Is Liberalism Brain-dead?
At least that would explain why so many liberals appear to be a fan of Hayek's, or at least his essay, "Why I am not a conservative."
Aside from comments on liberal blogs praising the essay with no particular stated reason, these are some of the passages they quote:
Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it - or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism.
I will nevertheless continue for the moment to describe as liberal the position which I hold and which I believe differs as much from true conservatism as from socialism
The only problem? From the same essay, I can quote this:
Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change. It has, since the French Revolution, for a century and a half played an important role in European politics. Until the rise of socialism its opposite was liberalism. There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of the United States, because what in Europe was called "liberalism" was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense.[2] This already existing confusion was made worse by the recent attempt to transplant to America the European type of conservatism, which, being alien to the American tradition, has acquired a somewhat odd character.
In other words, when Hayek says "conservative", he explicitly means European conservative (which makes sense, given that Hayek is a European, not an American), the likes of which America has never seen.
So, perhaps it is a simple reflection on the failure of liberal education system (with their blatant disregard of core 3Rs) that liberals who read this essay cannot understand the distinction Hayek makes between the conservatives in the U.S.A. and the conservatives elsewhere.
"But," you may say, "every movement has its morons." Surely I can't call liberalism brain-dead because some liberals happen to be?
Well, idiocy can be cured. Sophistry such as this cannot:
Now there is a diplomatic quality to Hayek’s essay, which could lead you to miss the fact that he is, in fact, talking about American conservatives. Pragmatically, Hayek regards American conservatives as his allies, but only because he thinks they can serve as a counterweight to socialism, not because he agrees with them philosophically. He thinks they have ‘a somewhat odd character’. The essay is, in part, an attempt to tell American-style conservatives this without really rubbing their noses in it – more flies with honey and all that.
Really? So everything else Hayek says about American founding values (which conservatives place great importance on), such as (Hayek uses "liberal" to note "classical liberal", and the fact that he refers to Jefferson as "radical" and Hamilton, the noted statist among Founding Fathers, as "conservative" should alert you to the fact that his terms are somewhat non-standard compared to modern usage),
It was the ideals of the English Whigs that inspired what later came to be known as the liberal movement in the whole of Europe[15] and that provided the conceptions that the American colonists carried with them and which guided them in their struggle for independence and in the establishment of their constitution.[16]
...
It is the doctrine which is at the basis of the common tradition of the Anglo-Saxon countries. It is the doctrine from which Continental liberalism took what is valuable in it. It is the doctrine on which the American system of government is based. In its pure form it is represented in the United States, not by the radicalism of Jefferson, nor by the conservatism of Hamilton or even of John Adams, but by the ideas of James Madison, the "father of the Constitution."[18]
All of this means nothing to Mr. Holbo? If Hayek was indeed addressing American conservatives, then in lauding James Madison as representing the "pure form" of classical liberalism, he was not telling American conservatives to stop being conservative; he was telling them to remain conservatives, and defend the Constitution—which is important not just because it's American, but in its current form, it represents the ideals of classical liberalism—from enemies foreign and domestic. I would take "criticisms" like that any day.
Jonah Goldberg has explained this for years, and yet, Mr. Holbo simply refuses to listen—and he's not alone.
And this is why liberalism is brain-dead. Morons, we can educate. Sophists, on the other hand, as Socrates found out the hard way, cannot be persuaded through logic—after all, it's their job to make the weaker argument stronger by twisting logic. Liberalism is nothing but an empty shell without its sophistry, which means it has to be brain-dead.
Update: To be fair, some of Hayek's criticism of conservatives was and is valid for some of the American conservatives—but they are valid only for certain (influential) versions of American conservatism, not for the core principles of American conservatism, as outlined here.
h/t: Stok
Are there no good men left in our government?
Don't these people know partisan politics is what destroyed Athens, not the famine, and not even the disastrous campaign against Sicily?
