Über die Freiheit / de libertate

Ilya Somin,

If Obama wins, he will have a strong Democratic majority in both houses of Congress to work with. This state of affairs is likely to lead to a significant expansion of government even in the best of times. However, now is clearly not the best of times. It is a time of economic crisis. And economic crises are also excellent opportunities to expand the powers of government - opportunities that politicians rarely let slip.

Obama’s ideological orientation also plays a role in my thinking. While I believe that his foremost objective is to get elected and reelected, I think he’s also an ideological big government liberal. His record in Congress and in Illinois reflect that. Obama might be willing to set aside ideology for the sake of political self-interest if the two conflict. But if he takes office at a time of crisis with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, there won’t be any such conflict between political self-interest and his big government instincts. The two will in fact be mutually reinforcing. [The Volokh Conspiracy]

In nurseries, and boarding schools, I fear, girls are first spoiled; particularly in the latter.  A number of girls sleep in the same room, and wash together.  And, though I should be sorry to contaminate an innocent creature’s mind by instilling false delicacy, or those indecent prudish notions, which early cautions respecting the other sex naturally engender, I should be very anxious to prevent their acquiring indelicate, or immodest habits; and as many girls have learned very indelicate tricks, from ignorant servants, the mixing them thus indiscriminately together, is very improper.

To say the truth, women are, in general, too familiar with each other, which leads to that gross degree of familiarity that so frequently renders the marriage state unhappy.  Why in the name of decency are sisters, female intimates, or ladies and their waiting women, to be so grossly familiar as to forget the respect which one human creature owes to another?  That squeamish delicacy which shrinks from the most disgusting offices when affection or humanity lead us to watch at a sick pillow, is despicable.  But, why women in health should be more familiar with each other than men are, when they boast of their superiour delicacy, is a solecism in manners which I could never solve.

In order to preserve health and beauty, I should earnestly recommend frequent ablutions, to dignify my advice that it may not offend the fastidious ear; and, by example, girls ought to be taught to wash and dress alone, without any distinction of rank; and if custom should make them require some little assistance, let them not require it till that part of the business is over which ought never to be done before a fellow-creature; because it is an insult to the majesty of human nature.  Not on the score of modesty, but decency; for the care which some modest women take, making at the same time a display of that care, not to let their legs be seen, is as childish as immodest.

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

From the Reason symposium on Obama.

Bruce Bartlett,

Libertarians have to decide which is more important to them. But they must also consider that Congress will be overwhelmingly Democratic regardless of who wins the presidency. I think it is more likely that Obama will restrain Congress’s worst instincts, as the Clinton administration often did on issues such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, than that McCain will be able to do so with nothing but a veto pen. On balance, I think there’s a better chance that an Obama presidency will end up being preferable to a McCain presidency from a libertarian point of view. To put it another way, I prefer another Bill Clinton to another Gerald Ford.

Deirdre McCloskey,

Obama’s characteristic pose is listening. I’ve heard that when McCain works a room he finds out who is powerful and goes to them (”Excuse me, but there’s someone over there who matters more than you”), but Obama listens in an egalitarian way. Good on him. Remember, though, that we libertarian populists had similar hopes for Jimmy Carter, and we even thought Bill Clinton was listening.

Virginia Postrel,

The president’s power has a face, and Obama’s most fervent supporters believe he can repair the world with his face alone. Perhaps they’re right, at least for the first month or two. We can only hope that he will respect the multiplicity of American dreams and the unpredictable ways in which their pursuit provides the basis for a better future.

Jesse Walker, 

Now the bad news. There’s a host of other broadcast regulations that Obama has not foresworn. In the worst-case scenario, they suggest a world where the FCC creates intrusive new rules by fiat, meddles more with the content of stations’ programs, and uses the pending extensions of broadband access as an opportunity to put its paws on the Internet. At a time when cultural production has been exploding, fueled by increasingly diverse and participatory new media, we would be stepping back toward the days when the broadcast media were a centralized and cozy public-private partnership.

It’s hard to imagine President Obama trying to bring back the fairness doctrine: Even if he’s prone to breaking his campaign promises, it’s just dumb to invite a fight with a big, noisy enemy that’s able to instantly mobilize an army of angry listeners. The real danger is more subtle and more mundane. It’s a bipartisan bureaucracy slowly, steadily increasing its power. [Reason]

David Henderson, 

Obama emphasizes that he would cut taxes for people with incomes below $200,000. Interestingly, though, he would not cut any tax rates on ordinary income. Instead, he would grant various tax credits and phase them out as people’s income increases. This means, ironically, that although many people’s taxes would be lower under Obama, their marginal tax rates would be higher. Within the income range over which the tax credit phases out, for every additional dollar the person makes, he loses some of the credit, adding an additional tax rate on top of the statutory tax rate. This means that not just high-income people, but also many modest-income people, would have a reduced incentive to make income under the Obama tax plan.

