happens to encompass 100 percent of the data because the underlying distribution isn’t normal):
What this means is that I will be confident of a Trump victory (270 or more electoral votes) only if it looks like he will get 53 percent (or more) of the two-party popular vote, nationwide. A tally of at least 54 percent (a margin of at least 8 percentage points) would be convincing. (That’s close to my finger-to-the-wind estimate of 9 percentage points in “How Good Are the Presidential Polls?“, wherein I assessed the accuracy to the nationwide polls for the presidential elections of 2004-2020.)
If Trump doesn’t rack up a big margin, the Dems will be able to manufacture enough votes in key States to steal the election — again.
Elsewhere I have written at length about feature films and my favorites among them. In the past several years, however, I have (mostly) eschewed feature films for TV series and miniseries. There are several reasons for my revised viewing habit, which I won’t bore you with. Let’s just say I find my new regimen rewarding because when I find a series or miniseries worth watching the enjoyment lasts well beyond a few hours.
The list below consists of my favorite TV series and miniseries of all time, with links to Internet Movie Database entries for each. The earliest entry is The Forsyte Saga (1967); several of my favorites are still running, 57 years later. I have inserted comments about many of the entries. The lack of a comment shouldn’t be taken as a lack of enthusiasm on my part. Every entry earned a high rating (8, 9, or 10) from me.
Many of the series are no longer available, but I’ve listed all that I can remember just in case some of them appeal to you. With luck, you will be able to find some of them on streaming services or DVDs.
There are a few American entries from the 1970s and 1980s — a brief era during which the major networks somehow managed more than schlock. The later American entries, also few (e.g., The Sopranos and Mad Men), were aired by streaming services.
The list is dominated by foreign entries. I have been especially pleased by the quality of Australian, Danish, Swedish, and Italian offerings in the 21st century. British fare figures prominently, of course.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984-1985) — The long-running Jeremy Brett version continues with The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1986-1988), The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1993), and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994).
All Creatures Great and Small (2020-?) — Better than the original from 1978.
All in the Family (1971–1979) — It’s worth watching for the humiliation of “Meathead” (Rob Reiner).
Any Human Heart (2010)
Barney Miller (1975–1982)
Beck (1997-?) Offbeat Swedish detective, on the job forever?
The Beiderbecke Affair (1985), followed by the The Beiderbecke Tapes (1987) and The Beiderbecke Connection (1988) — Especially good for afficionados of (real) 1920s jazz.
Berkeley Square (1998)
Better Call Saul (2015–2022) — Spun off from and better than Breaking Bad (which was excellent).
Bleak House (2005) — One of the many adaptations of a Dickens novel that I have listed here.
Bosch (2014–2021) Titus Welliver isn’t the Bosch described in Michael Connelly’s books, but he has the attitude. The original series was followed by Bosch: Legacy (2022-?).
Bramwell (1995–1998)
Breaking Bad (2008–2013)
Brideshead Revisited (1981)
The Bridge (2011-2018) — Excellent Danish-Swedish fare; the British-French remake is The Tunnel (see below).
The Brokenwood Mysteries (2014-?) — This offering from New Zealand was a comedy-mystery for its first six seasons. The comedy departed with the character of D.C. Sam Breen in 2021). I haven’t seen the episodes in which he appears since his return in 2024. Here’s hoping that the comedy and the series have recovered from his absence.
The Buccaneers (1995) — About American women seeking rich British husbands in the late 1800s; not about pirates.
Burn Notice (2007–2013) — Mindless but funny and fast-moving, with a trigger-happy female lead.
Cakes and Ale (1974)
Cambridge Spies (2003)
Case Histories (2011–2013)
The Cazalets (2001)
C.B. Strike (2017-?) — Tom Burke isn’t Strike (not big enough) but he grows on you.
Charters & Caldicott (1985)
The Citadel (1983)
Clouds of Witness (1972) Ian Carmichael as Dorothy L. Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey.
Cold Comfort Farm (1995)
Cold Lazarus (1996)
The Camomile Lawn (1992)
Cracker (1993–1996) — Don’t bother with the final episode from 2006, it’s an anti-American screed.
The Crown (2016-2023) — The royal soap opera, almost spoiled (as in real-life) by the Diana saga.
Dalziel and Pascoe — (1996–2007)
Danger UXB — (1979)
Dicte (2013–2016)
Downton Abbey (2010–2015) — Predictable but engaging; the only virtue of the final season is completion.
The Durrells (2016-2019) The final season is a bit of a let-down, but the whole thing is a gem.
Elementary (2012–2019) — Sherlock Holmes in the 21st century.
The First Churchills (1969) — The only non-fiction entry because it’s as good as any historical fiction can be.
Endeavour (2012–2023) — Inspector Morse before his promotion.
Five Red Herrings (1975) More Wimsey.
The Flame Trees of Thika (1981)
Flickers (1980)
Forbrydelsen (2007–2012) — The original (Danish) version of The Killing (see below).
Forgotten Silver (1995)
The Forsyte Saga (1967) — More complete than the later version (next) and well done except for Nyree Dawn Porter’s shrill interpretation of the main female character. Eric Porter (unrelated to Nyree) is Soames.
The Forsyte Saga (2002-2003) — Less melodramatic than the 1967 version.
Foyle’s War (2002–2015)
The Gathering Storm (2002) — Albert Finney does Churchill.
The Glittering Prizes (1976)
Grantchester (2014–2019) — The first four seasons with Jame Norton; the rest of the series is too “woke”.
Heat of the Sun (1998) — A cop in British Africa.
The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971)
House of Cards (1990) — This is the British original, not the Kevin Spacey knock-off.
I, Claudius (1976)
Inspector Morse (1987-2020)
Jonathan Creek (2007-2016)
Justified (2010-2015)
Karaoke (1996)
The Killing (2011-2014) — The American version of Forbrydelsen, perhaps better than the original.
The Last Detective (2003-2007)
The Last Tycoon (2016-2017)
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1982)
Lillie (1978) — Francesca Annis in peak form.
Little Dorrit (2008)
The Little Drummer Girl (2018) — A well-made series about a despicable person. My review is here.
Lonesome Dove (1989)
Love Among the Ruins (1975)
Love in a Cold Climate (1980)
MASH* (1972-1983)
Mad Men (2007-2015)
Madame Bovary (1975)
The Man Who Was Hunting Himself (1972)
Martin Chuzzlewit (1994)
MI-5 (2002-2011) — Known as Spooks in the UK; 86 episodes weren’t enough.
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012-2015) — Just for fun.
Moonlighting (1985-1989)
Murder Must Advertise (1973-1974) — Still more Wimsey.
New Tricks (2003-2013) — The first 10 seasons, with Amanda Redman, are fun.
The Night Manager (2016) — Two more episodes are schedule to air in 2024
The Nine Tailors (1974) — It’s Wimsey again.
The Norman Conquests (1977)
Olive Kitteridge (2014)
Oliver Twist (2007-2008) — Timothy Spall is Fagin, the best after Alec Guinness in the 1948 film.
Our Mutual Friend (1998)
Pennies from Heaven (1978-1979) — Bob Hoskins lip-synchs standards from the 1920s-1940s.
The Pickwick Papers (1985)
Piece of Cake (1988) — Aerial derring-do in the Great War.
A Place to Call Home (2013-2018) — A family saga Down Under, with characters you love to love and love to hate.
Pride and Prejudice (1995) — Colin Firth is Mr. Darcy.
Prime Suspect (1991-2006) — The link points to the first series; follow the trail for the rest.
The Queen’s Gambit (2020)
The Railway Children (2000)
Rebecca (1979)
Reckless (1997) Early Robson Green for the ladies.
Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983)
The Restaurant (2017-2020) — A Swedish saga.
Rocco Schiavone (2016-2024) — A cop from Rome, exiled to the Italian Alps, gets help from his crooked friends.
Rumpole of the Bailey (1978-1992)
Seaside Hotel (2013-2024) — Addictive Danish drama mixed with humor.
Shadowlands (1986)
Shetland (2013-?) — A series that might survive and flourish after the departure of its original star.
The Shiralee (1987)
The Singing Detective (1986)
The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) — Simply splendid.
Shooting the Past (1999)
Slings and Arrows (2003-2006) — Hilarious backstage doings, with an assist from Shakespeare.
Smiley’s People (1982)
Sneaky Pete (2015-2019)
The Sopranos (1999-2007)
Sunset Song (1971)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)
Touching Evil (1997-1999)
A Touch of Frost (1992-2010) — About an English police detective, not the weather.
To Serve Them All My Days (1980-1981) — Well-done variation of Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
Trapped (2015-2021) — Icelandic cop’s travails on and off the job, followed by the weaker Entrapped (2022).
True Detective (2014-2025) — The first three seasons (2014-2019) are excellent; I haven’t seen the rest.
The Tunnel (2013-2019) — Only a shade less gripping than The Bridge (see above).
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1972-1973) — Another entry in the Lord Peter Wimsey series.
Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975) — Better than Downtown Abbey, just played out on a smaller scale.
Vera (2011-2025) — The 2025 season will be the last in this enjoyable series about a DCI in Northumberland.
Victoria (2016-2019) — It ended too soon.
Vienna 1900 (1973-1974)
Wallander (2005-2013) — The Swedish version benefits from the absence of Kenneth Branagh, who agonizes his way through the British version.
Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979)
The West Wing (1996-2005) — Slick but clever and entertaining propaganda for big government.
The Wire (2002-2008) — Excellent example of the gritty-crooked-cops-and-remorseless-bad-guys genre.
Wives and Daughters (1999)
Wolf Hall (2015)
The Young Montalbano (2012) — A faster-paced prequel to Detective Montalbano (1999-2021), which savors human nature, crime, and the charms of Sicily at a suitably languid pace.
In “The Long Drift Leftward” I offer statistics about presidential elections to demonstrate the drift. I then attribute that drift to three coinciding factors, one of which is the enfranchisement of women and their steadily increasing propensity to vote.
Along comes a post by David Friedman, “Women Voting, Government Expenditure“. He finds that the relative growth of government spending for 13 Western nations (including the U.S.) is related to the enfranchisement of women. Being a two-handed economist, he hedges on his finding.
But putting his finding together with mine buttresses my conclusion (and his).
You hear a lot about the things that matter to college-educated, middle- and upper-middle-class women.
They don’t seem to be real things like these:
- Riots, crime, and terrorism
- Marauding illegal aliens
- Exorbitantly (and unnecessarily) high energy costs
- Subsidization of things that don’t matter (recycling, EVs, “sustainable” fuels)
- Rising tax rates
- Government censorship
- Subversion of justice
- Inability to deter China’s growing military might.
No. They care about a hoax: “Climate change”.
And about a “health issue” that most of them would never face (or contemplate) or are too old to need: Abortion.
That’s the mindset that was created by decades of brainwashing in public schools and universities.
You have to wonder why it was so easy to wash their brains of common sense. I’d say it was a fatal combination of hormones, groupthink, and insulation from the world of real suffering that their grandparents had to endure; for example:
There are five ways to do it:
- “Print” money.
- Make businesses less efficient through regulation.
- Enlarge government, thus drawing productive resources from private use.
- Pay people to do nothing.