Politicians have an excuse. It's their job to be partisan, almost, to provide opposing views in the marketplace of ideas so that the people may choose. In fact, the most commonly heard complaint about our two parties is not that they are too partisan—it's that they are too much like each other.
Bureaucrats, agents, attorney generals, lawyers, and other professionals in our government and the private sector have no such excuse. There is some core function to their position which is inherently apolitical. There is some part of their job that can be done equally well by a far-left Democrat as well as a far-right Republican, as long as the man is competent (e.g. Thomas M. Daniel, who investigated ethics complaints against former Gov. Palin competently and objectively even though it was later revealed that he was a Democrat who contributed heavily to Mr. Obama's campaign).
It is corruption of the highest degree when someone violates the trust implicit in their position to advance their partisan agenda. Facts have no liberal or conservative bias—though they may support one or the other side. Those who distort facts knowingly and willingly and make the numbers lie have no place either in the government or the private sector—after all, who would knowingly hire a liar, except for criminal purposes (and even that I am not sure)?
But these liars have been in our government so long. The fact that these liars who deliberately failed at their job to fulfill a political purpose have been in place of power worries me deeply because this is the only way I can make any sense of that: there are no good men left in our government. There are no men honest enough to speak out against this corruption. There are no men competent enough to replace these liars. There is no one who sees an objective view of reality free from his biases and agendas.
If that's true, what's going to become of this country?
Value of a human life = another human life?
National Review responds to a recent proposal in Nature:
The editors of Nature are well aware that this proposal might seem a little ghoulish, and they have two suggestions for making it seem less so. The first is that “death” be redefined. The law currently treats someone as dead if he has experienced an “irreversible cessation” either of all the functions of the brain or of both the circulatory and respiratory systems. These tests indicate that the person can no longer function as an integrated organism. Since people can pass those tests without, in the editors’ view, “being alive in any meaningful sense,” and since those people can be sources of working organs, the editorial proposes changing the definition. It does not specify what the new definition should be, but it is clear that the direction of the change should be toward relaxation. Problem solved: Fresh organs can now be removed from a patient deemed to be dead, and the procedure can’t, by (new) definition, kill anyone.
Existing law does not prohibit anyone from writing a living will which effects exactly what Nature suggests—for himself. What does not follow is that because a man can freely decide to do a good thing on his own, the state should force people to do the same act—the same way law does not require me to save someone from danger even though it would be virtuous of me to do.
But then, I guess to liberal academics, there is little difference between an act of kindness brought by compassion and voluntary will and a beneficial act enforced by the state. Just remember. This is supposed to be humor, not real life:
No more too big to fail … but?
The FDIC chief apparently thinks that no institution should be insulated from failure:
"I believe that the new regime should apply to all bank holding companies that are more than just shells and their affiliates regardless or not whether they are considered to be systemic risks," she said, adding that including only systemically important firms in the shut-down regime could reinforce the 'too big to fail' doctrine.
At first this sounds like a good idea (and Sheila Blair hates Geithner's gut, so she has this enemy-of-my-enemy factor going—although I am sure plenty of statists hate fellow statists). After all, capitalism works on a system of risks and rewards, and the moral hazard caused by the bailouts in the last year or so were the biggest damage to capitalism done in a while. Restoring the reality of risk will allow capitalists to act rationally.
But, according to Reuters, she wants to do this not by getting the government out of private affairs, but by digging it deeper into them:
FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, speaking to the Institute of International Finance meeting here, said a U.S. proposal to create the authority to shut down failing systemically important financial firms may need to be extended to insurers and hedge funds.
Is that really a good idea? In other words, under her plan, the government is not necessarily picking winners (as in the last rounds of bailouts), but the government will be picking losers—as it will have the authority to shut down firms that no private actor sought to shut down. I don't really see the big difference between the two. Either way, the government—one of the most inefficient organizations in the world—is deeply involved, and there are plenty of channels through which political corruptions can destroy capitalism.
Why is there no one who simply says: capitalism doesn't need government to function, it needs the government to get out of the way. Laissez faire!