Political Clientism Matters, but Ideas Matter More

For a candidate who is consciously trying to play it safe, Romney sure does make a lot of gaffes.  He's like the QB who just wants to run out clock, but when he goes to take a knee...he throws a freakin' interception!  (please excuse the sports metaphor).

As soon as Mother Jones released the latest campaign faux pas, it was obvious what would happen next.  Umbrage was taken and battle lines were drawn.  Meanwhile, another opportunity to tackle the real issues of our time slips out of reach.  

My goal is to enter the belly of the beast and see if anything of real substance can be salvaged.

To begin, I am not shocked by Romney's statements.  This 47% trope is not new, and many conservatives have communicated it in terms quite similar to the Governor's speech.  So, do I concur with the thrust of Romney's assertions?  Absolutely not.  

Before I grab my pitchfork and join the mob, let me be fair to Mr. Romney for a moment.  With an entitlement state of our size, it would be silly to deny the existence of some sort of entitlement culture.  Exploring the relationship between irresponsibility/dependence in the populace and our increasingly extractive, parasitic state seems like a reasonable enough endeavor.

If this is Romney's takeaway point, well, fair enough.  Political clientism is bad.  Greece's "rousfeti"alone should put the fear of god in all nations.  

However, Romney failed to articulate this general concern, and instead made some clearly erroneous claims.  First of all, American welfare is cross-cultural.  Government largesse does not flow directly to some monolithic Democratic-voting bloc.  Hell, American welfare doesn't even really flow to the relatively poor.  

Yes, entitlements pave the road to our fiscal cliff.  But social security and medicare--entitlements for wealthy, old people--pose the greatest danger for a healthy, solvent tomorrow.  What are bailouts if not welfare for big corporations and big labor?  When the Fed gets all easy with the money supply, to whom are those extra dollars channeled?  

Many different sub-groups receive government hand-outs, not just the 47% who don't pay income tax.  The feeding of this frenzy is a bipartisan effort.  Sorry, gov'nah!  

Furthermore, voters are not mere feedholes--welfare check goes in, vote for me comes out, taadah! Believe it or not, they have a brain at their disposal.  As Matt Welch, editor in chief at Reason magazine, points out, this vulgar economic determinism.  Yes, Romney's electoral analysis was based on the materialist postulates of Marx. 

This is misguided for many reasons.  For one, human nature tells us that citizens underestimate how much they benefit from government programs.  In general, people believe that their neighbors unjustly receive government succor.  They tend to forget that time they went on unemployment or received a government-backed student loan.  

Even if people could accurately surmise which party would better line their pockets, people won't check their ethical considerations outside the voting booth.  Perhaps I could vote my neighbor's jacuzzi right into my backyard.  But maybe that wouldn't be very ethical of me.  And maybe I would vote with my conscious and not my insatiable desire to lounge in those warm, frothy bubbles.  

Basically, ideas matter.  Convictions matter.  Frankly, Mitt Romney should reflect on his own convictions and decide if he truly favors a society of independent individuals.  I'm afraid Mr. Romney merely prefers moocher-parasites who have a house with a view and will support his candidacy.

Daily Literature of the Revolution

• Democracy:  When modern democracies fall short, it is often because of anxieties surrounding the "counter-majoritarian difficulty." Another equally weighty problem was on display at both the Republican and Democratic National Convention (watch short videos here and here to see the stories unfold). A democratic state must figure out a how to package and present decisions to the people. When it comes to anointing a serious candidate or deciding what policies are given serious consideration, the parties operate like tyrannical oligarchies. These conventions how real kratos (power) is plenty divorced from the demos (people). For a while, the vast majority of people seemed content with this arrangement. But as Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie argue in their book, The Declaration of Independents, people are becoming increasingly (albeit slowly) disabused of the Team Red versus Team Blue windmill jousting. There are exogenous reasons such as increased customization in our culture (less Kodak vs. Fujifilm, more Instagram; less Major News Networks, more political blogs). There are also endogenous reasons such as {the banal and baneful similarities between the two parties and} the equal vigor with which both parties crush our civil liberties. If citizens come to apprehend this predicament, there is a strong chance that elected officials will start to represent independent people rather than special interests.
• Public Education: I came across this story and figured it would be a good opportunity to touch briefly on teacher union abuses. Public teacher unions create problems all the way down, but, as seen in the LA Times pieces, the really culpable graft tends to occur near the top. This short video (4:30) is a good explanation of why pension-spiking is a predictable consequence of the teacher union machine. One can hope that these audits throw a wrench in the pension-spiking operation. It would be better to remove the incentive structure that is the fuel for this type of corruption. 

