As I am also a member of that magical demographic, “the young,” I’m just going to reprint the bulk of his post. It’s a point which deserves to be shouted from the rooftops again and again until we’re all hoarse.

These are the benefit cutters and means testers and age raisers — folks who loudly champion a set of painfully austere entitlement reforms despite the fact that the government’s fiscal worries are a) not about Social Security and b) driven by health care spending, not Medicare promises. It is, in other words, an aesthetic posture more than a policy argument, but it’s utterly pervasive in Washington.

Take Robert Samuelson’s column today, exhorting the young — and hey, kemosabe, I am the young — to “get mad” over the unsustainable course of government spending and start picketing outside AARP (I’m not kidding, that’s actually one of Samuelson’s suggestions). “You face a heavily mortgaged future,” says Samuelson. “You’ll pay Social Security and Medicare for aging baby boomers. The needed federal tax increase might total 50 percent over the next 25 years…There are three basic ways of reducing the costs of Social Security and Medicare: increase eligibility ages; trim benefits; and require recipients to pay more for their Medicare benefits (higher premiums, co-payments or deductibles).”

Number one: There is no such program as SocialSecurityandMedicare. It doesn’t exist. There is Social Security, which is a pension program predicted to endure manageable cost growth in the foreseeable future. It poses no threat to the federal budget. Claims that it is in crisis are a lie. Claims that it requires sharp cuts in benefits or hikes in the retirement age are a lie.

Then there is Medicare. Medicare is a trickier problem. Because it’s not the problem: The American health care system is. As Henry Aaron, the centrist Brookings health care expert has testified, our fiscal threats “derive entirely from projected increases in national health care spending, not from problems peculiar to government health care or entitlement spending.” As such, “materially slowing the growth of Medicare and Medicaid apart from general health system reform is impossible.” In other words: Raising the eligibility age or cutting benefits does not solve the problem. It does not solve the problem for the private sector, of course, but it does not solve the problem for the public sector, either. The problem is driven by rapid growth in health care costs. If you do not arrest that growth — in both the public and private sectors — and you instead raise the eligibility age for Medicare, you will just have to do it again. And again. And again. When wise men like Samuelson write columns arguing that the government must cut benefits or raise eligibility, they are arguing for doing nothing about the central fiscal problem facing the government. And frankly, on behalf of my generation, I resent that.

Jonah Goldberg responds to this post by Ross Douthat on the topic of “spreading the wealth around,” pointing out the difference between viewing such spreading as a necessary result of, or means to, good public policy, and viewing it as the actual aim of public policy – the latter coming genuinely close to a socialist worldview.

Indeed, Barack Obama made it sound like he thinks spreading the wealth isn’t the consequence of good public policy but it is in fact the chief aim of public policy. That was even more clear, I think, when he told Charlie Gibson that he would consider raising capital gains taxes for “purposes of fairness” whether or not they increased revenues. In other words, spreading the wealth is the public policy aim, not the regrettable byproduct of it.

It’s entirely possible this is largely a semantic as opposed to a philosophical thing, but I don’t think that’s the case, which is why I think so many people had an “aha” moment over this Joe the Plumber stuff.

Actually, I think a semantic rather than philosophic difference is precisely what we have here, and if the latest polls are any indication, that was the “aha” moment that wasn’t.

At any rate, I see no evidence that Obama views spreading the wealth as anything other than a necessary means to the end of good public policy. His positions on pork spending, his healthcare plan, and other positions seem to indicate that he does think there are good ways and bad ways to spread the wealth, which would imply he doesn’t view the spreading as an end in itself. I mean, maybe I’m wrong (and maybe Obama’s already said something on this), but if you’re looking for a major liberal politician who might be open to more means-testing, given his temperament I would think Obama would be it.

