That is the glib assessment that liberals will give you when asked about the issue of voterID: a solution in search of a problem. They will point to the miniscule number of prosecuted cases of voter fraud and the even smaller number of convictions.

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/12/cincinnati-poll-worker-indicted-for-voting-for-obama-six-times/

But who polices voter integrity? If there is no mechanism for finding those who vote multiple times, other than random clumsiness (such at the woman in the story here who admitted in a television interview to voting twice) why *would* there be any indictments?

We did not lose the last presidential election because of voter fraud. But the integrity of the vote (or lack thereof) will harm us sooner or later.

VoterID is a foregone conclusion. Liberals should get used to the idea because arguing against it (even in their faux blase dismissive tones) will let everyone on to an ethic not of representation but of power at any cost.

The abridged version of this article was published as a Letter to the Editor in Harvard’s Crimson.

By LUCIANA E. MILANO

I am disappointed that The Crimson has not apologized for but instead continues to defend its juvenile editorial warning conservatives not to enroll at Harvard. Although The Crimson claims that the article’s purpose was to highlight the hypocrisy among alumni who wish to “score political points by maligning Harvard,” the article does not actually make this argument. The Crimson never mentions politicians and constituents who attack alumni for attending Harvard—from both sides of the aisle. A good version of the article would have presented a robust and honest discussion of H-bomb dropping in American politics.

But this is not what The Crimson argued. Instead, The Crimson explicitly warns conservatives to stay away from Cambridge on the grounds that students who are critical of Harvard should “neither apply, enroll, nor graduate from this fine institution.” The article’s logic is embarrassing, and the belittling and disparagement of conservative students is repugnant.

The editorial’s suggestion that students who are critical of the university should go elsewhere rests on two false assumptions: first, that solely conservative students disagree with the university; and second, that dissent is inherently problematic. There are countless examples of Harvard’s liberal students and alumni expressing discontent with the University. By its own logic, shouldn’t The Crimson’s message also apply to Al Gore, who has recently supported Divest Harvard? And surely the editors recognize that criticism can play a valuable role in righting wrongs. Certainly they wouldn’t condemn alumni who disagreed and criticized Harvard for its past exclusion of women and minorities? But by the Crimson’s logic, such criticism would constitute “episodes of treachery.” As a Hispanic female, it is difficult to imagine that I might not be studying at Harvard today, were not for vocal critics of past Harvard policies.

Perhaps the most arrogant and disrespectful claim in the article is the characterization of conservatives as “anti-intellectual.” The name-calling itself reveals the real anti-intellectualism at Harvard. It is not typically found among its conservatives, whose ideas and arguments are sharpened by constant scrutiny and criticism. Rather, it is found in the intolerance toward conservatives on campus and in the failure to engage the arguments and principles that guide conservative beliefs in serious debate.

In this respect, this editorial is not an outlier, but only the most brazen recent example of the preference for mindless bullying over authentic discussion. Many of Harvard’s students recognize the value—and necessity—of intellectual diversity, but it is discouraging to see that the editorial board of our campus’s newspaper does not.

Although The Crimson failed to acknowledge the vibrant community of conservatives that exists within Harvard, conservatives’ efforts and achievements merit recognition. As The Crimson has made clear, Harvard can be a “potentially scary place” for conservatives. But that has only made the conservative movement here stronger. Last semester, over twenty faculty and academic staff, ten student groups, and over one hundred student attendees began a new tradition: Harvard’s Conservative Reception. Yes, we are outnumbered, but that does not mean that we don’t belong at Harvard.

In a few weeks, students from across the globe will find out whether they have been accepted into Harvard’s Class of 2017. I urge The Crimson to reconsider its welcome message. Conservatives remain an integral part of Harvard, and they are encouraged to apply and enroll.

Luciana E. Milano ’14 is a government concentrator living in Pforzheimer House. She is President of The Harvard College Anscombe Society and Vice President of Speakers and Political Discorse for the Harvard Republican Club.

