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My hair used to be pretty blonde come summertime, right?

In the second period, perhaps best characterized by the Magna Carta, individuals demanded some form of protection from the whims of Kings, deciding that a government of the people was best. But this self-government was not, as Mill has noted, the government of the self by the self, but the government of the self by others, the government of the self by the majority. This form of government is still predominant in non-dictatorships worldwide. But a government whose actions are not constrained - that is, a government that can act as a tyrannical majority - offers no liberty at all.

The third period, the one I hope to see continue to spread worldwide, holds when Isaiah Berlin’s “negative liberty” is strong. Negative liberty is the ability to do whatever your mind and body are able to do; it is infringed when another person coercively stops you from taking such action. In the US tradition, “natural rights” is more or less the same as negative liberty. (This is opposed to the positive liberty to do things that require the help of another to do, but are still an “inherent right” - think of FDR’s “freedom from hunger”. A French philosopher noted the difference: “It is not lack of freedom not to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale.” I see very little usefulness in the positive definition of liberty.)

Without natural rights, we essentially cede to 50.1% of the population the ability to do what they like to the other near-half of the population. And on what grounds? Often, the argument is made on the grounds of some sort of social contract, the grounds that an individual, by choosing not to leave a society, implicitly consents to this agreement. The argument is that if society desires something, if the greater good can be achieved somehow, that the preferences of some individuals can be ignored.

As far as I’m concerned, the most natural source of “good” and “bad” comes from the preferences of individuals. Some call this “utility”, but it is a very broad form of utility, one which makes no restrictions or judgments or claims about why an individual might prefer something. Individuals desire things and take actions because individuals have hopes and dreams, fears and wishes, loves and hatreds. A society has none of these. Societies do not think, they do not want, they do not hurt. Claims that society is better off because of some action conceal the individuals who are made better and who are made worse. The hope is that those who are made worse will consent if they are doing it for society, instead of for other individuals.

There are questions where the interactions between individuals make it difficult to parse whether government action is just or not - is the man calling for government action harmed by the action of another, or does he merely dislike it? Indeed, that question itself may be difficult to define. But in general, liberty demands that we err on the side of limiting government. Governments through history, I think it is clear, have been far more likely to err on the opposite side; we see far more gulags that we do anarchies. The easy questions make it easier to spot those who believe in liberty and those who do not.

Should the government coerce adults to wear seatbelts? Should the government be able to transfer property among individuals at whim? Should the government restrict you from taking medicines with a high level of risky side effects? Should the government be allowed to restrict what you say if it is false and it offends others? Should the government be able to restrict what you say if it is true and it offends others? Liberty says no. Many politicians, and many individuals, say yes. One has to look no further than the annual flag-burning amendments in the US, or, more worryingly, cases like the Maclean’s case in Canada. In that case, a magazine is being forced to pay a fine and apologize because a cover story about the growing Islamic population in Canada was considered offensive to society.

I don’t ask for you to agree with my preference toward greater and greater liberty. I only ask that you recognize, when you go to vote, which politicians run for office in order to impose their preferences on you, and which run in order to expand your ability to achieve your goals free of the meddling of others. This liberty we have is a rare and precious thing in human history, and we must not let it slide away without a fight.

I’ve drove to Florida State and back with my Dad last weekend. He’s a tough nut to crack. Like many people of his age (he graduated high school in 1973), he got pretty heavy into various substances when he was younger, and despite a college degree in history, he worked odd jobs for the past quarter century; machinist, part-time private investigator and student teacher, among many others. Dad’s a smart guy - his youngest brother, who avoided drugs, is a PhD engineer! - but just headed down the wrong track. He’s been clean 20 years, but the path you go down when you’re young turns out to matter quite a bit. He and my Mom have been divorced since 1989 or so, and he never remarried.

My dad was never very good with money. I think he’s two bankruptcies in the books, and sitting on nearly 100 grand in debt with no assets right now. Most of that debt is student loans - he did a second degree in criminal justice a few years back and now works as a probation counselor - and student loan debt is not forgiven in bankruptcy. At this point, he makes maybe 30k a year, and the courts take over 500 per month in back child support, so you can imagine he doesn’t have money most of the time. Thing is, he’s not poor because he’s flashy with the money, but poor because he’s stupid with the money. At one point, he wanted to go back and teach high school history, but for some reason or another left the Masters in Teaching program with one semester to go. He did his criminal justice degree at a not-terribly-cheap private college in New Hampshire, and though he did very well in his classes, I can’t help but think his job prospects are no different from if he’d done the degree at Phoenix online or something similar. Because his credit is so bad, his car payments on a 10 year-old Toyota are quite a bit more than what I pay for my new BMW convertible - and my car payment includes all the maintenance! At some level, I’d like to help him get his finances back in order, but there’s only so much a 24-year-old son can lecture his father, right? And it would make me personally better off; I’ve lent him a fairly substantial amount of money since I started working which I don’t ever expect to see back. That’s alright - I was raised that family is the most important thing, so I’ll help if it’s needed - but it would be nice not to have such a responsibility.

