Answer to Regina Barna re Corporate Rights and the Role of Government

In August, the Hunterdon County Democrat published my letter The rights of fossil fuel producers. The letter rebutted opposition to a proposed natural gas pipeline carrying “fracked” gas through Hunterdon County. In a September 30, 2014 letter, “Corporate Rights,” defending environmentalism,  Regina Barna quoted from my letter:

It is somewhat ridiculous to equate the rights of a large corporation with the rights of the common man, while depicting environmentalists as the antagonists in the fight against the "good life" provided by the fossil fuel industry. The balance of power is always tipped in the favor of the powerful corporations. In a recent letter to the editor published in the Hunterdon County Democrat, Michael Laferrara [sic] wrote that, "The government's proper job is to equally protect everyone's fundamental moral right to freely produce, contract and trade." I am not sure what government he is looking at, but it certainly is not what this country is founded on.

I am thinking more in the line of: "All men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," which is in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. The government's proper role is to ensure equality, to balance the playing field, to see that the rich and powerful do not take advantage of the average citizen, or what Theodore Roosevelt called the "common man."

I left these comments:

There is nothing “ridiculous” about corporate rights. Corporations are voluntary associations of individuals, each of whom possess rights. Protecting the rights of corporations is protecting the rights of the individuals who comprise it. Corporate rights are indispensable to our fundamental individual liberties. If corporations don’t have rights, then neither do the individuals comprising any group, including the group stopthepipe2014. Both are voluntary associations of individuals. If individuals lose their rights when joining a group, then what becomes of freedom of association, a fundamental First Amendment right? (I addressed corporate rights thoroughly in my HCD letter of 8/7/14. Since it’s not available online, I’ve reprinted it below [Please see my “Corporate Personhood” Clarified.])

The Declaration of Independence is precisely what I had in mind in my letter The rights of fossil fuel producers. The “fundamental moral right to freely produce, contract and trade” is integral to the “unalienable Rights [of] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Liberty means freedom of action. Work and trade are actions vital to the support, maintenance, and furtherance (happiness) of one’s life. If the furtherance of one’s life by one’s own hand is not what those unalienable rights protect, then what exactly does the Declaration mean?

“The government's proper role is to ensure equality?” Wrong! The very next sentence in the Declaration states, “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”  Equality before the law is a means of securing the rights. Equality is not the purpose. The government’s only proper purpose is to protect the rights of all individuals. Under these principles, government favors no one—rich, poor, or “common”. Equality of rights before the law, the only kind of equality consistent with the Declaration and with just government, is the only valid context for “leveling the playing field.”

“Leveling the playing field” doesn’t mean violating the rights of the next guy. It simply means protecting everyone’s rights. For example, in a current HCD article, Rick Epstein reports:

“It was made clear that if the federal government OKs the pipeline, anyone who does not make a deal to sell an easement to PennEast would be compelled to yield at a price to be determined by the authorities.”

Clearly, this is an example of improper governmental power (eminent domain). If rights were protected equally at all times (a level playing field), no landowner, “common” or otherwise, would be “compelled to yield” to government on behalf of PennEast. I stand with anyone who fights eminent domain, wherever it rears its head. On a level playing field, no corporation or individual, no matter how rich, would have the power to compel anyone. If PennEast can not get the voluntary consent of every landowner its pipeline crosses, it must either alter the course or abandon the project. Likewise, if a corporation pollutes another’s property, the government, as rights protector, must step in and force the polluter to pay restitution, and criminally prosecute the polluter, if applicable. Individual rights are the best protection the “common man” has in any society.

But neither does the “common man” have the right to gang up on “the rich,” if equality means anything. No one has the right to initiate government power (the power of the gun) against others. No one can claim ownership of “the environment” by arbitrarily declaring herself the representative of “all of us” for the purpose of trampling the rights of others to work and trade. Nor does any individual have a right to speak for all about what’s “necessary to enjoy a quality of life.” You may not need the nat-gas, but someone else may. Each of us has a right to decide for ourselves what products we need, and contract voluntarily with the producer. That’s a level playing field. We are not a nation of warring community tribes, each xenophobically fighting to protect its “little piece of this earth.” The collectivist flag is the leitmotif of the individual rights violator.

