Now is the Time to be Vocal: MORE NUCLEAR

Conservatives: if you're reading this, I don't need to convince you that nuclear is the way to go, and has been for some time.

However, it's not us that has to be convinced. We need talking points for the social-issue leftists. Here are two that might impress them.

- The only way that can keep the lights on right now without emitting carbon and has current infrastructure is nuclear. It's a solution that's here now. Wind and solar don't come close.

- One of the founders of Greenpeace is pro-nuclear.


Much as you don't like these, if you're serious, this is the time to sound off. Like it or not, some form of cap-and-trade is going to pass in this Democratic Congress, and if the GOP lets it through without at least guaranteeing that nuclear is part of the package, then someone is really asleep at the wheel. Fortunately Lamar Alexander and John McCain are already weighing in. Get out there and support them.

Uighur Protests in and Around Urumqi, China

Here and here.

Why doesn't this happen in the U.S.? Why are there no Navajo insurrections or Aleutian revolts? Is it because we ruthlessly crush them? Or is it because the U.S. continues to improve and expand its freedoms based on the consent of the governed, freedom of speech, property ownership and transparency? As an added ironic observation, why is it that central authoritarian states, even when they're originally predicated on a supposedly universalist social theory like communism, inevitably degenerate to nationalism - where one group is more equal than the others (Uighurs and Tibetans especially)?

China has awakened as a great power, and ultimately it's up to all the people of China - including the Han - to demand the basic freedoms that the successful governments of the world deliver. A peaceful and prosperous twenty-first century depends on it.

China is Shutting Down Google Access Because...

Are you ready? Because Google spreads "pornographic, lewd, and vulgar" information. That's really the best the CCP could come up with.

Of course, one answer to that is "so what" - in a modern civilized country, it's the individual's job to sort that out, and not the government's job to censor it. But of course there's more to it. Could it be that a dictatorial government is just coordinating the release of the mandatory dissent-filtering software installed on all computers sold after this date? And is it only a coincidence that the Chinese Communist Party is nervous at the same time people elsewhere in the world are using the internet to demand their freedom?

If it's bad for the Chinese people, it's good for the Chinese government.

Coverage of Iran in China

Interesting. An editorial in the Global Times says "In reporting on the Islamic world, the Western media is putting freedom of speech too far ahead of responsibility." Other reports have decried Western interference.

No surprise; China's nervousness at a people's ability to demand accountability from government is understandable.

A Potential Win for the GOP: Tax Reform

Great quote from Jonathan Rauch's review of Patrick Allitt's The Conservatives:

"Bartlett argues that the smart conservative alternative is not to insist on no new taxes ever, but to champion a value-added tax (a VAT), which taxes consumption and allows very few loopholes. It is flat (or flat-ish), economically efficient, and difficult for lobbyists and politicians to game. Establishing a VAT would finance higher government spending, and that is not conservatives’ first choice. But we live in a second-choice world, and some spending growth is inevitable. Today’s tax system is so complex and perverse and inefficient (it punishes saving and investment, for heaven’s sake!) that a VAT could raise more revenues while strengthening the economy. Reagan–the real Reagan, not the caricature–would smile."

Tax reform is a potential big win for the GOP that the Democrats, given their core constituencies, wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole, but can't be seen as resisting.

Pro-Democracy Rallies on the West Coast

The one on Tuesday in San Francisco here, elsewhere here.

Want to piss off a bunch of Islamic fascists? Become another outlet for Mousavi's Twitter feeds right on your Facebook page! Apparently these medieval thugs think that in 2009 they can stop the free flow of information.

If you need more hints on who the good guys are, look how quick Russia and China have been to congratulate Ahmadinjad.

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. -Thomas Jefferson

Noah's Ark Found in Hong Kong

In many posts I emphasize the importance of technology to American economic success, and consequently the importance of educating scientists and engineers - something which Asian countries in general, and China specifically, is beating us badly at.

That's why every patriotic American ssthould rise up in outrage at know-nothings who try to damage your kids' brains by making them learn the Qu'ranic account of creation - in public schools - instead of science and math. (Did you click on that link? Did it connect to something different than what you expected? Does the difference matter to you? Why?)

Turns out there are two approaches to competing with our neighbors across the Pacific. Chinese real estate moguls are opening a Noah's Ark theme park in Hong Kong. These "Chinese" investors are clearly operating in the service of the U.S. government, and sabotaging China's success. Brilliant! This is the best news I've heard about China for a while! Instead of educating our kids, we can stultify Chinese kids! Maybe we can get a Creation Museum to open there too. Once they convince enough bright Chinese kids that the principles of chemistry and genetics are all nonsense, maybe we can actually keep our edge in biotech. Bravo, Noah's Ark investors - what a brilliant Trojan horse.

