Apparently, I'm everything that's wrong with government

I got into an interesting debate with a few classmates today over the merits of school vouchers. At one point, one of my classmates said, "I think the problem with government is that people like you get elected who don't believe in it." Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the government is just like Tinkerbell: if we all clap loud enough, she'll be ok.

Of course, my classmate's remark was completely ignorant of history; there was no lack of faith in the Almighty State in the Soviet Union, in New Deal America or in post-war Britain. Yet somehow, despite the fervent belief and best intentions of bureaucrats, central planning has failed again and again. Thankfully, we had people like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who (at least ostensibly) didn't believe in government to prevent the US and UK from following the USSR into total collapse.

The Most Painful Post Ever

To quote Milton Friedman, I am a Republican with a capital "R" and a libertarian with a lowercase "l." While I certainly don't agree with the GOP on every issue (abortion comes to mind), I generally find Republicans to be far more tolerable than Democrats. Even the one major issue where I agree with the Democrats--ending the war in Iraq--is not an area of serious or principled agreement; considering that the Democrats have taken the U.S. into every major conflict--and a few minor ones--of the 20th Century, their opposition to the Iraq war looks more like opportunistic, disingenuous partisanship than any principled dedication to peace. On every other major issue, including gun control, the economy, taxation and health care, I am vehemently opposed to the Democrats, even if I can only summon up lukewarm support for the Republicans. Thus, it pains me greatly to say that I am truly hoping to see the inauguration of President Hillary Clinton.

I know what you're thinking: how dare I call myself a Republican, much less a libertarian, if I support the Pant-Suit Princess? Hear me out; to paraphrase Desi Arnez, I've got some 'splaining to do.

First of all, I truly wish that Ron Paul had been able to secure the Republican nomination. However, only the willfully self-deluded could possibly convince themselves that Paul has any chance whatsoever of doing so at this point; barring some fortuitous miracle at the Republican National Convention, John McCain all but has the GOP nomination in the bag. I am certainly not alone on the Right in finding McCain completely unacceptable. His namesake legislation, from McCain-Feingold to McCain-Kennedy and McCain-Lieberman, is all a complete nightmare. There is also a very strong possibility that Benjamin Netanyahu will be the next Prime Minister of Israel, and I think that between the two of them, McCain would find some reason to "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."

However, none of this worries me overly much since, barring a terrorist attack on the United States between now and November (God forbid!), McCain stands almost no chance of actually winning in the general election. McCain isn't going to be able to sell the people on continuing the incredibly unpopular Iraq war, the Democratic nominee is going to hammer him on his "100 years" comment regarding troops in Iraq, and many on the Right, myself included, may simply stay at home on election day rather than hold their nose while pulling the McCain lever. Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will almost certainly go on to be the next President of the United States.

Having rejected the possibility for the presumptive Republican nominee to become the next President, I am left to choose between Senators Clinton and Obama on the Democratic side. Much as I resent and despise this Hobson's choice, it looks to be the one I have to make. Aside from the minor distinctions of mandatory vs voluntary national health care, and how soon and at what level to start meeting with officials from nations unfriendly to the United States, there is no appreciable difference between the two Democratic contenders' policies. Both are completely inimical to any semblance of a philosophy of freedom or sound principles of just governance. Both will raise taxes and spending. Both will meddle in the already-weakening economy. Both want to reassert American "leadership" in the world, meaning an increase in, rather than the rejection of, our peculiar breed of Empire. Most frighteningly, both will likely have a Democratic legislature to push through their disastrous agenda. Make no mistake about it: the United States are heading for perilous and painful times. At this point, the coming Democratic rule looks inevitable. Avoiding it may be beyond the realm of possibility; we should instead focus on minimizing the pain and damage.

Barack Obama is an empty suit propped up by platitudinous generalizations about "hope" and "change," yet his rhetorical skills have the effect of a political aphrodisiac, seducing listeners on both the Right and the Left. Even I am not completely immune to this, and the media is head-over-heels in love with Senator Obama. In contrast, Senator Clinton is positively reviled by the Right, and is possibly the most divisive figure in national politics today, though she runs a tight race with President Bush for that dubious honor. Whether Senator Clinton has earned this intense revulsion is irrelevant; call it "Clinton Derangement Syndrome," but the phenomenon is very real and potentially useful.

