The Noise in my Head

Interesting (and encouraging) that Tea Party senate candidate Rand Paul says that cutting defense spending should be on the table for discussion at this point.

It’s a smart position, and here’s why: in the “new” war, information is actually as valuable (or more so) as weaponry.  And the defense budget is so big that…

…every 1% cut in the defense budget could get you a 100% increase in the intelligence budget!!

That’s right: put simply, if we were to proceed with a minimalist 4% cut in the defense budget, we could triple the size of the intelligence budget…and still pocket 2%.  And we’d be safer in the bargain.

• Let’s pull back the curtain on the whole thing: if you believe that President Obama is either (a) not an American citizen, or (b) a Muslim, you are too stupid to be reading this.  Get off my blog, and don’t come back.  If you’re not sure: same deal.
• It’s logically inconsistent to tell me that the guy who took hostages at the Discovery Channel was fueled by environmental rhetoric, and yet not understand that the guy who flew a plane into the Austin IRS building was fueled by eliminationist right-wing rhetoric.  It’s neither, or it’s both.
• Lindsay Graham says that the estate tax is going to “devastate small businesses and family farms.”  No further punchline is required.
• Did anyone else notice that the San Francisco Federal Reserve published a paper that posits that immigration is not the problem, but rather the solution, to our economic crisis?  Look it up; it makes a lot of sense.
• Jan Brewer has lost it.  The whole scene where she kept claiming that there were decapitated bodies out in her desert, then had to admit that there weren’t, was just…weird.
• When are conservatives and Tea Partiers going to wise up on Sarah Palin?  Folks: your all-time worst nightmare is getting this lady elected.
• Aside from the proven idiocy of trying to cut taxes, what are Republicans going to do next year?  Anything?  Anything?
• Okay, GOP: if you’re going to repeal “Obamacare,” please show me what you’re going to replace it with.  Because the (former) status quo is a non-starter.
• Dylan Ratigan pointed out an interesting fact: Ronald Reagan would have been run out of the Republican Party (like Bob Bennett was) because of his policies:
  • He provided amnesty for illegal aliens
  • He raised taxes 11 times in 8 years
  • He negotiated with terrorists
  • His top marginal tax rate? 50%
• What has been the single largest creator of jobs in California since this recession started?  Greentech.
• Glenn Beck made light of the fact that he said (in his big Lincoln Memorial speech) that he “held” the Constitution in his hands, when in fact it was held up in front of him.  Okay, Glenn.  I get that you think it’s a minor point, and it probably is.  But if you didn’t hold it… don’t say that you held it.  It’s not that hard, really.  It wasn’t even impromptu, for crying out loud!

Matt Taibbi suggests why it is that so many people are so angry, and I agree with him.  His theory is this: there are genuine local issues that have people riled up — Arizona has a genuine immigration problem, and when the New Jersey state supreme court  ruled in favor of a Central American drunk driver because cops didn’t explain the consequences of refusing a breathalyzer in his native Spanish, well.  C’mon.  These issues, and many others like them, years ago would have caused a local uproar, which is entirely appropriate.

But now there is 24-hour partisan news.

Now, the slightest misstep on either side of the debate is blown up into a massive national conspiracy.

While Arizona really does have issues, it is simply not the case that a brown-skinned menace is sweeping northwards in any organized way.  It’s not the case that Al-Qaida is building a mosque near Ground Zero to celebrate “conquering” the area; it’s just a bunch of Muslim-Americans who want a community center in Lower Manhattan.

The result of all this is really bad.  Others have pointed out that our national airwaves right now bear a striking resemblance to the notorious Radio Rwanda broadcasts that “warned” Hutus that they were about to be attacked and killed by Tutsis (resulting, predictably, in the wholesale slaughter of Hutus by Tutsis acting in “self-defense”), and I agree.  Let’s look at a few egregious examples:

On July 12, Glenn Beck suggested that the Obama administration was planning a race war.  Note that he didn’t imply that.  I’m being a little kind when I say he “suggested” it, in fact.  What he did was say it outright: “”They (the Obama administration) want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are going to poke, and poke, and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it.” He also said that “we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, ‘Kill all white babies.'”

CNN contributor Erick Erickson picked up the ball with this gem: “Republican candidates nationwide should seize on this issue. The Democrats are giving a pass to radicals who advocate killing white kids in the name of racial justice and who try to block voters from the polls.”

Not really a bunch of wiggle room in there, is there?

If we now mix in a healthy helping of anti-Muslim rhetoric, some “the Mexicans are coming” here and there, and let’s not forget to add a dash of anti-gay sloganeering, we end up with the unsavory stew we face right now.

