The Democratic Deficit in Europe — Another View

William Timberman5 Comments

From Dani Rodrik’s Europe’s Next Nightmare in Project Syndicate:

The challenge is to develop a new political narrative emphasizing national interests and values without overtones of nativism and xenophobia. If centrist elites do not prove themselves up to the task, those of the far right will gladly fill the vacuum, minus the moderation.

That is why outgoing Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou had the right idea with his aborted call for a referendum. That move was a belated attempt to recognize the primacy of domestic politics, even if investors viewed it, in the words of a Financial Times editor, as “playing with fire.” Scrapping the referendum simply postpones the day of reckoning and raises the ultimate costs to be paid by Greece’s new leadership.

A more moderately-worded view of Europe’s delusions. Then again, Rodrik doesn’t need to shriek — he isn’t looking directly down into the abyss. He’s over here on this side of the Atlantic, where we have our own problems with democracy. There are many pathways to the legitimacy conferred on a government by the consent of the governed. Europe can’t seem to find any of them, while we seem to have given up looking. Given that modern history hasn’t tolerated either form of benign neglect for very long, there doesn’t seem much point in preferring one over the other.

Not a Fool, but a Democrat

William Timberman2 Comments

Today, in the Süddeutsche Zeitung online, an editorial by Heribert Prantly which makes, among others, the following point:

In der Spitzenpolitik wurde dieses Referendum diskutiert, als habe Premier Papandreou vorgeschlagen, die Demokratie in seinem Land durch ein russisches Roulette zu ersetzen – und als gelte es daher, dem Premier die Waffe wieder aus der Hand zu winden; das hat man denn auch getan. Dabei hatte Papandreou nichts anderes versucht, als die Demokratie in ihr Recht zu setzen: unzulänglich sicherlich, undiplomatisch, ohne zuvor an Angela Merkel und Nicolas Sarkozy wenigstens eine SMS geschickt zu haben.

Er hätte sein Vorhaben früher ankündigen, es besser vorbereiten, es hätte Teil des Euro-Rettungspakets sein müssen. Aber auch mit der falschen Verpackung und falsch dargereicht bleibt eine Medizin eine Medizin; man muss sie besser einsetzen, zur richtigen Zeit und in richtiger Dosierung. Eine Volksabstimmung ist kein Allheilmittel, sie ist aber auch kein Gift. Wer in einer Demokratie das Volk, den Demos, befragen will, ist zunächst einmal kein Narr, sondern ein Demokrat.

Or, as I translate it:

In senior political circles, this referendum was discussed as though Premier Papandreou had proposed replacing democracy in his country with Russian roulette, and as though it would therefore be appropriate to wrest the weapon out of his hands, which was in fact what was done. But in acting as he did, Papandreou had sought to do no more than give democracy its due — inadequately, to be sure, undiplomatically, and without having so much as sent Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy an SMS beforehand.

He should have announced his plan earlier, prepared it better, it ought to have been part of the Euro rescue package. But even in the wrong wrapper, and improperly administered, a medicine remains a medicine. One need only introduce it more properly, at the right time, and in the right dosage. A plebiscite is no cure-all, but neither is it a poison. In a democracy, he who wants to submit a question to the people, the demos, is first and foremost not a fool, but a democrat.

I agree completely, and can only add that it never ceases to amaze me how thoroughly people who consider themselves the intellectual and moral elite of their respective countries, the custodians of our modern, post-industrial civilization, discount this simple truth. Poke them a little, and none of them actually believes in democracy. That’s their right, I suppose, and no doubt they have their reasons, but I’d have more respect for them if they didn’t expend so much energy trying to convince me otherwise.

Eminently Good Sense

William Timberman

Listening to Noam Chomsky for the first time can be a little like discovering a new species of orchid sprouting in a Wal*Mart parking lot. We think we know where we are — everything looks and sounds the way it’s always looked and sounded — and then, suddenly, familiar perspectives seem to shift. It’s not that Chomsky’s take on things is entirely without precedent, but it’s a genuine shock to encounter anything like it in the familiar American here and now. If you’ve ever thought about looking for an antidote to all those hours of mindless pontification from Washington Week in Review, or Charlie Rose, this Noam Chomsky interview isn’t a bad place to begin:

The Republican Alternatives

William Timberman

Bachmann: Why can’t somebody as ignorant as me make a good President? Think about it.

Perry: I’ve always liked tearing the wings off flies, and setting fire to cats. I’m exactly what America needs right now.

Romney: I only used to be somebody. Now I’m just like you, so it’s okay to go ahead and vote for me. Honest.

Paul: I don’t like black people, or women, or abstractions. I also don’t like war.

I could go on and on, but why bother? Fox News will take care of it.

The Lizard Brain

William Timberman1 Comment

I stepped out the back door this morning to light my pipe and promptly encountered a pale-green horned caterpillar, with black markings, about as long as my index finger and almost as thick, humping its way across the raised concrete walkway between the house and the garage. It lowered itself painstakingly down the step to the sidewalk and rippled onward toward the back yard. At that point a lizard dashed up to it, looked up at me, and dashed back out of view — a flick of lizard lightning which almost made me jump.

Absent-mindedly trying to honor the Prime Directive, I stepped back into the shadow of the garage, hoping to see without being seen. I should have known better. The lizard dashed up again, looked me directly in the eye and dashed back. The caterpillar continued humping slowly along, oblivious to its approaching doom. When the lizard deemed the relative distances between himself, the caterpillar, and me to be propitious, he dashed up yet a third time, neatly nipped off the caterpillar’s head, and dashed back to his hiding place under a sprig of rosemary beside the long wall of the garage.

