He's just not sharp, nor quick witted, nor a commanding speaker... and that's 50 yr old Biden. Now slap almost 30-years on that?... his responses were slow, unfortunately his stutter was prominent, it was clear he was losing his train of thought... odd substitutions in his retorts, like trying to set-up a 'zinger' around 'Poor Boys'. Using Malarkey in an actual sentence... Constant refrain of "c'mon, Man." His set pieces were ok if you're rooting for him, but not in any way impressive or, if I'm honest, convincing.

Trump as a debater is bad in a whole different way, but Biden just doesn't show well if extemporaneous entertainment is on the menu. Trump isn't debating, he's just live tweeting on national TV. Biden didn't really have an answer for that... as I say, I'm not entirely sure I would either... but I'm not the standard bearer for my party.

I sympathize with the position Biden (or anyone sharing the stage with Trump) is in... he's just not a good faith interlocutor - even more so than your average politician. Pulling on all of my sales experience I couldn't see a rhetorical way I'd deal with him in real-time. That is, without destroying my own brand. Honestly, some of the hardest and best decisions I've made over the years is to refuse to engage in a process I didn't feel was in my best interest.

That said, Biden looked bad... I don't think it matters, since people aren't actually voting *for* Biden and I think the voters are gonna vote for who they're gonna vote for already.

But man, Biden isn't up to the task. He's a talisman... keep him safely enclosed in glass and hope everything else just kinda... um, works?

I still think he'll win (and Bigly), but if I'm wrong, I have some strong notions on what's wrong with my model... but it isn't the debates. The debates are just a symptom of the disease.

Constitutional amendment to require Prime Numbers only. 27 is an assault on our judicial aesthetics... as is 15.

SESTA is a carve-out to 230.

Basically it says you are protected under 230, except for participation in SESTA activities for which 230 provides no specific protection.

Go ahead... start carving. What things can 230 *not* protect you from (I assume the law already prohibits material participation in illegal activities a'la Silk Road).

As to Hawley's exact intentions/strategy/tactics? Perhaps you are right... I only have his public utterances that he's going to pull 230 from these platforms. As of now the *actual* bill he's introducing pulls 230 from "[platforms] that display manipulative, behavioral ads or provide data to be used for them."

And his own website further observes with regards this episode of Twitter: "Senator Hawley has been a leading critic of Section 230’s protection of Big Tech firms and recently called for Twitter to lose immunity if it chooses to editorialize on political speech."

I think we might(?) agree that possibly one could clarify that in order to claim 230 protections, one cannot start to edit end-user-content, unless it censors according to these new 230 provisions for Platform Censoring (i.e. not the whims of a TOS).

Which would be Regulations strengthening 230... so not SESTA and not pulling 230.

Honestly George, if you didn't exist we'd have to invent you.

Yeah, that's the best bucket of all... but since Senators Johnson and Grassley have provided us with information on the matter, do we not have 'unbiased' facts about his tenure, pay, duties and qualifications... I mean, we're not suggesting that the son of a sitting VP *wasn't* given a position on a board for company in an industry in which he has no experience (yes, yes, he was advising them on important 'business process' objectives) shadily run - this we all admit - by people we call 'oligarchs' in a place called Ukraine... the language of which Mr. Biden does not speak? Just that we can't prosecute him for that.

Some of that must be in the Grassley/Johnson report, no?

But then, I'm fine with fathers maximizing their networks to make opportunities available to their progeny... like, we should encourage thick communities and networks and families and opportunities... build privilege at all levels.

But perhaps this runs beyond what reasonable limits we'd place on that? Or against the narrative I'm trying to sell in my campaign? Or can we do anything at all as long as we can't be prosecuted for it? It's all so confusing what is permissible and what isn't.

Tougher than inequality, privilege and exposure of our Meritocracy as systemically anti-merticoratic?

I dunno... I'd 100% shift into the not 'technically' prosecutable corruption bucket every opportunity I get.

