There have been a number of reactions lately to my decision to no longer consider myself a ‘conservative’. Few have been exactly favorable. Perhaps that is because I have not been clear enough or because I have been perceived as saying things I did not mean to say exactly. Perhaps not.

Here’s Larison:

I’m sorry to say that I find Erik’s post to be very close to the flip side of the argument that mainstream conservatives have deployed against dissident conservatives for years, which is that we associate with the wrong kinds of people, tolerate “liberal” arguments, and generally fail to be good team players when it comes to organizing for electoral politics and reinforcing absurd ideological claims. In other words, we are too close or insufficiently hostile to the other “side.” From what I can gather, Erik is telling everyone that he isn’t a conservative so as not to be mistaken for “one of them,” which is almost as depressing to watch as it is when a thoughtful person feels compelled to jump through a series of ideological hoops to prove that he is “one of us.”

I had to grimace a little when I read Erik talking about his cultural affinities. The point is not that I object to most of his cultural affinities. When I’m in my car on long road trips, I listen to NPR, too, and I have several friends to the left of Russ Feingold (as well as friends who are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans). I’m sure I could rattle off a list of other such “heterodox” behaviors, but I had thought that Erik agreed that these affinities have or ought to have no bearing on political coalitions. All of this reminds me of the ridiculous political categorizing that people wanted to impose on everyday habits during the debate over “crunchy” conservatism, as if eating organic vegetables or shopping at a co-op were proof of left-wing convictions.

A few points before I tackle this head-on.

First of all, I consider Daniel to be absolutely conservative in the best and most meaningful sense of the word – as conservative as they come, in a way that is at once consistent and admirable. If I were a conservative, I would want to emulate Daniel’s brand of that ideology – both in his clarity, consistency, and in his grounding of politics in his deeply held religious beliefs. And indeed I have learned a great deal from him especially on foreign policy matters (not to mention rhetorically and stylistically, as he has few peers in the blogosphere in that regard). There was a time when I very much began to think of myself as in the mold of the paleoconservatives over at The American Conservative.

But I am simply not conservative in the way that Daniel is, and I don’t think it’s a very accurate description of my politics even if the entire conservative movement were Daniel Larison clones rather than the hawks and liars that run the Republican Party (and no, I’m not trying to conflate conservatism and the Republican Party here). I’m not a paleocon, however much I enjoy writers like Larison or McCarthy.

I am probably 100% in agreement with Daniel’s foreign policy views – or very near that – and I do consider these views quite conservative; a dovish, pragmatic, and ultimately “America first” foreign policy is essentially conservative even if the modern conservative movement holds no such views. But I am not socially conservative enough to describe my social politics as such, and I’m tired of thinking of things in terms of “the conservative case for gay marriage” etc.

One of the best responses to Glenn Beck’s bizarre rally last week was an eloquent warning from Southern Baptist Russell Moore about the proper place of politics in the lives of Christians:

Satan did not mind surrendering his authority to Jesus. He didn’t mind a universe without pornography or Islam or abortion or nuclear weaponry. Satan did not mind Judeo-Christian values. He wasn’t worried about “revival” or “getting back to God.” What he opposes was the gospel of Christ crucified and resurrected for the sins of the world.

It’s worth pointing out, though, that Glenn Beck is not the social conservative many people, Moore included, seem to think he is. Beck has declared his support for gay marriage and tries to avoid discussions of abortion, apparently because he is too busy spinning conspiracy theories and giving wing to libertarian nuttery.

I think Beck’s professed indifference is a deeply disingenuous response to some of the most morally pressing issues of our time.  Marriage is no small thing. Neither are questions of autonomy and human life. And that’s true no matter what side of the debate you fall on.

Complete change of topic…

Like many people, summers blunt my level of attention to day to day political news.  But now it’s September – just a few days from Labor Day – and the calendar is kind of getting me back in campaign mode.  So, just for fun, a few of my personal favorites/least favorites of American campaign history.  Feel free to play along and offer your own picks.

Campaign Ads

Best quirky political ad that would play even better today than it did at the time:

Paul Wellstone, 1990

Best mainstream political ad:

Ronald Reagan, 1984

Campaign ad I’m supposed to think is brilliant but just find silly (maybe I need to channel that Cold War mentality…):

Also Ronald Reagan, 1984

Most inexplicable political ad:

Mike Gravel, 2008

Speeches

Best convention speech: Cross of Gold, 1896 (I HAD to throw that in here…)

Best stump speech: Truman – Give ‘em hell, Harry, 1948.  No link for standard stump speech text; convention speech link as stand-in.

Most legitimate, “game-changing” October surprise: Cuban missile crisis, 1962.

Best example of the media describing a minor news story as an “October surprise:” George W. Bush’s DWI discovery, 2000.

Most effective campaign stunt:

Checkers speech, 1952

Richard Nixon, 1960 (but please check out part 2 for the awkwardness…)

Most crash-and-burn campaign stunt: John McCain’s campaign suspension, 2008

Honorable mention on the crash-and-burn stunt: Giuliani skipping the early primaries to campaign in Florida, 2008, or, as Margaret Carlson put it, “like so many New Yorkers, Rudy Giuliani went to Florida to die.”

Best beating of expectations in a loss: Can’t decide between McCarthy’s ’68 New Hampshire showing and Bill Clinton’s ’92 “Comeback Kid” finish.

Worst spin in pretending expectations have been beaten: Joe Lieberman’s 3-way tie for 3^rd (nothing else even comes close), 2004

Best passage describing how a candidate should campaign: November 4, 1964, Time Magazine on Hubert Humphrey.

Humphrey had every reason to be happy and excited, for he had waged a bold and joyous campaign, and in the aftermath he could validly claim that he had made a considerable contribution to the size of the Democratic victory. Soon after his nomination, Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Karl Rolvaag dubbed Hubert “the happy warrior of our generation,” and throughout the campaign Humphrey lived up to the title. He had “The Happy Warrior” painted on the chartered Electra that carried him some 52,000 miles back and forth across the U.S. Aboard the Warrior, happy days were mandatory. West Virginia Folk Singer Jimmy Wolforcl twanged his guitar, and campaign aides joined in verses from The Hubert Humphrey Sing-Along Book. Presiding over the festivities was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate himself.

On the stump, Humphrey counted the countless mis- deeds of Barry Goldwater. “He wouldn’t vote yes for Mother’s Day,” he cried in Peoria, 111., and in Decatur he added: “I imagine that Abraham Lincoln would be called a socialist by the present pretender to the presidency of the Republican Party.” As for his own speeches, Humphrey chortled: “I never know whether the audience likes them, but I sure do.” He even had fun with his hecklers, smiling down on groups of sign-waving Goldwaterites and saying: “They carry their badge of political sin as if they come to repent.”

[Incidentally, I’ve been trying to come up with any modern-day Happy Warrior types; aggressive and partisan without being mean-spirited.]

