Where Were All These Tea Party People Back When...

A divided Republican Party saw its most fiscally-reasonable, most libertarian wing understandably frustrated by the increase in the debt ceiling.  Unlike the rest of Congress and most of the press, the Tea Party folks can do math.  Yet you’d think from the howling on the left that Ron Paul had already won the 2012 election. 

The left’s pain is not perfectly proportional to the wellbeing of the nation, though if it were, this Weimar-worthy quote from Paul Krugman would be an indicator that the debt ceiling agreement is a fantastic one:

What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question.  After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy?  And the answer is, maybe it can’t.

Krugman has become Kent Brockman, who said: “I've said it before, and I’ll say it again: Democracy simply doesn’t work.”

(At least the debt ceiling increase went through without killing tens of thousands of ducks, though.)

As for the recurring and pointless charge that many Republicans failed to notice the massive national debt until recently and therefore – what, exactly?  Must not speak of it now or ever?  Let the record show that I, for one, have been freaking out for over two decades now about the size and expense of government – even writing an article calling Bush a socialist all of one year into his administration (and at the peak of his post-9/11 popularity). 

And still I recently had a (relatively new) leftist friend ever so briefly accuse me (or merely my kind – it was unclear) of suddenly worrying about big government now that a black man is at its head.  Let’s put it this way: I would be happy to replace him with

DEBTS WILL RISE

"[E]xtremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." -- Barry Goldwater (1964 Republican presidential candidate acceptance speech)

"[In their idle fantasies] the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor." -- Wall Street Journal (Review & Outlook)

"Our list of allies grows thin." -- Elrond (not to be confused with the Red Skull)

"The weapon of the enemy is a gift!" -- Boromir (having a bad idea)

The past few weeks have been among the most optimism-inspiring in American political history, and if they have taught us nothing else, it's that only a hardcore ideologue is likely to make the tough decisions, such as substantial government budget cuts.  The pseudo-cuts pushed by the Democrats and Boehner have been a joke – and would have been worse absent the rigidity of the Tea Party-affiliated, more libertarian members of the House, who sent the message that Congress could not move farther in the direction of more borrowing without cutting and that they would not be bribed and negotiated out of this principled stand.

The press bemoaned the inflexibility of extremists (perceiving them only on one end of the spectrum, of course, as in this inept interview of Sen. Rand Paul by CNN’s Don Lemon, pointed out to me by Michael Malice).  But sometimes extremists are the only ones who get practical results, and this blog will feature a “Month of Extremists” throughout August: punks, psychos, demigods, and more.

Being a moderate-yet-hip, open-minded, tolerant person does not mean you should condone the government spending trillions of dollars as if wishes were productive returns on investment.  Love the pot, the gays, the heretics all you like, tolerate nearly everything, but for crying out loud, STOP THE SPENDING.  And the borrowing.  And the tax increases.

And if you're one of those (very common) leftists who responds only by saying "Well, Bush spent lots of money," (A) you're exactly right and (B) saying that is not a solution.  It's like responding to the charge that your belief in Bigfoot is groundless with the observation that the Catholic Church covers up child molestation cases.  True, and that ain't gonna make Bigfoot real.  And we're all going to go bankrupt sooner or later unless we radically shrink the government.

And if you're one of those (also very common) leftists who is now tempted to say, "Oh, yeah, well, are you willing to cut off funding for…?" the answer is YES.  "But what about -- ?"  YES.  Most definitely, in fact.

As a practical, pragmatic, moderate fellow in my own way, I am necessarily an anarchist and want the entire government abolished.  I'm polite, so for the past two decades I really, really wanted to do it slowly and painlessly while the mushier Democrats and Republicans around me grrrrraduuuuually figured out how to privatize the National Endowment for the Arts and how to foster the growth of a more-accountable analogue of Blackwater mercenaries and so forth.  Too late!  Not my fault, but now: SHUT IT DOWN, SHUT IT DOWN, SHUT IT DOWN. 