- Encourage destructive behavior — rioting, illegal immigration, crime in general — and count remedial spending as part of GDP.
The first four items got liftoff in the 1930s and have been getting bigger and “better” since then. The fifth item has reached critical mass under Biden.
It has been said often that today’s young adults have a harder time of it, economically (and probably in other ways), than the young adults of yesteryear. Is that true? If so, is a new phenomenon?
To shed some light on those questions, I turned to the Census Bureau and found Table P-10. Age–All People (Both Sexes Combined) by Median and Mean Income: 1974 to 2022. I plotted mean income by year for six age groups, with this result:
You can readily see that the rate of income growth for the youngest workers (15 to 24-year-olds) has been slower than that of the older age groups. In fact, the rate of income growth is inversely related to age group. Here are the coefficients of the linear fits to each of the lines in the graph:
- 15 – 24: 132
- 25 – 34: 346
- 35 – 44: 539
- 45 – 54: 625
- 55 – 64: 683
- 65 – 74: 750
Thus, for example, the mean income for the 15 – 24 age group increased, on average, by $132 per year, and so on for each group. (The r2 values are — from the youngest to oldest age group — 0.69, 0.76, 0.88, 0.87, 0.92, 0.95.)
In sum, the incomes of younger workers — on average and most of the time — have lagged further and further behind the incomes of older workers since at least 1974.
I am unsurprised by that. It has often been remarked that those of us who entered the labor force around 1960 had it better than those who followed us. I am certain that the observation would be borne out if there were data going back to 1960 or earlier.
Why is this so? An important reason, but not the only one, is the “law of supply and demand”. Economic growth in the U.S. has long been positive (though at a declining rate in the 20th and 21st centuries). Yes, there have been brief episodes of negative growth during recessions and longer episodes during the Great Recession and Great Depression. But the demand for labor of various kinds has grown over the long haul.
The supply of labor, on the other hand, hasn’t grown consistently (see table here). The population of the U.S. grew by only 7.3 percent from 1930 to 1940, as against 16.2 percent in the preceding decade, 15.0 percent in the decade before that, and much higher percentages before that.
The Great Depression of the 1930s was the main cause of slow population growth in that decade. World War II was the main cause of slow population growth from 1940 to 1950 — only 14.5 percent (slower than all preceding decades but one). Ant the growth in the 1940s came mainly in the latter half of the decade, when the post-war “baby boom” started.
The short of it is that younger persons who entered the labor force during, say, 1955 to 1965 didn’t face as much competition from their peers as did earlier generations. That happenstance served most of them well all the way to retirement.
Younger workers of later years have had it tougher — despite declining population growth since 1960 — because of the sharply declining rate of economic growth after 1970. Each regression line in the graph below reflects the rate of growth for the associated business cycle (the flatter the slope the lower the rate of growth). The 1949-1954 and 1960-1970 cycles generated much higher growth rates than those that followed. Further, the growth rates have generally declined over time; the rate for the 2009-2020 cycle (and beyond) is the lowest of the lot.
Today’s young adults, and those who follow them will be up against a lethargic economy — which will be made even more lethargic by the continued piling-on of regulations and the growth of government. The full amount of damage due to higher energy costs — because of the senseless war on “climate change” — is yet to be felt.
Youngsters should be leading the charge for regime change. But too many of them have been brainwashed in the belief that government (under Democrats) knows best. What it knows best is how to impoverish Americans and make nice to our worst enemies.
I have written several posts about political and economic paradoxes in the past 18 years. Here are the highlights (with some commentary).
The paradox of libertarianism:
Liberty rests on an agreed definition of harm, and on an accompanying agreement to act with mutual restraint and in mutual defense. Given the variety of human wants and preferences, the price of mutual restraint and mutual defense is necessarily some loss of liberty. That is, each person must accept, and abide by, a definition of harm that is not the definition by which he would abide were he able to do so. But, in return for mutual restraint and mutual defense, he must abide by that compromise definition.
That insight carries important implications for the “anything goes” or “do your own thing” school of pseudo-libertarianism. That school consists of those libertarians who believe that harm is in the mind of the doer, or who believe that they can define harm while standing on the outside of society looking in. Thus they proclaim abortion and same-sex “marriage” (among other things) to be harmless — just because they favor abortion and same-sex “marriage” or cannot see the harm in them.
I am therefore a conservative libertarian.
- Conservative because voluntarily evolved social norms are binding and civilizing, and therefore should not be dismissed out of hand or altered peremptorily.
- Libertarian in a minarchistic way. The urge to power makes a state inevitable; the best state is therefore the one that only defends its citizens from predators, domestic and foreign.
A non-paradox for libertarians:
What if a society’s transition from a regulatory-welfare regime to a regime of liberty were to result in losers as well as winners? How could one then justify such a transition? Must the justification rest on an intuitive judgment about the superiority of liberty? Might the prospect of creating losers somehow nullify the promise of creating winners?
I argue … that my justification for libertarianism — although it is of the consequentialist-utilitarian variety — rests on a stronger foundation than an intuitive judgment about the superiority of liberty…. The virtue of libertarianism … is not that it must be taken on faith but that, in practice, it yields superior consequences. Superior consequences for whom, you may ask. And I will answer: for all but those who don’t wish to play by the rules of libertarianism; that is, for all but predators and parasites.
By predators, I mean those who would take liberty from others, either directly (e.g., through murder and theft) or through the coercive power of the state (e.g., through smoking bans and licensing laws). By parasites, I mean those who seek to advance their self-interest through the coercive power of the state rather than through their own efforts (e.g., through corporate welfare and regulatory protection)….
[A] transition to liberty might not instantly make everyone better off … but everyone could be better off. That’s simply not the case with the regulatory-welfare state, which robs some for the benefit of others, and ends up making almost everyone poorer than they would be in a state of liberty.
Liberty is a win-win proposition for everyone except those who deserve to lose.
The interest-group paradox:
Pork-barrel legislation exemplifies the interest-group paradox in action, though the paradox encompasses much more than pork-barrel legislation. There are myriad government programs that — like pork-barrel projects — are intended to favor particular classes of individuals. Here is a minute sample:
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- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, for the benefit of the elderly (including the indigent elderly)
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- Tax credits and deductions, for the benefit of low-income families, charitable and other non-profit institutions, and home buyers (with mortgages)
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- Progressive income-tax rates, for the benefit of persons in the mid-to-low income brackets
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- Subsidies for various kinds of “essential” or “distressed” industries, such as agriculture and automobile manufacturing
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- Import quotas, tariffs, and other restrictions on trade, for the benefit of particular industries and/or labor unions
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- Pro-union laws (in many States), for the benefit of unions and unionized workers
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- Non-smoking ordinances, for the benefit of bar and restaurant employees and non-smoking patrons.
What do each of these examples have in common? Answer: Each comes with costs. There are direct costs (e.g., higher taxes for some persons, higher prices for imported goods), which the intended beneficiaries and their proponents hope to impose on non-beneficiaries. Just as importantly, there are indirect costs of various kinds (e.g., disincentives to work and save, disincentives to make investments that spur economic growth). (Exercise for the reader: Describe the indirect costs of each of the examples listed above.)
You may believe that a particular program is worth what it costs… The problem is millions of your fellow Americans believe the same thing about each of their favorite programs. Because there are thousands of government programs (federal, State, and local), each intended to help a particular class of citizens at the expense of others, the net result is that almost no one in this fair land enjoys a “free lunch.” Even the relatively few persons who might seem to have obtained a “free lunch” — homeless persons taking advantage of a government-provided shelter — often are victims of the “free lunch” syndrome….
The paradox that arises from the “free lunch” syndrome is much … like the paradox of panic, in that there is a crowd of interest groups rushing toward a goal — a “pot of gold” — and (figuratively) crushing each other in the attempt to snatch the pot of gold before another group is able to grasp it. The gold that any group happens to snatch is a kind of fool’s gold: It passes from one fool to another in a game of beggar-thy-neighbor, and as it passes much of it falls into the maw of bureaucracy.
The interest-group paradox has dominated American politics since the advent of “Progressivism” in the late 1800s. Today, most Americans are either “progressives” or victims of “progressivism”. All too often they are both.
The capitalist paradox meets the interest-group paradox:
An insightful post at Imlac’s Journal includes this quotation:
Schumpeter argued the economic systems that encourage entrepreneurship and development will eventually produce enough wealth to support large classes of individuals who have no involvement in the wealth-creation process. This generates apathy or even disgust for market institutions, which leads to the gradual takeover of business by bureaucracy, and eventually to full-blown socialism. [Matt McCaffrey, “Entrepreneurs and Investment: Past, Present, … Future?,” International Business Times, December 9, 2011]
This, of course, is the capitalist paradox, of which the author of Imlac’s Journal writes. He concludes with these observations:
[U]nder statist regimes, people’s choices are limited or predetermined. This may, in theory, obviate certain evils. But as McCaffrey points out, “the regime uncertainty” of onerous and ever changing regulations imposed on entrepreneurs is, ironically, much worse than the uncertainties of the normal market, to which individuals can respond more rapidly and flexibly when unhampered by unnecessary governmental intervention.
The capitalist paradox is made possible by the “comfort factor” invoked by Schumpeter. (See this, for example.) It is of a kind with the foolishness of extreme libertarians who decry defense spending and America’s “too high” rate of incarceration, when it is such things that keep them free to utter their foolishness.
The capitalist paradox also arises from the inability and unwillingness of politicians and voters to see beyond the superficial aspects of legislation and regulation. In Bastiat‘s words,
a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.
The unseen effects — the theft of Americans’ liberty and prosperity — had been foreseen by some (e.g., Tocqueville and Hayek). But their wise words have been overwhelmed by ignorance and power-lust. The masses and their masters are willfully blind and deaf to the dire consequences of the capitalist paradox because of what I have called the interest-group paradox [see above].
The paradox that is Western civilization:
The main weakness of Western civilization is a propensity to tolerate ideas and actions that would undermine it. The paradox is that the main strength of Western civilization is a propensity to tolerate ideas and actions that would strengthen it. The survival and improvement of Western civilization requires carefully balancing the two propensities. It has long been evident in continental Europe and the British Isles that the balance has swung toward destructive toleration. The United States is rapidly catching up to Europe. At the present rate the intricate network of social relationships and norms that has made America great will be destroyed within a decade. Israel, if it remains staunchly defensive of its heritage, will be the only Western nation still worthy of the name.
I wrote that almost five years ago. America network of social relationships and norms is (sadly) on schedule for destruction — unless there is a sharp and lasting turnaround in the governance of the country.
A paradox for (old-fashioned) liberals:
[A definition of old-fashioned liberalism is] given here by one Zack Beauchamp:
[L]iberalism refers to a school of thought that takes freedom, consent, and autonomy as foundational moral values. Liberals agree that it is generally wrong to coerce people, to seize control of their bodies or force them to act against their will….
Beauchamp, in the next paragraph, highlights the paradox inherent in liberalism:
Given that people will always disagree about politics, liberalism’s core aim is to create a generally acceptable mechanism for settling political disputes without undue coercion — to give everyone a say in government through fair procedures, so that citizens consent to the state’s authority even when they disagree with its decisions.
