Jan
24
2024

At Least Not in a Crowded Theater

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David Harsanyi admonishes some statism fans: You Can't Defend 'Democracy' And The Administrative State. In which he rebuts people doing exactly that, so maybe he should have stuck the word "consistently" somewhere in there.

Yet all the most vocal defenders of saving American “democracy” happen to think Chevron deference abuses are integral to governance. Read left-wing punditry on the topic, and you might walk away with the impression that federal agencies didn’t even exist until 1984.

The histrionics over the potential death of Chevron deference is just another example of the left’s abandonment of anything resembling a limiting principle. It’s all consequentialism, all the time. Anything Democrats dislike is an attack on “democracy.” When the court hands the abortion issue, unmentioned anywhere in the Constitution, back to voters, virtually every leftist in the country warns that “democracy” is under attack. When the same court threatens to stop unelected technocrats from doing whatever they like, democracy is again being threatened. It doesn’t even make any sense.

What Chevron deference does is incentivize Congress to write vague laws and presidents to abuse their power. It creates instability, as every administration implements its own preferred interpretation of the law. It threatens to further destroy the separation of powers. It was a huge mistake. And, as opposed to most of the left’s hysterics these days, it’s a real threat to “democracy.

Over at National Review, roughly on the same topic, Jim Geraghty is also frustrated and tired of seeing the sloppy weaponization of D-word: How Democrats Exploit ‘Democracy Is at Stake’.

This year, you’re going to hear a lot of people insisting, “Democracy is at stake,” in the upcoming presidential election. Very often, the person saying this will be a Democrat, or at minimum, rooting for Joe Biden to win reelection over Donald Trump. Trump supporters are much more likely to say, “America is at stake” or “the future of the country is at stake,” genuinely convinced that four more years of Joe Biden and/or Kamala Harris will turn the country into a dystopian left-wing dictatorship out of a young-adult novel, or crime-ridden borderless anarchy out of Mad Max, or somehow both simultaneously.

Inherent in that argument is that if democracy is at stake, you’re not allowed to have your usual beliefs, expectations, and standards for candidates. You must cut a lot of slack — a lot — to the candidate who allegedly is no threat to democracy. To preserve the Constitution, you must reelect the president who violated the constitutional limits on his powers with the eviction moratorium, the vaccine mandate, the cancellation of student debt, and the appointment of Ann Carlson as the acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration when it was clear the Senate would not confirm her.

It's kind of a rant, and a very entertaining one.

Also of note:

  • Nanny U. Yesterday, I mentioned that there were plenty of things college students should be outraged about. And, gee, I noticed one when I entered Dimond Library at the University Near Here: a small sticker on the door saying (maybe not an exact quote): "UNH is a tobacco, smoke, and nicotine-free campus."

    Nicotine? I was unaware of that, but it's been true for a couple years.

    UNH is committed to supporting its campus communities in Durham, Manchester, Concord and around the state in becoming tobacco, smoke and nicotine-free. Our policy aims to create a community culture where well-being is a priority, and where a healthy lifestyle without tobacco, smoke and nicotine is the norm.

    While tobacco, smoke and nicotine products are prohibited in UNH facilities and on its grounds, the focus of our policy is to promote voluntary compliance, support and resources that encourage a healthy community and sustainable environment. The updated policy was developed by a UNH-wide coalition in 2021 and went into effect on January 1, 2022. Moving forward, a TSN-Free Implementation Task Force will work to strengthen understanding of the policy and provide resources to the community.

    UNH joins nearly 2,500 U.S. campuses that have adopted a 100% smoke-free policy. This policy applies to everyone on UNH properties: students, faculty, staff, visitors, contractors and vendors.

    (That "policy" link above is outdated. Here is a page spelling out the current details.)

    Obligatory disclaimer: I am not, and never have been, a user of "tobacco, smoke and nicotine products". (I don't need, or want, another bad habit.) And I'd prefer not to inhale second-hand (or even third-hand) smoke, although I don't freak out when I do.

    When I was working at UNH, smokers were able to light up outside. (A favorite locale was the loading dock.) The guy in the cubicle next to mine was a vaper; I know this only because I noticed it occasionally when I walked by, I never smelled anything.

    But the UNH policy goes full-Puritan, in the Mencken sense: it seems to be motivated by "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Those pre-2022 reasonable accommodations for tobacco use are out the window; the updated policy bans (roughly) everything everywhere. In fact you can't even smoke in your own car, if it's parked on UNH grounds. Or even if you are driving it through UNH property.

    And, by the way, it also applies to "cannabis products". Sorry, potheads!

    And, by the way, it also applies to products that have zero health risk to anyone other than the consumer: ("… snuff, chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco …").

    Coincidentally, I noticed Jeffrey A. Singer wondering, at Cato: What is Causing Nicotinophobia? He notes Senator Chuck Schumer's call for a "crackdown" on "Zyn", a nicotine pouch not involving tobacco. And he points out:

    Nicotine by itself is a relatively harmless drug. It is similar to caffeine, which can also addict people. Like caffeine, nicotine functions as a stimulant that enhances concentration. Unlike caffeine, nicotine boosts the production of beta‐endorphins, providing anxiety relief. This may explain why individuals who use tobacco turn to smoking when seeking to relax or to calm down under stress.

    No word on whether UNH will be banning coffee, tea, Coca-Cola,…

    I should also note that there's a loophole for nicotine addicts: UNH is allowing "Products that have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for tobacco cessation or other medical purposes." Let's Google that, and… yes, here's a list of FDA-Approved nicotine delivery products. It includes nicotine gum, lozenges, and patches.

  • And they are spinning fast. Dominic Pino notes that the MSM is seeing things that aren't there: Organized Labor ‘Resurgence’ Is Media Spin. After rattling off dozens of stories over the past year that claim unions are back, baby…

    Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published its annual report on union membership. The unionization rate hit a record low of 10.0 percent in 2023, down from 2022’s 10.1 percent. “The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.4 million, also showed little movement over the year,” the BLS reported.

    Perhaps those journalists were overdosing on nicotine.

    That linked BLS report is full of interesting stuff. Fun fact: "The union membership rate of public-sector workers (32.5 percent) continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (6.0 percent)."

  • A damn big bag of bricks, though. Kevin D. Williamson is talking about the Republican Party: it's as Dumb as a Bag of Bricks.

    […] the pro-life movement will not have won when nobody can get an abortion—the pro-life movement will have won when nobody wants an abortion. In this, there is a fundamental asymmetry between the pro-life and pro-choice movements. For the pro-life movement, the regulation of abortion is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the desired outcome. The regulation or prohibition of abortion will have the practical effect of preventing some abortions, and it will have the salubrious secondary effect of encouraging Americans to disentangle themselves, mentally and politically, from the practice of abortion. 

    Our pro-choice friends bristle when the pro-life movement compares its project to the effort to abolish slavery (there are obvious differences, of course, but also important similarities, the most important being that both questions are rooted in a fundamental disagreement about who is a whole human person and who is not), but I hope they will indulge the following hypothetical: If the normal course of economic and social development had led to the gradual and largely voluntary eradication of slavery in the United States, wouldn’t we still want a law prohibiting it, even if the question were moot? Wouldn’t we still want to cultivate anti-slavery sentiment? To repent of the wrongs that were done under slavery and to mourn its horrifying human price? I think so. I am less sure that this necessarily is the case for abortion. For me, it is more important that the killing should stop than that pro-lifers should have some kind of political “victory” that results in a de jure prohibition of the abortion while de facto leaving the practice itself largely in place.