Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Politics

  • Why Democracy Fails

    In Preserving Democracy, Elgin Hushbeck quotes Alexander Fraser Tytler:

    A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. (quoted on pp. 26-27)

    I thought about that quote today when I read the somewhat deceptively titled story Current Mood Toward Congress: Throw The Incumbents Out. I don’t mean that CQ Politics intentionally wrote a deceptive title. Headlines always miss part of the article. The title refers to the part of their survey results that indicates that 53% of voters do not want to see the majority of members of congress reelected next year.

    The next paragraph has the really interesting result, and I knew it was coming, because I’ve seen this before. A statistically similar number, 52%, do like their own representative.

    Now unlike poll results that indicate that people hold contradictory views, and there are some of those, I think this points to a different problem. Let me use my own congressional district as an example. Here in the Florida’s 1st congressional district there is one issue on which any candidate who wishes to be elected must take a particular stand–keeping “our” military bases here.

    Further, this favors the incumbent absolutely, because he will undoubtedly be able to argue that his seniority makes him better able to protect those bases from any closure. Now I’m not necessarily saying that the bases here are not well placed. But that wouldn’t matter to the voters. The bases are well placed because they are a substantial part of the economy of this area. If our congressman were to become completely convinced that some substantial base or even a facility on a base should be closed, he would be committing political suicide by advocating it.

    When somebody else’s congressman makes that argument for the bases in his district, of course, the voters in this district are not so happy.

    It’s less obvious sometimes in other areas, because the projects and the money are spread over a wider variety of locations and types of activity. But a congressman must produce stuff for the voters or he’ll get voted out. That’s why we hear a great deal about reform out of congress, but we aren’t likely to get reform that prevents members of congress from doing nice things for their districts.

    The same problem continues more broadly. Rather than admitting that smaller government will have to provide less services, many people on both sides of the aisle like to argue that somehow increasing the efficiency of government and reducing waste will let us keep the services, reduce (or not increase) taxes, and still receive more.

    Unfortunately, we always count chickens before they’re hatched in this case. A current good example is health care. Now I think we do have a problem, and that we are not a nation that can actually refuse basic care to our citizens, whatever the economic problems. Currently, we require emergency rooms to provide stabilizing care, for example, which spreads the cost to those who pay. But in writing health care plans, everyone counts savings that they believe they will get.

    Those deficit projections about health care? They are guesses. They’re making assumptions about what various options will do to prices, and how much they can save.

    I could do this with my family budget. Let’s say I want to buy a car today, but I lack $100 of the monthly payment. In order to justify my deficit spending to my wife, I tell her that we’ll get $100 out of the grocery budget. (Since I do the grocery shopping, I might get by with that–or not!) I would say that by saving $25 per week on our grocery shopping we can afford the new car.

    Now there’s two ways to go about this. First, I could find and test ways of saving the money and then test them for a month or so. Can I reduce our grocery bill enough by buying bulk, making better use of the freezer, and so forth? If I go out and test this, and only buy the new car after I know it will work, I’m being responsible. On the other hand, I could simply guess that I can manage the savings, go buy the car, and then find out.

    In the case of health care, we guess certain savings can be achieved. Bluntly, the current proposals are so complex, I really can’t tear them apart on that point because I would have to give up my income producing work (and see what that would do to my budget!) in order to have time to follow it all. I do know, however, that advocates of the public option tend to assume that it will force the general price of insurance down, using the very capitalist argument that the public option will involve an increase in competition.

    Whether you buy that argument or not (and I don’t), the fact is that we haven’t actually seen it work. Advocates of health care reform something like what we have proposed are probably annoyed to have this sort of thing pointed out. After all, we need reform, so we all need to be as positive as possible. Opponents will crow by saying that this shows that the plan won’t work. The bottom line is that the voters are being promised something, but are not truly being told the cost. Would they support it if they truly knew the cost? I don’t know, but we’re not going to get to find out.

    I don’t regard this as a partisan issue. Republicans tend to take a similar approach on defense. We can plan strategy and buy equipment because we need whatever it is, but talking about cost-benefit is often regarded as anti-military and anti-defense. But we need to have good cost-benefit analysis, testing, and most importantly, we need to change our strategy, whether on domestic or foreign policy based on actually observing the results.

