Free Republic

http://www.jonathanbwilson.com/2005.09.01_arch.html#1125770948812

Is Roberts a Blank Slate?

Critics from both the left and the right have leveled criticism at Judge John G. Roberts based on the argument that he is a "blank slate".

Ralph Neas of PFAW has written that "The enthusiastic embrace of John Roberts by radical right leaders who have been demanding more far-right activists like Scalia and Thomas on the Court should sound alarm bells . . . "

From the right, Ann Coulter calls the nominee a "Souter in Roberts Clothing" and that the President "has given us a Supreme Court nomination that will placate no liberals and should please no conservatives."

More at www.jonathanbwilson.com

You wrote, "If Roberts meets this level of dishonesty . . ."

Are you suggesting that Roberts is dishonest? There is absolutely nothing to justify any suggestion that Roberts is dishonest!

Schumer has a vendetta against Roberts, as evidenced by the line of questioning he is suggesting. Past judicial nominees have successfully declined to answer questions like these.

For more, see: Fair Game on Confirmation Questions - http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/001351.php

and Schumer's Vendetta - http://www.jonathanbwilson.com/2005.07.01_arch.html#1121965220593

I'm familiar with the RCP list. I link to it from my own database at www.jonathanbwilson.com/shortlist.html

You're right about Janice Rogers Brown. I covered her nomination on my blog at www.jonathanbwilson.com.

Check out her profile in my supreme court short list database at www.jonathanbwilson.com/shortlist.html.

Check out this database of potential Supreme Court Nominees

Socialism has been dead since at least 1989, when Berliners pulled down the wall separating East and West.

Since then the Soviet Union has dissolved into a pastiche of struggling market economies. Russia still gives off mixed messages, but the private ownership of capital means that, absent state re-appropriation, Russia will have at least some semblence of private ownership for years to come.

China doesn't even pretend to be communist anymore. China's economy is growing as private business harnesses that country's workforce with the power of technology. There is a substantial tension, to be sure, between its burgeoning market and its one-party state, but the invisible hand of the free market is more likely than not to resolve that tension in favor of capitalism.

Throughout the world the debate is largely between the extent of privatization rather than over privatization itself. No one (other than in academe and the New York Times) seriously pretends that a centralized command-and-control economy is a viable option to capitalism.

Krugman is stuck in a time warp.

Conservative George W. Bush defeats Massachusetts liberal John F. Kerry by a 2 million popular vote margin, campaign on the theme of the "Ownership Society" in which he promises to empower individuals by lowering their taxes and opening the gates to individual capital ownership. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says this proves the American electorate is hungry for socialism.

Confused? You're not the only one.

Socialism has been dead for at least 20 years. But it lives on in the Economics Departments of a few college campuses and on the editorial page of the New York Times.

more at http://www.jonathanbwilson.com/2005.05.01_arch.html#1116861493108

Well said, and that was the point of my post.

What is "midstream" anyway? In the middle of a Congressional session? In the middle of a Presidential administration?

Kevin's Drum's argument defeats itself. If the majority has the right to change the rules, it can do so at any time. There is no "midstream".

The second point of the post, for Freepers anyway, is that this is a sign of desperation and defeatism on the part of the far left. They've given up on their other arguments (Bush's picks are extreme, filibusters are Constitutional, filibusters are intended as 'checks and balances" etc.) and now their only remaining fallback argument is "don't change the rules in midstream".

They've lost and they know it.

What is telling is that the "no midstream rules change" argument is both new, slightly disingenuous, and gaining steam among the far left bloggers.

So, the next time you find yourself having sex in Massachusetts, be careful not to do anything "wanton or reckless". Is everyone clear on that?

I think we agree on more than we disagree.

An interesting point. Not all nations have the same laws and, to the extent that free trade allows U.S. companies to outsource the production of goods to companies with looser or non-existent laws, free trade policies allow U.S. companies to skirt around restrictive U.S. laws.

If your point is that the U.S. should pay closer attention to the labor and environmental laws of the companies with whom it develops free trade agreements, I think you're right. We shouldn't subsidize human exploitation or environmental recklessness through trade.

But, on the other hand, we can't require every country in the world to match the U.S. law-for-law and restriction-for-restriction.

