Meanwhile, over on Examiner.com ...

The last few days have been busy ones for me in terms of posting articles as the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner on Examiner.com.

I have two articles based on reactions to President Barack Obama's fifth State of the Union Address:

Virginia Republican Congressmen Respond to 2014 State of the Union Message

and

Gay groups comment on Obama's 2014 State of the Union address

On Monday, libertarian/anarchist activist Adam Kokesh was in Charlottesville to read excerpts from his forthcoming book and talk about his time incarcerated for civil disobedience in support of the Second Amendment. I interviewed him about some current issues and this is the result:

Podcaster Adam Kokesh talks about NSA spying, gay marriage, and Justin Bieber

Earlier, I posted three articles about Virginia political issues:

Legal ethicist Jack Marshall weighs in on Bob McDonnell 'Giftgate' scandal
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring will challenge anti-gay marriage laws
Virginia political leaders react to Governor Bob McDonnell's federal indictment

Still earlier, I gathered some comments that expressed skepticism about President Obama's planned reforms of the NSA's extensive domestic spying operation:

Negative reactions to President Barack Obama's speech on NSA domestic spying

And finally, my last Examiner.com article of 2013 dealt with a professional interest of mine, Africa. This one was based on an interview with a libertarian Africanist -- not a phrase you're likely to hear very often.

Omidyar Network's Karol Boudreaux offers optimistic view of African economies

Keep checking back here to see when I link to new Examiner.com articles.

State of the State of the Union

I was going to respond to President Bush's State of the Union Address, which he delivered last night, but then I looked at the text:

Three men's dress shirts (light starch)
One blue blazer
Two men's trousers
Five ties
One grey pinstripe suit
Three ladies' blouses
One blue dress
Three pairs black socks
One jogging suit
One pair tennis shorts

... and decided it's just not worth the effort.

Instead, I thought it would be fun to go back ten years and see what I wrote about another president's list of (unaccomplished) aims. From the Metro Herald in February 1996, here is what I wrote about Bill Clinton's State of the Union message for that year:

State of the Union: But, But, But ...

Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

The difference between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole is this: Although neither Clinton nor Dole really believes in anything, Clinton knows how to fake it. (Long before his 100th birthday, George Burns observed: "Acting is all about sincerity. If you can fake that, you're set for life.")

If the State of the Union Address and Dole's response indeed launched the 1996 presidential campaign, Dole is in for a sad, downhill retreat. The contrast between the two performances was stark: Clinton was relaxed, vigorous, emphatic; Dole was twitchy, anemic, soulless. Yet only in their styles did the contrast shine forth. Though their deliveries were decidedly different, their content was barely distinguishable.

Television -- which is how most Americans observed the Clinton and Dole speeches -- is a visual medium that conveys emotion much better than argument. Neither Clinton nor Dole tried for much substance in their speeches. Their themes rested entirely on feelings.

Indeed, the themes of both politicians were conservative. Clinton sounded much like Ronald Reagan -- something he does often and well, dating to his acceptance speech at the 1992 Democratic convention. He emphasizes themes of family, neighborhood, and work -- the same themes that motivated Reagan's winning 1980 presidential campaign. (Reagan himself developed these themes when he stumped the country in the 1950s and ‘60s, and used them effectively in "The Speech" that launched his career as a politician. Delivered on behalf of Barry Goldwater just before the 1964 presidential election, "The Speech" made Reagan the darling of the dawning conservative movement.)

Unfortunately, Clinton does not mean what he says. When he appears to embrace conservative -- even libertarian -- principles, he always has a fallback to traditional, failed liberal policies. In his State of the Union message, Clinton used the word "but" 27 times in 65 minutes. Each time he made a grand statement that conservatives and libertarians could readily and happily agree with -- such as "the era of big government is over" -- he qualified it with a "but." Each "but" meant that "we liberals recognize that conservatives have won over public opinion, so we're telling you we agree with them, even though we're sticking to the same policies we've advocated for thirty years."