He’s also single, having just come out of another year-long relationship, which is about as long as his relationships have been since he was divorced. I completely understand when he tells me that it’s frustrating; he’s a nice guy, and you don’t have to walk far to run into a real jackass with a long-lasting marriage or long-term girlfriend. But what can you do? He’s 53, has no assets to his name, doesn’t drink (so bars are out of the question), and doesn’t have any specific hobbies where you would meet a nice girl. It’s not good to see him sad over this - he would never say as such, but I’m old enough that I know without being told.

This is a particularly tough thing for someone who grew up middle class. As a kid, more or less every adult you know is the parent of a friend who lives in a middle-class area, so by definition these adults have family and have some kind of career success. This isn’t preordained, though; it’s what statisticians call selection bias. The guys and girls from the previous generation would didn’t find family, who didn’t find success in their jobs? They’ve always been there, but we just never saw them growing up.

That’s all I’ve got. I don’t know even what I can do, but this is as good a format as anywhere to work through my thoughts.

I guess I’ve got one more thing. It always surprises me to see that negative traits between parents and children are positively correlated, rather than negatively correlated. That is, kids of wifebeaters are more likely to abuse their wives, kids of smokers are more likely to smoke, and on and on. This strikes me as so backward. Shouldn’t we learn from the experience of our family. I like to think - and perhaps I have blinders on here, but I don’t think so - that I’ve avoided, through deliberate effort, the sins of my parents and other family members. Am I conservative when it comes to economics because I’ve seen that choices are far more important than income in determining someone’s economic success? Sure. Do I avoid drugs and hold back when it comes to drink because I saw what it did to my Dad and my uncles? Of course. Most people don’t seem to make this transition, though. Why is that?

But yesterday was truly the coup de grace. I come home to a call from a friend of mine from back in high school. “Hey Kev,” he says, “have you seen King of Kong yet? You have to watch it.”

Now, King of Kong is a hilarious documentary about this middle school science teacher who tries to break Billy Mitchell’s record on the arcade game Donkey Kong. We’ve actually met Billy a few times - he is ridiculous. Back in the early 80s, when he was a teenager, he set the record in a ton of arcade games like Pac-Man, and was featured on TV and in magazines like Life. Incredibly, he actually had groupies. He now sells his brand of hot sauce, but still comes to famous arcades now and again to show off his skills, never showing up in anything but a full suit, long hair, a beard and a patriotic tie.

(Subnote: A few years back, I actually knew quite a few people involved in the early days of videogames. A few of us went to an event in San Jose maybe three years ago, and I was checking out the original Pong arcade game that they had on display. By “original”, I mean, actually the very first cabinet built by the guys who went on to found Atari. While I was there, an older guy with a big white beard comes over and wants to know if I want to play a game. Holy moly, it’s Al Alcorn, founder of Atari! I got up 9-7 on him (Pong goes to 11) when he started cheating by taking advantage of a glitch he knew about that made the ball disappear. He won 11-9! The rat!)

Kev vs. Al

I’m pretty sure that there’s no hope of ever being cool again once you’ve appeared in the Donkey Kong documentary, though. Screenshot to follow.

You often here, “But Kev, without government, we’d be savages in a jungle! Don’t you like courts and roads?” Well, yeah, I do. But first, the most useful things tend to be provided at the local or state level (ah, Principle of Subsidiarity, you are my truest friend). Let’s take a gander at the Federal Budget and see if we can do better.

The budget this year is 3 trillion dollars. In inflation-adjusted dollars, our 1996 budget was 2.2 trillion dollars. Now population has grown since then, but not nearly enough to make up for the substantial growth in government. So I’m fairly convinced that, if Seniors weren’t Starving on the Streets, and Orphans weren’t Forced to Eat Garbage, back then, they won’t be now if we trim the budget a bit.

Of that 3 trillion, almost 300bn goes to debt interest, which we wouldn’t have to pay if earlier generations hadn’t shafted us with the bill. We could pay this off within a generation, as many other countries have done. You should note that, as the deficit grows, the current older generation is sticking our generation with the bill. Hey, if you’re elderly, deficit spending is a credit card you never have to pay off!

The military will suck up almost 800bn next year. I’m fine with a military only four times as strong as China’s, who are next in military spending, so let’s spend 200bn instead of 800bn, and use much of this money to train a true National Guard (i.e., civilians trained to defend the homeland) rather than a backup foreign war fighting base. This change could come over 20 years. You might say, “But Kevin, we barely have enough troops and funds to fight two wars halfway around the world, simultaneously, while also basing over 200,000 troops in places like Japan and the UK, and building completely redundant massive new ships and airplanes.” And I say, exactly.

