The Volokh Conspiracy
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GOP VP Nominee J. D. Vance is an Enemy of Free Markets
The Ohio Senator is one of the Party's leading advocates of protectionism, economic planning, and immigration restrictions.

Ohio Senator J.D. Vance just became Donald Trump's running mate. If you care about free markets and liberty generally, he's just about the worst person the Republicans could have chosen, among those who got serious consideration.
Since being elected to the Senate in 2022, Vance has become one of the GOP's leading champions of protectionism, economic regulation and planning through "industrial policy," restrictions on foreign investment, and - of course - immigration restrictions. As Alex Nowrasteh and I explained in our article "The Case Against Nationalism," these right-wing forms of central planning have most of the same weaknesses as their socialist counterparts. These policies create terrible incentives, and predictably make the nation poorer and less innovative.
Vance also shares right-wing nationalists' penchant for conspiracy theories. For example, has endorsed bogus claims the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, and said he would have connived in Trump's scheme to overturn the 2020 election had he been in the place of then-vice president Mike Pence (who, to his credit, refused to do so).
Vance is also one of the GOP's leading opponents of US aid to Ukraine in resisting Vladimir Putin's brutal war of aggression. He tried hard to block the deal on aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan reached by the White House and GOP Speaker Mike Johnson in April. There is a strong case for aiding Ukraine on both moral and strategic grounds. Letting Vladimir Putin have his way won't "make America great again." It will just make us look simultaneously weak and unprincipled. These problems would be accentuated by Vance's support for the massive trade war Trump wants to start with our allies - arising from their joint commitment to large-scale protectionism.
If you wanted Trump to select a VP with at least some commitment to relatively free market policies and some tendency to restrict Trump's own worst impulses, Vance is one of the last people you would want to see chosen.
Vance wasn't always like this. I am a fan of his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of his upbringing in a poor Appalachian family. His 2016 warning that Trump is an "opioid of the masses" was in many ways valid; he rightly predicted that Trump could not solve the problems of declining communities by policies like building border walls, and escalating the War on Drugs.
In 2017, Vance and I had an exchange about his argument that talented people living in poor and declining communities should stay where they are, rather than move to places where there is greater opportunity. I emphasized that empowering people to "vote with their feet" is one of the best ways to increase opportunity for them, and make our society more innovative and productive. I also noted that Vance's own life is an example of that dynamic:
If you read his moving book, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that his life was transformed by [mobility]: leaving home to join the Marine Corps, get a college degree at Ohio State University, and eventually going to Yale, opened up opportunities that he probably would never have had if he had not left home. As a result, he is now a far more productive member of society than he likely would have been otherwise.
Although Vance has returned to his home state, he did not move back to the depressed community where he grew up, but to Columbus, a thriving city whose economy has done very well in recent years. He likely concluded that he and his family would be happier, more productive, and better able to serve society there than in a less successful part of the state.
We continued the exchange on Twitter. But I cannot find that part now.
In my later book Free to Move, I pointed out that Vance's story of success through domestic foot voting is also similar to that of people who transformed their lives through international migration. Almost all the standard arguments against allowing the latter also apply to the former.
Over the last several years, Vance has undergone a kind of ideological transformation, becoming a prominent advocate of the MAGA populism he previously opposed. Sadly, the policies Vance now advocates would destroy opportunities for immigrants and natives alike, and in the process make America weaker and poorer.
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Wow, so he's 1% as into regulating markets as Democrats are. *Yawn*
The Dems have done and are ideologically committed to economic interventions 10x what vance is and Ilya never has much to say about that. He's basically a Democrat who operates by criticizing Republicans in Liberatarian clothing.
Ilya opposing him is an endorsement.
I have a feeling Somin had this article already written denouncing the VP and was just waiting for Trump to announce his pick so he could fill in the name and a few minor details.
Well, it was obvious that Trump was never going to nominate anybody who agreed with Somin's open borders obsession. Even the Democrats know they need to pretend they want the border enforced, and have to make a public show of doing it as elections approach!
Somin has never come to grips with just how radically unpopular this position is, and how much more unpopular the Democrats halfway implementing it made it. He literally cannot get his way on this so long as America is a functioning democracy. Which is why, I guess, he pretends that it's constitutionally mandated: He likes to think the courts will impose it on the country, democracy be damned, like they did with SSM. But SSM was wildly popular next to open borders...
Now, I joined the LP straight out of HS, back in the 70's, so I'm very familiar with what it's like to seriously believe in the righteousness of extremely unpopular causes, like drug relegalization. But at this point Somin has fixated on an unpopular cause that isn't even terribly popular among libertarians, and every time he gets push back, he just doubles down.
It's like he's never heard of the incremental approach, or path dependence, or anything even halfway subtle. He just wants what he wants, and you're evil if you don't want to give it to him right now.
But if you DO want to give it to him, like Biden, he'll excuse a world of sins on your part. Because in the end, only one cause seems to matter to Somin.
No. He's 110% as into regulating markets as Democrats are. He has described himself as closer to Bernie Sanders than to the mainstream.
He's as much insurance to Trump as Pence was.
He's saying "go on, impeach me, this guy is much worse".
> and some tendency to restrict Trump’s own worst impulses,
Well he did call trump hitler among many other vocal criticisms in the past. So I don’t see what people who wanted someone who wasn’t just a spineless rubberstamp and wasn’t afraid to stand up to him are complaining about. Trump picked about as far as a timid yesman as he reasonably could be expected to. What more do you want? A guy who actively sabotages the campaign? Okay yeah I guess Somin would want that.
Amos, are you describing Vance in 2024? It seems like you are describing a distance Vance (who absolutely had the strength of character and integrity to condemn Trump repeatedly and on a variety of issue).
To put it another way; can you name another politician who has changed as dramatically from anti-Trump to pro-Trump over the past 5-10 years? (I can think of lots of politicians who went from pro to anti, but that was just the result of Trump's words and actions.)
I think that, for Trump, Vance is a decent pick. Vance is now a lickspittle, and I think that loyalty to (fear of??) Trump is the major criterion for Trump's selection. Absent the death of Trump, Vance will do what every single VP (except Dick Chaney) will do in his role as VP: He'll attend foreign funerals, and maybe cast some deciding votes in a 50:50 Senate. Yeah, he's totally unqualified to be president? But my dog Rufus could do a decent job as VP for any Democratic or Republican president. Vance will do no worse.
(Politically-speaking, it's a minor net negative for Trump. For the majority of undecided voters; I think Vance is dead-wrong on abortion and funding for Ukraine.) But if there are 15 million undecided voters left in America; how many of them will be swayed by this VP pick, one way or the other? I seriously doubt that more than a handful will give a crap, in terms of factoring this pick into their eventual calculations.
Just out of curiosity...what kind of dog is Rufus? Interesting name. Is there a story behind that name?
"Duck Soup" was one of my favorite films as a kid. As I've been fostering tons of kittens and puppies, I've been cycling through names of my most beloved characters and places from those films. (As I type this; Rufus is playing with my foster kitten Narnia. She's kicking his ass & is chasing him around my place--which seems to be the pattern with kittens vs puppies, in my experience.) 🙂
Rufus T. Firefly
Hail, hail, Freedonia - land of the .....
>Yeah, he’s totally unqualified to be president?
He's definitely more qualified than the current corpse occupying the office so I don't see your point.
That's okay. Everyone one else here does see my point. If Harris runs in 2028, and you point out that (in your opinion) she's unqualified, I don't think anyone would be satisfied by my response, of, "So what, she's more qualified than the rapist felon liar racist currently in the office."
You should strive for more out of your politicians than, "Yeah, he's shitty. But marginally better than your shitty guy." But you do you.
That’s okay. Everyone one else here does see my point.
It’s difficult to imagine the level of self-delusion required to support the notion that you know what "everyone else” knows/thinks.
It's a literary device called hyperbole.
Example: "Everyone knows Bill Clinton lied about his relationship with Monica."
You: False!!! There is certainly a tiny fraction of the population who, to this day, believes that there was no such relationship. Therefore, your use of "everyone" was wrong!!!
I feel like you actually do understand how language works, but you're purposefully pretending not to, so that you can whine about English-language usage that everyone else is familiar with. (See? I did it again!...there are some in America who are *not* familiar with the use of hyperbole, but I still wrote "everyone else.")
