Does Robert Sarvis Disdain Austrian Economics?

Robert Sarvis

Various individuals who have been trying to cast doubt on Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis' libertarian credentials have pointed to a comment he made in an interview with Ron Paul biographer Brian Doherty in Reason magazine, which has been interpreted to mean he is not entirely dedicated to Austrian economics, a staple of libertarian thinking.

Sarvis is the Libertarian Party's nominee for governor. He faces two rivals on Election Day, November 5: Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli and Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe.

Current public opinion polls show Sarvis might expect 8 to 10 percent of the vote, an unusually high number for a Libertarian (or any third-party or independent candidate for statewide office) so close to an election.

Charles C.W. Cooke cited the Reason interview on National Review Online on October 31, for example. 

Another instance of the questioning of Robert Sarvis' libertarian bona fides can be found on Examiner.com, where International Politics Examiner Andrew Moran wrote:

George Mason University is known for its free-market economics program (see Walt Williams). This is where Sarvis attained his economics degree. However, he doesn’t adhere to the principles of Austrian Economics, which is usually what libertarians promote.

Here is what Sarvis said in his interview with Reason: “I’m not into the whole Austrian type, strongly libertarian economics, I like more mainstream economics and would have been happy to go elsewhere.”

Wait does he mean “mainstream economics” that has gotten us into this current mess and continues to cause more problems?

An answer to that question may be found in an interview I did with Sarvis two years ago, when he was running for the Virginia state Senate.

That interview was also published on Examiner.com (just a coincidence). I had asked Sarvis about his favorite economist, and he offered up names of three people he admired: Friedrich Hayek, Adam Smith, and Scott Sumner.

It seems that, to Sarvis, "mainstream economics" means that derived from the work of Adam Smith, author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Here's the relevant excerpt:

His libertarian philosophy is reflected in his answer when asked about his favorite economist. Without pausing, he named Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian Nobel laureate who taught at the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago.

“Hayek is someone who really influenced my thinking,” Sarvis explained: “How to think about problems that face national economies and how public policy can influence it in many unintended ways.”


While a lot of people, such as talk-show host Glenn Beck, focus on Hayek’s 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, Sarvis said he “was more influenced by his 'The Use of Knowledge in Society,' which was probably the seminal paper that won him the Nobel Prize, and also [volume] one of Law, Legislation, and Liberty, where he talks about rules and order.”

In addition to Hayek, Sarvis cites Adam Smith as an influence in his economic thinking.

“In philosophy, they say, there’s Plato and all else are footnotes,” he quipped. “I think that can be said more truly of Adam Smith than of Plato.”

Among contemporary economists, Sarvis pointed to Bentley University professor Scott Sumner, who blogs at TheMoneyIllusion.com. As Americans have focused on the financial crisis and the recession, he said, “Sumner has been the most persuasive in what exactly is going on [with regard to the] monetary policy mistakes of the Fed. We really are in many ways repeating some of the mistakes of the depression.”

Then there is Sarvis' biographical sketch on the web site of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. (Both the Mercatus Center and the GMU economics department are hotbeds of Austrian economists.)

Emphasis added below:

Robert is a native of Northern Virginia and a lifelong believer in freedom, free markets, and the rule of law. He holds degrees in mathematics from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge and a JD from NYU School of Law. During law school, he co-founded a libertarian and classical liberal law journal, the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, dedicating the first issue to Friedrich Hayek, and he has been outspoken in arguing against government regulation of the tech industry. Robert has worked as a software developer, a lawyer, and a tech entrepreneur, and his research interests span a wide range of topics relating to law, economics, and public policy.

Can the off-hand comment Sarvis made to Reason about his choice of a graduate school overwhelm the other evidence of his admiration for, and influence by, Austrian economists?

Friedrich Hayek: 19th-Century-Born Video Star of the 21st Century

Sunday's New York Times featured a book review by Francis Fukuyama of a new edition of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty, originally published in 1960 by the University of Chicago Press (the same publisher of the new edition, which is edited by historian Ronald Hamowy).