Best political candidate in a movie: The Last Hurrah, Spencer Tracy

Worst political candidate in a movie: The Best Man, Henry Fonda

If I could bring back one campaign tradition that has been lost: Parades put on by political parties.

If I could kill one campaign tradition: Candidates coming up with gimmicky dates or dollar amounts for fundraising.

I’m fascinated by the liberaltarian conversations here and elsewhere and, as an outsider, more than a little bit jealous.  Whether or not the potential movement will be realized in the short term is still to be determined (although I tend to think based on demographics, it’s probably a good bet).  What I find so interesting is that it’s a political philosophy so far along that it can already be traced back historically, measured against established ideas, compared to movements in other countries, and can almost break through the elected official barrier (yes, the fact that all major libertarian electeds are social conservatives is a point, but we’re already starting to see the de-emphasis of social issues on the libertarian Right, Beck-ites and Islamaphobes excepted.)

My point is, liberaltarianism is ready to take off given the right political moment.  For someone like myself – economically Left and more socially conservative – there really is no organized counter-ideology.  If the political moment ever arrived and liberaltarianism actually got a foothold in American government, the only opposition would come from the Left on economic issues and the Right on social issues.  Getting hit by “both sides,” liberaltarianism would come to be seen as centrist (don’t worry, I don’t consider it High Broderism).  Sad, considering liberaltarianism is much more philosophically cohesive than the hodgepodge of ideas that make up modern liberalism and conservatism.

[Read more →]

When the debate over the proposed “Ground Zero Mosque” first began to engage the attention of the nation, my first reaction was to dismiss those who loudly and insistently protested its construction as demagogues bent on stimulating the worst impulses of the American public for political advantage. That opinion I have not revised: the proposed project is not in any meaningful sense “at” Ground Zero. This single fact moots the entire argument even if you cede all the questions of principle to the mosque opponents. But as is typical with public arguments about cultural questions, the argument about the mosque demonstrates some interesting facts about American public discourse, and these facts are not all to the discredit of the demagogues.

The most important feature of the argument has been one of its most typical, namely ambiguity about the level of abstraction from the immediate question. Are we arguing about whether to use public action to stop the mosque from being built, about whether Imam Rauf and co have the right to build the mosque, about whether it’s sensitive and prudent to build the mosque given that Imam and co have the right, about whether anyone has the right to say that it isn’t sensitive and prudent even if they also say that Imam and co have the right, or about whether it’s sensitive and prudent to say that the mosque isn’t sensitive and prudent given that people have every right to say it isn’t sensitive and prudent?

The ever-shifting ground of this debate is what makes it so perfect a culture-war wedge issue. The proponents get to call the opponents bigots, the opponents get to caricature the proponents as multi-culturalist appeasers, and everyone goes home happy, since no actual policy, no course of action and no point of principle is being discussed. It would be only marginally less illuminating if Gallup simply asked Americans for an up-or-down vote on the question “Muslims?”

To my dismay, the mosque proponents (or are they just mosque opponent opponents?) are not emerging from the meta-debate unsullied. To be sure, if you go looking you can dig up some hard-bitten anti-First-Amendmentists who don’t seem to realize that actually using the government to stop the mosque’s construction pretty much amounts to exhuming the bodies of the founding fathers just to spit in their faces, but the vast majority of the voices publicly opposing the mosque aren’t calling for Congress to send in the troops, though of course being coy about saying so explicitly is a tactic of long-standing in arguments about race, where conservatives frequently make intentionally ambiguous and provocative statements so they can cry foul when a foolish and frustrated liberal calls them racists. Sadly the Right is giving us plenty of that coyness. The Left is responding even more foolishly than usual, however. Even to the many opponents who make clear that they acknowledge the legal right to build the mosque, many liberal voices have responded not by pointing out how thoroughly inoffensive the project actually is but by denying that the debate about whether the project is offensive is even legitimate.

That’s a really stupid hill to die on. It’s obvious, or it should be, that some hypothetical incarnation of this project really would be offensive even if it were perfectly legal. Suppose a wealthy family — bin Laden’s, for example — had bought the Millennium Hilton on Church St, directly adjacent to Ground Zero, and deployed from the roof a massive banner reading “Glory to the holy warrior Osama for the victory won here against the Great Satan.” A lot of the rhetoric coming from the Left has suggested that the principle of religious freedom means never being offended by religious groups doing what they have a constitutional right to do, but John Boehner is of course entirely right, even if entirely in bad faith, when he says “The fact that someone has the right to do something doesn’t necessarily make it the right thing to do. That is the essence of tolerance, peace and understanding.” I’d like to hear liberals affirm that principle a little more explicitly, if you please.

Taking a step back, at some level of debasement, I believe it becomes morally obligatory simply not to get involved in these arguments. When you accuse the demagogues of bigotry you’re taking their bait and probably saying something probably untrue, unjust, and irrelevant (and, obviously, if you really think that building the mosque is an insult to the victims of 9/11 then you have bigger problems than an inclination to casual slander). If you have to speak up, reiterate the actual principles at stake and explain your position on each, if you have any positions that can’t be reduced to expressions of contempt for the guys on the other team.

[UPDATED BELOW THE FOLD]

The Big Story yesterday and, to a lesser extent, today was the arrest of two legal Yemeni immigrants on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack.  The pair, one of whom now resides in Birmingham, Alabama after previously living in Detroit, and the other of whom presumably resides in the Chicago area, were arrested in Amsterdam after having changed their itineraries in Chicago to direct flights rather than connecting flights through Washington-Dulles.  As a result of the itinerary change, both men’s luggage wound up on the flight to Washington on which they were originally booked rather than the flight they actually took.

Most of the attention focused on the Birmingham traveler, Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi, whose itinerary began with a Birmingham to Chicago flight, and who was discovered to be carrying in his checked baggage a few cell phones taped together, a cell phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle, and some knives.  Again – this was his checked baggage, not his carry-on, and all of these items are perfectly legal and harmless to carry in checked baggage.  Soofi was also carrying $7000 cash – also legal and harmless.  The close inspection of Soofi’s luggage in Birmingham occured because a Birmingham TSA agent considered his “bulky clothing” suspicious. 

After the luggage reached Washington, and it became apparent that the pair were not on the flight from Dulles to Amsterdam, their luggage was removed and closely inspected again.  Air marshals were also placed on the Chicago to Amsterdam flight to make sure the pair did not attempt anything nefarious. 

All this information was transmitted to the Dutch authorities, who arrested – but did not charge – the pair when their flight landed in Amsterdam on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack.  In particular, it seems that authorities were concerned that the taped-together cell phones and Pepto-Bismol were “mock bombs” and that the pair were doing a “dry run” for a terrorist attack. 

To this point, I don’t have much of a complaint about how the matter was handled. 

