Higher-income people can cope more easily with government-created soaring energy prices than lower-income people can. The state is no friend of those who struggle to pay their bills.
Energy News Flash!
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TGIF: Reject Both Identity and Egalitarian Politics
The push-back against identity politics by disillusioned leftists is welcome, but the striving to replace identity with economic equality as the guiding political principle? Not so much. I won't spend time on the problems with identity politics, a zero-sum game if ever there was one. The virtue of universalism extolled by classical liberalism seems indisputable. Why wouldn't everyone begin with the same entitlement to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness free of government impediment? As a general matter, past crimes committed by some long-dead people against other long-dead other...
TGIF: National Conservatism’s Ominous Economics
National conservatism is objectionable on many counts -- the name in itself tells you that -- but it does pay tribute to free enterprise. A closer look, however, may cause one to doubt its commitment. The movement's official Statement of Principles includes Principle 6, which begins encouragingly, though predictably tradition-bound: We believe that an economy based on private property and free enterprise is best suited to promoting the prosperity of the nation and accords with traditions of individual liberty that are central to the Anglo-American political tradition. We reject the socialist...
TGIF: Jefferson on Not Trusting the State
Regardless of written constitutions and the laws on the books, individual liberty is always at risk. And as liberty goes, so goes our capacity to live well, to achieve the good life as rational, virtuous social beings. The danger comes from left and right, both of which aspire to have a body of elders impose narrow cultural and moral norms on everyone, overriding our right to think for ourselves. (Progressives and National Conservatives have a lot in common in that regard, even if they differ on what is to be imposed.) This point about the fragility of liberty was well understood by the...
TGIF: The Coming New and Improved IRS
The brilliant people in the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have decided that one thing America really needs is an Internal Revenue Service (!) fortified by 87,000 more employees and 80 billion more dollars so it can help reduce the inflation that currently menaces us. You don't believe it? Oh, ye of little faith! How is that to be accomplished? By auditing rich individuals and corporations, of course, thereby harvesting tons of hitherto uncollected revenue and forcing the shirkers to pay their "fair share." (No one ever says how we know they aren't already paying it.) The law's...
TGIF: About Those January 6 Committee Extravaganzas
I admit it: I watched nearly every moment of the House committee extravaganzas on the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. I did more than that. I was transfixed. I couldn't even multitask. Were the mislabeled "hearings" beyond all criticism? Of course not. They were choreographed, but only mildly so; the production effort lent an orderliness that I appreciated. I accept the point that the presentations had nothing to say about FBI-informant intrigue if it took place. Such mischief has occurred in the past, and if credible allegations exist, they should be pursued vigorously. Of course, it...
TGIF: The Limits of Ideology
I have defended the idea of ideology per se and have disparaged the idea that anyone can operate without an ideology. The self-proclaimed non-ideological person is really one who has an implicit and therefore unexamined or underexamined ideology. No one really judges everything case by case as if nothing were related to anything else. We all have principles of some sort. I have never implied, however, that ideology cannot be abused or pushed too far. It most certainly can be. One way to do this is to imagine that an ideology can be squeezed to produce complete answers to empirical, including...
TGIF: Complete Liberalism
Many people formerly of the left, who have bid good riddance to their former political home, believe they can retain the mantle of authentic liberalism while ignoring its free-market component. They don't want socialism, and they appropriately dislike the right-wing. But they also can't abide the libertarian commitment to free markets either. So they declare themselves centrists void of ideology. The problem with this approach is that the commitment to market freedom lies at the heart of authentic, classical liberalism, or libertarianism. Liberalism and pro-market enthusiasm go hand in hand....
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