It’s also telling that Goldberg refers to the wealth spreading which results from public policy as a “regrettable byproduct.” Under this rubric, shouldn’t spreading the wealth be viewed as neither desirable nor regrettable? If your aim is good public policy, then spreading the wealth just is. There seems to be a bit of perceptual asymmetry going on here. Goldberg (and Joe the Plumber as well, I bet) assume Obama views spreading the wealth as inherently good because he doesn’t share their instinct that it’s inherently bad. That’s an instinct which is pretty widespread amongst the American electorate, and responding to that is probably why Obama goes out of his way to speak of “spreading the wealth” in positive terms. You argue with the opponents you have, not with the platonically idealized ones you’d prefer.

As for the “purposes of fairness” comment; If you’ve got a certain collective pot into which everyone throws money, and the government then uses that money to better peoples’ lives, it seems pretty straightforward to insist that everyone contribute to the pot in a manner proportional to the amount of wealth they take in. That’s fair, and it’s precisely that principle which the current capital gains tax regime undercuts. So raising capital gains taxes, even if such increases don’t bring in more revenue overall, are entirely keeping with fairness, and do not necessarily indicate a view that “spreading the wealth” is an inherent good.

Yesterday’s The Daily Show was kind of remarkable. The entirety of the show’s non-interview material was dedicated solely to ripping Sarah Palin, her “real America” schtick, and the sentiment of small-town reverse-snobbery to ragged and bloody shreds. I don’t think I have ever seen the show dedicate an entire episode to such a singular and partisan purpose. Jon Stewart and crew must loathe her every bit as much as the folks at Saturday Night Live do.

And you know what? I don’t blame them in the slightest.

I spent the first few days of Palin’s emergence trying my damndest to keep a clear head about her. I thought her family weathered a level of scrutiny and a slew of jokes that were genuinely out of line. The negative reaction to her lifestyle among many commentators, and among many of my peers and friends here in Los Angeles, was off-putting. And I admire Palin’s decision to not abort a child with Down Syndrome as a noble act worthy of emulation.

Then came her speech at the GOP convention, and all that vanished right into thin air. The arrogance, lack of intellectual curiosity, and self-satisfied know-nothingism she put on display was quite simply epic. Her crack about being mayor of Wasilla sort of resembling the job of a community organizer, except for (snicker, snicker) actual responsibilities, was obscene. Forget the disrespect it showed to Obama the candidate, a disrespect he has never responded to in kind. She dismissed an entire field of people who work long hours for often meager reimbursement in order to help their local neighborhoods and better the local governments which respond to those neighborhoods. And by implication, she dismissed the concerns and struggles of every last person those community organizers attempt to aid. People who are overwhelmingly poor, black and urban, and whose situation in every way ought to secure our compassion. And hers.

Her rhetoric since the speech has only gotten worse. Granted, politics isn’t beanbag, and if John McCain wishes to make William Ayers the centerpiece of his campaign, that is a vacuous and stupid approach to take but it does fall within the rules of the game. What sets Sarah Palin apart – from Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even her own running mate – is her willingness to attack the other ticket by way of attacking other Americans. That does fall outside the rules of the game. She is not calling urban liberals “bitter,” and she is not merely condescending to them or psycho-analyzing them. What she is doing is effectively declaring them to be disloyal, morally inferior or less worthy of consideration as citizens, simply because of their political views, cultural lifestyle and their desire to vote for the other guy. Here’s the Palin comment that got Stewart’s hackles up:

We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.

Sheesh. I’m just going to print Stewart’s response.

We’re all a little chafed here about this whole ’some parts of the country are real and American’ and other parts are not. This weekend I was performing at Northeastern and I just read the statement that Sarah Palin had made about the ‘pro-American’ parts of the country and I…in response to that, I think I might have said, you know, ‘Fuck you!’ That’s just my way of saying that I think that’s a profanity to say, and I was answering with a profanity. But it’s not really fair, and it makes it seem like I’m just addressing Governor Palin about this, and I’m not, it’s just this whole entire theme that there’s more American areas, or some people love the country, some people don’t. So what I meant to say is, ‘Fuck all y’all.’

