Ph.D. Octopus

by Bronwen

I’m currently on a research trip in Kenya, so have been following the news of the debt crisis from afar.  In a country, and a region, currently facing a real crisis of famine, in part caused by the inability or unwillingness of various regional governments to prepare for the third drought season in a row, the fake crisis manufactured by extremist politicians in the US does seem a bit silly (silly, but still with wide ramifications, as an article in the Kenya Daily Nation argues).  But in both cases, the unwillingness of governments to put governance before politics is marked, as this political cartoon reveals.

Not long ago, a blog I follow posted this video, a tourism video for a ‘libertarian paradise.’

When travelling or working in Africa, Asia, South America, and other parts of the so-called ‘developing’ world, the things that mark countries as ‘more’ or ‘less’ Read the rest of this entry »

by Weiner

Very quietly, on his own blog, David Frum has written the most important conservative article in recent memory. Ostensibly a critique of a National Affairs essay by Yuval Levin, Frum’s article “Two Cheers for the Welfare State” in fact represents a rejection of conservative economic policy at the level of abstract principles. It is not only an example of the oft-talked about rifts in American conservatism, but also, just maybe, a precursor to a dramatic shift leftward for the conservative intellectual class in the United States.

Frum notes that he “changed his mind” as a result of the recent financial crisis. Earlier in his career, he supported the “doubling-down on the economic libertarianism of the Reagan years.” But with the recent collapse, he decided:

Conservatives do not like to hear it, but the crisis originated in the malfunctioning of an under-regulated financial sector, not in government overspending or government over-generosity to less affluent homebuyers. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were bad actors, yes, but they could not have capsized the world economy by themselves. It took Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and — maybe above all — Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s to do that.

And then, this massive revelation:

GK Chesterton once wrote that we should never tear down a fence until we knew why it had been built. In the calamity after 2008, we rediscovered why the fences of the old social insurance state had been built.

Speaking only personally, I cannot take seriously the idea that the worst thing that has happened in the past three years is that government got bigger. Or that money was borrowed. Or that the number of people on food stamps and unemployment insurance and Medicaid increased. The worst thing was that tens of millions of Americans – and not only Americans – were plunged into unemployment, foreclosure, poverty. If food stamps and unemployment insurance, and Medicaid mitigated those disasters, then two cheers for food stamps, unemployment insurance, and Medicaid.

First, it’s fairly remarkable for anyone, left or right, in our political discourse (and in academia), to admit to being wrong. This is just not something the punditocracy does. I guess people did this about the Iraq War, particularly the left wing humanitarian hawks. And Richard Posner “became a Keynesian,” which I wrote about here. Most notably, Diane Ravitch, former champion of charter schools and standardized testing and opponent of teacher’s unions, has done a complete 180, and now blames America’s education problems on poverty and inequality.

Frum hasn’t changed that much. Sure he was fired from the American Enterprise Institute for criticizing the Republican Party. But I suspect that has more to do with his disdain for the recent wave of conservative anti-intellectualism, symbolized by the Tea Partiers who have made heroes out of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck. He shares that disdain with other conservatives like David Brooks and Christopher Buckley. But those disagreements were more about style than substance. On foreign policy I suspect Frum is still a hawk, and probably still far too conservative for my taste on economic issues as well.

Nonethelss, Frum is moving in the right (by which I mean the left) direction. Especially interesting is how he justifies this change. He invokes Irving Kristol the way socialists invoke Marx, libertarians invoke Ayn Rand, and Christians invoke the Bible. This is a classic intellectual move. Frum appeals to the ultimate neoconservative authority to advance the notion of a “conservative welfare state.”

Here is the Irving Kristol quote Frum uses:

The idea of a welfare state is perfectly consistent with a conservative political philosophy – as Bismarck knew, a hundred years ago. In our urbanized, industrialized, highly mobile society, people need governmental action of some kind… they need such assistance; they demand it; they will get it.

Whatever works for you, Mr. Frum. What I see is a smart conservative realizing that conservative economic policies aren’t so smart.

by Weiner

In the aftermath of the horrific murders in Tucson, critics and pundits are rushing to place blame and to find the killer’s motives. Some on the Left are blaming Sarah Palin for her use target-laden imagery and violent rhetoric. Conservatives are calling Jared Loughner, the suspected shooter, a “liberal lunatic.” Some believe Loughner to be antisemitic.