Of course, pollution is not good, and it should be cleaned up as and when technological advances make feasable. Objective, balanced laws against pollution are part of a proper rights-protecting government. But considering the misery of pre-industrial life, pollution pales almost into insignificance compared to the life-giving value of industrialization. By the explicit acknowledgement of its own ideological leaders, environmentalism is not about cleaner industrialization; it is anti-industrialization. So, yes, true environmentalists—regardless of what rank-and-file “environmentalists” believe—are antagonists against the good life. As evidence, I give you the expressed reasons behind the anti-pipeline movement in NJ. For more, I refer you to my comments on another letter by this writer, Shale Gas is Bad Idea, which I posted under my NJ.com screen name “Zemack”.

Barna’s statement “The balance of power is always tipped in the favor of the powerful corporations” is also another example of the equivocation between economic and political power. A corporation, no matter how wealthy, cannot use its financial clout to violate rights (initiate force). It’s true that economic power—dollar power—varies widely across society. But Money is a benign, benevolent, and productive power; a fundamental good.

What is not benign is the power of the gun. It’s true that corporations often employ government force to violate rights. But that is not the power of money. That’s political power. “The rich and powerful [can] not take advantage of the average citizen” in a fully free, capitalist society. To the extent they are powerful, it’s the power to create life-benefitting values. Only in a mixed—i.e. politically corrupted—economy can money buy the force necessary to do harm.

Government can not and should not “level the playing field” in economics. It should, however, “level the playing field” in politics, and the only way to do that is through the protection of individual rights, equally, and at all times.

Related Reading:

“Corporate Personhood” Clarified

The Dollar and the Gun—Harry Binswanger

Election 2014: Eminent Domain and the "Limits of Rights"

The “Divest-Invest Philanthropy” Movement and its Statist Roots

Recently the New Jersey Star-Ledger’s Dave D'Alessandro interviewed Dr. Ellen Dorsey, the executive director of the Wallace Global Fund:

[Dorsey] is an expert on impact investing, notably in the area of environmental sustainability, and she has helped galvanize nearly 200 foundations, universities, pension funds, cities, and faith groups, who have chosen to put their money in a place where it might do the planet some good.

Where “it might do the planet some good” is into anything but fossil fuels, particularly “alternative energy” investments. Dorsey is a leader in the fossil fuel divestment movement. “Divest-Invest Philanthropy,” as it is called, “is a tough sell, because multi-billion-dollar endowments are used to big payoffs from their oil stocks.”

Those big payoffs reflect the value billions of human beings derive from fossil fuels. It is shocking, therefor, to read Dorsey’s answer to D’Alessandro’s very first question, “When most of us think about divestment, we think of the [South African] anti-apartheid movement in the 80s. Does this have a similar ethical foundation to you?”:

There is a similar ethical component. When the environmental advocacy community was in the doldrums in the summer of 2009 and 2010, a student movement emerged, taking a cue from the anti-apartheid playbook. At that time, the U.S. government was unwilling to impose sanctions against South Africa because of the power of industry that was blocking it, so the anti-apartheid activists took it into their own hands to target the industries themselves with the tool of divestment.

And though it’s gone well beyond students now, they targeted their universities because they know fossil fuel companies are driving this problem, funding denial of the science and effectively shutting down policy reform. That makes it an ethical issue: Our universities should not profit from companies that drive this global problem that this generation has to respond to. But it’s also a financial call to action, because you can invest in the solution. There’s money to be made there as well.

Yet, the anti-apartheid movement succeeded, despite the alleged “power of industry,” for very valid and powerful moral reasons—the undiluted evil of apartheid. That environmentalists have to resort to such unconscionable equivocation between fossil fuels and apartheid indicates the moral weakness of their case against fossil fuels. If environmentalists’ case is sound, why stoop to such smears? And why attempt to silence the industry, as Dorsey apparently wants to do in tying her cause to “campaign finance reform”—a euphemism for censorship?

