Just about everyone who is moderately up to speed with regards to American politics likes to trash both the Republicans and Democrats, and who can blame them? Democrats (and John Maynard Keynes) may have brought us such absurdities as ‘countercyclical demand management’ programs so that my family is paid to not grow corn, but how can Republicans blame them when they are the ones responsible for such notorious boondoggles as the “bridge to nowhere?”
Many people have called for (or been involved with promoting) a third party to cut through the great heaping filthy mass of political corruption. Politicians, in order to differentiate themselves from the mess, are fond of casting themselves as “above” politics with claims to be bipartisan.
Some, including my recent acquaintance Korky Day, have called for a change in our political system from the plurality-vote winner-take-all system, which tends to produce a two-party dynamic like ours, to a system of proportional representation, which tends to produce a multi-party dynamic like much of Europe and Latin America.
But would an election process based on proportional representation actually improve things?
Now, I’m no political science major, so there are certainly those with more authority to speak on this than myself. Still, as an avid student of politics and political thought, it seems to me that there are several serious flaws with the proportional representation system.
First, it would not solve the problem of earmarks and culture of backroom deals (e.g. the “Louisiana Purchase” and the “Cornhusker Kickback”), one of the reasons that Mitt Romney was so fond of saying “Washington is broken” back in 2008.
Human ambition, the cause of said brokenness, can’t realistically be eliminated, especially among cynical politicians; however, rules can be changed without altering the whole electoral system. People act on incentives, and I don’t see any way a pro-rep system would alter politicians’ incentives to be less corrupt.
Second, proportional representation would promote political extremism. There is an American Communist Party, but it is relegated to the fringes of polite society. In Europe, with its system of proportional representation where each party is allocated representation based on the percentage of the total vote they receive, fringe parties can become a significant part of the ruling class.
I’m not saying we should try to silence dissent. Quite the contrary. But there is certainly something to be said for the moderating influence of the winner-take-all system that forces politicians to tack to the center in order to get votes. There’s no nationally significant Communist party in the U.S. and there’s no nationally significant openly racist party (in contrast to Europe) and I think we should all be grateful for that.
Third, the winner-take-all system in this country in which representation is allocated among the states based on geography and population ensures “no taxation without representation,” in terms of geography.
Maybe Korky can correct me on this, but in a proportional representation system in which the party selects the list and order of candidates to represent the party, is there any means of making sure that Oklahoma receives the same representation as Rhode Island? If several states vote largely Communist but the Communist party leadership decides the representatives should all come one or two states, is there any recourse?
Last, it seems to me that proportional representation gives way too much power to political parties. Would you rather the life-long political hacks at the Democratic National Committee (or horrors! the RNC) or the local district’s working men and women decide who represents us?
People are wont to criticize political parties, and not without good reason. Promotion within the party is based not on service to the country but on service to the party, and, of course, the interests of the respective groups don’t always coincide. If this system were given greater importance through pro-rep, the country would suffer.
Extreme polarization would be institutionalized. Claims by politicians to favor “bipartisanship” would be even more fatuous than they are today.
Anyway, it seems to me that the current system has worked well for the United States throughout our history, but maybe we could improve. Let me know what you think.
Here’s a graphic I created for the upcoming April issue of the Carolina Review. The chart shows just a few of the new middle-class (and lower-class) tax hikes that President Obama’s health bill will impose. The Joint Committee on Taxation expects ObamaCare to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars away from the public by imposing taxes that will, for the most part, be passed on to consumers. Manufactures of lifesaving medical equipment will take an especially hard hit.
For those of you wondering why the above headline appears on a conservative opinion website, wonder no longer: the above headline actually appeared in yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen, a leading Canadian newspaper.
The incident it refers to involved two student at Carleton University, known to be supporters of Israel, attacked by a group of antisemitic thugs early Monday morning.
So yes, it’s another chance to make fun of Canadians (I mean, it’s not usually very difficult), but it signifies something much more troubling. How can a society this slavishly committed to political correctness actually deal with legitimate problems?
One of the main problems with political correctness, as I argued in Carolina Review‘s February issue, is that it prevents an open and meaningful discussion of real problems. Yes, the attackers did show a “lack of tolerance,” but that misses quite a few important steps. Hitler also showed a “lack of tolerance,” but only a fool would think that an absence of open-mindedness was his chief failing or the root of his problems.
Back to the preposterous opinion piece from yesterday:
People admire Canada for its tolerance and open-minded attitudes to all nations and to all peoples. Being a student does not give anyone the right to attack others for any reason including personal prejudice.