Various forms of redistribution are, incredibly, 1.5 trn, or half the budget; I’m just counting SocSec, Medicare, Medicaid, and Dept. of Labor outlays like unemployment and welfare (though I’m not including things like Dept. of Housing grants, etc.). I’m more than glad to means test that which is not already means tested, phasing out the current system slowly alongside a phaseout of payroll taxes. Let’s say we cut half of this with means testing, sometime over the next 20 years. (Aside: you might say, as do many Seniors, that the old folks today have paid in their money, so they should get it out. Not true. Your average retiree today gets something like 3 times as much money out of SS as he or she put in. All joking aside, SS and Medicare are funded as a pyramid scheme. It’s absurd.)

Aside from debt, cash redistribution, and the military, the entire federal budget is only 3% of GDP, or 440bn - that’s highways, space shuttles, diplomats, NIH, the Fed, and on and on. Of that, 50bn are Veteran’s Benefits that we’re obligated to provide. Of the other 390bn, let’s cut out a bit of the chaff here and there - we have 17 intelligence agencies and 5 federal bank regulators, for instance - to knock a conservative 10% out of this piece of the budget.

With just a few changes, the federal budget falls from 3 trn to 1.35trn. That is, we could entirely get rid of payroll taxes, and reduce income taxes by a third, and still balance the budget; you’ll note that the current government is 10% over budget even with that money. If you added in a Pigouvian tax on carbon, you would raise enough money to internalize the pollution problem and allow income taxes to be halved.

I’m wholly in favor of government helping the unlucky. I’m wholly in favor of public roads. I even think (unlike many libertarians) that most real government spending on things like NIH, NASA, overseas aid, etc. are worthwhile things that would be difficult to do without government. What I’m not in favor of is a government that serves as a mechanism to shuffle around money from the politically unconnected to the politically connected.

And yet the politicians act like they’re taking a brave stand when they oppose a million dollars in earmark spending somewhere. Get real. Stop wasting our money.

I’ve never really believed in painkillers - medicine is incredibly useful in treating diseases your body can’t fight on its own, but pain is different. I don’t understand the people who pop a pill every time they have a headache. How do they ever expect to improve their tolerance for pain?

So you can imagine I was a bit disheartened when I got up Thursday with enough pain in my right foot that I walked with a limp/gangsta lean (call it what you will) at work all day. I don’t remember rolling on that ankle or twisting it or anything of that sort. By Friday, I physically could not put any weight on the front of my right foot, and was having a lot of trouble even walking. The pain was local to somewhere between the ankle and the fifth (outside) metatarsal. This is particularly worrying because, as anyone who follows sports knows, stress fractures on the fifth metatarsal are pretty common, can come on without any trigger, and often require surgery that puts you out of commission for 6-8 weeks.

I gave up and made a quick appointment to a local podiatrist who worked as the team doctor for a local college basketball team. I always like the athlete doctors the best - they won’t tell you things like “oh, and don’t do anything fun for the next month.” We got the X-rays and luckily nothing was broken. It turned out I’d sprained one of the ligaments between the cuboid and the third cuneiform bone, but since those bones move around so little, I hadn’t noticed until a few days after it happened.

“But, Doc, I have a soccer game tomorrow.”

No worries, he says; a quick jaunt to the cabinet for a needle filled with steroids (cortisone, in this case), and ten minutes later, I couldn’t feel the pain. The next day, I played a full soccer game at 90%. To go from unable to walk to near full strength in a half day? Maybe I shouldn’t put down modern medicine so much.

Then again, the anti-inflammatories the Doc gave me are still sitting unopened on my kitchen counter.  Only a wuss needs those, right?

1) Listen to Wilkins Micawber

From Dickens’ David Copperfield: “My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” That is, don’t spend more money that you have. Steve Martin covered the basics here.

The meaning of debt is a bit confusing. You’re in debt if you owe more on an asset than it’s worth. So if your car depreciates 20% in a year, and you pay 20% of the car down over a year, the car loan really isn’t debt. Reasonable, standard loans for cars and houses are fine. There is really no other time you should ever carry debt. You should have saved six months of living expenses in case you become unemployed, and carry (at least) catastrophic health insurance in case on an emergency (a policy with a $5000 annual cap would cost me $50/month here in Virginia, so there’s really no excuse for an employed person not to carry it). So rule #1: don’t go into debt in the first place.

2) Pay down high-interest debt before you do anything
There are, I assure you, huge numbers of people earning 5% on their savings while carrying 18% credit card debt. Every dollar they save here is losing 13% (well, 11.5% for the math nerds, but the idea is the same). Rule 2 is simple: pay down any debt that charges more interest than you get from your savings.

3) Open a Roth IRA, and max it out, including employer matches
In a Roth IRA, you pay income tax today, but then don’t have to pay tax again on your IRA savings and interest, whereas with a standard IRA, you avoid tax today and pay tax later. Without doing the math, I assure you that the magic of compound interest ensures that any 20-something year old is much better saving in a Roth than in a traditional IRA. Plus, the savings can be extracted penalty-free to help pay down a house. If you are saving for retirement, a Roth essentially doubles the interest rate you’re getting.

If your employer matches savings, you would have to be retarded not to save up to the match limit (my work matches up to 6% of salary, for instance). That is an immediate 100% return on savings! There is nothing you will every do in life that will give you 100% immediate return. Set up a Roth and take your boss’ free money.