The shame of it is that it obscures.  It shields good folks from understanding what has really been ailing them: crooks on Wall Street blew up our economy, and because we’ve been so distracted with the nonsense above, we’ve still not brought them to justice (nor have we fixed what made it happen in the first place).

We’re being duped, folks.

I’ve read several articles suggesting that my alma mater, BYU, wasn’t slighted in any way with Utah joining the Pac-10.

Nonsense.

This is terrible news for BYU.  Utah has had a very successful run in football recently — in the last five years, they’ve gone 47-17 and won five bowl games.  Most notably, they finished #2 in the nation in 2008 after going undefeated.

But, amidst all the hoopla over the Utes, BYU has quietly gone 49-15 over the same stretch, and has won three of the past four head-to-head games in the series.  And frankly, football is Utah’s best sport; in most other major sports, BYU is simply a lot better, and has been for some time.  The overall sports program at BYU is markedly superior to Utah’s.

On top of that, BYU draws more people to its sporting events: while Rice-Eccles Stadium at Utah seats 45,000, LaVell Edwards Stadium at BYU seats 65,000.  The Huntsman Center at Utah seats 15,000, while the Marriott Center at BYU seats 23,000.  And BYU, like Notre Dame, draws local fans wherever it goes, while Utah does not.

So, yeah.  It’s a snub.  A bad one.

The big news in the liberal blogosphere is from Kentucky, where a true Libertarian, Rand Paul (son of Ron Paul), won the GOP’s nomination for Senate from the Bluegrass State.  After his victory, he went on the Rachel Maddow show and, according to many, put his foot in his mouth with respect to his opinions on Civil Rights.

All of this stems from, originally, a letter he sent a couple of years ago to his hometown newspaper, in which he criticized the paper for its support for the Fair Housing Act.  “A free society,” he wrote, “will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin.  The Daily News ignores, as does the Fair Housing Act, the distinction between private and public property. Should it be prohibited for public, taxpayer-financed institutions such as schools to reject someone based on an individual’s beliefs or attributes? Most certainly. Should it be prohibited for private entities such as a church, bed and breakfast or retirement neighborhood that doesn’t want noisy children? Absolutely not.”

Rachel Maddow took it a step further, quizzing Paul on whether or not he’d want the Civil Rights Act rolled back in some ways.  Paul stuck to his guns, indicating that while government had every right to enjoin racism in government institutions, they were wrong to think that they could impose color-blindness in private institutions.  Maddow pounced, and worked really hard to paint Paul’s position as fundamentally racist.

Now, I can’t even tell you how thoroughly I disagree with Rand Paul.  I think this notion is entirely ridiculous.  It’s a stupid argument, but at least it’s a consistent one: government has no right to tell private institutions what to do, no matter what.  Consistent, he is.

Racist, though?  He’s not.  He took pains on Maddow’s show to demonstrate that, and I believe him.  I don’t believe, for a single second, that Rand Paul wishes ill on anyone because of their religion, or the color of their skin.  He says he does not.  There is no reason to disbelieve him, and the more you look at what he says, the more you know that people who attempt to paint him in that way will eventually fail.  The shoe does not fit.

Rather, he can be (and should be) defeated on the basis of what he is: a Libertarian zealot who isn’t smart enough to hide that fact.  I respect him, to be honest, for his seeming inability to run from his core beliefs.  Honestly, good for him.

But let’s finally admit it to each other: Libertarianism is patently stupid.  It really is — why can’t we just say it?

Conservatives call liberals “dreamers” and “naive” because we think government can be good.  But the height of naivete is Libertarianism.  The notion that, if we could just get government out of the way, people (or the invisible hand of the market) would operate efficiently and problems would fix themselves… well.  It’s a sweet dream, but it’s a dream.  Let’s review things that would not be here, if Libertarians had their way:

• Food safety laws.  As this is in an area of my expertise, let me assure you: were it not for food safety laws, you and I would be eating poison.
• Nothing (but, presumably, “market pressures”) would impel BP to clean up the Gulf in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill.
• Fire safety codes.
• Air bags, and other automotive safety regulations.
• Etc., ad infinitum

I think the BP example is instructive: to a Libertarian, they should be able to drill where they want, and if something like the Deepwater spill happens, you and I will “force” BP to clean it up by expressing our displeasure at the pump.

Yeah, that’ll do it.  I’m sure they’ll do a bang-up job.  You don’t suppose that they’d do as little as they could get away with and still get some good press, do you?

Let’s not paint Rand Paul as something he’s not (racist).  If they really know what his actual positions would produce, it should be enough.