“Economic justice” is one of those expressions that dance trippingly on the tongue. It’s a favorite with certain progressive thinkers—for example, those who greeted the Occupy Wall Street movement with hosannas and waving palm branches. But like so much contemporary political terminology there’s rather less to it than meets the ear—nothing, in fact. “Economic justice” is a term that cannot be swallowed by anybody with an understanding of (a) economics and (b) justice. Let’s take (a) first.

What is the function of an economic system? Whether it’s capitalist or socialist, hunter-gatherer or post-industrial, an economic system has but one function: the allocation of resources. As we know (but often forget) resources are finite and have alternate uses. Take the labor of human hands. There’s only so much of it available and it can be allocated to any number of uses. Labor can be used to build houses or hospitals, boats or baseball bats. It can be used to drill for oil, dig for gold, grow wheat or raise cattle. And the more labor that’s devoted to one task, the less there is for other tasks. The same is true of material resources like coal, oil, iron ore, wood, etc. The process by which these things are allocated is what we call economics. In a pure market economy the so-called invisible hand allocates resources; in a pure socialist economy the Ministry of Centralized Economic Planning does it. In reality most economies are an amalgam, purposeful or not, of the market and the ministry. Here the market predominates, there the ministry has the major say—but somehow, in some way, resources have got to be allocated.

And what is (b) justice? We think we know but when it comes to a precise definition things get vague. Is it fairness? Impartiality? Does it demand that virtue be rewarded while evil is punished? It implies all of these things, sure. But is justice in the natural order of things? Is it a solid, inescapable principle, akin to the economic principle that resources are finite and have alternate uses? Not even close.

Justice is a pure product of the human intellect that has no reality outside the human mind. Its existence depends on a societal consensus, e.g. that a person accused of a crime should be deemed innocent until found guilty by a jury of his peers. Now of course there are people who will claim that human beings are entitled to justice because they’re made in the image of God, possess natural rights as human beings, etc. These claims may or may not be true but as a practical matter justice cannot exist independently of societal consensus. If society gives up on the idea of innocence until guilt is proved, if the law ceases to embody that idea—out it goes.

Nor is justice cosmic, by which I mean all-embracing either in principle or in fact. Certainly the natural world operates on no principle of justice. Nor does humanity embrace a single standard of justice. We in the West think we have it figured out. But elsewhere in the world there are societies that not only ignore Western standards of justice in practice but reject them in principle. At the point of delivery justice is merely a package of defined benefits, e.g. the civil liberties spelled out in the American Bill of Rights.

Economics, then, is part of the natural order of things: an integral component of human society. Whatever its form an economic system has just one function: the allocation of finite resources. It does not embody and cannot produce justice. Whatever we define as “economic justice”—the minimum wage, the right to a job, the guarantee of a basic standard of living—is really just a package of defined benefits. It is what we say it is, nothing more and nothing less.

So for all the sonorous nobility with which it's sounded, the term “economic justice” always comes down to a case of special pleading: that my wages should be raised, that my student loans should be forgiven, that my health insurance should be provided free and so on and so forth. That such demands imply tradeoffs—that more economic justice for me means less for thee—is an inescapable fact of life that is usually ignored or denied. Because they are neither fair nor impartial, measures of economic justice violate our understanding of what is just. That we ignore the violation is a sad commentary on human nature. But you know something? It’s a just commentary…

Posted by tmg110 at 11:16 AM EDT

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Here’s an amusingly headlined story from the Washington Post: “Will Clinton’s experience be a liability?” That’s the Pants-Suited One’s experience as Secretary of State that the Post is referencing, presumably in a fit of angst over Hillary’s current troubles with State Department email regulations.