The hypocrisy of you claiming that I was being pedantic/hyperliteral by interpreting what I said as pedantically/hyperliterally as possibly should be astounding...but coming from you it's just par for the course. Perhaps it would have helped you overcome that sort of simplemindedness if I'd phrased it as "that you know what most commenters here know/think". Then again, perhaps not.
I feel like
It might also help if you tried basing your responses on thought rather than feeling.
" He’s definitely more qualified than the current corpse occupying the office so I don’t see your point. "
You're focusing on Vance's old-style right-wing bigotry, his obsequious sycophancy, his adult-onset superstition (and associated anti-abortion absolutism), and his culture-warring arsonry. You love every element of his MAGA-QAnon-Federalist Society persona.
Most Americans -- especially younger, better, educated Americans residing in strong, successful communities -- see those as problems, not assets.
'...specially younger, better, educated Americans residing in strong, successful communities...'
Where, pray tell, are those? Surely not in any American blue city, where the younger folks don't breed, don't even partner, can't afford to live or own property, and which are flooded with third-world uneducated-and-unskilled (often religious) poor neo-serfs.
Carry on, AIDS, till your American betters go after your family. Don't flee either, AIDS. Take your just, well-deserved punishment.
The country has changed in 8 years, the world has, much as it did 1932-1940.
In the before times, I remember thinking I had not seen a group of men more intelligent and well spoken than J.D. Vance, Ben Shapiro and Pete Buttigieg. Then I watched in horror how they shed their principles and integrity for money and power. Especially Ben Shapiro. I'm still shocked to this day about his transformation. Anyway, next to Ted Cruz, I cannot think of a better robot to be Trump's VP. Best of luck to them
"how they shed their principles and integrity for money and power."
unfortunately our national politics has that all to frequent effect on the young pols.
It seems to affect all of them in the MAGARINO party--regardless of age.
If you're worried about a second Trump administration having fewer safeguards or voices of reason than his first one did, I think this is a troubling pick precisely because Vance used to be a relatively harsh Trump critic. He made the dramatic move to Trump sycophant with pretty much no explanation other than that his voters seemed to buy into the Trump brand so he'd best follow them. As between someone who agreed with Trump's policies all along and someone who made a mid-career ideological jump to get on board, I'd prefer the former, because there's at least a chance those positions are sincerely held, and thus that the person is not purely an opportunist.
I gather Vance has more or less said he would not have stood up to Trump if he'd been in Pence's position at the end of the first Trump term. That ought to scare people who like constitutional government. I'm guessing it will be a big Dem talking point going forward, and justifiably so.
Anyway, I take Somin's point to be that Vance was the worst of the short listers for libertarians because his worldview (circa 2024) combines traditional social conservatism, belief in government economic intervention not traditionally found on the right, and isolationist foreign policy. Seems to me he's right about the first two, although plenty of libertarians are against interventionist foreign policy.
As between someone who agreed with Trump’s policies all along [...]
... can you name any currently active politician --from any party-- that meets this description? That hasn't pissed off Trump because Trump himself hasn't had the same policies "all along"?
That said, I'm fairly confident that any politician that was more about policies then loyalty is someone that Trump never would have considered: Trump placing great importance on loyalty to Trump has been a far more consistent trait then Trump placing importance on any given policy, ideal, or governing philosophy.
I was sort of thinking hypothetically. I imagine there are a few first term people who were ideologically close to Trump all along but I'm not a close enough observer to say for sure (Peter Navarro?; Wilbur Ross?). It's a small group, though.
You may be right about Trump's motives. Maybe the likes of Haley, Scott, Rubio, et. al., never had a chance.
Betsy DeVos.
No, that's not true at all. Trump places zero value on loyalty. Ask Jeff Sessions. Trump is purely transactional: "what can you do for me?"
Sessions was not loyal to Trump. You are right that Trump has appointed many people who were not loyal to him. Even today, he just picked JD Vance, even though Vance has said some negative things about Trump.
Sessions was the first major GOP figure to endorse Trump in 2016. He stuck with Trump through every up and down, when the rest of the GOP was still trying to tear him down. He joined Trump's administration, and never once badmouthed him. Even after Trump fired him, he never said anything negative about Trump. Even when Trump later endorsed Sessions' opponent in the senate race out of pure spite, Sessions still didn't go after Trump.
Trump likes his former critics more than he likes people who were always positive towards him, because it's more humiliating to the former that they were forced to bend the knee. It feeds his ego.
I guess relative peace and prosperity vs continual belligerence, wars and ruinous economic policy isn't something that would change your mind. Very progressive of you to not let reality intrude on your preconceived notions.
Big surprise. Open Borders Somin is against Trump's pick for VP.
I'm shocked I tell you. Just shocked!
Protectionism is neither a conservative nor strong economy value. It is leftist populist stuff from the likes of Bernie Sanders back many decades through Ceasar Chavez (the guy Democrats praise annually, while spitting on his support of this.)
Protectionism is neither a conservative nor strong economy value. It is leftist populist stuff
Also rightist populist stuff. Neither party has much to brag about here.
Limiting immigration to legal immigration is not protectionism.
And neither is putting up trade barriers against a Communist dictatorship that ignores all international rules in order to prop up its state-owned industries.
Yes, it is. And it's stupid, to boot. If the Chinese government wants to subsidize our consumption, that's great for us.
It is if legal immigration is narrowly constrained. Otherwise one could say the same thing about imports: putting massive restrictions on imports isn't protectionist because, after all, we still allow legal imports.
A less snarky comment I could have made with the same basic meaning would be: "Could anyone that Trump would have realistically picked satisfy Somin?"
Realistically? No. Trump is the anti-libertarian candidate, so there's nobody he could have picked and who would have accepted that would be anything other than terrible. But there's still better and worse even in the terrible quadrant, and Vance is basically worst among the plausible candidates.
Trump is the anti-libertarian candidate
As opposed to libertarianism-loving Joe "National Rent Control" Biden.
Tell that to Benjamin Disraeli. One nation.
Perhaps its time for Americans to start using the term 'conservativism' correctly. Some seem to be on the correct path to doing so.
I guess Vance is better than I thought.
Born and raised in Ohio he now lives in Ohio. Foot voting!
Joining the military and then going to school is just normal, not "foot voting". Middletown doesn't have a college, hard to go to college when none exists!
Yes. Somin says that Vance moved from small town Ohio to Columbus Ohio, so 100 million Third World migrants should be able to flood the USA!
I like his idea of a wholesale purge of the civil service.
Miami University has a degree granting branch campus in Middletown. It is a commuter school with a student body of almost 1,500 undergraduate students. It’s been in Middletown since 1966.
https://miamioh.edu/regionals/campuses-locations/middletown/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_University_Middletown
If Open-Borders Ilya is agin ’em, I’m a for’em!
Moved.
Somin the Principled Libertarian's preferred candidate Joe Biden is proposing a yearly 5% cap on rent increases (i.e., nationwide rent control), which, if implemented, would be the most catastrophic economic policy in American history. Given Somin's impassioned, repetitive posts on the effects of zoning, one would imagine this might interest him. But, let's face it, Biden could announce a full Sovietization of the economy, and Somin would still support him. TDS is a powerful drug.
LOL! Spot on.
Ouch! That hit with the accuracy of an SS Counter Snipers bullet! (Too soon?)
Frank
Needs to be posted tomorrow to get the SS timing down so 1 of 2 isn't bad.
Yes, both leaders are shit. Your point?
We choose an ass who would let dictator tanks roll through Europe, or a party who knowingly caused the loss of 20% of the dollar's value.
The point, I suppose, is that both are shit, but Somin can't be bothered to talk about the alternative being shit because he's happy to have open borders imposed by shit, and at all costs doesn't want people comparing their relative shittiness.
Somin goes against the Biden admin for stuff all the time. Immigration stuff even.
It’s kinda wild you’re accusing Prof. Somin, the most achingly sincere poster in the entire Conspiracy, of bad faith crypto-partisanship and hiding his immigration agenda in the posts where he's not talking about immigration.
Maybe he’s calling them like he sees them, and you just don’t agree with him.
Good job attacking the commenter instead of the comment!
That's a great way to contribute to the conversation! Bully for you!
No, Somin is not sincere. His postings are consistently anti-American and anti-freedom, and he never explains why.
Schlafly is big mad about the loss of freedom to lynch black people.