Fifty states -- and for now, their fifty respective governments -- will get along just fine, nay flourish, without the central one in Washington, DC.  Getting rid

Crisis on Google Earth (and the Panopticon)

Ten thoughts on the fate of the whole embarrassing planet, to hold you over until I resume blogging one week from today:

•Laws against drug use didn’t rescue the talented and troubled Amy Winehouse (who, like the still-living Lindsay Lohan, seemed too battered to be so young – and, by the way, a twenty year-old Fiona Apple sure sounded more aged and experienced than she looked back when she released “Criminal” in 1997, though she did not look well either).  For many people, there’s no doubt a temptation to think that even-stricter drug laws might have done the trick, but addicts’ best hope is likely the decentralized and spontaneous intervention of those close to them, and even those quintessential experts – using judgment and sanctions far more nuanced than those the state can devise – may have a tough time inducing change.

•Norway has plenty of gun laws already, in case you were wondering.  Side note: as I mentioned on Twitter and Facebook, the Oslo killings, as a portion of national population, are about twice as big as 9/11, the latter killing about 1 in 100,000 people in the U.S. and the former killing about 1 in 50,000 Norwegians (the respective attacks, I mean, not Facebook and Twitter), though obviously with no remotely comparable global-political fallout from the Oslo attack. 

•The state can’t – and shouldn’t – be everywhere all the time (and apparently in Oslo it can’t even respond to a shooting in less than ninety minutes sometimes anyway, a reason to consider possessing the means of self-defense).  But the panopticon can further the cause of public shaming without being run by the state: Witness Fox Indianapolis’s highly morally-educational photo gallery of passed-out drunk people.

•If the drunks aren't trashy enough for you, note that Beavis and Butt-head are returning to MTV, and Cornholio is now being hailed as a messiah.

•I don’t think I’ve done anything embarrassing enough to worry about being seen by Google Earth, but I did recently have the slightly-unnerving experience of video-cruising around the online version of the Reagan Terrace/Kenwood Ave. area of Austin, TX (in vain) to see if I glimpsed me (and Scott Nybakken) on the road there, since we were walking in the area (visiting recently for the historic Deyo/Hanlon wedding) when passed by the Google Earth Car with its rooftop cameras.  Gradually cursoring my way up behind an image of myself would be both cool and creepy – even more so if instead of us it somehow turned out to be Philip K. Dick and Richard Linklater.

•I knew a particularly badly behaved person who hated the idea of the panopticon.  I’ll concede that it’s disturbing that the idea of constant surveillance, which we now take to be a characteristic (in principle if not yet in fact) of the entire planet, was something that my philosophical forebear Jeremy Bentham intended to try out solely on a model prison.  By this measure, dare I say it, we are becoming a prison planet – no, I don’t mean that one...right, I mean that one, speaking of Austin, TX people with ties to Richard Linklater (though it’s intriguing to hear that the Legion of Super-Heroes, most associated with the first linked prison planet, will be teaming up with the comparably-future-utopian characters of Star Trek in an upcoming comic book miniseries). 

•Speaking of comic book characters from the future, with some talk that a couple writers of X-Men: First Class like the badass cyborg character Cable and might like to put him in a film, I’d like to remind everyone roughly what Cable interacting with the future Katherine Pryde (perhaps as she tinkers with salvaged Sentinel technology) might actually look like on film:

Brunonian on Muppets

More than one person has pointed out to me this thoughtful article on the changing Muppets by Brown art/semiotics alum Elizabeth Stevens (class of ’04).

She notes that if there’s an anti-Muppet faction out there, they’ve kept quiet – though I think her generation owes Gen Xers an explanation for their attachment to the mediocre Labyrinth, which can’t hold a candle to the Muppet Movie.  The latter, among countless other wonders and great comedy bits, offers one of the best opening songs in film history.

As for the far less catchy and vaguely creepy Labyrinth, if a film can’t fully win me over despite featuring David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, and Muppets, it must be doing something wrong – not so unlike a play with U2, Spider-Man, and Julie Taymor.  Or spaghetti pizza.  

WWII vs. the 1960s

Speaking of people getting frozen in 1945 and waking up to a changed world in the 1960s (as this weekend's box office hero, Captain America, did in the original comics): 

I think you could argue that the only two films on the list of 100 highest-grossing (domestic box office) films of all time, adjusted for inflation, that aren't fantasy, action, or historical/epic of some sort are: The Bells of St. Mary's and The Graduate, the first a 1945 film about a priest and a nun rescuing a run-down New York City Catholic school and the other, a mere twenty-two years later in 1967, about a man fresh out of college being seduced by an older woman.  Make of that what you will. 

