Seven million? Chump change.
Richard Fernandez on Seidman and liberty
Here’s what Fernandez has to say about that Seidman op-ed (the one I previously wrote about here):
The United States was founded on an extraordinary wager upon the nature of the human spirit; predicated on the belief that men valued life and liberty above all; that in order to preserve their individual awareness in order to pursue happiness they would take risks. But let’s face the truth, as Seidel [sic] says, people don’t want the anxiety of liberty. The Founders lost the bet. “Perhaps the dream of a country ruled by ”˜We the people’ is impossibly utopian.”
Maybe it was. Maybe the Founding Fathers were wrong after all to imagine that men craved freedom. In reality what men craved was Kings; whether in person or in parliament made no difference, for so long as it was some agency to which they could hand over all responsibility for their daily lives. And in exchange they would receive food in the Hall or its modern equivalent, the Mall, till it ran out. Free food till Grendel comes to Heorot ”” their sole concern being how near or far to the raised table and fire they were in the interim. If Seidel’s [sic] right that’s all there is to history: a kind of temporary gaiety with one ear open to the approaching sounds of the night. That’s all it will ever be.
Which brings me once more to a quotation from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. I first encountered it long ago in high school, when we were assigned to read the Grand Inquisitor chapter from that book (something I find hard to believe; do public high schools require such reading today?).
It made a very deep impression on me back then. Although I don’t think I understood it all that well, it seemed very important. Fortunately or unfortunately, I understand it better today, and it still seems very important:
Oh, never, never can they feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?
There are more things…
…in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy:
The Milky Way contains at least 100 billion planets, or enough to have one for each of its stars, and many of them are likely to be capable of supporting conditions favorable to life, according to a new estimate from scientists at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California (Caltech).
That specific figure of 100 billion planets has been suggested by earlier, separate studies, but the new analysis corroborates the earlier numbers and may even add to them…
“There’s room for these numbers to really grow,” said Jonathan Swift, a Caltech astronomer who is the lead author on a paper on the new findings, in a phone interview…
…[O]verall, the chances of life on such planets are good, because they and their parent stars are likely to be much older and longer-lasting than Earth’s Sun, between two and 10 billion years. That’s because they sip less fuel over time.
So in the future, when Earth’s Sun begins to run out of fuel after another 4 billion years, any intelligent life still on the planet would do well to migrate to a system like Kepler 32.
“This star will be there when the last Sun-like stars die,” [co-author of the study] Johnson concluded.
Note that the lead author of the Caltech study is named Jonathan Swift. As for the earlier, literary Swift, see this:
Swift made reference to the moons of Mars about 150 years before their actual discovery by Asaph Hall, detailing reasonably accurate descriptions of their orbits, in the 19th chapter of [Gulliver’s Travels] (that is, in Part 3, Chapter 3)…
Voltaire was presumably influenced by Swift: his 1750 short story Micromégas, about an alien visitor to Earth, also refers to two moons of Mars.
Swift crater, a crater on Mars’s moon Deimos, is named after Jonathan Swift.
[ADDENDUM: This seems related.]
Could you do the mashed potato?
In my recent stroll down the memory lane of Dance Crazes of My Youth, I came across this one, known as the Mashed Potato.
Which started a long time ago.
I never could do this particular dance. Maybe the problem was the turned-in stance; as a ballet dancer, that posture was especially hard for me. And looking at it again, it still seems really difficult:
Dances were awfully bouncy back then, weren’t they?
The fiscal cliff deal—so far
If you want to read at length about the latest in the fiscal cliff negotiations and legislation, go to Memeorandum and get cracking.
But here’s my shorter two cents:
After doing a lot of reading on the right side of the blogosphere, in articles and especially comments sections, I get the impression that a lot of conservatives are hopping mad that the Republicans in Congress voted to raise taxes for those who make over 450/400K (that is, those conservatives who hadn’t already deserted the GOP prior to the vote). I agree that it’s incredibly frustrating that Boehner et. al. didn’t see fit to do something stronger and more conservative, just as a statement, knowing that it would be defeated in the Senate.
But as I (and others) have written before, the defeat in the 2012 election—not just Obama’s victory, but the failure to do better in the Senate—sealed the Republicans’ fate and took away a great deal of their negotiating power. This doesn’t mean that Boehner is not at fault; he is, most particularly for setting up this situation in the first place during negotiations last year.
But it’s important to note that, in the political sense, this bill may remove at least some of the tried-and-true “Republicans won’t cooperate” argument. They did.