I left these comments:

Environmental activists have the right to advocate for voluntary divestment. I support their right to do so, even though I completely disagree with their fundamental premises. Fossil fuel investment and development is not analogous to apartheid. Whereas apartheid is anti-life and unjust, fossil fuels are on balance vastly beneficial to human life and the environment.

Clearly, though, the Wallace Global Fund and its ilk are not just about persuading fund managers to divest voluntarily. They are about forcing—with governmental force, the power of the gun—investment away from fossil fuels and into the environmentalists’ pet “alternative energy” schemes; hence, their support for statist “climate policy” taxes, cap and trade, and so on.

This, despite the fact that $billions in wind and solar taxpayer “investments” —subsidies—over decades has failed to provide any evidence that solar and wind can ever be a primary energy source. Alternative energy’s biggest test—the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which should have provided a showcase for the reliability of solar and wind—instead proved the indispensable value of fossil fuels. If fossil fuel companies are villains, then so is every fossil fuel consumer who prefers to do themselves “some good” by using energy from fossil fuels. Policies that hamper fossil fuel energy production will starve the market of reliable, affordable energy, drive up the cost, and make life harder for billions of people.

Yet, the anti-fossil fuel camp keeps trying, but they have a problem; those pesky voters. The kinds of policies anti-reliable energy types advocate—environmentalists don’t even support nuclear, which emits no co2—haven’t gained much political traction lately, and have even lost ground. Despite powerful positions in governments around the world, climate change crusaders are losing on the battleground of ideas and in the electoral arena, hence the folding of “campaign finance reform” into the climate change movement. One thing statists can’t tolerate is opposing viewpoints. The enemy of all statists is free speech. The failure of alternatives to win in the economic marketplace, coupled with a failure of their decades-long hysteria-mongering to convince average people to take always-imminent global climate catastrophe seriously, fossil fuel’s enemies demand campaign finance “reform” to silence effective voices of opposition.

The connection between environmentalism and statism is no accident. The modern environmentalist movement, which began as the New Left “ecology” movement on college campuses in the 1960s, is a movement initiated and led by neo-Marxist, New Left anti-capitalist ivory tower intellectuals. They've been crying wolf ever since. Yet, no catastrophe—just a better life for billions of formerly third world people built on the strength fossil fuel energy. No compassionate person would want to stop that progress.

Human beings survive and thrive by turning Earth’s raw materials into valuable resources, and those resources into life-enhancing products. Fossil fuels are one of those resources, helping to make life longer, healthier, and safer for billions of people. By all means, let’s leave people free to invest and divest as they please. But keep the political weapon out of the market, and let all energy producers compete for consumers’ energy dollars without government favoritism [. . . or hindrance].

Related Reading:

The Secret History of Fossil Fuels—Chapter One, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein

We Are Doomed Without, Not Because of, Fossil Fuel Use

Environmentalists, Luddites, and Collectivism

Six Reasons Why the United Nations Should Not Intervene on Fossil Fuel Use—Alex Epstein

Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet—Alex Epstein

What Accounts for Americans’ Widespread Jekyll/Hyde Morality?

In a July 2014 editorial, the New Jersey Star-Ledger essentially calls opponents of a minimum wage increase who make more than minimum wage hypocrites, with special emphasis on Republicans.

In Minimum wage: Fine for you, not for me, the editors write:

Few Americans believe they could live on a minimum-wage paycheck.

. . . That small act of honesty – conceding that the minimum wage is too meager to support their own family – doesn’t stop many Americans (mostly Republicans) from trying to stop the lowest-paid workers from getting a sorely needed boost.

According to a new poll, nearly 70 percent of Republicans say they couldn't live on a $7.25 minimum wage – yet only 37 percent support raising it to $10.10, as President Obama has proposed. You read that correctly: A large majority of the GOP supports a wage structure that deliberately pays people too little to live on.