(And remember that cowboys are back on the big screen next week.)

As reassurance that my aversion to libidinous 1960s folk does not logically entail a fondness for 1940s Catholics, here is a photogallery of stupid things that Christians think look like Jesus, Mary, or a pope.  The one in there of a plant that some guy in India thinks looks like the elephant god Ganesh should give you perspective on how stupid the adulation over the other objects looks to us non-Christians, especially the kudzu that North Carolinians think looks like the Crucifixion.  It's plainly more like Swamp Thing (or in a deeper sense, Rorschach).  

I think I'd better go to a birthday party full of Skeptics tonight. 

P.S. None of this changes the fact that my favorite rock video of perhaps the past two decades is "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie" by the band meWithoutYou, the two brothers at its core, now beloved by evangelical Christian fans due to their spiritual themes, raised Sufi Muslim by parents converted from Episcopalianism and Judasim (and the band brought to my attention by self-described "ignostic" Daniel Radosh, author of Rapture Ready!).  Note the emphasis given the "crescent cookie" and "prayer" lines in this song.  Also: puppets!  Speaking of which: tomorrow, a note on Muppets.

Captain America and Daniel McCarthy

I mused yesterday that William F. Buckley might have grown more sympathetic to Ron Paul if Buckley had not died in early 2008.  I defer to the expertise of AmCon editor Dan McCarthy, who responds that he actually began to feel out Buckley on just that topic before the end.  He links a one-hour Firing Line argument between Buckley and Paul from 1988 that shows Buckley to have been quite skeptical during Ron Paul’s Libertarian Party run for the presidency back then, though we can’t be sure where things would stand today. 

Most of Buckley’s concerns are ones that might divide libertarians as well, such as whether the CIA is inherently bad or has simply done some bad things and whether some forms of taxation are more moral than others.  Just to keep people confused, I should note that I’m probably closer to Buckley’s position and Dan closer to Ron Paul’s on some things (though this may look very hair-splitting to anyone on the left). 

I have generally taken the Cold Warrior view, for instance, that the government should be granted a bit of leeway in responding to foreign aggression and domestic criminals even if it ought to be granted none in initiating aggression.  Founding the CIA in a world without foreign foes would be wrong, but founding it in response to such foes is not necessarily wrong and is, in an important sense, the fault of the foes (keep in mind Buckley in the linked video was talking to Paul one year prior to the collapse of European Communism – and it’s nicely prophetic that Ernest van den Haag at one point in the third clip says, “Well, foreign policy is not a tea party”). 

I don’t think this sort of thing has to be a coalition-splitter, but then, I’m neither an AmCon nor an NR editor. 

•••

Likewise, I would not fault a central government for starting a Super-Soldier program in response to the Nazi menace and thus creating the hero known as Captain America (about whom I’ll see – and probably enjoy – a movie on Sunday).  The main menace in this case will be the Nazi villain the Red Skull, and it must be fun for Hugo Weaving to be that character as well as Megatron in this same summer (not to mention Elrond, if you count the three-day re-release just last month of the Lord of the Rings trilogy). 

And he should be pleased that Transformers: Dark of the Moon earned over twice as much as Cars 2, though it would be even more satisfying to watch the Cars fight the Decepticons, of course.

Captain America is as iconic as – well, cowboys who fight aliens, anyway, and the new movie contains not only a post-credits teaser for next year’s ensemble Avengers movie but this irono-patriotic faux-USO number about Cap, reports BleedingCool.  That’s not bad, but even better, frankly, is Lorinne Lampert’s rendition of “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” 

I’m no mere flag-waving militarist, but I have to admit that

Book Selection: “Miles Gone By” by William F. Buckley (and a banjo player)

ToddSeavey.com Book Selection: Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography by William F. Buckley

David Barnes of the thinktank e21 tonight moderates a discussion at the Cato Institute about the causes of the recent divorce between the conservative and libertarian factions and the odds of reconciliation.  Even though I’ve had my differences with editors at National Review – including being plagiarized by William F. Buckley himself – I still think they are close to the truth about how to maintain the “fusionist” alliance, so I won’t quite dismiss them (or him) as part of a sinister cabal just yet.  (And Buckley’s almost line-for-line recreation of my column on Howard Stern in the mid-90s might well have been ghosted for him by a harried intern anyway, given how these things work.  I am nothing if not a tolerant and forgiving man, as the world knows.)

