I am grateful to James Taranto for writing his most recent post explaining why progressives are no longer liberals, Jonathan Chait in particular not because I’m interested in Jonathan Chait’s ideological or political orientation but because he reminded me of James Burnham’s litmus test for liberals from Suicide of the West, a work I hadn’t revisited in decades. The list of thirty-nine questions was thoughtfully reproduced by James Panero.

Since I believe the questions serve as a good springboard to further discussion (not to mention their ability to bolster things I’ve been writing about around here for a long time), I’ll answer them in color code form. Green means I agree; red means I disagree; black means I can neither agree nor disagree without further remarks which I’ll make after answering the questions.

1. All forms of racial segregation and discrimination are wrong.
2. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion.
3. Everyone has a right to free, public education.
4. Political, economic or social discrimination based on religious belief is wrong.
5. In political or military conflict it is wrong to use methods of torture and physical terror.
6. A popular movement or revolt against a tyranny or dictatorship is right, and deserves approval.
7. The government has a duty to provide for the ill, aged, unemployed and poor if they cannot take care of themselves.
8. Progressive income and inheritance taxes are the fairest form of taxation.
9. If reasonable compensation is made, the government of a nation has the legal and moral right to expropriate private property within its borders, whether owned by citizens or foreigners.
10. We have a duty to mankind; that is, to men in general.
11. The United Nations, even if limited in accomplishment, is a step in the right direction.
12. Any interference with free speech and free assembly, except for cases of immediate public danger or juvenile corruption, is wrong.
13. Wealthy nations, like the United States, have a duty to aid the less privileged portions of mankind.
14. Colonialism and imperialism are wrong.
15. Hotels, motels, stores and restaurants in southern United States ought to be obliged by law to allow Negroes to use all of their facilities on the same basis as whites.
16. The chief sources of delinquency and crime are ignorance, discrimination, poverty and exploitation.
17. Communists have a right to express their opinions.
18. We should always be ready to negotiate with the Soviet Union and other communist nations.
19. Corporal punishment, except possibly for small children, is wrong.
20. All nations and peoples, including the nations and peoples of Asia and Africa, have a right to political independence when a majority of the population wants it.
21. We always ought to respect the religious beliefs of others.
22. The primary goal of international policy in the nuclear age ought to be peace.
23. Except in cases of a clear threat to national security or, possibly, to juvenile morals, censorship is wrong.
24. Congressional investigating committees are dangerous institutions, and need to be watched and curbed if they are not to become a serious threat to freedom.
25. The money amount of school and university scholarships ought to be decided primarily by need.
26. Qualified teachers, at least at the university level, are entitled to academic freedom: that is, the right to express their own beliefs and opinions, in or out of the classroom, without interference from administrators, trustees, parents or public bodies.
27. In determining who is to be admitted to schools and universities, quota systems based on color, religion, family or similar factors are wrong.
28. The national government should guarantee that all adult citizens, except for criminals and the insane, should have the right to vote.
29. Joseph McCarthy was probably the most dangerous man in American public life during the fifteen years following the Second World War.
30. There are no significant differences in intellectual, moral or civilizing capacity among human races and ethnic types.
31. Steps toward world disarmament would be a good thing.
32. Everyone is entitled to political and social rights without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
33. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and expression.
34. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
35. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.
36. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security.
37. Everyone has the right to equal pay for equal work.
38. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions.
39. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

I would claim that today’s progressives would agree with fewer of those than the liberals of a half century ago would have and that today’s conservatives would agree with more of them than conservatives of a half century ago. That at least provides some credible support for my skepticism about the very idea of progress.

These are the issues I can’t answer without further qualification.

Everyone has a right to free, public education.

Primary education. We’ve signed an international accord to that effect so it’s a right. Beyond that I disagree.

A popular movement or revolt against a tyranny or dictatorship is right, and deserves approval.

There are just too many weasel words in that statement. What makes a movement “popular”? That there are people behind it? That there are a majority of people? And what does “approval” mean? I do not think we should support foreign political movements of any kind even in countries governed by dictatorships.

Progressive income and inheritance taxes are the fairest form of taxation.

A progressive consumption tax, especially one that exempts food and medicine, is just as fair as an income or inheritance tax and economically more sound.

We have a duty to mankind; that is, to men in general.

I think that we as individuals have an obligation to other individuals and an obligation to society more generally. I don’t think that poor people in rich countries have an obligation to rich people in poor countries.

The United Nations, even if limited in accomplishment, is a step in the right direction.

I think that world government requires world consensus and that isn’t remotely foreseeable. I agree with Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s wisecrack that the UN is a Third World debating society.

Wealthy nations, like the United States, have a duty to aid the less privileged portions of mankind.