While by free-market standards, McCain’s proposals are far superior to Obama’s, both have given away the store by voting earlier this month for central planning of financial markets. [Forbes]

Don Boudreaux:

Since telling Joe the Plumber of his wish to “spread the wealth around,” Barack Obama is being called a socialist. Is he one?

No. At least not in the classic sense of the term. “Socialism” originally meant government ownership of the major means of production and finance, such as land, coal mines, steel mills, automobile factories, and banks.

But what about a milder form of socialism? If reckoned as an attitude rather than a set of guidelines for running an economy, socialism might well describe Senator Obama’s economics. Anyone who speaks glibly of “spreading the wealth around” sees wealth not as resulting chiefly from individual effort, initiative, and risk-taking, but from great social forces beyond any private producer’s control….

Wealth, in this view, is produced principally by society. So society’s claim on it is at least as strong as that of any of the individuals in whose bank accounts it appears. More important, because wealth is produced mostly by society (rather than by individuals), taxing high-income earners more heavily will do little to reduce total wealth production. [Christian Science Monitor]

Economist Art Carden, continues the skepticism about Barack’s policies.

Both Senator Obama and Senator McCain have offered numerous proposals that are almost audacious in their economic illiteracy. As president, Senator Obama would do well to reexamine the economics of the changes he is proposing. Especially in a turbulent economy, many of his proposals exemplify exactly the kind of change we don’t need. [The Independent Institute]

Reason survey’s a large swath of people about their voting, past and present.

Brian Doherty 

Who did you vote for in 2004 and 2000? I don’t vote, and don’t expect I ever shall. Being even one-scintillionth responsible for placing the unbelievable and unspeakable powers of the current U.S. government in the hands of any of the people seeking it strikes me as irresponsible in the extreme. Besides, as everyone knows, those who vote have no right to complain about the outcome.

Todd Zywicki has changed his mind about Obama:

Maybe I’m just slower at this than others, but it really took a long for it to sink in to me exactly how far left Obama really is. On every single issue that I am aware of, he seems to be at the far left end of the Democratic Party spectrum. I mean really out there.

I think that my slowness to really pick up on this was due to several factors. First, Obama’s demeanor is essentially moderate–he doesn’t come across as a Howard Dean crazy type. I think this leads one to assume his policies are moderate. Second, my resistance to McCain was really quite strong–I’ve criticized him here before, especially for the way it seems that he approaches problems. Third, until recently McCain has really run a terrible campaign in terms of explaining the differences between himself and Obama in terms of illustrating exactly how far left Obama is. Fourth, because of media bias, the media has tended to reinforce the idea that Obama is a moderate and not to highlight the embarrassing parts of his message.

Perhaps most fundamentally, given the history of the world over the past 25 years I think I just had assumed that no serious politician or thinker would in this day and age hold the sorts of views that Obama seems to hold. Raising taxes in a recession, protectionism, abolition of the secret ballot for union elections, big spending increases, nationalized health care, and most appallingly (to my mind) the potential reimposition of the “Fairness Doctrine”–I mean this is pretty serious stuff. And when combined with a Democratic Congress, I think we may be talking about (to use Thomas Sowell’s recent phrase) a “point of no return.” I guess I just assumed that Obama would be sort of Bill Clintonish–”the era of big government is over” and all that stuff. That he would have absorbed the basic insights of recent decades on taxes, trade, regulation, etc.

On Sunday Drudge was headlining that a radio interview from 2001 showed Obama favoring redistributing wealth via the court. However, as anyone who actually listened to the interview and took it in context could tell, it said no such things. The best commentary on Drudge’s ridiculousness comes from David Bernstein, someone not at all enamoured with Obama. He also makes a good point about the rhetoric surrounding this issue.

It’s true that most Americans, when asked by pollsters, think that it’s emphatically not the government’s job to redistribute wealth. But are people so stupid as to not recognize that when politicians talk about a “right to health care,” or “equalizing educational opportunities,” or “making the rich pay a fair share of taxes,” or “ensuring that all Americans have the means to go to college,” and so forth and so on, that they are advocating the redistribution of wealth? Is it okay for a politician to talk about the redistribution of wealth only so long as you don’t actually use phrases such as “redistribution” or “spreading the wealth,” in which case he suddenly becomes “socialist”? If so, then American political discourse, which I never thought to be especially elevated, is in even a worse state than I thought.