John Hinderaker looks on the bright side:
But what happens now that Obama has gotten his way? It will soon become apparent that the fiscal cliff deal, including precisely the tax increases that Obama has been demanding for four years, makes hardly a dent in the deficit. At best, it will reduce the deficit by five or six percent. We will continue to run up deficits of close to $1 trillion a year, and the national debt will continue to grow, as Obama has always intended. This fact can’t be hidden; it will be reported. Journalists who have pulled their punches in the past because they wanted Obama to be re-elected will now begin to ask, what are we going to do about the deficit and the debt? At some point, perhaps sooner rather than later, interest rates will begin to rise, at which point the debt issue will become a crisis. And Republicans will say: we told you so.
That’s too optimistic for me. For example, I can’t even imagine that Hinderaker is correct about the MSM.
The most important negotiations are still to come, the ones where Obama refuses any cuts except in defense, and the Republicans either go belly-up or belly-partway-up.
And as this article points out, the current bill will have the effect of raising payroll taxes for middle class Americans:
But lawmakers’ decision not to reverse a scheduled increase in the payroll tax that finances Social Security, while widely expected, still means that about 77 percent of households will pay a larger share of income to the federal government this year, according to the center’s analysis.
The tax this year will increase by two percentage points, to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent, on all earned income up to $113,700.
Indeed, for most lower- and middle-income households, the payroll tax increase will most likely equal or exceed the value of the income tax savings. A household earning $50,000 in 2013, roughly the national median, will avoid paying about $1,000 more in income taxes ”” but pay about $1,000 more in payroll taxes.
I don’t even pretend to know what effect this will have on the American public, except to say I think that, although “widely expected,” most people don’t follow politics that closely and therefore this aspect of the bill will still be a surprise. As to who will be blamed for it, I’m not at all sure. Previous experience says it would be the Republicans—that’s Obama’s and the left’s and the MSM’s specialty. But something in my gut says that the American public might just give this one bipartisan credit/blame. Congress in general hasn’t exactly ingratiated itself with voters in recent years.
[ADDENDUM: Many more links here from Instapundit on why this isn’t necessarily such a bad deal for the Republicans.]
Scary times
Quite a few people have recommended this Victor Davis Hanson article about some of the problems we’re likely to be dealing with in the coming year. One of the points Hanson makes is that the true face of the left is increasingly being revealed in articles such as the Seidman critique of the Constitution (which I discussed at length yesterday, here).
Hanson writes:
These are the most foreboding times in my 59 years. The reelection of Barack Obama has released a surge of rare honesty among the Left about its intentions, coupled with a sense of triumphalism that the country is now on board for still greater redistributionist change.
I agree.
One of the many negative results of the 2012 election has been the sense, among so many on both left and right, that so-called progressivism has won the battle in this country—perhaps permanently, but at any rate for a very long time.
Let’s not argue right now over whether this perception is correct or not; we’ve certainly done plenty of that before. But perhaps we can agree that the belief, right or wrong, is one of the prime movers of this coming-out-of-the-leftist-closet trend that seems to be occurring for so many op-ed writers. It’s not just the heady victory of the moment that’s motivating them, it’s their conviction that it’s clear sailing from here on that empowers the left to openly up the ante and signal their next steps in establishing and capitalizing on their hegemony. No need to hide anymore when there’s nothing the right can do about it.
In some ways the anti-white-man rhetoric that has become standard and acceptable lately is the worst sign of all. If the term “hate speech” has a meaning, it most definitely would apply to a great deal of what has been said recently about that despised group. Those who are first to shriek “racism” and “sexism” when criticism is launched against a group defined as oppressed (blacks, women) are turning the tables and dissing white men with impunity. It is both hypocritical and vile, and especially offensive when cloaked in the sanctimony of those on the left who believe they occupy the moral high ground (that would be everyone on the left).
A goodly portion of the preening triumphalism that has followed in the wake of the 2012 election involves just this kind of hatred: towards white men, the rich, Republicans, Christians, gun owners. There’s a lot of talk about how the demographics have permanently changed in this country, and perhaps that’s correct—and now the tables are being turned, with glee. It’s been a long time since the expression of real racism against black people (as opposed to imaginary and/or astroturf-generated racism) was acceptable in this country. But it’s now completely acceptable against white men, and this is an exceedingly ominous sign.
All is not well…
Expert at gaining, holding, and wielding power, he could outmaneuver the opposition and finesse the elections. But health is another thing entirely.