Can anyone really be so blind as to think that attempted murder is the result of a confusion about the rights of students?
May God help Frances Ross, the author of the piece, who clearly needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
If you missed Christopher Horner’s speech in Howell Hall last week, allow me to inform you that global warming, as a political issue, is dying. The poor economy is taking the focus off of the environment, the world has been in a cooling trend for about the last decade, and a series of emails were recently leaked from a leading climate research institute that cast doubt on the scientific evidence for global warming in the first place.
All of this has combined to take the wind out of the sails of those demanding we “do something” about global warming.
In spite of this, if Mr. Horner is correct, eco-alarmism is far from dead. The vested interests that hyped global warming alarmism, from coal companies to former (and current) communists to the town of Carrboro, will not pass silently into the night.
Polar bears may no longer be the poster child of eco-alarmism, but similarly charismatic fauna can readily be found. This time, coral reefs are the ones in danger due to the folly of man—not from global warming, but from ocean acidification, the next big eco-threat.
As CRDaily readers, you are already, generally speaking, among the most well-informed readers around, but a brief explanation of the science would, I think, be helpful (In any case, I hope it will make my Chemical Oceanography teacher happy).
This is basically how it works: carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (see figure 1.a), whether it is naturally occurring or emitted from your tail pipe, is in equilibrium with dissolved CO2 in the ocean (fig. 1.b). The more CO2 in the air, the greater the amount dissolved in the ocean (think of a 2-liter bottle of soda—let it equilibrate with the air long enough and it loses its fizz—in this case, the reverse would happen).
Carbon dioxide dissolved in water can combine with a water molecule to form carbonic acid (fig. 1.c). Carbonic acid, being an acid, has a tendency to dissociate with one or more of its hydrogen atoms (fig. 1.d and 1.e), increasing the acidity of the total solution (in this case, the ocean is the solution) and lowering its pH.
- Figure 1. Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere equilibrates with dissolved carbon dioxide in the ocean
Acidity, for the non-science majors, is basically a measure of the concentration of protons (H+ ions) in solution compared to hydroxide ions (OH-). The acidity is usually reported as pH, the negative log of the proton concentration; lower pH means more acidic, and higher means a more basic solution.
If I’ve lost you, let me summarize: CO2 + H2O –> carbonic acid (H2CO3), making the ocean more acidic, making life more difficult for corals, which require a more basic pH to survive.
However, ocean acidification due to carbon emissions may be less of a threat than some alarmists have suggested. As Mr. Horner pointed out, carbon dioxide levels have been much higher in the past (about ten times higher for much of the Mesozoic era), and the fossil evidence suggests that corals were still able to survive.
Also, if you were looking forward to bathing in a fizzy ocean, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, either. Atmospheric carbon is just not going to reach high enough levels anytime soon, although it is certainly fun to imagine (the fizz part, not the dead corals).
Duke University professor Dan Ariely is looking for participants in a study that involves sex toys. Ariely, author of the NYT and WSJ bestseller Predictably Irrational, is known for his research in behavioral economics. He proposes that people often make decisions for reasons not grounded in logic or reason. Ariely thinks that we can better explain human behavior by understanding how emotions and other irrational bases for decision-making affect the choices we make. I think that man is rational enough for most purposes, but that’s a topic for a future post.
This study has cleared the Institutional Review Board at Duke. I think that says something about that school down the road. It is unclear whether or not the study has cleared the Office of Human Research Ethics at UNC-Chapel Hill.
This post isn’t an April fools joke, but the image that one of the study’s research assistants sent to us is pretty ironic (it’s a Tupperware party scene). I don’t qualify for the study, so I won’t be participating.
The idea of a sex toy study or party at a major research institution now seems predictable and trite. Ariely recently conducted a similar sex toy study, which he paid for with private donations. That study, which involved Duke students, irked religious leaders at the school.
We’ll wait to see what the results of this study are before proclaiming its pettiness or merit. In the meantime, consider yourself informed.
It is becoming somewhat of a consensus among moderates that the recent effort to place ‘sexting’ under the purview of child pornography laws is an overzealous criminalization of teenagers. Such legislation passed the North Carolina General Assembly last summer, and the Daily Tar Heel rightly took a stand in favor of the counter-trend around the country to relax punishments and lower the classification of the offense from a felony to a misdemeanor. An action resulting more from basic human immaturity than malice should not land a minor on sex-offenders list.