• Free Speech: Remember Citizens United? Well, for a moment, forget about who can give which kind of money and how much and where it can go. An often forgotten part of that case, as the Institute for Justice's Make No Law Blog points out, is Justice Thomas' lone partial dissent (Thomas is often at his best when acting alone). The other 8 justices signed off on the forced disclosure of certain types of anonymous political advocates. Are we living in the dystopian world of Eric Blair?....err, George Orwell, as we now know him. Maybe not, but as Thomas notes in his dissent, forced exposure hampers free expression by inviting two types of retaliation. The most troubling example is of the political incumbent who seeks revenge on those who were silly enough to support the challenger. Sitting politicians have always wanted to hunt down their anonymous critics. Today, forced disclosure is pleasantly cloaked as a common-sense fight against monied interests. But the 1st amendment stands as a reminder of the value in anonymous speech. Anonymous speech was there at our beginning, as Publius (Madison, Jay and Hamilton in the Federalist Papers) duked it out with the Federal Farmer and other pseudonymous writers in the Antifederalist Papers over whether to adopt a new constitution. Publication and circulation are part and parcel of effective political speech. If the financial backers of a modern day Publius remain anonymous, what exactly is the problem? Shouldn't we judge based on content? The people can take into consideration the unknown origins of this or that piece of information. But as long as advocates can be forcibly unmasked, this tool will be used to intimidate those who would loudly question the status quo. Moreover....shouldn't we encourage the haute bourgeois to use their money and new forms of productive forces so they can unwittingly usher in a proletariat paradise? Or am I mixing up my Marx and Hegel? 

• Quebec Politics: Quebec had its provincial elections on the 4th. I’m a novice in Canadian politics, but I've yet to be won over by any major party and I'm not holding my breathe (the provincial parties are even less appealing than the national ones). The separatist Parti Quebecois came away with enough seats to form a minority government. The Coalition for Quebec's Future (CAQ) may have played the spoiler role in their first election. I admire the rebel spirit of the their leader, François Legault, but he also wants to intern "keep" Quebec-educated doctors from leaving the province. The hot-button issue of the election was (is) the fracas over tuition hikes. I will have an article on this juicy issue when the time comes. For now, Jacob Levy speaks my mind (more intelligently, of course) concerning the silliness and subtleties on both sides of this issue. My favorite line: "'special law' is every bit the contradiction in terms that 'student strike' is.” If people truly appreciated these two concepts..well, si ça arrive, je vais péter le feu!Yoga: 

• Yoga:  Speaking of Quebec, if you've ever been to a Cirque du Soleil, then these silk hammocks may look familiar. I'm glad to see that aerial yoga is proliferating. I think it will be attractive to a diverse set of students. For those who've lost some mobility, there is a lot you can do in the hammock with limited effort and a little guidance. And, let me tell ya, just hanging upside-down can feel amazing for your achy back. For thrill-seekers and people who missed out on joining the circus, I recommend finding a studio with high silks. I really enjoyed this new studio back in San Diego. After seeing the extraordinary Cirque du Soleil routines, it was a little intimidating, but it is actually fairly simple to learn a few tricks that will get you airborne in no time.

Our French Holiday

Last month, I made a commitment to blog more consistently.  I even concocted a plan to keep me on track.  But the end of summer is a lousy time for new undertakings.  The day after I decided to spend more time on A Libertarian Yogi, my wife and I woke up with a travel bug that could not be ignored. 

Since we met in Oxford, the Old World holds a special place in our hearts.  Living in California for the past few years, we had mostly dedicated ourselves to local travel, but now that we were settled in Montreal, we felt powerless to Europe’s magnetic pull.  The trip was conceived of at 8am, and by 11pm that evening, we were cruising at 30,000ft toward Paris.

Before we left, we frantically sent e-mails to some of Fannie’s friends half-way across the world.  Despite our haste, we were greeted with the utmost hospitality.  We stayed in Paris for a few days before flying down to Nice.  We made arrangements for a rental car using Rentalcars.com.  DO NOT USE RENTALCARS.COM!  After some grief, we received our “vehicle”* and our journey began.

It will come as no surprise that we had precious little time to plan our road trip.  Most of the route and destinations were settled upon less than 12 hours before we set out.  In general, we would drive, stop at places of interest, make it to some destination, explore, sight-see, feast, and then figure out where we wanted to go the next day as we fought off sleep.  For the most part, it worked out well.  