As Fukuyama notes in his first paragraph, Hayek -- who was born in 1899 and who died two decades ago -- is enjoying something of a renaissance of interest:

The publication of the definitive edition of Friedrich A. Hayek’s “Constitution of Liberty” coincides with the unexpected best-seller status of his earlier book “The Road to Serfdom” as a result of its promotion by the conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck. In an age when many on the right are worried that the Obama administration’s reform of health care is leading us toward socialism, Hayek’s warnings from the mid-20th century about society’s slide toward despotism, and his principled defense of a minimal state, have found strong political resonance.

That Glenn Beck is a fan of Friedrich Hayek should not be held against Hayek, because the Austrian-born Nobel laureate -- who also wrote about politics, society, philosophy, and culture -- is admired by far more intellectually solid individuals, not just Lonesome Rhodes types but also university teachers, think-tank scholars, journalists, business executives, and rap-music video producers.

Rap-music video producers?

Indeed, a surprising YouTube hit of recent months has been "'Fear the Boom and Bust' a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem," produced by George Mason University economist Russell Roberts and video artist John Papola. Since its Internet debut in January 2010, "Fear the Boom and Bust" has racked up 2,212,104 hits (and counting), leading to a sequel that was released on April 27, "Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two," which has had 589,253 views in less than two weeks.

That's a lot of fans for two economists who ended up in the long run just as Keynes predicted they would.  Still, their ideas are still alive.

Here are the two videos.  You can judge their intellectual (and entertainment) quality for yourself.

"Fear the Boom and Bust":

"Round Two":

For those interested in diving deeper into the continuing controversy among public intellectuals about Hayek, his ideas, and his legacy, take a look at the Mercatus Center's Peter Boettke's brief response at Coordination Problem to Fukuyama (who has his own new book on store shelves now, part one of The Origins of Political Order).  I'm sure it is just the start of a stimulating conversation.

 

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Legislative Redistricting Under Conditions of Divided Government

One of the unexpected things I learned about the evil that was alcohol Prohibition from Daniel Okrent's excellent 2010 book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, was that the pro-Prohibition lobby successfully prevented Congress from doing its constitutional duty of reapportionment after the 1920 census.

The Constitution requires, in Article I, Section 2, and in Amendment XIV, Section 2, that an enumeration (census) shall take place every ten years and that Congress shall apportion the number of Representatives following each enumeration.

As Okrent notes, however,

The dry refusal to allow Congress to recalculate state-by-state representation in the House during the 1920s is one of those political maneuvers in American history so audacious it's hard to believe it happened. In its disregard for constitutional principle and its blatant political intent, it would almost rank with Franklin Roosevelt's Supreme Court-packing plan of 1937 -- that is, if anyone remembered that it even happened. The episode is all the more remarkable for never having established itself in the national consciousness....

Never in American history, not even during the tumult of Civil War, had Congress disregarded the constitutional mandate, enunciated in Article I, Section 2, to reapportion itself following completion of the decennial census. In each of the three most recent opportunities -- 1890, 1900, and 1910 -- the process consumed less than nine months. As late as January 1921, [Wayne B.] Wheeler [the chief pro-Prohibition lobbyist and organizer] himself believed that reapportionment was imminent and warned the [Anti-Saloon League] faithful to "be on guard." But a threatened majority, like a threatened animal, will do what it can to preserve itself. Between 1921 and 1928, forty-two separate reapportionment bills were introduced in the House. Not one became law.

As it turned out, Congress never reapportioned the House based on the 1920 census. The next reapportionment took effect in time for the 1932 elections, after the 1930 census. Prohibition, it becomes clear, worked to undermine the Constitution in fundamental ways.

We do not live in such interesting times today. The number of representatives is set at 435, the same number as in 1920, and while a few states will lose representatives beginning after the 2012 elections and others will gain them, there is no movement afoot to prevent that from happening.

The 2010 census was just the first stage in a process that will lead to the redesign of legislative districts all across the United States over the next two years. Districts for the U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures, city councils, county boards of supervisors, and school boards will all be affected.