It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on with him right now, but it sounds quite dire. Then again, his good buddy Castro was rumored to be at death’s door in recent years, and he’s still chugging along.
Louis Michael Seidman: the con law professor v. the Constitution
Yesterday there was a big brouhaha over an op-ed of Louis Michael Seidman’s that appeared in the New York Times.
It was the type of piece that, on first reading, appears to be some sort of ironic Onion-esque parody—but sadly, it’s not. It’s also the sort of thing you’d expect from a leftist college student with no knowledge of history and no understanding of the Constitution.
But author Seidman is a well-known professor of constitutional law at Georgetown, one of the most elite law schools in the nation. He’s also a baby boomer, which is probably no coincidence, given his views (and I say this as a full-fledged, card-carrying member of that tiresome generation).
Seidman writes:
As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions…
Imagine that after careful study a government official – say, the president or one of the party leaders in Congress – reaches a considered judgment that a particular course of action is best for the country. Suddenly, someone bursts into the room with new information: a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action. Is it even remotely rational that the official should change his or her mind because of this divination?
Read the whole thing if you can stomach it, just for the flavor, and the exposure to the strangely tortured logic (and lack of historical accuracy) of this particular law professor. Seidman not only shows a lack of knowledge (actual? or strategic?) of the true position of most of the Founders regarding slavery, he also expresses the typical leftist position that we should throw away the wisdom of the past (wisdom? how can that be; they’re just a bunch of propertied white guys—just like Seidman, by the way) because we want to do something, and that pesky old white-guy document stands in our way.
There were many takedowns of Seidman published yesterday, such as this one by John J. Vecchione, who says Seidman’s op-ed “reads like a parody of liberal thinking”—although, unfortunately, he’s not joking. Vecchione also has a counter-proposal:
What he more seriously proposes, the radical rejection of binding any polity, is not only silly but unworkable. But we should take a small step in a very small universe and test it anyway: Get rid of tenure, and job security more broadly, at Georgetown Law. Every year, nay every minute, each faculty member should be judged on how they are doing at that instant of time. If they are found wanting by the standards of the hour they should be fired. Surely deep, radical thinkers like Professor Seidman and his confreres at Georgetown would not sacrifice the new and untried for the old, stolid, and hidebound edifice that is tenure? Why should current students suffer under the methods that were deemed acceptable by a faculty panel 30 years in the past, all of whom abjured same-sex marriage and none of whom used the Internet?
In his piece, Seidman goes on to cite instances in the past where he believes the letter of the Constitution was violated, and says we’re doing just fine nevertheless: “Our sometimes flagrant disregard of the Constitution has not produced chaos or totalitarianism; on the contrary, it has helped us to grow and prosper. ” So, which is it, Professor Seidman? Is our government broken, as you say at the outset, or are we doing just peachy-keen?
Seidman then states which parts of the Constitution we should preserve—the parts Seidman likes, of course—and the parts we should jettison (the ones he doesn’t like).
Glenn Reynolds calls our attention to this:
This editorial makes a lot of good points about Seidman’s piece. There’s also a good old-fashioned rant about it here. And Carl Scott has a question for Georgetown Law School regarding Seidman, the very same one I’d like to ask them:
Now, granting that it is impressive, as your website indicates, that “After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1971, Professor Seidman served as a law clerk for J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall,” do you not think that a professor who professes that he no longer believes his area of expertise matters, should be obliged to step aside? How can constitutional law be seriously taught by a man who thinks it is a kind of “divination?” Surely you are aware that along with Carl Eric Scott, there are 5,631 eager young professors without tenure in the nation capable of teaching constitutional law, both conservative and liberal ones, who nonetheless all think that the subject is a real one? That one can arrive at a genuinely wrong or right answer as to whether something is constitutional? So if you will not call upon the law faculty to fire Dr. Seidman, and replace him with Carl Eric Scott or another of those 5,632 (much less expensive, incidentally) professors, can you explain why you won’t? Is Georgetown University in the habit of handing the teaching of key subjects over to those who think they are worthless ones?
Not that Georgetown would ever think of doing such a thing. Steven Hayward notes that attitudes such as Seidman’s are not unusual in constitutional law professors:
I frequently bait the law professoriate with the axiom that if you really want to understand constitutionalism, and the U.S. Constitution in particular, don’t take constitutional law at an elite law school. There you will only receive systematic mis-instruction in the subject.* Joe Knippenberg reminds me that my AEI colleague Walter Berns always said that the problem with law professors is that they taught constitutional law, not the Constitution. Hence most constitutional law professors treat the Constitution as a plaything from which to extract whatever outcome they want.
