Would Jesus be a Liberal Democrat?

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Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat
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There is an issue here that even non-Christians like me and Bernie Goldberg can find interesting. The immediate issue is: Are people who vote for the government to give resources to people who need them practicing Christian charity? Behind this is a deeper issue, which does not presuppose Christian ethics: Are they practicing some virtue of benevolence or other -- perhaps generosity?

Colbert thinks the answer to both questions is obviously yes. I think the correct answer is no, for two reasons.

(Both are different from the reason O'Reilly gives, which is that , as he sees it, Christian charity and liberal charity are different traits, as the former is qualified by ideas, such as individual responsibility, which are absent from the latter. This is the idea that Colbert is ignorantly ridiculing in the above video.)

First: If you are really generous, charitable, etc., you have already given to the needy. The only thing your vote can add, at most, is to force others to give. Now, if I give you my coat, that may be generous, but if I give you someone else's coat, it cannot be. You can only be generous, etc., with your own property. If Al Capone tips a shoeshine boy with a stolen $100 bill, he is not being generous. His subjective affect at that moment may be identical to what a generous person might feel, but generosity is a moral concept, not a psychological one. A mere feeling is never sufficient to make an act virtuous.

Second: Further, by voting, you are not even forcing others to give. When you vote, you are never doing anything but voting. Unless the tally, minus you, turns out to be 1,395,735 to 1,395,735, with yours being the tie-breaking vote, your vote has no effect on the outcome of the election whatsoever. As Thoreau put it: "Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it." Voting is thus a great corrupter of morals, a smugifier, a hypocriter. Well, at least I've done something about the problem now! No, you haven't. Now get off your fat ass and really do something.

I think there are a significant number of liberals who believe the Colbert thesis: that simply voting a certain way and having certain opinions makes them more virtuous than people who do otherwise. It would explain the moral contempt some of them seem to show toward people who are to the right of them. It would also explain why they are often so easy on people who are to the left of them. Stalin may have murdered millions, but at least he presided over a state that gave free medical care to those it did not kill. (The same thing is true of Hitler, but nevermind that.)

The intuitive idea behind this is obvious: the liberal voter, the charitable Christian, and the Communist dictator do have something in common: all care about the needy. That may be true. But it does not show that liberals and socialists are more virtuous than others. Aside from the empirical fact that there are plenty of people who care and yet do not fit this political profile, there are reasons #1 and #2, above.

The Great Political Earthquake of 2010

.I think people don't realize how shockingly huge Tuesday's political earthquake was. Partly, this is because the national media are not reporting local election results very much. I suppose one reason is that vote-counting seems to be slower in these micro-elections.

As you may know, here in Wisconsin, a Tea Party candidate was elected governor on Tuesday. The previous occupant of the office was a Democrat. And another Tea Party candidate replaced my favorite liberal in the Senate, eighteen-year veteran Russ Feingold.

Here's some stuff you may not know. According to yesterday's Wisconsin State Journal (incredibly, today's WSJ does not contain a follow-up), given the tallies so far, the State Assembly will apparently flip from Democratic majority to Republican majority, and the State Senate will do likewise. More shockingly, if such is possible, the majority leaders of both houses -- that's right both houses -- were voted out of office and replaced with Republicans.

Not only has the government shifted in the Democrat-to-Republican direction but, more important, the Republican party has veered sharply in the direction of smaller-government, pro-market ideas.

Nothing like this has happened in my lifetime (and I was born right after WW II, just as soon as my father could return from the Philippines, marry my mother, and get her pregnant).

Why has it happened?

As to Feingold, one thing is that he made the tactical mistakes of campaigning proudly on "health care," and of welcoming Obama here to campaign for him. But these errors, at worst, merely converted a defeat into and decisive defeat (by 5%). And of course this is not just about him.

Wisconsin has been ruled by Democrats for some years, and they have spent their way into some serious fiscal problems. They haven't ruled as long as they have in California or New York, but then our problems are not as serious as theirs, yet. Conditions here are a lot like those of the federal government, except that we can't print money and must make ends meet somehow.

The voters of Wisconsin, who are not utterly and completely irrational, are trying to do something -- as to whether it will make a difference, we can only wait and see -- to rectify the situation.