But Buckley’s collection of columns called Miles Gone By is much more about Buckley’s unique crypto-aristocratic persona than his plans for maintaining the right-wing political alliance.  Then again, the book does include an essay about his recurring ski vacations with Milton Friedman, which I suppose compensate for all the time he spent hanging out with John Kenneth Galbraith. 

The book was explicitly regarded by Buckley, in his 2004 introduction, as a likely life-capping quasi-autobiography, given its emphasis on personal, almost non-political pieces about Yale, growing up fancy in Connecticut (his sister, for instance, snubbing FDR during an equestrian show she rode in as a child when the Buckleys were growing up), music teachers from his childhood, and the like – and indeed he passed away four years later, and I wish we still had him around.  If you like Buckley the man, politics mostly aside, enough to enjoy hearing him wax ironic about sailing or vacationing or language-use, this is a fun collection. 

(One small example of his distinctive tone and his amusing ability to sound especially lofty while counseling humility: asked during his failed NYC mayoral campaign whether he had been called “delusional” by fellow candidate John Lindsay for saying they’d known each other at Yale, Buckley replied, “I’m told he said I’m having ‘delusions of grandeur.’  Grandeur was not defined, while I was at Yale, as having the knowledge of John Lindsay.”)

Buckley’s attitude was not wholly unrelated to his policy positions, of course – he embodied an attachment to old, traditional, refined things, but he was also a free-marketeer and occasional party animal, so he often served as a model for keeping the factional peace.  He notes in one essay here that editing both fusionism-founder Frank Meyer and paleoconservative Russell Kirk was perhaps the greatest strain on his diplomatic skills. 

Lest conservatives reading this blog entry take this as evidence that libertarian sympathizers like Meyer never belonged in the coalition in the first place, though, it’s worth remembering that Frank Meyer stayed on good terms with NR and the conservative establishment, whereas Kirk, despite all their lionizing of him, grew to detest mainstream conservatism, thinktanks, and the Republican Party, as his widow, who speaks fondly of Rand, is only too happy to tell people.  There are fewer party-line people in the party than you’d think, and diversity is a good thing (in fact, Kirk often said so in his writing, seeing homogenization as one of the ugliest aspects of modernity).

If Buckley had outlived the 2008 presidential campaign, I could imagine he might even have become an ardent Ron Paul fan in time, which would have helped speed the right’s education along immensely.  Buckley was anti-Iraq War, after all.  Paul is admittedly a radical, but given the urgency of our economic situation (with complete collapse perhaps arriving in two weeks as I type this), I think we now need radicalism – economics-focused radicalism – instead of the slow cultural turning of the ship of state that was conservatism’s forte for a half-century.  That we’ve run out of time for such subtle methods is almost as tragic for the right, in its way, as the fact that regulating and spending have now come to naught is for the left. 

Libertarianism is our only practical option now, and we’d better use it quickly.  I am not oblivious to the nuances that may be lost in the process, but despite what David Brooks might tell you, we can’t afford them.  We cannot expect everyone to learn sensible economic policy overnight, but we ought to be able to agree on this: The Federal government is bankrupt and must now be shut down altogether – simply get rid of it and let the states take over, since it has failed and has run out of money (even NASA, as Austin Petersen, who gave me my copy of Miles Gone By, knows).  The states will then be free to experiment with different economic models – single-payer healthcare for Vermont, Perry-led growth in Texas – as they so choose.  Everybody wins instead of ending up in the poorhouse together. 

Instead, right now, liberal pundits like young Ezra Klein are coming perilously close to self-parody, very nearly literally claiming that government spending for the sake of spending really is the key to rescuing an economy, even if government can’t spend wisely.  The technocratically-inclined liberal wonks will admit that spending our way out of bankruptcy seems counter-intuitive.  And goddam it, they ought to more seriously consider the possibility that it’s counter-intuitive for a reason.