In Virginia, the redistricting process is accelerated because it is one of only four states that hold their state legislative elections in odd-numbered years.

Consequently, Virginia does not have a full-year's cushion in which to consider and pass a redistricting plan before it has to be in place for the next general election. In addition, because it falls under the jurisdiction of the Voting Rights Act, every aspect of the plan must be approved by the U.S. Department of Justice before it can be implemented.


George Mason University political scientist Michael P. McDonald is an expert on reapportionment and redistricting.  He is co-editor of The Marketplace of Democracy: Electoral Competition And American Politics, published in 2006 by the Brookings Institution.

McDonald has served as a consultant on redistricting issues, sometimes “helping jurisdictions produce redistricting plans that are in conformance with federal and state criteria,” sometimes serving as an expert witness in lawsuits on behalf of either the plaintiff or the defendant, “defending or challenging whether or not a redistricting plan is legal.”

After McDonald spoke to local election officials from across the Commonwealth at the State Board of Elections’ annual Election Uniformity Workshop (translation: training conference) last August, I interviewed him about what Virginia voters can look forward to in the coming months.

For the first time in Virginia history, redistricting in 2011 will take place under conditions of divided government. For the first time, the process will be supervised by a General Assembly in which the House of Delegates is controlled by Republicans and the state Senate is controlled by Democrats.

After the 1990 census, both houses were controlled by Democrats, as was the case in every decade since Reconstruction, and after the 2000 census, both houses had Republican majorities.

Moreover, in 1991, when the post-1990 redistricting took place, Virginia had a Democratic governor, L. Douglas Wilder. In 2001, Virginia had a Republican governor, Jim Gilmore. In both instances, the legislative and executive branches were unified under one political party's control.

Michael P. McDonald

“How it’s played out in other states,” Professor McDonald explained in our interview, “is that one chamber will draw its districts, the other chamber will draw its districts, and then the two will do a logroll,” in which each chamber approves the other’s proposal. In effect, McDonald said, “you will have two different partisan gerrymanders, one for each chamber.”

Virginia differs slightly from other states, however.

“The wrinkle that we have in Virginia,” McDonald pointed out, “is that the governor can amend legislation.” As a result, “there’s a little bit of concern on the Democratic side” that “even if the House passes their version of the Senate plan” the governor might not “keep his hands off of it.”

There is some discussion, McDonald said, that “the governor may form a commission or a committee of some sort to help assist him in evaluating the redistricting plans that come out of the legislature.” Such a commission, he explained, “may play a mediating role there.”

Given how fast the state legislative elections are approaching (in November 2011, when 100 seats in the House of Delegates and 40 seats in the state Senate are up for election), there is some concern about whether the General Assembly can pass a redistricting plan in time to meet the needs of the electoral calendar -- which includes setting a date for primary elections, normally held in June, in districts that have not yet been designed.

McDonald is optimistic, however.

“Plenty of other states have done it,” McDonald said. “We’ve done it in the past in Virginia.”

Can the process be completed in time?

“Presumptively, yes, the answer should be yes, that we can do it in time,” McDonald noted, also pointing out that “if it is not done in time,” federal courts will intervene.

“That’s one thing that the voters of Virginia can know to be true,” he said, “that the federal courts will step in if the state government can’t produce a redistricting plan.”

The courts, he added, “will basically draw their own map or they will accept a map that was not considered during the legislative process.”

Whether the redistricting process will fall victim to partisan bickering, or whether conditions of divided government actually make the process fairer and more transparent, both remain to be seen.

(A shorter, slightly different version of this article appeared on Examiner.com on September 4, 2010, under the headline, "After the census: GMU political scientist Michael McDonald forecasts Virginia's 2011 redistricting.")

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The 'Next Big Thing in Economics'? Three Views

What is the “next big thing” in economics? What is it that non-economists know nothing about today but that everyone will be talking about in five or ten years?

I posed this question to three young economists following a panel discussion at George Mason University featuring three Nobel laureates: Amartya Sen, Elinor Ostrom, and James Buchanan.