‘Tis passing strange at first sight. Current discussion in Washington about capping deductions threatens to limit drastically the amount of private funds  given to charities, non-profits and universities.  Why isn’t anyone talking about this outside of Foundationland? Why doesn’t the political world seem to care?

OK, Foundationland and the universities are generally 95% Democrat, so you wouldn’t expect the Republicans to care. It’s a little harder to explain why Democratic politicians and political websites aren’t complaining loudly.

Even we bleeding-heart libertarians ought to be protesting, at least to show that we’re not Randians. We are always trying hard to show why the usual choice between Randian hyper-egoism and statist pseudo-idealism excludes a huge, libertarian-friendly middle ground.

Thank to Rand’s status as the popular face of libertarianism, the assumption is widespread that the libertarian soul, insofar as libertarians can be said to have a soul, is a selfish one. Even many non-Randian libertarians after all embrace the doctrine, going back to Mandeville, that private vices make public virtues. Everyone pursuing his/her own interests makes the world a better place, at lease in a purely materialistic sense. The common good is nothing but the sum of private interests. A critic of this view might remark, and with justice, that it’s too bad the greatest good to the greatest number seems to require bad behavior from everyone.  That the only way to serve the human race is to give up on idealism and to serve yourself. The reaction of the neutral observer will be:  Really?  Since when is any society better off because everyone is behaving selfishly?

An excellent point. It shows why the first society dominated by free enterprise values, that of England in 18^th century, produced the morally defective philosophy of utilitarianism.

Here’s a question:  does market liberalism lead ineluctably to utilitarianism?  Or to ask the question a different way, is John Galt the only possible product of a libertarian society?  If the state is brought under strict limits, as the founding fathers intended, and if citizens are allowed a maximum of liberty, including economic liberty, does that necessarily lead to a hyper-selfish individualism, a spiritual poverty, an end to idealism?

This is the lie we hear every day from statists, a subtle lie since it is never stated in so many words. It is merely implied that if you prefer a free economy, it must be for selfish reasons. If you don’t want to turn over half your income to the government for it to be ‘redistributed’ (i.e. used to pay for wars and professional busybodies, i.e. bureaucrats), it must because you have alternative, ‘selfish’ purposes in mind.

The lie is subtle, but at the same time it shows an astonishing ignorance of human nature and human history. The only way that human beings can be idealistic is if the government is the focus of their idealism? There is no idealism in religions, in sport, in private charities, in the Boy Scouts, in the Masonic Lodges, YMCAs, the Salvation Army, and thousands more such associations in civil society?

But the objection socialists have to such organizations is not that they are not idealistic in the required sense, of wanting to serve others.  The problem is who the idealists are and the principles on which they act.  From the statist point of view, the problem with non-state charities is that they are run by amateurs. They have no scientific knowledge of politics and other social sciences. They are not part of what H. G. Wells called the Open Conspiracy, the unspoken, often unconscious desire of socialists to control others and advance the Enlightenment project.

Open Conspirators want to create a Cosmopolis controlled by soi-disant intellectuals who base the legitimacy of their rule, like Plato’s philosopher-kings, on their superior scientific knowledge. In effect, they want to monopolize idealism for themselves; the worker-bees exist only to pay the taxes and to be taken care of by the state.  This is why the left of the Democratic Party is delighted to cripple private charities in the US via the new tax legislation. Open Conspirators want to destroy enemy cultures such as religions and (eventually) nation-states to build their Cosmopolis.  The universalist religion of multiculturalism is not so much intended to allow many cultures to flourish in peace together (an admirable goal) as to destroy the dominance of particular cultures in particular places. For them, that‘s bad, because a religion, if truly believed and acted on, is a site of resistance to Cosmopolis.

Some libertarians – the less thoughtful ones in my view – may well want a Randian world of egoistic individuals, but what libertarians as a whole want is to prevent a government takeover of civil society (in this respect agreeing with communitarians). They want people to be free to pursue their own idealisms, not be forced into idealisms chosen for them by bureaucrats and politicians. Noting the poor track-record of the state in protecting us from ourselves, they prefer to choose their own foods — or their own poisons if they like — make their own judgments about dangers to the environment, decide themselves how to spend their means on the needy, on the arts, on the common good.