Frankly, I have no idea what motivated Loughner. But in reaction to this crime, my fellow Canadians who I’ve spoken to all seem to have the same reaction: “Americans are crazy.” Of course they (we) don’t mean all Americans, or even most Americans. But America’s culture of violence, love affair with guns, and the facility with which one can purchase firearms is downright frightening. I was never a big fan of Michael Moore or his Bowling For Columbine, which painted a stupid and false image of Canada as a nation where people don’t lock their doors. And I know violent crime in Toronto especially has been on the rise. But I think Moore was 100% right that America’s culture of violence combined with loose gun laws that lead to terrible results. It’s not really Americans we Canadians think are crazy, it’s America. It’s times like these America scares me: the every man for himself, protect yourself at all times and by any means necessary attitude along with easy access to deadly weaponry. The statistics bear this point out: gun violence in America is a national tragedy and shame.

What bothers me most in terms of commentary on the incident is those who miss the point entirely. David Frum blames Loughner’s crime on his marijuana use, despite all evidence that suggests the drug war is more harmful than drugs themselves, that most marijuana users tend to be peaceful, that alcohol causes much more damage to our society even though it is (rightly) legal.

Even worse, however, is libertarian Radley Balko, who uses the Tucson shooting to launch another tirade against the very same American war on drugs. Balko is right in everything he says about the drug war, but in the context of Tucson, he’s utterly missing the point. Since we don’t know Loughner’s motives, the only thing we really can comment on is the extent of the tragedy and the horrific nature of gun violence in America.

Balko, of course, is a libertarian, and loves loves loves the American right to bear arms. Balko is right that “we should mourn the people senselessly murdered yesterday, government employees and otherwise: U.S. District Judge John Roll, Dorothy Murray, Dorwin Stoddard, nine-year-old Christina Green, Phyllis Scheck, and Gabe Zimmerman.” By focusing his attention on the drug war, however, he diverts attention away from the only cause we know of these people’s deaths: America’s dangerous level of gun violence. And I’m sure he’ll go back to tooting his libertarian horn in favour of looser gun regulations soon enough.

By Wiz

I know I should leave this alone, but god-damn Rand Paul is at it again, comparing himself to abolitionists and Civil Rights leaders. In an op-ed with a Kentucky newspaper he writes:

I am unlike many folks who run for office. I am an idealist. When I read history I side with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglas who fought for 30 years to end slavery and to integrate public transportation in the free North in the 1840s. I see our failure to end slavery for decade after decade as a failure of weak-kneed politicians. I cheer the abolitionist Lysander Spooner, who argued that slavery was unconstitutional 20 years before the Civil War. I cheer Lerone Bennet when he argues that the right of habeas corpus guaranteed in the Constitution should have derailed slavery long before the Civil War.

Point one: This it nit-picky, but Lysander Spooner and William Lloyd Garrison took the exact opposite position on the constitutionality of slavery. Spooner thought slavery was unconstitutional, Garrison was almost certainly correct in thinking that slavery was constitutional, and that was why the constitution was “the most bloody and heaven-daring arrangement ever made by men.” I’ve already written about why its nonsense to think abolitionists were modern libertarians. Garrison did not support Rand’s beloved Constitution.

Second, Lysander Spooner? Who the fuck is this Lysander Spooner you’re asking? Spooner was a bit-player in abolitionist circles. But he has taken on a second life as a hero for the modern libertarian right. They’ve made him a hero, partly on the basis of his failed attempt to compete with the US Postal service, and his opposition to slavery. Apparently the hilariously named Laissez Faire Books used to give out a Lysander Spooner award. Even Justice Scalia has gotten in the act, citing Spooner in defense of gun rights.

Spooner makes, let’s say, a bit of an awkward hero for the libertarian right. Among other things he was opposed to wage labor, which he believed in proto-marxist fashion stripped men of the fruits of their labor, a proponent of soft-money inflationary policies (not like our modern Gold-bugs), an anti-imperalist, and a supporter of the labor movement. In many ways he’s more of an anarchist of sorts, then a libertarian properly understood.