(I should note that I’m a hypocrite here since I don’t have a Roth IRA, but that’s only because I’m blowing through my savings traveling next year. What can ya do? I’ll set one up as soon as I’m able.)

4) Gamble in Vegas, not on the stock market
Most economists believe in a theory called the EMH, which states that financial markets are efficient. That is, there is not just free money lying around - an asset’s expected value is dependent on its risk, and that’s it. Even if you think this is a bit strong, the point remains the same: don’t buy individual stocks unless you have some secret, insider knowledge (and in that case, call your lawyer). When you look at a stock price, that price already accounts for all market participants’ knowledge of a company or mineral or government bond. You were not the only one who saw Jim Cramer hype a stock on CNBC or read a great article about Google’s growth in the New York Times. There are tons of very smart, very rich people in places like New York and London who spend all day, every day, trying to figure out how to make more than everyone else by buying assets, and by the very nature of the market, half of them will make less than the median return.

There is a way around this: keep your money invested in index funds, which essentially buy hundreds and hundreds of companies for you. Companies like Vanguard or DFA will do this for you, and can help pick funds that make sense for your risk tolerance. You will make “average” returns. Anything else is gambling. In face, anything else is like playing poker at a table with professionals - there is no way you will do better than them. The best stock tip you will ever get is to stop listening to stock tips.

Finally, A dollar saved is WAY better than a dollar earned
You pay taxes on dollars you earn. You do not pay taxes on dollars you save. If you pay 33% in taxes at the margin (which is you do if you make over 32k, including social security), then saving $5000 is the same as getting a $7500 raise. If you want to be richer, you are always better off saving money that trying to increase your income.

Whew. OK. Now on to the fun part: how to get free money.

You may remember my post on this subject early last year. I’ve learned some new tricks, so it’s time for an update. I’m going to assume that you like to travel, so these tips lean toward “earning free travel”, though “earning free money” is a major part as well. As long as your credit is decent, you can do all of this no problem, as it has (if anything) only extremely minor harms for your credit score; in my case, my credit score is higher than it was last year. By decent credit, I mean no bankruptcies or late payments, and at least a few years of credit history. I have no assets and an income below the US median, and I’ve never been declined for a credit card; in fact, I get asked to upgrade to platinum on most applications. Here we go:

There are two basic ways to get free money from credit card companies. The first is to take advantage of sign-up bonuses. These usually require you to spend $250 or $750 or whatever on the card; after that, just set the card on your nightstand and cancel the old ones every six months or so (even better, roll the old ones into current credit cards you have with the same company, since this is a bit better for your credit score; if you call them up, they’ll let you do this). The second is to take any loan that you can get which has an interest rate lower than (roughly) the Fed Funds rate. More on this in a second.

First, the signup bonus. So, which cards to get? You should definitely sign up for the Citi AAdvantage card, which gives you 25000 miles on American after spending $750. The biggest reason is that Citi is “churnable”; that is, every 60 days or so, you can get another card and bonus. (Below, I’ll show you how to do this every 30 days). On AA, 6 cards and $10,000 in spending on those cards would get you a 25,000 mile, up-to-16-flight ticket in business class, essentially enough for a round the world flight in business every year. For instance, you could do yourself a nice little 4-week trip like San Fran-Ayers Rock-Mauritius-Kilimanjaro-Paris-Iceland-San Francisco, paying only taxes.

I’d also get the Citi PremierPass, which gets 25,000 ThankYou Points. This isn’t churnable, but 25,000 TY points can get you any flight ticket worth less than $400, so basically any domestic flight you want. There are no blackout dates. You could also get a $250 gift certificate to any number of places instead. This card has an annual fee ($75), however; nothing else I mention here has a fee.

The Chase United card gets you 20,000 miles on signup, so I’d definitely pick that one up as well.

Finally, the Starwood Amex gets you 10,000 Starwood points after your first purchase (no dollar limit). Starwood points can be used at Starwood hotels (such as Sheraton) and have no limits, so if a room is available, it can be picked up with Starwood points. They also have a points + pay deal which is very nice (I stayed at the swanky Sheraton Dubai Creek for $60 + 4,000 points/night, including taxes). If you don’t need hotel points, though, the real benefit is that SPG points can be transferred into airline miles, with 20,000 points getting you 25,000 miles on any number of airlines. If you do sign up for this card, please go through this link and use ID: 3073926108 and Source Code: A00000582S. You still get the 10k points, but they kick back 5000 to me if you do this before the end of February.

You can double up any of these offers by getting the business versions of these cards for your “small business”. There’s no registration process for sole proprietorships, so if you say you have a consulting business and are a real person, then you have a consulting business. So get the business versions of these cards as well.

If you watch sites like Bankaholic and View from the Wing, you’ll get a heads up on limited time offers. Both Amex and Chase had offers that essentially gave you $250 on signup last year.

