Canadian Cincinnatus

The Low Information Voter, the Last Mover and the bumbling RINO loser

It is a long-running theme of my political writings that politics junkies, on both the left and right, completely misunderstand the nature of the so-called ‘moderate’ voter, also sometimes called ‘centrists’ and ‘independents.’ For this reason, I want to highlight this excellent article by Richard Fernandez on the Low Information Voter:

“The phrase “low information voter” was originally coined to describe people who were too stupid to vote for liberal policies because they didn’t know what was good for them.”

Of course, as I have argued, low information voters are neither liberal nor conservative. In terms of political ideology, there is no ‘there’ there. The low information just doesn’t care about government policies at all.

“Conventional wisdom [CW] is something everyone knows is true but almost no one knows why. However, as Wikipedia notes, “conventional wisdom is not necessarily true. Conventional wisdom is additionally often seen as an obstacle to the acceptance of newly acquired information.”

 “Once something becomes CW it is almost cast in stone.  John Maynard Keynes said that after age 25 or 30 people seldom change their understanding of how economies work. Therefore if you can convince an elementary school kid that socialism is grand and communism is even better that locks a generation or two into that CW.

 There is a big First Mover advantage to creating an item of conventional wisdom. Once established, it is hard to overthrow.”

 This is why young people start out as socialist. They’re socialist because that’s what their teachers teach them to be.

 “The way conventional wisdoms end is they are taken to their logical conclusions.

If the First Mover advantage belongs to the originators of the narrative, then an equally important role must be accorded the Last Movers. Their strategy is to remain the last man standing, and pick up the pieces. The Last Movers don’t argue; they survive. They don’t have to worry about the nonsense low information voters believe because that entire system of cues will crash and therefore the LIVs will be blank slates ready to be overwritten.”

This is why the panic-mongers in the conservative movement are wrong when they predict that the conservative movement is doomed because young people tend to veer to the left. These chicken littles have been making this claim ever since the Baby Boomers – the most radical generation of all – were young. They are wrong because the left-wing narrative that young people learn in school is exploded as they become exposed to reality. Jobs, taxes, marriage, mortgage payments, children and divorce all conspire to teach former young people the real lessons of life.

 And so, young people, tempted initially by the vision of a socialist utopia, morph into conservative realists as they age. (Of course, it would be much better for them - and society as a whole - if they were able to hit the ground running.)

 “One often thinks of arguments as being settled by debate, via a kind of dialectic. Yet in fact arguments are often decided by survival. The narrative that wins in history isn’t the most beautiful meme; often just the one that can show up tomorrow.”

 In other words, as I have said before, public policies are not merely fashion trends with no more real-world consequence than the length of hemlines. They have consequences, and the long-term consequences of a policy are more important than its short-term popularity. Some ideas are more correct than others. If we accept that conservative or libertarian ideas are better for society than socialist ideas, then we have to accept – and be prepared to exploit – the long-term unpopularity of initially popular socialist proscriptions.

 So lets stop, for once and for all, all this talk about jettisoning conservative principles to appeal to ‘moderates’. They aren’t moderates; they are low information voters. And they don’t give a fig about the policies of any political party. Our core supporters, however, do care about such things, and we can’t afford to antagonize them if hope to win.

Ten Years After: the Iraq War and Clausewitz

It has been 10 years since President George W Bush launched his invasion of Iraq. Time enough has gone past to ask the question, was it worth it?

Many people have concluded no. While engaging in counterfactuals is always iffy, I think there are a number of things that can be said against this assertion.

First of all, you have to balance the gains with the losses, like any business does with its ledger. From what I have read, most of the Iraq War critics have ignored the cost of not invading Iraq in their calculus. If the costs of only one alternative are tallied, then the conclusion will be preordained.

So what are the costs of not invading Iraq?

For starters, there is the matter of Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror. He was the Joseph Stalin of the Middle East who had killed hundreds of thousands of his own people, some of whom were killed by weapons of mass destruction (i.e. poison gas on Kurdish villages). It is reasonable to assume that if he had been left in power, this behaviour would have continued unabated. This has to be weighed against the body count of the war itself and the insurgency.

Second, the most important aspect of the Iraq War ignored by its critics is the sharp diminishment of the threat of Islamic terrorism against the West that resulted from it. The Iraq War accomplished this by moving the center of gravity of the Islamist War Against the West back to the Middle East. War critics act as if the United States could have avoided further terrorist attacks by hunkering down behind a wall (perhaps by curtailing Islamic immigration). I think this is a delusion. Not only would you ensure that the initiative remains with your enemy, but you would also have done nothing to neutralize all the Middle East’s ‘angry young men’. While I agree that it would have been a good idea to curtail immigration and travel from Arab countries (the failure to do so can certainly be blamed on Bush), we would still be fated to live in a constant state of apprehension. Every time a leak sprung in the dyke, we would have to conclude that some Islamic terrorists might have gotten through. Pretty soon we would run out of fingers to plug the leaks. What did George Bush do to make those ‘angry young men’ go away? He went over there and killed them - en mass. Several hundred thousand insurgents were killed by the US military in Iraq, and more in Afghanistan.