Just now, on TV, I heard another progressive commentator saying "Oh, the voters are just unhappy because the economy isn't mending very fast. This doesn't mean anything. Ignore the man behind the curtain. We are the Great and Powerful Oz!"

No, you're not.

Update: A day later, I see the true extent of the earthquake is beginning to be reported. According to this article, the Republicans have not controlled this many state legislatures since 1928. In Minnesota, they captured the Senate for the first time in the state's history[later: but see the comments section] ; in Alabama, for the first time since Reconstruction.

Our Well-Informed Electorate

Can you distinguish between a Keynesian and a Kenyan? Then you know more than these pitiable and dangerous fools, who showed up a the "Rally for Sanity" to support Obama, but obviously haven't taken the trouble to do any serious thinking about the great issues of the day. I say they are "dangerous" because their vote counts just as much as yours does.

Think about that!

What's Wrong with Things Like Gerrymandering?

I say "things like" Gerrymandering because of a comment my last post. I had linked to this article by Geo. Will about a measure passed last week by the damphool voters of California. He describes it like this:

Henceforth, in primary elections that select candidates for most state and federal offices -- including almost one-eighth of the U.S. House of Representatives -- all voters, regardless of party registration, or those who have "decline to state" status (no party identification -- 20.2 percent of Californians), will receive the same ballot. All candidates for a particular office will be listed, regardless of party affiliation, if any, which they may choose to state, or not. The two receiving the most votes will be on November ballots, regardless of the desires of the political parties the nominees may claim to represent.

The result, as GFW explains in his masterful way, will be to cluster the November ballot candidates toward the center, disenfranchising everyone who is odd, distinctive, deviant, weird -- whatever you want to call non-moderates. Further, according to Will, it was meant to do so.

An anonymous commenter said this sounds like "a new form of gerrymandering." Hm. Well, it's not literally gerrymandering, which is the redrawing of geographical political boundaries in order to enhance or decrease the probability that one group of voters will win elections -- because it doesn't involve redrawing such boundaries. (See 1812 political cartoon, above.) However, it does seem to have the morally-active ingredient of gerrymandering, which is the intention of changing those probabilities.

In our system, gerrymandering is not regarded as either illegal or unconstitutional. Just take a look (here, on the right) at Illinois' celebrated "earmuff" congressional district, which connects two Hispanic neighborhoods via a thin corridor which seems to include nothing but a freeway. (It is currently represented by Rep. Luis Gutiérrez.)

Though we do practice it, however, Gerrymandering is typically regarded as immoral.

Why? I guess the intuitive reason is that it tends to, and is often meant to, create a system that does not represent the will of the people. It generally supplants the will of the people with the will of the reapportioners. (Since reapportionment is generally done by incumbents, it tends to represent, specifically, their Will to Incumbency.)

Gov. Schwarzenegger and other supporters of Prop. 14 might say that their measure does enable the electoral process to reflect the will of the people. After all, isn't Joe Sixpack the average voter? Yes, but he's not 100% of the voters, and this measure creates a system in which 100% of the representatives in the districts affected by it represent him and nobody else. The others will be unrepresented.

That of course is exactly the sort of thing that gerrymandering can cause.

On the other hand, Prop. 14 is bad in a way that makes it worse than gerrymandering. As Will points out, it violates the freedom of association of political parties by forcing to take as "their" candidates individuals they would reject if they had a chance.

I don't think this is something that gerrymandering does. The Hispanic residents of Earmuffland are not being forced to associate with someone against their wishes. In fact, gerrymandering in this case has accomplished something like the opposite of that effect. As far as this particular consideration is concerned, gerrymandering does have its points.

Take as another example Rep. Michelle Bachmann's district (on the left). For better or worse, she is one of the most ideologically distinct voices in congress. It's a virtual certainty that she could not be elected if her district cut through the Twin Cities, instead of snaking around them like it does. (This is not in any way a political comment on Bachmann. It's just a fact.)

Though gerrymandering, as actually used in the current political incentive-structure, often muffles the will of the people, it also has a potentiality that is the opposite of the sort of homogenizing sausage-grinder principle represented by Prop 14.