As it were, we set out northwest from Nice up through the Gorges du Verdon, staying overnight in Moustiers-Sainte-Marie.  From there, we made our one ill-planned stop near Cassis.  We recovered and forged back up north through Les Baux-des-Provence before reaching Avignon.  We did some more exploring in the Provence region, with stops in several gorgeous little communes like L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, Rousillon and Gordes.  After that we made the long trek to our westernmost destination, Carcassonne, a (controversially and strikingly) renovated medieval town.  A little luxury was waiting for us back at the coast in St-Aygulf.  We found great beaches and delicious food in this beach-y village, often overshadowed by nearby St-Tropez and St-Rafael.  From there we hugged the coast all the way to Villefranche-sur-Mer, just east of Nice.  At this point, we said goodbye to the Mediterranean, but not before stopping at the highest littoral town in France, St-Agnes.  Only 4km from the sea (as the bird flies), this small village towers above Menton and the rest of the Cote-d’Azur, giving the visitor a truly remarkable view.  Our next destination was the Alps.  We spent nights in Casterino and Briancon, and we were rewarded with captivating scenery as we hiked (and picnicked) all day long.  From there, we made one last stop in the charming town of Annecy.  A beautiful morning kept us in Annecy longer than we had expected, and we paid for it with stormy weather on the final drive back to Paris.  We spent some more time with our courteous Parisian host before hopping on our flight back to Montreal. 

It was an amazing vacation, enjoyable and rewarding.  We embraced the whirlwind circumstances, just being so grateful that we could make it there on such short notice.  Anybody who has travelled outside the world of all-inclusive resorts understands the potential stress and pitfalls that lurk beneath an otherwise pleasant trip. 

We had some things working in our favor.  My wife was born of French tongue and has lived and traveled a fair amount in France.  And I happen to have quite a knack for navigating the Internet and finding the best places to stay.  There was also a priceless little independent association that made our rambling route quite a bit more delightful.

For a while, I had been captivated by this project, “Les Plus Beaux Villages de France.”  It lists around 150 little French communes—the criteria being that they must have less than 2,000 inhabitants and contain at least two historical or picturesque protected areas.  As I gazed at the pictures and descriptions, I longed to feel what is was like to walk through these quaint little villages.  And I was not disappointed!  The history pulsated through the cobbled streets.  I often fantasized about retreating to a little apartment in Gordes or Ménerbes for a book assignment….one day!   

Still, as North Americans, there were some less enchanting aspects of our trip.  The notable one being the customer service at some lodgings and restaurants.  My wife is a francophone Canadian, but the cultural barriers became obvious when we had to make some customer request.  The familiar notion that the customer is always right is truly foreign in this foreign land.

I recalled a book on French culture, history, and life that I had read a couple years ago, Sixty Million Frenchman Can’t Be Wrong.  In the introduction, the authors note that when an Anglo-American visits a place in Asia, they have no problem accepting the major differences in culture.  But when it comes to France, we forget that their culture has grown up around their own distinct foundation, their own historical conditions and assumptions.  This isn’t some post-modern relativist observation.  You can judge another culture’s practices, but you should remember you are judging a whole new beast. 

On that note, I observed our Parisian friend and how he was always able to receive perfect customer service.  A reminder that there is more than one way to skin a cat. 

Overall, the trip was everything I wanted it to be.  It was fast-paced,  especially compared to our fellow travelers, who were mostly French (sometimes Italian or Spanish depending on where we were).  August equals holiday for the French, and many take this time to travel in country.  We seldom bumped into North Americans, even in the more popular tourist destinations.  One thing we noticed about the French vacationers:  children of any age stayed with the family until the adults felt like heading home.  As we were throwing in the towel, sometimes near midnight, parents would stroll past with their 4-year olds in tow, pushing their sleeping infant in a stroller.  We approved.

We were also surprised by the stark changes in topography.  France is a truly a diverse and gorgeous country.  Also, the culture is very salient; the visitor always has something novel to experience.  It has left reinvigorated.  And though the travel bug may not be sated, it has definitely been appeased.  

*Rentalcars.com is a car rental aggregator.  My wife told them on the phone that we would be landing in Nice at 2pm and needed a car.  They said: no problem, we gotcha! and we booked.  When the cab dropped us off at the car rental place, the place was locked up as they had closed at 1pm (yes, 1pm on a Monday).  We had already made plans to leave town and stay near the Gorges du Verdon that night.  We called Rentalcars.com and they basically said:  quelle dommage, there's nothing we can do.  Luckily, we were able to make arrangements to stay in Nice for the night.  We went to the rental place the next day and, as we had feared, they had rented our car.  The only automatic they had left was....a Smart car!  In the end, the Smart car turned out to be a far more useful than our friends at Rentalcars.com.  We are currently trying to receive some compensation for our wasted expenses, but it is not looking good.