In this way, I think the Iraq War conforms to Clausewiz’s theory of the decisive battle. In On War, Clausewitz extols the idea that armies do not fight to gain territory but to defeat the enemy’s army. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter where you go to fight, as long as the other side’s army gets crushed. This is basically what happened in Iraq. This explains why the nitpicking about the extent to which Saddam supported Al Qaeda is beside the point. If Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq before 9/11, it certainly was there after the US military took over, and are not anywhere any more because they are dead.

Third, the defeat inflicted on Iraq helped deflect the Islamic world’s aggressions inwards. On 9/11, the Islamic world was united against the West. Today, they are at war with each other. There is a civil war going on in Syria, the governments of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya have been overthrown, Iran is in a state of pre-revolution and a larger intramural conflict between the Sunni and Shia factions of Islam seem to be metastasizing. As regrettable as some of these events are, it means that Islamic aggression is, to a large extent, not aimed at us any more.

And for most of history, such a situation is about the best one could hope enjoy.

thought-criminal John Derbyshire on tolerance

Almost a year ago, the conservative flagship magazine, National Review, fired one of its writers for writing a satirical column in another publication about contemporary African Americans. The lick-spits of Political Correctness in the conservative movement branded him a racist.

For this reason, I think it is appropriate to point out some comments that Derbyshire made on his weekly podcast, Radio Derb, last week about the nature of tolerance. I think the PC bullyboys who howled for Derbyshire’s head would do well to listen to what he said about tolerance and heed his message. Here is the transcript of the relevant passage: 

“Liberalism, remember, is a totalitarian ideology. It conforms to the general totalitarian principle of no center. That is to say, there is nothing in the middle of the spectrum, nothing that is not total. You totally approve of this or that, or else you are totally, raving hostile to it. You either love Big Brother, or else you must be plotting to assassinate him. If you are not loving, you are hating. This is the totalitarian mindset.”

In other words, if you say A, you must really think B, which means you must believe C. And since C is racist, if you say A, you are a racist. Totalitarian syllogism.

“All those attitudes that dwell in between the extremes, attitudes like mild dislike, grudging acceptance, amused tolerance, or plain old indifference, are seriously out of favor. If anyone wants my opinion, I think those attitudes are essential to civilized social life; but that's a very unpopular opinion nowadays.

You love, or you hate. If you claim to do anything in between, you are lying. Hence the concept of "hate speech," which basically means disagreeing out loud with liberal orthodoxy.”

This is absolutely right, but is completely ignored by today's evangelists of 'tolerance'. If tolerance means anything, it means tolerating things you don't agree with, not expunging unorthodox opinions and facts and ideas from society. That means, real tolerance involves a lot of "mild dislike" (defined as disagreement that doesn't rise to the level of violence - or a political campaign to restrict free speech), "amused tolerance" (i.e. humour and satire) and "indifference". 

And if you discount John Derbyshire's exposition by excoriating him as a racist, I beg you to please explain to me how tolerance - genuine tolerance that is - is possible without those old fashioned attitudes that he extolls.

Stalin’s children: the descendants of murderers

There is a new documentary out about the lives of the direct descendants of prominent National Socialists and how they are addled with guilt about the sins committed by their parents and grandparents. I found these tidbits interesting:

“Rainer Hoess is not his grandfather, Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz. And yet, at the same time, Bettina's children would carry on Herman's genes--which is why, she explains, she and her brother both sterilized themselves.”

“The person in the film who seems to have made the most sustained effort to grapple with his Nazi heritage is, unsurprisingly, one with a very direct connection to that past. Niklas Frank, son of the Nazi Governor-General of Poland, Hans Frank, has spent much of his life researching and denouncing his father's crimes…. But he is spurned on by his loathing of his parents and of what they did …. As for his father, he says, through all his research, he kept hoping to find something, anything, good that he had ever done; some evidence that he tried to save at least one person, one time. But there was no such evidence.”

It seems that victory over National Socialism is now so complete that the children of prominent Nazis – who extolled eugenics and breeding a master race –voluntarily sterilize themselves so that their father’s genes would not propagate forward.