Of course it’s too soon to tell whether this little scandal will derail the PSO’s presidential bid. It does provide a reminder, though, that her decades of close association with one of America’s most naturally gifted politicians hasn’t done much to hone her own skills. Politically, Hillary Clinton has two left feet and a tin ear. The Post headline reminded me of one of Frederick the Great’s characteristic bon mots: “If experience were all that is needed to make a great general, the greatest of all would be the mules of my own army.” One observes the PSO…and one sees what old Fritz meant…

Posted by tmg110 at 5:46 PM EDT

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That contemporary progressivism has passed beyond parody is a simple truth that cannot be missed by anyone with eyes in his head. For example, if I were to claim that there’s a proposal on the table in California to create LGBT Police Departments, i.e. police departments made up of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender police officers, you would no doubt scoff. But it’s no joke…well, it’s no intentional joke. Mark Charles Hardie, a Huffington Post “Gay Voices” blogger, explains the rationale for his, ahem, innovation in law enforcement:

I believe it is important for heterosexual people and homosexual people to love and respect one another regardless of sexual orientation or transgender identity. However, it is also vital for LGBT communities to wield police power backed by the force of law. In other words, we must not only demand “gay rights,” but we must also demand “gay power.”

Presumably Mr. Hardie includes the right of gays to make excessive and incorrect use of quotation marks. (FYI, Mark, you don’t use them to lend emphasis to words.) But that’s not the reason why the HuffPo would probably be better off without this particular gay voice.

I’m sitting here trying to imagine what an LGBT Police Department might look like...and all I can come up with is the Village People…

Posted by tmg110 at 4:53 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 9 March 2015 5:28 PM EDT

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That would be Mother Jones senior editor Kiera Butler, who just published an article in her mag claiming that eating three meals a day is “racist.” I’m not making this up. “Dogmatic adherence to mealtimes is anti-science, racist, and might actually be making you sick,” is the subtitle of her article,“Why You Should Stop Eating Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.”

Just what the hell is Butler talking about? It seems that when the Europeans arrived in the New World, the found that Native Americans didn’t eat three meals a day—which the Evil Ice People took as one more piece of evidence that the natives were ungovernable savages. So you see, consuming three meals a day perpetuates a vicious racial stereotype. Besides, Butler adds, studies have shown (!) “that mice who skip feedings are leaner and live longer than their nonskipping counterparts.” So by passing on breakfast you can fight racism and perhaps even live an additional 1.638 years!

One of the least amiable traits of the contemporary Left is its relentless politicization of everything, from social policy to snacking, a vice well on display here. Less obvious but also worthy of note is Butler’s dismissive attitude toward the social function of mealtimes. She quotes with approval experts (!) who say that we should just eat when we feel like it. So much for that family dinner, already an endangered social convention. Oh, but I forgot, the family is not only unimportant but evil: a manifestation of sexism. Thus eating when you want strikes a blow against the patriarchy, I guess…

But I’ll leave to Tallyrand to deliver the rhetorical death blow to Kiera Butler: “Show me another pleasure like dinner which comes every day and lasts an hour.” Take that, you nosebleed!

Posted by tmg110 at 5:09 PM EST

Updated: Thursday, 5 March 2015 5:12 PM EST

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I’m struck by the adolescent behavior of the Obama Administration in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s impending speech to a joint session of Congress. Indeed it reminds me yet again of JFK’s cutting assessment of Richard Nixon: “No class.”

Where Israel is concerned, the Obama Administration seems incapable of acting with circumspection and restraint. Obama and his diplomatic minions say that they want a peace deal between the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs—but they behave in a way that guarantees a continued stalemate. As anyone with the slightest knowledge of the problem knows, the idea that Israel can be coerced or bullied into a peace agreement by the United States is a fantasy. Obama’s idea that creating “daylight” between the US and Israel would break the logjam has been tried and it hasn’t worked out. Its effects have been (a) to convince the Palestinians that if they stand pat the US will deliver their maximum demands and (b) to convince Israel that the Obama Administration is not to be trusted.

The Administration’s drive to conclude a nuclear deal with the Holocaust-denying, genocidal Islamic Republic of Iran has only compounded the problem. Having convinced himself that the ayatollahs can be converted into peace partners via a process of sweet reason, the President has armored himself against all evidence to the contrary. What is worse, his desperation to make his point and burnish his legacy by getting a deal with Iran has produced a series of unilateral concessions by the US and its spineless European allies. Like the Wizard of Oz, Obama tells us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain—in this case an umbrella wielder with an English accent whose similar policy toward an earlier genocidal despotism produced unfortunate results.