We have seen numerous examples of how completely catastrophic one-party rule can be in this country, from Roosevelt and the New Dealers prolonging and deepening the Great Depression to the stagflation of the 1970s to the first six years of the Bush administration. Bipartisanship is no great boon either; at best, we end up with ill-conceived legislation like No Child Left Behind, and at worst we get a noxious mixture of the Welfare and Warfare States. Ross Perot may have decried so-called "gridlock" in 1992, but it is clear to me that anything which prevents Washington from getting anything done ought to generally be considered beneficial to the country.

Barack Obama may be able to overcome gridlock. Whether by reaching across the aisle in a bipartisan manner or by increasing the Democratic majority through campaigning for key Congressional elections, a President Obama would be able to push his agenda through with relative ease and impunity. A (second) President Clinton, on the other hand, would be fought tooth-and-nail by Republicans. Either Democrat is going to over-reach in their first term. We saw this play out already in 1993-1994, when the Democratic Congress passed, and Bill Clinton signed into law, the Brady Bill, Don't Ask Don't Tell and NAFTA, to name only the most contentious pieces of legislation. This over-reaching led directly to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, and a healthy if limited revival of an anti-state mentality among the GOP. Barack might be able to get away with a great deal of over-reaching; Hillary, like her husband, will not.

For these reasons, I now endorse and support Senator Hillary Clinton for President of the United States, though without any sort of enthusiasm and only because I believe she represents the best chance for me not to have a full head of gray hair by the time the Democratic stranglehold on the two elected branches of government is broken.

The Cost of Empire

Jonah Goldberg of the National Review has written a decent piece about Ron Paul's non-interventionism, which he says was "rightly defeated" during the Cold War, but concedes that, "Now that the Cold War is over, it seems not only fair but wise to give it another hearing." While I remain unconvinced that aggressive foreign policy was necessary to protect Americans from the Soviet threat, I am not here to give elaborate alternate-universe theories of history. Instead, I'm going to take Mr. Goldberg at his word: let's re-examine non-interventionism in the context of the post-Cold War world.

First, a note about style and semantics: Mr. Goldberg laments the use of the word "empire" to describe America's dominant global position, saying that "it is slanderous to lump us in with Huns, Nazis, and Communists." This may be true; however, terms such as Mr. Goldberg's preferred "liberal hegemony" whitewash the nature of American global dominance at best, and at worst provide a fig leaf of legitimacy to the ultimate Big Government program. I will use the word "empire" because I think it is the most accurate description of post-WWII American foreign policy. It is worth noting that Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall both used the term "empire" to describe their vision for America. (Though Hamilton and Marshall used the term to support a vigorous federal government presiding over the various states; a "national empire" rather than international.) If my use of the word offends you, feel free to substitute "liberal hegemony" or whatever sterilized, politically-correct, inoffensive description you prefer for the word "empire" when you see it.

The American empire is the product of World War II, and was our primary means of fighting the Cold War. Given that our bases in Europe, Asia and the Middle East were established primarily as a means of "containment" of the Soviet Union, the most obvious question is: Why do we still need these trappings of empire when the USSR is dead and gone? Undoubtedly, many would contend that the threat of radical Islamic terrorism requires the capability for American military might to be projected both rapidly and world-wide. This argument seems compelling at first glance, but it has at least two major flaws: the "fight the last war" syndrome, and the phenomenon of unintended consequences.

"Fighting the last war" is a fairly common problem of some generals and military strategists who seek to apply lessons and consequences of previous wars to modern conflicts. While there are certainly some lessons of war which are basic and fundamental (there is a reason why Sun Tzu is on the Commandant's Reading List for Marines), all of these lessons must be put into proper context; furthermore, the changing nature of warfare--given considerations such as technology, culture, climate and terrain--renders other lessons obsolete altogether.

