Walter E. Williams has an excellent piece entitled Destroying Liberty in which he accurately describes the process that leads ordinary Americans to support destructive legislation.

But if you were to ask, say, the average senior citizen whether Social Security, Medicare and prescription drug subsidies should be continued, he would probably answer yes. The same would be true if you asked a college professor whether higher education should continue to be subsidized, or a farmer or a dairyman whether their products should be subsidized, or a manufacturer whether there should be tariffs and quotas on foreign products that compete with his product. The problem with congressmen producing favors and privileges to all interest groups is that it creates what none of us wants: massive control, numerous dictates and micromanagement of our lives.

Read the whole thing.  Superb as it is, he missed the hate factor.  There are a significant number of Americans who have been taught to hate the very things that make this country a success.  They hate the very idea of corporations for example.  The term “free enterprise” makes their blood boil.  The sight of a nice home, on a nice lot, with the American flag flying makes them want to spit.  They have a hateful name for it; “McMansion”.  They would tend to agree with Obama when he says with contempt that some Americans are clinging to guns and religion (the first two amendments in the Bill of Rights).  I suppose deriding Americans who “cling” to property rights, free speech, the right to a fair trial by jury, etc., will come next.  When FDR was pushing his Raw Deal back in the ’30s and ’40s, there was a famous (to me) quote, and I paraphrase; “For the first time, the rich are going to feel the same pain that the poor have felt.”  Spread the misery.  If I’m suffering, angry, and unhappy, then by damn, if I can’t do anything else, I will make you suffer, make you angry, and make you just as miserable as I.  That seems to be the mentality.  It’s far easier to tear down someone else’s house than to build one of your own.

Now we’re faced with the possibility that one of these America haters is going to be elected president.

It’s been years since I read Ayn Rand’s book, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, but her essay, The Anatomy of Compromise was recently brought to my attention. (If you haven’t read the book, it is highly recommended.  Trust me.  No really.)

In the essay, Rand defines three rules “…about the working of principles in practice and about the relationship of principles to goals.”  Leaving out her extensive lead-in:

1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.
2. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.
3. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

Does that remind anyone else of the Democrats and Republicans?  In my observation (feel free to correct me) the “basic principles” of the Democrats, if they can be determined by long-term observation, are founded in altruism, or at least feigned altruism, and “the common good” which can only come about though central planning.  If left to run our own lives, we would surely self-destruct.  If there’s a principle in there, it is the conclusion that people are inherently destructive, and must therefore be directed in their daily lives by someone else or all hell will break loose.  Forget for a moment the issue of the left’s success rate in achieving “the common good”, or the means of coercing us into compliance.

The Republicans talk about smaller government, free enterprise, (and maybe once in a while they’ll give us a passing mention of property rights) with the protection of “individual” rights (in fact there is no other kind) being the proper role of government (actually, they’re seldom ever that clear in their rhetoric).  If there’s a principle in there, it’s the conclusion that people are basically rational in judging their self-interests, and people are capable– that people running their own affairs and owning the fruits of their initiative is not only right, moral and just, it results in the best outcomes in terms of quality of life– win, win.  You may have heard it somewhere.  Our country’s founders talked about it a lot.  But how consistent have the Republicans been?  “Not at all” would by my immediate answer.  Are their stated goals really much different from the stated goals of Democrats?  Better schools, better health care, yadda, yadda.  Are their means to those stated goals all that different?  There are differences, but is the message clear and consistent?  How many times have we heard “Certainly, we all want the same things for our country..”

No, we don’t.  Far from it.

What I want is the protection of rights and the dispensing of justice.  The better schools, better health care, and all the rest, naturally follow from that, and in most cases those things are not the business of government (it’s protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, ensuring our security in our persons, houses, papers and effects, not giving us happiness, and not giving us houses, papers and effects).

To a leftist, the mere exercising of one’s rights (say, in hiring and firing for example, or allowing smoking in a restaurant for another, or in owning a gun in some cases) is a violation.

It seems to me that’s a pretty clear-cut difference in principles, yet which Party has been the most consistent?  You guessed it– The Dems.  Republicans are all over the map, talking about the virtues of free markets and the need for subsidies literally in the same sentence, espousing the benefits of small businesses and vowing to “crack down” on “Big Oil” at the same time, as if rights are inversely proportional to size or success.

Not that the Dems are consistent, and they’re certainly not rational, but the Dems are much more consistent than Republicans, in my observation.

In claiming to support individual rights while supporting gun laws and mandating certain lightbulbs, the Republicans showing hypocrisy.  When talking up the value and power of entrepreneurialism and trying to “save social security” at the same time, they’re being inconsistent.  When G.W. Bush tells us the free market is the best engine of prosperity in history, then piles on a new federal education program, he’s being ridiculous.  A joke.  When promoting his prescription drug give-away, Bush is trying, lamely, to “out Democrat” the Democrats.  Who’s going to fall for that?  I hear Republicans talking and I think, “Yea!.  Boo!  Yea!  Boo! Hell, I give up!”  It’s a mess.  They’re not using principles to guide either their goals or their means.  Even if there are a few snippets of rationality in there at times, there are few signs that they actually believe them.  No consistent principles are visible, unless you consider the act of trying to please mutually exclusive interests a “principle”.  It’s this sort of behavior that caused Ayn Rand, over forty years ago, to say that the death of conservatism can be blamed more on the self-described conservatives than on anyone else– they give conservatism a bad name.