Notice the Star-Ledger’s own dishonesty. Opponents of legally mandated minimum wages are not “trying to stop the lowest-paid workers from getting a sorely needed boost.” In fact we cheer such raises, so long as it is earned and paid voluntarily by the employer. And people get raises all the time without benefit of government coercion, which is why 96% of hourly American workers earn more than the legal minimum wage.

The S-L then offers up a classic Keynesian rationalization for raising the minimum wage:

The rich save a greater percentage of their earnings than other groups and can’t spend enough to make up for the tens of millions of Americans who are poorly paid or unemployed.

Low-income workers are more likely to spend their new earnings to increase their standard of living.

Republicans who agree that the low-income lifestyle isn’t for them – yet insist on policies that reinforce poverty, even for those who have jobs – should rethink whether they want to stimulate the economy, or continue to stifle it.

Yes, forcibly redistributing wealth—essentially, legalized looting—is good for “the economy”!

Of course, the issue is not “living wages”: Who would be against that? The issue comes down to a moral question: Do the ends justify the means? More specifically, is it right to initiate force against others if the ends are desirable? If you think you deserve a raise, would you think it ok to approach the boss, gun in hand, and demand he raise you're wages or you will seize his wealth or lock him in a cell? What if the object of concern was not your wages, but your neighbor's? Most people, in their private lives, would answer "no, of course not." But when these same people turn their attention to politics and government, they have no problem brandishing that gun, as long as it is a government official is acting on his behalf. On ends justifying means; What causes people to answer “yes” politically but “no” privately?

In these comments, I went a bit into deeper philosophy:

"Few Americans believe they could live on a minimum-wage paycheck."

And few Americans, even minimum wage supporters, believe they privately have the right to force, at gunpoint, someone else to give them a “livable wage”, recognizing such means as criminal and immoral.

Yet, politically, force—legalized criminality, rather than private initiative, increased skills, productiveness, and experience—is exactly what proponents of minimum wage laws advocate, with government as the hired gun. What accounts for this schizophrenic [Jekyll/Hyde] dichotomy between private morality and the predatory, dog-eat-dog immorality of the political arena? Three things:

Collectivism; the idea that the group—"society"—is the focus of moral concern, and can sacrifice any individual[s] it chooses to whatever it deems to be in “the public interest.” Any action is moral as long as the society decides to do it. “Stimulate the economy”—and to hell with the interests of the individual businessmen and workers whose rights to voluntarily negotiate terms of employment are trampled. Collectivism forms the core of all totalitarian socialistic systems, like communism, Nazism, and fascism, and the watered-down precursor to those, the welfare state mixed economy.

Altruism, the moral root of collectivism, holds that the individual’s only moral justification for existing is to serve the needs of others (We are our brothers’ keepers). Need, according to altruism, is the standard. All one has to do is need something, and “society” must sacrifice the rights, interests, and wealth of whomever it must to satisfy that need. Altruism is currently on display in Chicago, in the form of a Service Employees International Union gang that thinks the world owes them a living (just read the attendees’ comments). Failing to get what they want through private voluntary agreement in the free market, they are demanding a legally mandated $15.00-per-hour wage and forced unionization, based on “I need a raise”, and—in a fashion that would make any mob boss proud—are threatening to “shut these businesses down until they listen to us.” Altruism is a predatory, inverted morality that fosters taking over earning.

Statism, or state supremacy: The government as enforcer of the “public good” as determined by the most politically powerful faction of the moment. As long as legislators enact a law, anything goes, and justice and individual rights be damned. The predatory, dog-eat-dog political world of statism is the logical consequence of collectivism-altruism.

Combine collectivism-altruism-statism with fraudulent economics—the idiotic notion that consumer spending, rather than investment, drives economic progress (try eating a loaf of bread before you’ve invested in the knowledge, ingredients, and time necessary to produce it)—and you have the perfect rationalization for the economically destructive minimum wage laws.