There is no reason to suppose that a large, worldwide standing army is necessary and proper to curtail the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. In the first place, our overseas military installations, as well as NATO and similar agreements, were intended to counter an invasion by a Soviet Union armed with huge infantry divisions, tanks and aircraft--none of which applies to our current enemies. In the second place, the combined global might of America and our allies was itself a deterrent to Soviet aggression. The policy of Mutually Assured Destruction assumed that the Soviets were basically rational actors and would not pursue a course of action that would lead to national suicide, whether by launching nuclear weapons or invading West Germany. It is all too obvious that the radical Islamic terrorists against whom we are now fighting will not be deterred in such a manner, and in fact there is a good case to be made that opposition to the American empire is the driving force behind the "bin-Ladenism" in the Middle East.

The phenomenon of unintended consequences, in the context of foreign policy, is best summed up by the term "blowback," a word invented by the CIA precisely to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. The CIA initially warned of this phenomenon when writing their internal history of Operation Ajax, the 1953 Iranian coup which overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh and reinstated the Shah of Iran. There was, of course, blowback which resulted from that coup: the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Operation Ajax is hardly the only example of American interventionism in the Middle East, nor is it the only one with negative consequences for Americans. According to former President Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter signed a presidential directive on July 3, 1979 to aid the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, Afghanistan. This provoked the USSR into what an unrepentant Brzezinski called the "Afghan trap," which was to be the USSR's version of Vietnam. Once the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, it was relatively easy for the American CIA, working with the Pakistani ISI, to recruit, arm and train mujahideen from around the Middle East to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union. One of these mujahideen was a young Saudi named Usama bin Laden.

After 9/11, President Bush gave his State of the Union address, in which he claimed that the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms; for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to vote." It is true that some radical Islamists (perhaps most notably Sayyid Qutb, mentor of Ayman al-Zawahri) do hate those things about America, yet it would be both overly-simplistic and just plain wrong to assume that radical Islamic terrorists, and specifically al Qaeda, are motivated to violence by Baywatch, the 19th Amendment and American secularism. Rather, it is our current foreign policy of worldwide intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, combined with our Middle-Eastern military bases--i.e. the American empire--that motivates young Arab men to kill themselves in order to kill Americans.

If the Cold War allowed the rise of Usama bin Laden, it was the Gulf War that turned him against America. According to Time magazine, "The initial target [of al-Qaeda after Afghanistan] was not the U.S. but the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which al-Qaeda claimed were corrupt and too beholden to the U.S. It was only after the Gulf War, by which time bin Laden had moved his operations to Sudan (he would later be forced to shift back to Afghanistan), that he started to target Americans."

In 1998, when Usama bin Laden declared his second fatwa against the United States, he said that, "[F]or over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples."

The nature of al Qaeda's hatred for the United States was put into starkest terms by the federal government's own Defense Science Task Force: "U.S. policies and actions are increasingly seen by the overwhelming majority of Muslims as a threat to the survival of Islam itself [...] Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States."

If we are to weigh the costs of empire, we must realize that the threat of radical Islamic terrorism is the fall-out of the Cold War. Perhaps there are those, like Mr. Brzezinski, who can look at the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the Khobar towers, the U.S.S. Cole, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and say that the defeat of the Soviet Union was worth the cost. I cannot count myself among them. But whatever you think of the worthiness of Cold War foreign policy, let's not fool ourselves, and make no mistake about it: the terrorists do not hate us for our freedoms, they hate us for our foreign policy.

Jonah Goldberg echoes William F. Buckley in saying that hard thinking is required of conservatives. This hard thinking must not fall prey to "fighting the last war," and it absolutely must comprehend the unintended consequences of American empire. We must remember too, that unintended consequences are not the only cost of empire.

Mr. Goldberg argues that, despite numerous warnings to the contrary, empire overseas and civil liberties at home are not incompatible. While it is true that domestic freedoms have seen occasional steps forward despite an aggressive foreign policy, this is by no means the natural trend, and examples more contemporary than the repeal of the Corn Laws paint a different picture.

The Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act are but two examples of our domestic laws infringing on our liberties as a result of foreign policy. The case of Brandon Mayfield, who was erroneously imprisoned without criminal charges and allegedly without access to family or legal counsel, should be chilling to every American. The entirety of the Patriot Act, from the issuance of National Security Letters to provisions allowing the indefinite detention based on secret evidence of any alien believed by the Attorney General to be a national security threat, is a threat not only to our civil liberties, but also to our constitutional system of checks and balances; inordinate amounts of power are vested in the Executive branch with little provision for Judicial oversight. The Military Commissions Act further solidifies Executive power, allowing anyone, including U.S. Citizens, to be detained indefinitely, without habeus corpus rights, on the say-so of the Executive branch.