Worse, statists fail to appreciate that the ‘hyperselfish’ Randian character they so deplore is in fact their own creation. It was the hypertrophy of the state during the early 20^th century, with its ambitions to dominate every aspect of life, to create Soviet Man, that led to the perversion of human nature represented by the hyper-selfish kind of libertarian. John Galt is the mirror image of – an extreme reaction to — Soviet Man. But in the world of free minds and free markets advocated by libertarians, a world where bureaucrats were no longer bent on taking away personal liberty, the Randian character, perhaps, would wither away.

Here’s what someone who has spent a lifetime studying Machiavelli would advise the House leadership to do.

First, take a blood oath that under no circumstances will you raise the debt ceiling.  Next, pass Continuing Resolutions funding all non-discretionary spending and all the popular programs and spending (military salaries, national parks etc) that the Democrat media highlights whenever there is a threat of a government shutdown.  You can throw in spending for all your favorite weapons systems for good measure.  Then sit and wait.

When the Dems start wringing their hands about the House ‘shutting down the govt’, just say, ‘Pass the CRs.’  When they start weeping about all the elderly who will be denied their S.S. checks, say, ‘Pass the CRs’. When the press starts showing pictures of American families being turned away from national parks, say ‘Pass the CRs’. So the pressure will be on the Dems to pass the CRs and fund the government.  Then, since the debt ceiling is not going to move, Obama will be forced to decide what to cut.  It will have to come from all the budget items for which there is no CR. Say, funding for the IRS.  I would like to see Obama come before the nation to explain why funding for the IRS, or bureaucrats’ salaries in the Paperclip Procurement Agency,  is so desperately needed. Think how deliciously thrilling it will be to watch Obama cutting bureaucrats’ salaries at the Department of Departmental Affairs.

Another advantage: unlike other confrontations on the debt ceiling in the past, the bond markets will be thrilled at this display of fiscal discipline. Our bond rating may even go up.

The problem with this plan, of course, is that it doesn’t address the real problems, i.e. the dysfunctional tax code and entitlement spending. But I guess that after a few months of being forced to cut government programs (and being forced to defend their effectiveness), the Democrats will be ready to cut a deal on the real issues.

This is how Obama won:

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/508851/how-obama-wrangled-data-to-win-his-second-term/

The natural response is to say that Republicans engaged in a stone age campaign, the usual ground war/air war, while the Democrats engaged in advanced cyberwar.  Republicans have to catch up.  But something else is at stake too.  What the Democrats have done is to learn how to create an alternative reality for low-information voters.  Low-information voters are disproportionately non-voters: if you don’t care enough to inform yourself about politics, you won’t care enough to vote.  Ignorance tends to cancel itself out politically, or used to.  Now the Democrats have created a tool for misinforming AND motivating low-information voters – the sort who really thought there was a Republican war on women, for example. The sort who are completely unaware of the existence, let alone the implications of 16T in public debt.

Politically, this means that the Democrats have been able to reproduce via technology the situation that Plato most feared:  the Athenian assembly, its passions aroused by some orator with brilliant rhetorical technique, voting to engage in a foolish war or to ostracize the virtuous. These new techniques are a threat to Madisonian republicanism too, insofar as Madison in the Federalist hoped that the passions of the many would be rendered ineffective in a great republic because of its vast geographical dispersion. Democratic cyberwarfare has created a powerful new engine to whip up the passions of a virtual demos.

let’s adopt some of the laws used to limit its influence in countries where it is already normal, like France, Japan, Korea or Thailand.

Travelling in Thailand, I read in the papers that the former prime minister is being prosecuted for a variety of offenses. One caught my eye. It seems it’s illegal in Thailand for a company which is partly owned by the government or which receives substantial grants from the government to donate to political parties. This prohibition extends also to the officers of such a company. What a splendid idea. We’d surely see a lot less interest among politicians in managing the economy if kickbacks of this kind were actually, you know, illegal.