    Such a thing will only happen if voters demand it. I think that’s unlikely, because I think voters would rather hope that one or another politician can manage to come through and produce something from nothing.

  • A Note on Independent Voters

    I’m sure it’s a requirement that political commentators try to discover trends in voting patterns. It’s also not surprising that they try to make those trends deal with either the Democratic or the Republican parties. But I think that they simply don’t comprehend the meaning of “independent.”

    I’m just one independent voter. I won’t register as a member of either of the major parties, and I truly vote independently. I examine everything I can find about each candidate in a race. (Have you ever tried to discover anything useful about candidates for the district utility board?) When I vote, it is a decision that the particular candidate is the best person in that race and in that race only. It doesn’t mean I’m likely to vote for the same person next year. If that candidate is a Democrat is doesn’t mean I’m suddenly leaning Democrat. If he or she is Republican, it doesn’t mean I’m leaning Republican.

    For me, the meaning of being an independent voter is that those labels don’t impact the way I vote, except with reference to how party connections might impact the way a particular candidate will govern. I cannot be counted on for a trend. It’s back to a clean slate in each election.

    I don’t know how well that applies to independent voters in general, but the unscientific poll of the independent voters I know, including a few who are registered with a party so that they can participate in primaries, but are no more loyal to the party label than I am, indicates that it’s a pretty common feeling. Party endorsement of a candidate means nothing. Each candidate must earn respect.

    For myself, I will add that I don’t favor or disfavor the incumbent. Since I go out of my way to study the candidates, I will know the names of all of them. I’m never voting on name recognition.

    So don’t seek a trend. I’m not starting to lean one way or another. If the candidates of the major parties–or any party–want my vote, they must earn it 100% for each candidacy.

  • Ed Brayton on Fox News Bashing

    … here, and for the most part I agree with him. I think there is a certain justification for media bashing, simply because journalists keep expecting us to regard them as unbiased when they are not. But the bashing isn’t unbiased either … and so on ad infinitum.

    One of the key skills required today, I think is distinguishing the data points from the opinion and the framing, and then trying to reframe the issue for yourself from the data points. Of course, learning how to fact check is also quite useful.

    But Ed is quite correct–there is no such thing as purely objective reporting.

  • Prayer in a Public Meeting

    If I were invited to offer the invocation at a government event at which people of any faith should be welcome, I would have to refuse. This is a stand that has been misunderstood by both supporters and opponents of separation of church and state. I have been told that I lack the courage of my convictions because I would not go and utter a purely Christian prayer under those circumstances. Of course, I must note that it is not the courage of my convictions that is lacking, but rather I don’t have the courage of someone else’s convictions. On the other hand I have been told that I am intolerant because I will not offer an interfaith prayer.

    I was reminded of this issue today when Wesley Elsberry linked to this story about a council member in Tampa who chides speakers for offering too sectarian of prayers, which she believes violates the separation of church and state.

    I have an initial issue that I’m not going to address in detail, and that is how it can be that a prayer in general doesn’t violate church and state separation, yet a prayer in the name of Jesus does. The first would seem to exclude all those who either do not believe in God at all or do not believe in a way that includes the validity of prayer.

    And that does relate to my problem a little bit. Personally I think prayer is largely personal. Now I don’t mean it can’t be public. Matthew 6:5-6 has been cited ad nauseum as a prohibition of all forms of public prayer, but I think that verse has been asked to bear an excessive weight. Jesus is addressing making a show of one’s piety. When might one pray publicly and not be making a show of one’s piety? In my view, that would be a case of corporate prayer, when a group of people join together in prayer.

    Corporate prayer involves a certain amount of agreement, a certain commonness of purpose in worship. When I am asked to pray publicly, I do not feel that I need to preach a sermon in prayer. I’m sometimes a bit amused when someone informs God of all the things that the congregation needs to know, normally while saying something like “you know Lord …”

    My conviction is that if I am offering my prayer publicly, but it is not a corporate prayer, it automatically becomes a show. I should not pray something corporately that I cannot fully invite everyone to participate in, as I would in a pastoral prayer, or an invocation in a Sunday School class, or in a group offering the blessing over a meal. I have even left out praying before a meal when meeting with non-believing friends. They know my convictions, and I don’t think God will miss the meal because I chose not to impose my beliefs on a group.