S.1959, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, has truly turned the war on terrorism's eye inward. While I'm not going to engage in the hysterics and hyperbole of some of my libertarian friends, there is no question that the vague definitions of this bill (what constitutes an "extremist" belief system, exactly? Didn't Goldwater have something to say about that?), the potential for McCarthyism by the bill's committee, and the potential legislative recommendations of the committee ought to at least give us pause, if they aren't quite cause for alarm and panic.

Finally, we must consider the economic costs of empire. Need I remind conservatives that the government has no money of it's own, that every dime spent by the government is a dime taken from the private individuals who produced it, either currently or in a future generation? Given this, how many billions of dollars of our money are spent each year maintaining an American empire?

According to a State department report, American taxpayers spent nearly $24 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq in 2004. In addition, we were taxed $6.2 billion for "bilateral development assistance," $5.4 billion for "economic aid supporting U.S. political and security objectives," $2.55 billion for "humanitarian assistance," $1.7 billion for "multilateral assistance," and $4.8 billion for "military assistance" to foreign governments. That's a total of $44.65 billion dollars spent on foreign aid from just one federal department for just one fiscal year. One would think that, for that kind of money, we'd bought the love and good-will of all people around the world, right? No; instead, we are accused of being "stingy."

More recently, we've proposed a $63 billion arms deal with Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and five Gulf states. We also have a deal with Pakistan to provide $10 billion in military and other assistance to Musharraf's government. Note that support for these exact countries was noted by the Defense Science Task Force as a major grievance of the "overwhelming majority" of Muslim voices.

None of this even begins to touch on the profligate spending by the Department of Defense to maintain over 700 bases in 130 countries around the world. Nor does it account for the billions of dollars spent each day fighting the war in Iraq, much of which is borrowed from China. How much good could be done with our money if it were left in our pockets, rather than drained from us to be sent overseas?

The end of the Cold War has eliminated the conservative movement's rationale for supporting American empire. The fallout of the Cold War has shown us, in no uncertain terms, the enormous cost in lives, liberties and treasure of maintaining a global empire. Honest men may have been honestly mistaken in supporting empire to combat the Soviet Union. Now that the Soviet menace is gone and our imperial chickens have come home to roost, it is obvious that America must abandon her imperial ambitions if the American people are to remain safe, free and prosperous.

Corey Cagle

Intellectual Honesty and Iran

For some time now, members of the Bush administration, from the President and Vice-President to the Secretaries of State and Defense, to the head of the CIA have been saying that Iran is arming the Iraqi insurgents, specifically with "shape-charge IEDs." For those of you who don't know, these are improvised explosive devices fashioned with a conical copper disc which are able to penetrate the armor on American military vehicles, as well as the body armor our servicemen wear. I have seen firsthand the damage these can do, and they are absolutely devastating.

Iran's actions have been characterized by our current administration, Presidential candidates, and conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity as both state-sponsorship of terrorism and an aggressive act against the United States, bordering on an informal declaration of war. Many Americans' initial reaction is to agree that Iran is a threat which must be neutralized. But is there something else to consider here? Are we seeing the whole picture?

Remember that in 1979, Islamic fundamentalists--including a young Usama bin Laden--started gathering in Afghanistan. This group called itself the "mujahideen," (literally strugglers, though "those who wage jihad" may be more accurate) and were gathered together to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. It was the American CIA, working with the Pakistani ISI, who recruited, trained, armed and financed the mujahideen, which would eventually become al Qaeda (in fact, UBL refers to his group as "mujahideen" in his latest video). Seeing that the USSR was making a push toward the oil-rich Arabian peninsula, the CIA used the mujahideen as a proxy to enforce our doctrine of "containment" of the Soviet Union. This action was regarded as necessary and proper in defending our broadly-defined national security interests.