Conservatives Supporting Iranian Free Elections

I take a little break from this blog, and look what happens. Iran has an election, unsurprisingly it's crooked and Ahmadinejad steals it, and historically huge numbers of people throng the streets in Tehran. American mainstream media have fallen on their faces here; about the only thing they've succeeded at is protecting audiences from seeing the ugly truth of what dictatorial governments will do to squelch democracy.

Conservatives: Iran is a theocratic dictatorship by thugs and for thugs. We should be vocally supporting any expansion of the rights we take for granted - like free elections and speech - if only to undermine Ahmedinejad's nuclear momentum. What's bad for Iranian priest-dictators is good for everyone else, including (especially) the Iranian people.

I started this blog to try to draw conservative foreign policy attention more toward East Asia, which is usually where the real action is happening. The Middle East matters only for these few moments in history, becuase oil matters. Islamic terrorism is the efforts of desperate extremist Neanderthals to turn back the tide of freedom and economic growth. East Asia is still where the long-term momentum is; but Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. That makes this a critical moment in that country's history - and ours.

So what can we do? Get on a Twitter feed or join an online community like a Facebook group and express your support (Ahmedinejad knows that this is a problem for him). Go to a rally, like the one I'm going to the night of Tuesday 16 June in Union Square in San Francisco. Email your representative that it's important to you as a conservative that the U.S. shows its solidarity with the Iranian people, especially because the guy that just stole the election is trying to build a nuclear bomb.

We're watching people fight for their freedom. Let's not let them down.

The Price of Not Innovating

Full Businessweek article here. Excerpts:

The final piece of evidence [for an innovation shortfall] is the financial crisis itself. After the 2001 tech bust, trillions of dollars flowed into the U.S.—but most of it went into government bonds and housing rather than into innovative sectors of the economy. While subprime mortgages boomed, venture capital investments have more or less stagnated since 2001, with few tech startups going public...

...An innovation shortfall might also have weakened the country's underlying productivity growth, which in turn influenced real wages and the ability of consumers to spend without borrowing. Certainly economists on both the left and the right believe innovation is an essential ingredient for growth. A December 2006 paper by the Brookings Institution, co-authored by Peter R. Orszag, now head of the Office of Management & Budget, observed: 'Because the U.S. is at the frontier of modern technological and scientific advances, sustaining economic growth depends substantially on our ability to advance that frontier.'

Oakland, California to Issue ID Cards to Illegals

I'm posting a link to an entry in my local (Oakland, California) blog. The city of Oakland is proposing an ID card to half-legitimize illegals residing in the city. Being married to a legal immigrant, who jumped through a lot of hoops to be legal, I'm pretty down on any suggestion that the road should be smoothed for those who break the rules.

Humvee Purchased by Chinese Company

The irony of this deal cannot be overstated. One of the flagships of American industry has sold the Humvee unit to a Chinese firm - perhaps one of the institutions Chairman Mao founded inland (in Sichuan) to defend against invasion of the coasts by us capitalist swine.

I'm tempted to take a drive by the Hummer dealership in San Jose that I used to run by in 2003 when they were at their zenith. During the Iraq War, when owning one of these no-need-to-be-on-a-civilian-highway behemoths was considered an expression of patriotism, my own love for my country was questioned more than once when I expressed my bewilderment that anyone would want one. I prefer Jack in the Box to MREs too (what a commie!). At bottom the question is: how is it unpatriotic or unconservative to reject burning money for show?

I'm sure there are those on the "Obama is the gay socialist Antichrist" first-grade rhetorical fringe (you know, the ones currently discrediting conservatism in the eyes of moderate Americans) who will insist that that this is really part of Obama's plot to transfer America's military might to a communist nation. In truth I haven't even gone looking on the web, but I'm sure they're out there, and as with everything, my answer is: show me your evidence and I'll listen. It's worth pointing out that it's hard to see how, without government help, this same sale wouldn't have happened months earlier. One complaint I don't have about China is that their citizens and government actually know how to save money, (revolutionary! Americans should learn about this "financial discipline"!) although one negative outcome of that is that our government has been financed by theirs for the last five years.