I want to go back to the not-so-distant days when we could

A Harry Potter Conclusion, a Grant Morrison Prelude

Emma Watson is reportedly staying at Brown after all, Jacob Levy (Professor of the Dark Science) informs me.  I had a feeling everyone would band together at the old school in the end.

OK, enough with Harry Potter, undergrads, and Todd’s Brown Schooldays; on to Captain America.  And speaking of comics, here’s me with Grant Morrison, about which, more on Reason’s site in the days ahead -- and a little on Twitter last night:

A Sinestro Plot (and Grant Morrison reminder)

Remember: tonight starting circa 6pm, I'll be tweeting about seeing comics writer Grant Morrison at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble.  His appearance comes amidst fan anxiety over DC Comics' impending relaunch of all its superhero comics series. 

I will grant DC this: We've all been assuming September will be a squeaky-clean, potentially bland, "iconic" reboot, with current plotlines being wrapped up quietly this summer before the relaunch in order to leave a clean slate for hoped-for new readers in the fall.  I think, though, they might instead be setting up major game-changing cliffhangers prior to the relaunch.  Or at least...

•They claim the final pre-relaunch Batman ends with a huge shocker and the first September Detective kinda looks like it might actually have the severed head of the Joker on it.

•They've pretty clearly signaled that Superman won't be married, which I thought would just be due to the reboot...but they didn't say exactly why he won't be married and, interestingly, the penultimate issue of the current Superman series ends with a criminal threatening to kill Lois Lane unless Superman (temporarily retired) re-emerges.  [UPDATE: Oh, yesterday they did say it's just because in the new universe he's young, single, working with Lois's boyfriend, and lacking living parents to boot -- leaving Clark "isolated" and "alien"; hang in there, big guy.] 

•And while the above may just be typical fleeting story moments, the one undeniable shocker is that the star of Green Lantern #1 in September is...Sinestro!!  They accepted the long-time villain back into the Green Lantern Corps (after various signs of genuine and even heroic reform on his part) and ejected Hal Jordan for his constant rebelliousness, as the final scene of the current series. 

So September may not be quite as simple as expected -- which is good, frankly, even if Sinestro's the only real twist here. 

And after that movie last month, maybe it's best Hal take some time off anyway. 

NO BORDERS, NO BOUNDARIES: Lou Dobbs vs. Grant Morrison

I’m pleased to see that a gender-bending, bald, Scottish anarchist, Grant Morrison, will be writing the adventures of Superman come September, and it reminds me that I am not just in favor of “open borders” but rather of the complete abolition of borders.  I’m a “no borders” guy, if you will. 

In fact, it’s not borders but Barnes & Noble (ha!) that I’ll head to to see Grant Morrison in person – and tweet about it, starting circa 6pm Tuesday night, followed by an 8pm visit to the Bitter End to hear my neighbor Carey Yaruss sing.  (But tonight, Monday, we’ll gather and chat about politics at Langan’s at 7:30, for the penultimate time prior to the Great Transformation, about which, more in the months ahead.) 

I’m not denying an influx of immigrants can be a disruptive thing (with costs as well as benefits), or that some will be better behaved than others, but in a world of ever-easier mixing and matching – and ever easier communication and transportation – is it not swimming against the tide to try and prevent people crossing the arbitrary divides that governments (mere governments) have proclaimed proscribe our movements?

Surely, for an anarcho-capitalist in the style of the young Murray Rothbard, the border-protecting mania of the older Rothbard must still be regarded as something of an embarrassment, even if Ron Paul has helped make it a more common position among libertarians than it ever used to be.  I understand the fear (shared even by arch-free-marketeer Milton Friedman) that the welfare state could be overwhelmed by an influx of the world’s poor.  But doesn’t that mean that Gov. Pete Wilson of California (basically) had the right idea back in the 1990s: let them in but don’t offer any government benefits? 

I worried at the time it might be an inflammatory move on his part, but (taken in its idealized form) it seems an elegant and proper solution, eliminating in one stroke the left’s concerns about people being excluded from this land (families divided, etc.) and the right’s concerns about welfare-seeking parasitism.  Don’t offer them welfare and they won’t come here looking for it.  Those who do come you’ll then be pretty confident intend to work – indeed, will be even more likely to do so than the natives. 