A few nights ago, Stewart made the comment that New York City was just a bunch of small towns all stuffed into one building. Palin and her cheerleaders would have done well to remember an implication of her own rhetoric, which is that if you go after someone’s home town – and that’s clearly how Jon Stewart feels about New York City – then you’re gonna have trouble.

Will Wilkinson’s beef with all things Jacob Weisberg continues unabated:

The actually-existing system of institutions at any given moment is the result of a wickedly complex interaction of forces. In particular, the character of heavily government-regulated market institutions, like ours, is the outcome of set of bargains between public opinion-sensitive legislators in the democratic body, between competing ideological constituencies within regulatory agencies, between possible targets of regulation and legislators, and on and on and on.

This is in fact the system Weisberg seems to demands. He’s at least OK with it. His problem with the status quo apparently has nothing to do with the deeper structure, or the chronically unstable strategic character, of this system. His problem is simply that the wrong bargains sometimes get struck. Weisberg correctly notes, in the vacuous manner characteristic to this immensely popular but truly sophmoric conception of political economy, that the last disastrously bad set of bargains wouldn’t have been struck had the contents of the minds of key players been different in certain ways. Indeed. So… what? So when the bargaining outcome leads to instability and massive structural failure, the correct response is simply to attempt to ensure that, in the future, people who believe certain things are not key players. This is preferably accomplished by ensuring that, in the future, no one of significance believes those things at all.

Is there any reason to believe this is not Jacob Weisberg’s way of thinking? Is there any reason not to think it is monumentally stupid?

Okay, the first paragraph is true enough. But isn’t the phenomenon Wilkinson describes here as “monumentally stupid” simply what most people would call the marketplace of ideas? Isn’t the whole point of pieces like Weisberg’s, and blogs like Wilkinson’s, and all the rest of the public discourse, to promote ideas participants consider good and eliminate ideas participants consider bad? (Which would obviously entail ensuring that no one of significance holds to them.) Isn’t trying to make sure the wrong bargains don’t get struck precisely what makes the marketplace of ideas necessary in the first place? Changing the minds of key players in an effort to ward off bad decision-making seems like a perfectly reasonable project to me. How is any of this sophomoric or stupid?

Am I missing something, or is Wilkinson implying we’d be better off with a system of government and markets in which we need as little actual discourse as possible in order to run things? A system in which the debate and interchange of ideas is tossed aside as a woefully inefficient practice, and the self-driven, spontaneous technocratic organization of unregulated capitalism reigns supreme? This seems naive at the very least.

Responding to Weisberg’s specific argument laying blame for the current financial mess at the feet of economic libertarianism (which is rather silly), Wilkinson is on slightly more plausible ground:

The deeper objection is that it’s just retarded to implicitly affirm a system so easily destabilized by ideological diversity. If a smattering of libertarian ideas can bring it all down, then the problem isn’t really libertarian ideas, is it? If the integrity of the economy in your preferred model requires a high level of ideological conformity, you might think to reconsider the wisdom of harnessing it so thoroughly to democratic political institutions meant to accommodate pluralism.

It’s an interesting point. I wouldn’t go so far as to say a robust regulatory welfare state requires ideological conformity to remain stable, but I wouldn’t dismiss the idea out of hand either. Regardless, even if it is an accurate assessment, the reason we leftists and liberals oppose an unregulated laissez-faire free market is because we believe such a system would be morally wrong. We oppose tyranny and authoritarianism for the same reason. If those moral imperatives put us between a rock and a hard place, well, then they put us between a rock and a hard place. I do not feel required to assume that the relative instability and inefficiency of such a tension would inherently invalidate those underlying moral assumptions. Doing the right thing rarely if ever makes life any easier, and I see no reason why that rule shouldn’t apply in this instance as well.

