Who knew that the express way to the Supreme Court would be through the left wing Princeton history department?
More on Kagan’s early career as a young leftist scholar here and here.
Barack Obama and the new age of “diversity” has given us two left wing Ivy League females — identically unmarried and childless — not simply from the same city and same state, and not simply from the same undergraduate college, but from the very same undergraduate degree program ..
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If Kagan is confirmed 5 out of 9 Justices will be from New York City / New Jersey — and 9 out of 9 will have attended Harvard or Yale law schools …
Diversity.
Without JPS, every single SC justice will be Catholic or Jewish.
There are a lot more reasons to despise the pick rather than geography. My guess is the Mises Institute tends to pick people from similar backgrounds, no?
For example, her effective blocking of lawsuits against Saudi Arabia, her advice to Clinton in regard to supporting a ban on partial birth abortion because it was politically expedient, and her insistence (despite decrying Don’t Ask Don’t Tell) that same-sex marriage is not constitutionally protected.
Now, any self-respecting libertarian supports the dissolution of marriage as a governmental institution, but you know what I mean.
If the pendulum swings too far to the left, then it will eventually have to swing too far to the right. Between the two extremes will reason become a causality?
Abhilash,
I am not sure I understand your posts.
It appears that you are trying to make the case that the middle ground is the prudent path, which cannot be proven logically. Are you suggesting we should negotiate over ethics or liberty? If so this ignores the concepts of unforeseen consquences and political momentum (Herbert Spencer).
I guess you are relying on Hayek’s generous interpretations of Hume’s work. I love Hayek but don’t agree with him about Hume.
Please don’t tell me you are a pragmatist; free enough from ideas to operate in the real world. I would argue that watered down liberalism and pragmatism have done more to hurt liberalism than the collectivists.
I tend to think in three dimensions, Abhilash. Let the left and right fight it out on the X/Y plane; I’ll do my work on the Z axis.
Well it is a de-facto two party system and a de-facto two ideology system (liberalism vs conservatism), those who choose neither are almost by definition marginalized. I think it is still a better option. When presented with two wrong choices, there is always the secret third option of choosing not to choose. But I was not talking about you in particular (obviously) or libertarians in general. My comment was referring to the society at large.
The world is dynamic. It may be true that we have a de-facto 2 ideology system at present but that could change. It is true one can be marginalized in the current political system by choosing neither of the two alternatives. But it is also true offering a third alternative; exposing people to the concept of liberty, may benefit society more than accepting status quo over the long run.
This is one of those posts that is meant to stimulate the thinking process. American political system is delibrately bipolar. Compare that to England where they have a hung parilment now because no party has absolute majority. If people get tired of extreme leftists, they tend to vote in extreme rightists, as if to reverse the old damage.
Between the two extremes, reason is indeed a casuality. Now if there are only two dimensions, that would mean the middle is the best. But that is not the case. That is not the case, but the system forces people into two camps, when in reality there could be three, four, five, ten, fifty or even a hundred camps.
…or one for every individual on Earth.
One each, that is.
I liked Bruce Stein’s comment, I could have sworn most of the Mises Institute’s faculty and associates are white male Roman Catholic buddies from college. Look in the mirror before making accusations.
Probably, but they do not run the country or have a final say on how we live our lives.
Nor do they run around trumpeting diversity, affirmative action, political class warfare, and plastic promises of “opportunity for all.”
Nor does the Mises Institute purport to be a branch of a government “of the people,” supposedly representing the interests of the whole of the America.
The judicial branch of our supposedly republican “government of the people” may well represent your interests, if by “people” they meant “non-Protestant, Left-wing, childless, unmarried, Ivy League people from New York City who never started or ran a business a day in their lives.”
The difference is that the Mises Institute does not claim to value diversity like Obama and modern day liberals do. I admit that I’d prefer people to take my views on liberty, government, and capitalism. I don’t act on the pretense that I value other views when I decry them at every turn and only appoint those who agree with me.
It is not diversity in ideology that is being valued. It is diversity in gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity. In fact it can be argued that what holds people together from such diverse backgrounds is in fact a common ideology, it can be no other way. So yes, in one sense there is no diversity, but in the other sense, there is plenty of diversity.
Valuing diversity of that sort is completely silly IMO. That sort of diversity exists by biological necessity. It is simply a fact of humanity. Placing value in such things is no less racist or sexist than saying that such things lower the value of a person. People are ultimately human, regardless of “race” or sex.
It is all a matter of deciding whether the glass is half full or half empty. If mono-ethnic societies are valued, we will face problems arising from that. If multi-ethnic societies are valued, we will face problems arising from that.
OR
I might as well say, if mono-ethnic societies are valued, we will enjoy benefits arising from that. If multi-ethnic societies are valued, we will enjoy benefits arising from that.
The choice should be up to you and it need not even be immutable. In a libertarian framework, I can see those and many other social arrangements emerging as they become preferable, going extinct as people favor them less and then making a come back at some later stage all without the need for taxation and war.
The real problem now is not really a diversity problem. The real problem is that the country is broke, that is the problem behind all problems.
…Why not just value the individual? A “society’s” “ethnic” “diversity” is a phrase consisting of three meaningless words.
The contemporary obsession with “diversity” is one of the more hollow and conceited ideals of our time. It has everything to do with promoting differing appearances and nothing to do with accepting or tolerating differences of opinion or ideology.In many settings, such as academia, it’s merely a blunt strategy of infusing ideological apparatchiks into positions of influence at the behest of dissenters (who are typically deemed too “male” or too “monochromatic”). It’s anti-liberty to the core.
To value the individual over the group is also a social issue. By social issue, I mean an issue that one person can bring about and no one person can undo. Even at the expense of traditions and culture, it looks like individualism is the way of the future. And individualism cannot do without libertarianism. So there.
“It is not diversity in ideology that is being valued. It is diversity in gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity.”
There are a couple of interesting ways that you can interpret this new trendy word.
1. Diversity in a polylogistic world. Quite literally, in this framework, diversity means that we have various, possibly contradictory truths that exist in the framework of a given culture or ethnicity. In other words, what is true for me may not be true for you, and it is important to try to consider a large number of diverse truths. I consider such a view to be utter nonsense based upon a subversion of the concept of truth.
2. Diversity as a counterforce to minority oppression. I think this is what most people really mean when they say diversity, but they are trying to distance themselves from the victim mentality. Again, it’s utter nonsense. Rather than urging people to seek out “diversity”, why not simply teach them to consistently apply logic when evaluating the merits and abilities of individuals?
The forces of equilibrium cannot be stopped even by a covey of statists.
You know that the entire establishment is going to be broke, right?
Their endowments are so vulnerable. They are all reliant on quant models. They will literally fall on their swords before they forsake efficient markets and their precious number games. This is about legacy for them. They will keep the facade going until their checks bounce.
Some of us are students of how our boy Larry Summers snapped the spine of the Soviet Union…
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