Naturally the Israeli government and people are seriously alarmed by the prospect of a deal that would tacitly concede to Iran the right to arm itself with nuclear weapons. Past statements by the ayatollahs to the effect that Israel is a gangster state that should be wiped out are not easily disregarded by a people who historical memory includes the Holocaust. Hence Prime Minister Netanyahu’s systematic criticism of the Obama Administration’s negotiations with Iran, now about to culminate in his address to a joint session of Congress.

Why the furious reaction to this speech from Obama and his cabal? You’d think that if they’re confident in the correctness and logic of their Iranian policy they’d have nothing to fear. But in fact the converse is the case, they know quite well that Netanyahu has a powerful case to make, and they greatly fear the effect of his presentation on Congress and the American people. Already in Congress a bipartisan consensus against the Administration’s Iran policy is emerging. Netanyahu’s speech is very likely to solidify it.

There is also the personal factor. It’s not saying too much to observe that Obama loathes Netanyahu—who’s had the temerity on several occasions to lecture the President on the finer points of Mideast history and Israeli security concerns. This was evidently a bitter pill for Obama to swallow, given that at all times and in all circumstances he believes that he knows best. No doubt he’s hoping that Netanyahu will go down in flames in the upcoming Israeli elections. But if that happens, the President will find himself dealing with a new prime minister who trusts him little more than the old one did. Aside from a tiny faction of leftists, Israelis have given up on the so-called peace process, having concluded that until such time as the Palestinians experience a change of heart and reconcile themselves to the existence of the Jewish state, no settlement is possible. And, of course, no conceivable Israeli government will support Obama’s Munich-style phased surrender to Iran.

At a tense moment in the waning days of the Second World War Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, commanding the German armies in the West, reacted thus to an unwelcome intervention by his supreme commander: “That Bohemian corporal Hitler usually decides against himself.” One could say something similar of our community organizer-in-chief as he stumbles around on the world stage, blowing his lines, knocking over the props and treading on the toes of his fellow actors.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:09 AM EST

Updated: Monday, 2 March 2015 5:56 PM EST

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If you made me the General Secretary of Conservatism and put Stalinist power in my hands, the first people I’d purge would the creation science activists.

Let’s stipulate that people can believe or disbelieve anything they want. If you choose to disbelieve in the theory of evolution and prefer to embrace so-called creation science that’s fine with me. But it’s not fine with me if you try to bastardize science by forcing schools to treat creationism as a legitimate scientific theory, equally as valid as the theory of evolution. Because it’s not a scientific theory: It’s a religious doctrine tricked out with scientific jargon and as such it has no place in the science classroom.

Religious dominations that run their own schools are of course free to include religious instruction in their curricula. But creationists’ periodic attempts to force their doctrine through the doors of public schools are obnoxious in the extreme. We exclude religion as such from public schools for good reasons. Public education serves a pluralistic society whose members embrace a diversity of religious and spiritual beliefs. It’s often said that America is a Christian nation and this may be true in a historical sense. But our government is secular. It neither supports nor oppresses any particular religion. It may also be true that proponents of the doctrine of separation of church and state sometimes go too far, e.g. by attempting to banish all religious symbols from the public square. But the general principle of separation is valid and, indeed, vitally necessary in a country like ours.

Please notice that I’m not arguing for the exclusion of religion from political opinions and political discourse. Religious faith has always been a powerful theme in American history; recall the part played by Christian witness in the abolitionist movement. So if you oppose abortion or support immigration reform on religious grounds, fine. It’s only when you try to get some article of your faith enacted into law that you and I are going to have a problem. And that’s precisely what creationists are attempting to do by getting creationism accepted as real science.

One of the arguments advanced in support of the teaching of creationism as science is that, after all, evolution is not a fact but a theory. So why shouldn’t other theories about the origins of life get equal time in the classroom? This sounds plausible but it’s based on a false premise. A scientific theory is not just an opinion. It’s a conclusion from the evidence that is, as the saying goes, robust. That is, the theory as a whole conforms to reality, the evidence supporting is both solid and extensive, and there is no contradictory evidence that undermines it. In principle, of course, a scientific theory is provisional: If new facts disproving it come to light, out it goes. In practice, however, a robust theory like evolution is taken as a statement of fact.