For everyday purchases, the Chase Freedom is a good card. It gives you $50 on signup, then 1% cash back on purchases and 3% on purchases at your named 3 biggest areas. So you could get 3% back on utilities, grocery stores and restaurants. Whatever you use for everyday purchases, you should make sure you average 2% or so in rewards; I value Starwood points at around 2 cents right now, so I use my Starwood Amex for everyday buys.

With your credit card situation handled, the next thing you should do is move to an online bank. Remember that 6 months of living money you should have saved? You should be getting 5% back on that instead of letting it sit in Bank of America or whoever’s drawers. Check out WaMu online, ING Direct, Oregon Community Credit Union and many others for the best deal - optimally, you’ll get $100 or so signup bonus. FatWallet is a good site to research this.

Now that your cards are settled, save another $5 a week or so by “clipping” coupons, or printing out coupons. Seriously, if you just look through the Sunday paper, it’s almost impossible not to save $5 next time you hit the store. On online purchases, you should always google what your buying followed by the word coupon. For instance, Dell regularly has $300 coupons for their laptops, buy.com has an ongoing $10 coupon on anything bought with Google Checkout, etc.

OK, final bit of free money. You’ve already got your hundreds of dollars of signup bonuses and your two free kickass vacations per year, plus 5% interest on your savings, 2% back on your spending, and 5-10% off your purchases. Now it’s time to really make money work for you.

Do you know those “0% APR balance transfer for one year” offers you sometimes get? There are tons of them out there, some of which have no fees, and can give you, say, a $10,000 dollar transfer. In your 5% checking account, that’s $500 that you’ll earn before you pay it back (actually, slightly less because you’ll have to make the minimum monthly payment, but that’s no problem). You don’t need to have a balance to transfer to do this: the normal way is that your “transferred” card will show a negative $10,000 balance, and you simply have that card credit the $10,000 to whatever bank you’ve linked (or simply send you a check). This seems too good to be true, right? It actually works and many people are doing it.

Now, this *will* affect your credit score, but only in a short-term way. If you need a car loan or a mortgage in the next year, you shouldn’t do this. If you’re not taking a loan this year, it doesn’t matter since the hit on your score will go away a year from now. (Check out one guy’s FICO tracking while doing this trick here).

So how to do this? There are many easy tutorials online, but I liked this guide (specifically for Citi offers), and this more general guide in five parts.

Note that my tips are only for the really easy stuff - I know people who make $10,000/year (tax free, since cash back isn’t normally considered income) through signup bonuses and the like. The tips above should make you a good $3-5k per year in free money and travel, though, and that’s not a bad deal.

One last tip: If you’re in the market for a new cell plan, get the Sprint ERO (employee referral). Go here, use referral savings@sprintemi.com, and you can get 500 anytime, unlimited nights (7pm) and weekends, unlimited text and unlimited data for $30/month. You can pick up, say, a Palm Centro on signup for $99. There’s a two year requirement, but I’m pretty confident that you will nowhere else get a cell plan this cheap.

That’s all I’ve got. Now go feel richer! Let me know if you have any questions.

I never like thinking about elections before we even reach an election year, but now that 2008 has arrived, it’s time to get serious. It’s no secret that, politically, I’m a libertarian-leading moderate. I think that the Constitution and personal responsibility should be the bedrock of politics. Beyond that, I also think there are some ways the government can help the less-fortunate and the unlucky, I think that decisions should be made locally if possible (the principle of subsidiarity), and I think that America’s foreign policy should be guided by “the city on a hill”, where we hold our actions and leadership to a higher standard than other countries. Anything else is just details.

That said, as noted in my last post, I don’t see how anyone with political beliefs similar to mine can consider anything other than the war in Iraq to be the most important issue in this election. The money spent, $1 trillion, dwarfs any other governmental spending that is on the table right now. The damage to American lives, Iraqi lives, and the reputation of this country has been enormous. And the people fighting this war are overwhelmingly men my age. They’re the ones who, like a friend of mine from college, signed up for the military after 9/11 because they wanted to capture bin Laden, and ended up being sent to a country which was maybe the #30 most important place for Islamist terrorism, a country which essentially proved of no danger to the United States. They’re the ones who, like the same friend, left a promising college student and returned with serious depression. They’re the ones who tell me we’re wasting our time.

In 2004, I felt that General Clark was the best choice - he had good advisers, was going to end the war, and had the substantial foreign policy experience to restore America’s public image.

(Quick aside: Note the reason for the experience is to restore America’s image, not to keep America safe. I don’t know how al-Qaeda has somehow become considered a danger on the level of 1940s Fascism or the USSR. Al-Qaeda is a group of a couple thousand radicals, generally poorly equipped, with no major state support, who took advantage of a passive policy toward hijackers to kill a bit under 3000 people. Fascism controlled the state apparatus of a number of major countries, was a legitimate threat to conquer all of Europe, and led to the deaths of millions upon millions. The USSR was minutes away from firing a nuclear missile in October 1962, which would likely have triggered the greatest loss of life in the history of the world. Hell, even in the early 20th century, there were groups of anarchists in the United States that murdered a president, tried to kill another, and exploded a bomb on Wall Street. I’d say that aside from the 1920s and the 1990s, the current decade is the safest decade for America in the last hundred years, and if anything, we should be reducing the size of our military. I’d also say that the media (and many politicians) are incredibly ignorant of history.)

