Wednesday, December 26, 2007
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Phony Libertarian
Rep. Ron Paul, by far the most popular sideshow act in the 2008 presidential circus, is supposedly a libertarian. He even ran for president as the Libertarian Party nominee 20 years ago. But is he really a libertarian?
A libertarian, we thought, is someone who favors liberty, sometimes taking extreme positions toward that end. As the old joke goes, if you want to find out if someone's really a libertarian, ask him: Do you think children should be allowed to buy heroin from vending machines? A real libertarian will answer: Only if the vending machines are privately owned.
But is it really liberty Paul is in favor of? His interview Sunday with Tim Russert of "Meet the Press" left us wondering. Consider this exchange:
Russert: Let me ask you about race, because I, I read a speech you gave in 2004, the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. And you said this: "Contrary to the claims of supporters of the Civil Rights Act of '64, . . . [the act] did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of '64 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty." That act gave equal rights to African-Americans to vote, to live, to go to lunch counters, and you seem to be criticizing it.
Paul: Well, we should do, we should do this at a federal level, at a federal lunch counter it'd be OK or for the military. Just think of how the government, you know, caused all the segregation in the military until after World War II. But when it comes, Tim, you're, you're, you're not compelled in your house to invade [sic] strangers that you don't like. So it's a property rights issue. And this idea that all private property is under the domain of the federal government I think is wrong. So this--I think even Barry Goldwater opposed that bill on the same property rights position, and that--and now this thing is totally out of control. If you happen to like to smoke a cigar, you know, the federal government's going to come down and say you're not allowed to do this.
Russert: But you would vote against--
Paul: So it's--
Russert: You would vote against the Civil Rights Act if, if it was today?
Paul: If it were written the same way, where the federal government's taken over property--has nothing to do with race relations. It just happens, Tim, that I get more support from black people today than any other Republican candidate, according to some statistics. And I have a great appeal to people who care about personal liberties and to those individuals who would like to get us out of wars. So it has nothing to do with racism, it has to do with the Constitution and private property rights.
To be sure, it is a principled libertarian position (which is not to say we endorse it) that if a private business wants to discriminate on whatever basis, the government ought not to interfere. It would be defensible to say that the Civil Rights Act went too far in intervening in private transactions.
But it seems to have escaped Paul's notice that segregation was not merely a matter of private preference. It rested in large part on government power, chiefly at the state and local levels, and it deprived millions of people of liberty on account of the color of their skin. By forcing an end to Jim Crow, the federal government was siding with liberty against government-enforced oppression. Yet Paul allows that the federal government had a legitimate role in combating segregation only at "a federal lunch counter" and in the military. Apparently he favors "states' rights" over individual freedom.
If you think this is too uncharitable an interpretation of Paul's views, wait till you see which side he takes in the Civil War:
Russert: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. "According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery."
Paul: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn't have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was the--that iron, iron fist--
Russert: We'd still have slavery.
Paul: Oh, come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I'm advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn't sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.
It's an intriguing counterfactual, but what is most telling is that Paul blames Lincoln for the Civil War rather than blaming the South for starting a war to preserve slavery. Does he love liberty? Or does he merely loathe the federal government?
Hooverville? Nah, Just Reuterville!
"Tent City in Suburbs Is Cost of Home Crisis." Reuters must have made a point of getting this dispatch, by reporter Dana Ford, out before the end of the year, so as to make the deadline for all the journalism awards:
ONTARIO, Calif.--Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California.
The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis.
The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck's novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression.
As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease.
Homelessness, depression, children living in tents: This is a fantastic story! And that literary reference lifts it above the level of your typical wire-service hack work. Nice job, Dana!
Informative, too. Did you have any idea things were so bad? We sure didn't. We knew some people were having trouble paying their mortgages, but we didn't realize they were actually ending up homeless.
Oh wait, never mind. Here are the next two paragraphs:
While no current residents claim to be victims of foreclosure, all agree that tent city is a symptom of the wider economic downturn. And it's just a matter of time before foreclosed families end up at tent city, local housing experts say.
"They don't hit the streets immediately," said activist Jane Mercer. Most families can find transitional housing in a motel or with friends before turning to charity or the streets. "They only hit tent city when they really bottom out."
What seems to have happened here is that Ford heard about the tent city and went there with the idea of writing a story about how the housing problem is making people homeless. When she arrived, she found zero factual evidence to support her thesis, but she was attached to it so she wrote her story anyway, and made the lack of evidence a throwaway line in paragraph 5. She then rested her story on the prediction of an "activist" that it is "just a matter of time" before Ford's journalism comes true.
