It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong,
and an even bigger one to keep his mouth shut when he's right.
Jim Fiebig
Earlier One-Off Post: How Can Rand Paul Make a Comeback in the GOP Presidential Race?
Image of the Day
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| via the Independent Institute |
Thomas Sowell on the Welfare State
Facebook Corner
(Reason). A major project to reproduce study results from psychology journals found that more than half could not be replicated.
I don't like the leftist conspiracy nonsense that funding is a bias. As someone who has done peer-reviewed research and served as a scholarly journal reviewer, this is not an issue. I think it may be more of a case of incompetent reviewers, of researchers trying to establish their reputations by reporting significant findings, etc.
All of us during our doctoral residency period took methodology courses which hammered home research designs, adequate statistical power, reproducibility, etc.
Just a couple of small examples to make my point. During my dissertation research, I had developed doubts about a famous paper in my field about psychological dimensions of information. I wrote to the author asking if his study data were available, and he replied in a comment written over my query that the data probably got lost during a prior move. A few years later I did a replication study where his theoretical model failed confirmatory factor analysis. I wrote up my findings and presented the paper at a national conference. (Quite often you might find a handful of professors attending a session; I delivered mine to a standing room only crowd in a good-sized classroom, which loved my little paper presentation; I was hoping the original author would show up, but he didn't.)
There was also a famous computer user satisfaction measure, which had been published in a well-known management journal and later adapted in a famous computing journal. It really wasn't until I got into the busywork of designing and validating my own measure that I whiteboxed the methodology. I had never seen a single professor in my area ever challenging the methodology, simply repeating the original researcher's arguments. In the interim I had probably read hundreds, if not thousands of articles in reference fields and never once saw similar arguments presented. (My mom once told me of seeing a famous beautiful celebrity but noticed up close there were flaws in her complexion.) I had never whiteboxed the study with the idea of debunking it; if anything, if I felt the methodology was sound, I looked at possibly emulating it.
My doubts about the measure intensified years later, as I saw more and more studies published using the scale in question. I decided to write a note hoping at least to alert some of my fellow researchers my doubts about the measure and open a dialogue. I submitted the note to a journal and got scathing reviews/rejection back, with personal attacks on me. Clearly the article had been farmed out to reviewers with a vested interest in the measures I was criticizing. They really didn't question my discussion; it was just stuff like "instead of bitching about it, why don't you design your own measure?" or "why doesn't he reference something over the last 10 years in the psychometric literature?"; these weren't bad ideas, but I wasn't trying to write a comprehensive review.
My point is to combat the impression that the psychological literature is simply a vanity press for corporate sponsors, which many commenters suggest.
(Jeffrey Tucker). Conservatives and libertarians have been so focussed on fearing the Reds that many are blind to the more immediate danger of the Browns. How else to explain the astounding blindness that so many have toward Trump and what he represents? He does represent an actual tradition of thought, one that was very successful in the 20th century. Now that we know that Trump called for the execution of Edward Snowden, can we put a bit of thought into the ideology of fascism and what it means for human freedom? This, after all, is the whole thesis of Hayek's Road to Serfdom and Mises's Omnipotent Government.
Yes, fascism is a stealth cancer, whether by the left (Sanders) or the right (Trump). I wonder what Tucker makes over Rockwell's jubiliation over Trump's challenge to the GOP establishment? I honestly worry that this is going to be a case, like Obama, of people needing to be really careful of what they wish for. This guy can't let go of petty disputes with Rosie O'Donnell and Megyn Kelly; I cannot even imagine the damage Trump would do with trade wars or military engagements around the world.
Trump's national populism is not alarming. What's alarming is the amount of people swooning over him for it, and basically making up a fantasy in their head about who he is and what he represents. As you said before, I've never been so fearful of "democracy". I've heard the most bizarre beliefs on what Trump will do for America, all of it mythical.
I do think that economic nationalism is something worrisome, especially if Trump thinks that he has a mandate. The personality cult thing is also worrisome, as you suggest. There have been unrealistic expectations by these people who thought a GOP Congress could dictate terms to a veto-bearing Obama, and they are voicing their protests through an absurd candidate.
Okay, let's assume that your main premise is correct: Trump's thinking is potentially dangerous and he isn't a person we should want to see in the White House. Then what? What candidate or candidates do you see as better alternatives? If Trump is really the GOP front-runner (as current polls suggest) and you succeed in tearing him down, how does that leave us better off? If all we do is criticize Republicans we deem "unacceptable", does that not lead to the disaster of another Democrat victory?
These posts attacking Trump seem to reflect the same flawed thinking as Rand Paul has shown in some of his campaigning. It shows a loss of focus. Trump may not be the best candidate. Trump may even be a "bad" candidate. But the bottom line is that Trump is not the enemy. Democrats are the enemy and beating them requires that we assert positive arguments and convey a positive vision of what a "good" candidate has to offer.
No, you don't get it whatsoever. Trump is trying to buy the Presidency; he is unprincipled, a corrupt buyer of political favors, like putting a fox in charge of the henhouse. He is thin-skinned; he is volatile. If you think that this guy will have his way with Congress, he will be like Nixon on steroids. He promises an activist Presidency--and will abuse the powers of the Presidency. This has already shown itself when he talks about slapping tariffs on Ford products and attacks birthright citizenship. Unauthorized immigrants are not a key issue on any reasonable standard, but he's made them the centerpiece of his campaign; in fact, the number of unauthorized aliens has gone down a million over the Great Recession, but instead of focusing on granting temporary guest worker programs, he wants to throw money into walls and beefed up Border Patrols. This is dangerous shit. We libertarians don't want an activist run amuk in the White House; we need less federal government, not an authoritarian wannabe. Almost anyone sane would be preferable to Trump. Rand Paul is by far the best choice out there; he just does a poor job marketing himself.
It was lawlessness and authoritarianism of the Left the gave rise to Hitler and it is that same high-handedness that will do it again here. Democracy cannot reform itself from within. It is like asking a meth-head to simply get straight. I no longer vote. I withdraw my sanction from this system. As to what is coming, I hope Trump is good, but whatever he is, he is certainly not bad as the slow-motion jailers and crooks at a distance we currently suffer under. Trump is a man, democracy is a system. Men come and go. Systems are forever or until they have drained their victims bone dry.
No. Trump is a right-fascist; you just get a mirror-image of left-fascism. What's serious is he has an army of cultists who are willing to sacrifice the liberty of others to empower the authoritarian-wannabe.
Based on Trump's history, I don't think he actually believes any of this stuff. It's all for show. But that's telling because the reason he's putting on the show is that he has determined that this is what a sizable chunk of the American public actually wants. And his success in the polls is confirming that he's right. Granted, I think a lot of those people won't like where it ends up if we really get serious about it. But it's too late by then, isn't it?
Well, the problem is, this egotist would actually believe that he has an anti-liberty mandate if and when he gets elected to office. Make no mistake, this guy thinks that he's running for CEO of the US and sees the Congress as reporting to him. He will not respond well to a Congress bottlenecking his agenda.
(Rand Paul 2016). Here's something very important Trump just said that Rand Paul has been saying for years--and has been attacked for it.
Unlike the right-fascist Trump, Rand Paul has never suggested that we should have stolen Iraqi oil.
On a separate matter, I recently wrote a personal blogpost on how I think Rand Paul should refocus his campaign.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Chip Bok via Reason |
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| via LFC |
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists
Tina Turner (with Ike), "A Fool in Love"