Here’s a question: If private individuals have no moral right to a “livable wage” through private criminal aggression against their fellow citizens, on what basis do they have a right to a “livable wage” through legalized criminal aggression via political action? None. Only the rationalizations provided by collectivism-altruism-statism-fraudulent economics makes the moral schizophrenia possible. What’s the opposite? Individualism; rational egoism; individual rights and limited, rights-protecting government (capitalism); and any good economics textbook. Only when the latter replaces the former will we have a fully moral system, where society and politics are brought under the same moral standards as private individuals.

Related Reading:

Do Ends Justify Medicaid Means?

Economics in One Lesson—Henry Hazlitt

Atlas Shrugged—Ayn Rand

Non-Objective Law and the Malignant Nature of Eminent Domain

Eminent domain is another example of the malignant nature of non-objective law. How do you fight against private property seizure when “public use or public purpose” is the justification? Based on those rationalizations, how do you stop the expansion of eminent domain into wider and wider applications? What, exactly, are you fighting against?

I’ve written about my New Jersey hometown of Readington Township’s ongoing fight to seize a large swath of Solberg Airport land—not for “public use," as with a highway, or for a “public purpose," such as turning one private landowners’ property over to another’s to develop so as to generate tax revenues for the town—but to preserve as “open space,” which wouldn’t be used or generate any revenues for “the public”. So far, Readington has been rebuffed by the courts. The courts apparently don’t see “preserving” land from development as a valid application of eminent domain, which would appear to be another expansion of eminent domain's reach.

But, by the nature of eminent domain, there’s no logical limit to its potential. To illustrate the point, let’s revisit an issue I’ve written about before—the seizing of mortgages through eminent domain. It involves Newark, NJ and other cities that

want to expand their use of eminent domain to seize mortgages in order to pressure lenders to the “negotiating table” and thus “help” homeowners with underwater mortgages receive a reduction in principal.

Newark has since elected a new mayor, who is plowing ahead with the mortgage extortion.

I left these comments on the related article:

This proposed expansion of eminent domain shows why the government’s power of eminent domain should be completely expunged. It is tyranny, and tyranny, as history has shown, begets tyranny.

In this case, the eminent domain threat to property rights will, if sanctioned by the courts, extend the threat beyond property. As I noted in my 2013 article for the Objective Standard:

The proposed use of eminent domain to seize mortgages is an attack on the sanctity of contracts, a bedrock of rule of law and economic freedom. Whatever the legal outcome, this latest effort to expand its use highlights the open-ended danger of eminent domain and the need to end the rights-violating practice as such.

Eminent domain contradicts every fundamental principle of America, and the Founders should never have allowed it into the constitution. The Founders couldn't have imagined how it would be abused. The malignant nature of eminent domain is now obvious. We need a constitutional amendment to modify the Fifth Amendment “takings clause” to eliminate the phrase “without just compensation” so the clause reads simply, “nor shall private property be taken for public use.” No amount of compensation justifies the forcible seizure of private property against the owner’s will.

Experts recognize that applying eminent domain to mortgages is a long shot. But, on what grounds? Proponents claim that burdensome mortgages lead to property abandonment, which leads to lower home values, blight, and ultimately to lower tax revenues for the municipality. Does anyone doubt that someone, someday, could manufacture a “public purpose” out of that?

So, the next great expansion of eminent domain could extend beyond property, to contracts, a crucial foundational building block of the market economy.

Related Reading:

NJ's Consumer Fraud Act: Non-Objective Law in Action

Newark Seeks to Use Eminent Domain to Extort Principal Reductions from Lenders

Eminent Domain- Always an Abuse

Epstein's ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels’ Defangs the Anti-Industrial Revolutionaries

Philosopher Ayn Rand coined the term “The Anti-Industrial Revolution” to describe the 1960s Ecology movement, the precursor to modern Environmentalism and its War on Fossil Fuels. Environmentalists have managed to claim the political and moral high road ever since. But perhaps not for long.