David Brooks has an excellent piece detailing the weaknesses of the Obama rescue of GM, and how the prop-up is really a political forced move which leaves the already curiously government-like bureaucracy and culture of GM largely intact. What Brooks is talking about is customer interaction surface, and GM's lack thereof. To go abstract for a second, this is why, in biology, cells are small - the bigger a cell gets, the lower its surface area-to-volume ratio, and a cell that can't sense and exchange materials with the outside world is a dead cell. Companies' ability to react to the marketplace is directly related to their customer interaction surface. More generally, the more people you have that don't spend part of their day thinking about what goes on outside your company but that is relevant to the business, the harder it will be for you to compete over the long haul. A large part of Brooks's point is that GM is the poster child of government-like big-business bureaucracy, and this is what has brought it to where it is, and it's hard to see how the Obama plan will make it less big-government like. And it's this is exactly why companies with poor customer interaction surface go bust; success as a contributor in such a place has everything to do with satisfying inbred byzantine legacy processes and nothing to do with the customer (until the company fails; then you realize that all along, it had everything to do with the customer). GM's culture (and economic destiny) means that keeping GM on life support can only be a political move, and it's not doing American capitalism any favors.

So what do you do if you work at such a place? You focus on screwing your internal competitors, ignoring the customer, and forgetting that there's any external competition to speak of. Have you worked at a Fortune 500 company? Then you know what I'm talking about. (After watching his boss steal equipment from another division, Dilbert asked him when they would start thinking about screwing their competitors.) This is the same principle that results in the death of ideologies and moribund states, like the Ming Dynasty calling its treasure ships back, or Moctezuma's men not understanding (at first) that the Spaniards weren't there to politely participate in one of their "show-wars", or Roman generals worrying more about other Roman generals with similar designs on the imperial throne, instead of my ancestors who were busy massing at the borders to sack this curiously named Eternal City. And where are the Ming or the Aztecs or the Roman Empire today? And this is just as true of every silly theory or ideology that rejects the basic evidence of the outside world to preserve its purity and in the process disappears up its own ass (semiotics, intelligent design, Islamic legal "scholarship" and Marxism, for just a few examples). A company that pays more attention to its customers and competition is just like these - or, in a final analogy, like a whale with no eyes and ears. Who cares how well it controls its own metabolism if it's ignoring that sharks that are eating it?

* * *

Ultimately the sale of a GM division to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company is a capitalist transaction, although we do have to ask ourselves if we want the world's other superpower buying such iconic brands. Would we have allowed a consumer division of McDonnel-Douglas to be bought by the USSR twenty years ago? Why should we allow a Chinese firm to buy them today?) This is especially concerning when the country in question has a policy of trying to steal our military technology anyway, taking this ongoing espionage trial as an example. Incidentally, Republicans, this is a fantastic opportunity to start stepping up and reclaiming one of the few remaining Republican policy monopolies - national security. Reawakened Americans will be glad to have China a bigger part of our foreign policy. In the meantime enjoy Hummer's new ad campaign, courtesy Notions Capital.

Do You Have 64 Words for Freedom?

Aung San Suu Kyi made the mistake of being patriotic: she formed a political party to bring freedom to Myanmar, and won the election. Myanmar's military not only refused to recognize the election, they placed her under house arrest. Myanmar is a Chinese satellite state and, thanks to the ruling junta's efforts, a miserable place to live. Do you have a minute to give her 64 words of support?

Does Anyone Really Think There's No Such Thing as Progress?

In a recession, and with an administration in office that you may not agree with, it's easy to grumble that things are going downhill. "We're doomed, the country is going to hell in a handbag, it's the end of the world." For example: our cities are more violent than ever before, and you can't go out at night. Right?

Wrong. You often learn something when, instead of just going along with the groupthink grumbling, you actually work out the numbers to see if the received wisdom should stop being received. And it turns out that "Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth."

Yes, really. And even in crazy San Francisco, things are better than they used to be. Forget the 1960s; for some "you won't believe your eyes" memorable anecdotal data, just take a look at what people out here were up to in the 1870s:

The late 1870s birthed one of the most infamous sex scandals in history, with all the trappings of power, lust and deadly gunplay.

It began when minister Isaac Kalloch moved here from back East to become a pastor. Tales of illicit sexual exploits trailed him, and when he ran for mayor, Chronicle Publisher Charles de Young went on an opposition warpath. "Driven forth from Boston like an Unclean Leper, his trial for adultery, his escapade with one of the Tremont Temple Choristers," read one of the headlines. Kalloch railed back that de Young was, according to "The Magnificent Rogues of San Francisco" by Charles Adams: "The bastard progeny of a whore, born in the slums and nursed in the lap of prostitution."