The dying caterpillar’s reflexes coiled its body into a tight spiral. The lizard peered intently at me from under his rosemary sprig. I watched for a minute or so longer, hoping to see the final disposition of his prey, then relented and stepped back inside the house. When I went back out again an hour later, all evidence of the preceding melodrama had disappeared.

How does it go, Nature red in tooth and claw…? I suppose I should be grateful that there aren’t any tigers under the rosemary.

Must We Say It Yet Again?

William Timberman

Despite the contempt expressed for honest people by modern campaign managers, foreign policy experts, and the heads of national intelligence services, honesty is not a form of mental retardation. People who tell the truth as they see it aren’t stupid. They’re very well aware that in the short run, lying can be effective in getting you something you want, or in keeping something you don’t want at a distance, and they know as well as anyone does that the commercial and political advantages accruing to adept practitioners of the dark arts of modern advertising and propaganda are real enough. So why do they still continue to believe, against all the accumulated evidence, that honesty is the best policy?

The answer, it seems to me, is based on a principle that you might call the diminishing marginal utility of cleverness. If one lie succeeds in its purpose, a clever person is probably justified in thinking that a second lie will work just as well. A truly sophisticated clever person, equipped with the all the latest sociological and neuroscientific research, and in control of a major media outlet or two, might well conclude that he can make a lie serve as well as the truth for the majority of those he wishes to influence to his own benefit. As it turns out, however, lying doesn’t scale as well as the research predicts.

Abraham Lincoln is famous for saying that you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Maybe not, but given the tools available these days, there seems to be no shortage of clever people willing to give it a try. The jury is still out on whether or not their innovations will ultimately prove to be successful, at least in the terms which matter to them. What we do know is that a society which reaches the point at which everyone lies about everything all the time is more likely to experience a terminal exhaustion than a resurgence of interest in the truth. The late, unlamented Soviet Union is probably the best example we have of what happens when the substitution of systematic lying for honest discourse reaches its apogee.

The much-quoted witticism about the Soviet economy: They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work, sums up the consequences very nicely. We may lack the power to unmask the liar, or refute his lies, but we can certainly succumb to paranoia, cognitive dissonance, apathy and finally, a general collapse of trust. Just how smart, I have to wonder, is anyone eager to contribute to such an outcome? Whatever the answer, to remain honest seems to me a more attractive ambition for anyone with a concern for his immortal soul, even if it means that the smart money will always be invested with someone else.

Brief Encounters with Austrians

William Timberman

Fiat Currency. Fractional Reserve Banking. Collectivism. Curse words as familiar these days on the Intertubes as socialist or liberal used to be at Baptist church suppers. Disciples of the Austrian Holy Trinity  — Hayek, Von Mises, and Rothbard — are everywhere these days, and everywhere eager to counsel us that any houses we build in the future must be paid for, not with electrons and promises, but with actual money — you know, hard money, money you can bite down on, money that you can toss up in the air like Scrooge McDuck, and actually feel it hit you on the head when it comes down. They’re having none of this stuff that any government can conjure on a computer, and any central bank can issue. They claim that civic virtue is what’s driving them, but I suspect that they’re just out of breath chasing events that they don’t understand, and consequently need a rest more than they need our attention.

Yes, hard money would certainly slow things down for a time. People who presently have access to hard money, or can imagine themselves having access to it in the future, think that this would be a Good Thing, inasmuch as it would a) give them more leisure to lecture us on eternal verities, and b) keep the political fantasists and other rabble at bay until better security measures could be devised.

They’re wrong, of course. It’s not just that they’d have to put down the masses of people pissed at being forced to give up their iPads and go back to grubbing on somebody else’s acreage all day with only a dish of oaten gruel as their reward at the end of it. They’d also have to figure out how to finance a dozen nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and accompanying battle groups to replenish the gold they’d frittered away producing goods that no one but themselves had enough hard money to buy.

So what else is on offer, and who’s offering it? These days, business as usual, of the kind prescribed by Wolfgang Schäuble on the far side of the Atlantic, or Hank Paulson closer to home, has about it the unmistakeable odor of wishful thinking. Slightly left technocrats agree, and offer us Keynes instead. They swear it’s because his theories work, but I suspect that at least part of their enthusiasm arises from the notion that adopting his theories would put them in charge again, which for them, if not for us, is reason enough. Revolutionaries are still trying to exhume Marx — brush the grave-mold off his burial suit, put a little touch of rouge on his cheeks, they say, and  he’s good to go again. With all due respect for what he accomplished in his day, I doubt it.

We need to do better than this. What do we mean by freedom? What do we mean by prosperity? Is capitalism — any form of capitalism — really essential to either? Who’s minding the store anyway? I can’t really blame the Hayekians for asking similar questions, but when it comes to answers, I’d as soon consult my local astrologer.

…And I’m in the Kitchen. WIth the Tombstone Blues.

William Timberman

President Obama is golfing with John Boehner. Frau Merkel is resting comfortably, but avoiding her finance minister until Sarkozy’s love bites fade. MIchele Bachmann is now Snow White. The Seven Twelve Dwarfs are still dwarfs. The Wall Street Journal makes Leopold Bloom the mayor a denizen of Dublin. David Brooks blames Fannie and Freddie. Juan Cole is burning his trash. It’s June 18, 2011, and this is the news…