Do we actually want a situation in which the free-market ethos held by Republicans and libertarians has been completely driven from the sphere of public debate, and the only remaining argument is over which government interventions in the market should ultimately win out? That’s the question Jonah Goldberg poses in his latest Bloggingheads with Peter Beinart. And like Beinart, I must deliver a hearty “Yes!” in reply.

Goldberg seems to assume economic populism boils down to nothing other than panders to certain demographics, and that its embrace by both parties would create a “race to the bottom to determine which groups should be the winners and the losers.” By his lights, economic populism holds to no substantive or objective principles, and so if economic libertarianism were ever destroyed as a counterbalancing force the result would be a divisive politics of interest group one-upsmanship. This may be the state of economic populism now, but there is no reason (and here I hit a drum Daniel Larison has been beating) that this should inherently or inevitably be the case. The reason economic populism (or per Larison, populism writ large) seems to have no coherent framework of principles could very well be that no one has bothered to give it any. And the reason no one has bothered with that project, at least in the last few decades, is the overwhelming inertia of the neo-liberal free market consensus.

Not everyone can get what they want all the time, but it seems to me an economic approach which provides for the flourishing and good of everyday people is quite within our intellectual grasp. It’s just that almost no one currently seems to consider such a project legitimate. The free market consensus, which Republicans and libertarians only complain about in that it doesn’t go far enough, is concerned purely with producing as much wealth as possible at any given moment. Right now, not everyone can get what they want because we are determined to insure the continuance of that wealth creation, which means doing everything we can for the few at the top, and everyone else will be provided for using whatever is left over.

I am not saying the free market is a zero-sum game, but I am saying the current concentration on deregulation, unfettered wealth creation, and avoidance of wealth redistribution brings the market far closer to a zero-sum game than it otherwise would be.

Populism, as I understand it and I think as Larison means it, entails government truly and intelligently engaged with the needs of the many. (Which does not necessarily mean it would be popular.) I think it is fair to say the current Republican economic agenda, and to a depressing degree the Democratic agenda as well, does not represent that goal. Which isn’t to say I would completely agree with Larison on what economic populism would entail – I imagine what to do with entitlements would be a major sticking point, as would immigration – but I do agree it would involve a coherent set of principles, geared towards the good of the many, argued over in those terms and recognizing that not all good things can be made to go together.

In fact, Goldberg’s formulation is telling: The discussion would be reduced to which interventions we want. He assumes that means “which interest group or demographic wins the tug-of-war,” but it could just as easily mean “which interventions are smart and which aren’t.” By Goldberg’s own description, the current contribution of economic libertarianism to the debate is neither of those things, but merely the claim that interventions are bad on principle, simply because they’re interventions. Which is an unhelpful notion at best and pernicious at worst.

I also second Beinart’s point that there is little evidence the economic libertarian elements in the GOP have succeeded in restraining the culturally rightwing or “Buchananite” elements in a manner beneficial to the concerns of liberals and the left. In fact, when prompted to point out tendencies that have been restrained, Goldberg lists Buchanan’s endorsement of such things as caps on CEO pay, expansions of entitlements, and greater protectionism. The blockage of these things by economic libertarians is something economic liberals in the Democratic party (as opposed to free market neo-liberals) are supposed to be grateful for? Huh? The only thing Goldberg brings up that left/liberals might genuinely object to is Buchanan’s call for Italian and Irish racial quotas - effectively, affirmative action for working class whites. But even this notion, I think, would provide the Democrats with a productive lesson were they ever forced to confront it. They might have to admit that racial injustice, at this point in our history, functions largely as a subcategory of economic injustice. I’m familiar with Pat Buchanan’s stances, and many of them are absolutely horrific, but if those are the only points Phil Gramm and the Club for Growth currently rein in, then I say let the Republicans embrace the man.

