Category Archives: Current Affairs

A couple weeks ago I said that if you’re not informed on political issues, don’t vote.

Listen to this MP3 clip from a recent Howard Stern show. A guy goes to Harlem and asks people who they’re voting for. All three say Obama. He then attributes McCain’s views to Obama and asks whether they agree with it. For example, "Do you agree with Obama’s pick of Sarah Palin? Do you agree with Obama that our troops should stay in Iraq? Do you agree with Obama that stem cell research should be banned?" To all, they say yes.

And in this 20/20 clip there’s some nice footage of John Stossel asking people off the street some very, very basic questions about the world and getting blank stares.

God Bless America.

(Hat tip to Bryan Caplan for both links.)

Reconciling the attitudes of the wise Few and the uneducated Masses — the elites and common folk — has been a point of contention throughout American political history. In the early days, John Adams was famously wary of an overly democratic democracy, whereas Thomas Paine championed every man’s voice.

This issue has once again come to the fore with McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate. Political commentators mostly agree that McCain chose Palin not because of her qualifications to be VP or President, but rather to shore up the conservative base and reinforce ties with “everyday” Americans. Palin, a hockey mom and evangelical Christian with no fancy degrees, is uniquely suited for this role.

To this end, folksiness underlies all of Palin’s rhetoric. Oftentimes, her overarching attempt at sounding like an everyman robs her statements of substance. In the VP debate the other night, here’s what she said on education policy:

Say it ain’t so, Joe [Biden], there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he’s a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here’s a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

What do people make of this?

Here’s what we don’t know: what “real” people in middle America think about it.

Here’s what we do know: the “media elites” (read: educated people who live in big cities) think that middle America loves it. Here’s what David Brooks said after the debate:

To many ears, her accent, her colloquialisms and her constant invocations of the accoutrements of everyday life will seem cloying. But in the casual parts of the country, I suspect, it went down fine.

In other words, we have latte-drinking, high-income intellectuals finding their own inner-Joe Sixpack and declaring, on behalf of casual America, “You go girl!” To speak on behalf of “real Americans” and imply that those voters place such vapidness at the center of their concerns — and indeed are swayed by the hometown shout-out or “doggone it” references — strikes me as patronizing.

By focusing on how middle America will take to Palin’s rhetoric, these conservative intellectuals get to dodge how they actually feel about it. For the entrenched partisan, it’s understandable. Any thinking person with a brain would find Palin’s inarticulate, anti-intellectual, and embarrassingly ignorant (middle east, supreme court, news media, any type of foreign policy) rhetoric perhaps cute for a small town mayoral race, but horrifying when delivered by the possible President of the United States.

Chris Sacca just pointed me to this new YouTube video with tons of A-list celebrities urging us, "Don’t vote!" They each talk about different important issues in America and why none of it matters and why you should just not vote.

It’s a clever and funny reverse-psychology tactic to encourage voting. I think it’s Forest Whitaker who sums it up nicely: If you care, vote. At the end it displays information on how to register to vote. I suspect this video will obtain wide circulation.

But why do we so quickly accept the argument that anyone who cares ought to vote? The better advice is: If you know what you’re doing, vote. See Bryan Caplan’s recent three minute interview on CTV where he articulates this point.

Caplan says we don’t insist that everyone drive a car — we demand proof of driving ability first. We don’t want everyone performing surgery unless he/she has familiarity with anatomy. Why do we insist that everyone vote? The usual response is that uninformed voters balance each other out, but as Caplan shows in his excellent book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, this doesn’t actually happen. Illogical policies get passed — oftentimes, I would add, policies that work against the self-interest of the person who innocently voted for them.

So, if you read up on the issues, please vote in November. If you aren’t informed, please voluntarily step away from the voting booth and keep your hands where we can see them!

They’re from Freeman Dyson’s article titled The Question of Global Warming in the New York Review of Books. Andrew Sullivan called this the best piece on global warming he’s read in months. I skimmed it but slowly read the last three paragraphs, which I think are spot-on.

In a sentence: Some members of the environmental movement think the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet is fundamental to environmentalism in general, and this is not necessarily so. Many global warming skeptics are passionate environmentalists.

There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

Wisdom from Tyler Cowen in this IM transcript with Ross Douthat on the Sarah Palin VP pick:

Everyone is harping on the experience issue. The biggest question is how good a decision-maker you are and how "meta-rational" you are, namely having the ability to recognize your own imperfections. I don’t know how she does on those counts, but those are the more honest questions, not whether she can name or understand all the different factions in Afghanistan. No one can.

Right on. I’d much rather have someone less experienced but more self-aware and "meta-rational." (I’m not saying Palin is the latter.) This goes for business too. Experience ought not be the only proxy for decision making ability when hiring someone. Asking someone, "What are you strengths and weaknesses?" and then contrasting his answers with the answers of people he’s worked with might be one way to size up his self-awareness.

Speaking of the Palin pick…my Twitter stream is filled with my liberal friends bashing Palin and calling McCain nuts for picking her. I disagree with Palin on virtually everything. But I’d have to agree with my friend Chris that it’s a shrewd political move by McCain.

I have yet to decide who I’m going to vote for in November. I am increasingly unmoved by Obama’s rhetoric and shy away from politicians who believe the path to change / enlightenment starts in Washington. My ideal Washington D.C. is a place where politicians argue with one another all day and get nothing done. If the Dems control the House, Senate, and White House, the probability goes up that politicians will be able pass liberal legislation that attempts to solve all our problems.

I don’t mean for this to pass as an analysis of the scene — the world doesn’t need another pundit on politics, but I couldn’t resist at least a few sentences since politics is in the air!