An infuriated de Young shot Kalloch in 1879, but Kalloch recovered and was elected mayor. Kalloch's son was a better shot: He gunned de Young down in the newspaper office the next year, killing him.

If anything even close to this happened today, it would overwhelm the press and shut down the state of California. This will seem especially poignant to northern Californians. The Chronicle is our major newspaper (to which I often link, as above) and the de Young Museum is one of our major museums. I was dumbfounded to read this account. But it's not so out of character: this was only twenty years after California Chief Justice Terry killed Senator Broderick in a duel (in the city!)

Some of the grumbling about the world going to hell is no doubt the current of "the next generation is a bunch of losers" that undergirds the grumbling of middle-aged men since at least the Roman empire. But it seems to run deeper than that, to a kind of victimhood-worshipping justification for passivity. Tyler Cowen's sigh of frustration with the film-makers of The End of Poverty was that they apparently assume that the world's default position is wealth and happiness; since much of the developing world is miserable, this can only be due to active interference from the post-colonial villains of the West. Nonsense. Wealth is not the default situation. Poverty and misery are the default situation. Only by the constant application of reason and hard work do we escape that.

Beyond liberal mushheadedness, I'm bothered by this undercurrent of negativism, on all sides of the political spectrum, because it's dangerous. Somethin's broke? Then fix it! If there's an attitude I can't and won't tolerate, it's one of passively accepting victimization. Never ask me "oh well, what can you do?" because I'll have an answer for you. Yes, we sometimes hit rough spots, like the current recession - but it's nothing compared to the grind that our ancestors endured just a few generations ago, and that we don't, thanks to their hard work, brilliance and foresight. imagine meeting your great grandfather at your current age, and him smacking you around for being a whiner.

Again anecdotally: my great-great grandfather spent time at age 15 in a Confederate prison camp after being captured in the Civil War's only sword battle (a war in which he and many others were fighting to make it illegal for humans beings to be owned like livestock - there's an improvement for sure.) My great grandfather picked coal out of a mine in Western Pennsylvania all his life. My wife's father grew up in the literal ruins of post-war Japan, hauling rice up mountainsides at age 5 onward, and still managed to work his way up to a marketing position in one of the big conglomerates. My own father joined the Navy so he could afford his college education, the first of my ancestors to get one. Know what my biggest problem right now is? Which suburb of San Diego to live in while I'm in med school next year, because maybe La Jolla proper will be a little too pricey. Cry me a river, right? Granted, I'm fortunate (and I count my lucky stars every day), but I bet your life isn't so bad either. So next time you complain that your favorite beer isn't on tap at the sports bar down the street, or your plane ticket to Hawaii is a little too pricey, then boo hoo! (That sound you just heard was the ghost of my great-grandfather punching me for being a pussy. And you should get ready, cause he told me yours is on the way to your house right now.)

My point? Life has never been better - and we are responsible for creating the world we're living in! If things are so bad, why aren't there mass desertions of the cities for the mountains? Half of North America is still trackless wilderness. If civilization is so oppressive, then what is everybody waiting for?

Today, somewhere in the world, someone was shot on the way to work. Someone was put in jail for speaking their mind, or going to church, or not going to church. Someone couldn't feed their children. Yes, there is such a thing as progress, and it's only because of you and me that it will continue.

Public Intelligence on North Korea, via Technology

This nifty gadget lets you see and learn all kinds of things about the too-kindly-named hermit kingdom; perhaps holocaust kingdom would be a better term.

Support American Business and Medical Research

Public comments are still open for new NIH stem cell guidelines. To put it mildly, there's a huge need for more pro-business, non-extremist-anti-research comments. More, including the link to the NIH submission site, is here.

The Emigration Debate

I frequently write about how the U.S.'s immigration policy should be explicitly focused on drawing wealth and talent to drive economic growth. You're coming here from Ethiopia or Iran with an engineering degree? Welcome home! Alternatively: you're from a developing country and although you're honest and hardworking, you have no specialized skills, but your son is here? Sorry, this is a republic, not a charity.