Its likely a gift that folks like Trump, Giuliani and the RNC are too dumb to frame it any other way than "lock them up"

"Sen. Johnson and Sen. Grassley spent months looking into Hunter Biden’s alleged corruption regarding Burisma, and their initial report paints a picture – long known and previously reported by the media – of relationships that appeared to be conflicts of interest but in fact aren’t illegal."

Sometimes what matters is the bucket you put it in.

I believe your argument (mostly) that the Hunter Biden thing isn't (probably) prosecutable corruption.

Now. Put it in the "Inequality Bucket" and see how the story plays.

And here I'm talking about the Non-Prosecutorial No-Corruption story that Grassley approved.

As far as I can tell the internet is mostly a mechanism to put stories into the bucket *I* want, not the bucket other people want.

That said, my personal take is that Biden pere & fils corruption is exactly the right level of corruption we want in government. So tolerating this level of inequality and corruption leaves me unmoved by the 'scandal' but then I'm the sort of person Sens. Grassley and Johnson hope receive the message.

I suppose it's possible that Hawley is brandishing 230 as a weapon to force these providers to 'voluntarily' treat themselves as a public access platform; but the problem with that is twofold:
1. The internet doesn't do nuance... the threat becomes the victory condition.
2. Victory, in this case, destroys the thing it looks to preserve.
3. Bonus: In negotiating terms: The stick is too big*

*This happens a lot to me... customers say I'd better give them a great price because they can solve their problem for free... the issue is that I can't possibly beat free so I tell them that's good news, they should definitely solve their problem for free. Godspeed. Then, of course, they tell me what their really problem is and why the free solution won't fix it... then I ask if 'that' problem is worth $XX... if the answer is still no... then I wish them well, shake hands a part as friends. If the answer is yes... then their 'stick' was too big to beat me with... and they received no negotiating advantage. You need to beat me with a stick that's the right size and believable.

Right, the 'danger' of 230 is that it opens these companies up to becoming publicly regulated utilities. They can't be sued for access, but then access become the thing they provide, and the access passes from private to public good... and therefore subject to regulations that vitiate any private TOS.

Hawley *wants* 230 and campaigning against it is why we live in an idiocracy.

As it happens, Dreher is also blogging about ASP.

That's not terribly newsworthy... but this comment from Dr. Alex Salter is.

Libertarians for Solidarity, yo!

UPDATE: This in today from Prof. Alex Salter at Texas Tech, who gives me permission to post it:

This is Alex Salter, from Texas Tech University. We’ve corresponded a few times over the years. I read your post about the American Solidarity Party and wanted to share why I, a free-market economist, decided to vote for them.
I’m currently writing a book about distributism, which is under contract with Catholic University of America Press. I went back to the classic works of Belloc and Chesterton to see what sort of a dialogue contemporary economists could have with distributists. I was surprised at just how much political-economic wisdom I found.
A central claim is that a free society (by which I mean one that preserves ordered liberty) requires not only political freedom, but economic freedom as well. Freedom in this sense is positive, not merely negative: it requires access to capital. Property must be widely distributed, or at least widely accessible, or else the modal household/family has no reason to ‘buy in’ to the social order.
In economics jargon, you could say that the distributists argue there is a negative externaltiy associated with the market mechanism: the free-market allocation of resources, including productive capital, is not necessarily the allocation that will result in the preservation of democratic-republicanism, subsidiarity, etc.
The American Solidarity Party is the only organization I’m aware of that is taking these arguments seriously. They are also the only party with a substantive commitment to the common good. For these reasons, although I have my reservations about many things in their platform, I eagerly want them to have a larger political voice, both locally and nationally. The rest of my ballot was a mix of parties, but Brian Carroll was my vote for President. (Carroll is an approved write-in candidate in TX.)

After supper tonight the family voted with the first of our remote ballots.

It was fun sitting around the table with the kids googling the candidates and grimacing at their platforms before we made a decision (the R and D platforms, of course, not Solidarity). We agreed before looking that if *any* democrat took a pro-life position, we'd vote for them no matter their other positions. It seems the D's will dutifully fall on their swords rather than send any representatives from anywhere near these environs.

