A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Last word

For what it’s worth (not much at this point, presumably), my top three reasons for supporting Obama:

—A saner foreign policy. Hard core peaceniks and non-interventionists (among whom I count myself) will, I suspect, find much to dislike about an Obama foreign policy, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it will be far preferable to McCain’s amped-up neoconservatism.

—Executive restraint. Obama has expressed views on the scope of executive power that would constitute a big and important step back from those of the Bush administration. Friends of limited, constitutional government shouldn’t be comfortable with the unitary executive theory promulgated during the Bush years.

—A serious approach to global warming. Unfortunately, we haven’t heard much about this issue during the general campaign, (The candidates have preferred to dwell on the more popular slogan of “energy independence.”) but this may well be the defining issue of our generation. Obama’s positions on cap-and-trade and renewable energy are superior to McCain’s (especially on the key issue of pollution credit auctions vs. giveaways), and I’m fairly confident he’ll push harder for implementing them.

There are other reasons I’m voting for Obama, but those are certainly among the most important. I don’t agree with him on everything, but, for my money, he clearly passes the threshold of acceptability and even gets into the zone where I’m genuinely enthusiastic about voting for him (first time that’s happened!).

Happy voting!

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5 responses to “Last word”

  1. jayd

    About cap-and-trade: Do you still feel that way since the revelation that Obama plans to cut loose the coal industry if it doesn’t immediately conform to demands? (“You can build a coal plant but it will bankrupt you…” etc. and the “cost of electric bills will skyrocket”)
    That’s an awful lot of little people left to fend for themselves or will they all get degrees in renewable energy /clean coal technology?

    Reply
  2. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus

    Is it a sign of your political evolution that when you write, now, about limited, constitutional government you refer to subjection of executive power to the rule of law and the necessity of honoring human rights?

    When libertarians write of limited government they mean this in part, but they also intend what all other tribes of conservatives have in mind, government without any of the progressive, social democratic apparatus of regulation, paternalism, and re-distribution brought in since TR’s day.

    And some of them, famously including Ron Paul as we discovered during the primary season, also have in mind the sort of invocation of states’ rights and federalism against post-Civil War, post-WWI nationalism that provided a respectable fig-leaf for rejection of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as every other law or regulation aimed at stopping racial discrimination in the private economy as well as by states or municipalities, by such 20th Century conservative luminaries revered to this day as Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr.

    And libertarians aside, most conservatives never consider as examples of objectionable Big Government our gigantic, global military-industrial complex or the associated institutions of the increasingly threatening national security state comprising Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, all the bits and pieces of the intelligence community, and all the lesser parts of the federal police forces such as the ATF and the US Marshals Service.

    If I understand correctly, you share the concerns of civil libertarians, privacy-advocates, and progressives about the menace of the national security state, as well as anti-interventionist objections to our military-industrial complex of global reach.

    And it is evident that you reject conservative and libertarian opposition to the regulatory state so far as it seeks not only to protect the salubrity of the immediate environment and conserve the wonders and beauties of nature but also, as the present environmental crisis seems to require, to restrict industry severely in order to preserve the necessary balance of the eco-system, though at great cost to corporations and investors with large holdings of fossil fuels.

    Likewise, it is abundantly clear you reject their opposition to regulation aimed at protecting the well-being, interests, and even rights of animals.

    So, do you nowadays reject, outright and explicitly, conservative pleas for states’ rights and federalism in opposition to nationalism?

    Do you reject as well libertarian/conservative opposition to the regulatory state that keeps arsenic out of the toothpaste, lead paint off the walls and the toys, and bad food out of the supermarkets; and once in a while forces a manufacturer’s recall of defective autos for free repair or replacement?

    Do you reject their opposition to such frankly paternalistic and redistributive constructs of the Welfare State as Food Stamps, utilities subsidies, refundable tax credits, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to education, and Democratic schemes for universal health coverage?

    Have you come to accept that excessive concentration of wealth is politically objectionable so far as it is subversive of democracy, as are industrial concentration in general and media concentration in particular, though the latter two are also objectionable for economic reasons having to do with the benefits of competition?