In addition to this activist, the homeless folks Ford spoke with "all agree" with her view of the economy, even if they don't exemplify it. It sounds as though they are fully qualified to do economic journalism. Let's hope Ford handed out Reuters job applications.
Not a Bully--or Not Bully Enough?
This columnist is no fan of Mike Huckabee, but we're no fan of editorializing in the news columns either, and it seems to us that's what the Concord (N.H.) Monitor does, at Huckabee's expense, in a piece on Huckabee's views on homosexuality. Here's how it opens:
On Valentine's Day 2005, Mike Huckabee and his wife, Janet, were married all over again. Then governor of Arkansas, Huckabee hoped the super-public ceremony--which took place in an arena full of more than 6,000 people--would spark a wave of covenant marriages, legal contracts available in only three states that commit couples to counseling and a two-year waiting period before divorce.
At one point during the ceremony, a whistle sounded and about two dozen protesters stood up, according to The New York Times. They unfurled a banner: "Queer equality now."
Huckabee ignored them, the Times reported, and went on with the ceremony.
Arkansans who watched Huckabee during his 10 1/2-year tenure said that gesture was emblematic of his approach to gay-rights issues: He paid them little mind unless pressed.
This makes no sense. What "gesture" is the Monitor talking about? Huckabee merely ignored some obnoxious people who tried to disrupt an event in which he was participating. There is no reason to think that he was making any sort of statement about "gay-rights issues." If this story is emblematic of anything, it is the in-your-face attitude of some who advocate what the unfurlers dysphemistically call "queer equality."
The central part of the story is this:
Observers said Huckabee's positions on gay rights fell in line with those of most social conservatives: He supported a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and he opposed allowing gays to become foster parents. But, they said, Huckabee didn't make those issues priorities, focusing instead on issues such as education and health care.
"He may well be a mean-spirited, gay-bashing Christian evangelical in his heart of hearts," said Janine Parry, who teaches Arkansas politics at the University of Arkansas, "but it's not how he governed. He didn't use the bully pulpit to bully gays and lesbians. He could have, but he didn't."
The Monitor's headline reads " 'Bullying' Gays Wasn't Priority for Huckabee." This makes it sound as though he describes his own position as pro-bullying, but as governor was too lazy or distracted to do much about it. Wouldn't it be fairer and more accurate to say something like "Huckabee Took Moderate Approach on Gay Issues"?
The Big Mo
Here is a silly bit of alarmism from London's Evening Standard:
For the last 13 years Jack has been the most popular boys' name in the land.
But in multicultural Britain children named after the Muslim prophet Mohammed come a close second. . . .
Although Jack topped the list with 6,772 babies, that figure fell 156 on last year, meaning if the trends were repeated next year, Mohammed and its variant spellings would be the most popular choice in England and Wales.
Yet the paper includes a chart showing that among the top 20 boys' names, Mohammad is the only distinctly Muslim one. There are no Muslim-sounding names among the top 20 for girls. Moreover, Mohammed places second among boys only when alternate spellings--"Muhammad, Mohammad, Muhammed, Mohamed, Mohamad, Muhamed and Mohammod"--are included. Mohammad alone ranks 17th.
So this story tells us very little other than that Mohammed is a very popular name among Muslim boys' parents. It may be true that Muslim birthrates and radicalism are cause for concern in Britain, but sensationalism like this only obscures the issue.
Wannabe Bookies
Bloomberg columnist Al Hunt predicts the odds of various presidential candidates winning--but there's something screwy about his math. He begins by offering the following odds by party, which we've helpfully converted to percentages:
| Democrat | 5 to 7 | 58.3% |
| Republican | 2 to 1 | 33.3% |
| Independent/third party | 20 to 1 | 4.8% |
Add them up, and the total is just 96.4%. If Hunt is purporting to put forth actual probabilities, he's saying there's a 3.6% chance that the next president will be neither a Democrat, Republican, independent or third-party member. What other options are there?
But maybe that 3.6% is the "vigorish"--i.e., the house's take. Oddsmakers wouldn't make money if they paid out 100% of money bet. Only look what happens when Hunt breaks down the odds by candidate:
| Hillary Clinton | 3 to 1 | 25.0% |
| Barack Obama | 7 to 2 | 22.2% |
| John Edwards | 10 to 1 | 9.1% |
| Any other Dem | 40 to 1 | 2.4% |
| Mitt Romney | 5 to 1 | 16.7% |
| John McCain | 8 to 1 | 11.1% |
| Rudy Giuliani | 10 to 1 | 9.1% |
| Mike Huckabee | 12 to 1 | 7.7% |
| Fred Thompson | 20 to 1 | 4.8% |
| Any other GOP | 25 to 1 | 3.8% |
Add up the percentages for Democrats, and they come to 58.7%, roughly the same odds Hunt gives to the Democratic field as a whole. But add up the percentages for Republicans, and the total is 53.2%, much better than 2 to 1. In fact, if you believe these numbers, there is better than an 11 in 10 chance that the next president will be a Democrat or a Republican.