In his faltering attempt to respond to Clinton, Dole attacked straw men that must have befuddled most viewers. Most of his attacks rang true for committed conservatives -- accusing Clinton of alignment with elitist special interests, for instance -- but they had little to do with the powerful speech Clinton had just presented. And Dole offered few specifics to distinguish himself and the Republicans from Clinton and the Democrats. He gave us no reason to vote for him, personally, or his party.

Just so. The Republicans and Democrats agree on so much in terms of keeping the government big and intrusive, they must pretend to disagree in order to trade positions of power every four years. Is it any wonder that 60 percent of Americans tell pollsters they'd like to see a third political party emerge to challenge the Republicans and Democrats?

Clinton promised to seek a higher minimum wage. All economists agree that higher minimum wages result in higher unemployment for the most marginalized workers in society -- teenagers getting their first job, illiterate and unskilled workers, single mothers re-entering the workforce after raising their children. By raising costs for businesses, minimum wage laws fatten the welfare rolls.

Dole said nothing about this.

Clinton promised to seek laws that force insurance companies to grant health insurance policies to anyone who wants them, regardless of "pre-existing conditions" (that is, being sick). This will raise the cost of insurance premiums for everyone, making health insurance unaffordable for some -- many -- Americans at a time when government interference in the health care system raises prices across the board.

Dole said nothing about this.

Both Clinton and Dole call for more intrusion into the lives of Americans. In particular, as Clinton pointed out, Republicans and Democrats agree on a number of new programs. Gene Cisewski, chairman of the D.C. Libertarian Party, mentioned a few of these in a post-speech interview: "Calling for mandatory V-chips in TV sets, expanding social programs, building up more arms on our borders, showing off his real live general for a war against the American people, and campaign finance ‘reform' that effectively blocks third parties from political access move this country in a more authoritarian direction."

If the Republicans want to win the 1996 presidential election, they need to find a more dynamic candidate than Dole (perhaps Steve Forbes) who genuinely believes in policy changes that can move the country in a positive direction. If they do end up with Dole, Tuesday's match-up shows that Clinton will mop up the floor with his opponent.

But the ultimate losers will be the American people.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Richard Sincere is chairman of the Libertarian Party of Virginia.

(Doesn't that tagline date the piece?)

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The Queen's Speech

Like the Queen's Speech at the State Opening of Parliament, the President's State of the Union Address is usually little more than a laundry-list of legislative items -- or, more often, a wish list.

Now, since the President is a politician and the Queen is not, his delivery tends not to be quite so monotonous as hers. And he shies from phrases like "my government will seek to . . .," since he knows that the moment such words fell from his lips, his legislative agenda would be on its way to the trash bin.

Still, State of the Union speeches are remembered less for their golden oratory than ... strike that: State of the Union speeches are remembered less. Period.

The most surprising aspect of George W. Bush's 2005 State of the Union Address is that he used it for a sustained, concise but thorough, coherent presentation of his plans to reform and reinvigorate the Social Security system.

Troglodytes on the Democratic side of the aisle moaned audibly (Tim Russert of NBC News said they were yelling "No, no, no" in the manner of British backbenchers during the Prime Minister's question time) but the President was not moved by their heckling.

In 1,109 words, Bush set out an agenda to bring Social Security into the 20th century. He explained carefully and cogently how the system began, how it developed through to the present time, and how it will be bankrupt by the time today's 20-somethings are ready to retire.

It was quite masterful -- and totally unexpected.

In anticipation of the speech, Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post trotted out all the liberal bogeymen in an op-ed piece entitled "Assault on Social Security" -- as if anything designed to reconstruct the broken-down relic of the 1930s is meant to destroy it and all it stands for.