    If the answers to these four questions are affirmative, how are you not a bald-faced liberal, nowadays, given your relatively libertarian commitments regarding social issues?

    Haven’t you now come to agree with the progressives that democratically responsible government needs to control and intervene in economic activity to protect the public interest, foster social justice, and further the public good?

    Weren’t you an outright libertarian, though, once upon a time?

    Reply
  3. Lee

    Whoa there, Torquemada! Call off the inquisition! 😉

    For starters, except for a brief and unfortunate flirtation with anarcho-capitalism, I was never so hardcore a libertarian as to embrace the total dismantling of the regulatory and welfare state. After all, even Hayek supported a minimum guaranteed income.

    I think there are (broadly-speaking) libertarian grounds (e.g. the harm principle) for supporting things like welfare, government-provided health care, health and safety regulation, etc. And I don’t think these are necessarily paternalistic.

    The concentration of wealth and general inequality is a little trickier. For a long time I was convinced by the argument that inequality per se doesn’t matter so much as reduction in poverty (or increasing incomes among people at the bottom of the distribution). However, I may be coming around to the view that these are more closely linked than I’d thought.

    The subversion of democracy argument is also worth considering, though I can’t claim I’ve given it a lot of thought. Suffice it to say, the last eight years have pushed the limits of the degree of inequality that I think should be tolerated in a liberal society.

    As for the nationalism vs. federalism/localism question, it seems hard to answer from first principles. In theory, I’m sympathetic to the Catholic principle of subsidiarity and think government closer to the people would be, other things equal, more accountable and democratic.

    However, this presupposes equal access to and participation in decision-making, and there are ample historical examples of local government being oppressive and intervention from higher levels being necessary to secure basic human rights (segregation being the most obvious and salient example). Ron Paul-style libertarians are, in my opinion, far too sanguine about the benevolence of local government; this may have something to do with the fact that Paulistas and their ilk are more comfortable with social conservatism enforced at the local level.

    I’m intrigued by proposals from some on the left and right for a more decentralized structure of governance, but I think this has to go hand-in-hand with protection for individual rights at every level.

    Maybe what prevents me from being a true-blue liberal is my Millian insistence that the burden of proof for social regulation or sanction of behavior rests on those proposing the regulation. That is, legal coercion is at least morally problematic, even if there are good reasons for using it in many cases.

    For what it’s worth, I mostly still stand by what I wrote here: https://thinkingreed.wordpress.com/2005/04/19/instead-of-a-political-philosophy/

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  4. Lee

    Oh, and on the coal issue: it’s clear that what Obama was saying was that, under cap-and-trade, coal will get phased out because it will become too expensive to be profitable on account of all the greenhouse gases the industry emits. This is an unavoidable side-effect of any carbon-pricing scheme: “dirty” energy sources will eventually have to be replaced by “clean” ones.

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  5. Lee

    Here’s a fuller reporting of Obama’s remarks than the one that’s been making the round in the right-wing blogosphere, incidentally:

    “I voted against the Clear Skies Bill. In fact, I was the deciding vote. Despite the fact that I’m a coal state. And that half my state thought that I had thoroughly betrayed them. Because I think clean air is critical and global warming is critical. But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives.

    “But let me sort of describe my overall policy. What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade policy in place that is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anyone out there. I was the first call for 100% auction on the cap and trade system. Which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases that was emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market. And the ratcheted down caps that are imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I’ve said with respect to coal–I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter, as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it. That I think is the right approach. The same with respect to nuclear. Right now, we don’t know how to store nuclear waste wisely and we don’t know how to deal with some of the safety issues that remain. And so it’s wildly expensive to pursue nuclear energy. But I tell you what, if we could figure out how to store it safely, then I think most of us would say that might be a pretty good deal. The point is, if we set rigorous standards for the allowable emissions, then we can allow the market to determine and technology and entrepreneurs to pursue, what the best approach is to take, as opposed to us saying at the outset, here are the winners that we’re picking and maybe we pick wrong and maybe we pick right.”

    http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/energywire/2008/11/the_last_minute_obama-mccain_c.html

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