Which is to say that liberalism does entail coercion [how much is “undue” depends on whose ox is being gored]. Thus the paradox. (What is now called “liberalism” in America is so rife with coercion [link added] that only a person who is ignorant of the meaning of liberalism can call it that with a straight face.)
Socialism, communism, and three paradoxes:
The only substantive difference between socialism and communism, in theory, is that communism somehow manages to do away with the state. This, of course, never happens, except in real communes, most of which were and are tiny, short-lived arrangements. (In what follows, I therefore put communism in “sneer quotes”.)
The common thread of socialism and “communism” is collective ownership of “equity”, that is, assets (including the means of production). But that kind of ownership eliminates an important incentive to invest in the development and acquisition of capital improvements that yield more and better output and therefore raise the general standard of living. The incentive, of course, is the opportunity to reap a substantial reward for taking a substantial risk. Absent that incentive, as has been amply demonstrated by the tragic history of socialist and “communist” regimes, the general standard of living is low and economic growth is practically (if not actually) stagnant.
So here’s the first paradox: Systems that, by magical thinking, are supposed to make people better off do just the opposite: They make people worse off than they would otherwise be.
All of this because of class envy. Misplaced class envy, at that. “Capitalism” (a smear word) is really the voluntary and relatively unfettered exchange of products and services, including labor. Its ascendancy in the West is just a happy accident of the movement toward the kind of liberalism exemplified in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. People were liberated from traditional economic roles and allowed to put their talents to more productive uses, which included investing their time and money in capital that yielded more and better products and services.
Most “capitalists” in America were and still are workers who make risky investments to start and build businesses. Those businesses employ other workers and offer things of value that consumers can take or leave, as they wish (unlike the typical socialist or “communist” system).
So here’s the second paradox: Socialism and “communism” actually suppress the very workers whom they are meant to benefit, in theory and rhetoric.
The third paradox is that socialist and “communist” regimes like to portray themselves as “democratic”, even though they are quite the opposite: ruled by party bosses who bestow favors on their protegees. Free markets are in fact truly democratic, in that their outcomes are determined directly by the participants in those markets.
The paradoxes and consequences of liberty and prosperity:
The soil in which the seeds of [America’s] decline were to be planted was broken in the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The seeds were planted and nourished by “leaders”, “intellectuals”, and “activists” from TR’s time to the present. The poisonous crop burst blossomed brightly in the 1930s and again in the 1960s, but it had not yet engulfed the land. It continued to spread slowly (and often unheeded) for several decades before racing across the land in recent years. Its poisonous vines are now strangling liberty and prosperity.
These are the paradoxes of liberty and prosperity: Without a moral foundation they lead to their own destruction.
If you value liberty, you do not countenance speech and actions that subvert it. If you value prosperity, you must be careful not to let it breed the kind of idleness (of mind and body) that gives rise to speech and actions that subvert liberty — and thus prosperity.
The Founders understood those things. They believed that the Constitution would preserve liberty and foster prosperity because they believed that Americans would remain religious and moral. They did not believe that Americans would undermine liberty by being soft on crime, by feeding masses (and elites) at the public trough (and at the expense of taxpayers), or by accommodating foreign aggression. They did not believe that Americans would countenance such things, nor that political leaders would suborn and join efforts to ostracize, suppress, and oppress those Americans who oppose such things.
The Founders, sadly, were wrong. The did not and could not foresee these events (and many more not mentioned):
-
- A goodly fraction of Americans would spurn religion and become morally slack and complacent about the preservation of liberty.
- Freedom of speech and assembly would be turned against liberty, to foster crime, lack of personal responsibility, and the accommodation of deadly enemies, within and without.
- Firearms, always omnipresent in America for useful purposes, would become violent, murderous extensions of a growing tendency to toward psychological instability in a morally rootless populace.
- Governments, political “elites”, and corporations would celebrate and reward (or fail to punish) persons based on the color of their skin (as long as it isn’t white or “yellow”)*, their pro-constitutional political views (which “exonerate” many whites), and their sex (preferably female or confused).
- Abortion would become legal and support for abortion would be openly and boastfully proclaimed by political leaders and “elites”. Unborn human beings would be disposed of as inconveniences and treated like garbage.
- Parents would lose control of the upbringing of their children, who might be cajoled into psychologically devastating treatments and surgeries by teachers and others under the rubric of “gender-affirming care”.
- Women and girls would be forced to room with, shower with, and compete against males who “identify” as females (or “other”).
- Intelligence and superior (non-athletic) skills would be denounced as unfair and “white supremacist” (with Asians counting as white).
- Lawlessness and pathological deviancy would be rewarded (or not punished).
- Leading politicians and “activists” would bay and howl for the confiscation of arms, under the rubric of “gun control”, when the underlying problem isn’t gun ownership by moral and mental depravity.
- Political “leaders” would enable and allow a virtual invasion of the country, despite its negative consequences for the “little people” whom those “leaders” and other “elites” claim to champion.
- The national government (and many others) would ignore science and invoke pseudo-science to force Americans into isolation, disrupt the economy, and burden the poorest Americans because of a virus that would have run its course naturally and less destructively than had it been combated scientifically.
- The national government (and many others) would ignore science and invoke pseudo science to make Americans (especially poor Americans) poorer in an unnecessary and futile quest to “save the planet” from the use of fossil fuels, fertilizers, and other productive substances that the majority of the world’s populace will not refrain from using. (Regarding the state of science, see Maggie Kelly’s, “Professors Publish ‘Controversial’ Paper Defending Merit in Science”, The College Fix, May 2, 2023.)
- Prosperity — a fruit of liberty — would foster the moral softness and the mental laxity that gives rise to addle-pated schemes such as those outlined above.
- Vast numbers of Americans — having been indoctrinated in public schools, in left-dominated universities, and by the Democrat-allied media — would believe and subscribe to such schemes, which are made palatable by the application of double-speak labels to them (e.g., “defense of the homeland”, “combating misinformation”, “following the science”).
- Government officials, including law-enforcement officers, would collude with and encourage the press and other purveyors of “information” to distort and suppress facts about much that is alluded to above, to discredit and hound a president (Trump) who opposed them, and to help elect and protect possibly the most corrupt president in America’s history (Biden) because it is through him that the left’s agenda is being implemented.
- All of this (and more) would occur because almost-absolute power would accrue to the morally (and sometimes venally) corrupt politicians and their powerful enablers who advance and enforce such schemes.
….
In the best of possible worlds, there would be a voluntary return to something much closer to the America that the Founders envisioned. (Even a return to the post-New Deal 1940s and 1950s would do.) …
I don’t mean something like the turnaround in the House of Representatives following the elections of 1994 and 2010 (GOP gains of 12 and 15 percent). I mean something like the turnaround of 1930-1932 (total Democrat gains of 91 percent). In the wake of that turnaround, Democrats went on to control the House for the next 60 years (except for a post-World War II reaction of two years).
But the mass rejection of the GOP in 1930 and 1932 was a consequence of an economic upheaval, the Great Depression, that hit vast numbers of Americans and hit them suddenly and hard where it hurts: in the pocketbook. The policies that are now engulfing the land, onerous as they may be, are insidious by comparison — and are practically ignored or touted as “good things” by most media (including “entertainment” media).
Moreover, “woke” America is the laughing-stock of its enemies. And too weak [under the present regime] to stare them down. The growing unwillingness and inability of America’s “leaders” to deter and fight enemies really doesn’t matter to those enemies. In the end, the will to resist aggression and to accede to the wishes of aggressors depends on the will of the populace to stand together against aggression. That will, in turn, depends on broad (if not unanimous) allegiance to the survival and success of the nation.
There is no longer such an allegiance. The left hates what America long was and will not relent until that America is destroyed. The right hates what America is rapidly becoming at the hands of the left. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I used to believe that an event that threatened the lives and livelihoods of all Americans would re-unite them. I no longer believe that.
I now believe that a national divorce — a negotiated partition of the nation — is a dire necessity. (Its precursor, a concerted secession, is legal under the Constitution.) It would allow a large fraction of Americans, perhaps half of them, to break free of the economic and social oppressions that emanate from Washington. It would also allow those same Americans to defend themselves against invaders from the south and overseas enemies instead of wasting their treasure on the left’s destructive agenda.
Absent a national divorce, everyone will go down with a sinking ship. Across the land there will be declining material comfort, rising criminality, rampant social acrimony, the suppression of views that threaten the grip of the ruling class, the oppression of persons who express those views, and a fascistic arrangement between politicians and favored corporations — those that subscribe to the quasi-religion of “climate change” and the “wokeness” that propels schemes that put skin color, sex (or lack of it), and other personal characteristics above truth, above merit, and above the rule of law.
Which leads me to promote “Can America Be Saved?“, if you haven’t yet read it.
David Ignatius, a columnist at The Washington Post, offers for our adulation a RAND study, “The Sources of Renewed National Dynamism” (a link in that page leads to a free, downloadable version of the study). Here is some of what Ignatius (“breathlessly”) says about it:
Though the report is mostly written in the dry language of sociology, this is explosive stuff [emphasis added]….
What has led to “the relative decline in U.S. standing,” as the report asks? The opening chapter explains America’s problem starkly: “Its competitive position is threatened both from within (in terms of slowing productivity growth, an aging population, a polarized political system, and an increasingly corrupted information environment) and outside (in terms of a rising direct challenge from China and declining deference to U.S. power from dozens of developing nations).”
This decline is “accelerating,” warns the study. “The essential problem is seen in starkly different terms by different segments of society and groups of political leaders.” There’s a right-wing narrative of decline and a left-wing one. Though they agree that something is broken in America, the two sides disagree, often in the extreme, on what to do about it.
Unless Americans can unite to identify and fix these problems, we risk falling into a downward spiral. “Recovery from significant long-term national decline is rare and difficult to detect in the historical record,” the authors note. Think of Rome, or Habsburg Spain, or the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, or the Soviet Union. “When great powers have slid from a position of preeminence or leadership because of domestic factors, they seldom reversed this trend.”
What causes national decline? The Rand authors cite triggers that are all too familiar in 2024. “Addiction to luxury and decadence,” “failure to keep pace with … technological demands,” “ossified” bureaucracy, “loss of civic virtue,” “military overstretch,” “self-interested and warring elites,” “unsustainable environmental practices.” Does that sound like any country you know?
The challenge is “anticipatory national renewal,” argue the authors — in other words, tackling the problems before they tackle us. Their survey of historical and sociological literature identifies essential tools for renewal, such as recognizing the problem; adopting a problem-solving attitude rather than an ideological one; having good governance structures; and, perhaps most elusive, maintaining “elite commitment to the common good.”
Unfortunately, on this “fix it” checklist, the Rand authors rate U.S. performance in 2024 as “weak,” “threatened” or, at best, “mixed.” If we look honestly in the national mirror, we’re all likely to share that assessment.
So what’s the way out? Rand provides two case studies in which urgent reforms broke through the corruption and disarray that might otherwise have proved catastrophic.
The first example is Britain in the mid-1800s [from which I will not quote]….
A second case study can be found in the United States itself, after the binge of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. That industrial boom transformed America, but it created poisonous inequalities, social and environmental damage, and gross corruption. Republican Theodore Roosevelt led a “Progressive” movement that reformed politics, business, labor rights, the environment and the political swamp of corruption.
