Glenn Beck Goes Hayekian

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When I laid down to go to bed in the wee hours this morning, I flipped on Fox News and caught the re-run of Glenn Beck. He was talking about Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and The Other Glenn informs us that the book is now No. 1 at Amazon.

It’s unfortunate, really, that most people who read The Road to Serfdom stop there and don’t pursue Austrian economics or Hayekian philosophy further. One of the finest treatises Hayek ever wrote was The Mirage of Social Justice — which goes in-depth on a key theme briefly explored in Road — and yet it gets short shrift.

Many people describe Hayek as “libertarian,” a term also applied to Hayek’s mentor Ludwig von Mises, author of the masterwork Socialism (which I highly recommend). But Hayek and Mises were economists who directed their critique at the socialist error — Hayek famously described it as The Fatal Conceit — of supposing that a bureaucratic elite could improve the lives of ordinary people by directing their economic activity in a more rational or equal manner.

That distinct insight is quite separate from what most people mean by the label “libertarian,” and neither Hayek nor Mises was ever made it their business to militate for, inter alia, legalized prostitution. Which isn’t to say they were anti-prostitution. Rather, the Austrians sought to get people to think about economic policy as a thing separate from whatever might be meant by “conservative,” a term that provokes mental associations that are utterly unrelated to (and sometimes at variance with) the preservation of economic liberty.

By the way, if you think I’m trying to sell you books so that I can collect a (tiny) profit via Amazon Associates referrals, you’re absolutely right. However, if you want to read some excellent Hayek for free, let me recommend “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” and I’ll also tell you how to get the full value of it:

  • Print it out — A work of enduring value deserves the permanence of print. This isn’t some quick headline thing you can scan on your computer and then forget. It’s a keeper. So print it out and staple the pages together, and keep it for future reference.
  • Take it to bed with you — It is my opinion that the best reading position is supine. Ever since college, whenever I really wanted to get into reading something, I lie down to do it. Even if you can’t go to bed, recline on the sofa and you’ll be able to read with greater concentration. If you find yourself nodding off, don’t worry. Enjoy your nap, and then read more when you wake up again. There have been times (before I became a blogger, I should note) when I’ve spent entire weekends plowing through a book in this manner: Read some, sleep some, eat some, read some. Relax the nervous system, and hone the brain.
  • Keep a pen handy — This is a trick I borrowed from Thomas Jefferson. He had a notebook that he called a “commonplace,” sort of a daily journal of his reading and other activities. He’d cut out a newspaper item, glue it into his commonplace, and record his thoughts on it. What I drew from that was the importance of making notes, however minor, about whatever I read. When reading any work that is philosophical in nature, especially, you’ll likely find some passage that inspires you to underline a sentence or bracket a paragraph and then jot a note in the margin referencing some specific example of that particular point.

By the way, Ronald Reagan was known to do this kind of stuff — reading serious stuff as relaxation and making margin notes. And the Gipper was also a huge fan of Hayek. While I’m at it, let me suggest one possible answer to the question, “What Would Reagan Do?” Hit the tip jar.

Hey, you got something against capitalism, buddy?

UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who called my attention to the YouTube clips of this Glenn Beck broadcast at Liberty Pulse. You can go over there and see the entire episode, but here’s just one taste, featuring Professor Thomas E. Woods Jr.:

By the way, Professor Woods was among those who endorsed Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party, which he called “relentless and stunning.”

Primary Lessons: Don’t Bet Your Hopes

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Carle Hulse of New York Times conveys the politics of wishful thinking from inside the Democratic bubble:

On a primary election night when the heralded anti-incumbency sentiment was expected to again demonstrate its strength, Senator Blanche Lincoln proved there were clear limits to its power.
Virtually written off as a likely victim of voter outrage at veteran politicians, Mrs. Lincoln, a two-term Arkansas Democrat, showed that an experienced office-holder with money, message and determination still had a chance to prevail even in a toxic environment.