Where things went terribly wrong, however, was that unnamed, anonymous ”U.S. law enforcement officials” proceeded to bring the media into this, with one unnamed ”senior law enforcement official” stating “This was almost certainly a dry run, a test.”  These same officials also specifically identified the individuals arrested, and incorrectly claimed that the two had actually been charged with “preparation of a terrorist attack.”  Moreover, these officials falsely identified Soofi as still being from Detroit, making the fact that Soofi boarded in Birmingham rather than just starting his journey in much closer Chicago seem particularly suspicious.  Shortly thereafter, the faces of these two men were being broadcast around the globe, with words like ”terror probe” and “dry-run bomber” prominently displayed in connection therewith.  Not surprisingly, right-wing bloggers and pundits seized on the story.  For some, the proof was irrefutable that these men were terrorists – the men were, in this group’s minds, already convicted, despite the fact that there weren’t even any formal allegations against them yet, just the speculation of unnamed “senior government officials,” dutifully transcribed as fact by our Fourth Estate. 

One problem, though: it’s increasingly apparent that these men have nothing to do with terrorism and were either entirely innocent or were, at worst (in the case of Soofi), just trying to bring some phones and money to friends and family in one of the world’s poorest countries.  For starters, the very notion of a “dry run” for a terrorist attack is virtually unheard-of in the real world, regardless of how frequent they exist in the public’s imagination.*  Moreover, it is now clear that the pair did not intend to change their itineraries in Chicago while sending their luggage to DC; instead, these men – who I presume do not speak English as their first language - appear to have simply missed their flights after the airline changed their gate at notoriously complicated O’Hare Airport.  Indeed, the two men do not seem to have even known each other at all. 

There is also a fairly obvious explanation for the fact that Soofi had taped the cell phones together: cell phones are relatively sensitive pieces of equipment, they are not exactly soft and well-cushioned, and the cargo hold of a plane is a pretty rough environment (to say nothing of the way in which baggage handlers throw luggage around).

It thus appears extraordinarily likely that the pair will be released by the Dutch authorities within the next day or so.  But what happens when they return to the United States?  Will the stories vindicating these two men receive the same amount of publicity as the stories accusing them?  Doubtful – such stories never do.  Even if the stories vindicating them did receive that kind of publicity, will everyone who has convicted them in their own minds accept the vindication?  Ask Amanda Marcotte - and those were well-off, privileged, and intelligent white kids with good legal representation; the two men in this story are poor immigrants from a small and increasingly unpopular religious minority.  What will happen if/when Soofi returns to his home in Birmingham and finds that some percentage of his neighbors – whether it be 5% or 50% – are absolutely convinced that he is a terrorist involved in actively planning to blow up an airplane?

I know I am stepping into Glenn Greenwald’s territory here, but the relationship between the media and “senior government officials” does an active disservice to our ability as a populace to understand the world around us, sacrificing truth for sensationalism and the political agenda of the “senior government official” in question.  [Read more →]

Just how perverse is the Obama administration’s assassination program is reflected in the rights Awlaki is forced to assert. He alleges — as the Complaint puts it — that the Government is violating his “Fifth Amendment Right Not to be Deprived of Life Without Due Process.” Just re-read that and contemplate that in Barack Obama’s America, that right even needs to be contested.

Next to this, it’s kind of hard to care about Obama’s religion. As Glenn Greenwald notes, Democrats were outraged when George W. Bush did a whole lot less than this. Now, mostly silence. And the D’s are supposed to be the civil liberties purists. Of course, the Republicans are convinced that Obama still isn’t doing “enough.” What, if anything, would be? Good lord, what’s the next step after assassinating American citizens?

Bob Bradley re-signs (rather than resigns) with the USA Men’s National Team for another World Cup Cycle.  I think this is a better move than getting Jurgen Klinnsman, who I think would have proven little more than a high-priced disappointment, but I’m not entirely convinced it’s the right move for either party.  Don’t get me wrong – Bradley’s tenure as coach of the USMNT has been stellar, and I’m happy to say I was a quick and permanent convert to the pro-Bradley contingent.  My issue is simply that the track record of coaches returning for a second World Cup cycle with the same team is decidedly mixed at best, and it’s clear that Bradley is the first American coach with a real chance at managing in a top-level European league.  An American coach at that level would do quite a bit of good for the development of the game in the US and the development of respect for the American game abroad.  Of course, only Bradley knows how realistic those opportunities are or were, so it’s unwise to assume that Bradley is choosing a return to the MNT over a chance to be a trailblazer.  Nonetheless, I think I would have preferred to see Bradley in Europe over him returning to the MNT.

Meanwhile, Bradley will have a particularly difficult balancing act over the next few years between his loyalty to the players from whom he has gotten so much effort these last several years and his need to work new talent into the rotation.  While this is something any coach returning for a second World Cup cycle needs to deal with, I suspect it’s a big reason why the track record for such coaches is so poor.  But moreover, as the caliber of players the US has produced has changed, and will continue to change, the style that best suits the US will continue to change.  This makes it almost uniquely important that whoever manages the US in any given cycle be amenable to learning new tricks and adapting the team’s style to its talent rather than the other way around.  Bradley is almost certainly the most competent coach the US has ever had – but we don’t know yet whether he is capable of the kind of flexibility that a second cycle demands.  Bruce Arena apparently wasn’t, and his second cycle effectively destroyed the goodwill and excitement generated by his first.

So here’s hoping that Bradley doesn’t fall into that trap, and it cannot escape notice that Bradley’s ability to adjust – at least within and between games – has been perhaps his strongest suit.  But inter-cycle adjustment may be a different ball game entirely.  One thing that should be for certain, though:  after being the first modern American team to win its World Cup group, after reaching the Confederations Cup final (and losing a heartbreaker to the boys from Brazil), after winning CONCACAF, and after finally getting Landon Donovan to reach his full potential, one thing should be clear: Bradley absolutely earned the right to return for four more years.

[updated]

It is perhaps a little ironic that Beck is invoking theology so often and especially in order to demonize Obama further. Ironic because conservative and evangelical Christians probably have more in common theologically with Barack Obama than with Glenn Beck. Mainline Protestantism is still a lot more similar to evangelical Christianity than Mormonism – which has an entirely new book of gospels (the Book of Mormon) and which teaches that the lost tribes of Israel came to America and ended up the Native Americans.  Not to mention all the differences in belief in the afterlife.

So it’s an interesting tactic for Beck to criticize Obama’s ‘liberation theology’ and a risky one at that. And no, I don’t mean this to be a referendum on whether or not Mormonism is really Christianity. I don’t really care, to be quite honest.