A couple quick hits:
* Ballots have to be witnessed *unless* you don't feel 'safe' having a witness. Which is one of those things that sound fine, but in simple practice means ballots have no requirement for a witness. Which is also fine (I guess)... but just abandon the idea of a witness because there's no need or provision to identify what safety means. It's just dumb... waive the requirement for a witness. Period. Otherwise we're suggesting that its 'possible' that some of the unsigned ballots are invalid rather than 'unsafe'.

*Constitutional amendment to change districting to a bi-partisan committee ... which I like less than defining the data method first, then the review committee... but I've been persuaded that data analytics have transformed districting for the worse, so it shouldn't be done by the majority of the assembly alone.

*Another constitutional amendment for a lovely sentiment, but one which has no business being written into the constitution. That's what laws are for.

*I doubt we'll be removing any statues in my jurisdiction, but thanks for asking.

Thanks Kristin, good of you to say.

heh... just win PA, MI, WI. Getting flashbacks of running up the score in 2016.

I'd say maybe Regan would be the better comp to synthesize with Pinky.

Love him or hate him, he put in the 20-years of work as part of a movement that eventually arrived in 1980. When he arrived he arrived with policies, think tanks, congressmen, Senators, Governors and an entire apparatus that stepped in to the Executive branch on day 1.

Bill Clinton is a similar example in that he aligned with and was championed by the New Democrats which brought in on day 1 an apparatus that had done the pre-work to necessary to take the Democratic party in a different direction.

Obama is an example of a person who didn't and saw his presidency suffer for having jumped the gun. My critique here isn't that he was unfit for the presidency, just that he didn't do the work necessary to make his presidency more than the B- it was.

Interesting how Shire Envy has replaced Polis Envy... Peter Jackson has a lot to answer for in this life and the next.

The answer is that you're viewing Solidarity/Subsidiarity as pre-modern where it is in fact post-Modern. The idea of Democracy held by most of us here is - at best - a 19th century notion that's just beginning to grapple with the fact that we aren't doing Democracy, but instead we're now doing Mass Democracy. We're just now becoming the equivalent of Industrial Revolution Moving Assembly Line Democrats... in the era of advanced Automated Democracy.

The problem with your question is that if you have a single-assembly-line model of Democracy, anything you do to 'fix' the line breaks it elsewhere unless you fix everything all at once.

We don't do factories that way any more, and we can't do democracy that way anymore. Just as we're moving to advanced management principles which give autonomy to workers and business units to accomplish goals rather than tasks, that's how you have to think of Democracy going forward. Some democratic units will handle these issues differently than others... as long as we're within the framework of Lowest-common-denominator Solidarity (or Mere Solidarity as I call it) then you have to allow for those other people over there to do it wrong.

Sure, these are good practical observations. It is hard to build a party, especially when the voting apparatus is designed to put new parties at significant disadvantage. Which is why we don't really have a political "farm club" model but more of a Pirate / Hostile Takeover model for the two existing Parties - which is worse.

Practically we could advocate for minor changes to the mechanics of voting (to displace first past the post pluralities); but absent that there's really no other option than to run for office to gain a profile to launch the movement that hopefully builds the infrastructure needed to... Hijack an existing party vessel, see your ideas co-opted by another party without attribution, or be the rare case where a new party replaces the old.

That said, I'm 100% on board with the fact that political parties are also political movements are also cultural avatars are also think-tanks and policy groups are also coalitions with evolving priorities based upon paths available to them. In this sense I'm the Aristotelean Politics guy... there's no perfect form we're trying to bring down from heaven... just the day-to-day work of building polity. And that day-to-day work has to happen first, before the Party has an identity or an ability to govern.

This was precisely the argument I made to reluctant Trump voters, and I stand proven right in everything I told them would happen if you try to do politics by personality - without building the political infrastructure right and first. [Bracketing the catastrophically bad Personality that was the first premise of my arguments].

So I agree with your observations, and re-iterate that if a thing is worth doing, it'll be done badly at first.