Yeah. You bank on that in November, Democrats. There is no anti-incumbent wave, no outrage toward Washington, no backlash against Obama and the fact that Blanche Lincoln defeated a union-backed challenger in a Democratic primary in Arkansas obviously proves that.

On the other hand, Republicans need to be aware that their party still hasn’t recovered from Bush-era “brand damage.” That was my personal take-away from the PA-12 special election last month: Tim Burns was a good candidate with a good message, but simply couldn’t win in a majority-Democrat district with an “R” beside his name.

This problem is not ideological, by the way. It’s not that GOP candidates or policies are “too conservative,” it’s that the failures of Bush-era Republicanism left the party with an image of cluelessness and corruption. Democrat candidates can fake being conservative a lot easier than Republican candidates can escape the toxicity of that “R.”

Notice, for example, that in the May 18 Arkansas primaries, the turnout on the Democratic side was more than 300,000 while the highly-contested GOP primary — with eight candidates — drew less than half that. In fact, Lincoln’s vote in Tuesday’s Democratic runoff (about 135,000) was nearly twice what John Boozman got (about 75,000) in the Republican primary.

If Republican primary turnout is so low in Arkansas — not exactly a bastion of liberalism — it’s obvious the GOP still has a lot of work to do in order to rid itself of the toxic taint of Bushism. 

Most Republicans don’t really understand what causes this problem, which so badly hurt Tim Burns in Pennsylvania last month. You can’t solve a problem you don’t understand. And so if anyone thinks the GOP will just waltz to a majority in November, they’re as naive as Democrats who think there is no chance Blanche Lincoln will fall victim to a backlash.

UPDATE: If you want to understand what “brand damage” is really all about, contemplate why former GOP state chairwoman Sue Lowden lost in Nevada:

“I’m not going to second-guess it right now. That needs a week or two to sit back and reflect what we could have perhaps done to better prepare for all the money that was used in the primary against me,” Lowden said. . . .
She also gave her critics ammunition, most notably a series of interviews in which she suggested that people should barter for their health care.

Way to fight that “clueless Republican” stereotype, Sue! Lowden had all the advantages going in, fumbled away the nomination because she couldn’t talk coherently about the issues, and then blames “all the money that was used . . . against me.”

Don’t let the door hit ya, etc.

UPDATE II: Video via the Las Vegas Sun:

Angle is obviously not a slick talker and she’s got hard work to do if she’s going to beat Reid in November. The fact that Angle defeated the GOP establishment’s hand-picked choice, Lowden, by 14 points is further evidence of Republican “brand damage” vulnerability.

PRIMARY ELECTION NIGHT HQ UPDATE: Lincoln Defeats Halter in Arkansas Senate Democratic Runoff UPDATE: Nikki Haley Tops SC GOP Primary With 49%; Runoff vs. Barrett UPDATE: Angle Wins NV-Sen GOP UPDATE: Whitman, Fiorina Win California GOP Gov., Sen. Primaries UPDATE: Graves Wins GA-9 Runoff

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12:56 a.m. ET Wednesday: Congratulations are in order for Nevada Tea Party people:

Republicans nominated former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle as their candidate to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Angle, the favorite of tea party activists, was endorsed by the Tea Party Express. She dispatched her two main rivals, and the Associated Press declared her the winner in the race with 39% of the vote and 59% of precincts reporting.
She was not the choice of the Republican establishment, who believed that former state GOP Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden stood a better chance of defeating Reid this November. Lowden was running a distant second with 28% of the vote.

Tough luck, GOP establishment. Also, in case you didn’t notice: Republican women went 4-for-4 in major primaries Tuesday.

12:40 a.m. ET Wednesday: The progressive netroots community raving moonbats blew $3.6 million trying to beat Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln in the Democratic primary. Dan Riehl has the DailyKos screen-cap.

12:27 a.m. ET: Maybe Dave Weigel thought no one would notice:

Matthew Berry, an openly gay FCC lawyer who’d attracted some national attention, went down to a narrow defeat at the hands of Iraq War veteran Patrick Murray . . .