If U.S. companies were able to hire U.S. residents at fifty cents an hour it would be a travesty. That's why the Fair Labor Standards Act imposes a minimum wage.

In Bangladesh, however, 50 cents an hour is a princely sum and the population there is happy to work in a U.S.-owned factory for that rate. Encouraging trade to developing companies with lower rates is a good thing, not exploitation.

Does it sometimes hurt U.S. workers when jobs move overseas? Sometimes, but in the long run the U.S. is better off even if some individual U.S. workers are harmed.

The $10 radio you buy in Wal-Mart (because it was manufactured in Bangladesh by the $0.50/hour worker) would cost $100 if it was manufactured in Ames, Iowa by U.S. workers making the minimum wage. The factory workers in Ames may lose some wages as they re-train for other jobs elsewhere, but in the mean time everyone in American who buys the $10 Wal-Mart radio saves $90 on the purchase.

How is it "the responsibility of business to maintain a strong middle-class"? How is it that business is creating a "new elite class . . . while the middle-class is reduced to serfdom"?

Private businesses have no responsibility to do anything with a view towards the larger economy. Private businesses are obligated to obey the law and create profits, nothing more.

If every private business did nothing more than obey the law and make a profit, our entire society would be better off. To the extent our economy is healthy today (and it is) it is the result of free-market principles. On the contrary, our greatest economic failures have been when legislatures or activists have tried to impose other (non-market) obligations on business.

Today's middle class in America is the wealthiest in history. Even the poor have cell phones, air conditioning, television and the Internet.

By contrast, only a few decades ago the poor lacked indoor plumbing, electricity and enough food to eat.

How can you possibly claim that anyone today is "being reduced to serfdom"?

Thomas Sowell is never one to mince words, but he strikes at the heart of the liberal credo in this one. More on http://www.jonathanbwilson.com

Good point.

Dionne's bias does show when he characterizes the current Republican majority stemming from "attacks on Clinton". There is an historical series of events, from Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative" to the years in the wilderness following Nixon and Watergate to the beginnings of ascendecy with the election of Reagan in 1980 and the Contract with America in 1994.

The emerging conservative majority did not begin by attacking Clinton, it began during the counter culture revolution of the 1960s and has gathered ground slowly over time. In fact, for all his shortcomings, Clinton governed in large measure as a "centrist" in order to appease conservatives. Compared to the other candidates the Democrats could have nominated in 1992 (does anyone remember Paul Tsongas?) Clinton was the (relatively) conservative choice.

Dionne is sympathetic to the Dems, but he doesn't necessarily fault the Republicans for thinking politically. If, in fact, the majority party succeeds in convincing the Democrats that they are the minority, it will go a long way towards cementing the Republican majority for years.

Nearly two hundred years ago, surveying the wreckage of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke argued that, by abandoning their historical sense of government and by replacing it with an abstract ideology built on the "Rights of Man", the French doomed their revolution to failure.

The aggregated learnings of history had developed a working constitution that balanced the interests of parties and gave the state and its citizens an understanding of their rights, Burke held. Abandoning historical understanding and building government on an abstract theory left both the state and the people vulnerable to the whims of ideology.

Burke was proved right when the White Terror swept across France, leaving thousands dead at the guillotines.

Brown's warnings are woven from the same cloth as Burke's.

More: http://www.jonathanbwilson.com/2005.05.01_arch.html#1115207170752

What is truly astounding is the willful blindness required by some who continue in their belief that our society is less prosperous, or less fair, as a consequence of free market principles.

If, in the 1950s for instance, you held the belief that the free market was unfair, that the poor needed government intervention to survive and that economic prosperity could be hand only through proactive public intervention in the market, you probably considered yourself a liberal Democrat.

Fast-forward fifty years. Within the past two decades the federal government has, generally speaking, lowered tax rates, decreased federal regulation of business, restricted welfare and encouraged the private ownership of capital.

The result has been an almost uninterrupted boom in prosperity.

With this history as prologue, even Democrats are forced to favor market forces. The difference between the moderate left and the moderate right, so far as macroeconomic issues are concerned, is one of degree.

If she honestly followed history, Mother Jones would be amazed.

http://www.jonathanbwilson.com/2005.05.01_arch.html#1115115979039