See above.

Corporal punishment, except possibly for small children, is wrong.

I think that corporal punishment is wrong especially for small children.

All nations and peoples, including the nations and peoples of Asia and Africa, have a right to political independence when a majority of the population wants it.

I do not believe that one half plus one of the people is enough to base a society on. I think that consensus is required. If the above is an anti-colonialism statement, I agree with it. If it’s an argument in favor of strict majoritarianism, I’m against it.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.

Despite that being the state motto of my native state, I’m suspicious of it. It depends on what is meant by “will of the people”, “basis”, and “authority”. I think that tradition, consensus, and the common law have roles as well.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

I think that everybody capable of working and not of independent means has an obligation to work. Otherwise I agree with the statement.

Just as an off-hand remark I think that Americans should stay out of Israeli domestic politics and Israelis should stay out of American domestic politics.

David Ignatius sees light at the end of the trade negotiations tunnel:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is down to its final haggling. This week, negotiators from 12 countries met in New York to resolve the remaining issues, which have been narrowed from more than 2,000. The toughest matters left, ironically, are agricultural disputes with Japan and dairy and poultry disagreements with Canada.

U.S. negotiators hope they can close out the TPP deal by the summer and get it approved by Congress — thanks to Republican votes promised by House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). Republicans like trade even more than they dislike Obama, evidently. It’s a jobs bill that doesn’t cost any money. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that the market-opening features of the TPP will boost U.S. exports by about $123 billion annually by 2025 and add 600,000 jobs.

If an agreement could be reached that Senate Republicans would support, it would certainly play hob with the narrative.

I’m in favor of free trade agreements in the abstract but wary of them in the specific. What’s being negotiated is not a free trade agreement. You can write a free trade agreement on the back of a napkin and decide for or against it in a moment. What’s actually happening is that the various parties are working out the shape that managed trade among the Pacific Rim countries will take. They’re picking winners and losers. And make no mistake, there will be American losers. TANSTAAFL.

One of my college professors once wisecracked that he never paid any attention to an undergraduate paper until the first “however”. To know whether the TPP is good or not so good, I’ll need to see the “howevers”.

That having been said I think the future of trade negotiations is in bilateral pacts or multi-lateral ones like the TPP rather than worldwide agreements through the WTO. There are just too many basic disagreements to play out the WTO rope any farther.

While you’re rejoicing about the Kurds, supported by U. S. air power, having wrested the small Syrian border town of Kobane away from DAESH, keep in mind the cost of the victory. We’ve spent a couple of billion dollars and five months to re-take a town of 40,000 people (used to be). Three=quarters of the sorties we’ve flown since the campaign against DAESH began have been in the re-taking of Kobane. There are hundreds of such towns.

During that period DAESH has moved into Iraq, expanded their control of territory in what used to be Syria, and they probably have more fighters, money, and materiel than they did when the campaign started.

And Kobane was a best case situation. The Kurdish peshmerga are the only fighters worth a darn who’ve been willing to face DAESH on the ground. We won’t get that kind of boots-on-the-ground support with Sunni Arab towns.

A few weeks ago I found an old pair of shoes gathering dust in the back of my closet. They were great shoes, nice-looking and among the most comfortable I’ve ever had. About a year after I’d purchased them their soles began to wear out in bizarre ways. Chunks just fell off. The uppers were like new and they were such great shoes I couldn’t bear to throw them out but I couldn’t wear them, either, without my feet getting wet. So they sat in the back of my closet in limbo. For more than a decade.

They’re not the sort of shoes I could take to a local shoemaker. However, I searched around on the Internet and identified a place that would replace the soles. I mentioned the place to my wife who told me that she was very satisfied with what they’d done when she’d sent a pair of her Birkenstocks to them to have them resoled. So I sent them off in the mailer they’d sent me.

I received them back yesterday and I’m thrilled. They’re like new, better, actually because the new soles are better than the old soles ever were. Now I have a new pair of shoes that are as comfortable as an old pair.

This process doesn’t make any sense if you pay less than $100 for a pair of shoes but if you do, it’s a pretty good way to go.

There’s two-fer in this post at Zenpundit from Charles Cameron you might be interested in. In the first part he talks about the kerfuffle over Michelle Obama’s not wearing a headscarf in KSA. In the second he passes along an amusing anecdote about when the late Saudi King Abdullah visited ERII. You really should read the anecdote.