Meanwhile, in the Nevada Republican Senate primary, Tea Party-backed candidate Sharron Angle defeats GOP establishment-backed Sue Lowden.

12:10 a.m. ET: OK, the double California bummers are compensated by an anonymous White House reaction to the defeat of union-backed Bill Halter in Arkansas:

“Organized labor just flushed
$10 million down the toilet”

Just imagine what Rahm Emanuel had to say about that. And listening to MSNBC talking heads singing the blues about the Arkansas results is pretty sweet, too.

Midnight ET: Billionaire beats billionaire in Republican primary in California:

After two former Silicon Valley executives pulled nearly $100 million out of their own pockets to carpet-bomb the state with TV ads, the venomous GOP battle between Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner was all over 15 minutes after the polls closed.
Results from mail-in ballots across the state showed Whitman, a billionaire who once ran eBay, beating state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner by 65 percent to 26 percent.

Also, Carly Fiorina has bought the GOP Senate nomination in California. Way to fight back against that “party of the rich” stereotype, y’all.

Meanwhile, we hear that birther czarina Orly Taitz is leading the GOP primary for California secretary of state.

Yeah. Big thumbs-up. Heck of a job, California.

11:26 p.m. p.m. ET: Blanche Lincoln survives! Moonbat hearts are crushed. I just watched Ed Schultz on MSNBC, spinning bizarre election-fraud conspiracy theories for Bill Halter’s defeat. Life is good!

11:15 p.m. ET (Smitty): Lincoln at 52% over Halter’s 48% with 89% of precincts in.

11:04 p.m. ET (Smitty): VA Update: It’s Fimian in VA-11 against Connolly, and Patrick Murray against Congresstool Extraordinaire Jim Moran. Northern Virginia owes the rest of the country an example of getting behind the GOP candidate and offering heavy support, as we try to eliminate the blue death creeping south across the Potomac.

10:51 p.m. ET: Nikki Haley’s percentage in the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary vote is 48.9% with 97% of precincts reporting, so there will be a June 22 runoff against Gresham Barrett. In the Democratic primary, Vincent Sheheen cruised to the nomination with 59%.

10:35 p.m. ET: With 60% of precincts reporting in the Arkansas Democratic runoff, Bill Halter has now edged ahead 51-49% over Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

10:20 p.m. ET: In addition to Haley’s shockingly strong performance, here’s another South Carolina shocker:

U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis (R., S.C.) is poised to become the latest incumbent to be ousted in a primary contest. He trails a distant second in the Republican primary in South Carolina’s fourth district.

9:57 p.m. ET: Now with 89% of precincts reporting in the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial primary, Nikki Haley is still just shy of the 50% needed to avoid a runoff. She’s the biggest winner tonight, while the big losers are Jake Knotts, Larry Marchant and — most especially — Will Folks.

9:48 p.m. ET: Well, kiss my grits!

South Carolina state Rep. Nikki Haley (R) edged close to 50 percent in the Palmetto State governor’s primary race, an indication that personal attacks aimed at her in the final week of the campaign had backfired.
With 74 percent of votes counted, Haley stood at 49 percent while Rep. Gresham Barrett took second with 21 percent.

9:35 p.m. ET: Cassy Fiano: “Nikki Haley is kicking ass in South Carolina.” Clyde Middleton is tracking the Arkansas runoff results at Liberty Pundits.

9:30 p.m. ET: In Arkansas, with 4% of precincts reporting, incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln leads challenger Bill Halter 53%-47% in Democratic primary runoff.

9:25 p.m. ET: Republican Tom Graves wins the special election runoff in Georgia’s 9th District. He will enter Congress immediately.

9:10 p.m. ET: Michael Barone on Fox just said that the GOP turnout in VA-8 (to challenge Democrat Jim Moran) is more than double previous years. In South Carolina, with 35% of precincts reporting in the GOP gubernatorial primary, it’s Nikki Haley 46%, Gresham Barrett 26%.

8:35 p.m. ET: Now, with about 14% of precincts reporting, Nikki Haley leads Gresham Barrett 39%-29%, while Vincent Sheheen looks like he’ll avoid a runoff on the Democratic side.