This year, the field is quite a bit better than in 2004. On the Republican side, since every candidate but Ron Paul (more on him in a second) is in favor of the Iraq status quo, I can’t really endorse any of them, but let’s go through them one by one. I do like McCain, and did even in 2000. He tends to get things done, believes in personal responsibility and the free market, and has taken pretty bold stands in favor of a humane response to illegal immigrant, and against the torture which an incredible number of Congressmen inexplicably support. But his plan for Iraq is to keep us there for another 50 to 100 years. So he’s out. Rudy Guiliani is getting my anti-endorsement. He has a long of record of disregard for rules on executive power, has a foreign policy team that is an order of magnitude more extreme than the Bush administration, and can only claim “being mayor on 9/11″ and “hiring William Bratton“, the sheriff who cleaned up New York and went on to clean up LA, as accomplishments. I also think he’s immoral considering how he’s treated his many wives, and I think “immorality” is a bad characteristic for a president. His election would be an absolute disaster for this country. I actually like Mike Huckabee, but I don’t think I can vote for a guy who doesn’t believe evolution is real. He’s definitely the least bad of the Republican field (big up when he mentioned that he’s a “10th Amendment kind of guy” during the New Hampshire debate tonight). Ron Paul has the right policy on the war and civil liberties, but otherwise he’s just a bit crazy. His ideas on monetary policy, which he mentions nonstop, are considered a bit ridiculous by basically every mainstream economist. His heart on the role of the government is in the right place, though, so I can’t hate too much. Fred Thompson is a joke. “What policy of Obama do you disagree with, Sen. Thompson?” “Well, he’s liberal.” “And?” “Well, he supports liberal policies.” A vote for Fred is a vote for more of the same, plus it’s clear from his lack of campaigning that he’s both too old to be President and doesn’t really want to be President anyway. Finally, Mitt Romney is a total hack. Give him credit for doing something about health care, though the Governator’s plan is a bit better, and also give him credit for actually seeming to have read policy papers unlike some of the others in this list. But he’s clearly willing to do whatever any special interest wants him to do, and his government would also be more of the same.

Ok, let’s turn to the Democrats. This is tough. All the Democrats are far too willing to increase the size of government and ignore individual liberty, but problematically, the Republicans are too (Bush has damaged civil liberties and increased the size of government more than nearly any President in modern history). That said, of the four major candidates, the only one I would exclude right away is Edwards. I understand he’s passionate about his Dad and the mills, but his economic prescription is far too populist and ill-informed for my tastes, and I also don’t think he has anywhere near enough experience (one term in the Senate and many years as a trial lawyer?). So let’s move on to the other three.

First, Hillary. I think it’s safe to say that a Hillary presidency will be similar to Bill’s time at the White House. And to be honest, that’s a pretty good thing. I just fear that Hillary is too tight with a lot of special interests, and perhaps too divisive to get Congress to pass any major reform. She also has the worst record on Iraq. I also do think it is important to have a female president at some stage - not because I think females “deserve their turn”, but because I think females and minorities are just as capable as elderly white men and it’s a waste for voters to not consider capable people for the most important job in the land. That said, I think Hillary in probably third in the mind right now.

Next, Bill Richardson. I really, really like Bill Richardson. He’s unquestionably the most qualified (UN ambassador, governor, Secretary of Energy, major overseas negotiation experience, etc.). If you didn’t see the New Hampshire debate, watch the bits (when they make it to Youtube, as I’m sure they will tonight) where he talks about Iraq and where he gives his “What’s wrong with experience?” speech. He’s balanced budgets, respected the individual, and worked with many of the most important people in the world.  I don’t know that his economic policy would be great, and his plans for “national service” are quite worrying, but really the only problem I have with him is that he’s dead in the water, polling in the single digits.  I think it’s safe to say that he would be given the Sec. of State position if he wanted it, though.  Put him second, and if a miracle happens, I’d be glad to vote for him.

So I guess that leaves Obama.  You know, I didn’t particularly like Obama at first - he really is quite inexperienced.  But then he hired a top-notch economics team.  And pledged to leave Iraq (and opposed the war from the start).   And came across as more honest, sober and thoughtful than any of the other candidates.  I was particularly impressed that, when Richardson claimed that a cap-and-trade for carbon is paid by businesses while a carbon tax is paid by consumers, Obama interjected and noted that both would have the same effect on consumers.  Nothing like an understanding of tax incidence to make me happy, huh?   I do think that it is not trivial that Obama is a minority, has a Muslim father, and is the only presidential candidate to young to be a Boomer.   His policies are grounded while his rhetoric is not, and given this year’s field, I think Obama would make a fine president indeed.

What am I missing, guys?

