Pun Salad

David Harsanyi remembers that James Madison Saw Abigail Spanberger Coming.

Yeah, that's a bad idea. ObQuote from Madison's Federalist Papers No. 10:

Or, as Hayek pointed out, in The Constitution of Liberty:

That a majority, merely because it is a majority, should be entitled to apply to a minority a rule which does not apply to itself is an infringement of a principle much more fundamental than democracy itself, a principle on which the justification of democracy rests.

That ship has long ago sailed in America, where (for example) "progressive" income tax rates have long been tolerated. Which hasn't stopped some people for demanding more of the same.

Also of note:

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  Appealing to an old fogy like me. At the Dispatch, George Hawley looks at The Enduring Lessons of Fusionism. (archive.today link)

  The last decade was unkind to pro-freedom conservatives. Those of us who still find merit in the Reagan-era synthesis of free markets, limited government, moral traditionalism, and global leadership increasingly look like anachronisms. In the age of MAGA, a variety of insurgent factions—including new right populists, postliberals, national conservatives, and antisemitic groypers—compete for influence in a right united less by shared principles than by a common hostility to both the left and the conservative mainstream of the late 20^th century.

  This is not the first time the American right has been little more than a loose collection of competing dogmas. In the years following World War II, the American right encompassed a jumble of ideological impulses. One faction included traditionalists such as Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver, who themselves disagreed on fundamental questions. Pro-market thinkers like Friedrich Hayek exerted enormous influence, despite insisting they were not conservatives at all. Ayn Rand’s anti-religion Objectivists, the remnants of the Southern Agrarians, and conspiracy-minded cranks like Robert Welch likewise all occupied space within the broader right-wing ecosystem.

  George remembers Frank S. Meyer, the leading advocate of "fusionism", who sought to unite the "reasonable" sub-factions of conservatives and libertarians into a workable coalition.

  Hey, it worked OK for a while. Might do so again.

  Not for the first time, I'll plug Meyer's book, In Defense of Freedom, which I read as a young 'un in Omaha back in the 60s. Amazon link at your right!

• Fill in the blank: "Washington's Self-Inflicted      Crisis. That's increasingly easy to do! At Cato, Clark Packard describes: Washington’s Self-Inflicted Farm Crisis.

  Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made headlines last week when she called rising fertilizer prices an “overarching economic pending disaster” before the House Appropriations Committee. She is not wrong about the disaster part. She is, however, wrong about the cause of the problem and its supposed solution. 

  The Trump administration’s answer to soaring input costs for American farmers is to deploy tariff revenue to subsidize domestic fertilizer production. The implication? The government creates problems with trade barriers, collects revenue from Americans hurt by those barriers, and then hands back a portion of the money to a favored industry as a political salve (leaving aside the fact that this new proposal is just another in the administration’s long line of supposed tariff revenue use). To develop the plan, Secretary Rollins convened a meeting at the USDA with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, and, notably, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, alongside executives from four of the country’s top fertilizer companies. 

  Supplemental reading, from Eric Boehm at Reason: Trump wants lower fertilizer prices. His trade chief helped raise them. Usual warnings to folks susceptible to hypertension apply.

  I know agriculture policy isn't the most gripping topic, but a "farm crisis" doesn't take long to trickle down into an "affordability crisis" at your local grocery store.

• Can't argue with that, Nellie. The headline on Ms Bowles' TGIF column asserts: We Live in the World We’re In. It is the usual wonderful hodgepodge of observations. Up front, an unsurprising tale of Trump-related financial hijinks, but later on, the headline becomes relevant:

  → Anti-billionaire group endorses billionaire: Bernie Sanders’ anti-billionaire group Our Revolution has endorsed Tom Steyer, a private equity billionaire with a $2.4 billion fortune, Cayman Islands investments, and ties to dark money groups. He’s their pick for California governor, reasoning that “it matters what he is doing with that power.” Steyer himself has long acknowledged the irony, saying in 2020 “we live in the world we’re in” rather than “the world we dream of.” We live in the world we’re in. Now that’s something I can get behind. Can we get this guy a mic? You know, Tom, if you think billionaires shouldn’t exist, you literally can give away your money. Like no one is stopping you from ending your billy status. Do you perhaps like being a billy?

  As I type, Polymarket gives Steyer a 43% probability of being California's next governor, way ahead of second-place Xavier Becerra (28%). So I'm polishing up that old Mencken quote about democracy. You know, the one ending in "good and hard".