Once again, Iran is castigated and called a state sponsor of terrorism for using proxies and guerrilla tactics against the United States. Yet, when the United States used proxies and guerrilla tactics against the Soviet Union, we were acting in a strategic, defensive capacity. Only blatant intellectual dishonesty could possibly allow such a contradiction. If we are to be honest, then either both the United States and Iran are "state sponsors of terrorism," or we are both acting for our national security interest. Remember, too, that Iraq is Iran's neighbor. It could be argued that we were defending our regional allies by helping Afghanistan resist the Soviets, but there is no real sense in which the United States was acting in national self-defense when we created the mujahideen. Iran, on the other hand, actually has a US presence on it's western border.

Rather than talking to the Iranians and trying to allay their fears that they are our next target in the Global War on Terror, or even condemning their human rights abuses and encouraging democratic change in Iran, we are parking battleships off the Iranian coast, planning three-day strikes against Iranian infrastructure, and even threatening to unleash the incomparable evil of a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran.

This sort of behavior endangers our troops in Iraq, as the Iranians are given more reason to keep us bogged down there, so we are unable to invade them. We are effectively silencing internal voices of dissent as the Iranian people fall under the all-too-familiar spell of unity in the face of a common enemy. Finally, it damages our standing in the eyes of the world, including our friends and allies; no country would countenance a preemptive nuclear strike, and we have to wonder how China, Russia, Europe and the rest of the Middle East will react if they think that the United States is seeking strategic control over the oil fields of Iraq and Iran.

Non-Conformist or Just a Jackass?

As human beings, we must use our minds in order to survive; we don’t have instincts like animals. The use of our mind is volitional; we must choose whether to actively engage in thought, or coast through life on a perpetual acid-trip. Unfortunately, far too many people are content to suspend their rational capacity and rely on others to do their thinking for them. Non-conformists frequently ridicule uncritical conformity; however, many of these self-styled “radicals” are just as guilty of conformity as those whom they mock. These people are neither radical nor non-conformists; they are just plain old jackasses.

The field of politics is an excellent place to find potential jackasses. I will concentrate on three overlapping groups of people who, in attempting to rebel against the status-quo, manage to become dangerously conformist: socialists, environmentalists and the ubiquitous protestors. These people have one thing in common: they reject traditional values, then accept their perceived opposite without bothering to actually think about what is right, wrong, true or false.

Most people perceive capitalism to be the foundation of America’s economy. While this hasn’t been strictly true since FDR’s New Deal, it is still a common misperception; as such, young people looking for a way to be unique will often turn to socialism because it seems radical and shocking. They blindly follow anything Noam Chomsky and other leftist intellectuals spew out of their mouths, burn the American flag, declare corporations to be evil and disparage the American way of life with thousands of their “fellow travelers,” all while depending on the basic freedoms that no socialist country has ever allowed. Survey says: you are jackasses!

Environmentalists, or “greens,” are another good example of mindless rebels. Often aligned with socialists, these geniuses whine about things like global warming, overlooking the fact that their spokesmen, such as Paul Erlich, were screaming about global cooling in the 1960’s, and predicting world-wide famines in the 1970’s. These people are completely impervious to facts, logic and reality. Greens lobby for forced recycling, ignoring the fact that it takes more fossil fuels to recycle plastic than it does to create new plastic. Greens’ favorite pastime is rallying around one pet catastrophe after another. News flash for Henny-Penny environmentalists: the sky isn’t falling, you’re just jackasses.

The third example from the political realm is the protest movement. This movement started in the 1960’s with the masses of unwashed hippies who protested the Vietnam War. Unsurprisingly, many of the members of this group are also socialists and/or greens. Critical thought isn’t important for a protester. As long as you’ve got a catchy slogan, pissed-off demeanor and plenty of cardboard signs, you can be one of them. Do you enjoy protesting things like: the G8 summit, the latest war, fur coats and rich people? Do your hobbies include: breaking windows, throwing Molotov cocktails at cops and tipping SUVs? If so, congratulations! You’re a jackass.

This general jackassery bleeds over into pop culture as well, particularly the so-called “Generation X” phenomenon. You know the type: unshaven, bleary-eyed teenagers who bathe less often than a Frenchman, wear ill-fitting clothes and prefer “slacking off” to getting a job and doing something productive. These are the same people that “X-treme” marketing caters to, and can generally be described as X-treme jackasses.

