Kategoriarkiv: Fra Redaktionen

Punditokraterne i medierne

Af Redaktionen, den 1. marts 2006. 1 svar

Denne blog var forleden omtalt i en længere artikel i Information om den danske blogosfære, og der var–måske lidt overraskende–overvejende pæne ord med på vejen.  Den fulde artikeltekst findes hos forfatteren her, men her er den for os centrale passage:

“Ingen af disse bloggere [Uriasposten m.fl., red.] er tilsyneladende politisk aktive i gængs forstand. Og ikke alle er lige velartikulerede eller høflige i tonen.

Et mere gennemarbejdet bud på en decideret politisk blog i polemik med sin omverden, er den fritænkende Punditokraterne.dk, der virker inspireret af den amerikanske Instapundit (nr. 7 på top 50) og den britiske Samizdata.net.

Punditokraterne er blandt andre folk fra Copenhagen Business School, jurister og en Groft Sagt skribent fra Berlingske forsamlet for at skyde med meget liberale, verbale skarpskud. En velargumenteret og belæst flok, der stadig savner kvalificeret modstand fra deres politiske modfløj. Til gengæld ser de ikke ud til at kunne levere et gennembrud i form af en markant selvstændig historie, fordi de ikke oplever verden, men snarere fortolker den fra et skrivebord.”

Det er sådan set i orden, som de ville sige i Århus.  Vi skal i fremtiden bestræbe os på også at komme med en selvstændig historie, så vi kan få et gennembrud …

Ugens citat: Tierney om universiteter

Af Redaktionen, den 27. februar 2006. 2 svar

Den fremragende John Tierneys klumme i New York Times i denne uge handler om universiteter–og særligt de amerikanske Ivy League-skoler.  Årsagen er, at Harvard Universitys rektor, fhv. finansminister Larry Summers (som uden US Supreme Courts Bush v. Gore afgørelse i januar 2001 let kunne være blevet fungerende præsident …), i sidste uge tog sin afsked, foranlediget af et kommende mistillidsvotum fra universitetets fastansatte forskere.  Årsagen er–udover at han blev et offer for amerikansk akademisk politisk korrekthed, når den er værst–at Summers forsøgte at tvinge forskerne til at interessere lidt mere for, hvad der egentlig er nyttigt for de studerende.  Men Tierneys pointer er generelle, og her kommer nogle af dem:

“[As] Adam Smith observed two centuries ago, the university tends to be organized “not for the benefit of the students” but “for the ease of the masters.” And nowhere is this more true than at an elite college like Harvard.

In most industries, a company would cater to customers paying $41,000 per year, but Harvard has been able to take its undergraduates for granted. …  Harvard has long known that the best students will keep coming, not for its classes but simply for its reputation. Smart students want to go where the other smart students go.

Suppose people picked hotels based on how intelligent they expected the other guests to be. Once a hotel got the reputation as a brain magnet, smart people would automatically go there, and hotel employees could afford to get complacent. They’d be more interested in their own welfare than their guests’ — especially if their jobs came with lifetime tenure.

At a university, the senior employees not only have tenure but are also used to controlling their own fiefs: departments vote on who’s hired and decide who teaches what. Unless a university president is willing to be less than collegial — and is backed by a board with more gumption than Harvard’s — there’s not much that can be accomplished.

Senior professors can shunt off the more tedious jobs, like teaching freshmen or grading papers, to low-caste graduate students or visiting lecturers. Or they just neglect the jobs that don’t appeal to them. That’s why Summers had to push them to teach survey courses and other basics.

You might expect the Harvard history department to devote a course or two to the American Revolution or the Constitution, but those topics are too mundane. Instead, there’s a course on the diaries of ordinary citizens during the Revolution, and another, “American Revolutions,” that considers the American and Haitian Revolutions as “a continuous sequence of radical challenges to established authority.” …

They’ve been insulated from reality in a political monoculture. The faculty discourse — or at least the discourse among those who bother to go to faculty meetings — has been so dominated by paleoliberals that Summers, a Democrat and a Clinton appointee, struck them as reactionary.”