The most important challenges and opportunities that confront any of us derive not from our cultural or sexual identities, not from our ethnic or racial conditions, but from our common human condition. I am a husband, a father, a son, a teacher, an intellectual, a citizen. In none of these roles is my race irrelevant, but neither can identity alone provide much guidance for my quest to adequately discharge these responsibilities. The particular features of one’s social condition, the external givens, merely set the stage of one’s life. They do not provide a script. That script must be internally generated; it must be a product of a reflective deliberation about the meaning of this existence for which no political program or ethnic category could ever substitute. [Boston Review]

The Atlantic has an excellent article up about transgendered children and the issues involved.

Spack’s own conception of the psychology involved is uncomplicated: “If a girl starts to experience breast budding and feels like cutting herself, then she’s probably transgendered. If she feels immediate relief on the [puberty-blocking] drugs, that confirms the diagnosis,” he told The Boston Globe. He thinks of the blockers not as an addendum to years of therapy but as “preventative” because they forestall the trauma that comes from social rejection. Clinically, men who become women are usually described as “male-to-female,” but Spack, using the parlance of activist parents, refers to them as “affirmed females”—“because how can you be a male-to-female if really you were always a female in your brain?”

I found this section, interesting and important. 

Transsexualism is far less common than homo­sexuality, and the research is in its infancy. Scattered studies have looked at brain activity, finger size, familial recurrence, and birth order. One hypothesis involves hormonal imbalances during pregnancy. In 1988, researchers injected hormones into pregnant rhesus monkeys; the hormones seemed to masculinize the brains but not the bodies of their female babies. “Are we expecting to find some biological component [to gender identity]?” asks Vilain. “Certainly I am. But my hunch is, it’s going to be mild. My hunch is that sexual orientation is probably much more hardwired than gender identity. I’m not saying [gender identity is] entirely determined by the social environment. I’m just saying that it’s much more malleable.”

Vilain has spent his career working with intersex patients, who are born with the anatomy of both sexes. He says his hardest job is to persuade the parents to leave the genitals ambiguous and wait until the child has grown up, and can choose his or her own course. This experience has influenced his views on parents with young transgender kids. “I’m torn here. I’m very ambivalent. I know [the parents] are saying the children are born this way. But I’m still on the fence. I consider the child my patient, not the parents, and I don’t want to alleviate the anxiety of the parents by surgically fixing the child. We don’t know the long-term effects of making these decisions for the child. We’re playing God here, a little bit.” 

Even some supporters of hormone blockers worry that the availability of the drugs will encourage parents to make definitive decisions about younger and younger kids. This is one reason why doctors at the clinic in the Netherlands ask parents not to let young children live as the other gender until they are about to go on blockers. “We discourage it because the chances are very high that your child will not be a transsexual,” says Cohen-Kettenis. The Dutch studies of their own patients show that among young children who have gender-identity disorder, only 20 to 25 percent still want to switch gender at adolescence; other studies show similar or even lower rates of persistence.

The most extensive study on transgender boys was published in 1987 as The “Sissy Boy Syndrome” and the Development of Homosexuality. For 15 years, Dr. Richard Green followed 44 boys who exhibited extreme feminine behaviors, and a control group of boys who did not. The boys in the feminine group all played with dolls, preferred the company of girls to boys, and avoided “rough-and-tumble play.” Reports from their parents sound very much like the testimonies one reads on the listservs today. “He started … cross-dressing when he was about 3,” reported one mother. “[He stood] in front of the mirror and he took his penis and he folded it under, and he said, ‘Look, Mommy, I’m a girl,’” said another.

Green expected most of the boys in the study to end up as transsexuals, but nothing like that happened. Three-fourths of the 44 boys turned out to be gay or bisexual (Green says a few more have since contacted him and told him they too were gay). Only one became a transsexual. “We can’t tell a pre-gay from a pre-transsexual at 8,” says Green, who recently retired from running the adult gender-identity clinic in England. “Are you helping or hurting a kid by allowing them to live as the other gender? If everyone is caught up in facilitating the thing, then there may be a hell of a lot of pressure to remain that way, regardless of how strongly the kid still feels gender-dysphoric. Who knows? That’s a study that hasn’t found its investigator yet.” 

Indeed the whole article made me rethink my views on this issue. This article puts forth both sides of the issue and put a lot of doubt in my mind that transgendered children are necessarily transgendered.

…they’re usually part of a union.

Advanced Education, Employment and Labour Minister Rob Norris received a raucous and not very friendly reception at the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour convention in Regina Thursday.

Most of the more than 600 delegates left their seats during his speech, at the Conexus Arts Centre, and gradually gathered at the back of the room.

They shouted disapproving comments at Norris and almost drowned out his speech with rousing renditions of the “solidarity forever” song.

Many of the delegates held one of their arms straight up above their heads in a closed-fisted gesture of solidarity and defiance.

Comments such as “bull shit” and “shame” were directed at Norris, as he continued with his speech, which defended changed in labour legislation made by the government and generally discussed positive developments in the province. [Leader-Post]

Seriously? This is how unions air their grievances? And they wonder why so many people, especially of my generation, hate unions.