Its just one more case of right-wingers trying to adopt the mantle of people who would have detested what they stood for. The violence to history done by people like Paul is tremendous. The worst, absolute worst example of this, is Glenn Beck, who is going to give a speech on the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of King’s I have a Dream Speech. Rand Paul as well claims to act in King’s legacy, which is, of course, far more outrageous and offensive than their grave-robbing of Spooner. Neither Beck nor Paul, it seems, can get beyond a few out of context quotes from King about color-blindedness. As if the man who died supporting a strike of public workers, who spoke out against the Vietnam war, and who was leading a poor people’s march demanding the government to ensure high paying jobs was a right-wing libertarian.

There is a tremendous erasure of history required for the modern right to claim historical heroes among the abolitionists and Civil Rights movement. Later in the op-ed Rand Paul claims to believe deeply in Martin Luther King Jr’s vision. Let’s take that seriously for a second. Its not like King has been dead for 500 years. People and institutions who, you know, were his actual allies and friends in the Civil Rights Movement are still alive. Not that Jesse Jackson, or John Lewis, or the UAW or whoever gets to speak for King, but they have a better claim on it than Rand Paul does. They actually marched with him in real life, not in their fantasies, like Paul did. The point is, Paul apparently believes that he knows better than the actual Civil Rights activists what the legacy of the Civil Rights movement was.

In other words: a shocking display of white arrogance, entitlement, and willful ignorance.

By Wiz

Via a friend I saw this excellent essay about Ayn Rand by Corey Robin in The Nation. Robin sees Rand less as a con-man, though she has many surface similarities to that great American type, and more a product of Hollywood: all phony pseudo-intellectualisms and self-satisfied (and she was very satisfied with herself) and self-serving superficiality. Robin also suggests her ethos tends towards fascism, not liberation, as she probably thought.

On one hand it always seems a bit too easy to bash Rand. We all know, by this point, the score. She’s a bad writer, philosophically ludicrous, and morally immature. Her fans tend to be socially inept, and have the truly repulsive combination of delusions of grandeur alongside persecution complexes. Of course, on the other hand, there are enough powerful people out there pushing Ayn Rand and her ideas at us, that its always worth reminding ourselves how ludicrous she is. (Here, for instance, is a report about how businessmen are trying to fund “Ayn Rand Studies” at universities).

One thing I learned from Robin was that Rand claimed to be influenced by Aristotle, basing her defense of the free market on Aristotle’s dictum that A is A, and declaring Aristotle to be the greatest Western philosopher (until her, of course). Robin is rightfully skeptical that Rand ever read much Aristotle beyond a shallow reading of his logics. Certainly not his ethics, it seems. Aristotle’s entire ethical theory, after all, is based on the idea of personal virtues: habits and skills that individuals build up over time in order to live good lives. Were Rand to seriously read Aristotle she might have noted that many of the virtues lauded by Aristotle—like temperance and justice—hardly fit into a capitalist and egoist ethos.

Moreover, she might have noticed something else jarring to her hyper-egoist worldview. For a book about ethics, Aristotle dedicated two chapters, 1/5 of the book (Chapters 8 and 9), to friendship. “Without friends no one would choose to live.” Friendships are crucial training grounds for virtuous behavior, places to enjoy the internal goods of yours and others’ virtue, and a small model of the just community. In other words, Aristotle’s ethics is crafted, from the beginning, as a social product, just as his political philosophy takes the household, rather than the individual, as its starting point. As Alasdair McIntrye points out, Aristotle’s ethics are fundamentally incompatible with Nietzschian relativism. Yet, of course, Rand’s vision tried to fuse a vulgar Aristotle with an extraordinarily vulgar Nietzsche.

And finally, one last point. In a burst of hideous meladramatic cliché, Rand has one of her heroes, Howard Roark declare:

“The great creators—the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors—stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid.”

(One can just imagine all the CEO psychopaths out there, bravely firing their workers who try to unionize, evading environmental laws, and hiding their income in off-shore tax havens, all imagining themselves as heroic Galileo figures, couragously withstanding the persecution of the small-minded and jealous.)

Anyways…Aristotle was, of course, personal physician to Kings and tutor to Alexander the Great and Ptolemy. He spent his entire life among the most powerful in the Greek world. Hardly the resume of a persecuted and misunderstood man who suffered for his genius.