Ugens citat: Norquist om rottehoveder, republikanere & cola

Af Redaktionen, den 21. februar 2006. 1 svar

Den farverige amerikanske politiske aktivist Grover Norquist (leder af Americans for Tax Reform) er altid god for en ideologisk metafor.  Det var som bekendt ham, der i sin tid sagde, at han ønskede, at den amerikanske forbundsstat skulle være så lille, at den kunne druknes i et badekar.

Her en en anden metafor, som til med er dagsaktuelt i.f.t. de amerikanske Republikanere, der p.t. argumenterer for en slags “big government”-konservatisme; Norquist sagde således fornylig i en tale, at det er undergravende for tilliden til Republikanernes “brand”, som ellers har været succesrigt netop p.g.a. en politik om lave skatter:

“The reason this is important is the same reason that Coca-Cola has been so successful.  They brand Coca-Cola; they have quality controls.  You can walk into the store and you can grab a bottle of Coke off the shelves:  you don’t have to taste it, you don’t have to look at it, you don’t have to shake it around, you don’t have to ask your friends about Coca-Cola.  You just grab it off the shelf because you know what’s inside it.  Now if you get that bottle of coke home and you look at it and there’s a rat head in the coke bottle, you do not say to yourself, you know I’m not going to finish the rest of this coke bottle.  You tell your friends about the rat head in the coke bottle and you go on local television and show them the rat head in the coke bottle.  And all across the country, and the world, people say I wonder what my coke has? Okay.

Republican elected officials who vote for tax increases are rat heads in a coke bottle. They damage the Republican brand.  This is not a victimless crime:  oh Fred’s over in the corner raising taxes, but that’s Fred.  No! No!  Small children everywhere get discouraged if they see Republicans raising taxes because it confuses them, and they don’t know what it means to be a Republican.”

De liberale slår til igen …

Af Redaktionen, den 8. februar 2006. 16 svar

Punditokraterne vil fra og med denne post indlede en on/off tilbagevendende serie af dokumentatiske indslag med den sigende titel “De Liberale Slår Til Igen …”.

Formålet er–“for the record”–at notere offentligt alle de eksempler, der måtte forekomme, hvor selverklærede liberale gør det stik modsatte af, hvad man skulle forvente, at et hensyn til personlig og økonomisk frihed, retssamfund og markedsøkonomi, o.s.v., skulle diktere–alle de eksempler på stillingtagen, der forsøger at fjerne ansvar fra individuelle borgere, markedsinstitutioner og civilsamfundets organisationer.  Vi håber, at serien bliver kort, men vi må nok erkende, at der er empirisk belæg for at forvente, at den bliver uendelig.

Vi lægger hårdt ud med dagens fine lille historie om, Venstres sundhedsordfører Jørgen Winther, som sammen med partiets ideologiske fanebærer, næstformand og indenrigs-og sundhedsminister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, har konkluderet, at den rette liberale politik er at forbyde rygning i alle offentlige rum:

“Venstres folketingsgruppe vil forbyde rygning på restauranter, caféer, butikscentre, banegårde og i lufthavne og idrætshaller. Samtidig vil partiet indrette hermetisk aflukkede rygerum, hvor der ikke må serveres mad eller fødevarer. … – Nu er der solid dokumentation for, at passiv rygning virkelig er farligt for helbredet. Nu er Venstre ved at være klar til at indføre dette, siger Jørgen Winther.”

Et totalforbud er det måske ikke helt.  Endnu.  Men næsten.  Og det er dog en begyndelse.  Og med en ekstra indsats skal det nok lykkes.  Punditokraterne ønsker Jørgen Winther og Lars Løkke Rasmussen held og lykke med det videre arbejde–der er jo endnu nok at tage fat på, hvis danskerne skal forhindres i at gøre noget som helst, der kan skade dem selv.

