Ari Armstrong's Free Colorado

ProgressNowColorado just launched an awesome new fundraiser offering a “Progressive” bumper sticker for the low, low price of $5 (or, for the real bargain shoppers out there, two for $10).

My favorite aspect of the campaign is that the featured image shows one of the “Progressive” bumper stickers on the back of a V8 Toyota Tundra. (See my screen capture on Picasa.)

Talk about a carbon footprint! This glorious gas guzzler gets an impressively low 16 miles to the gallon for city driving. (The figure varies slightly by model.) I definitely have some energy envy; my Honda Civic gets 50 percent more miles to the gallon. Foiled by the progressives again! I may have to take some extra leisure drives up to Boulder just to keep up the pace.

Can I trust that Colorado’s so-called progressives will now stop haranguing people for their gasoline consumption? Now that would be progress.

The Objective Standard just published my latest article, Contra Occupiers, Profits Embody Justice. Following are a few excepts:

According to various Occupy Wall Street protesters, profits hurt people and constitute injustice. … [F]ar from undermining justice, protecting the right to profit in a free society is an instance of justice. … Unfortunately, many Occupy Wall Street protesters call for ‘social justice,’ which is a euphemism for more looting. True justice neither needs nor permits the adjective ‘social’ before it. Justice necessarily applies in a social context…

Check out the entire piece!

Incidentally, following is the interview at Zuccotti Park that I quote from.

Thankfully, the Tea Partiers are now taking useful action in politics, rather than holding endless rallies. For the Occupiers, holding endless protests is their political action. I think the Occupations, often violent, law-breaking, trashy affairs, don’t ultimately do much to help the leftist cause. But they do help define the debate in America: many people now openly debate the merits of socialism and capitalism, and that is a good thing. It’s about time we got back to fundamentals.

I visited Occupy Wall Street in New York on November 3, where I captured several interviews. Note that, while I ask some challenging questions and editorialize a bit, my goal here was not to debate but to interview. It always irritated me when journalists covered the Tea Parties without actually talking to the Tea Partiers. So I wanted to give the Occupiers the chance to say what’s on their mind. In many cases, their positions are more subtle and nuanced than perhaps many of their opponents tend to recognize. Here my main goal is to present the Occupation case; later I’ll pursue the discussion more forcefully.

Also see my editorial video from the day, “Wall Street Occupiers Depend on Capitalism.”

Here is some of my coverage of the Tea Parties:

Voices of the Tea Party

“Eat the Rich?” Unions, Tea Parties Stage Opposing Denver Rallies

Tax Day Tea Party: Denver 2010

Tea Party 9/12 March on Washington Video Interviews

NYT Smears Tea Partiers

Last night I argued that camping out in government parks in the city (where overnight camping is always illegal) is not a First Amendment right.

This morning, I point out that the Occupy Denver movement stole services from Xcel Energy, destroyed property, and cost taxpayers untold thousands of dollars.

9News reports, ”Officials say the protesters tapped into the electricity of park structures (like lighting fixtures, etc.) to run their equipment. Xcel is repairing the damage the protesters caused, structure by structure.” Those costs get passed along to other energy customers. What, do the rest of us also get to steal services so long as we’re protesting something? Hey, A-Basin is open; maybe I can just hop on the ski lift without paying if I wear a political shirt.

I have not seen a figure for how many state patrol and Denver city officers were involved in the night’s activities — no doubt scores at least. So how much will tax payers in the region end up coughing up to cover these costs? Who’s going to calculate that tab?

And then there are the dump trucks required to clean up the mess. The Denver Post reports, ”Dump trucks were brought in for tents and other trash that authorities picked up and threw away.” Dump trucks, as in plural? How much did that cost taxpayers?

I recognize the long and noble history of civil disobedience. Think about Rosa Parks, Gandhi, and those who refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Act. Today’s Tea Party gets its name from an act of civil disobedience. Strategic civil disobedience in the name of a great cause to advance individual rights is a sacred thing.

But the Denver Occupiers do not belong in the same company. They have no noble cause, nor even a coherent message. Instead, they’re stealing, destroying, and looting the taxpayers as a cause unto itself. Call it the Narcissist Invasion.

Bob Glass filed the following report from New York. Photo credit:Wikipedia.

On Wednesday I went to Zuccotti park in lower Manhattan to see what all the hoopla was about concerning the swelling crowds gathering to protest Wall Street and Capitalism. Zuccotti park, one of the few private parks in New York City, had been turned into a command post and staging ground for the myriad of groups and individuals who had gathered to vent their rage against the disparity between what they perceived to be the haves and have nots in this country.