Were this also true for communism. Where are Mao and Pol Pot and Lenin and Stalin’s children? Where is the movie describing their guilt and self-sterilization? After all, while National Socialism killed 20 million, communism has killed 100 million world-wide. In Cambodia, Pol Pot killed 1/3 of all the people in his country in less than 5 years.

Instead we have proto-Stalin, Vladimir Putin, commemorating the 70^th anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad by temporarily changing the name of Volgograd back to Stalingrad and painting Stalin’s visage on the side of municipal buses.

We need to be working for the day when Vladimir Putin’s children are so wracked with guilt that they neuter themselves so that the hated Putin gene is not propagated any further in the human gene pool.

Republicans America’s core; Democrats America’s fringe

Ever since Romney lost the presidential election, the Democrats and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) have been piling on the Republicans knocked off-balance by their unforeseen defeat. They claim that the GOP lost because they lost the Hispanic vote, and that if they want to ever win again, they should get on board with amnesty.

Of course, anybody with an ounce of common sense (i.e. not David Frum) knows that it is generally not a good idea to take advice from your enemy; that, perhaps, they do not have your best intentions at heart; that, perhaps, they are just trying to set the GOP up for further defeats down the road by getting them to agree to policies that will only expand the Democrat voter base.

As well, in an election as close as last November’s – a swing of only 320,000 votes in 5 swing states and Romney would have comfortably led in the electoral college, and all his now-maligned advisors would have been hailed as strategic geniuses  - even the tiniest voting trend can be seen to be decisive. For instance, the GOP’s mainstream media ‘advisors’ rarely bring up this fact: Romney attracted 7 million fewer white male voters than the anemic John McCain campaign got in 2008. With these 7 million McCain voters in his back pocket, I suspect Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin and Virginia would have comfortably gone to Romney. In other words, he would have clocked Obama, no contest. For some reason, David Plouffe and David Axelrod never mention this angle.

But still, the GOP does have a popularity problem with many voter groups. I have offered some ideas on the subject myself, but here Steve Sailer makes an observation that I had not thought of before, but which, I think, offers the Republicans a coherent strategy for going forward:

“The vastly bigger issue is that the Republicans don't understand the long term fundamentals of their electoral position: their voters represent the core of America (on multiple dimensions: married v. single, white v. nonwhite, and so forth) while the Democrats represent the various fringes. What they cannot survive is a worldview in which demonizing the core of America is the default response in the culture.”

This strikes me as the right focus for any future Republican message. In the near term, you regain the seven million Jacksonian white males who deserted Romney. In the long term, you slowly convert fringe America to the GOP message, that is, the core message of America. 

In contrast, if they hop onto the amnesty bandwagon: in the short term, they antagonize their core Tea Party supporters even more; and in the long term, they add to the Democrat’s core interest groups. Works out great! At least for the people giving the Republicans this ‘free’ advice.

If there is one thing that the recent experience of the Stephen Harper government in Canada teaches us, is that it is possible to win over recent immigrants while simultaneously tightening up immigration policy.

Oh nooo! “John Tory not ruling out running for mayor again”

According to yesterday’s Toronto Sun:

The one-time mayoral candidate, former provincial Progressive Conservative leader and current talk radio host wouldn’t rule out a run when asked Tuesday.

The obvious problem if he becomes a Toronto mayoral candidate in 2014 is:

Mayor Rob Ford has been adamant about his intention to seek a second term in 2014 so if Tory ran, it would put the two right-wing candidates on a collision course.

John, baby, sweetheart. It ain’t 2003 any more, when you had that air of competence around you. Many Torontonians (myself included) were bamboozled by those vibes. But rest assured, your disastrous tenure as leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party has absolutely dispelled everybody (ok, well maybe not your inner circle of sycophants) of that impression. 

Not only did you achieve an Ernie Eves’ style shellacking in the 2008 provincial election, losing to an Anthony Perkins impersonator whom everybody wanted chased out of the premier’s office; not only did you lose your own seat in the bargain; not only did you then dither embarrassingly after an ambiguous leadership vote at your party’s convention (a result accurately predicted in private polls that you had commissioned and then disregarded); not only did you then proceed to lose in a by-election attempt to get back into the legislation - in one of the most conservative seats in the province, after convincing their popular MPP to step aside for you; not only all of that, but most seriously, your handling of the faith-based funding issue in the 2008 election belongs in all political strategy textbooks as a cardinal example of how not to handle a controversial issue. This last item alone, momentarily setting aside all your other screw-ups, is enough to disqualify you forever as competent man in the eyes of every Ontarian.

And if you add to these fumbles the final one of splitting the right-wing vote in the next municipal election, and thereby enabling a David Miller acolyte like Olivia Chow or Adam Vaughan or Joe Mihevic to become Toronto’s next mayor, you will have demonstrated a complete lack of common sense, as well as political judgement.