If you’re an anti-illegal-immigration person who’s sincere about thinking the welfare state is the problem, then please, please devote as much energy to its elimination (or at least radical downsizing) as you have to keeping out the Mexicans.  Imagine what that energy and anger could accomplish if deployed to fight the real battle, not least the financial salvation of the country. 

But, as much as people such as Lou Dobbs (broadcasting right across the street from Langan’s at the HQ of the currently phone-tapping-scandal-plagued News Corp, where I worked last year) like to focus on the economic and criminological implications of porous or open

Smash the Matriarchy! (plus Maureen Dowd on talking Nazi dogs)

In two entries last week, I noted feminists (including Amanda Marcotte) who were warning about creepy men approaching women when the women are alone and thus making them feel cornered – a reasonable complaint in many situations.  But coincidentally, the day after writing those two entries, I was reminded of another pitfall males constantly face, about which the aforementioned feminists, of course, don’t give a sweet goddam.

I walked past two women lingering near an apartment building entrance – in Manhattan, mind you, where millions of people, including but not limited to feminists, do not want to be approached by millions of other strangers who are doing millions of strange things at every moment – and only as I passed did I notice a third woman, a more brawny bodybuilder sort, begin (quite successfully) pushing a small luggage bag on wheels. 

Then, I heard one of the women, behind me now, thanking the brawny one for an assist – they must have had a bowling ball in there or something, since the bag was very small – and the brawny one (whether motivated by feminism, lesbianism, hetero-chivalry, or a twisted combo of all three we can only guess at) remarked that no man would ever help out with the bags.  “Yeah, like that one” one of the other women remarked, surely of the only man passing at that moment, which would be me. 

(It’s one of the moments that makes you think you should be less helpful, like when you hear the homeless, a vicious lot, swearing at you.  I was reminded a bit of the day when I hosted a debate on whether religion is necessary for good character about one hour after I, an atheist, coincidentally helped a blind, retarded person cross an intersection.  As Superman knows, you can’t always save everyone, but you try to pick your battles.  One strange Christian in the audience at that night’s debate, by the way, suggested that people are too nice and that the great thing about religion is that it makes them less nice.  Earth really is a dark, terrible place, filled with profoundly evil, sadistic people, but we happiness-fostering utilitarians must make the best of it.)

So men should not play the superhero in a bustling anonymous metropolis and leap in offering to touch the possessions of women they do not even know – and who a nice feminist male would likely assume looked perfectly capable of coping with adult life and small bags on their own – except of course when women secretly want them to. 

But you know, in truth, unlike many exasperated males, I do not pretend to be baffled or flummoxed by this sort of thing.  In fact, the reason I usually do err on the side of chivalry, door-holding, object-lifting, paying for the meal, etc. is precisely because I do not believe for one second there even is an opposition between (A) chivalry and (B) feminism in most women’s minds.  Indeed, the seemingly-opposed forces of traditionalism and political progress have nothing to do with the popularity of either of those modes of interaction.  The paradox is easily resolved as soon as you notice the simple underlying truth that women, throughout the ages and by any philosophical label, expect men to be their eager servants, catering to their whims like slaves. 

The matriarchy must be resisted, of course, if all individuals are to live with the dignity necessary to make rational individual decisions and form coherent lives.  It won’t always be easy, given that instinct (shaped by the cheap and ready availability of sperm versus the relative rareness and thus seeming-preciousness of eggs) screams in the hearts of both genders “Protect the females!” – an instinct that has been shaped by (understandably, naturally) self-interested

Puppy Mills and Bootlegger-Baptist Alliances

Believe it or not, yesterday’s entry about werewolves – and looking forward to tweeting about an appearance by animal-friendly comic book writer Grant Morrison on Tuesday – has me thinking about a more serious topic: “puppy mills.”

A visiting vegan pal – less prone than I to sound dismissive of animal welfare crusades and therefore in many people’s minds perhaps more reliable – shares my suspicion that the sudden animus (no pun intended) against “puppy mills,” which seems to be spreading rapidly to become a crusade against all pet stores, may be an under-examined new instance of a “bootlegger-Baptist alliance.”