It’s worth looking back because I think many people underestimate the human capacity for self-improvement. Benjamin Franklin, up there with the illegal immigrant Alexander Hamilton and the original George W as the best Founding Father, used to keep a daily record of his virtues and vices. He would give himself tick marks if he’d performed each of the thirteen virtues in a given day. Each week, Franklin turned his attention to a particular virtue, cycling through the order fully every quarter. Certainly Franklin didn’t claim perfection, but “tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”

And part of that endeavor must involve spotting where our mind has let us astray, musn’t it? So I’m going to go back to the start

September 16, 2001
“We have to be the better man, the bigger man. My idea: The US should spend 1 dollar on building schools and hospitals in the 3rd world for every dollar we spend fighting terrorism. Lead by example. Be the shining “beacon of freedom” that Bush talked about.And speaking about Bush talking, he has not done a good job in this tragedy. Guiliani, Pataki and Powell have all showed great leadership strength. Bush’s speech the night of the attack didn’t mention anything that he should have. Where was the “Please remember that Arab-Americans are Americans, too, and think the acts today are just as egregious as non-Muslim Americans think them.” Or “Your Civil Liberties are not in danger: If we let our freedom slip away, the terrorists will have won”. Or “There is no need for panic economically. Our nation is still strong”. Or “We will be cautious and deliberate in finding the enemy. No one is going to be drafted. We will be the better man and try at all costs to avoid killing civilians when we seek out justice on those who killed my fellow Americans today.”

I’d say that holds up generally well. I mean, this essentially calls Bush out for screwing over our civil liberties and tossing military power around in a manner out of proportion to the threat, and only five days after 9/11. Also note that this is the only nice thing I’ve ever said about Guiliani.

Nothing about war was mentioned again until September 2002, when I mentioned that I was convinced that the Iraq talk was only rhetoric designed to pressure Saddam into giving up the ghost on WMD and stopping internal prosecution. At that point, I didn’t think there was any actual chance of war, but:

September 20, 2002
The wording of Bush’s request to Congress to allow him unconditional power in dealing with threats in Iraq is very similar to the text of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that got us in the 10-year disaster called the Vietnam War. Speaking as an American, not even as a citizen of the world, and as a non-liberal, I would rather have 10 World Trade Center bombings than another Vietnam War.

I’d say I definitely still believe that’s true. The same post argued that the US should do three things to prevent terrorism other than invade Iraq: force settlement in Israel by disengaging from both the Arafat and the Israel government, facing up to our past foreign policies mistakes and ending future trade in arms, and working to secularize the Middle East (i.e., the Turkey model). I mean, I really was convinced we wouldn’t actually invade Iraq; witness this from October 2002 (the war didn’t begin until March 2003, so I guess I would’ve won):

And I’m making my “the war tactic is a bluff” into a solid bet: A $20 bet is on the table for anyone who wants to bet that the US will go to war with Iraq before, say, New Years Day, assuming that Saddam doesn’t fire missiles at Israel or something like that. Email me if you’re interested. Prepare to send me the check on January 1st.

In January 2003, I laid it all on the line. After listing Saddam’s litany of crimes (and we oughn’t forget, he was a world-class jackass) and listed three possible denouement:

January 18, 2003
So will we go to war? I still think it’s a last resort. If it is about “blood for oil”, as the hippies will tell you, we would have attacked Iraq in July. The US has waited. They have went through the UN. They have put up with Saddam’s lies and torture, and are prepared to put with more if it means avoiding war, which, it must be mentioned, is very expensive and undesirable for the US. The optimal solutions are either a) Saddam and his regime go into exile and is replaced with a UN-monitored democracy, b) Saddam declares a full list of weapons he has and immediately dismantles them, c) Saddam faces war with not just the US, but the world…Military force doesn’t mean war. The threat of military force is also effective. What needs to happen, in this non-bipolar era, is that the world needs to get on the stick and tell the world’s most horrendous leaders to ship up and shape out. “But what about their soveriegnty?” you say, and rightly so. There are some leaders and situations that are too terrible to simply wait. In the twentienth century, more people died from internal repression than from war, and that counts the two worst wars in human history, World War I and World War II.

The world did nothing when Uganda’s Idi Amin killed 300,000, until 5 years after his killing spree started; Tanzania decided it was enough, invaded and removed him.

The world did nothing when Cambodia’s Pol Pot killed 2 million until 4 years after his killing spree started; Vietnam decided it was enough, invaded and removed him.

The world did nothing until too late in Rwanda. They did nothing until too late in Yugoslavia. They did nothing until too late in Timor.

This is not a discussion of US policy. The US has been as guilty of not stopping these regimes (and in some cases, directly supporting the regime, as in the case of Somoza in Nicaragua) as any other nation. This discussion is about what the US, and the world, should do now and in the future.

Put simply, it is morally irresponsible, soveriegnty be damned, for the world to allow dictators to kill thousands upon thousands. It can’t be allowed to continue.