Ugens citat: Friedman om Skandinavien–og alt muligt

Af Redaktionen, den 6. februar 2006. 2 svar

Vores allesammens “Onkel Milton”–altså Nobelprisvinderen Milton Friedman–er (som nævnt før her på stedet) “still going strong” og skarp som Occams Razor, selv om han nu nærmer sig de 94.  Det fremgår med tydelighed af et længere interview i New Perspectives Quarterly, som kommer vidt omkring: Irak krig, Reagan & Thatcher, Bush, EU, den “tredje vej”, og meget, meget andet–bl.a. de skandinaviske velfærdsstater:

NPQ | Perhaps the Scandinavian countries are a model to look at. They are high-tax but also high-employment societies. And they have freed up their labor markets much more than in Italy, France or Germany.

Friedman | Though it is not as true now as it used to be with the influx of immigration, the Scandinavian countries have a very small, homogeneous population. That enables them to get away with a good deal they couldn’t otherwise get away with.

What works for Sweden wouldn’t work for France or Germany or Italy. In a small state, you can reach outside for many of your activities. In a homogeneous culture, they are willing to pay higher taxes in order to achieve commonly held goals. But “common goals” are much harder to come by in larger, more heterogeneous populations.

The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can’t do that. Politics exacerbates and magnifies differences.

Hat tip: Dan Drezners blog.

Ugens citat: B.-H. Lévy om USA, Frankrig og integration

Af Redaktionen, den 22. januar 2006. 2 svar

Wall Street Journal havde lørdag et interview med den franske filosof fra det man ca. 1980 kaldte “det nye højre”, Bernard-Henri Lévy.  Lévy har i de seneste måneder haft en artikelserie om USA i det fortrinlige Atlantic Monthly (som ethvert begavet menneske burde læse), og denne kommer nu kommer i bogformat.  I den forbindelse dette interessante interview, hvori Lévy bl.a. forsvarede USA og kritiserede Irak-krigen:

“Mr. Lévy regards his own criticism of America not as anti-Americanism, but as tough love. He is an assiduous believer in America’s “manifest destiny,” and expects this country, clearly, to uphold the highest standards–as he sees them. Some of these standards he would prescribe to France, in particular the American approach to citizenship. He contrasts the “model of Dearborn”–the Detroit suburb, home to significant numbers of contented Arab-Americans–with the “model of St. Denis,” the Parisian banlieu where discontented Arab immigrants (never referred to as Arab-Frenchman) ran riot late last year. “What is good about America is that in order to be a citizen, you are not asked to resign from your former identity. You cannot tell Varadarajan or Lévy, ‘You have to erase from your mind the ancestors you had.’ In France, we erase.”

America, Mr. Lévy concludes, “is a factory of citizens, which has some defects, some problems, but the country works, not too badly. Better, I think, than mine.””

Ugens citat: Shadegg om "Ånden fra '94"

Af Redaktionen, den 18. januar 2006. 1 svar

Kongresmedlem John Shadegg (R-AZ) er en af kandidaterne til den ledige post som Republikansk flertalsleder i Repræsentanternes Hus.  Han kæmper for sit kandidatur bl.a. med et indlæg i onsdagens Wall Street Journal, hvori han priser Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater m.fl. som idoler for, hvad partiet burde være i dag.  Heri hedder det bl.a.:

Ten years ago, the American people put Republicans in control of the House of Representatives for the first time in more than 40 years. It was a historic achievement, made possible because we stood for the principles the American people believed in: smaller government, returning power to the states, lower taxes, greater individual freedom and–above all–reform.

