Whatever it was...

 ..it wasn't a coup. 

Not even an attempted coup.

Mises Wire: The Capitol Riot Wasn’t a Coup. It Wasn't Even Close.

What Is a Coup?

A gang of disorganized, powerless mechanics, janitors, and insurance agents running through the Capitol isn’t a coup. And if it was a coup attempt, it was so far from anything that might hope to succeed as a coup that it should not be taken seriously as such.

So how do we know a coup when we see one?

In their article “Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset,” authors Jonathan M. Powell and Clayton L. Thyne provide a definition:

A coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive.

There are two key components of this definition. The first is that it is illegal. Powell and Thyne note that this “illegal” qualifier is important to include "because it differentiates coups from political pressure, which is common whenever people have freedom to organize."

In other words, protests, or threats of protest don’t count as coups. Neither do legal efforts such as a vote of no confidence or an impeachment. 

But an even more critical aspect of Powell and Thyne’s definition is that it requires the involvement of elites.

QOTD, 11/10/15

If the federal government guaranteed auto loans and made them non-dischargeable via bankruptcy, Hyundai Accents would cost a hundred long.
Tamara K. Here

The context of the conversation was the cost of higher education, and, specifically, the financial burden of college loans.

Shortest -- and Best -- Graduation Speech ever

A whole 335 words, and 12 bullet points.

1. Many things that are desirable are not feasible.

2. Individuals and communities face trade-offs.

3. Other people have more information about their abilities, their efforts, and their preferences than you do.

4. Everyone responds to incentives, including people you want to help. That is why social safety nets don’t always end up working as intended.

Read the whole thing at Thomas Sargent Shortest Graduation Speech - Business Insider

The Question Libertarians Just Can't Answer - Answered!

h/t Daily Pundit

More on those pesky libertarians

As a follow-up to my previous post, "Inside the Cold, Calculating Libertarian Mind", Professor Reynolds asks for A HIGHER DOSE OF LIBERTARIANISM, PLEASE, in which he tells us that "Damon Root over at Reason takes on the New York Times’ David Brooks’ assertion that the increasing influence of libertarians in the GOP has been bad because Brooks doesn’t think libertarians 'speak in the language of social order.'  Root correctly points out that Brooks seems to have no clue about libertarianism...”

I think David Brooks is a tool and a schmuck. 

"Inside the Cold, Calculating Libertarian Mind"

Matt Ridley on Libertarians | Mind & Matter - WSJ.com

Libertarians

They want to take over and leave you alone!

Great bumper sticker philosophy.  Too bad that many of the people who would be attracted by it would be repulsed by the corollary:

Libertarians:  We want to take over and make you leave the other guy alone!

even if most Libertarians, or ("small 'l'") libertarians, would do so by moral suasion, and making sure "the other guy" was able to defend himself, as opposed to actually, you know, somehow forcing you to mind your own damned business.

In my previous post I made a joking reference to the fact that the Libertarian Party  is commonly viewed as the Party of Legalization of Drugs, and little else more.  I really do think they should start emphasizing the economic liberty aspects of libertarianism, and let the whole "Declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home" thing wait until they have the ability to do more about it than debate esoteric points of political philosophy...

Speaking of which...

The AnarchAngel : Two libertarians walk into a bar...

Aretae's lovely wife ran out of steam just around the time we (just barely) started talking about compatibilism, utilitarianism, determinism, associationism, the veil of ignorance, the social contract, and the fundamental nature of rights.

See, we barely know Chris and Mel, other than by their blog, although I did enjoy swapping war stories with Chris, and Mrs. Drang talked spinning and other crafty stuff with Mel, at Gun Blogger Rendezvous IV.  I can just imagine him rubbing his hands in anticipation at being able to have that kind of discussion with fresh meat a new victim friend.

Me, my eyes glaze over just reading about it.  So that's another thing: Go ahead and debate those esoteric political philosophical points all you want with each other, but know your audience.

Political Ideology

UPDATE:  Link fixed, sorry!

Chatting (via text message) with Mrs. Drang about the previous post, about the "Which candidate?" quiz, prompted me to look up Jerry Pournelle's essay about the "Pournelle Chart", which Dr. Pournelle calls The Pournelle Political Axes.

Here's the chart as it appears in the essay linked to above:

Wikipedia has a slightly cleaned up, slightly prettier version, at the second link above:

Note that it does not directly address the questions of economic freedom versus control/regulation.  Not sure that's important--what good is economic freedom if you have none, otherwise?