But then, one suspects that this doesn’t contradict Rand’s point. What Roark means is that the true heroes will be disliked by the democratic masses, so being friends with Kings is fine. The “men of unborrowed vision” are not worried about the rich and powerful, since in Rand’s world they always are the rich and powerful. They’re worried about the unwashed little people. And so, of course, we see the self-fulfilling prophecy to Rand’s message: anyone who acts like a self-centered greedy solipsistic psychopath, as Rand wants, will end up hated by the mass of the people, just as Rand predicts they will.

I’ll leave you with these words of Aristotle, much wiser than anything our modern libertarians ever have come up with:

For in every community there is thought to be some form of justice, and friendship too; at least men address as friends their fellow-voyagers and fellowsoldiers, and so too those associated with them in any other kind of community. And the extent of their association is the extent of their friendship, as it is the extent to which justice exists between them. And the proverb ‘what friends have is common property’ expresses the truth; for friendship depends on community.

By Wiz

A couple of days ago Rand Paul had his balls surgically removed by Rachel Maddow on her show, concerning the issue of whether or not private businesses have the right to discriminate. Watch it below, if you haven’t at one of the ten million places that already linked to it.

Particularly obnoxious, to me at least, was when Paul mangled the history of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Here is the relevant part:

PAUL: You know, one interesting historical tidbit, one of my favorite historical characters is William Lloyd Garrison. And one of the interesting things about desegregation and putting people together, do you know when it happened in Boston?
MADDOW: What do you mean, the desegregation? In general?
PAUL: You know when we got — you know, when we got rid of the Jim Crow laws and when we got rid of segregation and a lot of the abhorrent practices in the South, do you know when we got rid of it in Boston?
MADDOW: I — why don’t you tell me what you`re getting at?
PAUL: Well, it was in 1840. So I think it is sort of a stain on the history of America that 120 years to desegregate the South.
But William Lloyd Garrison was a champion and abolitionist who wrote about freeing the slaves back in the 1810s, ’20s and ’30s and labored in obscurity (ph) to do this. He was flagged, put in jails. He was with Frederick Douglass being thrown off trains.
But, you know, they desegregated transportation in Boston in 1840, and I think that was an impressive and amazing thing. But also points out the sadness that it took us 120 years to desegregate the South. And a lot of that was institutional racism was absolutely wrong and something that I absolutely oppose.

Paul’s history is, well let’s say, a bit shaky here. His point, I guess, is that segregation ended in Boston because Garrison changed public opinion, rather than through government action. This is not accurate for reasons that are very relevant for the debate about libertarianism.

First of all, the low hanging fruit: This is picky, perhaps, but William Lloyd Garrison started abolitionist agitation in 1831, 1829 if you count his speech at Park Street Church, but most historians would say 1831, when he founded The Liberator. So, Paul fails on the dates when he claims Garrison started in 1810s.

Second, segregation did not end in 1840s in Boston. Perhaps Paul means the segregation of the railroads, which the abolitionists did largely achieve in the 1840s in Massachusetts. But the Public School system was not desegregated until 1855, Harvard did not graduate an African-American until 1870, and many churches, theaters, lecture-halls, and other public institutions remained segregated throughout the period. The leading scholars on Black Boston write: “In antebellum Boston, blacks were segregated into a few highly concentrated areas of the city, restricted to Jim Crow accommodations on public transportation, isolated in schools that were rapidly deteriorating, and scholastically inferior, excluded from juries, and seated apart in white churches, lecture halls, and places of entertainment.” (Horton and Horton 73)

Here, for instance, is a quote from The Liberator, Dec 12, 1853: “Rev. Theodore Parker administered, in a recent Sunday discourse, a well-deserved rebuke of the spirit of caste, which in the Puritan city is exhibited towards that portion of God’s heritage whose skins are colored unlike the majority; and for an illustration, referred to the concerts of Monsier Julian, at Music Hall, from one of which respectable colored persons had been excluded.”