 A student group at the University of Alberta is fighting to make the school’s convocation ceremony a God-free event.

Specifically, the university’s Atheists and Agnostics society objects to one line in the service, when the chancellor charges graduates to use their degrees for “the glory of God and the honour of your country.”

The group is petitioning the university to either remove the line or change the wording to respect their “God-optional” views. [Leader-Post]

As an atheist and a student at a Canadian university I say to the Atheist and Agnostics of the UofA: Shut the fuck up.

What a waste of a battle. Instead of spending their effort showing people the light, so to speak, they decide to be pissants.

Richard Epstein explains the Obama he knows.

My Obama number is one. I know him through our association at the University of Chicago Law School and through mutual friends in the neighborhood. We have had one or two serious substantive discussions, and when I sent him e-mails from time to time in the early days of his Senate term, he always answered in a sensible and thoughtful fashion. And yet, for assessing the course of his likely presidency, I don’t know him at all.

It should come as no surprise that the traditionally liberal Hyde Park community is a veritable hotbed of support for Obama. So my manifest reluctance on his candidacy raises more than a single eyebrow: Loyalty for the home team counts.

The odd point is how his many learned and thoughtful supporters couch their endorsement. Almost without exception, they praise the man, not the program. Their claim is that Obama has proved himself to be a consummate politician who understands that the first principle of holding high office is to get reelected. His natural moderation in tone and demeanor, therefore, translate into getting advisers who know their substantive areas, and listening to them before making any rash moves. The dominant trope is that he will be a pragmatic president who will move in small increments toward the center, not in bold steps toward the left.

But is it all true? The short answer is that nobody knows. Virtually everyone who knows him recognizes that he plays his cards close to the vest, so that you can make your case to him without knowing whether it has registered. At this point, my fear is that the change in office will not lead to a change in his liberal voting record, as reinforced by a hyperactive Democratic platform. My great fear is that a landslide victory will give him solid majorities in both Houses of Congress, so that no stalling tactics by Republicans can slow down his legislative victory procession. At that point his innate pragmatism will line up with his strong left-of-center beliefs on issues that have thus far been muted during the campaign.

Put otherwise, Obama’s vague calls for change that “you can believe in” are, to my thinking, wholly retrograde in their implications. At heart, he is an unreconstructed New Dealer who can see, and articulate, both sides on every question–but only as a prelude to championing the old corporatist agenda with a vengeance.

Ilya Somin adds,

The danger of an Obama presidency is not so much the man himself as the political environment he is likely to have around him.

And earlier,

Obviously, nothing is certain. It could be that Obama’s agenda will be derailed by a massive political blunder on his part or by some unexpected event. It could be that the Republicans will somehow come back strong in the 2010 midterm elections. It could be that the economy will recover very quickly, curtailing Obama’s window of opportunity. I’m not certain that a major expansion of government will actually occur if Obama wins. But I do think it’s a strong possibility - certainly a greater than even chance. 

Will Wilkinson, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, makes the case for not voting, or at least the case for why democratic participation is overrated and misunderstood.

Importantly he makes the point I’ve been trying to say for a long time: there are many good–indeed bettter–ways to perform civic virtue.

Everybody has an incontestable and absolute right to his or her vote, but that doesn’t mean it’s always right to vote. Abstaining can be a way of looking after the public good, too. Not all of us have the energy, inclination, or opportunity to learn what we need to know in order to vote well. And that’s OK. There’s more to public-spiritedness than showing up at the polls. You can run a small business or coach a kids’ hockey team with the common good in mind. That’s an expression of civic virtue, too.

The New Yorker has two excellent pieces now out.

The Insiders: How John McCain came to pick Sarah Palin. 

Palin’s sudden rise to prominence, however, owes more to members of the Washington élite than her rhetoric has suggested. Paulette Simpson, the head of the Alaska Federation of Republican Women, who has known Palin since 2002, said, “From the beginning, she’s been underestimated. She’s very smart. She’s ambitious.” John Bitney, a top policy adviser on Palin’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign, said, “Sarah’s very conscientious about crafting the story of Sarah. She’s all about the hockey mom and Mrs. Palin Goes to Washington—the anti-politician politician.” Bitney is from Wasilla, Palin’s home town, and has known her since junior high school, where they both played in the band. He considers Palin a friend, even though after becoming governor, in December, 2006, she dismissed him. He is now the chief of staff to the speaker of the Alaska House.

The Third Man: Bob Barr’s Libertarian run for the White House.

