I confess I've never read The Road to Serfdom, in part because of the impression I'd gotten of it from its fans. So this fascinating piece on Hayek was a revelation. Who knew that the father of right-wing libertarianism (though he wouldn't have considered himself so) believed that every government had a responsibility to ensure "a minimum standard of living"? Who knew that Keynes and Orwell found themselves wholly in agreement with Hayek's criticism of controlled economies? Clearly I'll have to finally read this.

I feel like this is a point I've been trying to make for a long time, but never so eloquently as this:

Yes, it is true that unions and chambers of commerce and gun enthusiasts and environmentalists and industrial sectors and doctors and lawyers and Indian casinos will band together and attempt to capture the machinery of government to further their own particular interests, often—usually—at the expense of rivals who are locked out of participation (and of the social and economic choices of individual citizens). Hayek’s solution is to deny the legitimacy of any movement to impose restraint on competition. The paradox is that forming spontaneous associations for the collective good of insiders seems to be a universal human activity. When individuals are free to make choices, this is invariably what they choose to do. Hayek’s principle might be sound, if applied universally, which it could never be. The practice would devastate civil society, and with it democracy.

Thanks to Tim for tipping me off to this: If you ever wondered whether all those secret, small expansions to the president's power really will ever have an effect on your life, check out this utterly terrifying article about the implications of a secret order issued by Ronald Reagan in the '80s -- it's apparently so secret that we don't even know when, though that could just be lack of access to "classified" information per usual -- regarding the line of presidential succession. (Ever notice that whenever this subject is brought up, no one can ever agree on who follows the Vice President?)

In the scenario I'm envisioning, Nancy Pelosi would assert her claim as acting president under existing statutes while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, or some other executive official, would simultaneously assert her competing authority under the executive order.

When confronting these competing claims, it would be the military that would call the shots. As the Washington Post reported three years ago, the Pentagon has "devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, envisioning 15 potential crisis scenarios and anticipating several simultaneous strikes around the country." In acting on these plans, would the Joint Chiefs choose to recognize the constitutional authority of Pelosi as commander in chief? Or would they respond to the commands of the executive official presiding over the "doomsday" crisis center at some "undisclosed location"? To ask the question is to answer it: The whole point of these "doomsday" exercises is to assure instant obedience to the will of the executive on the other side of the hot line. We are staring at a clear and present danger to the republic.

Even if the scenario never happens, the very notion that the President -- especially a revered and supposed champion of Constitutional rule like Reagan -- can secretly amend the Constitution for his own purposes is profoundly unnerving.

"Younger people are kind of excited about being in the wilderness," libertarian writer Megan McArdle told the New York Times the other day. She was referring, of course, to the very strong possibility that John McCain and the Republican Party will be crushed this November. It's by no means a given, but it's certainly a popular notion. Harpers ran a cover story about the possible demise of the GOP, and I can't count the number of headlines I've read running along the lines of "Is Conservatism Out of Ideas?"

To be honest, I don't think Republican leaders much want to win this one. Bush and the Right have left the government in such a dismal state that they've honestly got no idea how to run it anymore -- short of Bush's blatantly anti-Republican method of rule-by-executive-fiat governing -- and they'd rather leave the Democrats to clean up the mess.

This is just a theory, mind you. I'll throw any evidence I come across up here.

The notion that party leaders might deliberately throw away an election (or, to cast it in less ) isn't really that hard to believe. What keeps us in the dark is the belief that the point of a party is to win elections. As Walter Karp contended in Indispensable Enemies (the one and only indispensable book ever written about American politics), the point of a party is to retain power, and there are countless instances where it would clearly be more harmful to win an election than to lose it. If your candidate turns out to be a "dangerous" man -- i.e., one who might turn his back on the party leaders and govern like a populist -- then clearly it goes against the party's interest to let him win. If your candidate would be taking office under dangerous circumstances -- i.e., the middle of a war or an economic slump -- then clearly it's in the party's interest to let him lose.

According to Karp, Republican leaders "nominated the egregious Barry Goldwater with every intention of sending him to defeat" in 1964. That's an interesting spin on the usual story, that Goldwater lost because his radical populist right backers took away the party from the "helpless" party elite. Frankly, it's much more believable than the usual story (which reads like an apology for the Republicans). As for other examples, I wouldn't find it hard to believe that -- for example -- the Republicans threw away the election in '96, when Clinton was governing as a far more effective centrist-Republican than Dole ever would have.

I’ve been complaining about commercials a lot lately; the other day I saw one that made all the rest of them look classy. It was an advertisement for some gaudy 9/11 collector’s item: a clammy-looking oversized $20 bill printed in solid silver, with a picture of the NYC skyline — the twin towers included, of course — shimmering on one side. “The towers gleam in the morning light, much like they did on that fateful morning,” yammered the announcer, voice betraying not a hint that he knew what he was talking about. Who would buy something so grossly tacky? Who is the audience in mind? What would you even do with such a thing? Frame it? There was something mildly desperate and sad in the presentation, as if the product’s pushers knew it was a cursed item.