Sounds like a son of a bitch.
We know why. He's a secular Jew.
Professors Bernstein and Blackman, and former professor Volokh, will take a break from their strenuous search for left-wing antisemites (real or confected) to attack and instead issue a pass to JHBHBE with respect to his conservative antisemitism because partisan hacks and bigoted clingers need to stick together in modern America.
Carry on, un-American culture war rejects.
You’re too old. Young American liberals and progressives would never insult others by calling them ‘UnAmerican’. They take being unAmerican to be a point of pride.
Pointing out the irony of how that makes YOU a culture war reject from your own 'side' would only be worthwhile if you weren’t a parochial American ignoramus who is incapable of appreciating irony.
Bernstein, Blackman, and Volokh are Jews, but not of the anti-American Marxist type like Somin.
Yes, he disagrees with Biden. He denounces Trump.
Biden has been President for three years now, and Somin still spends most of his efforts denouncing Trump. He can't seem to summon much passion about Biden's offenses.
Really, it all comes down to immigration. Open borders are Somin's obsession, and so long as Biden is more aligned with Somin than Trump, he'll excuse a world of faults.
He can't quite seem to accept that open borders aren't actually the one libertarian issue that all other issues must give way to.
Yeah, if you think Biden cannot be legitimately seen as better than Trump, that would be hard to square.
Somin talking about borders really seems more your obsession than his - you bring it up in every post where he's not talking about borders.
Somin was talking about borders in this very post, saying we should have open borders internationally just as Kentucky and Ohio have open borders.
Somin pretending that SarcastrO isn't just Somin is also very odd...
No, that's silly, Sarcastr0 is NOT a Somin sock puppet. For one thing, Somin doesn't have enough gile to use sock puppets, he's too forthright and sincere about everything. For another, despite his obsession, Somin actually manages to be intellectually coherent. Wrong, ignores counter-arguments, but coherent.
So he can't be Sarcastr0.
Not enough gile, indeed.
Perhaps the gile manifests when he puts on his AIDS hat.
Go back to Russia, AIDS.
And rightly so. As actual libertarian P.J. O'Rourke said of Hillary in 2016, "She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters." Biden, similarly.
What if the Russkies just want to immigrate here to Western Europe? Wouldn't Somin say they have a fundamental right to do so over and above our laws?
Then they wouldn't need the tanks.
Other immigrant groups here seem to possess such ideas.
" TDS is a powerful drug. "
TDS is a powerful drug.
You're a worthless, ready-for-replacement right-wing bigot.
Everybody has problems.
Gonna replace him with more illiterates and uneducated third-world religious freaks?
Everyone has problems. Yours are existentially ruinous, however. You're doomed, AIDS. So, too, are your values and your superficial ideology. The world will be improved somewhat as they go the way of the dinosaur.
I've had the privilege of being responsible for, and observant of, many illegal men these past few years. Apart from being darker and better educated, I see no difference between them and you except their being less crazy
So, you exploit neo-serfs? In what capacity? The privilege of exploitative employer? Manager? Legal advisor?
I’m glad you’ve taken a statistically significant sample size and made a credible judgement based thereupon.
It’s not as though there’s a want of empirical data about these folks’ levels of education either, yeah? 🙂
You're a supposed European, so you wouldn't know, and you're a Putin-employed troll, so you wouldn't care, but you don't understand anything about the American economy and illegal immigrants' role in it.
Putin paying you to say that?
It doesn’t take much to understand how illegals play a role in your economy. How they’re needed for only about 24% of farming (picking fruits, veg, and NOT for the farming of grains that can be machine harvested), and how you have them work as neo-serfs in low-skilled jobs in every blue city to bypass the min wage and labour laws. That, and drive for Uber, of course. ‘They’re just doing the jobs that American’s won’t do’, yeah? ????
And then there are thousands upon thousands of sweat shops workers, sex slaves and trafficked, and other fun forms of exploitation of illegals across the USA. No doubt you’ve researched those thoroughly because you’re obviously not just a mindless fucking libertarian ideologue, but rather someone who is sincerely interested in such things and can learn about them without prejudging them based on your dogmas.
many illegal men
WTF is an illegal man?
Vance checks all of the clinger boxes.
Obsolete bigot.
Shameless hypocrite.
White.
Male.
Hillbilly.
Old-timey superstition.
Authoritarian.
Sycophant.
Most important: Superstitious bigot.
I've been keeping score in the Culture War, and it doesn't seem like you guys are getting on the scoreboard lately.
Unless you count 200lb heifers with a lot of junk in their trunks play acting, horribly, as SS agents as a win.
Just as an experiment, maybe you could try posting something other than a stupid comment sometime.
It's biting social commentary in the same vein of other greats such as Mark Twain, George Carlin, or Jonathan Swift.
I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings.
Excuse me while I take a moment to stop laughing at the stupidity of that comment. Your “biting social commentary” doesn’t even rise to the level of the Three Stooges or Larry the Cable guy.
Three Stooges were those three fat acceptance DIE Secret Service agents panicking while POTUS 47 got shot at.
Perfect record so far! All stupid, all the time. Let us know when you plan on writing a non-stupid, intelligent, thoughtful, insightful comment. We'll be waiting.
https://imgur.com/6pF7W8Q
Hey, do you think it goes "beep beep beep" when she backs that dumper up?
If you think right-wing racism, old-timey superstition, incel misogyny, can't-keep-up rural communities, superstitious gay-bashing, drawling street pill addicts, chanting "Unite the Right" antisemitism, "heartland values" Islamophobia, nonsense-based education, and the rest of the Republican-Federalist Society-Heritage Foundation wish list are poised to make a comeback in modern America, you might have a point.
Rudy Guiliani has become the embodiment of conservatism -- a clownish old white guy with ridiculous hair and a beer belly ranting belligerently as better Americans continue to kick the bigoted, useless shit out of him in the culture war and beyond. Bankrupt (if not worse) financially. Disbarred and disgraced. Perhaps headed to prison. Devoid of credibility and character. A pathetic spectacle. Headed toward replacement and not much else.
Carry on, clingers. So far as your betters permit.
It’s “Bettors” you should bottle your drool, say it’s “Floyd George Tears/John Louis Pee-cum” and make a killing on Grinder
Frank
These right-wing bigots are your fans, defenders, and target audience, Volokh Conspirators . . . and the reason your leader no longer resides or teaches in Los Angeles.
If you important millions of illiterate religious third-worlders, you will only have less bigotry not more...
I liked this Weinstein (propaganda) piece. He touches on some of the reasons you need mass illegals, beyond demographic implosion due to shitty values.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18bhyZIFXF4
Remind Gentle Reader how you think blacks are so stupid they can't get a photo ID.
I think white dudes were in charge of security in past shootings that actually hit their targets. Maybe hefty heifers are better!
Watch this video.
https://x.com/stillgray/status/1812325147384086597
You left out his Law School, Penis Envy much?
Superstitious bigot??? Says the egalitarian, inclusive-diverse, social-re-engineer sans-empirical-knowledge-and-skills cult member???
Actually choose reason, AIDS. Choose science. Your core political beliefs have been rendered obsolete by credible empirical science, including evolutionary psychology.
It also doesn’t mean much to slander people as ‘authoritarians’ when the entire world can see that your lot is a bunch of totalitarians. Importantly, that that label isn’t used as an epithet or pejorative: it's a completely accurate categorisation for your domestic and global efforts at anti-democratic, oligarchical thought and action policing, to control everyone’s forms of consciousness/conceptual scheme(s), and to reshape the society based on your inchoate ideals.
You’re on side of the villains, AIDS. For the left and right across the globe, YOU are the bad guy. And they’re certainly not wrong in their judgment of you. You’re evil. Now, thankfully, you are widely perceived to be evil.
I'm so glad to see VC participating in the time-honored media tradition of dropping pre-written hit pieces as soon as nominations are made.
I assume Somin would have done one of these, probably with only minor variations, for whomever Trump picked.
Right, that's what I meant. The Bee explains it best: https://babylonbee.com/news/12-women-come-forward-alleging-they-were-sexually-assaulted-by-whoever-trumps-vp-pick-is/.
Spectrum-hugging conservative incels seem to find sexual assault humorous.
Trump did, too . . . until the jury schooled him. More than once.
Carry on, bitter clingers.