The September 9 event honored Buchanan, one of the founders of “Virginia School” or public-choice economics, who taught at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville before settling at George Mason (located in Fairfax, Virginia) in the 1980s.

The tribute attracted numerous professional economists, academics, and students interested in hearing about Buchanan’s contributions to social philosophy and political economy.

In addition to Buchanan's fellow Nobel prize winners, the program included encomia from GMU’s former law school dean, Henry Manne, and the current chairman of the university’s economics department, Daniel Houser, among others, as well as an opportunity for university President Alan Merten to show off a new conference facility.


Garett Jones
Garett Jones is assistant professor of economics at George Mason University as well as BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center, which is headquartered at GMU's Arlington Campus near Virginia Square. His current research, he said, is about “why IQ matters more for nations than for individuals.”

He noted that “a person’s individual IQ has a very weak relationship and very small effect on their adult wages, but it seems as though a nation’s average IQ -- how people do on conventional IQ tests, on average -- is a really great predictor of how rich or poor that country is.” He described this as “quite a robust finding” and he is trying to discover “why that’s true.”

Jones’ prediction of what the “next big thing” comes from a different part of the field, however.

“This idea of balance sheets and net worth is being a big part of business cycles, is a really big deal,” he said.

Jones pointed to a review by Paul Krugman and Robin Wells of Richard C. Koo’s book, The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession, in the September 30 issue of the New York Review of Books, describing it as “this book that’s been kicking around for a little bit” as giving “some attention” to the topic.

Discussions like these, Jones said, are “trying to bring [Federal Reserve chairman] Ben Bernanke’s research into the broader public light,” such as ideas about “what makes it possible for us to trust each other, what makes it possible for firms to lend to individuals, [and] for investors to lend to banks.” What is necessary to make these things possible, he explained, “is that you want to lend to people who have a high net worth, people who have sound balance sheets.”

What’s “floating around,” he said, is “the idea that we’re in a so-called ‘balance sheet recession,’” yet, he added, “the absolute centrality of healthy balance sheets of individuals, of firms, [and] of governments, is something that has not made it [into] the mainstream.”

“Five years from now,” Jones said, “we’ll take it for granted in a way that don’t at all today.”



Margaret Polski
For her part, Margaret Polski of the Mercatus Center pointed to new forecasting tools that are becoming available to economists.

“The real problem that we have in economics,” Polski said, “is that we can’t forecast the things that are really interesting and really important: changes in the business cycle, when we’re going up, when we’re going down. We can’t forecast when we have shocks, big price changes, and catastrophic events.”

Polski offered the example of “the Congressional Budget Office’s record in forecasting and the error in their forecasts,” for which there’s a record dating back to 1976.

In six of the last 13 years, she said, the CBO’s forecasts have been “significantly off.”

It doesn’t end there, however, she added.

“It’s not just the CBO, it’s not just the Office of Management and Budget, it’s also the private sector economic forecasters. The practical matter is that our current tools for forecasting don’t serve us well.

“What you’re going to be hearing over the coming years,” Polski continued, “is the use of complex systems tools, agent-based models to help us develop a better understanding of what’s really happening at a micro level and how that translates into macro impacts.”

That she said, is “where I think it’s going. That’s what I think is interesting and cool.”

Polski noted that,” thanks to the most recent financial regulatory reform, we have an office of financial research,” which means that, “for the first time, we’ll actually be able to collect data. Researchers will be able to get their hands on this data and start putting these tools to work.”

These tools, she said, “will help us really imagine futures that we otherwise would have a hard time imagining, [and] imagine scenarios that are otherwise difficult for us to imagine,” so that we then “can think about what is the impact of our policy decisions in a different way that we’re able to do right now.”

The new tools, Polski emphasized, are “agent-based tools” and therefore more individualized and focused than traditional forecasting models.

“The reason the macro models don’t predict” as well, she explained, “is they’re based on historical data and they’re based on big patterns and big trends and the fact of the matter is that individuals matter, small groups matter.”