However, the article ignores the far more persuasive argument against such laws, which asks on what basis the government justifies its involvement in private texting conversations, regardless of content. Though family values groups cry pornography, the logical inclusion of ‘sexting’ within its bounds is not obvious. Child pornography is a criminal act that requires an innocent victim. Voluntarily sent messages ought not to amount to criminal conduct, and criminal conviction based on communication that should never reach the eyes of the government ought to raise 4th Amendment concerns.
That family values groups are the driving force behind the effort is bothersome. As a family values traditionalist myself, I recognize the concern over the problem of ‘sexting’ and its consequences. But I also recognize that a core tenet of the conservative belief in these values is that the family is the basic unit of society. It follows that the government should refrain from interfering with the role of the family in handling its own problems. When a teenager ‘sexts’ her boyfriend, it is no one’s concern but her parents.
Family values conservatives such as Bill Brooks of the N.C. Family Policy Council, referenced in the DTH editorial, stubbornly insist on such a role for government, and they cease to talk merely about family values. They reveal their attempt to assert their moral agenda on society, and they trample on the privacy and the values of the family.
Today in the Quick Hits section the Daily Tar Heel printed a line suggesting Republican Party chairman Michael Steele “apparently spent lavishly at bondage-themed clubs while traveling.”
In addition to getting rid of attempts at vulgar humor on the editorial page, the Daily Tar Heel’s professionalism would also be enhanced by some fact checking. The actual story is that a contractor traveling with an RNC expense account spent $1,946 at a strip club. The staffer responsible for approving the receipts for the expense account has been fired.
Now, I understand Michael Steele won’t win any popularity contests with the Daily Tar Heel editorial staff (or with the Carolina Review staff for that matter). But there’s still an obligation to print basic factual information. Errors are understandable, especially in a college paper. Publishing slander is not.
Left-wing pundits often like to criticize right-wing pundits for being paranoid, but paranoia is clearly a phenomenon not constrained to the right. Bob Herbert’s recent piece in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/opinion/23herbert.html) reveals a particularly irrational strain of paranoia, not to mention a myopic perspective and a near-total absence of rational thought.
Whatever Mr. Herbert’s former achievements, his writing seems to have lost nearly all connection to reality. I hadn’t heard of the Tea Partiers who showered a Parkinson’s victim with money, but that hardly sounds like cause for much concern, certainly not comparable with the beatings endured by civil rights advocates in the sixties. Besides, I thought liberals were in favor of redistribution of wealth.
I am convinced that the whole racial epithet business is just as much bull feathers (as Dan Rather would say). Andrew Breitbart has offered to donate $10,000 to the United Negro College Fund if anyone can produce any video evidence of a racial epithet being hurled. As of this writing, no one has come forward to claim the prize for the UNCF.
Still, let’s consider: even if there was one guy who yelled it, or even several guys who said bad things out of the millions of Tea Partiers across the country, who cares? One guy? Seriously? Saying the Tea Party movement is a bunch of racist, bigot, homophobes because of one racist (who, for all we know, could have been planted to make the Tea Partiers look bad) is like saying the Civil Rights movement was a bunch of philandering whorehounds and skanks just because Martin Luther King, Jr., serially cheated on his wife. That would, of course, be unfair. There were a lot of decent people in the Civil Rights movement, and even MLK had his positive attributes. Unless I am much mistaken, this has been just about the largest, most non-violent protest in the long history of man’s relation to man.
Look, racism is repugnant wherever it is found. When left to fester unopposed, it has resulted in many of the most shameful, awful incidents in human history. Under no circumstances should racism be allowed to take hold in American politics, and especially not in mainstream political discourse. Even this one incident, if it actually happened, should not be taken lightly. However, it should certainly be put in proper perspective. One kook out of millions is a fairly decent batting average. In fact, I would argue that such a low proportion is in fact evidence for the classiness, not bigotry, of the Tea Party movement. Have you read any left-wing blogs lately?
Mr. Herbert says of the Republicans, “This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.”
As evidence he points out that Glenn Beck “called President Obama ‘racist’ and asserted that he ‘has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.’”
This is very nearly self-parody. If calling someone racist and accusing them of hate is evidence of “insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry,” then who could possibly be more committed to hatred and bigotry than Mr. Herbert himself? To my knowledge, Glenn Beck only called the President racist once, while Herbert has already called different people racist twice this month (see link above and http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/opinion/02herbert.html).
If these constitute the worst abuses our “civil rights leaders” can come up with, then I think it’s time to reexamine where the real paranoia resides.