But the difference between Baptist and Mormon theology is far more radical than the difference between Baptist and Lutheran or Catholic and Presbyterian theology. Notice, in this comparison chart, the right hand column is “Christianity” and is basically all those areas where mainline Christians – whether Protestant or Catholic or Evangelical – agree. They may disagree on implications, on tolerance of various social practices, on accepted rituals or ways to go about practicing, preaching and so forth, but they agree on the basics.  Mormons do not agree on those basics, much as Unitarians or Arians do not agree on the basics. I’m a big-tent Christian, so I’m perfectly happy to call Mormons, Unitarians, and Gnostics Christians and be done with it – but that doesn’t change the theological divide one iota.

Michael Drew asks some questions in the comments. And before I even begin to try and answer them, let me just admit to not having this all worked out. There are no solid answers, and I’m almost certainly not the best person to take a shot at this – but shoot at it I will none the less…

For liberaltarianism to “survive,” or even come into existence in a real way, it badly needs an ontology. What is it? I mean what is “it”? A loose coalition? A movement? What are its goals? Is it just an ideological inclination? Does it have to be conscious? Does it matter if you want to be a liberaltarian? If you don’t? A liberal willing to say somehthing good about markets is one? Matthew Yglesias “might as well be” part of the movement? Or is?

Right now I’d say it’s just the murmuring of a movement and maybe it will always be. As Alex Massie pointed out in his post on the matter, there really are parties that embody some form of liberaltarianism across Europe. So it has the potential to be more than just a loose coalition. But right now I’d say it’s just an inclination a number of people have who sit somewhere between libertarian and liberal and who have very little use for the American right. Matt Yglesias may be part of this ‘loose coalition’ and is likely toward its left wing. Right now I’d say the whole thing is necessarily vague, still in its early stages, still in the inclination phase. The policy preferences of Will Wilkinson and Matt Yglesias and Tim Lee and Jim Henley and any other number of people who might be loosely tossed into this project will differ wildly. I wish I had a better answer.

And, “Both sides will have to give ground to make it work”? Can you point to single liberal who wants to do that? It’s not like different liberals don’t already hold plenty of positions that coincide with libertarian ones – they always have. But that’s not a statement of common cause – those positions already exist and are sincerely held. Is liberaltarianism just the overlap between modern liberalism and libertarianism?

Based on what then are you asking anyone to give ground? To what end? Are we really to believe libertarians are prepared to give ground on core principles not just rhetorical flotsam left over from right-fusionism? I certainly wouldn’t ask them to. This all just sounds like a scheme of persuasion to me. Name me an issue on which libertarians are willing to substantively compromise, not just “adjust the language used,” and give me a reason that liberals should want to reciprocate, and I’ll try to give the project another chance. Otherwise, I still don’t get what it is or what it’s for. It still sounds like it’s basically two things: libertarians highlighting the many places liberals’ positions long have and do overlap with theirs, and libertarians adjusting their language and areas of focus so as to be less scary to liberals.

I think we’ve seen lately where some liberal ideas are being challenged on economic matters from within the ranks. Yglesias especially has been posting a lot about public choice theory – the barber shop regulations, healthcare cartelization. Stuff that liberals don’t talk about much but which you’ll see plenty of in libertarian circles. Meanwhile, I think we have issues like private prisons which are pretty widely accepted by many libertarians as good things being challenged by Wilkinson. In other areas liberals and libertarians generally align well enough, though there’s plenty of room for liberals to get more serious about civil liberties and hold their own leaders to higher standards in that regard – just as, I believe, libertarians interested in working with liberals need to take issues like healthcare reform more seriously and not always fall back on market solutions for everything. This is typically where I bring up how great Wyden-Bennett was.

But I’m probably an outlier myself, and quite frankly I’m having a hard time speaking for either side. I’m probably a lot more libertarian than most liberals but a lot more liberal than most libertarians. That’s one reason I like this new fusionism idea so much, but I also feel sort of awkward writing about what it should achieve or how various sides should make concessions. I would like to see a move toward something more akin to northern European social democracy – very free trade, minimal government regulation, but a sturdy and generous safety net apparatus to keep society stable and workers cared for and economically and socially mobile. Obviously I’d be thrilled if we could do this without resorting to the super high tax rates in these places, but I’m convinced lately that tax rates are really way down the list in terms of priorities we should be worried about. Creating a good business climate free from too much government regulation, barriers to entry, etc. is more important. Providing the work force with healthcare and social security and allowing them to live freely, civil liberties protected and respected by the state – these are far more important to me. Others interested in this project may prioritize tax rates much more than I do. I don’t know.

I think for me what I’ve realized is that the right is just an inhospitable place these days. Even nominally conservative goals – to create a stable, middle class society and a resilient, vibrant civilization – are better served by liberalism – but not necessarily leftism. If anything I think this whole liberaltarianism thing is intended to make modern day liberalism more liberal and less leftist, and modern libertarianism less right-wing. That there is no proper ontology, no set of standards or agreed upon goals, methods, etc. is more a sign of infancy than a sign of its implausibility.

My wife has joked about the foolhardiness of blogging the Bible due to the likelihood of offending everyone: people who take the Bible as the word of God understandably take it very seriously, and I’ve met some atheists who take rejection of the Bible nearly as seriously. I’m in neither camp.

Nevertheless, it’s impossible to “blog the canon” without discussing the Bible. We can disagree about its truth content, but the poetry is lucid, lovely and powerful- frequently majestic, and the stories are lively and entertaining. Seemingly half of our English phrases were begat by either the King James Bible or Shakespeare. (Note that I am using a Latin version and the KJB.) It is also a foundational text of the West and central to how billions of people see the world. [Read more →]

Tim Carney thinks liberaltarianism is dead following the departure of Will Wilkinson and Brink Lindsey from Cato. He asks if there are any real life liberaltarians in politics, pointing out that the the only truly libertarian members of Congress are also social conservatives. He writes, "maybe there’s something about the socially liberal agenda that draws someone away from economic freedom."  Maybe. Or maybe this is an accident of history colored by personal bias. Who knows?

Alex Massie responds by pointing to the very real success of liberaltarian politics in Europe, noting that socially and economically liberal policies coincide nicely in Denmark, Sweden, and elsewhere. America is hardly the only bastion of classical liberalism after all.

Indeed, the Heritage Foundation’s Economic Liberty Index suggests that, actually, there’s little to no necessary contradiction between social liberalism and economic freedom.

For instance: Heritage hammers Denmark and Sweden for high levels of government spending but both countries are ranked "freer" than the US in matters as non-trivial as business, trade and investment freedoms. Indeed, Sweden and Denmark each score better than the United States in seven of the ten areas measured. (Britain comes out 5-4 ahead of the US with the property rights fixture ending in a draw. Germany is tied 5-5 with the Americans. Canada, Australia and New Zealand also do better than America.)

Now clearly if you were building a libertarian society from scratch you might not end up with something that looks very much like Denmark. And if tax rates are the only – or at least principle – measure you employ then, sure, Denmark and Sweden might look pretty hellish to you. But it depends which taxes you’re talking about and, for that matter, what aspects of government spending you’re unhappy with.