This is a point often lost on those engaged in traditional macroeconomic analysis, “because agents and small collectives of agents really do matter.”

Using the new tools, she said, these agents will not “lose that power; it’s that we don’t understand their power. That’s why our forecasts are wrong and they’re wrong in ways that cause us to make bad policy.”

The real challenge, Polski explained, “has always been to integrate micro and macro.”

In the economics profession, she pointed out, “there have always been microeconomists and macroeconomists, and never the twain shall meet,” with one exception.

“Theoretically, they meet in industrial organization theory, but that’s just not enough, because that’s very focused on business and on the structure of industrial markets. That’s not really what we’re talking about.”

What we are really talking about, Polski said, is “trying to bring those analytical tools together to understand how individual actions and small collectivities can produce macro patterns, and how there can be disruptive, unpredictable, non-linear events that occur.”

Once these tools are widely available, predictions will become more accurate and that, according to Margaret Polski, is the next big thing in economics.

Peter Boettke
Recently profiled in the Wall Street Journal as “the intellectual standard-bearer for the Austrian school of economics,” Peter Boettke teaches at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and conducts research there and at the Mercatus Center in Arlington, across the river from Washington, D.C.

Boettke singled out the work of Ostrom and Buchanan, particularly their ideas “about the nature of democracy and citizenry,” that democracy is more than just voting but more active participation, and exploring the preconditions for that.

Elinor Ostrom’s husband, Vincent Ostrom, Boettke said, “wrote a wonderful book called The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies. It’s a very densely written book, so it doesn’t have the sort of popular sway that it should,” but it establishes the way to think about “those conditions about what it means to be a citizen, or what they call an artisan-citizen.”

Following on the work of the Ostroms and Buchanan, he continued, “We’re now examining those things: how it is that you create or cultivate (educationally) individuals [so they] can become self-governing citizens or their own participants within the democratic process.”

That idea, Boettke said, “is going to get more and more explored,” and Ostrom’s Nobel Prize and other events mean that it is “going to capture the imagination of a lot of scholars [in] what Amartya Sen [calls] the ‘public reason project.'”

Looking at another discipline, Boettke noted, “if you read in philosophy, a lot of people in philosophy now are calling for an idea of ‘public reason.’ I think that idea is something that no one knows about now, but ten years from now, people will all know about it and think back, ‘When the hell did they get started thinking about that?’”

One of the developments that excites Boettke is the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of economic research and theory.

“There’s a rising trend of programs in philosophy, politics, and economics,” he said, and that is a return to “what actually took place back at the end of the nineteenth century.”

Boettke explained:

“You can think about modern economics as an hourglass shape. You start with really broad questions and then, as we believed that the role of the economist was to be a technical expert, the questions narrowed, but then we found out we knew more and more about less and less.”

Consequently, he said, “we had to open the questions up again. We opened them up to sociology, to psychology, to philosophy, to politics, so as a result the hourglass goes narrow and then widens up, and we’re at that point of the widening up.”

Boettke pointed out that “the financial crisis is a perfect example of this, because you can’t just answer it as a technician in economics. It’s a question about the legal and political rules, the culture of Wall Street.”

Citing Karen Ho’s book, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, which he called “fascinating,” Boettke explained that “economists normally don’t look at those things, but now we have to. What are the implicit rules that are going on? What do these people believe that they are doing?”

Animated and smiling, Boettke returned to his hourglass analogy and concluded: “We started out, we got very narrow, we didn’t go anywhere -- or it didn’t really help – [and] now we’re opening up again.”

(This article originally appeared in three parts on Examiner.com on September 20,  September 21, and September 23, 2010.)

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Worth a Reminder

I have mentioned this before, but it is worth remembering that today, June 12, is the anniversary of the adoption of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776.

The National Archives has an on-line exhibit of the Virginia Declaration of Rights that notes:

Virginia's Declaration of Rights was drawn upon by Thomas Jefferson for the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. It was widely copied by the other colonies and became the basis of the Bill of Rights. Written by George Mason, it was adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776.