The scene was part Woodstock (minus the talent and music) part rave (minus anything resembling ecstasy) and part public forum (minus anything resembling intelligent dialogue). The overwhelming majority of people were in their teens and early twenties — lost souls not quite sure what they were angry about. I spent a few hours going through the crowd talking to as many people as I could, and it seemed that each person had a different agenda, a different bone to pick, and a different cause celebre.

In addition to the young people in search of life’s meaning and some type of government handout there was the usual assortment of left wing organizations, including but not limited to the Communist Party USA, the Socialist Workers Party, Workers World Party, and dozens of unions including the SEIU. It became clear to me that the rhetoric of class warfare championed by Barack Obama and dutifully spread by the major media had permeated the crowd and was the only common thread holding the rabble together.

They all seemed to agree that greed and capitalism are the roots of all evil and culprits for all of society’s ills. They shouted the usual left-wing slogans like “Tax the rich feed the poor,” “Jail the bankers,” and “The people united will never be defeated.” They were particularly upset about the taxpayers bailing out all of the big Wall Street banks and investment houses, but no one seemed to make the connection that the person most guilty of this is Barack Obama.

It soon became clear to me that I was witnessing the formation of Obama’s shock troops, those he will try to exploit to bully and intimidate his way back into power.

The supreme irony was not lost on me that so many of these people had ipads and ipods and were using them with great success to organize their movement. I could not help but remember Lenin’s famous quote, “The capitalists will sell us the rope that we will hang them with.” And I thought of the passing of Steve Jobs, one of America’s greatest inventors, entrepreneurs, visionaries and capitalists. A man who will forever change the way we all live for the better.

Considering what little the occupation crowd has made possible, compared to what the great champion of the free market Steve Jobs has made possible, I could only shake my head. As Howard Roark reminds us, “Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light.” The occupation forces seem eager to throw in the torch.

I am an atheist, and I am also a liberal in the true and classical sense, meaning that I advocate human liberty and individual rights, including in the economic sphere. (By this understanding, most people who today call themselves “liberals” are in fact anti-liberal.) One might predict, then, that I would feel some smug satisfaction when reading comments like the following:

“Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent”

“Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ”

“Liberals and atheists are further along the evolutionary scale than conservatives and religious believers.”

And yet, because such comments reflect the abuse of science, I instead find them irritating.

While one study indeed correlates higher intelligence with self-identification as a liberal or atheist, the study certainly does not demonstrate that people tend to become atheists or liberals because they are more intelligent.

The study in question, “Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent,” by Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science, comes from the March, 2010, Social Psychology Quarterly. Here’s what the abstract says:

The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values (for children, marriage, family, and friends). The analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the General Social Surveys (Study 2) show that adolescent and adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism, atheism, and men’s (but not women’s) value on sexual exclusivity.

The basic theory, then, is that smarter people are more likely to believe novel things. This is plausible. Smarter people tend to engage in more theoretical reasoning, and they may feel less at home among their social peers, so they tend to adopt new ideas and practices.

The abstract’s claim, then, that “adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism” etc. is clearly bogus. The term “increases” implies a causal connection where only correlation is evident.

Thankfully, a CNN science report Elizabeth Landau actually does a pretty good job of explaining the implications of the study. She points out the following details regarding the study:

* The study involves people in the U.S. who self-identify as liberal or atheist.

* The IQ differences are statistically significant but small.

* “George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey… said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ.”

* The study takes an absurd (my term) view of “liberalism,” defining it as “concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people.”

* “Vegetarianism, while not strongly associated with IQ in this study, has been shown to be related to intelligence in previous research, Kanazawa said.”

Following are merely some examples of what’s wrong with the study:

* Many “conservatives” advocate “liberalism” as defined by the study. Certainly many Christians do.

* Many Christians are also (self-identified) liberals. So if you’re a liberal Christian, does the study predict you’ll be smart or dumb?

* Many smart people move to the city to work at high-paid jobs. Of course metropolitan attitudes tend to run more “liberal.” I suppose that what the survey is really showing is that “smart people tend to move to big cities.”

* Smarter parents tend to have smarter kids, so that may be expanding the bias noted above.

* Smarter people might be better at gaming surveys, and they might be more intensely aware of the presumed biases of the surveyors.

* Some variants of religion are quite new and complex, while some variants of atheism are pretty silly. Likewise, some strains of conservative thought are highly abstract and novel, while some variants of “liberalism” are bone-headed and ancient. So, presumably, some of the very smartest people are turning to the most novel forms or interpretations of conservatism and religion.

* In many cases the adoption of atheism and liberalism probably has a lot more to do with cliquishness than intelligence. As Bailey indicated, the attitude may be something like, “I think I’m pretty smart, and I want to fit in with all my smart friends, so I will parrot their views.” (Obviously cliquishness would also apply to conservatism and theism.)

