This birther nonsense just refuses to die. Also notice that, at least to my knowledge, every single birther opposes President Obama. Not a single one says, “I agree with him, though I think he was born in Kenya.” Weird, huh?

It’s not enough to simply disagree with his policies. They have a need to make it personal. “I disagree with him, therefore he must be ineligible for office.” This is not a healthy mindset.

If anything, I think the U.S. citizenship requirement should be abolished. In 1812, it might have mattered quite a bit if a foreigner — a British citizen, perhaps? — became President. Here in 2012, that once-wise policy is no longer needed.

A hallmark of Johnson’s career had been a lack of any consistent ideology or principle, in fact of any moral foundation whatsoever — a willingness to march with any ally who could help his personal advancement.

-Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, p. 663.

Similar sentiments apply to both 2012 candidates. Power. Always power. Caro’s books are about that at least as much as they are about LBJ, their nominal subject. And that is why they will always be relevant.

The Pentagon — the same agency that has an official 26-page brownie recipe — recently released a study about studies. Now GAO has produced its own study about that study about studies. Yahoo’s Alyssa Newcomb explains:

The study of a study of studies began in 2010 when Defense Secretary Robert Gates complained that his department was “awash in taskings for reports and studies.” He wanted to know how much they cost.

Two years later, the Pentagon review is still continuing, which prompted Congress to ask the GAO to look over the Pentagon’s shoulder. What they found lacked military precision.

It goes downhill from there.

George W. Bush may have raked in $15 million from speeches alone in 2010, but he still expensed $1.3 million to taxpayers, including $80,000 in phone bills, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl reported in “Spinners and Winners.”And Bill Clinton also made it big on the speech circuit — bringing in $10 million — and billed more than $1 million in expenses to taxpayers. Jimmy Carter, meanwhile, received over half a million in expenses, including $15,000 for postage, and taxpayers also paid $830,000 for George H.W. Bush.

Entitlement reform is what it will ultimately take to balance the books, and should be one of Congress’ highest priorities. But wasteful spending such as George W. Bush’s phone bill should be reined in, too. Fortunately, a bill from Rep. Jason Chaffetz would end taxpayer giveaways to ex-presidents with incomes over $400,000 per year.

“These people are not conservatives. They’re not Republicans,” Hatch angrily responds. “They’re radical libertarians and I’m doggone offended by it.”

Then Hatch, a former boxer, turns combative. “I despise these people, and I’m not the guy you come in and dump on without getting punched in the mouth.”

Given how offended I am by his big-government establishment conservatism, glad to see the feeling is mutual.

For one, he believes libertarians are “anti-immigrant, bigots.” He must be unaware that libertarians favor open immigration. This doesn’t bode well for his argument. The Huffington Post‘s Radley Balko tweeted, “Dear Van Jones: I’m a libertarian. I’m for open immigration. You support Obama. Last year, he set the all-time US record for deportations.”

If Jones is pro-immigration, he’ll find a lot to like about the work that libertarian groups like CEI and Cato have been putting out for years (see here, here, and here). And he’ll also be more critical of both parties for their stances on the issue.

He must also not know that you can’t be a libertarian and a bigot at the same time. It’s a logical impossibility. Libertarians are individualists. Bigotry is a crude form of collectivism. Bigots also tend not to favor liberalizing immigration.

Jones also argued that libertarians are homophobic. He must not know that libertarians are strong supporters of gay rights, including gay marriage (see here, here, and here, for starters). People who actually are bigoted against gays, such as Rick Santorum, are in fact openly critical of libertarianism.

Van Jones was never on my radar even when he was regularly in the news; he made it clear early on that he is not a serious thinker. This post marks the first time his name has appeared in this blog. And it will probably be the last. But his errors demand correction, not least because they are so common.

Think about it for a minute. Can you really imagine radical anti-government ideologues arguing for more government control over immigration and marriage? Me neither. This is pretty basic stuff. And he got it dead wrong.

The reason is that Jones has the bad cognitive habit of taking everything he disagrees with and simply giving it the name “libertarian” (or progressive, or conservative; all sides fall for the same fallacy). If Jones wants to argue against libertarianism, he would do much better to argue against positions that libertarians actually take.

The most effective thinkers and activists are the ones who at least try to pass the ideological Turing test. That’s really just a fancy way of saying, as Sun Tzu does, to know your enemy. That Jones has clearly taken no such trouble speaks volumes.

A Politico article describes the GOP’s small, tentative about-face on same-sex marriage:

It’s not like the GOP has become a bastion of progressiveness on gay rights, but there has been an evolution in the political approach — and an acknowledgment of a cultural shift in the country. Same-sex relationships are more prominent and accepted. There are more gay public figures — including politicians — and it’s likely that many Washington Republicans have gay friends and coworkers. Just as important — there’s also a libertarian streak of acceptance on people’s sexuality coursing through the House Republican Conference.

I think it was Radley Balko who pointed out that in twenty years’ time, almost everyone who today opposes gay marriage will be for it, and will be embarrassed by their former hostility. It’s a long process. In the short run, I think politics are trumping any imaginary libertarian streak:

But there’s also a political strategy at work: The economy has displaced moral issues in today’s politics. Ask most House Republicans today if they have deep convictions about gay relationships, and it hardly registers.

This lighter approach is an international phenomenon. Over in the UK, the Conservative Party is actually outflanking Labour by proposing legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

Conservative hostility to immigration is another electoral loser, and the GOP seems to be discovering a little tolerance there, too. Sen. Marco Rubio, himself the son of Cuban immigrants, is on board with the DREAM Act, which would offer legal residency to undocumented immigrants who satisfy certain conditions (the bill is actually a mixed bag instead of an unmitigated good; more information in this podcast).

I don’t see the entire party coming around on either issue anytime soon, but it’s good that there glimmers of hope here and there. May they become more frequent.

One of the book’s main themes is contrasting the philosophies of “you’re on your own” and “we’re all in this together.” This is, of course, a false dichotomy.

This immediately made me think back to that bible of “you’re on your own” free-market thought, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. It spends over 1,000 pages proving that if man were on his own, he would starve. People need to cooperate and exchange to prosper. Free trade, division of labor, and other Smithian concepts are inherently “we’re all in this together.” People can only achieve great things by working together. I have yet to see anyone actually argue “you’re on your own,” ever.

The review is mostly about the book’s philosophy and rhetoric. I have further thoughts about its suggested economic policies, which I will post about soon.