Some Republican leaders in the House seem to have lost sight of those principles, though the American people still believe in them. Meanwhile, Americans are sick of scandals. To fully regain their confidence–and to retain and grow the Republican majority–we need to make a clean break with the past and return to our ideals.
Republicans promised the American people two things in 1994. First, we promised to rein in the size and scope of the federal government. Second, we promised to clean up Washington. In recent years, we have fallen short on both counts. Total federal spending has grown by 33% since 1995, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Worse, we have permitted some of the same backroom practices that flourished in the old Democrat-controlled House. Powerful members of Congress are able to insert provisions giving away millions–even tens of millions–of dollars in the dead of night. The recent scandals involving Duke Cunningham and Jack Abramoff have highlighted the problem, but this is not just a case of a few bad apples. The system itself needs structural reforms. …

I grew up watching the example of Barry Goldwater, who worked closely with my father. He taught me that “a government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.” That philosophy guided me when I ran for Congress in 1994. I was thrilled to be part of the Revolutionary Class of ’94, and the sense of hope and mission of the early days after the American people elected a Republican majority in the House is still with me. We believed then that we could take back our government, and I believe it today. …

House Republicans differ about policy and tactics, but we stand together in our respect for this institution, our hatred of corruption, and our support for the basic principles of our party. The American people overwhelmingly support the principles we stand for. We cannot allow the current scandals to distract their attention from our substantive agenda. If we do not make a clear, public break with the recent past, there is a good chance we will lose our majority.

I do not need a poll or questionnaire to tell me what Republicans stand for. The party of Ronald Reagan exists not to expand government, but to protect the American people from government’s excesses. President Reagan once said, “If you’re afraid of the future, then get out of the way, stand aside. The people of this country are ready to move again.”

WSJ‘s Brendan Miniter (hvis broder, Rich, har været venlig overfor denne blog) havde tirsdag en artikel netop om Shadegg, Reagan og Goldwater, og Republikanernes problemer p.t.

Punditokraterne ønsker godt nytår!

Af Redaktionen, den 1. januar 2006. Skriv et svar

Vi Punditokrater ønsker hinanden og vores læsere et godt og lykkeligt nyt år–med fred og frihandel for alle!

Samtidigt skal der lyde en tak til vores læsere.  2005 var bloggens første år, og vi synes, at det generelt gik godt: Vi har siden marts 2005 haft knap 60.000 "unikke" besøgende, ca. 130.000 sidevisninger og ligger generelt på en 4., 5. eller 6. plads blandt chart.dk's danske politiske websites.  Det synes vi selv er en god begyndelse.

PS.  Og nå ja, i den politiske korrektheds navn: Happy Kwanzaa!

Jalving om velfærdsstaten og Vesterbro

Af Redaktionen, den 13. december 2005. Skriv et svar

Vores med-Punditokrat Mikael Jalving har forfattet dagens kronik i Berlingske, om velfærdsstaten “gennem brevsprækken”, når man bor på Vesterbro.

Ugens citat: Toomey om Republikansk identitetskrise

Af Redaktionen, den 12. december 2005. Skriv et svar

I dagens Wall Street Journal har Pat Toomey (tidl. Republikansk kandidat til kongressen og nu ny leder af Club for Growth, som vi tidligere har omtalt) en kronik, hvor han opfordrer Republikanerne til at rense ud i eget hus (og som nok også kunne give hjemlige danske borgerlige/liberale lidt at tænke over):

“After 10 years of controlling Congress, Washington Republicans have an identity crisis. It was Republicans who gave us a farm bill that only a Soviet central planner could love; a campaign-finance reform bill that expands government’s unconstitutional restrictions on speech; a prescription-drug entitlement program that Lyndon Johnson could only have dreamed of; and a transportation bill with more than 40-times as many pork projects it took to earn Reagan’s veto. So, we ask a fair question: Is Reagan’s vision of limited government–the fundamental principle that brought Republicans to power–still part of the Republican identity, or has it been abandoned in favor of the seductive power of controlling unlimited government?”

Dansk Public Choice Workshop

Af Redaktionen, den 30. november 2005. Skriv et svar

I næste uge afholder Dansk Public Choice Selskab sin årlige workshop, denne gang ved Aarhus Universitet.  Programmet og de relevante papers, som nok skulle kunne interesse nogle Punditokrater, kan læses her.