Finally, I think Goldberg’s prediction that the death of economic libertarianism would mean a more economically populist and culturally rightwing Republican party, and a socialist and much further leftwing Democratic party, is more or less on the money. I also think he’s right that the Democrats would lose the Reagan Democrats and the Jim-Webb-type votes, thus shrinking their political clout. Meanwhile, the socially liberal and economically conservative types (libertarians writ large) would simply become an even larger swing vote than they are now.

So, yes, such a shift could be bad for the party with which I currently align, assuming they played their cards poorly. But I think it would be better for the country as a whole.

ADDENDUM: I do not know by what lights Goldberg describes a Republican party more in line with the politics of Pat Buchanan as “nationalistic.” Buchanan is, among other things, the author of a book entitled A Republic, Not An Empire. Even more bizarrely, what Beinart describes as “internationalist” during the discussion – the belief that America should be the world’s imperial policeman and should maintain its seat at the reins of global finance – is precisely what I would call “nationalist.” An internationalist would be someone who believes America should cooperate with other nations and international institutions, seeing itself as simply one country among many, which would be the exact opposite of a nationalist. Under my scheme, Buchanan is probably best described as an isolationist. There’s some weird word usage going on here.

Why I picked the previous header image of the planetoid at nighttime, I don’t really know. This blog isn’t merely for the purposes of bloviation (though it is certainly that) but also a forum for me to work out and give structure to my own internal philosophic musings, which are usually built in some form upon the sentiment expressed in the Mark Twain quote. For whatever reason, I tend to associate philosophic musings with celestial imagery, hence the previous header.

Still, the picture never seemed to jive with a title that included the word “coward.” And a recent epiphany led me to conclude the best image to match that word would probably be found somewhere in a Calvin and Hobbes strip, preferably one dealing with the various reptilian, mutant, be-fanged things which live beneath Calvin’s bed. The new image comes from the cover of Something Under the Bed is Drooling, though I suspect even more appropriate pictures may be found in Waterson’s illustrations to his poem A Nauseous Nocturne. (“It says ‘coward,’ so what’s he doing with the damn suction dart gun?”) For the moment, I have been unable to acquire any of those drawings in a usable format.

It continues to be a work in progress.

I’m in agreement with Brink Lindsey that, contrary to Jacob Weisberg’s claims, the financial crash does not discredit economic libertarianism. (That said, Weisberg’s argument is hardly crazy, though this might be. And if anybody can come up with a way to finally and forever run economic libertarianism into the ground, I’d probably be for it.)

Lindsey does make one point I’ve heard before, and with which I take issue.

Here’s what I think, at least at this point. I think the whole system failed. Without a doubt, private actors succumbed to bubble psychology and perverse incentives, and their risk-taking grew increasingly reckless. Yet Weisberg’s simplistic morality tale that good prudent liberals were foiled by go-go free-marketeers doesn’t come close to mapping reality accurately. When exactly did Democrats try to arrest and reverse the steady relaxation of lending standards? When did they try to rein in the GSEs? Meanwhile, European banks are being battered by this crisis as well. Does anybody really think that European financial regulators are closet libertarians?

The point about Europe holds (though maybe we should start wondering if an entirely interconnected global financial market is such a good idea after all), but Democrats do not equal liberals just as conservatives or libertarians do not equal Republicans. Surely Lindsey must admit that, in so far as the Democrats acquiesced to the relaxation of regulation, they were in fact not acting as liberals. They were acting as Democrats who had been brow-beaten into supporting a neo-liberal economic consensus the more solidly liberal Democrats of decades past would have had nothing to do with. As Weisberg says, we were all operating on a “disbelief in financial regulation as a legitimate mechanism.”

Now, this probably wouldn’t change the damage done – with the Democrats’ approval – by Fannie and Freddie in encouraging the housing bubble.  But I think it does indicate that had the Democrats spent the last three decades acting more like, you know, liberals, the financial crisis would be substantially smaller than it is.

So, uh, apparently Obama’s campaign contributions for September are roughly equal to the budget of a Michael Bay film:

The Obama campaign announced this morning that it had raised a record $150 million last month, and had added 632,000 new donors to its total.