8:26 p.m. ET: In very preliminary South Carolina returns, Nikki Haley has 42% of the vote.

7:35 p.m. ET: From USA Today:

Polls have closed in South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, where state election officials report low to moderate turnout today. The results of some of the most compelling races will come later tonight, after voting ends in Arkansas, Nevada and California.

Readers should feel free to contribute by linking/reporting the latest results in the comments.

7:50 p.m. ET: South Carolina results at WHNS-TV, the Fox affiliate in Greenville, S.C.

8:05 p.m. ET: As all decent patriotic Americans must despise Rep. Jim Moran, please follow the Virginia 8th District GOP primary results at Red NoVA8.

UPDATE 8:08 p.m. ET: Scott Rigell has been called the winner in Virginia’s 2nd District Republican primary.

EXPECT FURTHER UPDATES . . .

PREVIOUSLY (6:30 p.m. ET):
Republicans for Blanche Lincoln *
* – Offer expires June 9, 2010

Smitty will be online later to handle the major task of providing coverage of tonight’s primary elections in several states, while I toil on a non-blogatory project. When the indispensible (and inimitable) sidekick called to check in this afternoon, I mentioned the runoff in the Arkansas Democratic senatorial primary.

“So we hope that Blanche Lincoln will be reading her political obituary?” Smitty inquired.

“No, no, no, Admiral Smith!” I replied, and explained that it is the duty of all good Americans to hope that Senator Lincoln breaks the vicious little hearts of Bill Halter’s moonbat supporters, so that she’ll be a wounded prey come November. Writing in the Manchester (U.K.) Guardian — which explains the Brit-style spelling — Jim Antle summarizes Blanche’s predicament:

Senator Blanche Lincoln has irritated organised labour and other liberal activists by voting against them on card check legislation for union organising, a public option for healthcare, and various free trade agreements, among other deviations from party orthodoxy. So the unions and the progressive netroots are fuelling lieutenant governor Bill Halter’s primary challenger.

Quite so and, as with the May 18 Pennsylvania primary — where the weakened incumbent Arlen Specter faced the young challenger Joe Sestak — the upstart progressive insurgent represents the stronger political choice for Democrats in November. Just as Republicans fare better when the GOP nominee enjoys strong support from the conservative grassroots, Democrats are more likely to win if they nominate someone who inspires enthusiasm by their (misinformed, demented and/or evil) core constituencies.

This may seem counterintuitive to advocates of moderation and centrism, but in any reasonably competitive election, a nominee who doesn’t have the loyalty of his own party will seldom defeat a hard-core partisan of the opposite party. This is why John McCain was such a weak candidate against Barack Obama two years ago.

Human Events has a roundup of pertinent info on the Arkansas runoff, including this poll result:

Bill Halter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49%
Sen. Blanche Lincoln . . . . . 45%
Research 2000, survey of 600 Democratic voters, June 2-4. (Margin of error +/- 4 percentage points.)

So the wackos, zanies, union goons and other menaces to society who constitute the core of the Democratic Party are this close to bestowing their stooge Bill Halter with the nomination. She’s probably doomed beyond all hope of redemption, but if somehow Blanche Dubois Lincoln can pull off a miraculous victory tonight, the moonbats will be so demoralized they’ll contemplate suicide.

Which is why every patriotic soul must permit himself to hope that the worthless old hag wins.

In other key races tonight:

  • California Senate — Carly Fiorina  buys the GOP nomination, which means the only hope for Republican victory in November is that Sen. Barbara Boxer gets caught on video in a Helen Thomas-style gaffe, disparaging gays and/or Mexicans. Barring an eruption of sudden-onset Tourette’s Syndrome — the Senator denouncing her hairdresser Ramon as a “g–d– beaner faggot” in an accidental CNN live-mike situation — we can expect Kollyfornia to keep electing Democrats and continue slouching toward Zimbabwe.
  • California Governor — Meg Whitman buys the GOP nomination, but stands a reasonable chance against Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown in November. Frankly, Republicans could nominate Martin Bormann and stand a 50-50 shot against Jerry Brown, a fossilized remnant of a bygone political era for whom no intelligent person could be nostalgic. Notice I said “no intelligent person.” But this is, after all, Kollyfornia . . .
  • Nevada Senate — Sharron Angle will follow in Rand Paul’s footsteps to become the second Tea Party-backed candidate to win a GOP Senate primary. Democrats and some Republicans are trying to depict Angle as a wacko extremist who will lose in November. No, she’s a GOP Bill Halter, and is likely to win in November, even if she does start ranting about “beaner faggots.”
  • South Carolina Governor — Nikki Haley places first in the GOP gubernatorial primary, although it’s doubtful she’ll avoid a runoff. However, let’s hope Haley does win it outright tonight, delivering a well-deserved kick in the gonads to Will Folks, Larry Marchant and Jake Knotts.

Buckleyesque
Notes on a Rhetorical Method

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“Philip’s perspective typifies the tautological nature of intellectual consensus . . .”
— God and Man at The American Spectator

While I was proofreading that little essay just now, Mrs. Other McCain asked me, “What are you grinning at?”

She knows me too well, and recognized the mischievous smile of a man who is up to something, and expects to get away with it.

Earlier today, I called my friend Joe Marier to seek his assistance in overcoming tip-of-the-tongue syndrome. A specific word was required, and I knew exactly what it was, except that I couldn’t quite get the synapses to connect and conjure forth le mot juste.

“Tautological!” I exclaimed, when Joe finally prompted me.

My wife heard that, too, and commented that her friend Lynne had complained about my occasional tendency to sling around fancy five-dollar-words: “She said she had to keep looking up words in the dictionary.”

Guilty as charged, ma’am. And when I’m in that mood, your dictionary should also include a glossary of phrases in French, Latin and German. Likewise, you should be prepared to Google the names of various authors cited and historical phenomena to which I allude.

Better Than the Crossword

What I’m up to, of course, is employing a mode of discourse I learned to love as a boy, when the Atlanta Journal would arrive at our home and I’d apply myself to the task of comprehending the latest column by William F. Buckley, Jr.

For a boy of 10 or 11, reading Buckley was a puzzle more challenging than the crossword or the Daily Jumble. Buckley had a way of casually throwing out some brobdingnagian word, invoking the name of an ancient philosopher or referencing a battle in a once-famous war. He performed these rhetorical feats in such a confident manner that any intelligent reader felt compelled either (a) to look it up, or else (b) to abandon any pretension to literacy.

So it was that as a boy I’d find myself spending the afternoon in our living room in Lithia Springs, Ga., thumbing through the two-volume Thorndike-Barnhart dictionary and the World Book Encyclopedia in quest of the answer to that persistent question: What the hell is Buckley trying to say here?

Sure, you could infer his meaning from the context, or skip that fancy word and concentrate on the political point he was trying to convey. But anyone who genuinely desired to be educated would be so confounded by Buckley’s high-falutin allusion — e.g., “As Napoleon remarked to Marshal Soult at Austerlitz . . .” — that the resulting mixture of shame and curiosity would obligate him to look it up.

Was this Buckley’s purpose? Was he a journalistic schoolmaster or, perhaps, a smug intellectual show-off?

No, not at all. Rather, Buckley was demonstrating to the arrogant intellectual elite, and to anyone who observed his combat with them, that liberals did not possess a monopoly on erudition.

Forensic Genius, Q.E.D.

By the time I was a schoolboy driven into the bookish embrace of Messrs. Thorndike and Barnhart by Buckley’s discursive method, he had been up to something for two decades. And I imagine Mrs. Buckley sometimes noticed him grinning mischievously while he proofed his copy.

Ever since the 1951 publication of his great bombshell, God and Man at Yale, Buckley had exasperated liberals by undermining the strongest bulwark of their mid-century dominance, namely their intellectual prestige.