For the most part, Barr seems to find the dim limelight of the political fringe uplifting. He is fifty-nine but has the stamina of a college freshman—he consumes up to fifteen shots of espresso a day, typically in five-shot installments. He has a graying mustache, and his hair, which was curly when he had more of it, is white and combed flat across his head. He is trim and compact, but can be expansive in his movements. While making an argument, he often furrows his brow, puts one hand in his pocket, and thrusts the other above his shoulder, in the manner of a prosecutor driving home a point. Throughout his career, aides have struggled to soften his image, urging him to get new glasses—his preferred frames are rectangular and black—or swap his jacket and tie for a sweater. For a political advertisement, a media strategist once had Barr filmed surrounded by bubbles. “There is this sweet little shimmer to the picture, and I think it subtly makes you go, ‘Awww,’ ” the strategist told me. “You have to go to troubles like that with Bob.”

CTV: We sat down that afternoon with Stephane Dion. I began by asking Mr. Dion about his comments that the Prime Minister has done nothing to put Canadians minds at ease about the current economic problems. I asked him, quote “If you were prime minister now, what would you have done that Mr. Harper has not done?” After beginning to answer the question, Mr. Dion asked to start the interview again because he did not understand the question. After a second false start, a member of Mr. Dion’s staff explained the question to Mr. Dion and there was also a third false start. Perhaps we shouldn’t have agreed to restart with the questioning and the Liberal campaign was anxious that his exchange not be broadcast and initially we indicated that it would not be, however, on reflection, CTV News believes we owe it to you to show you everything that happened.CTV: Thank you. Mr. Dion, thank you, good of you to come again.
Dion: Thank you Steve.
CTV: Mr. Dion the economy is now the issue in the campaign, and on that issue you’ve said that Mr. Harper’s offered nothing to put Canadian’s minds at ease and offers no vision for the country. We have to act now you say, doing nothing is not an option. If you were Prime Minister now what would you have done about the economy and this crisis, that Mr. Harper has not done?
Dion: If we had been the Prime Minister two and a half years ago?
CTV: If you were the Prime Minister right now and had been for the past years…
Dion: Right now, ok. If I’m elected next Tuesday, this Tuesday, is what you’re suggesting
CTV: No I, I’m saying if you hypothetically were Prime Minister today…
Dion: Today!
CTV: What would you have done that Mr. Harper [fading] hasn’t done.
Dion: I would have started the 30-50 plan that we want to start the moment that we’ll have a Liberal government. And the 30-50 plan, the 30…in fact the plan for the first 80 days, I should say, the plan for the first 80 days, once you have a liberal government… Can we start again?
CTV: Do you want to?
Camera Man: Sure.
Dion: Yeah.
CTV: Yeah, I’m OK to start again.
Dion: Yeah. Because I’ve been slow to understand your question. I don’t think…[Unintelligible]
Camera Man: I’m recording.
CTV: Mr. Dion good of you to come again.
Dion: Thank you Steve.
CTV: Mr. Dion, you have said today the Mr. Harper has offered nothing to put Canadian’s minds at ease during this financial crisis, you go on to say that he has no vision for the country, you say we have to act now, doing nothing is not an option. So I’d like to begin by asking you, if you were Prime Minister now, what would you have already done in this crisis that Mr. Harper hasn’t done.
Dion: I can’t…I don’t understand the question. Because are you asking me to…respond/answer at what moment? Today? Or since a week? Or 60 weeks? Or…
CTV: No, if you were, if you were the Prime Minister during this time, already…
Dion: We need to start again. If I was the Prime Minister starting when? Today?
Staffer: If you were the Prime Minister, when, since Harper’s been Prime Minister.
Dion: Back then, two years and a half ago.
Staffer: At any given time. We week or 5 years ago.
Dion: Two years, two years and a half ago.
Staffer: What would you have done differently between…between the time that Harper’s been there, to change things.
Dion: Yeah, but if I had been Prime Minister two years and a half ago we would have had an agenda… Let’s start again.
CTV: OK.
Camera Man: Still recording
CTV: Mr. Dion, thank you for coming.
Dion: Thank you Steve. Let’s start again [Laughs]
CTV: It’s a good job tape is cheap.
Dion: But give me a first date where I am Prime Minister, where I can figure out what you question is about.

They then played the interview in its entirety.