Creationism has nothing like the scientific solidity of evolution. Thus to treat it as a plausible alternative to evolutionary theory is scientific and educational malpractice. Worse, it’s fundamentally dishonest. Creationists are trying to sneak the Biblical story of creation into the science curriculum. And because they’re mostly conservative in their politics, creationists are giving conservatism as a whole a black eye. Progressive charges that conservatism as a whole is “anti-science” are exaggerated and unfair—but they’re hard to refute when conservative activists are trying to impose a religious doctrine on this or that public school system.

Well, progressives also have their horribles—Michael Moore, for instance, and they’re welcome to him. And, yes, I know, a Stalinist-style purge of creationists would be a bit of an overreaction. They deserve more attention—and plenty of criticism—from other conservatives, though. Our enemies we can handle—but God protect us from our friends!

Posted by tmg110 at 1:00 PM EST

Updated: Thursday, 26 February 2015 1:15 PM EST

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I know it’s one of feminism’s most cherished myths. But if you believe that women are more empathic, inclusive and collegial than men and that they possess superior management and leadership abilities, well, you need to go back to school. High school.

To begin with this claim is a typical example of ideological schizophrenia. Feminists who preach the doctrine of gender neutrality—that there are no essential differences between men and woman—are hardly being logical when they tout female superiority in the workplace. Gender—what an ugly word it’s become!—is supposed to be socially and culturally determined, and to the detriment of women at that. But if women as a group possess the virtues listed above, is that not thanks to socially driven gender determinism? And doesn’t that suggest that society’s gender bias favors women in certain important ways?

Now of course feminists are unfazed by such contradictions. Socially constructed gender roles oppress women except when they don’t. But theories of gender have become so tangled and bizarre that now the snake is eating its own tail. At Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts they’ve banned the performance of The Vagina Monologues—a play that only yesterday was holy writ in the eyes of feminists. Then it was discovered that TVM discriminates against a certain class of women: those not in possession of a physical vagina. After all, if Bradley/Chelsea Manning claims to be a woman, then he/she is a woman. Claims to the contrary based on the observation that Manning is not physiologically equipped for the role are sexist and oppressive. So The Vagina Monologues had to go.

What remains, then, of the claim that women as a group possess certain unique managerial and leadership attributes? Not much. Feminist theory doesn’t really support it and neither does the evidence of one’s eyes. As individuals, men and women display the full range of human virtues and vices. There are men who are bad managers and women who are inspirational leaders. One of the best leaders I encountered in my many years of Army service was a female captain. But in private conversations when they’re being honest many working women will tell you that hell is a workplace with an oversupply of women.

Cliques, tale carrying, grievance mongering, backstabbing, jealously, vendettas—in all too many instances women replicate these high-school vices in the workplace. To take a single example: Women often have a hard time working with or for someone they dislike. Of course no one enjoys dealing with an obnoxious coworker or boss but men tend not to take the situation personally. Women, on the other hand, tend to take it very personally indeed.

The smelly little orthodoxies of modern feminism are mostly concerned with papering over women’s real workplace problems while promoting phony issues like pay equality. It wasn’t always this way. Workplace sexual harassment is a genuine injustice and the women’s rights movement deserves great credit for focusing attention on it. But it seems that as the real barriers to female progress crumble, imagined and exaggerated grievances multiply. Cries of bias and discrimination have only grown louder. But at some point women who want to lead are going to have to stop whining and start leading. “We are what we habitually do,” said Aristotle. Yet even the most cautious and partial suggestion that this must happen, e.g. Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, is denounced by feminists as “tone-deaf” and “elitist.” Though Sandberg was careful to honor all of the ideological totems of feminism—discrimination, sexism, sexual harassment, gender equality, etc., etc.—her idea that women should strive to earn leadership positions was reviled. We have affirmative action for that!