“Progressives had a ‘yearning for rebirth’ and sought to inject ‘some visceral vitality into a modern culture that had seemed brittle and about to collapse,’” note the Rand authors, quoting historian Jackson Lears.
The message of this study is screamingly obvious. America is on a downward slope that could be fatal. What will save us is a broad commitment, starting with elites, to work for the common good and national revival. We have the tools, but we aren’t using them. If we can’t find new leaders and agree on solutions that work for everyone, we’re sunk.
The first thing that you should notice is Ignatius’s persistent use of “we” and the ludicrous metaphor of a “national mirror”. There is no “we” (let alone a “national mirror”). There are many “we’s” in America — about as many as there are American citizens.
There’s certainly nothing remotely resembling a consensus about any of the topics addressed by the RAND study. Even the RAND analysts who concocted the study admit as much. But that’s the sum and substance of my praise for their work.
As a guide to the fate of the nation, the study is uselessly superficial. The fate of a nation is like a system of equations with dozens if not hundreds of variables whose values and interrelations are unknown and mostly unknowable. The authors even admit to the omission of what is probably a key variable:
[T]he wider project identifies many ways in which flourishing markets and grassroots (rather than centrally directed) solutions are essential to national competitiveness and parallel ways in which ossifying centralized bureaucracy can choke off national dynamism [p. 42].
Aside from the obvious fact that there is and is unlikely to be a consensus about how to save America, no study of the kind produced by RAND could be useful. Case studies reflect the biases of those who conduct them.
The authors of the RAND study evidently believe that the Progressive movement was responsible for some kind of national resurgence. But the Progressive movement was largely about the aggrandizement of the central government and the proliferation of regulations, both of which have slowed slightly a few times but have never been seriously reversed. There is statistical evidence that the Progressive movement and its aftermath choked economic dynamism (see “The Bad News about Economic Growth“), though the full effect of efforts to combat “climate change” is yet to be felt.
There is ample (and mounting) evidence in the news of the past few decades that government intervention in social and educational matters (the leftist takeover of public education, same-sex marriage, gender fluidity, anti-religious, racist in the guise of “anti-racism”, etc.) is deeply divisive and therefore an obstacle to any kind of revitalization through consensus.
America’s economic decline and social divisions are paralleled by its military decline at the hands of “liberals” and pseudo-conservatives (e.g., the Bushes). I will say little more here; I treat the subject at length in “Grand Strategy for the United States“. I will only add that military decline is of a piece with economic and social decline because it rests on the naive view of the world that is enshrined in leftism and indulged by pseudo-conservativism. (I address that worldview in “Human Nature and Conflict“.)
In a non-naive view of the world, there are four major signs of America’s decline:
- deep internal divisions about the role of government (the deepest they have been in my lifetime of more than 80 years)
- deep internal divisions about permissible behavior and the lax treatment of (what real grown-ups consider) anti-social behavior — from drug use to murder and many heinous things in between
- the aforementioned loss of economic vitality
- decline of standing (including but not limited to military predominance) among other nations.
Because of the internal divisions — in particular, the division about the role of government — there is no way for government (or elites who are identified with a particular view about the role of government) to unify the nation. As long as the government is large, intrusive, and dedicated to certain behavioral norms (e.g., rewards and lack of punishment for its favored groups, the demolition of long-standing social norms), stultifying economic policies, and inadequate or even abject defense policies — and as long as government pursues those norms and policies (and imports potential voters to sustain it in power) — the nation will remain deeply divided.
There is a way out, though it is a long shot at this point. If more and more Americans come understand what is happening to the country and come to understand why it is happening, there could be a kind of revolution at the polls. The revolution would consist of such an overwhelming and lasting turn to the right that the vast left-wing conspiracy would not be able to overcome it through chicanery.
A second way out, which is a longer shot, is de facto secession leading to a voluntary partition of the country (a national divorce). The de facto secession would begin subtly, with more and more States refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of directives from Washington (e.g., Texas enforces the southern border, Florida and others ignore Biden’s Title IX travesty). If the Democrats in Washington prove unwilling to enforce their directives with armed force (as they haven’t thus far in Texas), further disobedience would be encouraged and it would spread to more and more States and a broader array of issues. Finally despairing of keeping the right in check — especially as geographic separation of right and left proceeds apace — the left might agree to (or even suggest) a negotiated partition of the country. (See VI.A and B in “Constitution: Myths and Realities“. See also “The Supreme Court Recognizes the Legality of Secession“.)
There is, of course, the possibility of a civil war. I address it — and its likely failure — in “How Will Civil War II Start?“. The predicate in that post is Donald Trump’s losing the election of 2024, though that now seems less likely to me than it did only a few months ago (see “Trump vs. Biden: 12“). But if Democrats retain control of the central government (a necessary prerequisite),
all hell will break loose. By “all hell”, I mean the full-scale construction of a fascistic state, which will be accomplished by executive fiat and friendly judges even if the GOP somehow controls at least one chamber of Congress….
All hell having broken loose, (solid) Red State governors and legislatures will engage in acts of resistance of the legalistic variety. These will fail because (a) their success would require judicial support, which will be lacking, and (b) the Democrat administration will simply ignore rulings that are unfavorable to its agenda. (The Biden administration’s flouting of immigration law, work-arounds to blunt the effect of Dobbs, and refusal to protect conservative Supreme Court justices’ homes are harbingers of the lawlessness to come.)
Red State hot-heads will then be unable to resist the urge to engage in futile acts of violence against the regime. The effect will be to justify harsh “anti-terroristic” measures that will result in unbridled censorship and jailing of conservatives for the mere “crime” of pointing out the regime’s lawlessness. But that would just be the start of full-scale suppression of dissent.
Red State governments that try to resist the regime will be found to be unconstitutional according to some kind of legalistic argumentation. The central government will then declare them null and void, invoking the Constitution: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government….” (Article IV, Section 4). Armed resistance, where it is attempted, will be squashed by superior force and rewarded with draconian punishments.
So … the answer to the question posed by the title of this post is that Civil War II won’t start. It will be aborted by the pro-abortion party.
That scenario won’t be far-fetched if Biden wins re-election — especially if his win is blatantly fraudulent.
There is, finally, the remote possibility of a military coup against a left-wing regime. Here is my assessment of that (from “A National Divorce“):
Military personnel are disciplined and have access to the tools of power, and many of them are trained in clandestine operations. Therefore, a cadre of properly motivated careerists might possess the wherewithal necessary to seize power.
But … a plot to undertake a coup is easily betrayed. Among other things, significant numbers of high-ranking officers are shills for “wokeism”. A betrayed coup for liberty could easily become a coup for tyranny.
America can be saved and restored, at least in part, to something like the America that I discuss in “What Happened to America?” and “1963: The Year Zero“. But it will happen only if enough voters wake up to what is happening and stage a lasting electoral revolution. And if they do, “we” on the right might enjoy the blessings of a national divorce.
I remain pessimistic but not without hope.
The typology of personality is a fascinating but superficial way of looking at human nature and the sources of conflict among human beings. I will begin there before probing more deeply. If you are eager to get to the bottom line of this post, scroll down to “Conflict”.
SOME ASPECTS OF PERSONALITYGeneraloberst Kurt Gebhard Adolf Philipp Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord (1878-1943) was commendable for at least two reasons. He was outspokenly against the Nazi regime, and he conceived this classification scheme for officers:
I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.
Here is my paraphrase of that scheme:
- Smart and hard-working (good middle manager)
- Stupid and lazy (lots of these around, hire for simple, routine tasks and watch closely)
- Smart and lazy (promote to senior management — delegates routine work and keeps his eye on the main prize)
- Stupid and hard-working (dangerous to have around, screws up things, should be taken out and shot). (This describes the boss whose “leadership” skills prompted me to retire early.)
Personality analysis and classification has since become an industry. It provides pseudo-scientific insights for the misuse of corporate executives and HR departments. And it offers endless hours of enjoyment (and self-doubt and argument) for casual users.
For my own part, I have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) several times since the late 1980s. It is in ill repute, but I have always found it to be reliable, especially in my own case. I am an INTJ, which is I(ntroverted), (i)N(tuitive), T(hinking), J(udging):
For INTJs the dominant force in their lives is their attention to the inner world of possibilities, symbols, abstractions, images, and thoughts. Insight in conjunction with logical analysis is the essence of their approach to the world; they think systemically. Ideas are the substance of life for INTJs and they have a driving need to understand, to know, and to demonstrate competence in their areas of interest. INTJs inherently trust their insights, and with their task-orientation will work intensely to make their visions into realities. (Source: “The Sixteen Types at a Glance“.)
I first took the “Big 5” personality test in 2009, with this result (details here):
My scores are in green; the average scores of all other test-takers are in purple. The five traits are defined as follows:
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Openness to experience: High scorers are described as “Open to new experiences. You have broad interests and are very imaginative.” Low scorers are described as “Down-to-earth, practical, traditional, and pretty much set in your ways.” This is the sub-scale that shows the strongest relationship to politics: liberals generally score high on this trait; they like change and variety, sometimes just for the sake of change and variety. Conservatives generally score lower on this trait. (Just think about the kinds of foods likely to be served at very liberal or very conservative social events.)
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Conscientiousness: High scorers are described as “conscientious and well organized. They have high standards and always strive to achieve their goals. They sometimes seem uptight. Low scorers are easy going, not very well organized and sometimes rather careless. They prefer not to make plans if they can help it.”
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Extraversion: High scorers are described as “Extraverted, outgoing, active, and high-spirited. You prefer to be around people most of the time.” Low scorers are described as “Introverted, reserved, and serious. You prefer to be alone or with a few close friends.” Extraverts are, on average, happier than introverts.
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Agreeableness: High scorers are described as “Compassionate, good-natured, and eager to cooperate and avoid conflict.” Low scorers are described as “Hardheaded, skeptical, proud, and competitive. You tend to express your anger directly.”
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Neuroticism: High scorers are described as “Sensitive, emotional, and prone to experience feelings that are upsetting.” Low scorers are described as “Secure, hardy, and generally relaxed even under stressful conditions.”
Dozens more such tests (many of which I have taken) are available. Some of them can be found at yourmorals.org (free signup).
Personality differences occasion conflict, of course. For example, decisive persons are often frustrated by and impatient with indecisive ones (and vice versa), and extroverts usually don’t understand introverts and the advantages of introversion (e.g., introspection, thinking more deeply about problems).
HUMAN NATURE WRIT LARGERBut personality tests only scratch the surface of human nature and differences among human beings. Consider the following 35 traits:
You can add to that list, I’m sure. But let’s consider the implications of the 35-trait scale for differentiating among human beings.
If each trait were quantified on a scale from 1 to 10 (though the actual range for most traits is infinite) the number of possible combinations would approach 3 quadrillion. That’s more than 300 times the number of human beings now living on Earth. To say that every human being is unique is a vast understatement.
And yet — despite the unquantifiable complexity of human beings — there is a tendency to love, like, admire, dislike, or detest a person because he or she possesses a particular trait or two — or because one is anxious to be “in” with a person or group who loves, likes, etc., because of a trait or two. Even more ephemerally, love, like, etc., be triggered when a person simply says something that suggests a particular opinion or attitude.