Politik som de(t) smukkes kunst …

Af Redaktionen, den 28. november 2005. 3 svar

Punditokraternes gode ven (og læser), den produktive og innovative svenske public choice økonom Niclas Berggren fra Ratio Instituttet, har bedt os om via Punditokraterne at forsøge at rekruttere deltagere til et survey i.f.m. et forskningsprojekt, der ser på bl.a. politik og betydningen af folks udseende! …  Så hermed Niclas’ egen henvendelse + et link:

Participate in a scientific study of beauty

You are welcome to participate in a scientific study of beauty carried out by three academic economists: Associate Professor Niclas Berggren, The Ratio Institute, Dr. Henrik Jordahl, Uppsala University, and Professor Panu Poutvaara, University of Helsinki. They study how differences in beauty, and some related traits, are perceived, and for this purpose they need respondents from different countries.

Respondents have the option to participate in a lottery with a 200EUR prize.

The link is http://www.beautystudy.se

Please write PUNDITOKRATERNE as your city of residence, as an indication that you found information about the study at this blog.

All replies are anonymous. Deadline for participation is December 8. Any questions can be put to niclas.berggren@ratio.se. Thanks in advance for your time and help!

Please write PUNDITOKRATERNE as your city of residence, as an indication that you found information about the study at this blog.

All replies are anonymous. Deadline for participation is December 8. Any questions can be put to niclas.berggren@ratio.se. Thanks in advance for your time and help!

Ugens citat: Bjørnskov om Gosplan forskningspolitik

Af Redaktionen, den 25. november 2005. 3 svar

Vores med-Punditokrat Christian Bjørnskov har dd. en kronik i Berlingske Tidende, hvori det bl.a. hedder:

“Gosplan var navnet på det agentur, der oprindeligt koordinerede de forskellige Sovjetrepublikkers økonomiske planer. Fra 1928 formulerede og overvågede det de famøse femårsplaner, som lagde linierne for, hvordan Sovjetunionen skulle udvikle sig. Med andre ord var det Gosplan, der identificerede, hvilke områder det sovjetiske samfund skulle satse på for hurtigt at blive rigt og klare sig i kampen mod de kapitalistiske vestlige samfund. Planerne var da også klare: Sovjetunionen burde satse på industri – specielt sværindustri – og massive investeringer i uddannelse og moderne produktion. Landbruget derimod blev brandbeskattet og kollektiviseret, da det jo tydeligt var fortidens erhverv. Vejen frem syntes at være få men store virksomheder inden for enkelte områder, hvor man kunne blive stor nok – opnå såkaldt »kritisk masse« – og realisere stordriftsfordele. Det sovjetiske samfund søgte således at planlægge sig til succes baseret på kriterier, der helst skulle nås inden for femårsperioder. Den store satsning blev dog som bekendt aldrig en succes, og kriterierne for succes blev hurtigt absurde.

Gosplan har dog også taget en anden betydning, nemlig som det navn mine kolleger på Handelshøjskolen i Århus flere gange har brugt om den danske regerings forskningspolitik. Sammenligningen er ikke uden grund, da den borgerligt-liberale regering med Folketingets velsignelse er slået ind på en forskningspolitisk kurs, som Lenin ville have været stolt af.”

Ugens citat: Mencken om demokratiske valg

Af Redaktionen, den 9. november 2005. 3 svar

I denne uge, hvor der vistnok afholdes en slags kommunalvalg, kan der være grund til at ihukomme nogle af de vise ord fra vores Punditokratus Maximus, den store amerikanske forfatter H.L. Mencken (1880-1956).  Her er noget af det, han skrev om demokratiske valg:

“I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself – that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it may be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers, tend to be coy. What I can’t make out is how any man can believe in democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained when they are debauched and made a show of. How can any man be a democrat who is sincerely a democrat?”