Charlotte Forten, a black feminist, keep a meticulous journal throughout the 1850s and 1860s. A relevant entry from September 1854:

“I have suffered much today,- my friends, Mrs. P and her daughters were refused admission to the Museum, after having tickets given them, solely on account of their complexion. Insulting language was used to them.—Of course they felt and exhibited deep, bitter indignation; but of what avail was it? None, but to exit the ridicule of those contemptible creatures, miserable doughfaces who do not deserve the name of men. I will not attempt to write more.—No words can express my feelings, but these cruel wrongs cannot be much longer endured. A day of retribution must comes. God grant that it will come very soon! (Forten 98)

The point, of course, is that moral suasion and consumer choices—Rand Paul’s solution to segregation—did not work. Let me repeat. Non-state consumer action did not desegregate all public facilities in Massachusetts. Abolitionist pressure did convince some theaters, a number of railroads, and other companies to let in African-Americans. But, by any standard, segregation, but de facto and de jure, remained a fact in Boston.

Which is why—you guessed it—abolitionists and their allies turned to the government. First the State Government, and then the Federal Government. Wendell Phillips—Garrison’s close ally—testified in front of the Massachusetts legislature in 1841, on the issue of Railroad Desegregation (the abolitionists began a boycott campaign only after the State Government failed to act on the issue). This is a description of the event from his biography:

Privately owned railroads received “special privileges and franchises” from the state, he argued. The state, therefore had the right and the duty to make these enterprises treat all citizens as equals. “These corporations are public servants,” Phillips maintained,” and therefore bound to serve in accordance with the laws of the commonwealth,” which had been designed “to secure the rights of all the people.”…Since law, according to Phillips, must insure the public’s good above all else, legislators should override the private choices of the segregationists…. As Phillips had made clear during this contest, however, he now equated racial equality with the public’s good and insisted that positive law must prevent an individual’s discriminatory use of private property.” (Brewer p. 98-99)

No politician was as associated with the abolitionist legacy as Charles Sumner. Sumner devoted the last of his life to passing a Civil Rights Bill that would, in the words of Eric Foner “Guarantee all citizens equal access to public accommodations, common carriers, public schools, churches, cemeteries, and jury service.” (504) As he died, Sumner whispered to a visitor “you must take care of the civil rights bill… don’t let it fail.” (533) But fail it did, shot down by compromises in the Senate, and then a Supreme Court, and so segregation lasted, in much of America, for another 100 years.

In case the point isn’t obvious, Rand Paul’s idea of how to fight segregation and racism is simply nonsense. The power of privately owned business, institutions, and individuals is too great to be fought simply by consumer choices and moral suasion.

By Wiz

There has been some discussion on this blog and others about the crude libertarian idea that America today is less “free” than it was in some golden age in the 18th or 19th century.
Two quick and obvious points that seem to have been left out:

1. Freedom is just another word (for whatever you want). People define freedom in completely different ways at different times. This whole debate seems premised on the idea that there is one obvious standard of freedom that is measurable, and all we need to do is determine whether or not that freedom standard is going up or down. (See the absurd Heritage Foundation which tries to do this and finds that Hong Kong and Singapore are the most free countries in the world. )

And yet, throughout American history, different groups have defined freedom in particular ways. Eric Foner wrote a whole book about this. Even today, of course, no one agrees on what the word means. To a businessman, or their paid shills in the Heritage Foundation, freedom means the ability of multinational corporations to engage in whatever business practices they want, to a small-r republican, it means the ability of the community to govern itself, to a modern civil libertarian it means vigorous protection of individual free speech, etc…

So when tea partiers or whatnot goes around whining about the loss of freedom, it really is more meaningful to simply translate that as “we perceive things to be getting worse in some way.”

2. Many of those freedoms are zero-sum. Liberal political theory aside, the fact is throughout American history people have often perceived their freedom to depend on other people’s lack of freedom. Edmund Morgan, of course, famously argued that American, especially Virginian, political theory was able to come to terms with what was then a remarkably free white population, exactly because slavery insured that the majority of the workers were denied that freedom, and racism insured that the poor would never unite against the rich. Freedom and slavery went hand in hand. Chandra Manning has similarly discovered, among letters from Confederate soldiers, that Southern whites defined freedom largely as the ability to control dependents- women, children, and slaves. And the model of the small yeoman proprietor that American ideology, since Jefferson at least, has so equated with freedom and independence was only made possible by a massive reduction in the freedom of Native Americans.