These tendencies seem to have been around for a long time — for as long as there have been human beings, and even longer. Fear and ferocity are easily triggered in many species of animals. This suggests that making snap judgements about other persons is an inbred survival mechanism that evolution and socialization couldn’t eradicate and may have reinforced. (Evolution has somehow become thought of as a kind of progress, but it is nothing more than unplanned change caused by external stimuli and random mutations. The belief that evolution represents progress is akin to the anthropic principle.)
Some of the prominent triggers nowadays (e.g., certain political opinions or positions) may be new. But their newness only suggests that the tendency to form snap judgements has found new outlets in keeping with cultural change. In addition to reacting fiercely to perceived threats to life and limb, humans acquired the trait of reacting vociferously (and sometimes fiercely) to perceived threats to their self-image, of which beliefs constitute an essential part.
That isn’t new, either. Nor is the perception new that the actualization of certain beliefs (or dogmas) about such matters as race, religion, government, economics, justice, sex, and morality would result in misery because they would lead to oppression, aggression, economic disaster, social division, or any combination of those things. The correctness of that perception carries the weight of historical evidence, which matters to those who are swayed by reality and not by fairytales.
Today’s divisions about race, religion, government, economics, justice, sex, and morality are just replays of eons-old conflicts along the same lines. They are replays because human nature is immutable. The only thing that changes are the manifestations of human nature in action.
Those who do not grasp human nature in its fullness — the bad with the good — are doomed to be surprised by the consequences of the actualization of their beliefs. Or they would be surprised if the human capacity for self-delusion didn’t blind them to those consequences.
Leftists and “intellectuals” (nearly identical categories) are especially prone to misjudging the consequences of their beliefs because they have spun themselves delusional fairytales about the rightness of their beliefs. I don’t need to (and won’t) relate the fairytales about race, religion, government, economics, justice, sex, and morality. All of those (and more) are amply addressed in this blog (go here and explore) and in the many other reality-based blogs and journals that abound on the internet.
CONFLICTHere, I will focus on a fairytale about conflict itself. It is the subject of another long post of mine, from eleven years ago, “The Fallacy of Human Progress“. I won’t reproduce it or quote it at length. I can only urge you to read it.
I will conclude this post with a few of the main points from that one. It was inspired by Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011). I can only say the events of the past thirteen years — and especially of the past few years in Ukraine, Israel, and America (to name only a few places) — are proof that Pinker was dead wrong.
The best refutation of Pinker’s thesis that I have read is by John Gray, an English philosopher, in his book The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths. Gray’s book appeared only eighteen months after Pinker’s and doesn’t mention Pinker or his book. The refutation is therefore only implicit, but just as powerful as if it were aimed directly at Pinker’s book.
Gray’s argument is faithfully recounted in a review of his book by Robert W. Merry at The National Interest:
The noted British historian J. B. Bury (1861–1927) . . . wrote, “This doctrine of the possibility of indefinitely moulding the characters of men by laws and institutions . . . laid a foundation on which the theory of the perfectibility of humanity could be raised. It marked, therefore, an important stage in the development of the doctrine of Progress.”
We must pause here over this doctrine of progress. It may be the most powerful idea ever conceived in Western thought…. It is the thesis that mankind has advanced slowly but inexorably over the centuries from a state of cultural backwardness, blindness and folly to ever more elevated stages of enlightenment and civilization—and that this human progression will continue indefinitely into the future . . . . The U.S. historian Charles A. Beard once wrote that the emergence of the progress idea constituted “a discovery as important as the human mind has ever made, with implications for mankind that almost transcend imagination.” And Bury, who wrote a book on the subject, called it “the great transforming conception, which enables history to define her scope.”
Gray rejects it utterly. In doing so, he rejects all of modern liberal humanism. “The evidence of science and history,” he writes, “is that humans are only ever partly and intermittently rational, but for modern humanists the solution is simple: human beings must in future be more reasonable. These enthusiasts for reason have not noticed that the idea that humans may one day be more rational requires a greater leap of faith than anything in religion.” In an earlier work, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, he was more blunt: “Outside of science, progress is simply a myth.”
. . . Gray has produced more than twenty books demonstrating an expansive intellectual range, a penchant for controversy, acuity of analysis and a certain political clairvoyance.
He rejected, for example, Francis Fukuyama’s heralded “End of History” thesis—that Western liberal democracy represents the final form of human governance—when it appeared in this magazine in 1989. History, it turned out, lingered long enough to prove Gray right and Fukuyama wrong….
Though for decades his reputation was confined largely to intellectual circles, Gray’s public profile rose significantly with the 2002 publication of Straw Dogs, which sold impressively and brought him much wider acclaim than he had known before. The book was a concerted and extensive assault on the idea of progress and its philosophical offspring, secular humanism. The Silence of Animals is in many ways a sequel, plowing much the same philosophical ground but expanding the cultivation into contiguous territory mostly related to how mankind—and individual humans—might successfully grapple with the loss of both metaphysical religion of yesteryear and today’s secular humanism. The fundamentals of Gray’s critique of progress are firmly established in both books and can be enumerated in summary.
First, the idea of progress is merely a secular religion, and not a particularly meaningful one at that. “Today,” writes Gray in Straw Dogs, “liberal humanism has the pervasive power that was once possessed by revealed religion. Humanists like to think they have a rational view of the world; but their core belief in progress is a superstition, further from the truth about the human animal than any of the world’s religions.”
Second, the underlying problem with this humanist impulse is that it is based upon an entirely false view of human nature—which, contrary to the humanist insistence that it is malleable, is immutable and impervious to environmental forces. Indeed, it is the only constant in politics and history. Of course, progress in scientific inquiry and in resulting human comfort is a fact of life, worth recognition and applause. But it does not change the nature of man, any more than it changes the nature of dogs or birds. “Technical progress,” writes Gray, again in Straw Dogs, “leaves only one problem unsolved: the frailty of human nature. Unfortunately that problem is insoluble.”
That’s because, third, the underlying nature of humans is bred into the species, just as the traits of all other animals are. The most basic trait is the instinct for survival, which is placed on hold when humans are able to live under a veneer of civilization. But it is never far from the surface. In The Silence of Animals, Gray discusses the writings of Curzio Malaparte, a man of letters and action who found himself in Naples in 1944, shortly after the liberation. There he witnessed a struggle for life that was gruesome and searing. “It is a humiliating, horrible thing, a shameful necessity, a fight for life,” wrote Malaparte. “Only for life. Only to save one’s skin.” Gray elaborates:
Observing the struggle for life in the city, Malaparte watched as civilization gave way. The people the inhabitants had imagined themselves to be—shaped, however imperfectly, by ideas of right and wrong—disappeared. What were left were hungry animals, ready to do anything to go on living; but not animals of the kind that innocently kill and die in forests and jungles. Lacking a self-image of the sort humans cherish, other animals are content to be what they are. For human beings the struggle for survival is a struggle against themselves.
When civilization is stripped away, the raw animal emerges. “Darwin showed that humans are like other animals,” writes Gray in Straw Dogs, expressing in this instance only a partial truth. Humans are different in a crucial respect, captured by Gray himself when he notes that Homo sapiens inevitably struggle with themselves when forced to fight for survival. No other species does that, just as no other species has such a range of spirit, from nobility to degradation, or such a need to ponder the moral implications as it fluctuates from one to the other. But, whatever human nature is—with all of its capacity for folly, capriciousness and evil as well as virtue, magnanimity and high-mindedness—it is embedded in the species through evolution and not subject to manipulation by man-made institutions.
Fourth, the power of the progress idea stems in part from the fact that it derives from a fundamental Christian doctrine—the idea of providence, of redemption . . . .
“By creating the expectation of a radical alteration in human affairs,” writes Gray, “Christianity . . . founded the modern world.” But the modern world retained a powerful philosophical outlook from the classical world—the Socratic faith in reason, the idea that truth will make us free; or, as Gray puts it, the “myth that human beings can use their minds to lift themselves out of the natural world.” Thus did a fundamental change emerge in what was hoped of the future. And, as the power of Christian faith ebbed, along with its idea of providence, the idea of progress, tied to the Socratic myth, emerged to fill the gap. “Many transmutations were needed before the Christian story could renew itself as the myth of progress,” Gray explains. “But from being a succession of cycles like the seasons, history came to be seen as a story of redemption and salvation, and in modern times salvation became identified with the increase of knowledge and power.”
Thus, it isn’t surprising that today’s Western man should cling so tenaciously to his faith in progress as a secular version of redemption. As Gray writes, “Among contemporary atheists, disbelief in progress is a type of blasphemy. Pointing to the flaws of the human animal has become an act of sacrilege.” In one of his more brutal passages, he adds:
Humanists believe that humanity improves along with the growth of knowledge, but the belief that the increase of knowledge goes with advances in civilization is an act of faith. They see the realization of human potential as the goal of history, when rational inquiry shows history to have no goal. They exalt nature, while insisting that humankind—an accident of nature—can overcome the natural limits that shape the lives of other animals. Plainly absurd, this nonsense gives meaning to the lives of people who believe they have left all myths behind.
In the Silence of Animals, Gray explores all this through the works of various writers and thinkers. In the process, he employs history and literature to puncture the conceits of those who cling to the progress idea and the humanist view of human nature. Those conceits, it turns out, are easily punctured when subjected to Gray’s withering scrutiny . . . .
And yet the myth of progress is so powerful in part because it gives meaning to modern Westerners struggling, in an irreligious era, to place themselves in a philosophical framework larger than just themselves . . . .
Much of the human folly catalogued by Gray in The Silence of Animals makes a mockery of the earnest idealism of those who later shaped and molded and proselytized humanist thinking into today’s predominant Western civic philosophy.
There was an era of realism, but it was short-lived:
But other Western philosophers, particularly in the realm of Anglo-Saxon thought, viewed the idea of progress in much more limited terms. They rejected the idea that institutions could reshape mankind and usher in a golden era of peace and happiness. As Bury writes, “The general tendency of British thought was to see salvation in the stability of existing institutions, and to regard change with suspicion.” With John Locke, these thinkers restricted the proper role of government to the need to preserve order, protect life and property, and maintain conditions in which men might pursue their own legitimate aims. No zeal here to refashion human nature or remake society.
A leading light in this category of thinking was Edmund Burke (1729–1797), the British statesman and philosopher who, writing in his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France, characterized the bloody events of the Terror as “the sad but instructive monuments of rash and ignorant counsel in time of profound peace.” He saw them, in other words, as reflecting an abstractionist outlook that lacked any true understanding of human nature. The same skepticism toward the French model was shared by many of the Founding Fathers, who believed with Burke that human nature isn’t malleable but rather potentially harmful to society. Hence, it needed to be checked. The central distinction between the American and French revolutions, in the view of conservative writer Russell Kirk, was that the Americans generally held a “biblical view of man and his bent toward sin,” whereas the French opted for “an optimistic doctrine of human goodness.” Thus, the American governing model emerged as a secular covenant “designed to restrain the human tendencies toward violence and fraud . . . [and] place checks upon will and appetite.”