Quite right. (I love citing the Heritage Index because it says so much about how we should think about economic freedom, and yet the conclusion so many at think tanks like Heritage come to is that we just really need to cut taxes and quit spending money. I wonder how long until they tweak the index to better align with their conclusions?)

Indeed, taxes are entirely the wrong factor by which to gauge economic freedom – or at least only one factor among many. As evidenced by the success of liberal welfare states in Europe, economic liberty can occur in tandem with a pretty robust welfare state funded by high, progressive tax rates (though it helps to couple these with a consumption tax which is more reliable and less burdensome on productivity). Limited government and small government are not one and the same thing and conflate scope with size. Libertarians, I would argue, have largely dropped the ball on safety net issues, and the strict adherence to ‘markets solve everything’ and tax-slashing ideology has been a disservice to the cause of liberalism.

Been dipping into League favorite Max Nordau lately, where I found this gem of 19th-century concern trolling:

The nations which emancipated the Jews have mistaken their own feelings. In order to produce its full effect, emancipation should first have been completed in sentiment before it was declared by law. But this was not the case. The history of Jewish emancipation is one of the most remarkable pages in the history of European thought. The emancipation of the Jews was not the consequence of the conviction that grave injury had been done to a race, that it had been treated most terribly, and that it was time to atone for the injustice of a thousand years; it was solely the result of the geometrical mode of thought of French rationalism of the 18th century. This rationalism was constructed by the aid of pure logic, without taking into account living sentiments and the principles of the certainty of mathematical action; and it insisted upon trying to introduce these creations of pure intellect into the world of reality. The emancipation of the Jews was an automatic application of the rationalistic method. The philosophy of Rousseau and the encyclopedists had led to the declaration of human rights. Out of this declaration, the strict logic of the men of the Great Revolution deduced Jewish emancipation. They formulated a regular equation: Every man is born with certain rights; the Jews are human beings, consequently the Jews are born to own the rights of man. In this manner, the emancipation of the Jews was pronounced, not through a fraternal feeling for the Jews, but because logic demanded it. Popular sentiment rebelled, but the philosophy of the Revolution decreed that principles must be placed higher than sentiment. Allow me then an expression which implies no ingratitude. The men of 1792 emancipated us only for the sake of principle.

It works pretty well as a mad libs.

Tell you what, refraining from blogging is a lot easier than abstaining from beer.

I haven’t been around these parts much, but I have had a rich and varied summer: Discussions of aesthetics with John Haldane and Anthony O’Hear. A seminar on marriage and parenthood with W. Bradford Wilcox. Jousting with Timothy Jost on abortion in health care. Trips to the sun-soaked shore with the League’s own David Schaengold and William Randolph Brafford. A reunion with old friends for our third annual celebration in honor of Humanae Vitae, the document that courageously affirmed the consistent Christian teaching against contraception. A discussion with the distinguished Dr. Catherine Hakim on erotic capital.

Erotic capital — the real subject of this post — is a controversial new sociological category proposed by Hakim, a professor at the London School of Economics. She uses it to describe six related traits of market actors: beauty, sexual attractiveness, social charm, liveliness, presentation, and sexual skill. Obviously, erotic capital plays a large role in marriage markets and sexual bargaining. But Hakim also writes in her paper outlining the subject that erotic capital has an unacknowledged influence in the labor market:

The most recent study shows that good looks, intelligence, personality, and confidence all determine income, for men and women alike (Judge et al., 2009). Even after accounting for intelligence, good looks raise income, partly by enhancing educational attainment, personality, and self-confidence. The total effect of facial attractiveness on income is roughly equal to that of educational qualifications or self-confidence, but is much smaller than the impact of intelligence. Attractive people find it easier to interact socially, are more persuasive, and are thus more successful in a variety of jobs.

In her paper, Hakim faults patriarchs and feminists for obscuring the importance of erotic capital. It is, as Jezebel’s response indicates, a theory that seems designed to provoke. But is anyone here inclined to agree with Hakim? If so, how might the phenomena Hakim describes under the heading of erotic capital be addressed in corporate policies and government programs?

And now back to what’s left of summer.

Daniel Larison goes another round with Ross Douthat:

On the one hand, Ross urges us not to believe that “all religious cultures are identical, or that the intellectual climate in contemporary Islam is no different from the intellectual climate in Judaism or Christianity,” but he wants to apply “a high standard” to high-profile moderate Muslims, which in practice means that they are supposed to act and speak as if their religious culture is no different and the intellectual culture in Islam is the same. At least, that’s what his call for “swift pushback” against “forays into dubious territory” suggests. If all religious cultures are not identical, might it be the case that what Ross judges to be a foray into “dubious territory” is actually a “necessary part of the moderate Muslim package”?

The call for pushback brings us once again to the matter of what constitutes “dubious territory” and whether or not American Muslims are going to be permitted to say politically controversial things without being absurdly vilified as fanatics. As far as I can tell, what Rauf’s critics want is not merely someone who is a moderate Muslim, which presumably means someone moderate in his interpretation of Islam as a religion. What they would apparently also like is someone who has no sympathy for the political causes or grievances of any other Muslims in the world. If moderation is defined in that unreasonable way, there probably aren’t very many moderate Muslims after all.

Of course, I think Larison is absolutely correct. But I can’t help feeling that the more we wander off into this territory – essentially into a debate over the Imam Rauf or over moderate Islam and so forth – we’re straying away from the crux of the matter which is: do they have a right to build the Park51 project near Ground Zero? The answer to that question is simple: yes, they do. All the rest of this is just a sideshow – an important discussion to have, maybe, but still a sideshow. Yes, of course critics have a right to do whatever they like, say whatever they like about the project, about its planners. But that’s not really the point either – nobody is telling them they don’t have this right. The only people interested in waylaying rights are the critics of the project.

Furthermore, the only reason Imam Rauf is setting up shop “as an arbiter of Muslim-Western dialogue” is because this so-called scandal was manufactured in the first place. Prior to this, hardly anybody knew or cared one way or another about Rauf or the Cordoba House plans. Sans the manufacturing of this scandal, nobody would know still and nobody would care.

A response to Jaybird’s inquiry concerning the applicability of certain aspects of the Old Testament in modernity

by Robert Cheeks

Which brings me to ask how do you know what we’re able to toss away from the old covenant and what we, seriously, totally need to keep?

Is it stuff you know in your heart?

Jaybird

To explore the question it’s necessary to understand that historically man’s experience in reality is established on two categories of the experience of existential tension: the ‘compact’ and the ‘differentiated.’ The experience engendered in the ‘compact’ is symbolized, as Voegelin tells us, by the “time of the cosmos, the intracosmic gods, and the language of the mythical tale and its personnel.” The symbols used to express the ‘differentiated’ mode are “the polarization of cosmic time into the time and timeless of the tension; and the flow of presence; the world-transcendent God; and the language of noetic and spiritual life.”