The best, most effective leaders are those who purge their minds of conventional wisdom and see the world as it truly is. So I would advise ambitious women to shun feminist ideology—and as a reminder of what high school was really like to read or re-read Stephen King’s Carrie.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:33 AM EST

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Liberals, progressives and lefties can say whatever they want about prominent Republicans and conservatives. Remember the leftie line on George W. Bush? He was stupid, a drunk, a fascist, a war criminal. According to Al Gore he “betrayed this country.” There was even a movie made depicting Bush’s assassination—this while he was still president. Supposedly responsible progressive pundits wrote articles that openly proclaimed their hatred of Chimpy McBushitler. And it was all just fine, don’t you know: free speech in action, robust debate, patriotic dissent, etc., etc.

So forgive me if I don’t share the Left’s outrage over Rudy Giuliani’s suggestion that Barack Obama doesn’t love America. It’s phony outrage, it’s one-hundred-percent hypocritical and besides, Giuliani was more or less correct.

The question of Obama’s patriotism—or lack thereof—is an interesting one. There’s not much doubt that our Community Organizer-in-Chief looks askance at the Land of E Pluribus Unum. Why else would he have campaigned for president on the promise that he would fundamentally change America? Obviously he has issues with this country. Nor has he made a particular secret of his attitude. Remember his smarmy little crack about the “bitter clingers”? Remember the hissy fit he threw over questions about his lack of a US flag lapel badge? Remember his, ahem, spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright?

Yet I wouldn’t go so far as to call Obama unpatriotic. He’s not an active hater of Fascist Amerikka, not some leftie loony bird like Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore. Obama is, rather, a typical specimen of the academic Left, a snob for whom such notions as love of country and American exceptionalism are just…tasteless. As a sophisticate with a graduate degree from an elite university he disdains the instinctive patriotism of the proles, the boobs and the bitter clingers. George Orwell once remarked that the average leftist of his day would be less ashamed of stealing money from the poor box than of standing to attention when “God Save the King” was played. Contemporary American progressives of Obama’s type honor that ignoble tradition.

Barack Obama isn’t patriotic and he isn’t unpatriotic. He’s post-patriotic, a man for whom the puerile slogan “think globally, act locally” is full of meaning. And there’s no room for love of country in the mind of a man who considers himself a citizen of the world. That’s the point that Republicans and conservatives should make to journalists who pester them for statements denouncing Giuliani’s comments. The truth hurts and in this case it's sure to make the average progressive’s head explode.

Posted by tmg110 at 1:04 PM EST

Updated: Sunday, 22 February 2015 1:13 PM EST

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I’m 65 years old, I live in a house with a long, wide driveway in an area of northwest Indiana that’s subject to periodic doses of lake effect snow—and I don’t own a snow blower. I do have a good sturdy snow shovel, purchased at Lowe’s (10% discount for active and retired military members), that has given me faithful service since the winter of 2011-12.

Yesterday the lake effect snow machine was running in overdrive and by two in the afternoon I had a good eight inches of snow on my driveway. I’d been sitting at my desk most of the morning, drinking coffee and watching through the front window as a stiff wind blew the snow around. There’s a peculiar fascination to lake effect snow. You can be standing in your driveway under the sun with what looks like a blizzard in progress a hundred yards down the street. So it went all morning and into the afternoon, the snow swirling as adroitly as a matador’s cloak. Then the wind died down and though it was still spitting snow I decided the time had come to seize my shovel and get to work.

Retirement is the gift of time and it’s very pleasant to wake up with the thought that your day is free. But sometimes it’s good to know that a job of work awaits and so it was for me yesterday. All that morning, into the noon hour, I’d been mentally preparing myself for the task ahead. That driveway had to be cleared—it had to be cleared so that when my wife arrived home from work she’d be able to get her Rav into the garage.

Perhaps you think that I’m dramatizing a mundane task. But I’m 65, remember? At that age shoveling snow is an intimation of mortality. Every winter guys in their sixties check out for good: snow shovel in one hand, grabbing their chest with the other. But never mind—that God-damned driveway had to be cleared. I pulled on my insulated boots, draped myself in cold-weather gear, flexed my fingers in my gloves and ventured forth.