Most of the American Founders rejected the French philosophes in favor of the thought and history of the Roman Republic, where there was no idea of progress akin to the current Western version. “Two thousand years later,” writes Kirk, “the reputation of the Roman constitution remained so high that the framers of the American constitution would emulate the Roman model as best they could.” They divided government powers among men and institutions and created various checks and balances. Even the American presidency was modeled generally on the Roman consular imperium, and the American Senate bears similarities to the Roman version. Thus did the American Founders deviate from the French abstractionists and craft governmental structures to fit humankind as it actually is—capable of great and noble acts, but also of slipping into vice and treachery when unchecked. That ultimately was the genius of the American system.
But, as the American success story unfolded, a new collection of Western intellectuals, theorists and utopians—including many Americans—continued to toy with the idea of progress. And an interesting development occurred. After centuries of intellectual effort aimed at developing the idea of progress as an ongoing chain of improvement with no perceived end into the future, this new breed of “Progress as Power” thinkers began to declare their own visions as the final end point of this long progression.
Gray calls these intellectuals “ichthyophils,” which he defines as “devoted to their species as they think it ought to be, not as it actually is or as it truly wants to be.” He elaborates: “Ichthyophils come in many varieties—the Jacobin, Bolshevik and Maoist, terrorizing humankind in order to remake it on a new model; the neo-conservative, waging perpetual war as a means to universal democracy; liberal crusaders for human rights, who are convinced that all the world longs to become as they imagine themselves to be.” He includes also “the Romantics, who believe human individuality is everywhere repressed.”
Throughout American politics, as indeed throughout Western politics, a large proportion of major controversies ultimately are battles between the ichthyophils and the Burkeans, between the sensibility of the French Revolution and the sensibility of American Revolution, between adherents of the idea of progress and those skeptical of that potent concept. John Gray has provided a major service in probing with such clarity and acuity the impulses, thinking and aims of those on the ichthyophil side of that great divide. As he sums up, “Allowing the majority of humankind to imagine they are flying fish even as they pass their lives under the waves, liberal civilization rests on a dream.”
Amen.
These somewhat related posts may be of interest to you: “Evolution, Human Nature, and ‘Natural Rights’“, “More Thoughts about Evolutionary Teleology“, and “Scientism, Evolution, and the Meaning of Life“.
The latest results for the so-called battleground States are positive for Trump. I’ll get to those after I review the national polls. I’ll then remind you how Trump can win the election even if he “loses” the meaningless nationwide tally of popular votes.
NATIONAL POLLSI introduced a new metric in Trump vs. Biden 11: the change in each pollster’s results from poll to poll. For example, Trump was tied with Biden in the Quinnipiac poll that was conducted on April 18-22, and was down by 3 points in the Quinnipiac poll of March 21-25. That counts as +3 on the average date of the later poll: April 20. The full tally for all polls reported at RealClearPolitics since August 2023 looks like this:
Keep your eye on the red line. It has been spending a lot of time in negative territory since mid-March. But that could well change.
Now, for the overall polls. I am dropping the “poll of polls”, which aggregates all national polls reported by RCP, regardless of bias and frequency. It is too easy for polls often-published polls with a strong bias (usually pro-Democrat) to make things look worse for Trump than they actually are. (Demoralization of Trump voters is a main objective of such polls.) From here on out, I’m sticking with two, more selective, bias-adjusted measures of the nationwide balance between Trump and Biden.
First is a collection of all polls report by RCP, with two adjustments. I use only the latest results from each pollster, to avoid overrepresentation. I adjust the results by the average of the anti-GOP bias reported by RCP for 14 nationwide polls. I add that value (3.3 percentage points) to Trump’s 5-poll average. Here are numbers, which include the results of all nationwide polls reported by RCP as of today:
Trump has slipped somewhat since mid-March. Poll-aggregator and wag Nate Silver attributes this to the fact that Trump has become more visible since he cinched the GOP nomination. I would add to that Trump’s greater exposure because the legal proceedings against him have moved forward, spawning various controversies. It may well be, in Trump’s case, that less is better. But that’s not advice that he will heed, so it’s irrelevant.
The other collection of nationwide polls that I am keeping tabs on is a smaller set, in which each poll is adjusted for the amount of bias shown by the same pollster in 2020:
In this case, Trump is experiencing a sharp rebound because of the aforementioned Quinnipiac poll and a few others.
“BATTLEGROUND” POLLSThe other bit of good news for Trump is that he is doing better in the “battleground” States than he was when I last wrote about them (here). All of the polls underlying my previous report were conducted in March. There is now a new round of polls, conducted in April. In almost every case, Trump’s numbers for April look as good as or better than they did in March. See for yourself:
RECONCILING THE RESULTSCan Trump win the election without “winning” the meaningless nationwide tally of popular votes? Of course he can, thanks to the Electoral College. He did it 2016, when he “lost” to Hillary Clinton by 2.1 percentage points. He almost did it in 2020, when he “lost” to Joe Biden by 4.5 percentage points. And he would have won in 2020 except for “election interference” by the Democrats on a massive scale. You can read all about that here. I’ll save you the trouble of wading through more than 200 links. Here’s the punch line:
Through a combination of information control, partisan management of election processes, outright fraud, ballot harvesting, and failure to apply election laws on the books, the presidential election of 2020 was stolen by a cabal of super-rich elites, crooked politicians, crooked lawyers, and judges who either didn’t want to hear the truth or were blinded to it by partisan considerations. For a systematic treatment of much of the chicanery mentioned in the preceding sentence, see Mollie Ziegler Hemingway’s Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech and the Democrats Seized Our Elections. Regarding outright fraud, see “Last Thoughts on Voter Fraud” (The Adventures of Shylock Holmes, December 11, 2020) and “The Most Secure Election in American History?” (Gatestone Institute website) for thorough wrap-ups.
Let’s hope that an army of better-armed poll-watchers and lawyers working for the GOP can keep it from happening again.
In “Trump vs. Biden: 10” I highlighted the tightening of the race (according to nationwide polls). Changes in the 15 days since that post have been slightly in Trump’s favor. Below are results, which I have parsed in three ways:
- all polls, unadjusted for bias (with polynomial fits for smoothing)
- the latest version of each pollster’s result, unadjusted for bias
- the latest version of each pollster’s result, adjusted for bias (using each pollster’s bias in 2020)
Here’s a fourth way to look at the results:
The values represent the change in Trump’s lead (or deficit) since the preceding poll by the same pollster. The typical margin of error for a poll (statistical estimate of the accuracy of the poll) is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Most of the movements are within that range. Therefore, what all of the preceding graphs point to is a race that is now essentially tied.
Well, it’s tied if the polls aren’t picking up “hidden” Trump voters — Trump voters who aren’t telling pollsters their true intentions. If there are enough such voters to swing the election to Trump, it won’t become evident until the votes are counted.
Until then, I can only tell you what the polls are saying.
Seventy-four years ago yesterday, Ludwig von Mises addressed the University Club of New York. He ended his speech with this:
Even in this country which owes to a century of “rugged individualism” the highest standard of living ever attained by any nation, public opinion condemns laissez-faire. In the last fifty years [and in the seventy-four years since], thousands of books have been published to indict capitalism and to advocate radical interventionism, the welfare state, and socialism. The few books which tried to explain adequately the working of the free-market economy were hardly noticed by the public. Their authors remained obscure, while such authors as Veblen, Commons, John Dewey, and Laski were exuberantly praised. It is a well-known fact [still true] that the legitimate stage as well as the Hollywood industry are no less radically critical of free enterprise than are many novels. There are in this country many periodicals which in every issue furiously attack economic freedom. There is hardly any magazine of opinion that would plead for the system that supplied the immense majority of the people with good food and shelter, with cars, refrigerators, radio sets, and other things which the subjects of other countries call luxuries.
The impact of this state of affairs is that practically very little is done to preserve the system of private enterprise. There are only middle-of-the-roaders who think they have been successful when they have delayed for some time an especially ruinous measure. They are always in retreat. They put up today with measures which only ten or twenty years ago they would have considered as undiscussable. They will [and did] in a few years [and several decades] acquiesce in other measures which they today consider as simply out of the question. What can prevent the coming of totalitarian socialism is only a thorough change in ideologies.
The title of Mises’s speech is “Middle-of-the-Road Policies Lead to Socialism”. But in fact (as Mises knew well) compromise (a better descriptor than middle-of-the-road) leads to tyranny. His student and later colleague, Friedrich A. (von) Hayek, argued at length against inevitability of tyranny through economic micro-management in “Freedom and the Economic System” (1938) and The Road to Serfdom (1944). Hayek put it this way in part 16 of Liberalism (1973):
There is, however, yet another reason why freedom of action, especially in the economic field that is so often represented as being of minor importance, is in fact as important as the freedom of the mind. If it is the mind which chooses the ends of human action, their realization depends on the availability of the required means, and any economic control which gives power over the means also gives power over the ends. There can be no freedom of the press if the instruments of printing are under the control of government, no freedom of assembly if the needed rooms are so controlled, no freedom of movement if the means of transport are a government monopoly, etc. This is the reason why governmental direction of all economic activity, often undertaken in the vain hope of providing more ample means for all purposes, has invariably brought severe restrictions of the ends which the individuals can pursue. It is probably the most significant lesson of the political developments of the twentieth century that control of the material part of life has given government, in what we have learnt to call totalitarian systems, far‑reaching powers over the intellectual life.
Where’s the compromise in that? In the United States, it began in earnest two lifetimes ago, in 1887, with the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission. The ICC was abolished in 1996, but by then (and since) its originally limited regulatory powers were (and have since been) expanded upon through the aggrandizement of the original cabinet-level departments of the federal government, the creation of new cabinet-level departments, the creation of a multitude of “independent” regulatory agencies, and the emulation of federal regulatory power by the States and their subsidiary jurisdictions.
None of that would have happened had the three branches of the federal government not collaborated to expand the powers of the federal government beyond their clear constitutional limits and enabled the various departments and agencies to exercise unconstitutional legislative, executive, and judicial authority. Every bit of that represents compromise — unconstitutionally altering the Constitution or allowing it to be altered — for various personal reasons: feeling good by spending other people’s money, power-lust, getting along by going along, wanting to not seem “mean”, and getting elected or re-elected by assuaging the masses.
Consider Obamacare, for example. A key provision of Obamacare — the camel’s nose, head, and shoulders in the tent of universal health care (a.k.a., socialized medicine) — is the vast expansion of eligibility for Medicaid. In the 30-some States that have opted to participate in the expanded program, persons with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line are eligible, including adults without dependent children.
It would seem that only a Simon Legree or Ebenezer Scrooge would deny Medicaid coverage to those millions who have obtained it by way of Obamacare. Or it would until the following considerations come to mind:
- The poverty line is a misleading metric. It’s a relative measure of income, not an absolute one. Most “poor” persons in today’s America are anything but poor in relation the truly poor of the world, and they live far above a subsistence level. The poverty line is nothing but an arbitrary standard that justifies income redistribution.
- Other persons, with their own problems, are paying for the government’s generous “gift” to the semi-poor. But who is really in a position to say that the problems of Medicaid recipients are more deserving of subsidization than the problems facing those who defray the subsidy?
- If expanded Medicaid coverage were withdrawn, those now covered would be no worse off than they had been before taxpayers were forced to subsidize them.