Are these really, as Walter Russell Mead contends, the three core values of the Western establishment:

There are three subjects on which virtually everybody in the Western policy and intellectual establishments agree: think of them as the core values of the Davoisie: The first is that the rise of a liberal capitalist and more or less democratic and law-based international order is both inevitable and irreversible. The second is that the Davos elite—the financiers, politicians, intellectuals, haute journalists and technocrats who mange the great enterprises, institutions and polities of the contemporary world—know what they are doing and are competent to manage the system they represent. The third is that no serious alternative perspective to the Davos perspective really exists; our establishment believes in its gut that even those who contend with the Davos world order know in their hearts that Davos has and always will have both might and right on its side.

Dr. Mead goes on to point out that neither V. Putin nor DAESH holds those core values but I’m pretty certain that he doesn’t, either. I think that, like me, he’s a Jeffersonian and believes that liberal democracy is fragile and embattled, not only not inevitable or irreversible but always in danger of being reversed. You need only to look at the rise of the security state to recognize that it’s at least a possibility. You might also recognize the believe as that of “Whig history” which I described earlier.

I also don’t believe that the so-called elite “know what they are doing and are competent to manage the system they represent”. It’s just too complicated and changes too quickly for anyone to “manage” the system.

Finally, there are at least three competitors to the “Davos world order”: Chinese oligarchy, Putin’s irredentism, and DAESH’s barbarism. All three are gaining ground.

From time to time I’ve mentioned my belief that a policy that encouraged the production of more energy would be better for the economy than one that discouraged energy production. There’s a post at OilPrice.com that presents an energy-centric interpretation of the economy:

In order to produce economic growth, it is necessary to produce goods in such a way that goods become cheaper and cheaper over time, relative to wages. Clearly this has not been happening recently.

The temptation businesses face in trying to produce this effect is to eliminate workers completely–just automate the process. This doesn’t work, because it is workers who need to be able to buy the products. Governments need to become huge, to manage transfer payments to all of the unemployed workers. And who will pay all of these taxes?

The popular answer to our diminishing returns problem is more efficiency, but efficiency rarely adds more than 1% to 2% to economic growth. We have been working hard on efficiency in recent years, but overall economic growth results have not been very good in the US, Europe, and Japan.

We know that dissipative systems operate by using more and more energy until they reach a point where diminishing returns finally push them into collapse. Thus, another solution might be to keep adding as much cheap energy as we can to the system. This approach doesn’t work very well either. Coal tends to be polluting, both from an air pollution point of view (in China) and from a carbon dioxide perspective. Nuclear has also been suggested, but it has different pollution issues and can be high-priced as well. Substituting a more expensive source of electricity production for an existing source of energy production works in the wrong direction–in the direction of higher cost of goods relative to wages, and thus more diminishing returns.

Getting along without economic growth doesn’t really work, either. This tends to bring down the debt system, which is an integral part of the whole system. But this is a topic for a different post.

If you’re convinced that the future of life on earth depends on producing less energy, it probably won’t convince you otherwise but I might give you something to think about.

Sean Trende speculates on the likelihood of a brokered Republican convention in 2016, i.e. a convention in which the candidate is selected after the first balloting:

Let’s look at Jonathan Bernstein’s list of potential candidates here, and assume the following candidates get in: Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, John Bolton and Peter King. Some on that list won’t run, but some others probably will (Mike Pence or Rick Snyder being the most obvious contenders).

Let’s rate this field using a points system as follows: 5 points for a sitting veep, 4 for a sitting senator or governor, 3 for a representative, 2 for Cabinet officials, and 1 for “other.” We’ll (somewhat arbitrarily) add a point for “star power,” and deduct one for candidates who haven’t won a race in the past six years. We’ll do this for all the initial fields going back to 1980 (minor note: Harold Stassen receives a 1 even though he was a former governor. An election in 1938 doesn’t have much bearing in 1988).

The total for the prospective 2016 field is 56 points, by far the highest of any field. The next-closest field, from 2008, totals just 39 points. Moreover, the average candidate quality in 2016 is the highest of the bunch: 3.5 points, compared with 3.1 points for 2012 or 3.3 for 2008. Even this doesn’t tell the whole story though, as the 2008 slate is filled with candidates who were much weaker than their ratings suggested (Jim Gilmore, Sam Brownback, Tommy Thompson). Almost all of the candidates on the 2016 list would have been top-flight contenders against the 2012 field, yet many of them will struggle to finish in the top five in a single primary or caucus.

Iowa is a caucus state and, as Sean point out, caucus states tend to be good for candidates with devoted followings. That’s why religious conservatives and Tea Party candidates do well in Iowa.

I would think that the factors that would lead to a brokered convention would mostly be the total number of candidates who manage to run even marginally viable campaigns and the number of states that pile in to the early primaries and caucuses. If, as seems possible, none of those candidates manages to eke out an outright majority from their primary and/or caucus victories, you’ve got a brokered convention. Then just about anything could happen.

Update

There’s more reaction to Sean Trende’s post at memeorandum.