Sir, go away. Just go away and enjoy your father’s inheritance in peace.

Political Correctness watch: Tom Flanagan edition

It is without question that one of the most noxious political diseases of our day is Political Correctness, which is why the recent whoop-dee-doo about Tom Flanagan’s child pornography comments is so dispiriting. Political Correctness first started out as an ideological tool for controlling public discourse, put forward by left-wing theoreticians like Herbert Marcuse in the 60’s. Therefore it is not surprising that the CBC would fire Flanagan, or that the University of Calgary would retire him. It is however disappointing, at least with regard to the university - which should be a champion of free discourse. (With regard to the CBC, I have no expectations, however low. But that is another story.)

What is most depressing about this affair is the extent to which this pox has been revealed to have infected the institutions of the right: organizations which should oppose political correctness with every fibre of their being, both for practical as well as moral reasons. Exhibit A is Andrew MacDougall, the spokesman for the PM, who tweeted, “Tom Flanagan’s comments on child pornography are repugnant, ignorant, and appalling.” Exhibit B is worse, and comes from Danielle Smith, the leader of the Wildrose Party. She said, “There is no language strong enough to condemn Dr. Flanagan’s comments…. To be clear, Dr. Flanagan does not speak for me or the Wildrose caucus and he will have no role — formal or informal — with our organization going forward.” Oh well, so much for gratitude! Tom Flanagan midwifed both the Federal Conservative Party and the Wildrose Alliance into existence. Both owe a huge debt of gratitude to Tom Flanagan’s preliminary work and foresight that they can never repay. Basic loyalty and common decency demanded a lot more from them than Flanagan got.

All they needed to say was this, “We disagree with Tom Flanagan’s opinions on child pornography. It is the policy of our party that child pornography is a serious crime.” Period. Full stop.  No need to elaborate any further, as he didn’t say what he said as their representative.

To demonstrate the appropriateness of my suggestion, let’s conduct a gedankeneksperiment. Suppose that instead of remarking on child pornography he had remarked on murder instead, suggesting that the criminal code is too harsh on murderers. What would have been the reaction?

Doubtlessly, the political parties would have tried to disassociate themselves from the immediate comments while giving him the benefit of the doubt, basically assuming that he had misspoken or was misquoted, all the while hoping that he would clear it up with a clarification. And this would have been the correct response, in spite of the fact that the unlawful taking of human life is a far more serious crime than downloading a jpeg.

In our PC inspired, self-righteous indignation, we should recognize what Flanagan actually said, and, just as importantly what he did not say. He did not say that he favours child molesters, and he did not say that he favours child pornography. He only wondered aloud about the efficacy of jailing people whose only crime is viewing child pornography, suggesting that, perhaps, some form of ‘treatment’ would be better. As a tough-on-crime conservative, I personally favour punishment and deterrence over rehabilitation. But you know what? In a democracy, this is the kind of thing we argue over, and settle by voting – not by scapegoating our opponents and drumming them out on a rail. That is why I accept the fact that there are a significant number of people in our body politic (primarily on the left, but also including some libertarians) who favour rehabilitation over punishment for an entire range of crimes – including murder! And they aren’t drummed out of respectable circles. Nor should they be.

And neither should Tom Flanagan, for tentatively supporting a much less radical proposition.

An unarmed society is an impolite society: According to an Iraqi immigrant, Cool Britannia is “more dangerous here than Iraq”

According to the Daily Mail:

“A shopkeeper who fought off two armed robbers said the streets around his inner city Birmingham store were ‘more violent’ than his native Iraq.

Kochar Rasul, 30, made a new life for himself and his family in Britain after fleeing from Kurdistan to escape Saddam Hussein’s evil regime.

But he was forced to defend himself using a shop sign when two gunmen pounced as he locked up his shop in Handsworth, Birmingham, just before midnight on Monday.”

“Mr Rasul came to Britain in 2003 when the Kurds were being persecuted in their native Iraq.

‘I thought it would be safe here, but it isn’t, it’s very dangerous with crime always going on and lots of bad people around,’ he said.

‘It’s more dangerous here than Iraq because at least there, you knew who your enemies are.’

Detective Constable Phil Langstone, from Force CID in Harborne, praised Mr Rasul’s courage.

‘The victim was very brave in his attempt to fight off the attackers and the fact that armed officers just happened to be passing at that particular moment was a case of being in the right place at the right time,’ he said.’”

It must be noted that handguns and all semi-auto rifles have been banned in the UK since the mid-nineties, and homeowners who defend themselves against violent intruders are often mercilessly prosecuted by the Leviathan.