Being more consistently pro-big government, pro-redistribution, and collectivist, and with neither side being rational, the pro-big government side seems to have been winning consistently for generations.  During Bush’s eight years, we’ve seen the federal budget grow from about 2 trillion to about three trillion dollars, and there’s no end in sight no matter who wins the next election.  The measurable “Change” seems to be primarily a matter of speed and not of direction.

“Oh, but we all want the same things for our country. Surely we can agree on that much.”

No we don’t, and we can’t.  Realizing that is a first step toward getting our “…opposite basic principles clearly and openly defined”.  I submit that Reagan’s popularity was in his more consistent application of clear and open principles (specifically American principles) to his goals and to his means of achieving them.  Now what are the Republicans going to do about it?

Read The Anatomy of Compromise in the book, Capitalism, and get back to me.

I attend an invitation-only forum of a few dozen people, many of whom it turns out are educators.  Someone started a thread on how to improve education (Joe, you know where this is going).  The discussion was proceeding as you might expect– this person with experience was discussing details of education with another experienced person.  Someone suggested that compulsory attendance was a bad idea– that if a kid doesn’t want to be there, he can be a disruption, etc.. So I took the bait and posted a response.  Here it is, with some minor edits;

You’re on the right track. Make attendance optional. The next step would be to make funding optional too, as in; if I choose not to send my kid to a “public” school, I don’t have to pay a cent for it– I can instead pay some other school. If I choose the grocery store on the West side of town, I don’t have to still give 120 dollars a week to the grocery store on the East side. If the East side store wants my 120 dollars per week, they’ll have to do a better job of serving my wants and needs, so as to entice me back. Hence the store which better serves the wants and needs of the community gets the “funding”.  Further, we don’t have to fight with one another over how to best run “our grocery store”.

I point out to all here that we are not discussing the details of how Microsoft, Linksys, Apple, or Maxtor should be forced by the legislature to operate, yet we are using computers that only a few years ago would have been the subject of science fiction. We’re not debating the policies of Wal Mart to figure out how the state can get them to sell at low prices and still make enough money to be self-sustaining, or Addidas shoes, or Coca-Cola Bottling Company, etc.. It’s not as if we need to have legislators deciding how these companies should be run at all– if one of them starts to do a poor job, there will be ten others to take its place. Besides, how many legislators have successfully run a school, or a software company, or a microchip manufacturing plant, or a bottling plant?

Poorly-run government programs go on and on and on for generations, sucking up more and more resources. In the case of schools, whole generations are getting ill-educated and it just keeps perpetuating itself.  Poorly-run businesses, on the other hand, fail, and pretty quickly, and then they are gone. Then someone else buys their assets and starts something better, all with zero participation from idiots in Congress, zero participation from the county commissioners, zero involvement from the loons in city council, and at zero cost to the taxpayer and zero coercion.

This is what was once known as a “Free Market”, which is a system that has proven itself superior in every measureable way for many generations, though in this enlightened age, no one believes a bit of it.

Today, we all know perfectly well that if the government didn’t provide shoes for our children, no child would have shoes unless they were lucky enough to be born into a rich family. So anyone who opposes full, compulsory, free shoes, is anti-shoe, or a shoephobe, and obviously hates both kids and shoemakers! These people are known as “conservatives” or “neo-cons” etc., and are absolutely terrible, evil people, who want all poor kids to go barefoot so their rich buddies can make even more money and won’t have to pay their fair share in taxes.

Therefore, we should be discussing what our state and federal legislators are going to do to provide shoes (and computers and software) to all kids. We all know that that is why this country was founded and our constitution written– so everyone would have everything they need, provided by the state, so they can all be healthy and happy, and think the right thoughts, and feel warm and fuzzy, and never have to be upset or uncomfortable or have to work too hard.

The post, by design, is rather incongruous with the rest of the thread, yet, I thought, to the very heart of the matter (two toddlers are concentrating on their game of catch at the edge of a cliff and you want to change the whole subject by striking up a discussion on subjects as ethereal and unrelated as situational awareness and the law of gravity?  Dude!  We’re playing catch here?).

It’s all been said before of course, by others more eloquent than I, but they are elephants in other people’s living rooms.  This is your living room.

I expected at least someone to respond, but nothing.  They went right on, discussing the details of how this or that tweak would make things better in education.  Hello; this is the elephant in your living room speaking.  Socialism doesn’t work.  It leads to stagnation and decay every time its tried.  It may look great on paper but it starts with the ignorance of how people actually interact in real life, and everything it tries to accomplish is founded on that ignorance.

And then there is the pesky little issue of rights (the right to choose where your education dollars go, for instance) but how dare I bring that up.  We’re discussing public education here, after all.