By the middle of the 20th century, liberals had become accustomed to winning arguments because they had all the great professors and pundits on their side. With a few rare and brilliant exceptions like H.L. Mencken and G.K. Chesterton, critics of liberalism tended to bluster reflexively about God, Mom and the American Way of Life.

To which the liberals would respond, “See there? He’s just a bigot, as all conservatives are. Quod erat demonstrandum.”

Buckley was able to turn the tables in part because of his wide-ranging knowledge, extensive vocabulary and eloquence. He did not argue like a jingo or a woolhat. His rhetoric was refined and his arguments were well-informed, so that the reasonable observer of his combat with liberalism could never say that Buckley was intellectually outgunned. Even if you disagreed with Buckley, you could not dismiss him as ignorant.

Yet Buckley was more than merely eloquent. He was a genius of forensic strategy who confounded his opponents by maneuvers that his opponents could never anticipate. 

Like Stonewall Jackson stealing a march on the Yankees in the Shenandoah Valley campaign of ’62, Buckley siezed the initiative and exploited every advantage he could gain by the element of surprise. Locating in his adversary’s argument some logical fallacy or factual error, he would suddenly come down upon the opponent’s weak point with overwhelming force, so that the opponent was obliged to attempt a defense of the erroneous premise or fallacious syllogism.

Knowing that he had his foe on the defensive, however, Buckley would bear down with bulldog tenacity until the opponent was forced either to yield that particular point or else look like a fool.

Monkey see, monkey do. My feeble emulation of Buckleyism is nothing innovative, but even this pale shadow of the great man’s art often has a similar effect, inspiring others to join in the chorus proclaiming that the liberal emperor has no clothes.

Saturday I employed Robert Knight’s column as an occasion to fire a couple of salvos at the arguments for overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” including a good jab at my young friend Philip Klein. Klein responded Monday and today, our fellow American Spectator contributor John Guardiano piled on.

Shortly thereafter I expanded on my earlier theme in “God and Man at The American Spectator: Intellectuals vs. Ordinary Americans,” which was why my wife caught me smiling. See if you can figure out why.

UPDATE: Via e-mail, Joe Marier informs me that Duck Hollow University — “Where Learning Is the Aim of Education” — offers a thorough, complete and comprehensive course in the science of tautology.

Mistress, Actress, Heroine

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by Smitty (via Insty)

Amidst an excellent review of Nikki Haley’s campaign to govern South Carolina, Walter Shapiro says, emphasis mine:

Haley, in her first statewide campaign, has proven a master of boomerang politics – making every attack seem like a vindication of her conservative populist outrage.

Shouldn’t that be “a mistress”?

I don’t mean to go all Little Miss Attila on the point, but should conservatives worry about conserving gender in the English language? I see a page like Female Actor Search and wonder: is this an epic fail, or an admission that the language, like the Constitution and history, are poorly taught these days?

But that’s just a tangent. The poll is open, and it’s time to go participate in the primary. Go, USA!

News, Weak

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The bidding for Newsweek hasn’t been exactly eager:

[S]ome Newsweek staffers . . . describe the mood as ranging from stunned to funereal to angry — the latter emotion fueled by a sense that Editor Jon Meacham erred badly by transforming the newsweekly into an upscale, left-leaning opinion magazine. Meacham has said that in the face of mounting losses — $44 million since 2007 — he had no choice but to seek fewer subscribers who would be willing to pay more.
On one level, the situation is a paradox. Here you have a magazine loaded with talent . . . and few seem willing to bet on its financial future. That amounts to a no-confidence vote not just on the category of newsweeklies, which have long been squeezed between daily papers and in-depth monthlies, but on print journalism itself. The lucrative properties these days are digital, and Newsweek’s Web site has long been a flop, both creatively and commercially. . . .
The result is a conventional wisdom, to use a phrase popularized by Newsweek, that the magazine smells like a loser.

Brilliant — losing $44 million to produce a liberal opinion magazine. Because, according to Meacham’s theory, people would pay more for liberal opinions than for news.

It takes a special kind of stupid to think that way — if you can call that “thinking.”