Alex Epstein’s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels is now available. View and share the book trailer if you are concerned about the Environmentalists’ War on Fossil Fuels, and thus our advanced quality of life.

Here is a sampling of Amazon reviews:

As a member of the fossil fuel industry, I can honestly say that this book will not only change the way you view the industry, but if you’re in the industry, it will change the way you work.  . . . By internalizing the ideas presented in this book, I can honestly say that my work is so much more rewarding because I have a better understanding of just how productive and valuable my work is.—Erin Connors

There are good books, there are great books, and there are books that change the conversation a society is having. Alex Epstein's “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” has the potential to change the debate about energy and environment in this country.—D. Watkins

And from the Objective Standard:

For Epstein’s comprehensive moral case for fossil fuels and, more broadly, for industrial civilization—including whatever new forms of energy industrialists develop in the future—read his book.

Your future prosperity—indeed your very life—depends on the freedom of industrialists to produce energy and to transform nature for human benefit.—Ari Armstrong

Related Reading:

The Secret History of Fossil Fuels—Chapter One, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein

Environmentalists, Luddites, and Collectivism

Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution—Ayn Rand

Forget "Global Warming Pollution." Legalize Direct-to-Consumer Car Sales Anyway

Tesla has been fighting New Jersey law for its right to sell its electric cars directly to consumers for about a year now. They’re still fighting. They’ve picked up an ally, recently.

Doug O’Malley, director for Environment New Jersey, argued for Tesla in a recent New Jersey Star-Ledger op-ed. The NJ legislature should abolish its laws requiring car manufacturers to sell only through dealerships, O'Malley argued, and legalize direct-to-consumer car sales. Why? To spur electric cars sales because “Electric vehicles represent a tantalizing solution to reduce both global warming pollution and air pollution.”

“Global warming pollution” is, of course, the non-polluting carbon dioxide. Regular air pollution comes, of course, from both gasoline-powered vehicles and electricity generation, so I don’t know where the reduction would come from. More electric cars means less gasoline emissions, but more generating plant emissions. Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress, in fact, argues that With the Tesla Model S, Elon Musk Has Created a Great Fossil Fuel Car.

But, hey, O’Malley’s on the right side of the Tesla issue—albeit for ridiculous reasons. So I left these supporting (sort of) comments:

Politics certainly create strange bedfellows. It’s rare that I’m on the side of environmentalism. I agree with the author’s political conclusion, though not the rationalizations.

The author didn’t have to resort to all of this childish “global warming pollution” (CO2) or “Hurricane” Sandy hyperbole to convince me that direct-to-consumer car sales should be legalized. It’s insulting. “Hurricane” Sandy wasn’t even a hurricane when it hit NJ. Nor was it unprecedented. And the idea that CO2 is a pollutant is an insult to any rational, semi-educated person’s intelligence. If global warming can be blamed for Sandy, then there’s no reason not to credit global warming for the ideal weather conditions across the American farming belt that led to record bumper crops in 2014. As the Huff-Post reported recently:

“In a typical growing season, at least some corn-growing states would have experienced drought or other production problems. But the 18 states that grow 91 percent of the nation's corn have experienced nearly ideal conditions this year, as adequate rain fell when plants emerged and cooler summer temperatures minimized heat stress.”

The constant harping on Sandy just proves that environmentalism is a religion. Just as religionists credit “God” for everything good, yet blame man for everything bad, so environmentalists blame every bad weather event on “man-made global warming,” but never credit global warming for good weather. Of course, neither is global warming. Good or bad, weather events are just weather.

But I don’t need environmentalists’ quasi-religious dogma to convince me to support free market reforms. Direct-to-consumer car sales should be legalized, but not to favor electric car sales. The government’s only proper job is to protect individual rights, including the rights of consumers, manufacturers, and car dealerships to contract with each other voluntarily to mutual advantage. It is immoral for government to use its powers of legalized physical force to favor any special interest over everyone else, as laws favoring car dealerships over manufacturers and consumers do.