- Being relatively poor used to be a good reason for a person to work his way up the ladder of success. Perhaps not far up the ladder, but in an upward direction. It meant learning skills — on the job, if necessary — and using those skills to move on to more-demanding and higher-paying jobs. Redistributive measures — Medicaid subsidies, food stamps, extended unemployment benefits, etc. — blunt the incentive to better oneself and, instead, reinforce dependency on government.
I will underscore the last point. The lack of something, if it’s truly important to a person, is an incentive for that person to find a way to afford the something. That’s what my parents’ generation did, even in the depths of the Great Depression, without going on the dole. There’s no reason why later generations can’t do it; it’s merely assumed that they can’t. But lots of people do it. I did it; my children did it; my grandchildren are doing it.
Republicans used to say such things openly and with conviction, before they became afraid of seeming “mean” or losing the perks and powers of office. Principled conservatives should still be thinking and saying such things. When conservatives compromise their principles because they don’t want to seem “mean” or lose perks and powers they are complicit in the country’s march down the road to serfdom — dependency on and obeisance to the central government.
Every advance in the direction of serfdom becomes harder and harder to reverse. The abolition of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is now unthinkable, even though those programs have caused hundreds of millions of Americans to become addicted to government handouts.
And how does government pay for those handouts? In part, it taxes many of the people who receive them. It also pays generous salaries and benefits of the army of drones who administer them. It’s a Ponzi scheme enforced at gunpoint. Despite the seeming benevolence of it all, it’s tyranny. The examples multiply, just as the size, scope, and cost of the federal government (at all levels) multiplies. And the price is liberty.
The best time — usually the only time — to kill a government program is before it starts. That’s why conservatives shouldn’t compromise.
One (admittedly crude) way of measuring the nation’s leftward drift is to assign “left” and “right” labels to the presidential candidates in every quadrennial election (including candidates of third, fourth, and fifth parties), and then to determine the fraction of the total popular vote that went “left” or “right”. I have done this for the 26 elections spanning 1920-2020. I chose 1920 as the starting point because that year marks the birth of the modern (post-Teddy Roosevelt) Republican Party — the rhetoric (if not the practices) of which favors smaller government, reliance on free markets, toughness on crime, traditional (Judeo-Christian) morality, etc., etc., etc.
The resulting measure of leftness vs. rightness, to which I will come, is admittedly crude for at least these reasons:
Some candidates have in fact been less “right” or “left” than their predecessors and successors. That is to say, the core measures of “left” and “right” — the percentages of votes going to Democrats and Republicans” — aren’t fixed. GOP candidates since Barry Goldwater, for example, have supported Social Security and its offshoots (Medicare and Medicaid) and one of them (George W. Bush) enlarged it by pushing for prescription-drug coverage when he was president.
Labelling a third (or fourth or fifth) party as “left” or “right” is sometimes iffy. Take, for example, H. Ross Perot’s run for the presidency in 1992, which garnered him 19 percent of the popular vote. His appeal was broad and it is believed that he drew votes equally from those who would otherwise have gone for George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton. But a lot of otherwise-GOP votes went to Perot because GHWB defaulted on his “no new taxes” pledge. Aside from taxes, Perot’s platform was conservative (e.g., balancing the budget, reducing reliance on foreign trade) and his running-mate, James Stockdale, was a hard-core conservative.
With those caveats in mind, consider the leftward drift of the electorate since 1920. First is the election-to-election split:
Next is the election-to-election shift:
Finally, and most significantly, is the cumulative shift from 1920 to 2020:
The Great Depression and the Goldwater-scare election of 1964 were blips. The trend since 1972 is unmistakably leftward. What’s behind the shift, which (for reasons discussed above) is really more leftward that the numbers suggest? I put it down to three things:
Women got the vote and their tendency to vote gradually overtook and surpassed that of men.
The black vote emerged from Southern suppression in the 1960s, and the tendency of blacks to vote gradually increased relative to the tendency of whites.
The young-adult vote got a big boost with the passage of Amendment XXVI, which lowered the voting age from 21 in most jurisdictions to 18 in all jurisdictions.
What’s next? Illegal immigrants will be given the right to vote in more and more jurisdictions, and then they will be granted amnesty and full citizenship. The long-promised permanent Democratic majority will be upon us, and today’s morally bankrupt regime will morph into overt Stalinism.
See also “The Course of the Mainstream“, “What’s Going On? A Stealth Revolution“, “The Fickle Electorate“, “The American Electorate’s ‘Squishy Center’ vs. Liberty“, and “Another Measure of Political Polarization: The Winner’s Share of the Popular Vote in Presidential Elections“.
The New York Times reports:
President Biden and his team, hoping to avoid further escalation leading to a wider war in the Middle East, are advising Israel that its successful defense against Iranian airstrikes constituted a major strategic victory that might not require another round of retaliation, U.S. officials said on Sunday.
The administration’s position is one of these two things:
- Disinformation, which is meant lull Iran into the belief that the U.S. doesn’t want war with Iran and will not help Israel if it attacks Iran. (What would happen in the event of a counterattack by Iran?)
- The real position of the administration, which is meant to deflect Iran from acting against the U.S. or its overseas interests if Israel attacks and Iran counterattacks. (Again, what would happen in the event of a counterattack by Iran?)
I believe the second to be the administration’s real position. It is consistent with its efforts to mollify Iran. It is consistent with the eternal belief of leftists that mortal enemies can be reasoned with and bought off. It is of a piece with the delusion that the elimination of capital punishment and general leniency in sentencing will result in less crime.
In neither case does the administration acknowledge the central fact that Iran (among other countries and non-state actors) wants the elimination of Israel in particular and of Jews in general.
Israel’s leaders today grasp that central fact. If they ever lost sight of it, the events of October 7, 2023, have emblazoned it in their souls. Given that, Israel will not relent in its efforts to eliminate the threat posed by its main enemy: Iran.
The only question in my mind at this point is what Israel will do to accomplish the demise or defeat of the Islamic regime in Iran. For that is what it will take to at least blunt if not eliminate the threat from Iran, and the support that Iran gives to other states and non-state actors who seek Israel’s demise.
Ignore what the Biden administration says about Israel vs. Iran. Keep your eyes on Israel.
These are my first thoughts about the domestic politics of the conflict. Subject to change as events unfold.
A strong and unyielding defense of Israel, followed by an attack on Iran and its nuclear facilities will clinch the election for Biden, regardless of what happens to Hunter. It will be rally ’round the president (shades of BHO’s “heroics” re Hurricane Sandy in the days before election 2012). The House GOP won’t even muster the votes to send a bill of impeachment to the Senate. Trump will storm and rage to no avail.
If Biden wins big enough, the Senate won’t flip to the GOP and the Dems will win a comfortable margin in the House. More trillions will be wasted on the Quixotic war on “climate change”. The already deep divisions in the U.S. will deepen, but the Dems will be in charge and won’t care.
I ended “Two Kinds of Leftism?” with this:
The existing order in America has to be overthrown again and again to keep it from becoming what America has become and is becoming. Whoever said “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” got it right.
Americans have been insufficiently vigilant and far too ready to go along with schemes that aggrandize government power. They have ignored, to their own detriment, the inescapable fact that there is only one kind of leftism: the leftism of government control. That is a thing entirely different from the night-watchman government which protects Americans from each other and from foreign enemies — though even that government must be carefully and constantly circumscribed.
Today, I opened Diana West’s American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character. It ends on a similar note:
As far back as 1934, The New York Times [yes, The New York Times] trumpeted NEW DEAL PATERNALISM IMPERILS ALL INDIVIDUALISM. The article describes a speech by Massachusetts governor Joseph Ely at a conference of America’s governors. “There is no stopping short of the end of the road,” Ely said, “and at the end of the road we shall have a socialistic state.” Invoking Stalin in Russia, Mussolini in Italy, and Hitler in Germany—all newly minted dictators—Ely pointed out that where these despots ruled, “individualism had passed from the people to dictators making the people the ‘children of government.’”
Echoes of de Tocqueville. One century earlier, the French visionary described the infantilizing effect of a paternalistic despotism in America. Imagining the “immense, protective power” of a state with “absolute” power, and likening such power to “parental authority,” which keeps citizens in “perpetual childhood,” he wondered, “Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living?” It would seem that the mortal blow against the “grown-up”—the free citizen—was struck, softly, once liberty was no longer paramount in this country, once ideology began to take precedence over facts, once we traded in the American ideal of “rugged individualism” for the material markers of “the American dream.” If once upon a time Americans subscribed to our Founders’ belief that our Creator endowed us with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there came a time when we expected a package of perks—car, house, Play Station—to sweeten the deal. Suddenly, those perks became darn near an entitlement, an attitude entirely befitting the subjects in Tocqueville’s absolute state. In fact, measured in material goods as it is, the contemporary “American dream” is a vision driven by the Marxist belief in the primacy of the economic….
No wonder Norman Thomas was tickled by the direction of the country in the Eisenhower years. By 1958, he was beside himself. “The United States is making greater strides toward socialism under Eisenhower than even under Roosevelt,” he enthused. By 1962, the man who had run for president on the Socialist ticket six times had concluded that “the difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted the ideas of socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly.”41 Just not by name. As Upton Sinclair put it in a 1951 letter to Thomas, “The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label.”
We take the Big Lie instead. Euphemism. Official vocabulary. Language of ideology. The “PC” pact with the devil. The Big Lie as big con. The narrative of authority. How to stand athwart false history and yell “Stop!”? The answer finally seems clear. If once it was vitally important to shore up America’s bastions, something else is called for now. What’s needed is a full-scale assault on those bastions of unreality, those safe houses of secrets, all in a painful but restorative effort to upend the narratives of authority, to break open the conspiracies of silence, which have endured through too many lifetimes. Put another way, it’s time to avenge the victims and the truth tellers, the voiceless and the voices of one. It’s time to avenge the American betrayal of Liberty herself.
I have elsewhere drawn heavily on West’s book. My post and her book are well worth your time.
Are there two kinds of leftism? I was prompted to ask that question by a colloquy between Megyn Kelly and Batya Ungar-Sargon of Newsweek and author of Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. (The betrayal is common knowledge and the fodder of many a web post; for example, “Democrats See Ordinary Americans as the Great Unwashed” and “You and America’s Unaccountable Class“.)
Leftism in the United States was for many decades a movement aimed mainly at the redistribution of income from the have-lots to the have-littles. That kind of leftism was central to New Deal legislation in the 1930s, especially the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act, the latter of which guaranteed the right of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take collective action such as striking.
Later legislation, most notably the Taft-Hartley Act, diluted the Wagner Act somewhat. But the Social Security Act has been augmented by increasingly generous old-age benefits, the addition of Medicare and Medicaid, SNAP (formerly food stamps), and the addition of prescription-drug coverage to Medicare. There is also funding of and subsidization of housing — at all levels of government — which has expanded to encompass homeless persons and, most recently, illegal immigrants.
Today’s leftism — which synchronizes with the Democrat Party — certainly contains elements of what is now called “redistributive justice”, but it is far more than that. It encompasses actions that leftists of old (or most of them) wouldn’t have contemplated:
Flood the country with illegal immigrants with the aim of converting them to voters who will ensure a permanent Democrat majority.