It may be valuable, 233 years later, to post the full text here, as well, since many people are unfamiliar with Mason's handiwork, even though much of it continues to be a part of the Virginia state constitution:

A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government .

Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Section 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.

Section 3. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration. And that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.

Section 4. That no man, or set of men, is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, nor being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary.

Section 5. That the legislative and executive powers of the state should be separate and distinct from the judiciary; and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burdens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part, of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.

Section 6. That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in assembly ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assembled for the public good.

Section 7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights and ought not to be exercised.

Section 8. That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man has a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of twelve men of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty; nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty except by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.

Section 9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Section 10. That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive and ought not to be granted.

Section 11. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other and ought to be held sacred.

Section 12. That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

Section 13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

Section 14. That the people have a right to uniform government; and, therefore, that no government separate from or independent of the government of Virginia ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof.

Section 15. That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

Section 16. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.

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Interview with Tom Davis

This article is scheduled to appear in this weekend's edition of The Metro Herald. (While I call this a "partial transcript," it is virtually complete; I just left out a few vocal pauses and repetitions.)

This interview was conducted on May 15, a week before the Washington Post editorial board endorsed state Senator Creigh Deeds (D-Bath County) for Governor.

Tom Davis Speaks with The Metro Herald
Rick Sincere
Special to The Metro Herald

Former U.S. Representative Tom Davis (R-Virginia), who represented the 11th Congressional District for 14 years and before that was chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, was the featured speaker at the undergraduate convocation of George Mason University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences on May 15. Rick Sincere of The Metro Herald caught up with Congressman Davis backstage before the ceremony and captured an exclusive interview. Here is a partial transcript of that interview.


Metro Herald: What are you going to be talking about in your remarks today?

Tom Davis: Well, I’ll just be talking a little bit about the future and the challenges that they face and try to humor them a little bit with what I call “Davis’ Five-Step Process for Life After College.”

Metro Herald: What’s your handicap of the Democratic gubernatorial primary?

Tom Davis: My gut is that it is [Terry] McAuliffe and [Brian] Moran, depending on the size of the turnout. [R. Creigh] Deeds is just from the wrong part of the state that produces votes in a primary. But they haven’t really started their ads, at least the other two candidates. So we’ll see. Anything can happen in the last week. I’d handicap it that way.

I think [Republican candidate Bob] McDonnell is the favorite simply because Virginia, being what we call a countercyclical state, they vote against the president in power, and for governor it’s been eight straight times.

Metro Herald: What do you think is going to happen in the House of Delegates races?

Tom Davis: The Republicans should hold the House. I don’t think you’ll see a major shift but they should hold, maybe pick up a seat or two.

Metro Herald: Back on the governor’s race. Do you think Brian Moran’s unique stance on repealing the Marshall/Newman Amendment [which bans same-sex marriage and civil unions] will affect him either way in the general [election] or the primary?

Tom Davis: I think it’ll probably help him up here in general. A lot of people feel strongly about that issue. What we found in the general [election] is that it doesn’t really play in partisan politics. Buchanan County had the largest percent for the marriage amendment last time [2006] and yet George Allen lost it.

Metro Herald: Anything you’d like to say to our readers? We’re based in Alexandria.

Tom Davis: It’s an exciting time to be out of office. What worries me is the debt. We’ve stacked up more debt here in the first five months of this year than we did in the previous 200 years. Just this year the debt that has piled up – just this year – you take thousand-dollar bills, stack them from the floor, they’ll go 60 miles high. That gives you a perspective.

Metro Herald: Is there any way that we can overcome that?

Tom Davis: The only way you’re going to do it over time is you’ll have to attack the entitlement programs, and it’s a very tough lift without getting both parties to the table to take the hit. Whatever you do is going to be very unpopular.

Metro Herald: What about prescriptions for economic growth? What would you suggest?

Tom Davis: Well, I’m always a great believer that the nation needs to attract capital and that means not over-regulating and not overtaxing because there are other places companies can grow. I think the Administration’s idea of trying to “close these loopholes” on overseas income is the wrong direction. I think it will actually drive capital away.