A bootlegger-Baptist alliance, as libertarians but few others know, is any political situation in which, perversely, it behooves ostensibly-opposed factions to maintain some ban (or other legal rule) that ends up pleasing, for instance, both the black marketeers who will now get extra business and the prudes who get to crow about instituting the ban.  Prohibition was great news if you ran a speakeasy (or one of a tiny handful of grandfathered-in distillers) – or if you were a teetotaling temperance crusader.  Not so great for everyone who just wanted a drink.

Similar examples include the tobacco company Philip Morris and the anti-tobacco crusaders at Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids co-writing the law that made cigarettes become regulated by the FDA – in the process making it harder for newcomers to enter the tobacco market, even with safer products like smokeless tobacco, and by entering put a dent in Philip Morris’s massive market share (as my former co-workers at ACSH often lament).  No one was made safer healthwise (the FDA did not ban cigarettes), yet both Philip Morris and Tobacco Free Kids could claim a big victory.

So who hates “puppy mills” enough to start railing against virtually all the pet stores we tolerated for so many decades (and note that I ask this regardless of how one feels about animal welfare as a moral priority)?  Well, both animal activists and fancy dog breeders (for whom the average shopping mall pet store is unwelcome competition).  And as often seems to happen in these alliances, two factions of the upper crust (who in many cases probably even socialize with each other despite their philosophical arguments) are likely sticking it to bourgeois shopkeeps in the process, though one of those upper crusty factions speaks for the lowly and oppressed (dogs in this case rather than, say, the homeless) and the other speaks from aristocratic disdain.  

It’s not so unlike what I’ve long considered one of the most perverse examples of this sort of dual-purpose ban, minimum-acreage requirements that prevent smaller, cheaper houses for the poor being built – even as the upper-crusty (or mere bourgeois) homeowners of the area likely pat themselves on the back for preventing “crowded slum-dwellings” from being built (near their highly-valued property). 

And I honestly say all this without being wholly opposed to animal activists, regular pet stores, or fancy dog breeders – or even aristocratic disdain.  In fact, I’m not even saying every bootlegger-Baptist alliance is a bad thing (in fact, a lot of bootleggers and Baptists have probably participated in the very anti-regulatory libertarian movement).  I’m just sharing my hunch about one dynamic that may be at work here, for sociological purposes. 

And just for the hell of it, here’s “Overweight Hedgehog” again.

A Magical Friday

Today, millions of children will see Harry Potter’s final battle, amidst a divisive wizard-war.  Fewer will make plans to see the tragic schism chronicled in Strippers vs. Werewolves. 

Speaking of British fantasy, though, prepare for my Tuesday-night tweets about going to see comics writer extraordinaire Grant Morrison down at the Tribeca Barnes & Noble, as he signs copy of his new book about superheroes, Supergods.  I will attempt to capture the psychedelic magic.

The toilet-paper-saving mechanism Roll it Rite, by contrast, doesn’t seem magical at all, and it's oddly funny how unmagical this lame ad for it makes it seem. 

As a general rule, though, to separate the scientific from the magical (i.e., phony), I recommend following my old co-workers at ACSH.

Vive La Roast! Vive La Difference! (and some more “Declaration of Independents”)

It has been brought to my attention that all three of the female speakers on tonight’s Todd-roasting panel of seven people (Lolita Bar, basement level, 7:30pm) have PhDs (there’s one of them in the photo nearby, Laura Braunstein, along with emcee Scott Nybakken, neither of them responsible in the slightest for anything I do or say, by the way, except in so far as their roasting educates me tonight).  I am only confident of the four males, plus me, having a Master’s and a J.D. among the lot of us. 

If the women were single and, rising above our stations, one of us males dared asked one of them out, he might well be tempted to make sure no one was around to hear it and witness his potential humiliation but her – but he’d better take care not to make the woman feel isolated or “cornered,” as Amanda Marcotte puts it in this column (a reaction to the Rebecca Watson/Skepchick vs. Richard Dawkins spat of which I blogged Tuesday and tweeted yesterday), so that she doesn’t fear violence or awkwardness.  Fair enough.  One should never want to seem creepy.