And yet when someone's prophet does so, one cannot talk about it.
When it SYSTEMATICALLY occurs across an entire religious community, or communities, including in the form of honour killings, your lot does EVERYTHING you can to silence discussion of it, in part by falsely labeling such things a function of a 'phobia'.
Carry on, AIDS. Your culture war looks very much like it's going to turn hot. When it does, you're toast. Do the right thing and euthanise your loved ones now.
*Yawn*
Isn't it obvious that vice presidents don't do much? Nice to see Mr. Somin going apocalypto about a nothing-burger.
If the candidates were twenty years younger, I'd agree that it's much ado about nothing.
This election? Who is going to be surprised if Trump dies before he's eighty from natural causes? If Biden doesn't make it to 83?
We might be in one of the rare elections where it'll matter.
Not that it'll matter to the election, mind you. The number of folk that will change their vote based on a VP are pretty slim. So to back-up a second, I guess it depends... just how narrow do you think the victory is going to be? Narrow enough for people to blame Harris/Vance like they blamed Palin?
Except get impeached when they try to follow Lincolns “Malice towards none” Nuke Japan Twice like Hairy Truman (could use a DemoKKKrat like him again), Start Vietnam like LBJ, End Vietnam like Richard Mihouse, Pardon Richard Milhouse like Ford, Break his “No New Taxes” promise like GHWB, and preside over the Shitstorm Parkinsonian Joe’s led the last 4 years.
Frank
JD supports Amurican Business????
Good!
Have we had a Jarhead as VPOTUS? As POTUS?
Can’t wait to watch Morning Schmoe tomorrow(funny it wasn’t on today) Schmoe Hates JD, because he went to an Ivy League Law School, wrote a Best Seller, is a Marine, and has a hotter wife than dried up Minka Zzzzzzzzbrinski. For some reason Schmoe calls JD “Butters” a reference which even I don’t get
Frank
Vance -- who is on his third name (formerly Bowman and Hamel) -- served as a journalist in the Marines. The 82nd Chairborne Keyboarders, or something.
He's like the downscale lawyers who settle for jobs as military attorneys (often in the reserves, where combat involves getting to the airport base after rush hour) and boast about being "veterans."
An all-talk blowhard who can't shake the hillbilly.
Hey, there's a vet parade this Saturday, do you want directions so you can go spit on them?
Not all veterans resemble J.D. Vance.
Some of them -- relatively few, with a median age approaching 100 -- have even won a war.
>Some of them — relatively few, with a median age approaching 100 — have even won a war.
I'm with you. The Democrat Diverse Pentagon is a fucking disgrace. Marxists are great at conquering, but that's it.
It's the pool of clingers from which the military currently draws that forces America to settle for a series of vague draws with ragtag irregulars across the globe. American taxpayers pay for first-class product and get drawling, half-educated, backwater, red state mediocrity.
The military is filling up with illegals, homos, trannies, and YaaaSSS Quueeeens!
They can't meet their targets because 1776 Americans are refusing to die for Globo Homo.
The military is full of drawling, knuckle-dragging, immature, poorly educated, unskilled, downscale, backwater, red state rejects. That's why all of the taxpayer investment in equipment still can't win a fucking war once in a while.
With a draft you would get some smart, industrious people from civilized communities who didn't choose the military because they couldn't get a decent job or legitimate education in the real world.
You're living in 1980, not 2024.
And now they’d even induct Turd-Burglaring Poofs like you!
Frank
What percentage of the US military is Black, AIDS…
You’re dependent on illegals and foreigners to fill the ranks now. Just as Rome once was.
No one’s going to be drafted to fight for you. This isn’t the 1960s. Hippies won’t be burning draft cards. Whites and the working poor will kill you instead.
Rather of have fake lotteries that secretly prioritize poor neighbourhoods, why not just have draft the neighbourhoods loaded up with gays, trans, feminists, Muslims, socialists, illegals, and other unequal trash to serve as your cannon fodder. I’m sure they’d find fighting proxy wars against China, whether in East Asia or Africa, to be FABULOUS.
It was the Second Marine Air Wing, out of Cherry Point NC, who kill bad guys for a living, like Orwell talked about, letting old Queens like you have the freedom to try to jerk off looking at 60 year old photos of Mick Jagger. Every Marine qualifies on the Rifle Range annually, no matter if they're Infantry or a Cook, even a less than average shot in the Corpse, like Lee Harvey Homo was able to take out a POTUS
You're just bitter that your Homo-ness and Pediophilia didn't let you inflict your ejaculation of terror on young Sailors/Soldiers/Airmen/Marines, which would have lasted approximately 10 seconds until they pithed (no lisp, it's a medical term) you like that Frog I dissected in 10th grade Biology.
Oh yeah, JD got his JD(get it?) from Yale, what Bible College did you get your GED from?
Frank
Given his screen name: Costco school of law and free samples.
He is going to write a best seller about his experiences.
Vance was an affirmative action admission -- a conservative hillbilly, he called himself -- at Yale. His education was funded by his betters. Academically, I have been told he wasn't close to making law review. He described himself as "mostly holding his own," or something similar.
A right-wing, backwater affirmative action baby. And a "Marine" whose weapons were a pencil and paid in a shitty office.
Internet tough guy, even those fat lesbo Secret Service "Agents" would slap you around like one of those inflatable clown punching bag toys, which is what you are.
"I have been told"? well I've been told you're disgraced former Penn State Foo-bawl Coach Jerry Sandusky, I've been calling you "Revolting" just to give you a break, but I've got my doubts, 1: You sound like no Shyster I've ever met, and I've met a few, 2: You don't even go through the motions of pretending you went to Law School, 3: Even other Homos like Pete Booty-Judge and Barry Hussein are grateful for a military that protects their right to homo-erotic relationships,
In short, you're a polluted old Queen, who'd have been dead years ago if it wasn't for CPAP, Losartan, Metformin, and the 20 other medications that keeps your pathetic corpse churning out CO2.
I now return you to kinder/gentler Frank, until your "Bettors" decide you need a "Stomping"
Frank
According to online reports, he was in fact on law review. Whereas you're a nobody.
What percentage of the new deans of American law schools over the last two years were affirmative action hires and then affirmative action appointments?
🙂
Congratulations on making those institutions even shittier than they already are, AIDS. No doubt you’ll consider that to be bona fide progress, but the civilised world can only note that your unis are in clear decline.
Nothing like another Ilya Somin tirade where he rants about people not clinging to his own clinger version of libertarianism.
If America were a real country, Somin would be deported. He's so incredibly ungrateful to his hosts and their values.
America is a great country, in large part because it is no longer the bigoted, superstitious, old-timey country is was back in the "good old days" for which worthless right-wingers pine.
Did he hurt your feelings, AIDS?
I'm morbidly curious about your definition of "a real country", why you think the US fails that standard, and further, what you think the US is since it is not, in your esteem, a "real country".
The Volokh Conspiracy is attracting mostly un-American societal rejects these days.
His name being Barfer B. Jerkland, I wouldn't expect a cogent position to be forthcoming.
These bigoted right-wing hillbillies seem fixated on me.
Game recognizes game.
I wonder where that might lead, Somin?
Woah... that was quick! Did Somin have a hit piece on the ready for all potential VP picks? Or did he just insert the name with search&replace?
Anyway... yet another absolutely worthless take from Somin.
You think Josh is the only Conspirator capable of instantaneous spewing on that scale? Why?
The VP does have a lot of power in one way: he's the only person around the President whom the President can't fire. He can insult him to his face, criticize him in public, refuse to carry out any task.
It's a constitutional office and he can be removed only by impeachment. It's a wonder no VP has taken advantage of this (though John Calhoun, in another era, did to some extent).
It’s a wonder no VP has taken advantage of this
Until fairly recently, VPs did not do much. One even said that the position was "not worth a bucket of warm spit." So it's not a wonder, as unless the president gives them something to do, they have nothing to do. And, if they attack the president, that renders them liable to be dropped at the next election.
Fun fact: Garner actually said that the vice presidency was "not worth a bucket of warm piss." Your social studies textbooks bowdlerized it to protect your delicate sensibilities.
As an aside: do either of those substances "improve" following their regression to ambient temperature?
I can understand using a modifier such as "warm" for a substance which is more or less qualitatively different at different temperatures (e.g., beer or coffee), but in relation to either of those particular substances it would seem that the modifier is entirely superfluous.