To put it another way, if Hunt were actually taking bets at these odds, you could guarantee yourself a return of more than 10% simply by betting a proportionate amount on each candidate. Except that you'd lose your shirt if the winner isn't from a major party. Does Hunt have inside info thanks to his Bloomberg gig?
It doesn't matter anyway. He's only a political pundit, so you'll have to stick to riskier gambles like stocks and bonds.
Metaphor Alert
"At this time of year, we find ourselves knee-deep in two kinds of clutter: the debris of holiday gift packages and a glut of high-profile endorsements of presidential hopefuls. Endorsement season reached a crescendo right after Thanksgiving, when Oprah Winfrey announced she'd campaign for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., followed swiftly by Barbra Streisand's testimonial for Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. But you do have to wonder whether the value of such benedictions outweighs the risk. . . . This delicate dance started nearly a century ago. . . . Absent reliable exit polling data, candidates must roll the dice when trying to gauge whether a celebrity is, on balance, an asset or a liability. Add this to the list of other high-stakes wagers that become necessary when the political system is driven by the almighty dollar."--Ross Baker, USA Today, Dec. 26
Congress Replies, 'Hey, We're Just Doing Our Job!'
"Bush Says Congress Wasting Time, Money"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 21
'Look What You've Done! I'm Melting! Melting!'
"Charming and Aloof, Huckabee Changed State"--headline, New York Times, Dec. 22
'Have Brain, Eh? Hey, That Must Be Very Handy at Times.'
"Clinton Says Wife Is a 'World-Class Genius' "--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 21
'I Say It's Duck Season'
"Bus Driver Allegedly Asks Decoy for Sex"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 20
'But I Wanted Myrrh!'
"Baby Jesus Getting GPS for Christmas"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 23
Didn't He Say He Wanted a White Christmas?
"Keeping His Cool: Wintry weather will test Crosby's resolve"--headline, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dec. 20
Think and Grow Rich--I
"Worms Infect More Poor Americans Than Thought"--headline, Reuters, Dec. 26
Think and Grow Rich--II
"Queen Elizabeth Urges Thought for Less Well Off"--headline, Reuters, Dec. 25
All Your Base Are Belong to Us
"Apple Rumor Site Think Secret to Shut Down"--headline, MarketWatch.com, Dec. 20
News of the Tautological
- "Will First-Time Caucus Goers Show Up?"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 25
- "Unpaid Credit Card Bills Rise Sharply"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 24
News You Can Use
- "Cat Fleas' Journey Into the Vacuum Is a 'One-Way Trip' "--headline, ScienceDaily.com, Dec. 22
- "Magic Carpets Possible, Mathematician Says"--headline, New York Sun, Dec. 21
Bottom Stories of the Day
- "Many Iowa Conservatives Still Undecided"--headline, Associated Press, Dec. 25
- "Oprah Effect Didn't Really Sway Voters"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 20
- "Ron Paul Will Not Be President"--headline, Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Pa.), Dec. 24
Academentia Watch
If you think American political correctness is twisted, wait till you get a load of the Israeli version. From the news site ArutzSheva.com:
A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers' committee prize finds that the lack of [Israel Defense Forces] rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.
The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that "the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals."
The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: "In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences--just as organized military rape would have done."
The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.
ArutzSheva raises the obvious question: "Can't it just be that Israeli soldiers come from a culture that very much condemns rape?" To which Zali Gurevitch, head of the professors' committee that recommended the publication of Nitzan's paper, replies that, as the news service puts it, "Observers do not have the right to demand a particular explanation to a given phenomenon." But it's hard to see how Nitzan can condemn soldiers for not committing rape unless she's already made up her mind what she thinks of them.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Scott Wright, Rhonda Cisneros, Robin Carroll, Shane Hitzeman, Steve Edwards, Monty Krieger, Stephen Wyse, John Williamson, Brian O'Rourke, Michael Segal, Lewis Sckolnick, Paul Strada, Jim Orheim, Mark Johnston, Arnold Nelson, A.S. Clifton, Michael Driscoll, Joel McLemore, David Skurnick, Steve Feyer, Dagny Billings, John Nernoff, Dan Stirling, Daniel Carlton, Bill Pries, Arlene Ross, William Katz, Ray Hendel, David Taylor, Jeff Jacoby and Israel Pickholtz. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
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