So does the study show that higher intelligence drives people to turn to atheism or liberalism? No, it certainly does not. It shows a slight correlation that could mean any number of things.

Here’s what the study does prove beyond any doubt: More intelligent people are more likely to publicly articulate novel and pseudo-scientific nonsense.

In a recent column, E. J. Dionne claims, “Young Americans are the linchpin of a new progressive era in American politics.” Those “born in 1981 or after” are “without question, the most liberal generation since [the] New Dealers.”

There is a rather large problem with Dionne’s article: he never explains what a “liberal” is or in what sense young Americans are more “liberal.” In the true sense of the term, I am a “liberal,” because I advocate liberty and individual rights, while the New Dealers were statist reactionaries who fought against market liberalism. So, absent any definitions or mention of specific beliefs, Dionne’s article is worthless.

So let us turn to the Pew study cited by Dionne to get some specifics. Offhand, the “Millennials” don’t sound like a bad bunch. Pew describes the Millennials as “confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and open to change. They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. They’re less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history.”

I regard this as great news: “One-in-four are unaffiliated with any religion, far more than the share of older adults when they were ages 18 to 29.”

What about politics?

About half of Millennials say the president has failed to change the way Washington works, which had been the central promise of his candidacy. Of those who say this, three-in-ten blame Obama himself, while more than half blame his political opponents and special interests.

To be sure, Millennials remain the most likely of any generation to self-identify as liberals; they are less supportive than their elders of an assertive national security policy and more supportive of a progressive domestic social agenda. They are still more likely than any other age group to identify as Democrats. Yet by early 2010, their support for Obama and the Democrats had receded, as evidenced both by survey data and by their low level of participation in recent off-year and special elections.

Pew recommends Chapter 8 of its full report for more details. So let’s see if that offers anything else of interest.

By a margin of 53 to 42, Millennials think “Government should do more to solve problems,” as opposed to thinking “Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” This is the only age category in which a majority agree with the first statement. However, the question is ambiguous. Government should do certain things that only government can do — run the military, for instance — whereas certain things our government is now doing should be left to the private sector.

I do not doubt that these younger Americans are more seriously interested in seeing government involved in the economy. In part, that reflects a lack of experience and economic literacy. With the lap-dog media repeating political lies about how the market supposedly caused the housing bust, when it is clear that political interference in the economy actually caused it, and without the memory of Carter or Watergate, it is no big surprise that youngsters place too much faith in political action. Moreover, George W. Bush was so horrible in so many ways that youthful exuberance for Obama was to be expected. Obama’s failures are already eroding that confidence.

What this represents is an outstanding opportunity for the true liberals of the country — market liberals — to help educate this generation on the benefits of a free market economy.

It is clear that the Millennials are more “liberal” in the good sense:

The distinctiveness of members of the Millennial generation is particularly evident in their social values, where they stand out for their acceptance of homosexuality, interracial dating, expanded roles for women and immigrants. At the same time, however, their views are not particularly distinctive in other areas, such as attitudes about business and the social safety net.

Given this apparent respect for individuals, it should not be too hard to persuade many Millennials that fully respecting individuals means respecting their rights, including their economic rights to control their property and freely associate with others.

At least Millennials are no more hostile toward business than are other groups:

Millennials’ views of business are not substantially different from those of older generations. On a three-question index of attitudes about business power and profits, Millennials’ opinions mirror those of Gen Xers and members of the Silent generation and are slightly less critical of business than are the views of Baby Boomers. Millennials are no more likely than other cohorts to say that big companies have too much power, and Millennials are nearly as likely as other cohorts to agree that the country’s strength is mostly built on the success of American business.

On one question, Millennials appear more supportive of business than their elders. A higher percentage of Millennials than other cohorts agrees that “business corporations generally strike a fair balance between making profits and serving the public interest.”

Of course, these questions are ambiguous, so answers to them must be interpreted accordingly. Some businesses really are too big and powerful, precisely because politicians have granted them bailouts, other forms of corporate welfare, and protectionist advantages. “The public interest” is notoriously ambiguous, and the question wrongly implies that pursuing a profit is at odds with “the public interest.” In fact a profit indicates that a company is ably serving its customers’ needs.

Millennials “are not particularly supportive of an expanded government social safety net.”

On the whole, thankfully Dionne is wrong to see in the Pew results youthful support for “liberalism” of the “progressive” (i.e., socialist) variety. What I see is a group of Americans who may be naive about the efficacy of political action and unknowledgeable about the benefits of market liberalism, but who may be very open to arguments about the need for individual rights and economic liberty.