If The West Wing and VEEP are to be believed (ahem), I’m not sure VPs get a lot of face time with the president or a lot of opportunity to tell it like it is.
Is Richie's Pawn Central still the biggest storefront remaining in J.D. Vance's white, Republican, backwater hometown?
There’s an old saying that “All politics is local”. I will admit my approval of Vance is purely locally based. During and right after the N&W wreck in East Palestine, OH JD was on site and was loudly calling for accountability. We live about 17 miles from there downwind. Despite the powers that be 1st saying there was no danger outside of a mile, later extended to 10 miles we could see and smell it in the air here at home.
I particularly appreciated when he stood in Leslie Creek, which is a tributary to the Little Beaver Creek, which is a nationally designated “Wild and Scenic River” and is also one of the few remaining habitats of the critically endangered Hellbender Salamander, and stirred up all of the chemical residue from the bed resulting in that oily rainbow.
I spent a good part of my misbegotten youth down in the Beaver Creek valley fishing, swimming, examining and photographing the ruins of the old Sandy and Beaver Creek Canal, and making sure I was on the Ohio side where it was legal to drink beer at 18 then. I probably know every inch of the abandoned rail bed running up that valley.
Bottom line is I appreciate someone finally standing up and recognizing and advocating for our mostly ignored little corner of Eastern OH/Western PA.
Do you really think as Trump's V.P. he will press for greater environmental protection? Or closer monitoring and inspection of railway safety?
" Or closer monitoring and inspection of railway safety?"
Like Buttplug did?
Can you graduate from junior high and revise your comment ?
Well he’s an Expert in checking out Cabooses
Frank
You're trying to reason with Currentsitguy? You might as well yell at a lamp.
Except some new-fangled lamps can respond to audio prompts, so . . .
Like Common-Law Harris-Willie-Brown did?
Are you implying that J.D. Vance would somehow totally repudiate his sincere and previously held positions if the right opportunity presented itself? How insulting!
“Bottom line is I appreciate someone finally standing up and recognizing and advocating for our mostly ignored little corner of Eastern OH/Western PA.”
There are many reasons anyplace in eastern Ohio or western Pennsylvania more than 10 or 12 miles from Pittsburgh is ignored. Ample, excellent reasons. Those decayed, parasitic, bigoted, uneducated communities might as well be in West Virginia, Idaho, Alabama, Mississippi, or Kentucky.
J.D. Vance will never shake the hillbilly. He isn’t even trying. What is the name of the Richie's Pawn Center in your town?
Jerry Sandusky will never shake the Buggery. He isn't even trying.
Just as you can't shake your Soviet core, you totalitarian imperialist.
Just about every single political position I've seen Prof. Somin take has been wrong to the point of outlandishness. (Open borders, anyone?) I don't know much about J.D. Vance. But if Somin doesn't like him, I expect he's a pretty darn good VP pick.
Way to be a Free Thinker!
I'd hardly be confident of that; Somin isn't wrong about everything, he's just utterly obsessive about the big thing he's wrong about.
Exclusive zoning?
If you think about it, it’s just another facet of his obsession with open borders; Single family housing as just another way of keeping people from moving into nice areas!
Same basic principle: If a place is nice, you are utterly obligated to let people keep coming, more and more, until it stops being nice and they move on to the next place to flood.
Zoning is not boarders.
As I said you have Somin and borders in the brain more than Somin talks about borders.
So what? Zoning is not borders. A club isn't a knife, but they'll both hurt you.
Somin wants people to be able to go anywhere they want, regardless of whether the people already there want them there, regardless of whether it makes life worse for the people already there. And he opposes any sort of rule or mechanism that gets in the way of this.
Borders obviously stop people from crossing them, if enforced. But they're not the only mechanism that can thwart Somin's goal.
Say you've got this nice town, peaceful, a very pleasant place to live. Naturally people want in, but it's full, so they can't come in. They can't pay enough to persuade the people already there to move out and sell their homes to them!
One way they could come in anyway is if they could just pitch tents in some random location, say a park. Hm, what does Somin have to say about rules prohibiting camping in parks?
Other way they could come in anyway is if one or two of the home owners in this nice, single family zoned area sold their property to developers, who could build a high rise apartment. Again, what does Somin have to say about this?
In both cases it's pretty obvious that life gets worse for the people already there. But it gets better for the newcomers, which is all that matters to him.
Let me note that I really do feel sorry for the people who don't get to enjoy nice things because they're already owned by somebody else.
The answer is not to force the current owners to share. It's to make more nice things.
Why doesn't Somin put some of this energy into trying to improve things in the places the immigrants are coming from, rather than leaving those places awful, and just relocating the people?
I mean, Milei demonstrates that it's not hopeless, and it really is the low hanging fruit if you want to improve lives.
All the best liberarians think of things purely from the point of view of middle class property owners. More of a fuck you got mine shallow conservative take than anything libertarian. NIMBYism is bad, and certainly not libertarian.
Ahhhh your second post. Like you couldn’t hold in an immigration screed after your zoning screed.
A zoning screed which demands Somin take positions on aspects of zoning I’m not sure he’s taken a position on. But even this indicts him!
You are not showing you dint have an issue with your inability to focus on the post when the poster is Somin.
I often find Somin well beyond where I am on both borders and zoning. But I manage to keep it to a post by post basis.
Good post below on the shallowness of hypothetical hypocrisy btw.
"Fuck you I've got mine" is worlds better than "Fuck you I'm taking it".
"A zoning screed which demands Somin take positions on aspects of zoning I’m not sure he’s taken a position on."
Be sure.
Zoning is the taking like thing.
It’s not always bad but inverting the issue is…well, like mistaking libertarian for authoritarian.
Zoning IS a taking, when it first happens, for the specific property owner whose property value has been diminished.
For the next owner? It's not a taking for them, because they bought the property already encumbered.
What Somin doesn't want to consider is that for the existing property owners in an area, the existing zoning is effectively part of what they bought into, and the zoning changes HE wants diminish the property values of everybody but the early actors who cash out and leave.
No, buying encumbered land with no choice to unencumber it is not actually the free market, nor is that person not suffering from government regulation restricting their freedom.
You're making elementary errors because you really want to defend zoning.
Didn't say government encumbrances on property are the free market. I just said they're not takings for subsequent owners, only for the owner at the time the encumbrance was imposed. Rule changes can be takings, rule stability can suck, but doesn't suck as a taking.
The general point I was making here is that Somin's high level policy preference is that people be free to move to places regardless of the impact on the people already living there. He opposes basically EVERY impediment to people moving into areas; Camping restrictions, zoning limits on the housing supply, having enforced national borders.
And he systematically discounts the costs of his preferred policy to people already present.
Because it’s hard for Maria Maria Isabella Sanchez/Garcia/Fuentes to schlob his knob if she’s in Honduras
Frank
If there's any fundamental principle of libertarian, it's that only individuals, not collectives, have rights. It's this that you don't understand, which means that your claim to have been a libertarian in the 1970s was at best self-delusion. You like low taxes and guns. That just makes you a bog-standard conservative, not a libertarian.
Prof. Somin is not saying that you have to let newcomers to the town where you reside live on your property. He is saying that you have no right to stop me from letting them on my property, whether to live or work. If I want to build a multi-family home on my property — key word, my property — that's my business. If people living nearby don't like it, so what?
Look, I perfectly well understand that. In the 70's I was an anarcho-capitalist libertarian of the David Friedman sort. I was a member of the LP, but found them uncomfortably statist. From an anarcho-capitalist perspective you're right, but an anarcho-capitalist society wouldn't HAVE local governments. You'd likely be looking at something more like gated communities, actually.
Eventually I came to understand that E.O.Wilson's gibe about socialism was equally applicable to anarchism: “Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species”.
The only flaw in anarchism is that humans are not well suited for it, so it's not really stable against all sorts of failure modes. That's a pretty big flaw if you're stuck working with humans!
So now I'm more of a minarchist, I want the least government that's actually stable against failure modes. That's a hell of a lot more government than anarchy, regrettably.
One failure mode of a prosperous and free society is a bunch of people who like the prosperity but don't appreciate the freedom moving in and abolishing the freedom that caused the prosperity, so that the originally prosperous people end up poor, too.