CTV: Mr. Dion thank you for coming.
Dion: Thank you Steve.
CTV: The economy is now the major issue we’re confronting in this campaign and on that issue you’ve said that Mr. Harper has offered nothing to put Canadian’s minds at ease and offers no vision for the country. You say we have to act now and doing nothing is not an option. I’d like to ask you Mr. Dion: If you were Prime Minister of Canada, today, what would you have done by now that Steven Harper has not done about this economic crisis.
Dion: I assume that I have been elected today Prime Minister, my first thing I would do is to consult with the Privy Council office, Minister of Finance to know exactly in which situation we are according to data. I would speed up the…my ability to appoint rapidly a government with the Minister of Finance, to be able to be Prime Minister right away, as soon as possible. And once we are the government we have 30 days of an action plan that we announce. So we will need to work with the regulatory agencies to have their best recommendation to protect our savings, to protect our mortgages, our pensions, and our jobs. I will speed up the investment in infrastructure and in the manufacturing sector to create economic activity and jobs now. Good jobs, well paid jobs. I will call a first ministers meeting to be sure that our great federation, everybody will work in coordination: provinces, territories and the federal government. I will consult the best economists of the private sector to ask them why are we ready [reeling?], us Canada and the world; what is their forecast for the situation in which we are. There are a lot of things that I would do. I would not be passive like Mr. Harper.
CTV: But looking back over the past two weeks, what specifically should Mr. Harper have done about this economic crisis that he has not done.
Dion: He did nothing. And what I will need to do is to be sure that the regulatory agencies will come with their best recommendations. There are things to examine. For instance, can we improve the insurance on the deposits of Canadians, as other countries have done. Can we put our seniors in a situation where they are not obligation to sell savings when the stock market is so shaky. There are a lot of things other countries are doing. Here in Canada Mr. Harper is doing nothing.

This entire exchange is a farce and Mr. Steve Murphy is an asshole. Dion clearly had an answer for both versions of the question but Murphy refused to rephrase his question in a clear way.
The question, as I take, was if Dion has been elected Prime Minister instead of Harper in 2004, what would have he done differently. Instead of asking “What would you have done differently in the past two years?”, Murphy chose to word the question like a moron.

The primary failure in the question is Murphy’s continue use of the term “now”. Now denotes immediacy, not reflection upon two years ago. Thus Dion was confused between alternating tenses. On one had Murphy wants to know about “now” while at the same time asking “what would you have done”. These two things are in contradiction with each other. For someone whose English is secondary, it is patently unfair to phrase something this awkwardly then not feel the need to change the wording as to make it more clear.

If you look at the beginning of the exchange, after the initial confusion, Murphy does correct Dion stating “If you were the Prime Minister right now and had been for the past years” and Dion responded to the “right now” comment, missing the “past years”. As such, he begins to answer the question as if he has just then been elected prime minister, but Murphy interrupts and says no, “if you hypothetically were Prime Minister today”. Of course that only makes the question even more confusing, rather than less. What Murphy should have said was “if you had been hypothetically elected in 2006″. But instead of this he continues to lure Dion into this linguistic trap.

At the second start Murphy continues to make the question even more confusing. He states “if you were Prime Minister now, what would you have already done”. This is a ridiculous sentence. He asks part of the question in the present and the second half in the past. That is, if you were there now, what would you have done in the past? It would have been very easy to explain that he meant two years ago instead of adding the more perplexing “already” contrasting the present tense “now”.

Following this exchange there is some discussion between Dion, a staffer and CTV. Yet this again shows the failure of CTV. The staffer is essentially on the right track explaining that Murphy meant that if he were Prime Minister in the past two which Dion responds that he understand that he means two and a half years ago. Indeed he even begins to explain what he would have done saying “I had been Prime Minister two years and a half ago we would have had an agenda…” He then ask to start over on the condition that they “give me a first date where I am Prime Minister, where I can figure out what you question is about.” However, as the question starts again Murphy asks the question in the same backwards manner. Despite Dion asking for a specific date Murphy repeats “today” or ‘now’ instead of specifying the past. As such Dion continues to answer the question on the basis of being elected today.

As such this interview is abhorrent, not for Dion’s misunderstanding, but for CTV’s ridiculous question and their lying about broadcasting it. Dion’s first language is not English and to compound upon that he has a hearing problem. Thus this interview is an example of the stupidity and insensitivity to people whose English is not perfect.

Harper and the Conservative’s response to this interview is also reprehensible. Harper claimed, “I don’t think this is a question of language at all. The question was very clear. It was asked repeatedly.” There is no way that this question was clear, especially to someone in Dion’s situation.

I think everyone should email CTV News and tell them that they are pathetic: atlanticnews@ctv.ca, news@ctv.ca.

And this is coming from a non-Liberal.

My prediction is as such:

Conservative: 130
Liberal: 89
NDP: 36
Bloc: 51
Green: 0
Independent: 2

I base this upon the average of these 5 predictions: DemocraticSPACE, UBC Sauder School of Business Election Stock Market, Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy, Ekos Election, & Election Prediction Project.

And I’m still not voting! I am, however, hoping for a Harper minority government. Socially speaking, I’m not a fan of Harper, but on the economy, he’s most certainly the best choice. (This reminds me a of post by David Boaz, A Libertarian Dilemma. Though I solved the issue by not voting.) I anticipate strong reaction from my Canadian history seminar when they hear I did not partake in the sacred democratic process.