Metro Herald: Would you be in favor of something like the Fair Tax [national sales tax] and eliminating the income tax?

Tom Davis: It’s a heavy lift. I work for an accounting company so that’s not a fair cop to the question. I can’t speak against interest.

Metro Herald: Thank you very much. Good luck today.

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Return of Virginia Patriot

After a long hiatus, George Mason University student-blogger Richard Morrison returns with a set of predictions for Tuesday's elections in Maryland, Missouri, and Virginia.

I see three candidates -- including Gail "for Rail" Parker -- listed in his forecast for the Virginia Senate race, but where is Kevin Zeese, the fusion candidate in Maryland? (Zeese has been nominated, in what is widely seen as a first anywhere in the nation, by the Green, Libertarian, and Populist parties.)

And I would expect one of the signatories to the Republican Pledge against Ballot Question No. 1 to mention the Virginia referenda. (Speaking of Republicans voting "no" tomorrow, check out Jay Hughes' analysis and apologia on Not Larry Sabato.)

Maybe Richard will do an update before the polls open at 6 a.m. in Virginia and 7 a.m. in Maryland.

One final question before going to bed. (I have to wake up in 4 hours.) What does a full moon portend on Election Eve?

Gaudeamus Igitur

Three Virginia colleges are among "20 schools that create a campus culture that fosters student success," according to a story in USA Today. The list was compiled by the authors of a new book, Student Success in College: Creating Conditions That Matter. The lead researcher and co-author of the book, Indiana University professor George Kuh, said of the twenty chosen that "they all add value to the student experience."

The three from Virginia that made the list are Sweet Briar College, Longwood University, and George Mason University. USA Today notes:

Though every college has a mission statement, for these 20 schools it constitutes far more than just words on paper, Kuh says. The schools translate their words into practice. For example, at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., a philosophical commitment to innovation translates into extensive use of technology to foster collaborative learning among undergraduates.

It doesn't hurt that George Mason also has two Nobel laureate economists, James Buchanan and Vernon Smith, on the faculty. Talk about role models!

Virginia Declaration of Rights Anniversary

Today is the anniversary of the adoption of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, an important precursor to the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. As explained on the National Archives web site:

Virginia's Declaration of Rights was drawn upon by Thomas Jefferson for the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. It was widely copied by the other colonies and became the basis of the Bill of Rights. Written by George Mason, it was adopted by the Virginia Constitutional Convention on June 12, 1776.

In his 1992 history of the American Bill of Rights, The Great Rights of Mankind, Bernard Schwartz notes on page one that, in contrast to the "rudimentary" English Bill of Rights of 1689, "the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 was the first modern bill of rights, since it was the first to use a written constitution to insulate individual rights from the changing winds of legislative fancy."

Schwartz writes at length of Founding Father George Mason's pivotal role in the drafting and adoption of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. (His chronicle of the process leading to the Declaration's adoption can be found on pages 67-72 of his book.)

Schwartz, who died in 1997 after teaching law for a half-century at New York University and the University of Tulsa, writes about Mason:

The Journal of the Virginia Convention consists only of unrevealing formal entries, making it necessary to use other sources for facts on adoption of the 1776 Declaration of Rights. Of these, the most important is the summary contained in Edmund Randolph's Essay [on the Revolutionary History of Virginia], written some thirty-five years after the event. Randolph, who had been the youngest delegate to the convention, tells us that, although "many projects of a bill of rights" were presented to the drafting committee, "that proposed by George Mason swallowed up all the rest." [James] Madison also confirms that "This important and meritorious instrument was drawn up by George Mason." Moreover, there is a copy of the first draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights almost all in Mason's handwriting.