    I do think that invocations at governmental meetings are a public show. The council (or congress) as a whole is not going to seek God’s will. The meeting should be welcoming to all citizens, not just those who pray, and the prayer cannot be offered in real unity nor in any sort of expectation of obedience. I believe that a critical part of prayer is listening, something that should be included in our acts of prayer as congregations.

    Are there any ecumenical or interfaith circumstances under which I do believe I can pray? Yes, I believe so. I can do so in practically any ecumenical setting, though I will shape my prayer to the best of my ability so as to make it truly corporate. I can and have engaged in prayer in an interfaith setting where all believe in God and all believe in prayer.

    The latter is a bit difficult for me, as my view of both ecumenism and interfaith dialog is that it is a conversation between strongly held beliefs, not a least common denominator collection. I think that continuing constructive conversation is much more important than is some sort of structural unity.

    So I would say that the council member in the story is only half right. Were I invited to pray at that council, or any other, I would just say no. I’d pray for them at home or with others of like mind. I’d be happy if the individuals prayed according to their conscience and understanding of God.

    The public display? No.

  • FTC Disclosure Rules for Blogs

    Over on my company blog I indicated that these rules were generally common sense, as in if you make money off of something you should disclose the fact that you do.

    Of course, you can’t count on the government to use common sense even in implementing common sense. Thus somehow if print news organizations get free copies for review, they don’t have to disclose it, but bloggers must. Even an affiliate link is compensation and must be disclosed.

    I don’t have problem with the disclosure requirement. In fact, I try to be more forthcoming that is required. I do have a problem with the idea that we need government regulators to do this sort of thing. I think it’s a pretty clear example of how to waste taxpayer money while accomplishing less than good competition would manage.

    There’s a good article and discussion at Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits.

  • The Death of Good Judgment

    I’ve really been wanting to write something about this for some time, but I haven’t, and don’t, have time to do it justice. But I saw a couple of other posts that begin to address some of the issues.

    My deep concern is with ideas such as zero tolerance polices, the great push to make the foibles of youth into major crimes, and finally the equivalent push to move more and more juvenile crimes to adult courts.

    I think there are genuine reasons to be concerned about the juvenile justice system. There are good reasons to put certain young offenders into the adult system. The problem is that the public seems to be much more concerned about being hard on criminals than about solving problems of crime.

    Making sex offenders out of teens involved in sexting is a good example of the legal system run amuck. This is much more properly a parental issue than one for the state. Only in extreme cases of parental neglect should the state get involved, and then I would suggest the involvement should be with parents. In no way do I want this to make things easier for purveyors of child porn–adult pornographers preying on children. They’re scum and we need to go after them. But using the same laws on teenagers playing around, even if one can stretch the letter of the statute to fit, is nothing other than malicious.

    Having said all that, let me link to a couple of recent blog posts that called my attention back to this.

    The first is a post on a new blog for me, AnotherThink, which I found via C.Orthodoxy. I find myself thoroughly in agreement with the sentiments expressed in that article, and have added the blog to my RSS reader.

    The second comes from the blog Classically Liberal, and describes the case of a six year old cub scout who brings, you probably guessed it, a multifunction knife to school. But instead of sanity, the school has a zero tolerance policy. Now they want the child taken to juvenile court. Sounds like an excellent reason to homeschool.

    Both of these cases illustrate a lack of willingness to permit and/or to exercise simple good judgment. One can determine not to tolerate a weapon at school without simultaneously overreacting to either mistakes or purely innocent actions. But we prefer to hide beyond a policy that requires merely the application of a detailed set of rules without any regard for how those rules work out in practice.

    I said two things, but here’s another I remembered, Hoosier Grandmother Arrested for Purchasing Cold Medication. This was surely a case for the application of some good judgment, which was not forthcoming. Of course, I would blame the legislators who passed the law in that form in the first place.

