The Closet Racism of MSNBC

In today's edition of Impromptus, Jay Nordlinger has some absolute gems that bear repeating.  Here is one of them:

A commentator for MSNBC, that fountain of hate, said this about Herman Cain and white Republicans: “I think they like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place.”

And what would Cain’s place be? Federal Reserve banker, CEO, presidential candidate?

It's an absurdity that liberals today are able to play the every-Republican-is-a-closest-racist card and get away with it.  Has anyone actually read any history before?  The Democrat party was solidly in the South from around the 1830s to around the 1960s, and the Republican party was created in the 1850s in partial response to the growing slave power of the South.  In 1915, Woodrow Wilson held the first movie screening in the White House.  The movie?  It was D.W. Griffith's The Birth of A Nation.  I could go on, but it's something too low to waste any more time on.  It's just odd that the Republican Party seems to attract the inherent racism label from Democrats when history says something else entirely.

More on Romney's Flips and Flops

This past weekend, I posted George Will's latest column in which he took Mitt Romney to task for his muddled and contradictory views on a number of different topics.  No doubt this is a problem for Romney as it looks like he is one of the front runners for the Republican nomination in 2012.

I have noticed that Democrats have now gotten on board the conservative attacks on Romney.  On Meet the Depressed, David Plouffe, Obama's senior political advisor, said that Romney has "no core" and on "issue after issue he has moved all over the place."  Jennifer Granholm, former Democrat Governor of Michigan, had similar sentiments later in the panel section.  The Democrats aren't even attacking the positions Romney is taking; they are attacking his seeming lack of conviction just as are conservatives. They obviously want to use this to drive a wedge between Romney supporters and conservatives who are very wary of the specter of a Romney presidency. And should Romney win the nomination, this will no doubt be a major problem in the coming months.

If Romney can give justification for his political positions, I think everyone will better be able to understand his thought process and how he thinks through issues.  In the debates, Romney has slid by without really having to talk on the level of principle.  For instance, how exactly is Romneycare in principle different than Obamacare?  He has never had to answer that seemingly straightforward question.  Or perhaps this question:  Gov. Romney, why are you now pro-life when, as little as ten years ago, you were pro-choice?  What changed?  Now, I understand that people can change their minds, even about the most important issues.  No one person--especially a politician--is going to be 100% consistent throughout their life.  What is important are the reasons for the switch.  The plausibility and thoughtfulness of the answers Romney may give to those questions would show how principled he really is.       

Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short

In yesterday's edition of the G-File (you can subscribe here if you don't already get it), Jonah Goldberg hit on an important theme that, for the most part, has gone virtually unnoticed.  Obama has lately been harping on the point that Republicans want the government to tell Americans that they are on there own.  Here is Obama during his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention:

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own. 

Goldberg has a number of good and funny insights but perhaps the most interesting is the idea that Obama's logic here implies Hobbes' conception of the state of nature.   Goldberg elaborates:

...philosophically, Obama's vision is 100 percent catawampus (that's right, catawampus) from the traditional American understanding of government. He sees civil society as a vacuum where, absent the federal government, we are autarkic, anarchistic individuals left to fend for ourselves, drinking puddle water and using cat fat for Chapstick...If the federal government won't do it -- whatever it is -- then we are all on our own. But that is not how the vast majority of Americans live. Nor do we define our understanding of communal, cooperative life purely through the prism of the federal government. If the federal government won't organize a bake sale at my kid's school, we are indeed "on our own," but we are not alone. 

In Hobbes' view, the state of nature is nothing more than a state of war where all are against all.  The central animating principle in human nature is the fear of violent death.  Government is instituted by social contract but the obligation upon which that contact stands is one completely void of any moral purpose since the obligation is propped up by passions and force rather than reflection and choice.  This means that before that contract, there are no obligations, no standards that bind anyone's actions.  Right and wrong, just and unjust, are meaningless and have no objective standards other than the positive law, or what is laid down by the sovereign. 

The Founders rejected this political philosophy.  James Wilson, a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, stated that "Hobbes's 'narrow and hideous' theories are 'totally repugnant to all human sentiment, and all human experience" in his Lectures on Law.  In 1775, Alexander Hamilton, in The Farmer Refuted, unequivocally rejected Hobbes (and Obama):

There is so strong a similitude between your political principles and those maintained by Mr. Hobb[e]s, that, in judging from them, a person might very easily mistake you for a disciple of his. His opinion was, exactly, coincident with yours, relative to man in a state of nature. He held, as you do, that he was, then, perfectly free from all restraint of law and government. Moral obligation, according to him, is derived from the introduction of civil society; and there is no virtue, but what is purely artificial, the mere contrivance of politicians, for the maintenance of social intercourse. But the reason he run into this absurd and impious doctrine, was, that he disbelieved the existence of an intelligent superintending principle, who is the governor, and will be the final judge of the universe.