A reader once commented that we're in trouble when foreign-born talent starts going elsewhere. Richard Florida writes in Andrew Sullivan's blog that a recent survey shows that both American and foreign-born college grads in the U.S. list the U.K. and China above the U.S. as preferred places to start their careers. While it's easy for daydreaming college grads to say this to a survey-taker without backing it up with an actual move, this should be considered a disaster. I haven't seen such surveys in the past, but I'll wager this is unprecedented. Unpatriotic? We should expect talented people to go where the best labor market is. A friend of mine took advantage of the U.K.'s rule that automatically grants work permission to top business school graduates, regardless of country. Unpatriotic? No - smart and self-interested, the very definition of capitalism! The U.S. would do well to remember that people come here not because it's the U.S., but because it offers opportunities. If those go away, they stop coming.

I typically like Florida's writing because he always focuses on the central questions of modern economies - like this one - or on how to encourage and sustain democracy (turns out wealth doesn't encourage a transition, as we're seeing in China). But I don't understand his professed excitement about China seeming a better place to launch a career, even to American college students.

California Special Election - How I Voted

California today held a special election with six ballot initiatives as part of the compromise which broke our budget stalemate in February. It was anticipated to show record low voter turnout, and indeed at 9:30 am I was only the 40th voter (this at an urban polling station where in November I had to wait in line nearly a half hour). Since I didn't bother campaigning online about these measures you can tell I'm just as excited about them as my fellow Californians. Here's how I voted.

1A - No. Would raise taxes temporarily to balance the budget and establish a rainy day fund. At some point, you have to cut services and feel the pain, and we're at that point. Next time you create a budget, don't spend money you won't have. (Update: state voted no.)

1B - Yes. I can't compain about education and then not support it at the polls, can I? Education is one of the areas where I strongly support state-run (and to some degree -mandated) institutions, because it's a direct investment in our future economy and security, and that's more true with every day that passes. California's public schools are largely a disaster, owing to lack of funding-per-student. (Update: state voted no.)

1C - Yes. Lottery modernization - increases sales and lottery revenues so the state can use it or borrow against it in the future. Essentially, taxed gambling. I'm all for it, because it's essentially a sin tax. (Update: state voted no.)

1D - No. This measure would have protected childrens services, including health, against pay cuts in hard times. Unfortunately there are limited resources, and the creation of children is something that is absolutely under the control (and therefore resopnsibility) of the individual. To paraphrase Minnesota's ex-Governor Jesse Ventura - don't have enough money for kids? Don't have any. Not the rest of our problem if you do. (Update: state voted no.)

1E - No. Would transfer mental health services funds to other areas of the budget. Another legitimate area of government spending is taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves. The mentally ill fall into this category. Therefore I'm against this proposition. In the interest of full disclosure, I would like my medical specialty to be psychiatry, so I can't be expected to vote against my own interests. If you disagree with me, it's your job to vote against my position. (Update: state voted no.)

1F - Yes. This prevents pay increases for elected officials during budget deficit years. I noted that the argument for was co-signed by Abel Maldonado (R), a center of the aisle deal-maker who was villified by the CA GOP's circular firing squad for actually helping to get a budget passed. The only guy that would write an argument against it was an activist whose argument boiled down to "All it'll do is make you feel good". Sorry, Charlie; basing your employees' salaries on their performance - which is exactly what this measure does - is more than just symbolic. (Update: state voted yes.)

Dear College Students: Capitalism Works

"Capitalism is unraveling." This is how economic leftists would like to portray the recession; unfortunately, given the average level of economic education of most Americans, we're easy prey for such propaganda. Most worrisome is that exactly that perception is out there, and it's growing. I feel as if I'll be attacked for being disloyal to conservative ideals by pointing this out. Note that I'm not arguing that capitalism has failed - I'm arguing that the perception is being promoted that it has, and unless we recognize that this perception is taking hold most effectively in young people, we'll lose a whole generation.

Young people graduating into the teeth of this recession can't be blamed for being worried, but the combination of a meltdown induced by a bloated financial sector is prompting statements like these from Jake Lear, "a digital arts major at George Mason, worked three jobs at a time through the past semester and is doing one of them full-time this summer — a resident adviser helping to look after freshmen in dorms — because he gets free housing. His parents work for a federal contractor that shrank its work force and eliminated 401(k) matching contributions...Lear gets the occasional 'panic-inducing thought' that capitalism itself is unraveling, a scary prospect with graduation ahead of him in December."

Dear college students and recent grads: I know it's tough. Suddenly being on your own in the real world is scary in the best of times. But the benefit of capitalism is sustained long-term growth, with the advantage, college graduate, to you - who has the brains and skills to create value and push technology forward. The State is not interested in economic growth, or your job, any more than it has to be to get re-elected. To that end, your productivity becomes the State's way of feeding less talented people to keep them happy. Collectivism is a short-term fix that in the medium and long run is always, always toxic and stultifying to real growth.