    I realize that criticism and court cases against people that exercise judgment make people afraid to do anything that’s not micromanaged by the book. I continue to believe that such an attitude will be ultimately very destructive.

  • President Obama and the Peace Prize

    This is just a quick early reaction, and my reaction is that it is too early to judge President Obama’s impact on world peace. Yet he has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for which nominations were closed two weeks after he took office.

    I want to be clear that what I like most about President Obama is his approach to foreign policy. I think it is much needed. This includes the fact that he has a bipartisan team. One of the key elements of any foreign policy is sustainability and a purely one-party approach isn’t sustainable.

    But I think the single most important element of any policy, provided it is morally and ethically justifiable, is its long term effectiveness. In public policy we seem to want to proclaim a plan for accomplishing something, or sometimes even just the intent to accomplish it, and then act as though we have succeeded.

    It is as though I wrote a new family budget, itemizing savings in various categories, and then started spending the money before I had actually lived on the new budget, and successfully saved the claimed amounts. (Watch as this happens in the health care debate–we’re spending money we imagine we’ll save.)

    In foreign policy, President Obama has declared a new era of engagement with the world, but he has done, as yet, very little actual engaging, and what he has done, has yet to be evaluated. I’m optimistic about many of these things, but optimism isn’t success.

    I think this is very much premature, and is much more of a political message than an award for actual accomplishment. I would hope the president can fill the shoes for which supporters, well-wishers, and starry-eyed dreamers have fitted him, but that would be impossible. Unrealistic expectations beget disappointment. Every stumble–and there will doubtless be some–will now look larger than life. He can now do exceptionally well, and yet be regarded as a failure.

  • Giving Away a copy of Preserving Democracy

    … on the Energion.com eZine, which is currently in development. But I’m trying to bring a few people over there, so a copy of Preserving Democracy will be given to a randomly selected commenter who writes a relevant comment.

    In mid-October I will be changing the topic to science education, and offering a $10 B&N gift card. The Energion.com eZine will go into full production in January 2010, but even now I am paying for a few articles and offering a few prizes.

    I now return you to the normal, more personal, content of this blog.

  • Singing Praise to President Obama?

    CBS is reporting on a school that has children singing songs about President Obama’s accomplishments. I note that the story compares the reaction to this to the reaction to Obama giving a speech. I thought the speech reaction was way overblown. The president of the United States should be able to address the nation, and to address schoolchildren as well.

    But even in the context of Black history month as the school superintendent said this was, I think this is deplorable. Use historical figures, celebrate current African-American citizens, celebrate President Obama as our first African-American president, but leave out the songs of praise for his specific policies.

    In both religion and politics, it seems some teachers fail to comprehend the idea of neutrality.

    HT: Dispatches

  • Doing Something

    Talk is cheap, and I’m a good talker. This past Sunday I visited a new Sunday School class and met a young man who told me that he was opposed to abortion. He went on to say that he believed that if you talked about something you should be willing to act, and in his case, that meant going out and getting the home study done and being willing to adopt. He and his wife had done precisely that and had adopted an older child.

    I deeply respect someone who takes that sort of action. There are many ways in which one can act. Some of us are called upon to proclaim, but even then I think the proclamation gets weak if one isn’t personally involved in taking action in some way.

    Today Allan Bevere has a great post on the health care debate and how the church should be engaged. What can we do? Do we really believe the gospel has power? Consider this near Allan’s conclusion:

    … But in the midst of the debate over how the Principality and Power called the United States can initiate health care reform, I believe that the church should be ahead of the game and work to cover as many people as it possibly can, and thereby demonstrate a powerful witness to others concerning what is possible. The church is a sleeping giant with resources available to it, both spiritual and physical, that can shake the very foundations of every civilization, but they are under-utilized because we continue to think the nation-state is where the real action is. We continue to believe that Caesar is more effective in accomplishing tasks than the people of God brought into existence by nothing less than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. [emphasis mine]

    I think our greatest difficulty with sharing or proclaiming the gospel in this country is that we do not show the power of the gospel in the way we live as a church. If the gospel has power–resurrection power–then we should be able to point to something to show for it, as the early disciples pointed to an empty tomb.