Perhaps the strongest example of this is in the family. A great deal of male freedom was premised on the virtual slavery of their wives. Men could enjoy the ability to sell their labor freely in marketplace (not necessarily a great freedom, but that’s for another day) exactly because women performed the unpaid labor at home that comprised the social reproduction of the working class (cooking, raising family, etc…). Men were “free” to beat their wives or commit sexual violence against them exactly because the woman lacked the freedom to legally resist or divorce. We can say these aren’t real “freedoms,” since they violate someone else’s, but the ability to act as you pleased at home, order around slaves, control your wife, etc… were perceived as freedoms.

The point is, it’s not really enough to say that the existence of slavery, or Indian Wars, or the oppression of women was evidence that freedom wasn’t extended far enough. Rather, those were exactly the things that made freedom possible for many Americans.

Something to think about when you hear those Tea partiers complain about the loss of their freedom. In many ways they are right! Rich white men (the backbone of the Tea Party Movement) are less free than they were 100 years ago, when they could treat their wives as tools to their sexual pleasure, their workers as cheap and expendable, and never had to be bothered by racial minorities agitating for equality or respect.

I don’t agree with libertarian economic policy, but I do greatly appreciate this Cato Institute vice-president David Boaz’s smart post on why there was never a “golden age of lost liberty.” H/T Josh. Maybe the Tea Partiers should read this. I doubt they would care. Certainly Bob McDonnell wouldn’t.

I don’t care much for libertarianism. Sure, individual libertarians are fine (some of my best friends are libertarians!). As libertarian economist Henry Hazlitt wrote in his 1946 classic Economics in One Lesson:

The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible. Among men of good will such an aim can be taken for granted. The real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. (141-142)

As I’ve written before, I think the ideology of libertarianism is mostly a failure. Libertarianism does not lead to everyone being “as well as off as possible,” as evidence, we can contrast the United States with the democracies of western Europe, Australia, Canada, and Asia, which on the whole have cheaper, better healthcare (which covers everyone and gets better results), better education, and broadly speaking more functional, cohesive societies. (I recognize that this is a broad generalization, but I sincerely believe it to be true).

Nonetheless, I think libertarianism can be an intelligent, principled position. Case in point, this blog, The Sheep’s Vote, and particularly this most recent post about the health care summit:

The president and congressional Democrats did what they do best. Step 1, appeal to emotion. Step 2, appeal to authority. Step 3, the pièce de résistance, argument by anecdote. This is the Dems’ premier rhetorical recipe: two parts emoticon, one part encyclopedia. Not that this should surprise anyone. It’s the ratio of choice for Democrats and liberals everywhere. Earn a living? You keep two parts, the government keeps one. Public schools? Two parts babysitting, one part math and reading. Time allocated for “bipartisan” health care reform summit? Two parts team blue, one part team red.

I don’t agree with the assessment of the American education system, that’s for sure. Nicholas Kristof was on the money when he observed that “America became the world’s leading nation largely because of its emphasis on mass education at a time when other countries educated only elites (often, only male elites).” As a student of American Jewish history, this seems pretty obvious to me. American Jews embraced the public school system en masse, including at the post-secondary level, and New York’s City College became even more of a Jewish Harvard when the Ivy League instituted quotas after ww1. The same is of course true of other immigrant groups. There is no question that the American public school system has been the greatest force for social mobility in the 20th century United States.

But I credit The Sheeps Vote for being consistent, and calling out the Republicans like John Boehner on their hypocrisy.

Masticate on this Boehner: what’s the difference between a trillion dollar government boondoggle in the health care industry (which you oppose) and a near trillion dollar government boondoggle in the financial industry (which you supported)?

I also agree with the criticism of the Democratic that mandates the purchase of private insurance, though I don’t quite think it’s “at the barrel of a gun.” I do think, like Glenn Greenwald has argued (among others) that it’s a gift to the insurance companies, which is why I would prefer single-payer, or a robust public option (which is really kind of bullshit, but much better than the status quo). I also think the bad Senate bill would be better than the status quo, but that’s another story.

The larger point here, however, is that what the Republicans are offering is even greater bullshit, and smart libertarians can recognize that too. They don’t have a party to vote for, which is unfortunate. But that’s a problem of the two-party system, which is another post altogether.