Not only direct electric car sales be legalized. As I've written elsewhere, all manufacturers should be free to use whatever sales model they choose. The market—i.e., the voluntary choices of millions of consumers—will sort out which sales model prevails.

Related Reading:

Government Victimizes and Favors Tesla by Violating Rights of All

Global Warming Brings 'Record' U.S. Crop Yields

GOP Needs a Philosophically Coherent Agenda

I’ve been around awhile—65 years. I’ve seen a lot of Republican electoral surges. Mostly, I’ve been disappointed. The only exception; the Reagan Republicans of the early 1980s. But even that faded. Rather than build on and correct the “Reaganomics” revolution, the GOP slipped back into me-too, country club land. The G.W. Bush era was a blatant leap to the Left.

Typically, Republican control has resulted in the consolidation of the welfare state advances scored by prior Democrat controlled legislatures. At best—with rare exceptions—Republican control only stalls the statist advance, and paves the way for another lurch to the Left.

I’m hopeful that this time will be different. One thing is certain: It won’t be, if the GOP takes the advice of former Republican New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman. Whitman urges, Republicans Must Put Forward Ideas After Big Wins.

Whitman correctly observes that the GOP cannot merely be anti-government or anti-Obama. It must put forward a positive policy agenda based on “our”—Republican—ideas.

But Whitman doesn’t hint at what those ideas are. More importantly, she offers no principles upon which those ideas should rest. Instead, she retreats into meaningless generalities:

I have been dismayed to watch just how polarized Washington has become in recent years - every issue that is discussed is done so from the political, rather than policy perspective.  I am not naïve to think that one midterm election's result will lead to greater political compromise – much less one midterm election that so clearly favored one party over the other.  But I remain hopeful that my party will lead well from their place of political strength – be willing to negotiate for the sake of ordinary Americans, and foster a policy discourse that shows our ideas are the right ones for the nation. The next two years can be a time of great policy achievement in the United States, and it all depends on how Republicans choose to lead.

“Political” vs. “policy perspective?” What about the philosophical perspective? Compromise? On what. To what end; “great policy achievement?” “Negotiate for the sake of ordinary Americans?” As opposed to whom; extraordinary Americans? If Republicans are to avoid “polarization”—i.e., fighting the Democrats on fundamental ideas—then what kind of leadership does that imply? What kind of ideas?

I left these comments:

It can’t be just about ideas. It must be about pro-liberty ideas. Republicans have always had some good ideas in this area; e.g. school choice in education; expanded health savings accounts and other free market reforms in healthcare; lower and flatter tax rates; deregulation. But Republicans need a focussed, philosophically coherent agenda based on a core principle. They need to sharply distinguish themselves from the Dems on terms that are clear and easy to grasp.

I suggest the Self-Reliant Society, as contrasted to the Democrats’ Dependency Society.

The Democrats common theme is: Whatever the problem (real or concocted), only government can solve it. If all Republicans are going to do is propose different ways for government to run our lives and solve our problems—like “universal health care” through “market-based” policies—then what’s the point of electing Republicans?

Everything the Democrats do or suggest moves Americans toward dependence on government. They only “compromise” if they can move the ball in their direction. Republicans should counter with a policy that whatever they do or propose must result in greater control for individuals over their own lives. Compromise, yes. But only so long as it results in more freedom for individuals to manage their affairs and solving their own problems.

The only alternative to the Democrats’ statism is individual rights and limited, rights-protecting government. Stop obsessing over “polarization.” It’s time Americans had “a choice, not and echo.” Whatever the legislative policy, tie it to the Self-Reliance principle, and then trash Democrat opponents as pro-Dependency and anti-self-determination. Let voters know explicitly the broad direction the GOP wishes to move America.

Americans still respect self-reliance. Give them a choice—a Self-Reliant Society, or a Dependency Society—and I think the GOP could score big.

Related Reading:

Why Conservatism is a Perpetual Loser

My Challenge To the GOP: A Philosophical Contract With America

Extremists vs. the Moderates: Why the Left Keeps Winning, and the Right has been Powerless to Stop It