So, while freedom of exit is incredibly important to limit the depredations of pathological states, freedom of entry can kill off free states. It's much more problematic than freedom of exit, has enormously more potential for downsides as well as upsides.
This is why the early libertarians, while they wanted open borders, didn't think it was the first thing you should do. Because if a welfare state has open borders, who does it attract? People who want to live in a welfare state! Kiss any chance of getting rid of the welfare state after that happens. Open border were the LAST thing on the agenda, not the FIRST.
Path dependence! The early libertarians understood it, Somin does not.
if a welfare state has open borders, who does it attract? People who want to live in a welfare state!
A country has lots of characteristics, of which being a "welfare state" is only one. Migrants trying to move there are attracted by some combination of those characteristics, or maybe only that it's not a total mess.
Besides, most countries are welfare states to one degree or another, so there may not be much improvement on that score. People migrate mostly to get away from terrible places, or for better economic opportunities, not welfare. We know this because they generally take crappy jobs, at low wages, rather than lolling around living the high life on the state's dime.
Of course then they are "taking our jobs," another basis for vilification by the bigots.
Yes, they did.
If there is anything the incels and bigots at this white, male, faux libertarian blog can't abide, it is some genuinely libertarian content.
The Ohio Senator is one of the Party's leading advocates of protectionism, economic planning, and immigration restrictions.
There used to be a Sesame Street song about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsRjQDrDnY8
"He's the enemy of free markets" says the guy who wants to sell human organs on the "free market," which makes you the enemy of human dignity.
Telling someone that he/she doesn't own his/her own body is not respectful of human dignity.
But it is a pillar of right-wing thinking these days.
One more reason these clingers can't be replaced, by their betters, fast enough.
You have not said anything contradictory. Free markets would allow such, and use of "human dignity" means forcing others to not do this, which does not acknowledge the inherent dignity in free people making their own choices for themselves.
Anyway, a judge in Australia ruled dwarf tossing at bars was illegal, because it was not dignified for them, patronizingly, which also removed their dignity as free people making their own choices, and made them ethical wards of the state as they apparently could not control themselves for their own dignity's sake.
To be fair, he's not called "LibertarianProfessor"...
So, which candidate *is* a libertarian?
Maybe the Libertarian Party candidate, but the Libertarian Party seems to disagree over whether their own candidate is a libertarian.
I used to watch the Kenenedy show (as in MTV VJ), who was libertarian. She had on the Libertarian guy who apparently ran in the previous election.
He was full on Trump syncophant, enjoyed at the idea of dictator tanks rolling through Europe, as if that had anything to do with liberty.
Did Jo transition?
We understand that leftists like you think America exists to serve foreigners at the expense of Americans just so long as you get paid. Sorry that some of believe American government exists first to serve Americans, wait, not sorry.
Multiple people, including some from Appalachia, have called out his book as not reliable. If so, it would not be surprising, since he is a power seeking grifter.
The continual annoyance of some comments on a blog that front and center highlights its libertarian content that the writer is libertarian is duly noted.
This blog expressly and prominently claims to be libertarian but never mentions conservative, Republican, right-wing, or bigoted. What a bunch of transparent liars.
He's a CIA puppet, and like CIA puppet Gerald Ford, will be President via an IC op.
There may be hope for you yet. Stupidity is a disease much like alcoholism and drug addiction. You seem to be a perfect candidate for Stupidity Anonymous, so there may be hope for you. The first step is admitting that you're stupid and that you don't know how to think or write like an intelligent, rational, educated adult. Once you take that first step, the rest should be easy. After you're done rehab, come back and try to impress us with your newly-acquired 12th Grade reading and writing skills.
"Libertarian screeches that different party's candidate is not Libertarian"
It doesn't matter who Trump's pick would have been - all the Trump stupporters would have approved of it.
I am sure that many of you Trump fans have in times past favoured at least some kind of free market and limited central planning, etc. but Trump and Vance have exposed that position as superficial and possibly merely tribal ritual utterance given the speed with which you dumped it.
The GOP is now clearly the party of the anti-capitalist right.
Look, the LP had its shot, and failed. (In part it failed because Somin was actually getting what he wanted: The country was being flooded with immigrants from far less libertarian cultures!)
We're not going to get free markets, there is no longer any constituency for them large enough to matter politically. Our choice is now limited to what sort of planned economy we're going to experience. After that proves a disaster, maybe there will be a constituency for free markets again.
Left-wing socialism, or right wing nationalism. I know which I'd rather be subjected to, and it's not even close.
We are kind of lucky in that the US is a huge country with diverse natural resources, we're one of the few countries in the world that's big enough to reap all the advantages of economies of scale internally, without foreign trade. So, at least in the long run, we've got less to lose from trade restrictions than anybody else.
In the mean time, one side in this conflict wants us disarmed and helpless, and the other doesn't. That tells me all I need to know. While it doesn't matter AT ALL to Somin. He's kind of clueless, that way.
Left-wing socialism, or right wing nationalism. I know which I’d rather be subjected to, and it’s not even close.
one side in this conflict wants us disarmed and helpless, and the other doesn’t. That tells me all I need to know
Good examples of rationalisation, thanks.
You're welcome.
But that really is my reasoning.
I'm not going to claim that tariffs are entirely harmless; Bush's steel tariff was a contributory cause of my first employer out of college going out of business. They're taxes, no tax is harmless. They're economically distorting, their purpose is to be economically distorting.
In a world at peace consisting of free market economies, tariffs would be really stupidly destructive. We don't live in such a world.
Being economically entangled with a totalitarian, genocidal strategic adversary isn't exactly the smartest thing in the world, and the express purpose of Trump's tariffs is to free us from being dependent on China. That's a valid strategic goal. Free market economics doesn't always tell you to do the smartest thing in a world where there are hostile, economically irrational actors.
So, like I said, if the tariffs substitute for domestic taxation, rather than adding to it, they're not that bad an idea. They'll be economically painful in the short run, but what military preparation isn't?
And, yes, I stand by my remark on gun control: One side in this election wants the public disarmed and defenseless, the other side doesn't. That tells us something fundamental about those two sides. Trump isn't afraid of an armed American people.
Biden? Disarming us has been a life-long obsession of his. Because he knows he can't do everything he wants if we are in a position to resist.
: One side in this election wants the public disarmed and defenseless, the other side doesn’t.
Not true.
No, absolutely true, and I flatly refuse to pretend otherwise.
Cast your memory back to when the Heller decision overturned the strictest gun control law in the entire country, and the Democratic party, instead of saying, "Fair call, that law really was nuts." went CRAZY.
Recall when McDonald incorporated the 2nd amendment, and overturned maybe the 2nd worst gun law in the country: The rage redoubled!
That told us what they meant by "reasonable gun laws", and no matter how convenient it would be for Democrats for us to forget that, we're not going to.
Patrick Leahy, who became pro tempore of the Senate, noted he had a firing range at his house. Lots of Democrats are strong gun rights people, especially those in Western states.
Even the likes of AOC later accepted the basic constitutional rule in Heller, which seems understandable, since you have in the past criticized it as thin gruel.
It is not “crazy” to think that overturning the traditional rule in heavily populated cities that guns can be heavily regulated is wrong. Such rules go back to the Founding. For those who care about originalism.
The opinion did not just overrule the handgun ban. A safety lock law was also overturned. It also overruled the democratically determined regulation of local affairs.
The case was not about a state’s right to have its gun laws. It was about D.C. having the ability to regulate its affairs. Yes, if you assume the premise, they did it wrongly here per five federal judges.
Before Heller, most states already had gun rights provisions in their constitutions. Democrats and Republicans supported them. Both in state after state hunt, own guns for self-defense, and so on.
A majority of people in both parties support certain types of gun regulations. Meanwhile, when Congress passed a law blocking some types of gun litigation it, again, had bipartisan support.
A minority of Democrats want to go much further but then some Republicans -- including Chief Justice Warren Burger & a few Republican appointees on the federal bench now -- agree/agreed with them on the Second Amendment.
I didn't say they wanted themselves disarmed, just the masses.
"Even the likes of AOC later accepted the basic constitutional rule in Heller,"
Yeah, right: Accept that the 2nd amendment guarantees a 'right', then define the 'right' in such a way that it doesn't stop you from disarming people. Stevens wrote that playbook in his dissent: Treat it as a right to be armed whenever the government wants you to be armed.