Ugens citat: Blankley om Bushs konservative kritikere

Af Redaktionen, den 4. november 2005. 2 svar

Den konservative kommentator og redaktør ved Washington Times, Tony Blankley, affærdiger, at det var “det kristne højre”, der fældede Bushs højesteretsdommer-kandidat, Harriet Miers:

“The successful opposition to Harriet Miers was not a triumph for just some faction of the conservative movement … From the market-oriented Wall Street Journal, to my own Washington Times’ classic Reaganite conservatism, to the social conservative opposition of Phyllis Schlafly and so many others on the social and Christian right, to the neoconservative opposition of the Weekly Standard and Charles Krauthammer, to the paleo-conservatism of Pat Buchanan, to the high Toryism of George Will, to the popular talk-radio titans Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and their legions of regional voices, to the lawyer turned hip radioist Laura Ingraham, to the iconoclastics: Michael Savage and Ann Coulter, to most of the conservative blogdom … This was a never-before-seen moment of comprehensive conservative opposition to a Republican initiative.”

Punditokraterne i Berlingske

Af Redaktionen, den 1. oktober 2005. 1 svar

Denne blog og hele to af dens skribenter er omtalt i Bent Blüdnikows artikel “Groft Sagt i USA” i dagens Berlingske Tidende.

Punditokraterne udvider – igen

Af Redaktionen, den 26. september 2005. 1 svar

Så er der igen forstærkninger på broen mellem de to hjernehalvdele: Punditokraterne udvider med to nye stærke skribenter, Jørgen Møller, ph.d. stipendiat og cand.scient.pol., og erhvervsmanden “Ex Column”.  Velkommen til–og knæk & bræk.

Punditokrater og andet godtfolk

Af Redaktionen, den 24. september 2005. 1 svar

Vores med-punditokrat Mikael Jalving var fredag i P1 hos Poul Friis for at diskutere lighed/ulighed (lyt her).  Aftenen før var CEPOS’ Martin Ågerup og Mads Lundby Hansen overalt på DRTV–d.v.s. henholdsvis i Debatten og Deadline.

Jalving om konkurrence & vilje

Af Redaktionen, den 22. september 2005. Skriv et svar

I en tid, hvor det tilsyneladende ikke er comme-il-faut at mene, at konkurrence er en god ting, eller at det at klare sig bedst ikke nødvendigvis efter tur skal gå på omgang mellem alle, kan man med fordel læse vores med-punditokrat Mikael Jalving, som har en fin kronik i dagens Berlingske Tidende.

Ugens citat: Steyn om lig, Tyskland & euro-velfærd

Af Redaktionen, den 21. september 2005. 2 svar

Vores med-pundiokrat Mr. Law har henledt Punditokraternes opmærksomhed på Mark Steyns farverige status i The Telegraph over det tyske valg og den europæiske velfærdsstat:

“If you want the state of Europe in a nutshell, skip the German election coverage and consider this news item from the south of France: a fellow in Marseilles is being charged with fraud because he lived with the dead body of his mother for five years in order to continue receiving her pension of 700 euros a month.

She was 94 when she croaked, so she’d presumably been enjoying the old government cheque for a good three decades or so, but her son figured he might as well keep the money rolling in until her second century and, with her corpse tucked away under a pile of rubbish in the living room, the female telephone voice he put on for the benefit of the social services office was apparently convincing enough. As the Reuters headline put it: “Frenchman lived with dead mother to keep pension.”

That’s the perfect summation of Europe: welfare addiction over demographic reality.

Think of Germany as that flat in Marseilles, and Mr Schröder’s government as the stiff, and the country’s many state benefits as that French bloke’s dead mum’s benefits. Germany is dying, demographically and economically. Pick any of the usual indicators of a healthy advanced industrial democracy: Unemployment? The highest for 70 years. House prices? Down. New car registration? Nearly 15 per cent lower than in 1999. General nuttiness? A third of Germans under 30 think the United States government was responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11.”

Læs selv resten af den underholdende og deprimerende analyse.