The amount shattered the campaign’s previous record from August. The McCain campaign also had a record-breaking month in August, but is now operating with the $84 million provided by public financing for the general cycle and assistance from the Republican National Committee under certain limits.

In announcing the Obama figure, David Plouffe, the campaign manager, said the average donation for September was less than $100. Mr. Obama, however, did hold several mega fund-raisers in September that pumped millions of dollars each into his coffers, including a Barbra Streisand-Hollywood event that alone collected a reported $11 million.

All counted, 3.1 million people have contributed to his campaign, Mr. Plouffe said.

Judging by the (admittedly) anecdotal evidence I’ve gathered talking to people, both here in Los Angeles and especially back home in Texas, I share Hilzoy’s belief that the arrival of Sarah Palin and her “real America” schtick was a major factor in this. Meanwhile, Ezra Klein has laid out the broader political implications of Obama’s fundraising success:

In normal years, the DNC has to split its funds between downticket races, party building, and supporting the presidential candidate. This year, as you’ve heard, the RNC is the only institution keeping McCain viable. But for once, the DNC is freed from such presidential level responsibility, which is why you’re hearing rumblings that they’re going to inject $20 million — $20 million! — in state legislature races meant to construct the majorities needed to take control of congressional redistricting in 2010. Obama having a lot of money, in other words, also means the rest of the party has a lot of money, and can spend it on things that are not Obama. They can spend it on building a majority.

Oh boy. As much as the last 8 years have taught me about the dangers of having a single party in power, the fact is I believe the overall liberal agenda of the Democratic party is objectively and morally superior to that of the Republicans, and no reasonable person can deny the GOP has employed their recent political domination atrociously. So I intend to indulge in a little gleeful hand-rubbing at the prospect of a thorough GOP trouncing and a Democratic realignment. Hehehe.

As I am now a California resident, it seems I will have to begin paying attention to state politics. (Governor Schwarzenegger, you are on notice.) The LA Times editorial recommending a no vote on Proposition 2 is as good a place as any to start.

The egg industry is rife with cruelty to animals. Millions of hens in California are kept in cages so small that every natural instinct is thwarted: They cannot perch, walk or spread their wings. On some farms, cages are stacked and hens on the bottom live in waste.

All creatures, even those bred to provide food, deserve to be treated humanely. That’s the appeal of Proposition 2. It would require farmers to give chickens, pigs and veal calves room to turn around, walk or, in the case of chickens, stretch their wings

Ezra Klein points out even this doesn’t rise to the level of humane treatment, given that the animals are not required to receive natural feed, time at exercise or in the field, or even exposure to sunlight. Still, it’s certainly a step in the proper direction, so how does this turn into a “no” recommendation?

The brute fact is that treating animals humanely is expensive. Stuffing them into cages so small they cannot even turn around, in which they often live in their own waste, and must be constantly feed antibiotics to prevent infection and disease, is cheap. Cheaply treated animals mean cheaply produced eggs/veal/pork, which means a bigger profit margin for the farm in question.

As much as we support the decent treatment of animals, we doubt that passage of the measure would start a national trend. In fact, we fear that it would have an unintended consequence: Because it only regulates eggs produced in California and not eggs that are sold here, it would likely bolster the market for cheaper out-of-state eggs produced where farmers have no similar bans on cages.

According to a University of California Agricultural Issues Center report, cage-free eggs are about 20% more expensive to produce and cost about 25% more to buy. There is a growing demand, but it is still small — about 5% of all eggs nationally are produced by cage-free hens. So California eggs would become more expensive, and many consumers would simply buy the cheaper eggs laid by hens living in cramped conditions in neighboring states or in Mexico. As a result, we fear the result of Proposition 2’s passage would not be better treatment of hens but merely the export of their mistreatment. We recommend a no vote.