AOC 'accepted the basic constitutional rule', and at the same time praised New Zealand's gun confiscation program, suggesting we adopt it here.
"It is not “crazy” to think that overturning the traditional rule in heavily populated cities that guns can be heavily regulated is wrong."
Obama's proposal for a 'local option' on gun control. Do any other civil rights work that way?
Disarmed means disarmed, not restricted or limited. If you'd claimed the Democrats want to restrict gun rights, I wouldn't argue. But you're making an absolute claim that is unevidenced and arguably paranoid bullshit.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and if you don't like where that journey is headed, you say "No!" at the first step, not the last.
If you stop after the first step, do you also say you've completed a journey of a thousand miles?
Probably!
“It is not “crazy” to think that overturning the traditional rule in heavily populated cities that guns can be heavily regulated is wrong.”
Obama’s proposal for a ‘local option’ on gun control. Do any other civil rights work that way?
Non-responsive.
Absolutely true, and tracks what has happened (and is happening) in other Western countries.
National socialism, or regular socialism?
Depends on whether one is a member of the "vermin" class or not, I suspect...
We’re not going to get free markets, there is no longer any constituency for them large enough to matter politically.
There is no constituency for your notion of free markets, true, but there is plenty of support for a sensible version, which in fact we have in much of the economy.
Left-wing socialism, or right wing nationalism. I know which I’d rather be subjected to, and it’s not even close.
Really? Given your definition of "left-wing socialism," which probably covers most modern industrialized countries, I'd be curious to know what "right-wing nationalistic" country you'd prefer to Canada, say.
One of the biographies of the Bielski brothers mentioned that when parents in the ajd
Jewish ghetto in L’vov found their daughters starting to connect with the Bielski partisans, they werw absolutely horrified that their daughters would be subject to bad influences and might end up marrying common working class people instead of the doctors and lawyers who would help them be successful in life and give them prestige. They might be ruined. And they continued to feel this way even after the ghetto was well into liquidation and people were starving, and being killed, right and left. They simply couldn’t let go of the values they grew up with to grasp the idea that this might be their daughters’ best chance of survival.
Professor Somin’s post reads much like this. Faced with a Vice President whose most likely qualification is probably a willingness to not pull a Pence and do whatever it takes to make sure Congress declares Trump the winner of the 2028 election, faced with a real possibility of an authoritarian overthrow of the US Constitution, what does Professor Somin focus on? Economic theory! Fine points of economic theory that are about as helpful and relevant to the current situation as traditional advice about what sort of company to keep with eye to marriage would be helpful to young Jewish women trapped in Polish ghettos and awaiting murder by the Nazis.
The old values just don’t matter in the current situation. Focus on what’s relevant and we have a chance of surviving. Fail to, go on like nothing has changed and the old fine points are even relevant, and we might all be slaughtered. Professor Somin seems to be as incapable of grasping the real danger we’re in as the Lvov ghetto parents were during the Holocaust.
I suppose one of the perks of blogging is that you get to decide what to blog about, rather than having to take direction from the poor suckers scribbling in the comments section. I probably would have written it differently, too.
The differance is that when J.D. Vance voted with his feet he did it legally. International immigrants who wish to do it legally are welcomed. It is only the criminals who most Americans-native, natural born and naturalized-object to.
Can you imagine a more invertebrate species than today's Republican politician? No matter what you said before as an independent, sentient human, you have to now kowtow to Dear Leader, kiss his ring, apologize for any past criticisms, declare loudly that he's competent (even though you know he's not), knowledgeable (even though everyone privately agrees he's "a moron"), and prudent (even though you know he's a petulant child). The closest to this I've seen in my lifetime was Nixon's control over the GOP circa 1972, and even that wasn't very close. And at least Nixon was competent.
"Can you imagine a more invertebrate species than today’s Republican politician?"
Sure, the slugs and parasitic worms that make up today's Democratic party.
"I know you are but what am I?" seems to be your only response when someone makes a point you can't refute.
More gutless? That’s a tough one, but . . . right-wing law professor?
And, of course, former right-wing law professor.
Yes, easily, because your President isn't even compos mentis. What do you think that tells us, in the rest of the world, about the operations of your blue team?
You're totalitarians. You're not fascists. You're not mere authoritarians. You're totalitarians. It's clear for the whole world to see now.
You're fucking ruined. Unfortunately, you're doing your best to bring down the rest of the West with you.
Trump could have picked AOC for his VP and Somin and the rest of the TDS-addled Leftist sycophants here would have instantly switched to belittiling and berating AOC.
Your insincerity and vacuity is noted, yet again.
You know, it's really easy to posit some hypothetical outrage, say the people you don't like would do it, and claim that proves you're right about them.
It's easy to do, and it's incredibly stupid. And since they're not actually going to do it, you face no risk of being proven wrong!
I don't like this silly rhetorical move when people I disagree use it, so I'm kind of obligated to attack it when people I sometimes agree with use it, too...
Depends on if it's mockery of Somin's monomaniacal screeds or an actual position.
Somin's positions have consistently held no attachment to reality. He posts a theoretical answer that is applied regardless of the facts or consequences so substituting counterfactuals is irrelevant and absurd counterfactuals highlight this, if poorly.
Or alternatively the Trump supporters would have done a 180 and proclaimed it a brilliant choice.
Anyway, JD Vance, on the issues.
Pro-life, but thinks that abortion is not, constitutionally, an issue the federal government has any say about. He's right about that.
Opposed to war in Ukraine. I think that's a bit short sighted.
Opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants, favors merit based immigration.
January 6th: Would have gone along with Trump's scheme to reject electors from states Trump was disputing. Can't agree with that.
Favors tariffs. Added to internal taxes, tariffs are a bad idea, just because they'd represent an increase in taxes. Substituted for internal taxes? There's no particular basis for thinking they're worse than an income tax, say, dollar for dollar.
Climate: No Green new deal.
Middle East: Supports Israel, but wanted to give them financial aid, not arms.
He actually seems a pretty common Republican, actually. Did Somin think Trump was going to nominate Noam Chomsky?
There’s no particular basis for thinking they’re worse than an income tax, say, dollar for dollar.
So you don't understand how tariffs affect international trade. Gottit.
He actually seems a pretty common Trump Republican,
FTFY.
Econmically illiterate, authoritarian, and in favour of overthrowing a legitimately elected administration. Great.
See my remark on the subject, above. Yes, I do understand the drawbacks of tariffs. They're economically distorting, and have costs.
The same could be said of having a military. Tariffs, in this case, are a military investment, getting us disentangled from China so they have less economic leverage over us. They have to be assessed as a military investment.
There is some case for selective tariffs based on foreign policy matters.
But the idea of broad tariffs, which are what Trump and Vance want, is truly terrible. To claim they are no worse than income taxes is a mark of economic illiteracy.
https://lawliberty.org/forum/why-economists-loathe-tariffs/
The question we have every right to ask is why economists insist that tariff rates should be zero while income tax rates can be well above zero. Do not the same economy-deadening forces that arise with positive tariff rates apply to positive income tax rates as well?
...One reason for the zero-tariff consensus in economics is, surely, a historical and sociological one. Antipathy to the tariff is “the date that economics brought to the dance,” so to speak. It would be impolitic for economics to jilt antipathy to the tariff, to accept the possibility of positive tariff rates, because the cause of free trade made economics what it is today. ...
As I understand it, his proposal is for a 60% tariff on imports from China specifically, and a 10% tariff on imports from elsewhere, with offsetting reductions in other taxes to make the change revenue neutral.
The other tax reductions should offset the direct effects of the tariff, but tariffs are, of course, distortionary. (As I've said, their POINT is to distort the market!) and people would feel some consequences from the economic distortions. The market can't instantly respond to these sort of incentives.
People would feel some consequences from embarking on a program of building aircraft carriers, too. Again, this is a strategic investment for military purposes. It has to be judged as such.
Again, the US is almost uniquely situated in terms of size and comprehensive natural resources, so that in the long term attaining a high degree of self-sufficiency is actually feasible for the US in a way it isn't for almost any other country. The current US economy is about equivalent to the entire world economy 30 years ago, and the world was not too small to be economically self sufficient 30 years ago.
The other reason for wanting the US to be relatively self-sufficient is that we're setting ourselves up for an economic crash when people finally decide to stop lending us money. At that point foreign trade will become expensive indeed, and the less of it we need, the better off we'll be.