Do read that article.  Dr. Pournell not only discusses the issues with the traditional Left/Right line, but he goes into a bit of the history behind it.

Wikipedia discusses a similar chart at Political compass, which, it cautions, uses European/Commonwealth terminology, which can be different than US terminology.  (I.e., "conservative" in the UK means something different than it means here.)  This chart also has two axes, "Economic" and "Authoritarian."  (The left end of the economic scale calls for collectivization, the right end for a free market, laissez faire approach.  I assume the "authoritarian" axis is self-explanatory.) 

Another chart is the Nolan Chart, which the Libertarian Party displays in it's booth at the State Fair when it is not behind the cow barn smokin' a doobie.*

(It's usually rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise, putting "Libertarian" at the top.  Go figure...)

This model, of course, does emphasize economic freedom.

Keep in mind that "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" was originally "Life, Liberty, and Property", based on the writings of John Locke.  As explained in an article at Yahoo!,

By "property," Locke meant MORE than land and goods that could be sold, given away, or even confiscated by the government under certain circumstances. Property also referred to ownership of one's self, which included A RIGHT TO PERSONAL WELL BEING. Jefferson, however, substituted the phrase, "pursuit of happiness," which Locke and others had used to describe FREEDOM OF OPPORTUNITY as well as the duty to help those in want.

As George Mason put it in the Virginia Declaration of Rights

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

No surprise, really, that Mason and Jefferson (and Adams, Franklin, et. al.) were reading the same philosophers...)

(See also the Wikipedia article on Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

As I told Mrs. Drang, Joe Waldron (of the GOAL Alerts I post here) once observed that "a libertarian is a guy who can argue esoteric points of political philosophy all day, but needs velcro to fasten his shoes."  That may have been true at the time, but I suspect the tide is changing.  More and more people are getting fed up with an overly intrusive nosy nanny state.

I can always tell people who get their opinions of the Tea Party issues to them whole by HuffPo, MSNBC, Kos, and/or the DNC--as if there were a difference--by how far off-base their assumptions are.  Middle-aged white guys like me are definitely outnumbered by a younger demographic, which seems to have a higher proportion of X chromosomes than that of us more seasoned types, among other differences.

***

*OK, a cheap shot, but, really, guys, while I agree about the futility of the War on Some Drugs, in the public mind, assyoumeing they've even heard of you, to most people you're the Party of Decriminalizing Pot, and little more. 

Unintended or intended?

As i read Richard Epstein's Obama’s Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep at the Hoover Institution, I kept asking myself whether this was simply yet another piece of leftist garbage, written with no thought whatsoever to the consequences, or whether it is, indeed, a crap sandwich written with the intention of being yet another nail in the coffin of free enterprise and a free market economy in America.

News flash! Water wet! Fire hot!

John Maynard Keynes still full of crap!

WSJ:

The global recession and financial crisis have refocused attention on government stimulus packages. These packages typically emphasize spending, predicated on the view that the expenditure "multipliers" are greater than one—so that gross domestic product expands by more than government spending itself. Stimulus packages typically also feature tax reductions, designed partly to boost consumer demand (by raising disposable income) and partly to stimulate work effort, production and investment (by lowering rates).

...

The bottom line is this: The available empirical evidence does not support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus spending stimulus programs will likely raise GDP by less than the increase in government spending. Defense-spending multipliers exceeding one likely apply only at very high unemployment rates, and nondefense multipliers are probably smaller. However, there is empirical support for the proposition that tax rate reductions will increase real GDP

From Gateway Pundit, who adds:

Obama and democrats spent billions this year on their stimulus plan and all we got was another trillion dollars in debt.

It looks like you can't spend yourself out of a recession, after all.

(Although that was actually the intro, not an "added comment.")

BTW, notice how "they" never talk about how, even when the projected deficit spending is down to merely dizzying levels, from the current-year nose-bleed-inducing troposphere, that "they" never, ever talk about the National Debt? Only those darned, bitter gun- and religion clinging racists care about that sort of thing...

QsOTD, 05/21/2009

Those politicians, professors and union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a lower standard of living.
Theory and History, p. 147

What is needed to prevent any further credit expansion is to place the banking business under the general rules of commercial and civil laws compelling every individual and firm to fulfill all obligations in full compliance with the terms of the
contract.
Human Action, p. 440; p. 443

Imprudent granting of credit is bound to prove just as ruinous to a bank as to any other merchant.
The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 295

All by Ludwig von Mises, collected in The Quotable Mises, at scribd.com. (Membership required, free, but some items may require payment for download.)