URLs du Jour

2022-10-10

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  • I wouldn't want to join any party that would have me for a member. Morris Fiorina looks at a new book at Reason. Review: 'The Other Divide' Questions Left-Right Polarization Narrative.

    With The Other Divide, political scientists Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan have made a significant contribution to the polarization debate. Wait! What debate? Everyone knows that Americans are more polarized now than at any time since the Civil War. There is no debate. The science is settled.

    Well, actually not—or at least not in political science, whatever the average political journalist might erroneously believe.

    When the polarization narrative first became popular in the early 2000s, my collaborators and I wrote a short book showing that in terms of ideologies, issue positions, and partisanship, the American electorate was no more polarized than it was when it chose between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976. In fact, significantly fewer Americans were willing to claim affiliation with either of the major parties than had been the case in the supposedly pre-polarized era. (Political scientists still debate how to think about those independents.)

    I think of these hyperpoliticized folks as the "Flight 93" crowd.


  • I still like him. John Tierney looks at the politician it seems everyone loves to hate: Mr. Paul Goes to Washington.

    For all its virtues, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington has never been considered a realistic film. Critics complain that Frank Capra’s movie is at once too corny and too cynical: one brave senator singlehandedly defending the public good against the thoroughly corrupt political and journalistic establishments. But we’ve been seeing a version of that plot for two years now, thanks to Senator Rand Paul’s lonely battle against Anthony Fauci, the Centers for Disease Control, and the mainstream press.

    Like the politicians meekly following orders in the film, most of Washington has bowed to the CDC’s Covid edicts, but Paul has never tired of challenging the agency’s futile policies and dubious science. Like the movie’s media baron Jim Taylor, Fauci’s cheerleaders in the press and on social-media platforms have shamelessly pushed the party line—and worked hard to squelch opposing views, though they prefer to use “fact-checkers” rather than the street thugs whom Taylor hired to silence a rival newspaper. Journalists have smeared Paul, and censors have removed some of his scientifically accurate heresies from YouTube, but no one can stop him from regularly berating Fauci at the televised hearings of the Senate health committee.

    Paul isn’t as folksy or likable as Jeff Smith (Jimmy Stewart), and his tousled hair isn’t quite as disheveled as during Smith’s epic filibuster, but he, too, likes to deliver lectures on democracy and liberty. Unlike Smith, he hasn’t read the Declaration of Independence to his jaded colleagues—at least, not yet—but he did invoke Friedrich Hayek’s The Fatal Conceit at a hearing early in the pandemic, when he was pleading with Fauci to stop locking down Americans in their homes.

    Senator Paul didn't get much traction when he ran for president. In fact, he dropped out of the race before I could vote for him in the New Hampshire Primary.


  • I still like this guy too. Chris Stirewalt notes a reverse Flynn Effect: Senate Brain Drain Set to Continue With Sasse.

    Political awfulness is self-concentrating. 

    Indeed, that can be part of the problem with our upper chamber. So well-developed is the dignity of many of the mostly older, already wealthy members that they don't have the spunk to deal with the growing number of zealous, self-promoting demagogues in their midst. 

    It was all fun and games 15 years ago when it was just Bernie Sanders, who was good for a head pat and a press conference and would be on his way muttering about millionaires and billionaires. But the bear-baiting purveyors of class-warfare bull pucky are now everywhere: Ted Cruz, Elizabeth Warren, Josh Hawley, Tommy Tuberville, and Mazie Hirono have all arrived since then. Others, like Kirsten Gillibrand and Ron Johnson, caught the bug after they arrived. 

    Don't worry, he gets to Senator Sasse later on in the article.


  • Part Three of "Economics for English Majors". And it's from Kevin D. Williamson, so if you wrote your senior thesis on a feminist interpretation of Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', it's for you: The Power of Choice.

    Opportunity cost is one of the three or four most important concepts in economics, especially for non-economists who want to understand economic thinking in the public policy context. It is simple enough, but still underappreciated, in part because we tend to look at opportunity cost from the consumer point of view and forget all about the production side.

    The fundamental issue in economics is scarcity. Scarcity is a fact of life: No matter how rich we become as a society, and no matter how much material abundance we enjoy, there is never enough to go around to satisfy every desire of every person: Some goods are naturally limited (there are only so many Rembrandt paintings), some goods are rivalrous in consumption (if Steve smokes a cigar, Jonah can’t smoke the same cigar), and our desire to consume goods that require work to produce (see last week’s discussion of Say’s Law) conflicts with our practically infinite appetite for leisure time. As much as it may grieve David French, you can’t plant turnips and play World of Warcraft at the same time. You have to choose one.

    That special application of scarcity—“If you want x, you have to forgo y”—is opportunity cost.

    You all know that, of course. I’m just laying some groundwork.

    You may know that, but do you appreciate that?


  • And finally, an item to go with our Amazon Product du Jour. And it's from J.D. Tuccille: Putin Have You Panicked? You Can Survive a Nuclear Exchange.. This is really news you don't want to use. But…

    While it's possible to ignore overseas horrors so long as they stay distant, that's increasingly difficult with the war in Ukraine. Not only is the conflict worsening conditions in a world already damaged by pandemic responses, but Russia's President Vladimir Putin threatens nuclear escalation and U.S. President Joe Biden warns of resulting "Armageddon." It's a grim reminder that government power enables ambitious individuals to put millions of lives at risk. And it's a heads-up to us as individuals do what we can to preserve ourselves, our families, and our communities if the situation gets even worse.

    "To protect Russia and our people, we, Of course, we use all the means at our disposal. This is not a bluff," Putin huffed in a September address to his country that was far from the first time he and his government invoked the use of nuclear weapons, always by insisting it's in response to the West. "The territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be ensured, I emphasize this again, by all that we have means. And those who are trying to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the wind rose can turn around and in their direction."

    If you can read this, Armageddon haan't happened yet. Also, thank a teacher.


Last Modified 2024-01-16 4:55 AM EDT