Apparently, though, so grave is the danger of making her feel “cornered” that he shouldn’t even have dinner with her, not on a first date, since dinner is harder to escape than coffee or a drink.  Strategically accurate, perhaps – as is the assertion by Seventh-Day Adventists that it’s less moral to go to a movie than to watch TV, since it’s easier to change the channels if something smutty appears – but it’s strange for Marcotte to elevate this anti-dinner rule to the level of something all sensitive males should be aware of. 

And online, she has even gone so far as to applaud a column suggesting that if any males do not take such dating advice from feminists (indeed, it is implied they should already have done so or should at least be looking to such writers for their pointers instead of, say, the women they actually date), such males must not be all that interested in having sex (advice from feminists being of such proven value in that area) and therefore – bear with me for one more amazing leap in logic – must not even be sincere if they claim sex is their motive.  (Remember the not so distant days when claiming that up front would be considered boorish, by the way.)  It must then – get this – be sheer assertion of “privilege” – a conscious effort to make women uncomfortable even if it yields no sexual advantage – that drives them.

Now, perhaps Marcotte and everyone she knows has been raped several thousand times by Cossacks who started with a dinner invitation – and I genuinely regret it very much if that’s the case – but even so, our feminist writers are obligated to retain at least some minimal connection to reality.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with women preferring coffee or alcohol as the first date, just as there’s nothing wrong with preferring sex in a tub full of champagne on the first date, but we have reached a deeply sad (and insane) juncture in history when the women who claim to be the ones doing the empowering and liberating and whatnot are warning women away from dinner and recommending they have brief booze-fueled dates – and insisting that all men should know this is, as it were, the system. 

Nothing wrong with this being their default set of behaviors, but are they really so far removed from older and subtler traditions as to think no decent men might see a loss of civility in bidding farewell to dinner – or might have pleasant motives in suggesting food?  Are these people sure they should be going on “dates” in the first place if the need for sudden escapes is that likely?  (Of course, one is never certain, but that’s true of many things in life.)

It’s not just the young women who think this, either, since a friend my age assured me that one of her online-dating friends always starts with drinks and only suggests dinner – albeit for the same night – if the drinks go well (sounds like a potential scheduling mishap to me, but, again, as long as everyone’s happy).  How these encounters must reek of pessimism, though – not that I’m complaining, and by all means do it that way if you want to.  It just never ceases to amaze me that no matter how much things change and how strange they become, even the weirdest and ostensibly hippest of people treat their new systems as if only sickos and maniacs would do things any other way. 

Indeed, it’s tempting to suspect that they fear a world of sickos

Book Selection: “Declaration of Independents” by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch

ToddSeavey.com Book Selection: Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch

Despite the fact that freedom and prosperity are found mainly in places with less government, not more – as succinctly explained in this two and a half-minute video from EconomicFreedom.org – people often look to government and politics to express their visions of how life and the world should work.

The temptation for any intellectual – including me – is to leap into the political arena and duke it out with opponents, but in this book, my libertarian colleagues Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch chronicle how more and more people are quietly opting out of affiliation with either the Republicans or Democrats (and the associated social-conservative and left-liberal ideologies) to register as independents and to form coalitions and ad hoc interest groups and – best of all – completely non-political fixations, philosophies, personal identities, and subcultures. 

Let the deranged sadomasochists of all parties fight it out in DC while the rest of us get on with living, in myriad novel and enriching ways.

Of course, we will still need people willing to play defense and fight the political battles that keep government off our backs.  It was a bit sad this week to hear Ron Paul won’t seek reelection to Congress but nice to see his presidential campaign attract a bit of extra attention – and nice to see him taking on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke like never before.  It’s a welcome alternative to the shifty but ever-arrogant pontificating of statists like Paul Krugman, whose self-contradiction was so ably skewered by Mickey Kaus this week.

Nick did an hour-long interview about the new book on C-SPAN (not C-SPAN2), and Bretigne Shaffer’s reaction to it – and to home brewing – leads Reason’s round-up of reactions to the book (her full review is here, second review down). 

Sidenote: I like American Conservative, but I can’t help sort of enjoying how wrong – and stereotypically so, for paleocons – that magazine manages to sound in its reaction, excerpted in that Reason round-up, to the book.  That reaction – that societies naturally crave order rather than liberty – is a more than sufficient, one-paragraph summary of the whole paleocon worldview, really (a commenter on the original AmCon page, I noticed, uses the