The garage door rumbled up and there it was: a pristine expanse of snow, marked only by the icy fingers of the wind. But now that wind had died down and the sun was in and out, though it was still bitterly cold. I grabbed my shovel, flourished it like a knight presenting his tournament lance and got to work.

Two hours later I was down to the end of the driveway. You take your time with a job like that, not pushing yourself too aggressively, pausing for a warm-up break when you need one—but even so it seems to go quickly. There’s a rhythm to the routine of snow shoveling that’s oddly soothing. Nor is the work—physically but not mentally demanding—any impediment to musing or daydreaming. In fact a troublesome knot in a short story I’m writing came loose as I worked my way down the driveway, flinging snow to the left and right.

But there at the end of the driveway was the snow shoveler’s nemesis: the packed and compacted mound left by the snowplow, winter’s own Maginot Line. You don’t shovel your way through that. No, you hack at it bit by bit, heaving the fragments aside, slowly widening the breach. This is the part of the job that depletes your energy budget. Now the cold really begins to pinch—now you really begin to feel the ache in your thighs and shoulders. The temptation to call it quits grows strongly upon you—but the driveway has got to be cleared. And eventually it is cleared. Mission accomplished. In all, counting breaks, it took me three and a half hours.

Yesterday evening I was really, really tired—bone tired, as the saying goes. My wife, God bless her, let me off the hook for dinner (I’m her executive chef). So for supper I had some cheese, bread, cold sausage and a couple of cocktails, and by seven I was ready for bed. I slept for eleven hours, waking up only once during the night. Today I feel all right—a few aching muscles but for that there’s Aleve. And a good thing, too, because there’s an inch of snow on the driveway this morning and later I suppose I should get out there and scrape it off...

Posted by tmg110 at 8:45 AM EST

Updated: Friday, 20 February 2015 1:16 PM EST

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Something that popped up on my homepage this morning delivered an unsavory reminder of popular culture’s casual cruelty. US Magazine isn’t one of my customary reads but a link to this feature caught my eye: “Stars without Makeup.” It consisted of 254 photos in 127 two-photo sets, each set depicting a female star or celebrity with and without makeup.

You have to look at all 254 photos to appreciate the willful, almost gloating ugliness of this Us hit piece. A few of the women—mostly the younger ones—looked all right without makeup and one or two of them actually looked better without it. But mostly they looked worse, sometimes shockingly so. As I clicked past photo after humiliating photo, a vague feeling of guilt possessed me. The temptation to linger over the awful non-makeup image of some celeb I’ve never liked was disconcertingly insistent. It was a tutorial in the nature of contemporary celebrity—a sharp reminder that schadenfreude and sadism play a big role in the attention we devote to our Beautiful People.

Of course I’ve always known this—intellectually. Leafing through People at the barbershop or the dentist’s office I’ve often remarked how that magazine likes to print photos of celebrities that are less than flattering. Why? Because the demand is there—the demand for a disreputable but very popular product. This star being busted for a curbside tryst with a hooker, that celeb’s anger management problem, fascinates us because it takes the fair and fortunate down a peg or two. Whether we care to admit it or not, the travails of celebrities supply us with psychological compensation for all that is un-fair and unfortunate in our own lives.

Yes, I generalize. There are plenty of people who pay little or no attention to the celebrity culture (Of the 127 celebs featured in the Us piece, a third to a half of them were completely unknown to me. Who is Iggy Azalea, for instance?) And yes, it’s quite true that celebrities invite the attention that comes their way. No doubt some celebrities—perhaps even most of them—take negative publicity in stride, just part of the job when you’re famous. So why do I care? Why should anybody care?

We should care, I think, because the ritual humiliation of celebrities, though it isn’t as gruesome as gladiatorial combat or cockfighting, derives its popularity from the same source: a secret, atavistic delight in gratuitous cruelty. Celebrities as a group may be thick-skinned but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that tears have been shed over that horrible Us feature. I’ll try to bear that in mind the next time I’m tempted to laugh about some famous person’s weight problem or wardrobe malfunction. It’s an insight that might come in hand for you, too, the next time you find yourself tittering over a worst-dressed list or a squalid tabloid hit piece.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:21 PM EST

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