That is why Saddam must change 180 degrees, leave peacefully or be replaced by force. There are no other options. This isn’t about oil. The beachhead we approach is a beach of evil. Its palm trees provide shade only from freedom and human rights. Its grains of sand and the grains of death and suffering on a magnitude that is unimaginable, and that death and suffering shows no signs of slowing.

The coming tide will wipe away that evil. The question, and in this case, the question that Saddam must answer, is how that will happen.

This is really where I laid it all on the line. I’d say I still am much more concerned about internal repression than war between states, since the post-1945 world has been harmed much more by dictators and civil war than by internecine war. I’m a bit embarrassed to have so uncritically accepted the party line on Saddam’s WMD, however, and I should have been more aware of the anti-war sentiments of scholars whose opinions on internal repression I respect (and respected), such as Samantha Power.

Now’s the part where I really look bad, however. You should read the whole thing for yourself. Let’s just say that the following doesn’t hold up well:

April 10, 2003
The call of protesters and the anti-war contingent has been answered. There is peace in Iraq. For the first time in a quarter century. Make no mistake, Iraq was not at peace before the US invaded. Any doubt I had about the rightness of this war has been erased.This war will go down in history as one of the most successful in the history of the world. Less than 150 allied deaths. The most inflated estimates say about 1000 Iraqi civilian casualties; most unbiased sources say less than half that. Children and political prisoners have been freed from jails. The thoughts of a nation have been freed to the air. In 3 weeks, a nation was defeated on its own turf by a relatively small portion of the US military and our friends’ armies. Saddam’s acid baths, his extravagant gold palaces, his hospitals used as army bases, his torture chambers: all are now shown to the world.

In my defense, if we would have just pulled most of our troops from Iraq in April after we’d rolled through Saddam’s army, the insurgency might not have happened. By early 2004, only 10 months after the war started, I listed my preference in the 2004 election as the most plausible candidate pledging to bring the troops home: Wesley Clark.

January 19, 2004
He is a former NATO Commander with a history of diplomatically working with our allies around the world, organizing coalitions, speaking tactfully and deeply understanding security issues. He is hawkish in his liberal internationalism, pressing for using the US Military on humanitarian missions when grave disasters might result, such as in Kosovo and Bosnia. He would follow the Powell Doctrine of using US force only when we can guarantee victory, only when we have the support of the American people and only when we have a clear exit strategy. He understands that the problems the US has with terrorism from the Moslem world are grave, and must be dealt with accordingly.

So there it is.

I’m actually pleasantly surprised - Past Self came off much better than Present Self would have imagined. I guess if I take any lesson out of Iraq, it’s 1) don’t trust the government, 2) military might is often not the most useful solution to internal repression problems (though, admittedly, we should balance the lessons of Iraq with, say, the lessons of Kosovo), and 3) foreign policy is and always will be more important than economic and domestic issues.

I still want to see a US that serves as a “city on a hill”, that welcomes foreign visitors and hardworking immigrants searching for opportunity, that stands up for the oppressed no matter where they live, and that leads on international issues (whether they be trade, the climate or human rights) rather than follows (or worse, obstructs). I don’t think this is too much to ask. To be honest, there are very few candidates in this year’s election who meet those criteria: Richardson, probably Obama, and to a lesser extent Hillary. I’m more amazed by the week that the Republican field, in general, feels that “we need to do what Bush did, only to a greater extreme” is going to win them an election.

Finally, I should note that, knowing what we knew in March 2003, I’m still not sure invading Iraq was necessarily the wrong thing to do, since if we’d be able to get out with similar human toll as in Afghanistan and Kosovo, the human rights ledger would have lied firmly on the side of “remove Saddam”. The projected costs to the US economy were also closer to $50bn than $1 trillion. Knowing what we know in 2007, though, believing that invading Iraq was the right thing to do is essentially lunacy. $1 trillion could have funded, for instance, the oil-free, emissions-free, transport of the future PRT in all of the 100 largest US cities. The death rate in Iraq has been substantially higher since 2003 than during the late years of Saddam’s reign. It is unbelievable that so many politicians (including the entire Republican field, aside from Ron Paul) still thinks the Iraq War was proper in retrospect.

What do you guys think? How have your own feelings on the war changed?

Next redesign coming around June, when I temporarily make this my trip blog. Less than 8 months to go before I take off, and man, am I excited. The plan is currently:

Aug 08 Australia, Papua/Vanuatu/NZ (?)
Sept 08 Japan, Western China
Oct 08 China, South Africa
Nov 08 SE Africa
Dec 08 Kiliminjaro (?), Central Africa
Jan 09 Burma, SE Asia
Feb 09 SE Asia, India
Mar 09 India, Mideast, Egypt
Apr 09 Turkey, Balkans
May 09 Italy, France
Jun 09 Spain, Venezuela, Brazil
Jul 09 Peru, Argentina

I think this schedule does a reasonable job of being cost-efficient, arriving in places when the weather is reasonably good, and avoiding high tourist seasons, so I can’t imagine any major changes at this point. The more the merrier, so email me if you want to join along in any of these places!