Of course, "I'm positioning us to recover faster from the economic disaster that's inevitably facing us." is not the sort of thing people say publicly as Presidents or candidates for the office...
There’s no particular basis for thinking they’re worse than an income tax, say, dollar for dollar.
More economic illiteracy from Brett.
Your argument is ipse-dixit from a known idiot. Care to back that up with cite to a discussion of the topic in a classic text ?
Economics is hogwash. A charge of 'illiteracy' of the dismal science simply means one doesn't share your prejudices about methods that lack both predictive and causal-explanatory power.
Wake up. You're in a cult.
I will state upfront that Trump is not Hitler, nor have I said otherwise.
But how would all you Trump supporters, had you been living in Germany in 1932, known not to have voted for Hitler?
Gee, you'd think Trump hadn't already served four years as president.
The GOP in Congress were not as sycophantic then. Try again. And how about answering my question?
Tour attempt at a comparison is without merit. The US in 2024 is not like Germany in 1932 and in fact never has been since its founding.
What were Americans thinking when they voted for FDR four times? You know the guy who tried to pack the SC to get his way and set up concentration camps.
Your inability to answer my question, despite responding to my post is, er, interesting.
"The US is not like Germany" is not an answer.
I assume by having read Mein Kampf.
So Trump's denial of having read Mein Kampf might actually be true, then.
I would believe it. Most people haven't read that book, any more than they've read Das Kapital.
I assume it was more widely read in 1932 Germany.
Whoosh! If someone says "man, Trump ain't shit", Brett will vouch for Trump being shit.
He's acknowledged owning a copy; he uses Hitler's language like "unified Reich", "poisoning the blood of the country" and "vermin".
They had to insert his name into intelligence reports to get him to keep reading when he was president. So I'm sure he's only browsed it for the blood poisoning part, but not read enough to get him to not admire Hitler.
Actually, it was a collection of Hitler speeches, not Mein Kampf. He tried to shield himself by claiming that a Jewish friend of his had given to it him; the person was not, in fact, Jewish.
Vanity Fair, quoting a 1990 interview
He acknowledged owning a copy, but maybe was not telling the truth. Politicians often lie, but not about stupid stuff that is easily exposed and also makes him look worse. And I still doubt that reading Mein Kampf would actually make Trump less admiring of Hitler. I retract my speculation that he got the blood poisoning stuff from Mein Kampf; but was it also in My New Order?
Unless you're an expert in WWII political history, a claim to have not read Mein Kampf is facially plausible, you know. It's not exactly on the best sellers list, nor is it particularly shameful to have not read it.
The idea that reading Mein Kampf in 1932 Germany would have persuaded Trump supporters not to vote for Hitler is as likely as reading Project 2025 persuading Trump supporters not to vote for Trump in 2024. But publicizing Project 2025 is so effective at diminishing Trump votes among those who are not in the Trump cult that Trump is fleeing from it as fast as his golf cart can go.
I see that in 2014 it was reported that Mein Kampf surged onto e-book bestseller lists, even though free copies were and are available on the internet. A commenter as prone to stupid conspiracy theories as Brett Bellmore would assert with no more proof that this was the foundation of Trump's rise in politics.
That's easy. In 1932 the Nazi party was divided between the genuine socialists on the one hand who wanted to do away with capitalism altogether and the 'pragmatists' who wanted corporatism (private ownership, but effective loss of control over production decision).
Regardless, there was no surprise about what the party BASICALLY wanted to do economically and socially: German voters were repeatedly and explicitly told both stories. Hence, they could roughly imagine, if they reflected on it, that anything in between was possible. To their minds, not ours, that was better than the status quo ante. (The surprise, if you can call it that, came in 1935, with the Night of the Long Knives, when the pragmatists assassinated the more ideologically pure national socialists.)
So, if you wanted something different, if didn't want to vote for Hitler in 1932, you could have voted conservative. Famously (infamously), the conservatives sought to ally, for prudential reasons, with Hitler circa 1931. He REBUFFED them. (Google it.) He explicitly stated, and made known to the German people, that the Nazis were not conservatives because they wanted to upend the existing order and do away with all conservative policies.
So, in 1932, you could have voted conservative and not NSDAP if you didn't want Hitler. And if you look at the presidential election results from the spring of 1932, you will see that many more people voted for Hindenburg than for Hitler, including leftists who sought to block Hitler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_German_presidential_election
In other words, you know in 1932 not to vote for Hitler because you know basically what he wants to do to Germany, and so you vote conservative. (You might also vote that way because you get a sense of what Hitler wants to do in the neighbourhood, but probably have no sense at all about the scale or the violence.)
Regarding the United States, Donald Trump's policy preferences basically track, and have long tracked, that of the Reform party (Perot, Buchanan). That's why Trump himself got involved with them decades ago, howsoever tenuously.
Your MSM has gone to GREAT lengths to obfuscate this fact from the American public. They don't want the public to understand that Trump was economically to the left of Hilary Clinton and so won in 2016 in part on that basis. Your media, and your blue teamers, go to great lengths to portray him as a policy-less, feckless tyrant. It does so in part BECAUSE it doesn't want to to talk about reality: of a disastrous globalization policy since the 1990s, the gutting of manufacturing and industry in America, the hollowing out of its middle class, the mass importation of illegals as basically a neo-serf class, etc. The MSM doesn't want the American people to confront the fact that the American blue team betrayed its traditional economic policies, betrayed the unions, betrayed the middle class, etc.
Oh no!
This guy's not perfect!
He wants to close the border?
He wants to purge the useless to harmful jobsworths in the swampy bureaucracy?
He's good enough.
In this OP, Prof. Somin cries out for the return of a ship that has sailed some years ago.
1) Regardless of who wins in November, the US and its allies have embarked on a new era of protectionism and "industrial policy." That is at the heart of present Realpolitik.
– The inflammatory rhetoric of the existential threat of the destruction of American democracy, only blinds US voters to the actual threat: the twilight of US economic hegemony, a threat promised by the policies of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.
a) Both candidates promise policies that will increase the US national debt to > the annual US GDP that implies annual debt servicing > $1T.
b) That level of debt will threaten the status of the US dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Fortunately, neither the EU nor the UK nor China are in a position to challenge the dollar during the next 5 years.
c) Both base their plans on the myth of Chinese "overproduction" requiring extreme tariffs and top down government dictated industrial policy rather than encouraging the historical US advantage of supremacy in basic manufacturing technology.
d) Fortunately China will be increasingly handicapped by persistent unfavorable demographics.
2) To the end of strengthening US technological dominance, both the Reps and Dems should promote a new wave of legal immigration of the best and brightest from the global south. Such immigration has been of incomparable benefit since the 1940s. US high tech companies are well positioned to transform such immigration to our national economic advantage.
It is time to set aside the partisan bickering in favor of a "no loose," bi-partisan economic and immigration roadmap.
Free markets are all well and good... If you own a large company. Not so much if you're working class. In practice? NAFTA destroyed the United States manufacturing sector utterly.
Actually, genuine free markets are pretty good if you're working class. Large companies do very well under crony capitalism, though.
We haven't had anything like a genuine free market economy in the US in decades.
Yeah, no. The widespread proliferation of free trade agreements has incentivized a race to the bottom and most US manufacturing has flat out left the country as a result, especially the steel industry. The US and a number of other western countries have built up a large trade deficit with China, as well.
U.S. manufacturing output is at historical highs. It has not been "destroyed" in any way, shape, or form.
try and find a TV built in the US or Computer, Blue Jeans, I-phones, Baby Food, Converse Sneakers, Ray Bans, Razor Blades, Fender Guitars, Underwear, Socks,
OK, Boeing still making airliners (for now)
Frank
I am a long-time fan of the legal analysis and insights offered in the Volokh Conspiracy, since way way way back before their joining Reason.
Not to squelch anyone's free speech, but Ilya Somin's commentary almost never focuses on law, legal analysis, or insights about law or legal analysis. It's pure politics and pure commentary that is entirely out of place on this forum (the VC). Maybe Reason could publish his stuff elsewhere. Thanks for considering.
Supposedly Vance has said, in paraphrase, "Don't be an asshole" and the Iraq War was a "fucking disaster." How can we get Trump to switch places with Vance on the GOP ticket?
A more competent shooter.
Just wait, and biology will take care of it.