Meyerson's worst fear is that Bush may fulfill the decades-old work of conservatives and libertarians, who have been pushing for Social Security reform (let's call it by its true and honest name, privatization) since the 1970s:

And the plans to privatize Social Security, it's important to note, have been devised by people who are ideologically committed to its destruction. When Milton Friedman was calling for privatization a half-century ago, it wasn't because he feared the system would run out of money when the boomers retired. (The boomers were at that point just midway through being born.) It was because he was a committed advocate of laissez-faire capitalism.

Similarly, the advocates for privatizing Social Security have for the past quarter-century been housed at the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute -- the nation's leading institutions of economic libertarianism. But since 1983 -- when a commission appointed to augment Social Security's solvency declined to consider privatization, though it was appointed in part by Ronald Reagan and headed by Ayn Rand-acolyte Alan Greenspan -- they have understood that the only way to realize their libertarian hearts' desire was to convince the American people that the system was teetering on bankruptcy.

To Harold Meyerson, "ideology" is a dirty word. But why? Ideology is nothing more than the organizing principles that inform politics and policymaking. The "pragmatism" that Meyerson so admires in American voters is an ideology itself, the ideology of practicality and practicability. Was John Dewey's philosophical pragmatism any less ideological than Ayn Rand's philosophical Objectivism?

By identifying the roots of Social Security reform with the nonagenarian Milton Friedman -- why did he leave off the usual honorific, "Nobel laureate economist"? -- Meyerson tries to suggest that the idea is past its use-by date. That's just laughable.

If anything, Social Security reform is recognized as both necessary and inevitable -- as well as desirable -- by younger thinkers. Here's one example.

In an article dated January 24, Anthony Dick, a columnist for the Cavalier Daily at the University of Virginia, wrote:

Our country's current Social Security policy has a place amongst the most mind-bogglingly, hair-pullingly, eye-gougingly insipid monstrosities ever to occupy a place in the pyrite pantheon of American legislative travesty.

Amid all of today's talk about the practical issues of Social Security reform, commentators rarely step back to appreciate the absurdity of Social Security as a matter of pure principle. Under the status quo, every time you get a paycheck, a percentage of it is forcibly taken from you and put into a collective Social Security fund. If you selfishly try to keep this money that your employer has voluntarily given to you, men with guns and badges will come to your house and drag you off to jail. After many years of this lovely process, once you've reached an age that the government deems to be sufficiently old and crusty, some money from this collective fund will be doled back out to you in a monthly allowance from your kind old Uncle Sam. You may be getting robbed today, proponents say, but you'll sure be secure tomorrow. It's for your own good.

The most obvious and ugly assumption at the heart of this system is the paternalistic idea that the government knows better than you do what's best for your life and your future.

Dick concludes:

Today's defenders of the Social Security status quo urge you to ignore the quaint old idea that you should be free to form and pursue your own conception of the good life by deciding how to spend or invest your own paychecks. Such pleas make them yet another sad contingent in history's parade of callow conspirators who have claimed to serve the people's interests while at the same time severely limiting the people's freedom to control their own lives. It's time we reject this model of condescending paternalism and reclaim our financial security from the claws of stilted bureaucrats.

I, for one (and I'm obviously not the only one), am grateful for the yeoman work performed in obscurity for so many years by policy analysts at the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, for the politicians in Chile and elsewhere who had the courage and good sense to ignore the U.S. example and modernize their social-security programs, and for the young voters who are willing to sneer at the reactionaries manning the liberal barricades against progress.

Let's just hope that George W. Bush has earned the political capital he needs to make Social Security modernization happen. Members of Congress may have erupted in applause 9 times during that section of his speech, but we know better than to trust them to do the right thing. As a group, they lack both principles and fortitude -- in a word, Mr. Meyerson, ideology.

Which Finger Is That?

Syndicated radio talk-show host Neal Boortz is suggesting that, in a gesture of solidarity with the Iraqi people, Members of Congress should dip their index fingers in purple ink and wave them in the air during tonight's State of the Union Address by President Bush.

Given the attitude of most Members of Congress toward us Americans, wouldn't it be more appropriate (and accurate) for them to wave their middle fingers in the air?