Here is Bourque’s round up of polls:

cp: Con 34% Libs 25% Ndp 19% Bloc 11% Grn 9%
cpac: Con 34% Libs 27% Ndp 21% Bloc 10% Grn 8%
Ctv/g&m: Con 33% Libs 28% NDP 18% Grn 11% Bloc 10%
Ang/Reid: Con 38% Libs 28% NDP 19% Bloc 9%, Grn 6%

Here is a round up of a few historians’ comments on the election:

Robert Bothwell, University of Toronto 

“The Conservative ads continue to be really negative on Dion and they have more or less made his mannerisms and his speech and his appearance the election issue,” said Robert Bothwell, director of the international relations program at the University of Toronto.

[…]

“Coming into an election with a promise to enact something called a tax, no matter if it’s one cent on bubble gum is not a sensible tactic,” Bothwell said.

Stephen Clarkson, a political economy scientist at the University of Toronto, said Canadians may fear a Conservative majority led by Harper.

“He comes from the neoconservative school of thinking represented in the Bush administration,” Clarkson said.

Bothwell said he is an ideologue.

“He’s backtracked to keep himself in power until the right moment has arrived,” Bothwell said. “I don’t see any evidence of moderation. I do see evidence of political calculation.” [Associated Press]

Norman Hillmer, Carleton University 

Norman Hillmer, one of Canada’s foremost political historians, also recites “Hillmer’s law of Canadian politics: Once you are in power for a year, you’re in power for a long time. We have a very stable political culture (and) sitting leaders have a huge advantage.”

[…]

Stéphane Dion, whose entire political career has been defined by low expectations, almost certainly benefited from his surprisingly competent performance against Harper in the televised debates.

“Momentum has a lot to do with expectations,” Hillmer says.

“The media set Harper up as a great strategist. He was ‘the man’ and Dion was just this pathetic little figure. But Dion turned out to be a better campaigner than many expected. He grew stronger as the campaign progressed. He performed well in the debates. It gave him, if not a momentum shift, at least the power to stop the bleeding.” [Winnipeg Free Press]

Political historian Norman Hillmer of Ottawa said the wave of economic anxiety that swept Canada after the U.S. meltdown challenged Harper’s strategy of running on a platform of “more of the same” and forced the prime minister’s team to retool the message. He also threw $25 billion into the pot as late as Friday, money designed to make it easier for Canadian individuals and business to borrow money.

Duncan McDowell, Carleton University

Duncan McDowell, a history professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, said that as long as the Bloc is alive and kicking, it’s almost impossible to imagine a majority federal government being formed.

“You subtract 45 to 50 seats out of 308 and it takes a Nobel laureate in mathematics to try to find a majority in that,” McDowall said in an interview. “That is the new norm.” [The Windsor Star, editors note: there is no Nobel prize for mathematics.]

David Mitchell, Queen’s University

“I really, honestly believe that having the long weekend - the Thanksgiving family oriented holiday across the country before the vote - may be the most decisive part of the campaign,” said David Mitchell, a political historian who is a vice-principal at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. [The Windsor Star]

Michael Bliss, University of Toronto, Retired.

Historian Michael Bliss says there has been no other time in Canadian history that political leaders have seen such a serious economic crisis break in the midst of a federal election campaign, but he believes Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s “less activist approach” is the winning leadership message in these economically uncertain times.

There are economic precedents that had clear political consequences and carry lessons for today’s leaders, said Prof. Bliss author of Right Honourable Men: The Descent of Canadian Politics from Macdonald to Mulroney.

The closest comparison may be the Great Depression election of 1930, Prof. Bliss said in an interview with The Hill Times. The 1930 election was similar to today, when the seriousness of an economic downturn, sparked in 1929, remained disputed. Sitting prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King went into the campaign denying that the country was headed into difficult economic times, but the strategy didn’t pay off. The Conservative candidate, R.B. Bennett, campaigned on taking a more activist government approach, to tackle economic troubles and fix unemployment. As a result, he won a majority government from Mackenzie King. [The Hill, cached]

Jack Granatstein, York University, Emeritus

But as Canadian historian Jack Granatstein pointed out, Mackenzie King’s loss in 1930 meant his victory in 1935, because Mr. Bennett had to govern over the most difficult period of the Great Depression.

“By losing in 1930 he was lucky because it meant he missed the worst of the Depression. When he came back in 1935, things weren’t all that much better, but he got a huge majority just because he wasn’t Bennett,” Mr. Granatstein said. “If we’re in for a long recession, and Harper gets elected this time, the odds are pretty good that he won’t the next time.”