You know, the one the Obama campaign and the press have been building for 2 years, that the Republicans are ‘obstructionists’.  The following proposal would change that narrative and perhaps the real narrative of American history as well.

“Dear Mr President,

It’s clear that you Democrats and we Republicans have starkly different ideas of what fiscal policies are good for America. We believe we are right, but since the election, it’s clear that we’re being set up so that we’ll be blamed for whatever bad outcomes may result from your policies.

So we propose the following.  Draw up whatever legislation you want. If  you want 90% income tax rates on the rich, go ahead. If you want to double the debt, go ahead. If you want to give away billions in ‘stimulus’ to your capitalist cronies go ahead.  If you want to double the debt ceiling, go ahead.  We will vote to abstain on all your proposals (that’s like voting ‘present’ in Illinois) and they will all pass.

Our only conditions are the following:  First, we want you to summarize and defend your proposals in a short, 1000 word document, written in clear English. Second, we want you to host a televised conference at the White House.  You will get 90 minutes to make the case for your legislation, and we will get 90 minutes to explain why it’s not going to work. No moderators from the press, no interruptions on either side.  After 20 months, you will host another televised conference in the White House along the same lines, 90 minutes for each party, to discuss the results of your fiscal policy with the American people.

The American people were not offered a clear choice of economic policies in the 2012 election because you refused to say what your policies would be in the future. Now it’s time to stop campaigning and start leading. If the results of your policies are what we think they will be, it will be a long time before Democrats win another national election.

John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives”

Negotiations on the ‘fiscal cliff’ show that Republicans and Democrats have fundamentally different conceptions of how to achieve economic prosperity. If negotiations proceed as they have thus far, Republicans will get something of what they want, but experience shows they will get all of the blame if the economy goes back into recession. That means free-market policies could be further tainted.  Republicans simply don’t possess the communications skills and resources to fight this narrative. Obama and the media are already laying down the premises to direct public opinion in the direction they want.

The best thing the Republicans could do now for the country is simply to give the Democrats everything they want. Unfortunately, history shows that the only way democracies can learn lessons is by making big mistakes. For example, the country only figured out that the classic 1960s Democratic policy of paying for giveaways by debasing the currency was a bad idea when it suffered from the stagflation of the Carter years.

The Republicans should make clear that they are conceding the policy debate in order to test the correctness of Democratic beliefs about economic growth and prosperity. When the economy tanks, as it inevitably will, and government debt continues to mount, as it inevitably will, the resulting economic distress will communicate with the electorate far better than Republicans seem able to do. It is a high price to pay and people will suffer, but ultimately they and the country will be better off if the electorate learns once and for all that no, debt is not just an obligation we owe ourselves, and no, higher taxes do not in the aggregate create more revenue, and no, prosperity does not come from government management of the economy.

Combined with the coming train-wreck of Obamacare, the failure of Obamanomics could lead the electorate to a major realignment in its beliefs and to a new embrace of the free market. But the electorate has to know, unambiguously, where the blame for that failure lies.

Addendum: it looks like Gingrich is also skeptical about the advantages of negotiation, though for different reasons.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/29/gingrich-house-republicans-should-stop-negotiating-with-president-obama/

The point is, Pubbies should stop letting Bam get away with demanding that THEY give in to him when he hasn’t even put anything on the table. They should say:  look buster, you won the election. Time to step up and lay out your proposal.  In public, not in secret.  With numbers.  Then we’ll talk. Stop letting him pretend that the Pubs are holding the < 250K filers hostage in order to keep rates low on the ‘rich’. Totally bogus, but as we know from the election, half the country is inclined to believe bogus charges against Pubs.

Want to meet fellow conservatives/Republicans/libertarians in the Harvard community? Share a brew or a wine with us! Open to all (non-Harvard folks welcome as well).

Join us at Om Restaurant for Harvard Conservatives Happy Hour, this Tuesday, November 27, 5:30 pm onward.

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/events/166168700196537/