Fellow real-world conservatives, we have to explain to the Jake Lears of this country why capitalism and markets are the best bet for them and the best way that humans have yet found to allocate and create wealth. His generation is used to questioning everything - and they should. By all means question capitalism, and every other wealth allocation system discovered or contrived, because capitalism is the best and has survived Darwinian selection for a reason. (Adam Smith is the one pointed out the metacompetition that bred the Invisible Hand.) We have nothing to fear from open discussion and inquiry - and after all, if there really is a better system, why wouldn't we choose it?

Without Jake - and without that open discussion - the concept of the free market will lose all public support and die. How do we - conservatives (moderate Republicans, Libertarians) appeal to Jake? By prioritizing positives - education, fiscal responsibility, smart foreign policy, and smarter regulation (not more regulation) that can prevent our economy from relapsing into metastasizing too-big-to-fail de-facto-government finance agencies like Bear-Sterns et al. We won't win Jake Lear through embarrassing tantrums about stem cell research and tea bag parties.

Capitalism has been under continuous assault from ideologs since the mid-nineteenth century, but this isn't even the first time that the opinion of regular working men and women in the industrialized West has swung against it: Joseph Schumpeter wrote Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy as an attempt to preserve capitalism by appealing to its opponents, whom he recognized as in the ascendant. That's why I'll end with a quote from the Economist that I included in a previous post about preserving the public's perception of capitalism:

If the bail-outs are well handled, taxpayers could end up profiting from their reluctant investment in the banks. If regulators learn from this crisis, they could manage finance better in the future. If the worst is avoided, the healthy popular hostility to a strong state that normally pervades democracies should reassert itself. Capitalism is at bay, but those who believe in it must fight for it. For all its flaws, it is the best economic system man has invented yet. Capitalism is at bay, but those who believe in it must fight for it. For all its flaws, it is the best economic system man has invented yet.

More Volunteers For The Circular Firing Squad?

The time to have a witchhunt is not when your village is already decimated by plague. That's what's going on in the circular firing squad of American conservatism today.

California is a perfect example of what this can do: it's projected that in the next election cycle, there will not be a single district with a registered Republican majority. But hey, all those Californians are gay America-haters anyway, right? Good job, write us off; and all the other academics and young people that we need if the GOP isn't going to go the way of the Whigs. Strong work!

The recent attack on Jerry Taylor is a perfect example of what's happening. Someone dares to have an independent thought - someone who happens to be a Cato Institute Senior Fellow - and offers criticism that he thinks will strengthen the conservative philosophy. Immediately he's a heretic. He dared speak out against our converse-cheerleader-in-chief Rush Limbaugh? Where's the kindling! Burn him! Burrrn! The same thing happened to Charles Johnson when he refused to swallow the time-wasting conservative shibboleth/distraction that Obama is secretly showing allegiance to the Saudi king with his bow.

What's worrisome about this is that no political philosophy can survive if free inquiry is being stamped out by the hyperventilating fourth-graders that insist on calling themselves the "real" conservatives, and are threatened by the style of frank and open discussion that comes naturally to well-educated, crisp-thinking scholars. Those coastal types with Audis and PhDs (like David Brooks and Bruce Bartlett) can't be real Americans? They can't be real conservatives? Yet another demographic we've alienated - and the one that builds the future. Just look at this chart:

If conservatism is going to survive, it's not going to be demanding loyalty oaths and suppressing open discussion. We need Andrew Sullivan and Megan McArdle and the eggheads at the Secular Right. We need Austrian-school economists like Tyler Cowen. We need to get over our allergy to the term "intellectual"; it's frankly embarrassing that it has to be defended. Saying that you don't need intellectuals steering your political philosophy is like showing up to a football game with no quarterback. Yes, there are real problems that require the application of a conservative viewpoint - for example the resistance to what is frankly Obama's dishonest accounting scheme vis a vis nationalized healthcare - and the on-the-fence policy-makers and local politicians who play into this debate are more likely to listen to Tyler Cowen than to Glen Beck. That's not a bad thing, because Cowen actually knows what he's talking about.

Objective Evidence of Hugo Chavez's Thuggery

Economists have shown that after the attempt to recall Chavez, people who signed the Chavez recall petition suffered a 10% drop in wages relative to non-signers. Coincidence?