It Came From the Swamp

Vulgar Politics
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All my life I’ve heard the same story: Socialism works in Scandinavia. The usual example of this practical central planning is Sweden. But occasionally someone notices that Finland is run along a similar model, and, except for the high incidence of alcoholism and suicide, we’re told that the Finns are happy and healthy and all-around moral exemplars. The most recent example of this Finnophilia comes from Newsweek, which proclaimed the small country “the world’s best.”

I’ve had to hear this more than most people, since I’m as Finn as an American can get — without speaking the bizarre language. All my grandparents were Finnish, and, as near as I can tell, all my great-grandparents were born in Finland. I certainly look Finn, and I possess many of the alleged Finnish “national” traits, such as stubbornness (yes, I am going to continue doing this) and emotional reserve (no, I don’t want to hug you).

But there have been several reasons for my skepticism about the Finnish paradise.

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Voting, Moral Hazard, and Like Buttons

Anti-Statism, Democracy, Libertarian Theory, Vulgar Politics
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I was reading Sarah Lacy’s “If You’ve Got Social Media Fatigue, UR DOIN IT WRONG” on TechCrunch and was reminded of a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s seminal essay “Civil Disobedience” that I discuss in chapter 6 of my dissertation.

First the passage from Lacy’s article:

Sometimes metrics can be a bad thing and beware of any so-called “social media consultant” who tells you otherwise. What’s the value of a Retweet or a Like? It’s roughly the equivalent to sitting next to someone during a keynote who nods his head at a salient point. Someone hitting a button in front of them is hardly a heady endorsement—nowhere near the impact of someone calling you to tell you about a story he read. That actually takes more than one-second of attention and work.

This reminded me of the moral hazards of voting in electoral politics and Thoreau’s likening it to a sort of gambling with morality:

All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

With this last sentence Thoreau is no longer really speaking of voting, as becomes clear later on when he writes “Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.” He is advocating civil disobedience and participatory democracy.1

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  1. For more on participatory democracy, see chapters 6 & 7 of my dissertation ↩

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A Pastor’s Provocative Attack on Islam

The Right, Vulgar Politics
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The New York Times is reporting the story of  Terry Jones’ plan to commemorate the 9/11 attacks by burning 50 Qur’ans. While I find his actions repulsive, and needlessly offensive to me and every other Muslim, irrespective of our political views, I must say that he nonetheless has every right to burn his own property or that which is voluntarily donated to him. In a similar manner, a property owner may build a mosque on his own property. Perhaps all people can eventually learn to either ignore such actions, or use them as springboards for conversation rather than conflict.

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Weigel’s Parallax View

The Left, Vulgar Politics
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David Weigel, late of the Washington Post‘s blog, now writes for Slate, where he posted, yesterday, about a possible “purge” at the Cato Institute. Personnel changes at Cato are of only scant interest to those not employed by Cato (or so it should be, partisan obsessions aside), but something Weigel wrote deserves attention:

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The “Ground Zero Mosque” and the Prospects for Liberty

Immigration, Vulgar Politics, War
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The furor over the “Ground Zero Mosque” (which is neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero) doesn’t make me very optimistic about the prospects for liberty.

As a libertarian and just a live-and-let-live kind of guy, I can’t imagine caring much about, let alone vocally protesting, what someone is building two blocks away from me.

Yet apparently many of my fellow Americans are such busybodies that they’ll whine for weeks about something being built hundreds or thousands of miles away from them, in a city where they don’t live and probably won’t even visit. And many of the complainers are among the Tea Party set whom we are occasionally told are “libertarian,” even though they seem to hate Muslims and Mexicans and love war at least as much as they hate the federal government and love liberty.

Jonah Goldberg claims that the conservatives who object “mostly” recognize that the Muslims have a legal right to build their center. But what I hear on talk radio makes me doubt this. A common argument there seems to be that since “liberals” don’t care about the constitution or property rights in general, they aren’t entitled to invoke them now — as though liberals somehow have the power to waive Muslims’ rights.

In any event, even if Goldberg is correct, it’s hard to imagine that the spirit of liberty resides in the sort of people who get so worked up over this sort of thing. The ease with which they’ve been distracted by this issue suggests that reducing government isn’t going to be their top priority once their team is back in control in Washington.

(Cross-posted on my blog.)

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