So what we have here is a classic collective action problem. An individual farm – or even an individual state – abstaining from inhuman treatment has too minute an effect to change the overall system, meanwhile the incentives of the system punish those who attempt to act humanely and reward those who continue with business as usual. The only way to truly change the system is for everyone to act collectively all at once. (Presumably through the passage of national law.) So the editorial is right about that.

But not all collective action problems are created equal. Let’s say, for instance, you’re wondering if it would be wrong for you to fly half way around the world to attend your sister’s wedding, given the plane ride would dump more carbon into the atmosphere and thus contribute to global warming. In that case, relax. The plane will fly regardless of whether you’re on it, the carbon footprint of the flight is minute in comparison to the overall problem, you’ll incur a moral cost at your sister’s expense by not going, and (most relevant to our purposes) the harm caused by participating in global warming is aggregate rather than direct. So take the plane ride, then get home and continue doing what you can as a citizen to push for a collective solution.

In contrast, an example of a collective action problem that would involve direct harm is something like this: You’re in high school, and your football player buddies decide they’re gonna beat up the runt nerdy kid with the thick glasses after school. If you don’t participate he’ll still get beat up, and your friends may ostracize you for not participating in the smackdown. In this case, there is nothing aggregate about the harm being incurred. Your kicks and punches are landing squarely on the kid, a unique individual human being with inherent dignity and moral worth. So you have a cut-and-dry moral obligation to not participate, even if your non-participation won’t prevent the event from occurring and would come at cost to you.

The question of how our farming industries treat animals falls into the same category as how we treat the kid with the thick glasses. The harm is specific in both circumstances. In the case of the plane ride, the harm is cumulative and done to a system – namely, the ecology. That ecology does have moral worth as it is composed of individual beings, but it is not the beings themselves.

Like us, animals are all unique individuals. Their interior life may be rudimentary in comparison to ours, but they possess the capacity for suffering, and as with us we can speak of this particular chicken or that particular cow, which has never existed before now and will never exist again once it has died. The difference between us and them is one of degree rather than kind. Which means we all fit into the moral framework the same way, even if we don’t all carry the same amount of moral force. While chickens and pigs and cows may not have dignity and worth equivalent to human beings, they possess a level sufficient to require humane treatment, as the editorial itself acknowledges.

And that means that if these creatures deserve to be treated humanely, then they should be treated humanely. Period, full stop. That Proposition 2 will almost certainly fail to start a national trend, and will almost certainly incur economic costs to California’s farmers and economy, is, quite frankly, beside the point.

A thought experiment.

You’re in a bar chatting to some guy over a beer, and suddenly, in a rash of frustration, he declares, “You know what? I’m the greatest person in the world, and I don’t think I should apologize for that.” Would you consider him to be an amiable and down-to-earth straight talker? I doubt it. Most likely you would conclude that he’s an arrogant and insufferable little shit.

I see no reason why this same logic should not apply when it comes to nations. It is a depressing and unfortunate thing when declaring that “America is the greatest nation on earth, and we shouldn’t apologize for it” becomes evidence that one is a morally solid American common man. All it shows is how deeply we have in fact sunk into hubris and self-satisfaction. And those are traits which always end in disaster.

I turn the floor over to G. K. Chesterton:

The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say it is the mystic patriot who reforms. Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England. (Orthodoxy, pg. 69)

If I buy my father a mug that says “greatest dad in the world,” I do not mean the slogan literally. I mean it with humor and gentleness and a touch of irony, because I know it is not literally true. But I wish to make the statement anyway, because I love him. He is my father. Were I to actually defend the claim with seriousness, against another man’s son making the same claim, the argument would not only likely end in nonsense, but in a betrayal of some of the very values my father has attempted to instill in me. But when people declare America to be first amongst the nations of the world, as far as I can tell they mean it literally. I detect none of that humor, gentleness or irony in their meaning. Rather, their attitude comes off as resentful, almost martial.

They are defending a feature of America (which may or may not be true) against America itself. They do not love America. They love a theory of America.