Hamilton's prescription to this understanding was to "study of the law of nature" and the works of "Grotius, Puffendorf, Locke, Montesquieu, and Burlemaqui."  I would offer that same prescription to President Obama.  Even more than just sheer study, I would invite Obama to drop by his local church or boy scout service project to see what people are really like without direct government help and assistance at every turn.  Surely there is room for charity and everyone realizes that people do fall onto hard times, but as Ronald Reagan said, "The nine most terrifying words in English language are, 'I'm from the government and I am here to help."

Romney the Pretzel

In his much-hyped column, George Will disassembles Mitt Romney, the candidate.  Here is Will on Romney's principled stance on ethanol:

In May, in corn-growing Iowa, Romney said, “I support” — present tense — “the subsidy of ethanol.” And: “I believe ethanol is an important part of our energy solution for this country.” But in October he told Iowans he is “a business guy,” so as president he would review this bipartisan — the last Republican president was an ethanol enthusiast — folly. Romney said that he once favored (past tense) subsidies to get the ethanol industry “on its feet.” (In the 19th century, Republican “business guys” justified high tariffs for protecting “infant industries”). But Romney added, “I’ve indicated I didn’t think the subsidy had to go on forever.” Ethanol subsidies expire in December, but “I might have looked at more of a decline over time” because of “the importance of ethanol as a domestic fuel.” Besides, “ethanol is part of national security.” However, “I don’t want to say” I will propose new subsidies. Still, ethanol has “become an important source of amplifying our energy capacity.” Anyway, ethanol should “continue to have prospects of growing its share of” transportation fuels. Got it? 

And here is the devestating last paragraph:

Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this? 

Ouch.  But very true.  Will has hit on an interesting phenomena that has been with the Republican party and their language now for some time.  Is the problem with Obama is that he can't run government sufficiently enough like a business or is the problem that Obama has all but thrown the Constitution under the wheels of a moving bus?  Romney's argument always seems to imply the former but the candidate we need has to argue the latter. 

No Jobs For You

This is great:

Animals Have Rights Too!!

This story is unbelievable but it strangely enough falls in line with the general direction of jurisprudence in the modern day:

A federal court is being asked to grant constitutional rights to five killer whales who perform at marine parks - an unprecedented and perhaps quixotic legal action that is nonetheless likely to stoke an ongoing, intense debate at America's law schools over expansion of animal rights.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is accusing the SeaWorld parks of keeping five star-performer whales in conditions that violate the 13th Amendment ban on slavery. SeaWorld depicted the suit as baseless.

Laurence Tribe, professor of law at Harvard, gave his support of PETA's case stating that "[p]eople may well look back at this lawsuit and see in it a perceptive glimpse into a future of greater compassion for species other than our own."

So I guess the next logical step is to enact laws mandating that only animals that consent to be sold can be lawfully held by their masters  And concomitant to this is that animals will now have legal standing which means that they now will also have to abide by the laws, e.g., no urinating in public parks, and no more breaking into trashcans on garbage day.

Of course Tribe and other fellow supporters of animal rights in the law professoriat would never think of including fetuses as deserving of protection under the Constitution...

Romney's Pass

During a visit to Ohio yesterday, Mitt Romney declined to take a stand on Issue 2--a citizen-generated ballot initiative that, if voted down, would repeal Senate Bill 5, a law passed by both the House and Senate and signed by Governor Kasich.  SB 5 revises collective bargaining laws concerning all public employees, puts teachers on a merit-based pay system, and requires all public employees to pay 10 percent of their pension and 15 percent of their healthcare--something that already applies to the private sector and Ohio legislators.

Peter Hamby from CNN tweeted that during Romney's visit to phone banks full of volunteers calling Ohioans to support Issue 2, Romney refused to take a stand.  A Romney spokesperson later stated that “Gov. Romney believes that the citizens of states should be able to make decisions about important matters of policy that affect their states on their own.”  But back in June, Romney wrote a Facebook post that said the following:  “I stand with John R. Kasich and Ohio’s leaders as they take on this important fight to get control of government spending. Please visit www.BetterOhio.org for more information."  And today, Romney, seeming to sense the mistake he had made, issued a strong endorsement of Issue 2.

Romney seems to support Issue 2 but why would he, in an Issue 2 supporter-filled phone bank, decline comment?  So just because he supposedly feels strongly for states' rights, that means he now cannot make a reasoned judgement on anything completely within the border of a state?  How was he able to talk about and come to a judgement on that same issue back in June, decline to support that issue yesterday, and now today, decide that he can openly support it again?  This all makes no sense and does not bode well for a man who, to put it mildly, has not exactly held firm to conservative principles.