If we compare the first draft with the declaration as adopted, we find only four major additions (Articles 9, 10, 13, and 14). At the end of a copy off the first draft, wrtten in 1778, Mason states that "it received few alterations or additions in the Virginia Convention," saying that only "Two more articles were added, viz., the 10th and 14th in the adopted bills -- not of fundamental nature." Mason understates the significance of the changes made. Article 9 concerns excessive bail and unusual punishments, while Article 10 contains the direct antecedent of the Fourth Amendment. Article 13 calls for a militia controlled by civilians; Article 14 deals with a local problem of Virginia's western land holdings. And a change in Article 16, suggested by Madison, contains the term "free exercise of religion" -- thus anticipating Madison's use of the term in the First Amendment. Yet, even with this said, it remains true that the declaration was mainly Mason's work. The extent of Mason's contribution is made even clearer when we compare it with the rudimentary provisions protecting personal rights in the draft constitution Jefferson prepared just before the Virginia Convention.

That a planter without formal legal training could draw up a document like the Virginia Declaration of Rights must remain a constant source of wonder. According to the 1855 account by Hugh Grigsby, "when Mason sat down in his room in the Raleigh Tavern to write that paper, it is probable that no copy of the reply to Sir Robert Filmer or of the Essay on Government . . . was within his reach. The diction, the design, the thoughts, are all his own." He goes on to say that "Mason was a planter, untutored in the schools, whose life . . . had been spent in a thinly settled colony." Nonetheless, Mason knew Locke, Montesquieu, and Sydney -- the trio that gave the Revolution its theoretical underpinnings.

In a letter written to Richard Henry Lee on the very day he took his seat in the convention, Mason declared, "We are no going upon the most important of all Subjects -- Government." In settling the constitutional frame of government, he and his colleagues were at one in the opinion that a declaration of rights had to be an integral part of the new constitution. This explains why so revolutionary an item as the declaration could be drawn up by one man and adopted with few changes. By 1776, a consensus had clearly developed in the former colonies on the fundamental rights the law should protect. In giving specific content to those rights, Mason gave expression to the shared thoughts of the day on individual rights; in doing so he was more the codifier than the transforming innovator.

Here is the complete text of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Consult it often:

A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, assembled in full and free convention which rights do pertain to them and their posterity, as the basis and foundation of government .

Section 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Section 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.

Section 3. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration. And that, when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.

Section 4. That no man, or set of men, is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, nor being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge to be hereditary.

Section 5. That the legislative and executive powers of the state should be separate and distinct from the judiciary; and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression, by feeling and participating the burdens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections, in which all, or any part, of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.

Section 6. That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people, in assembly ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right of suffrage and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assembled for the public good.

Section 7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority, without consent of the representatives of the people, is injurious to their rights and ought not to be exercised.

Section 8. That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man has a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of twelve men of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty; nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty except by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.

Section 9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Section 10. That general warrants, whereby an officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive and ought not to be granted.

Section 11. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other and ought to be held sacred.

Section 12. That the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

Section 13. That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

Section 14. That the people have a right to uniform government; and, therefore, that no government separate from or independent of the government of Virginia ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof.

Section 15. That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

Section 16. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.

Those who are interested can read the current Constitution of Virginia here. Note that Mason's Declaration of Rights is still the basis for Article I of the constitution, which was revised and amended in 1971 from the 1902 version.

GMU Students Plan Terrorist Strike in Northern Virginia

Richard Morrison (aka "Virginia Patriot") spotted a news report on CNN that describes how students at George Mason University are making plans for a terrorist attack on a soft target in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Don't fret, however. It's all an exercise for a class taught by a former State Department counter-terrorism analyst, Dennis Pluchinsky. Pluchinsky is the co-author of Europe's Red Terrorists: The Fighting Communist Organizations and co-editor of European Terrorism Today and Tomorrow. He collaborated on both books with the well-known terrorism expert, Yonah Alexander.

The description of his terrorism class in the course catalogue is as bland as a toaster:

475 Theory and Politics of Terrorism (3:3:0). Explores the origins of terrorism and traces its development from early states to a modern mode of conflict. National, regional, and global perspectives are presented.

The money quote in the CNN report? "It's scary how much is on the Internet. One thing I've learned through this class is there's nothing you can't find on the Internet."

Indeed.