The response to Jaybird’s inquiry appears difficult because we are living in an age whose political, moral, and intellectual ‘disturbances’ reflect, in part, the problems brought about by the changes in the above modes of experience both existentially and in the ‘polis.’ Further, Holy Scripture as Voegelin argues, rejects the myth of the intracosmic gods, explicates a continuing flow of pneumatic insights, and represents a profound movement in the ‘language of truth’ as it is experienced in the divine/human relationship.

Scripture (God’s Word), defines/requires that man is a being divinely constituted, not only to live and exist in this cosmos, but more importantly, he is constructed to dialogue with God. Consequently, the process of this dialogue, the experience itself and the forthcoming symbolizations represent the truth of reality as long as they are not deformed, Voegelin argues, by “doctrinal reflections.” And, while I agree with Voegelin that “doctrine” can eclipse not only the humbling and perfect experience of being in spiritual oneness with Divine Being, I’m not so sure it is the problem he thought it was/is.

However, Jaybird’s question may give credence to Voegelin’s pronouncements on the deleterious effects of ‘doctrine’ on the spirit/soul in that it is illustrative of a society effectively derailed by ideological disturbances, more and more refusing to acknowledge the theophanic event, who finds itself spiritually in decline to the point where the process of “experiential reactivation and linguistic renewal” of the truth of reality no longer have a dominate role in community and represents that point in time when the symbol “separates from its source in the experiential Metaxy, (and)the Word of God can degenerate into a word of man that one can believe or not.” In other words, boys and girls, we are in some really deep doo.

Re: Jaybird’s query we must first give our friend a great deal of credit for not loading his inquiry with “premises devised to make the search impossible.”

The answer and my reply after a couple of fingers of Maker’s Mark and a couple of hours of discussion with my autodidact-theologian wife out on the veranda is for you to read, and read closely Acts 10, Acts 11, and Gal. 2 of the Word of God. The answer is found within. Jaybird, if you’d like we can discuss and differentiate these three chapters and address the seminal aspect of your inquiry which is the spreading of the Gospel to the Gentiles. And yes, Jesus changed the water to wine. I only hope it might have been a decent Pinot Noir.

…what we, seriously, totally need to keep?

We need to ‘keep’ that which permits us to exist in a condition where, we, as Jesus Christ said, “…love the Lord your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matt., 37-40).

My wife remarked that she is obliged, as a Christian, to “adore and obey!”

I find it rather fascinating that it wasn’t I who answered your question but God, Himself, …..in the Gospel.

Voegelin once commented that “The gospel, to be heard, requires ears that can hear; philosophy is not the life of reason if the questioner’s reason is depraved (Romans 1:28).” To your credit you have not lost the question; many in our culture have, and they are probably lost (though miracles are the leitmotif of the metalepsis).

This passage from Timothy B Lee is very good:

If all you care about is avoiding the long arm of the law, that’s actually pretty easy to do. Buy a cabin in the woods in Wyoming and the government will pretty much leave you alone. Pick a job that allows you to deal in cash and you can probably get away without filing a tax return. In reality, hardly anyone does this. To the contrary, people have been leaving rural areas for high-tax, high-regulation cities for decades.

Almost no one’s goal in life is to maximize their liberty in this abstract sense. Rather, liberty is valuable because it enables us to achieve other goals, like raising a family, having a successful career, making friends, and so forth. To achieve those kinds of goals, you pretty much have to live near other people, conform to social norms, and make long-term investments. And people who live close together for long periods of time need a system of mechanisms for resolving disputes, which is to say they need a government.

I wrote something along similar lines a while back:

Conservatism is not only about limited government, and where it seeks to limit government it does so because it sees government as a force of instability.  But what about those times when government is instead a force for stability?  Defense leaps to mind.  Conservatism, I would argue, is first and foremost about preserving or regaining a stable society.  Liberty and prosperity are two of the most profound ways we can achieve a stable civilization.  Limiting government often leads to both these things, and thus it is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

And when limiting government actually brings about social chaos rather than social stability, then it’s outworn its use. Perhaps this is why anarchy is such an impossible goal.  At some point the benefit of removing the state from the equation no longer outweighs the cost.

Then again, when shit hits the fan the seasteaders will be way ahead of the rest of us – like those guys in Water World. As long as they stockpile cigarettes.

So I killed that last post because, honestly, that was an emotionally driven, snarky, stupid thing to write (except the part about how I love you guys, that’s all true). It was something I should have addressed at Balloon Juice – and something I now have addressed there. This is one of those lessons you learn when you write publicly and on-the-fly. Sometimes, when you’re really tired, in a bad mood, and feeling defensive for whatever reason, you shouldn’t open your big fat mouth. Or at least that’s what my wife tells me, and if it’s true for marriage it’s true also for blogging. Or something.

Anyways, consider this a retraction. I made a mistake. I do that from time to time. I’m human and full of human frailties including pride. I’m sorry.

Socrates, we’ll remember, felt a reverent awe in the face of poetry. In Ion, god-inspired rhapsody had an effect on the audience akin to possession. In Republic, the emotions aroused by poets threatened the polis. We can disdain his censoriousness, but at least Socratic dread in the face of art is an improvement over our own indifference toward its power.

Aristotle shares this veneration, but abandons the claim that poetry poses a threat to rational society. Unlike Plato, Aristotle embraces the salutary effects of emotion aroused by art. He just wants to know how it works. And he makes it safe by explaining it. In Aristotle, philosophical/rationalist rule-making finally triumphs over pre-rational ritual; Camille Paglia calls his pity and fear, “a broken promise, a plea for vision without horror”. It is an attempt to explain the effect that epic poetry and tragedy has on him, and as such is a foundational text of Western aesthetics. It’s a text we must absorb and, I think in the end, reject. [Read more →]

[Update: In response to comments, I have revised this post somewhat to soften its tone, which was unduly harsh in relation to the fault I am identifying.]

NR‘s Jason Steorts, responding to Whitaker Chambers scholar Richard Reinsch, writes:

I think Reinsch mischaracterizes Nietzsche if he means to say that the Nietzschean position “inexorably leads to the rise of a master class.” . . .  Certainly some have read Nietzsche as Reinsch does — Heidegger, for instance, and Bertrand Russell (Heidegger liked what he found, while Russell abhorred it) — but this view is no longer dominant among Nietzsche scholars. I would recommend, as a corrective, the work of the late Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann. My personal opinion is that Nietzsche’s thought tends in a direction very like that of some forms of Buddhism, though Nietzsche himself was not aware of this (having fallen prey to Schopenhauer’s caricature of that tradition) and was not always true to his ideal. Perhaps I shall have more to say about this on a future occasion.

