Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
I’m a bit reluctant to post anything that mentions Ayn Rand, for fear of triggering some very heated and off-topic discussion…but recent trends in the political and business spheres have reminded me of a line in Atlas Shrugged which was spoken by Henry Rearden’s mother:
All business is just dirty politics and all politics is just dirty business.
Ruth McClung is running for Congress in Arizona’s 7th District. She seems like an interesting person–physics degree, works in rocketry at an engineering company, worked her way through college, enjoys rock climbing, an amateur painter whose work has been displayed in local galleries.
Views on specific issues aside, it’s great to see so much true diversity among some of the new people running for office. Too many of the old crowd are made in the same mold…typically lawyers, who have spent their entire careers in public office, government “service,” or in pseudo-private positions (lobbyists, attorneys focusing on regulatory issues) which are closely connected to their governmental experience..or activists and “community organizers,” types of activity which are really just other kinds of lobbying…and many them appear to have little intellectual or emotional depth and no real interests in life other than the acquisition of personal political power and influence.
Last year, I wrote about the historic steamboat Delta Queen, whose withdrawal from passenger service was forced, on what appear to me to be very spurious grounds, by the federal government. One of the main perpetrators of this act was Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN), head of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
So I was especially pleased to see that Oberstar faces some serious competition in his race for re-election. This 18-term incumbent trails Republican candidate Chip Cravaack by only three points (42-45 percent). Quite an achievement on the part of the Cravaack campaign, given that Oberstar has something like a 10-to-1 money advantage.
There are plenty of reasons to support Cravaak over Oberstar in addition to the Delta Queen matter—indeed, some might say that the continued passenger operation of one steamboat is trivial in the context of the massive issues we face as a country. But the symbolism is important. In literally thousands of ways, the “progressive” Democrats have sought to restrict American freedoms, as the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver with threads. Your ability to choose your own light bulbs and shower heads, to have swing sets in your child’s schoolyard, to buy or sell pizza by the slice, to sell home-baked pies at a church sale, to have a transparent or translucent sunroof for your car, to decide for yourself whether or not to buy a Barbie doll for your daughter…all of these rights have already been constrained or are currently under attack. Not to mention the ever-tightening constraints on your ability to start your own business and make it succeed. Consciously or not, “progressives” seek to convert Americans from citizens into subjects, and the Delta Queen matter was simply one very visible symbol thereof.
For years and years I have been quoting Hayek as saying:
Capitalism depends upon values which it did not create and cannot replace.
I am sure I read something by him that was very close to this at some point. I thought it was from The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, but when I looked in there, I found the concept but not the pithy summary.
The sentence comes pretty close to summing up my whole political philosophy, and I did not originate it.
Does anyone know where I got it?
My son made it back from his first tour in Afghanistan two days ago. He will probably have to go back at least once. This is from his Facebook posting.
“Lindsay Lohan, 24, is all over the news because she’s a celebrity drug addict. While Justin Allen 23, Brett Linley 29, Matthew Weikert 29, Justus Bartett 27, Dave Santos 21, Chase Stanley 21, Jesse Reed 26, Matthew Johnson 21, Zachary Fisher 24, Brandon King 23, Christopher Goeke 23, Sheldon Tate 27, they are all Marines who gave their lives this week, no media mention. Honor THEM by reposting…”
Done.