A good example of the conformity-in-disguise of Gen-X is the number of so-called subcultures that are based purely on aesthetics. Specifically, I’m thinking of the “emo” kids and the punks. Emo “culture” is identified by the wearing of all black, as if to symbolize that life is dreary and pointless which, for most of these kids, is true. Self-mutilation is also essential to the emo kid. Punks also have their own style—too much gunk in their hair, spiked bracelets, worn-out clothing, tattoos and body piercings—which they enforce as strictly as any military uniform. Depending on how “hardcore” a given punk is, he or she may refuse to listen to any music that’s put out by a major record label, not because the music is bad or because the artists club baby seals in their off-time, but because anyone who is successful is automatically a sellout. Both of these groups are trying so hard to be different and unique, just like all their friends. Here’s a tip for all you emos and punks: cutting yourself and spiking your hair doesn’t make you cool. It just might, however, make you a jackass.

What, you might ask, is responsible for turning an entire generation into conformist jackasses? It all goes back to many people’s decision to let other people do their thinking for them. Why bother coming up with your own style when you can turn on MTV, the cultural Mecca of Cool, to find out exactly what you should be wearing, listening to and thinking? MTV claims to be racy, edgy and different, but in reality they’ve just taken the lowest common denominator of cultural phenomena and turned them into a new standard of conformity. Anyone who produces, stars in, or religiously watches anything on MTV is a grade-A, prime example of a jackass. Small coincidence that “Jackass” is the name of one of their more popular, and more mind-numbing, programs.

Just for fun

I was going through my hard drive and came across some old papers I wrote for my Writing 102 class. These got a great reaction from my professor and fellow students, so I thought I'd post them here for everyone to enjoy. Keep in mind that these are all very ascerbic, and could be quite offensive. Before you flame me, keep in mind that, while these are all semi-serious, they were written for humorous effect. I'll be posting one essay per day for the next few days. Without further ado, here is the first of my essays:

Get Away From Me, You Dirty Hippy

On August 15, 1969, the unfortunate residents of upstate New York found their peaceful, quiet community had been invaded. The intruders were not a conquering army bent on pillage and plunder; they were creatures much more vile: hippies. A scant month after NASA had put men on the moon, thereby achieving mankind’s greatest technological triumph, the single largest gathering ever of subhuman bipeds took place. Woodstock, a three-day long “music” festival, was a critical mass of the worst elements of humanity.

Hippies have plagued civilization since the mid-1960s, when experimentation with drugs—especially hallucinogens like lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD), psilocybin, and mescaline—became popular among American youth. Drugs are life’s blood and mother’s milk to the hippy. Places with a large hippy population, like California, are awash with marijuana, LSD, cocaine and various other drugs. Psychedelic drugs have inspired many of the defining characteristics of the hippy. Tie-dyed shirts, folk music and black-light posters are but a few of the common hippy’s psychedelically-inspired accoutrements.

Hippies can generally be found en masse in places like the University of California Berkeley campus, Earth Day rallies, Burning Man festivals and Grateful Dead or Phish concerts. In order to get a better understanding of hippies, it is necessary to observe them in their natural habitat, however unpleasant this may be. While the reasons for UC Berkeley’s great percentage of hippies is not fully known, it is suspected that some Californians who have enough money to send their hippy kids to college are often former hippies themselves, and consider sending their kids to UC Berkeley to be a sort of apprenticeship. Thus, an otherwise prestigious college becomes a kind of guild for the spoiled progeny of hippies who either grew up or got lucky. After a few semesters at UC Berkeley, a budding young drug addict is able to achieve the status of full-fledged hippy, just like his or her parents, thereby completing the cycle.

One of the hippy’s favorite pastimes is whining about the environment. In 1970, Earth Day was created as a way for hippies everywhere to whine together about the importance of pristine nature and the evils of industry and western civilization. While bitching about the environment is important to hippies, it is secondary to the consumption of mind-altering substances. Burning Man festivals and concerts for bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish are gathering places for masses of hippies who come with the intent of destroying the remnants of their brains with drugs and rambling, incoherent folk music.

The common hippy is not hard to detect. From afar, one can observe several common characteristics of a hippy. Volkswagen vans seem to be the hippy’s vehicle of choice, despite the automobile’s inefficiency and pollution output. Hippies tend to wear dirty, ill-fitting clothes, usually emblazoned with peace signs and often tie-dyed. Whether male or female, the hippy will have long, matted hair that looks as if it hasn’t been washed in months, and hippies of neither gender will be clean-shaven, perhaps because it is impossible to shave when you’re stoned out of your mind.