He adds the one good thing we can say about Seidman’s essay:
…[I]t is helpful when a liberal’s impatience with constitutionalism yields to the impulse to rip the faé§ade away and declare their contempt for the Constitution. Georgetown Law School professor Louis Seidman thus does us the favor of candor with his New York Times op-ed today…
As for why the Times decided to publish this piece right now, one can only conclude they see the time as ripe for delegitimizing the Constitution in order to further the leftist agenda, and seek to use Seidman’s credentials to make the argument from authority. The ground has been well prepared for this by our president, the MSM, and our educational system, so their calculations may indeed be correct.
Congress’s fiscal cliff deal
Here’s the way it stands so far:
”” Tax rates will permanently rise to Clinton-era levels for families with income above $450,000 and individuals above $400,000. All income below the threshold will permanently be taxed at Bush-era rates.
”” The tax on capital gains and dividends will be permanently set at 20 percent for those with income above the $450,000/$400,000 threshold. It will remain at 15 percent for everyone else. (Clinton-era rates were 20 percent for capital gains and taxed dividends as ordinary income, with a top rate of 39.6 percent.)
”” The estate tax will be set at 40 percent for those at the $450,000/$400,000 threshold, with a $5 million exemption. That threshold will be indexed to inflation, as a concession to Republicans and some Democrats in rural areas like Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mt.).
”” The sequester will be delayed for two months. Half of the delay will be offset by discretionary cuts, split between defense and non-defense. The other half will be offset by revenue raised by the voluntary transfer of traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs, which would tax retirement savings when they’re moved over.
”” The pay freeze on members of Congress, which Obama had lifted earlier this year, will be re-imposed.
”” The 2009 expansion of tax breaks for low-income Americans: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit will be extended for five years.
”” The Alternative Minimum Tax will be permanently patched to avoid raising taxes on the middle-class.
”” The deal will not address the debt-ceiling, and the payroll tax holiday will be allowed to expire.
”” Two limits on tax exemptions and deductions for higher-income Americans will be reimposed: Personal Exemption Phaseout (PEP) will be set at $250,000 and the itemized deduction limitation (Pease) kicks in at $300,000.
””The full package of temporary business tax breaks ”” benefiting everything from R&D and wind energy to race-car track owners ”” will be extended for another year.
”” Scheduled cuts to doctors under Medicare would be avoided for a year through spending cuts that haven’t been specified.
”” Federal unemployment insurance will be extended for another year, benefiting those unemployed for longer than 26 weeks. This $30 billion provision won’t be offset.
”” A nine-month farm bill fix will be attached to the deal, Sen. Debbie Stabenow told reporters, averting the newly dubbed milk cliff.
It’s gotten through the Senate and has yet to be passed by the House.
As for the consequences, this certainly does very little to solve our difficulties in financing government. It’s very much a case of jockeying for political gains and kick the can down the road.
That said, it seems somewhat better than I thought it would be in the political sense, although that’s a tentative conclusion at this point. I thought Obama would get much more from the Republicans and give up even less.
But the bottom line, politically—at least as best I can figure it—is that for most voters this is very much inside baseball. Bloggers and pundits can jaw-jaw all they want about it, and each side can claim some sort of victory (or criticize a perceived defeat), but my sense is that most Americans are heartily sick of the bipartisan lack of ability of our “leaders” to tackle our serious problems.
Happy non-euphonious New Year!
There’s something about 2013 that doesn’t fall trippingly off the tongue.
A friend pointed out that it’s the first year since 1987 that doesn’t have a double digit in it. Perhaps that’s it. Or perhaps it’s that 13.
Whatever. Let’s hope it’s a very good year, and much better than the last one.
2013 is the year of my reign…
…as Grande Conservative Blogress Diva, an honor bestowed by Gay Patriot, via all of you who voted.
There—did that sound Diva-esque enough? I’ve got to practice my Diva ways.
Although I suspect that I was the only blogger who pushed the voting much, I’ll still take the win. My court as Diva consists of blogger buddies Sarah Hoyt and Bookworm, so all’s very friendly in the Diva world.
Thanks for all your voting efforts. And Happy New Year!
It’s definitely not too early in the game…
…to ask this question:
Me? A quiet night. Ordinarily I’m not a keen New Year’s eve reveler, although if some wonderful revels presented themselves, I wouldn’t say no.