With his invocation of unnamed “Nietzsche scholars,” eccentric (though anodyne) interpretation of Nietzsche as Buddhist, and warning that the he may have more to say in the future,  Steorts is implicitly claiming to know a lot about Nietzsche. But that claim doesn’t square with what he actually writes.

Steorts begins by calling the idea that Nietzsche’s thought “inexorably leads to the rise of a master class” a mischaracterization of Nietzsche.  But this idea is not a characterization of Nietzsche at all, much less a false one.  It is, rather, a speculation as to the consequences of Nietzsche’s thought (whatever they may be).  So, right away, Steorts sets out to refute an interpretation of Nietzsche that isn’t even an interpretation – a rather elementary mistake.

Next, Steorts claims that the interpretation is “no longer dominant among Nietzsche scholars.”  As an example, Steorts cites Walter Kaufmann. Wait a second… Walter Kaufmann?  Kaufmann died thirty years ago.  He hardly represents contemporary Nietzsche scholarship.  He published his major philosophical work on Nietzsche a full sixty years ago.  Nietzsche scholarship (as opposed to popular receptions, such as via Mencken in the U.S.) virtually begins with Kaufmann.  There is no “dominant” scholarly interpretation that Kaufmann could have corrected in the first place.

Further, though (unlike Steorts) I’m not going to hold myself out as an authority on the history of Nietzsche scholarship, it seems quite unlikely that Kaufmann’s work has held up since 1950.  First, there has likely been important archival work since 1950 which may have forced a revision of earlier views. Second, the climate of opinion in 1950 — when, for example, Marxism and Freudianism still predominated – was very different from the climate of opinion today. The change may lead to a re-evaluation of Nietzsche.  Finally, Kaufman carried a lot of ideological baggage.  The Nazi regime — which hailed Nietzsche as an intellectual hero and forerunner — had only lately convulsed the world.  You can almost depend upon it that, in his zeal to rescue Nietzsche from the Nazis, Kaufmann [qua Nietzsche interpreter - not necessarily as a translator] distorted Nietzsche’s words. 

As it happens, a simple google search of top Nietzsche scholars (I entered simply ”Nietzsche Brian Leiter Walter Kaufmann”) reveals that Kaufmann, though still influential, is not considered the leading authority on Nietzsche any more.  Here, for example, Brian Leiter ranks Nietzsche scholars by Google Scholar citations. Kaufmann’s citations (already artifically inflated by the fact that he arrived at the beginning of the Nietzsche industry) have been surpassed by works written after his death.  Leiter himself ranks in the top ten and is the leading Nietzsche scholar of his generation. And what does Leiter have to say about Kaufmann?  He is, say Leiter, an “unreliable scholar” who “saved Nietzsche from the misrepresentations of the Nazis, but added his own by introducing a more straightforwardly moralistic interpretation.”  So, contrary to Steorts, Kaufmann [again, as interpreter - not necessarily as translator] has been displaced, possibly even discredited.  (Incidentally, according to Leiter, Heidegger’s interprertation of Nietzsche isn’t at all what Steorts claims.)

In short, on the evidence of Steorts’s own words, he is exagerrating his knowledge of the state Nietzsche scholarship.  (Not coincidentally, the one Nietzsche scholar whom Steorts appears to have read is the same one whose name appears ubiquitously on all the readily available translations of Nietzsche into English.)  To be fair, opining on things that they actually know little about is pretty much what bloggers do. Still, this time Steorts took this common failing a bit too far.

This is my confession: I did not emerge from the womb a fully-formed beer snob. I will admit to sneaking off to the bathroom during high school parties to pour out half-empty Budweisers (adolescence was a dark time for us all). For the first year or so of college, I was still grinning and bearing it. Most of us, I suspect, were in the same boat.

But then I started enjoying beer. Part of it was brute acclimation – if you drink anything long enough, you’ll develop a taste for it (nothing else explains PBR’s market share). More importantly, my beer-drinking horizons were expanding. Friends turned 21 and started venturing into Total Wine, the ubiquitous East Coast booze emporium. Suddenly, Miller High Life wasn’t the classiest thing you could drink on a Thursday afternoon.

But it wasn’t Chimay or Delirium Tremens that turned me on to micro brews. Instead, the “classy” beer for college kids was Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, a treacly confection that’s approximately eight parts sugary additives and one part hops. At the time, I swear it tasted like sweet nectar. I think we were all secretly relieved that beer drinking didn’t have to be such a chore.

After Cherry Wheat, the idea of social drinking suddenly made sense. If you’re 18 and Coors Light is the best you’ve ever known, the idea of enjoying a beer on your porch or sharing a six-pack with a few friends must seem utterly inconceivable. If you’re not drinking to get drunk, why subject your taste buds to such abuse? But a Cherry Wheat with dinner, a Cherry Wheat on your balcony, a Cherry Wheat to help you slog through that interminable sociology paper – that made sense. Sam Adams may be responsible for introducing me to the concept of drinking in moderation.*

A few weeks ago, I went down to the beach with some old college friends. We picked up a six-pack of Cherry Wheat for old times’ sake. Like many other adolescent fixations (Bright Eyes, a cute girl from that freshman history seminar), it hasn’t held up particularly well. But I still feel obliged to tip my hat to Sam Adams, because I don’t think I would have started drinking beer (as opposed to merely enduring it) if I hadn’t first encountered Cherry Wheat.

*If I had to reform our drinking laws, I think I’d allow minors to consume alcohol if they’re supervised by a parent or some other responsible adult. The idea being that adults not only moderate kids’ drinking habits, but they also can afford to buy the good stuff, which is better suited to social drinking.

I’m not a libertarian but I do share many beliefs in common with libertarians. That’s one reason I find this piece by Amanda Marcotte so incoherent. Leaping onto the anti-Koch bandwagon, Amanda comes to this conclusion about libertarianism:

But what all this points to is a very serious problem for libertarianism, whether Christian or secular.  As I noted earlier, libertarianism tends to spring up when you start to believe human beings exist to serve systems and institutions, and not vice versa.  But our system of government was laid out explicitly on the grounds that institutions serve human beings—basically, the founders were backed by a humanist philosophy.  If you disagree, let me point you to the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

Rights exist because of people.  Government exists because of people.  Markets exist because of people, and if those markets stop working for people, they should be modified until they do.  Libertarians take an opposite view, which is that their institutions—free markets for seculars, free markets plus the patriarchy plus the church for Christian libertarians—have the right of way when they come into conflict with the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of The People.  Pollution is no reason, in their view, to introduce environmental regulation.  Economic crashes shouldn’t result in economic regulation.  We’re all supposed to just see that as the way the cookie crumbles.