If one is unfortunate enough to come into close contact with a hippy, their distinct odor will be readily apparent. Hippies almost always smell like a combination of dirty clothes, body odor, pot smoke and incense. Female hippies will sometimes perfume themselves with patchouli oil, as though they don’t smell enough like moist dirt naturally. For those ill-fated souls who actually come into physical contact with a hippy, the hippy’s distinct texture will be noticed. Hippies very rarely exercise or shower, since both require effort, so they feel like slimy, gritty bean bags.

Under the laws of evolution, it is reasonable to expect that hippies would be an endangered species. Yet somehow, they have managed to survive and even thrive, like cockroaches in a nuclear winter. In a perfect world, hippies would either not exist at all, or they would be awkward teenagers going through a particularly stupid phase. In the real world, however, there are no easy answers to the hippy problem. Short of carpet-bombing Phish concerts and Earth Day rallies, we may have no choice but to wait until California breaks off of the North American continent and floats out to sea, never to return.

The Paul-Huckabee Moment Through the Eyes of Thomas Hobbes

I'm re-reading Leviathan by Hobbes for my Modern Political Thought class (and no, the irony of my reading that book, given the name of my blog, was not lost on me), and since I have to write a paper about the book, I thought I'd warm up a bit by analyzing the debate between Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul during last night's GOP debate on Fox. In case you missed it, here's the actual moment I'll be analyzing:



Now first off, I'm glad that Gov. Huckabee at least had the good grace to address Ron Paul and have a somewhat substantive debate, given the time constraints. Contrast that to Giuliani's reaction from the South Carolina debate. But that's neither here nor there.

So what would Hobbes have to say about this? Leviathan was written during the English Civil War, and is an inquiry into the nature of Man and the Commonwealth, in an attempt to answer the question of why we should submit to civil governance. In the first few chapters, Hobbes says that yes, man possesses the faculty of Reason, but that, because men do not all reason equally well, Reason is insufficient as a guide for our actions. Hobbes argues that emotions, or the Passions, should augment Reason.

When Ron Paul says that we have no national security interest in having a troop presence on the Arabian peninsula, or that we should correct our mistakes rather than continuing to make them, he is making an argument based on Reason. Huckabee, on the other hand, starts off reminiscing about moral lessons he learned from his mother, then makes a strong appeal to the Passion of Pride when he says that we must continue the surge for our national honor. Ron Paul countered that Republicans are losing elections, and are "going down" in 2008 if they don't change their foreign policy. Paul made an appeal to the Passion of Fear to augment his argument from Reason.

Huckabee's argument was almost entirely an appeal to the Passion of Pride, excepting the dubious logic that because some of our elected officials made a horrendous error, it is now the duty of the entire country to endure as much loss and suffering as necessary to see that error through to the end. This is unsurprising, as Huckabee is a former Southern Baptist minister, and if there's one thing Southern Baptists know, it's how to appeal to the Passions.

The thing I found the most interesting, especially seen through a Hobbesian lens, was the audience's reaction to each of the men. The audience was cheering and applauding quite loudly for both Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee. Hobbes, I think, would not have anticipated this; Leviathan certainly indicates that he would have expected the crowd to be more receptive to an appeal to Passion than to Reason. Now, to give the devil his due, the applause (filtered through Fox's sound system, of course) was a bit louder for Huckabee's appeal to Honor and Pride, but the New Hampshire audience did react quite enthusiastically to Ron Paul's appeal to Reason, which says good things about the citizens of the Granite State.

The question now is: what will Republican voters do? Will they follow Reason, realizing that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with our national security, that our troop presence on the Arabian peninsula is (by way of fact, not as a fear tactic) making us more reviled and thus more likely to be attacked, and that our national self-interest is best served by a foreign policy of non-intervention? Or will they fall for appeals to Pride, such as Governor Huckabee's, and Fear, such as the theory that al Qaeda will follow us home, or will take over Iraq, or that Iran will annex Iraq? I am certainly hopeful that Reason will win the day, although I've no doubt that Hobbes would disagree.