In the name of “critical race theory” (CRT) and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), raise up “persons of color”, sexual deviants, violent criminals, and (generally) those who are less intelligent, capable, or diligent by rewarding them for being what they are, and by doing it at the expense of persons who are white, East Asian, heterosexual, law-abiding intelligent, capable, and diligent. (The negative aspect of raising up favored groups isn’t openly admitted, of course, because to do so would expose its corruptness. Members of non-favored groups who support raising up are either ignorant of the consequences, tormented by misplaced guilt for being what they are, or wealthy and secure enough to avoid the consequences.)
Increase the power of government for the sake of enforcing policies that the purveyors believe to be for the general good, whether or not they are scientifically sound or economically beneficial.
Use government power — in collusion with corporate and media power — to decree that certain policies are beyond debate, and to harass, suppress, and even criminalize those who dare to “deny” (i.e., question) the official “truth”. (This is straight out of the Hitler-Stalin-Mao playbook.) To date, the subjects that government and its cronies have or are striving to enforce include (but are far from limited to):
-
- massive redistribution of income, directly and in kind, with the consequence of significantly lower economic growth;
- discouragement of the more intelligent, more capable, and more diligent members of the populace, with the same consequence;
- promulgation and enforcement of policies that reduce the well-being of most Americans — most notably the anti-scientific doctrine of human-induced climate change, and the futile and vastly counterproductive response to Covid-19;
- deliberate (and sometimes incidental) undermining of beneficial social norms, including but not limited to marriage, religion, sanctity of life, and dignity of work; and
- anti-Americanism and pusillanimous behavior toward enemy regimes, beginning with the Korean War and continuing through today’s behavior toward China, Iran, and Iran’s proxies — coupled with heedless, needless, and costly provocation of Russia (the Eurasia of the saga) — and accompanied by the willful (relative and absolute) weakening of America’s military might.
If this all reads like something out of George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Theory and Practice of Oligarchichal Collectivism — the fictional book that plays a central role in the novel — you can chalk it up to Orwell’s keen but fallible understanding of human nature.
I say fallible because, even though Orwell was a leftist of the old-fashioned kind, he seemed to believe that some kind of economic leveling could be managed without harm to liberty or prosperity. He, like other old-fashioned leftists, could not (or chose not to) see that economic leveling means greater and greater government control of greater and greater swaths of the economy.
Further — and this is the crucial part — liberty cannot survive economic interventions by government. Friedrich A. Hayek put it this way in part 16 of Liberalism :
There is, however, yet another reason why freedom of action, especially in the economic field that is so often represented as being of minor importance, is in fact as important as the freedom of the mind. If it is the mind which chooses the ends of human action, their realization depends on the availability of the required means, and any economic control which gives power over the means also gives power over the ends. There can be no freedom of the press if the instruments of printing are under the control of government, no freedom of assembly if the needed rooms are so controlled, no freedom of movement if the means of transport are a government monopoly, etc. This is the reason why governmental direction of all economic activity, often undertaken in the vain hope of providing more ample means for all purposes, has invariably brought severe restrictions of the ends which the individuals can pursue. It is probably the most significant lesson of the political developments of the twentieth century that control of the material part of life has given government, in what we have learnt to call totalitarian systems, far‑reaching powers over the intellectual life. It is the multiplicity of different and independent agencies prepared to supply the means which enables us to choose the ends which we will pursue.
The accretion of power by government in order to attain economic ends necessarily involves the use of that power to ensure that the populace is aligned with those ends, and with the resulting restrictions on liberty. Power-lust breeds power and more power-lust. The only way to put a stop to it is to overthrow the existing order and strive to prevent its resurrection.
In Madison’s words:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. [The Federalist No. 51, February 6, 1788]
But men are not angels — not even those who profess goodness. Look at history. Look around you. Look into your soul.
The existing order in America has to be overthrown again and again to keep it from becoming what America has become and is becoming. Whoever said “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” got it right.
Americans have been insufficiently vigilant and far too ready to go along with schemes that aggrandize government power. They have ignored, to their own detriment, the inescapable fact that there is only one kind of leftism: the leftism of government control. That is a thing entirely different from the night-watchman government which protects Americans from each other and from foreign enemies — though even that government must be carefully and constantly circumscribed.
See also “Election 2024: The Bottom Line” and “What Happened to America?“.
I am reminded of the scam that is management consulting by an article at Econ Journal Watch, “McKinsey’s Diversity Matters/Delivers/Wins Results Revisited“. (McKinsey is McKinsey & Company, a prestigious consulting firm founded in 1926.) I have read the article, and it firmly support the claims made in its abstract:
In a series of very influential studies, McKinsey (2015; 2018; 2020; 2023) reports finding statistically significant positive relations between the industry-adjusted earnings before interest and taxes margins of global McKinsey-chosen sets of large public firms and the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives. However, when we revisit McKinsey’s tests using data for firms in the publicly observable S&P 500® as of 12/31/2019, we do not find statistically significant relations between McKinsey’s inverse normalized Herfindahl-Hirschman measures of executive racial/ethnic diversity at mid-2020 and either industry-adjusted earnings before interest and taxes margin or industry-adjusted sales growth, gross margin, return on assets, return on equity, and total shareholder return over the prior five years 2015–2019. Combined with the erroneous reverse-causality nature of McKinsey’s tests, our inability to quasi-replicate their results suggests that despite the imprimatur given to McKinsey’s studies, they should not be relied on to support the view that US publicly traded firms can expect to deliver improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives [emphasis added].
McKinsey’s studies about the supposed benefits of diversity were produced for corporate clients. Specifically, they would have been produced for senior executives of corporations, most likely at the direction of or with the close involvement of vice presidents for human resources (i.e., personnel). I would be willing to place a wager that McKinsey’s results were just what the clients wanted, corporate culture being what it had become by the time McKinsey was called in to ratify diversity.
In that respect, McKinsey is far from alone. I worked at a not-for-profit consulting firm in the Washington DC area for 30 years. We looked down on the for-profit firms of which McKinsey is one of dozens (if not hundreds). They were known crudely but with some justice as Beltway Bandits, and more accurately as Highway Helpers. Their job (unacknowledged but obvious to anyone who read their output) was to deliver findings that served their clients’ interests. Those interests, in most cases were the justification of systems and processes being considered for procurement by government agencies. When the clients were government agencies, the findings justified whatever systems and processes were favored by those agencies.
But, to be candid, the same kind of relationship often existed between non-for-profits (like the one I worked for) and their government clients. We knew what the clients wanted to hear, and we often found ways to deliver results that made them happy. The first major project to which I was assigned went that way, and I observed (and sometimes participated in) projects that were similarly biased. One time, when I delivered to an admiral a candid — and negative — appraisal of his pet project, I was declared persona non grata in his branch of the Navy’s DC establishment.
The main exception to this kind of behavior occurred in the field, where my former employer’s analysts worked with Navy and Marine Corps operators to evaluate the effectiveness of systems and tactics — sometimes in actual combat situations. There, where lives were at stake (or could be at stake), operators usually wanted the unvarnished facts. And that’s what they got from the analysts in the field. But those analysts comprised (and still comprise) a tiny fraction of the thousands of analysts who worked for Beltway Bandits/Highway Helpers and their not-for-profit brethren.
Consulting to U.S.-government agencies on a grand scale grew out of the perceived successes in World War II of civilian analysts who were embedded in military organizations. To the extent that the civilian analysts were actually helpful,* it was because they focused on specific operations, such as methods of searching for enemy submarines. In such cases, the government client can benefit from an outside look at the effectiveness of the operations, the identification of failure points, and suggestions for changes in weapons and tactics that are informed by first-hand observation of military operations.
Beyond that, however, outsiders are of little help, and may be a hindrance, as in the case cited in a Politico article that I address here. (Which is far from unique.) Outsiders can’t really grasp the dynamics and unwritten rules of organizational cultures that embed decades of learning and adaptation.
The consulting game is now (and has been for decades) an invasive species. It is a perverse outgrowth of operations research as it was developed in World War II. Too much of a “good thing” is a bad thing — as I saw for myself many years ago.
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The success of the U.S. Navy’s antisubmarine warfare (ASW) operations had been for decades ascribed to the pioneering civilian organization known as the Antisubmarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG), the predecessor of the organization for which I worked. However, with the publication of The Ultra Secret* in 1974 (and subsequent revelations), it became known that codebreaking may have contributed greatly to the success of various operations against enemy forces, including ASW.
See also “Modeling Is Not Science“, “Analytical and Scientific Arrogance“, and “Management Science” in “The Balderdash Chronicles“.
I have moved many posts and pages to my new blog, Loquitur’s Letter. You may find what you’re looking for at the index of posts.
I am loathe to leave loose ends, so I am republishing the best of P&P at Substack: https://loquitur.substack.com/. Republishing gives me a chance to edit posts lightly and update them a bit. I’ve just started with a reprise of my first post at P&P: “On Liberty“. There’ll be more to follow as I scour my […]
A recent exchange with a family member led me to pen this afterthought, which is really a consolidation of much that I have published here. The movement toward centralized control of American’s social and economic lives began in the so-called Progressive Era of the late 1800s and early 1900s. It got a boost from the […]
That’s all, folks. But don’t go away empty-handed. See “Favorite Posts“. It’s a gateway to several weeks, months, or years of good reading.
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter dismays the left and elates the right. Why? Because of the expectation that Twitter will henceforth stop censoring “misinformation”, that is, facts and arguments that subvert the tenets of wokeism. Chief among those tenets are: Gender fluidity (e.g., the beliefs that “men” can bear children and that sex is “assigned” […]
What is Putin’s strategic objective for Russia? I believe it is a “greater Russia” which is strong enough economically and militarily to (a) leverage its natural resources to its economic advantage and (b) play hardball successfully when NATO or its key members try to thwart Putin’s economic aims. “Greater Russia” must therefore include key regions […]
Here: Among the proofs that we [humans] were not made for happiness but on the contrary often seek out its opposite is the fact that so many of us follow the news closely, though we know it will make us wretched to do so. We pretend that we have a need to be informed and […]
Regarding the pandemic, I wrote this last year about U.S. politicians (mostly Democrats): It has been assumed that the citizenry would be best served through governmental edicts such as mask-wearing, social distancing, lockdowns, and, ultimately, involuntary vaccinations. But there is an alternative hypothesis: Such measures have merely delayed the inevitable and made it worse by […]
Years ago I eviscerated Steven Pinker’s fatuous book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Pinker’s thesis is that human beings, on the whole, (or in “civilized” Western societies) are becoming kinder and gentler because of: The Leviathan – The rise of the modern nation-state and judiciary “with a monopoly on the legitimate […]
A correspondent took me to task for suggesting that NATO’s leaders bear some responsibility for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: This is all on [Putin]. He and Russia could have turned to the West, become part of Europe, even joined the EU. Instead he has leaned on [Peter the Great’s] 300-year-old idea of a great Russian […]
ADDENDUM BELOW I observed, in November 2020, that there is no connection between CO2 emissions and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This suggests that emissions have little or no effect on the concentration of CO2. A recent post at WUWT notes that emissions hit a record high in 2021. What the post doesn’t […]