Yeah, the ASP is clearly stating incrementalist approaches and policies (which makes me doubt Ahmari is much of a supporter of the political project, even though he's read the same books)... even if you adjusted a tiny fraction of policies to be oriented towards Solidarity and reworked a handful of programs to be more subsidiarist you might see incremental less-badness. And that's why it's potentially an option, and potentially a threat. Usually claims of Utopia signal internal discord of the claimant rather than a substantial critique.

Right. From my perspective Bushism (Compassionate Conservatism) would be critiqued in a similar way we'd critique the Left... if the goal is to simply tax and re-allocate, then we're not really broadening economic gains but negotiating service fees from a segment of the population that is manipulating the rules that govern markets to their advantage... sometimes by trading small fees/taxes for small benefits to large numbers. That's the neo-liberal consensus in a nut-shell -- Left and Right alike.

It's an important distinction that a Solidarity Party isn't simply taking Left/Right positions in a new amalgam, but really does look to incrementally change the direction of the ship on some important matters... it recognizes markets, but it recognizes them as Game Theory domains, not invisible hand Natural Law dynamics. The Economic Laws aren't a priori, they are crafted and discerned a posteriori. The market is always a human game. Importantly it is a game that is too complex to control absolutely, but it isn't a game where the rules cannot be questioned at all... and more fundamentally, it isn't a game that would exist without rules in any scenario.

This is an important distinction that prevents this economic approach from trying to do too much while acknowledging it is possible to do too little.

But that's why it isn't Trumpism, nor Bushism, nor Neo-liberalism, nor Libertarianism, nor Mercantilism... it's a Stakeholder Economics where the Stakeholders are as broadly distributed as possible.

On the contrary, I think you bring up a very good point. Subsidiarity indeed encompasses all of Civil Society; in fact, an important part is that Civil Society is both public and private institutions. The error is crowding out one to the exclusion of the other. You could see how it might make some on the right uncomfortable for not always trying to diminish govt. while making some on the left uncomfortable for making govt entities one among many. Think of it as right-sizing government within a civil framework that is more than just govt.

Good observation, thanks.

I see... I agree in the sense that there's no top-down magic-wand win-the-presidency and usher in the age of solidarity. But then, these early forays into the public sphere are more about messaging and getting the ball rolling. Nothing more happens without small local governance projects.

It is fundamentally a trust building project... so you've hit on that directly.

Let slip the dots of war.

But I'll also point out that Parties also gather-in dots and consolidate them... some of what we're seeing is the unfocus of the parties and the revolt of the dots.

Doughnuts and coffee in the basement for all people of good will... we'll see that you get an invitation.

Interesting thought; I'm not sure that subsidiarity itself is a faction. It's more like a self-regulating principle of federation that seeks to balance competing entities by giving legitimate autonomy and a self interest in not allowing authority to become too concentrated... both by decentralizing primary authority and providing the framework that prohibits consolidation. I should note also that this is a bias that carries into commercial projects as well. Ideally any entity that is XY big has counter-balancing entities which are also XY big. The important distinction is that there isn't an Uber power that creates the sub-powers.

But yes, the danger to any sort of decentralization is centralization... and the temptation to centralize in the name of efficiency is the ever present danger in politics as it is in commerce. The main thing to consider is that we're failing on all fronts with regards centralization. If we don't start an incremental movement away from these tendencies (which I fear are more enshrined in our popular consciousness than we realize) then we'll wonder how it is we've lost what little subsidiarity we currently have.

Not sure if that helps or misses the mark... there's no political system that isn't in danger of constant decay. Subsidiarity looks to address the decay by providing less centralized / multi-polar polity that depends upon a minimal (rather than maximal) solidarity. Think of it as 'mere solidarity' rather than uniform genomic singularity.

Agreed. It might be possible to change some voting paradigms (if not the entire regime) to open up space for more parties... ranked choice plus run-off systems could change dynamics so coalitions are formed around actual platforms and support traded for policy objectives. Really wouldn't have to be that radical just to alter the first past the post plurality that's locking us into the duopoly.