I’m simply not following the notion that somehow libertarians – all staunch defenders of individualism – believe that “human beings exist to serve systems and institutions” or that, if this is the case, in what sense they believe this in contrast to liberals who apparently do not. First of all, Amanda is arguing through assertion. She says libertarians believe this, therefore they must. She says that libertarians believe that institutions (including free markets?) trump “the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of The People”. This is nonsense. It never ceases to amaze me that people like Amanda are so distrustful of every institution except the government. She lists markets, the church, the patriarchy – but what about the state? Isn’t it every bit as powerful – indeed, a lot more powerful – than any of these other institutions – even allowing that ‘markets’ are an institution (and assuming she means corporations and is simply conflating the two)? The state is also an institution. And like the rest of these, it may be good or bad or neither, but it can certainly work against The People just as easily as Big Business.

It wasn’t so long ago that everyone just loved Cash for Clunkers. People thought I was a total crank when I scoffed. Even some of my fellow ideologues wavered.

On my now-defunct blog, I wrote,

Whenever I mention that paying people to destroy vehicles does not create wealth, I am inevitably — always, always, always — presented with one of the positive (but decidedly local) effects of the program, as if it negated the simple destruction of goods:

• American auto companies will be kept alive. Yes, but we could keep nearly any industry “alive” by paying people to continually destroy its products. This only proves that the industry probably shouldn’t be kept alive anyway. By the time it needs this kind of help, it should be allowed to fail.
• The environmental effects will be positive. Yes, but they’ll be tiny when we consider the effects of manufacturing and running the replacement car — and you’re still paying people to destroy goods.
• A lot of those cars were more or less junk anyway. Yes, but you’re making them 100% junk — the program’s own terms demand that they be rendered completely inoperative. How’s that an improvement?

…[But] countries can’t grow wealthy by destroying goods in exchange for pieces of paper. If they could, then there would be absolutely no reason to stop at cars…

No, the appropriate course would be to generalize, and to destroy all goods in exchange for government scrip. Then we could play Monopoly, I guess, for what all good the money would do. But we’d have to scrape a board in the dirt to do it.

That’s because money isn’t wealth. Money is at best a measure of wealth, which actually consists of goods. Money retains its value as long as there are goods to be traded for it. When the goods disappear, the economy grows poorer, regardless of how the money is shuffled around.

And the payback isn’t long in coming — today’s used car prices are soaring owing to reduced supply. (This link gives even more dramatic numbers, but I’m less sure of them. h/t Radley Balko.)

See how that works? You can’t get something for nothing. Cash for Clunkers turns out to have been a highly inefficient wealth-transfer program, that is, one that destroyed a bunch of wealth along the way. It gave wealth to those already relatively wealthy people who did the government’s bidding (that is, those who could afford to part with a used car and buy a new one). And now it’s taking wealth from those relatively poor people who need a used car today — in the form of higher prices.

Along the way, it destroyed hundreds of thousands of cars — that’s the real wealth these poor people don’t have access to anymore, because the scrapped cars aren’t a part of the economy.

And this is what passes for a successful government program.

In wine there is truth, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria. — Unknown

When I first started home brewing, the stereotypes were everywhere, the leftovers of a dark era. My parents worried about trouble with the law. My academic advisor made jokes about bathtub gin. It seemed like everyone’s first question was about exploding bottles. Their second was usually about lead poisoning.

All of which is a silly, unnecessary shame. Home brewing is both legal and safe.[1] Yet in many corners the taboo remains.

Prohibition hurt America in ways most of us can’t even begin to understand. It put us out of touch with the making of that most salutary of western beverages, beer. It made us that much more ignorant of our own culture and past. Prohibition didn’t kill the desire to drink, which appears to be immortal. But it did kill the old American beer culture, and it’s taken decades for a new one to emerge.

Prohibition hit beer the hardest in part because beer is bulky. Its relatively low alcohol content makes it hard to transport when compared to gin, which Prohibition tended to help. The popularity of the martini, for example, dates to the same era.

This is the so-called iron law of prohibition. It helps to explain everything from the death of American beer to the rise of blotter acid over peyote, and crack over powder cocaine: “The more intense the law enforcement, the more potent the prohibited substance becomes.” Under Prohibition, gin just made more money per unit volume.

It doesn’t help, either, that hop plants are hard to hide and have few other uses. Nor does it help that beer — unlike hard liquor — is pre-eminently a social drink. Beer drinkers are gregarious. You certainly can drink beer to get wasted, but its real use is in creating a slight, mellow, easy-to-manage buzz, perfect for pleasant, even elevated conversation. Beer can be as sophisticated, or as base, as needed.[2] But what it needs most is company. No one drinks martinis at a baseball game or a rock concert. Beer is the beverage of camaraderie.

Prohibition ripped a hole in America, and not just because it led to more crime, more poisoning, more alcoholism, and more corruption. It also killed the sociability of beer. And when it returned, that sociability wasn’t the same any longer. Whole generations came and went between then and now, hardly knowing anything other than Americanized pilsner beer, perhaps thinking that Americanized pilsner was beer — which is sort of like thinking that canned salmon is all you need to know about seafood.

Why did American pilsner prevail? It was undemanding all around. It appealed to new drinkers. It’s one of the least hoppy styles of beer, and certainly the cheapest, making it an easy start-up product at the end of Prohibition. (A hop field, like a vineyard, takes a few years to get up to speed.) The first-mover advantage was huge. Plus the idea of drinking something only very lightly alcoholic must have been appealing after all those years of furtive martinis. As a result, entire styles of American beer all but died out — bocks, California commons, porters, brown ales, schwarzbiers, rauchbiers, hefeweizens — the list is really appalling. Even after Prohibition ended, the beers didn’t come back. Commercial breweries had already won over American tastes.

Regulation took care of the rest. Even a small regulatory barrier — a bunch of forms, a modest tax, someone looking over your shoulder once in a while — can and will kill innovation. Who would go through all that trouble when the results were so uncertain? Here, the second mover advantage was greatest — let someone else take the regulatory risks. So almost no one did.

All that changed in 1978, when small-scale brewing for personal use was exempted from federal taxation and from the inspections and paperwork involved in it. Where commercial breweries were wary of risks, homebrewers embraced them. They dug up old recipes, invented new ones, compared notes, and perfected techniques and innovations that render home brewing dependable and relatively easy.

Today, the best and most original beers in the world are brewed at home. In the last three decades, homebrewers have done an enormous amount of work in bringing back American beer culture. As a result, American beer is possibly more diverse and of better quality than it ever has been. If you are ever invited to a party for homebrewers, drop everything and go. I mean it. And consider that beer is part of the American birthright, something we both can and should be able to manage on our own. A freedom, even.

—

[1] Except, as I understand, in Alabama, where home brewing is not legal, and where lead poisoning from moonshine remains suspiciously high. The Sahara of the bozart, indeed.

[2] Paul Fussell’s generally excellent book Class is no longer correct about beer, as it was written well before the homebrew revolution had borne any cultural fruit.