Just how well the next prime minister fares politically during an economic slowdown will depend largely on their leadership, and they may have something to learn from U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who governed during the Depression. Mr. Granatstein said Mr. Roosevelt was the most successful leader during poor economic times, although it was largely his charisma, inspiration and promises that succeeded. He also utilized the radio-what was then a new form of media. [The Hill, cached]

Giant douchecanoe.

The fact that Leiter, noted asshole and fucktard, thinks that pointing out “hackery” is uncivil, shows he’s a moron. The approach that Will took, compared to the approach that the childish Dworkin and Leiter took, tells you everything you need to know about the two. Keith Burgess-Jackson is a moron, but he’s right about Leiter.

Canada has the world’s soundest banking system, closely followed by Sweden, Luxembourg and Australia, a survey by the World Economic Forum has found as financial crisis and bank failures shake world markets. [Reuters]

I demand that someone buys me this shirt.

The Lutheran muckraker points towards towards an LA Times article about Palin’s religious beliefs. I have found the illustration the article sadly lacks.

Dianna Lynne Fisher became Diane Lynn Fisher
- Because telling people you like to be called Diane is too taxing at age 61. I suppose I should change my name to Bob.

Natalia Heinze Neves became Natalia Delicious Charmal Heinze
- Delicious Heinz: 57 Varieties

Aidan Thomas Andrew Klassen French Wotherspoon became Aidan Thomas Andrew Cowie Klassan French Wotherspoon
- Because sometimes 6 names just isn’t enough.

[Source: Government of Saskatchewan, The Saskatchewan Gazette, Sept. 19, 2008]

Facts.

In reading for my honours thesis I have to slog through many ideologically driven works bemoaning the supposed rise of free-market ideology in the 1970s and into the 1990s. A prime example of this is and edited work by Robert C. Allen and Gideon Rosenbluth called False Promises: The Failure of Conservative Economics. It’s hard to be a historian and read works with blatant falsities and partisan nonsense.

On page 8 in the introduction Allen argues that Milton Friedman and David Meiselman’s 1963 “The Relative Stability of Monetary Velocity and the Investment Multiplier in the United States, 1897-1958″ had “since been discredited”. This is misleading at best and a lie at worse. This paper stood, with Friedman and Schwartz’s A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, as the foundation of the monetarist school in economic thought. Throughout the 1960s and beyond there was much debate over the paper, but to say it was “discredited” without qualification or comment demonstrates the ideological blinders employed by the authors.

Factually speaking, Tim Hazledine contribution in chapter 6, “A New Direction for Macroeconomic Policy”, features some lazy errors. On page 79 he claims that “John Maynard Keynes had no formal training in economics; no PhD; was never a professor, and did not even hold an official university (as opposed to college) teaching position.” It is true that Keynes did not hold a PhD. In today’s intellectual climate this would be a significant issue, but at the turn of the century the PhD had not yet become the requisite for university teaching. (For example, teaching history at the University of Toronto in the first half of the twentieth century required merely an Oxford BA. See: Wright, The Professionalization of History in English Canada.) Many economists of the era did not have PhDs: John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, and A. C. Pigou.

As for Keynes training, Keynes spent much time around Cambridge at Marshall’s lectures, though not as a student. He completed a BA and MA and much of his effort was spent on economics, though formally his education was focused on mathematics, classics and philosophy. I don’t think it would be unfair to call him autodidactic in economics. Nevertheless, Hazledine glosses over the intellectual climate in which Keynes learned economics, including his father, an economist himself. I would compare this to David Friedman, son of Milton. David never formally studied economics, but he’s an economist.

Hazledine also attempts to make a point out of the fact that he Keynes never held an official university position, though he did hold a college position. For the remainder of his life Keynes was affiliated with King’s College, Cambridge. Though he spent much time as an advisor to the government and a public intellectual, he was also a lecturer. Thus to say he held no “official university teaching position” is wrong. This represents a misunderstanding of the constituent college system at Cambridge. Students and many professors are affiliated through the colleges but this doesn’t somehow negate their position with the university. Just because a scholar is at All Souls College, Oxford or Trinity Hall, Cambridge doesn’t, in any meaningful way, mean they aren’t part of the “official” university system.

Hazledine also exclaims that “Somehow, this did not prevent him from becoming one of the four or five truly great economists, and certainly the only one of this century.” It’s one thing to disagree with Milton Friedman, but it’s another thing to exclude him due to partisan bickering. There is no question that Keynes and Friedman together make up the two giants of twentieth century economics. Aside from calling Milton Friedman “conservative” throughout he also says that Friedman was “never really…happy with the activist, interventionist government polices of the ‘new economics’”. Unless Hazledine is trying to split hairs over the word “really” then he is ignoring the fact that Friedman Freidman was, at first, a through Keynesian. It was only in the 1950s that he began to change his mind.

If I have to read much more like this I don’t think I’ll ever finish my thesis.