As 2011 comes to a close, FrumForum plans to re-run some of our best featured pieces from the year. Kenneth Silber’s piece on the libertarian movement is especially important in light of Ron Paul’s recent surge in the polls

Last fall, I wrote for FrumForum about “How I Joined the Vast RINO Conspiracy,” tracing how I, a longtime self-described “libertarian conservative,” got out of step with the right as the right moved further right and as I moved toward the center. Some readers applauded my independent thinking and others invited me to drag my backside out of the Republican Party (something I’ve declined to do).

A new book The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, respectively the editors of Reason.tv and Reason magazine, has given me much to contemplate, on how libertarianism fits into American politics, how Reason fits into libertarianism, and why I, a onetime fairly regular contributor to that magazine, eventually failed to fit in at Reason.

Noting the rising numbers of unaffiliated voters, Gillespie and Welch argue American politics is moving beyond the longtime duopoly of the Republican and Democratic parties, much as new technologies and empowered consumers have undermined duopolies in other fields — Macy’s and Gimbels, MCI and AT&T, Kodak and Fujifilm. In a somewhat strained literary metaphor, the authors liken the two major parties to Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum,” as both are complicit in bloating government.

The weakening of the two big parties is ushering in a “libertarian moment,” according to Gillespie and Welch, as the public shows growing affinity for a “default preference for the freedom to pursue happiness as we define it without interference from government.” The authors predict not some surprising Libertarian Party surge but rather that fluid coalitions of independents and disaffected major-party members will be increasingly influential, “provoking purple-faced rebukes from the political establishment, and pushing politicians in directions they had no intention of going.”

A sizable chunk of the book is devoted to “case studies in making life richer, weirder, and better” over the past 40-odd years, ranging from Czech rockers undermining the Soviet Empire, to Southwest Airlines toppling airline regulations, to Fred Eckhardt’s 1970 pamphlet on then-illegal home beermaking paving the way for a thriving craft brew industry. The authors celebrate the maverick career of baseball statistics whiz Bill James as an example of the demise of the mid-20th century organization-man ethos of conforming to some big institution and staying there for decades. They applaud Tiger Woods for bucking ethnic categories by calling himself a “Cablinasian.”

It’s no accident that some of the case studies have little to do with politics. This book, its authors proclaim, is not just a manifesto for independents in politics but also for independence from politics — for shrinking the political realm so more of our lives can benefit from the choice and innovation that government stifles. Gillespie and Welch describe their own Reasonoid libertarianism thus:

Like the magazine we write for, we agitate for the aspirational goal of “free minds and free markets,” celebrating a world of expanding choice — in lifestyles, identities, goods, work arrangements and more — and exploring the institutions, policies and attitudes necessary for maximizing their proliferation. We are happy warriors against busybodies, elites, and gatekeepers who insist on dictating how other people should live their lives. Like John Stuart Mill, we’re big on “experiments in living.” Within the broadest possible parameters, we believe that you should be able to think what you want, live where you want, trade for what you want, eat what you want, smoke what you want, and wed whom you want. You should also be willing to shoulder the responsibilities entailed by your actions. Those general guidelines don’t explain everything, and they certainly don’t mean that there aren’t hard choices to make, but as basic principles, they go a hell of a long way toward creating a world that is tolerant, free, prosperous, vibrant, and interesting.

As general guidelines, those sound pretty good to me. I note, also, that they seem to admit some degree of flexibility, with mentions of “broadest possible parameters” and “hard choices.” That’s a different attitude than in some libertarian arguments, where government must be limited or abolished in accordance with some abstract doctrine rigorously provable as a matter of simple logic, and where natural or constitutional rights are no less cut-and-dried than the beef jerky in your basement bunker.

I would have been interested, however, to see Gillespie and Welch actually address some “hard choices,” delving into areas where they see exceptions or ambiguities in the application of their guidelines (or where they accept unpalatable outcomes for the sake of holding to them). The book tends not to get into such matters. There’s no analysis, for instance, of whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act was warranted in its limitations on property rights (I say yes; Ron Paul says no).  To choose another unaddressed issue, might some government action to limit the risks of climate change be justified, or are greenhouse gas emissions just high-carbon experiments in living?

Moreover, it seems to me that sometimes government activism helps produce the “expanding choice” this libertarian manifesto champions, even if the authors show little interest in exploring that connection. Surely, the Interstate Highway System gave people some new options, as did the Erie Canal way back when. Gillespie and Welch celebrate the Internet as driver of choice and opportunity, but describe its 1969 invention rather obliquely (“a new technology allowing university computers to communicate with one another went live”) without mentioning the Pentagon agency that did it.

Would America be more vibrant, prosperous and interesting if the small sliver of the federal budget devoted to science were excised by measures such as Rand Paul’s push to eliminate the Energy Department? It’s hard for me to see how terminating research projects that are too large-scale or long-term for the private sector would yield greater choices of technologies and careers. It would produce more freedom only in the sense that a man stranded on a tiny desert island is wonderfully free because he doesn’t have to pay any taxes.

Such qualms about stringent libertarianism have shaped my thinking as a center-right dissenter, a deviationist apostle of the Frumian Heresy. But as I was once a contributor to Reason, my checkered history with the magazine merits some elaboration, in the interests of context and disclosure.

During the 1990s, when the estimable Virginia Postrel was editor of Reason, I wrote a dozen pieces for the magazine, on topics ranging from space property rights to fluctuating sperm counts to the free market’s possibilities for offshore platforms.

I was attracted to Reason in large measure because its libertarianism tended to avoid dogmatism and utopianism. The magazine in the Postrel years had an empirical bent and a focus on policy details. I could, for instance, write about radon regulation in late 1998 at a moment when the Weekly Standard was overflowing with the Monica Lewinski scandal (fun fact: I tried selling the radon story idea to theStandard first and was told by an editor there that they weren’t currently publishing anything not about the scandal).

For a few years early in this millennium, I drifted away from Reason, so to speak; I was busy with, among other things, writing aboutouter space for Lou Dobbs but by 2005 Gillespie, then editing the magazine, coaxed me to write some more articles, which I did on subjects including artificial intelligence and intelligent design.

Unexpectedly, at some point in late 2007 or so, Gillespie and his managing editor Jesse Walker stopped replying to my emails. It wasn’t clear why. Perhaps I had failed some ideological purity test, though it was also possible that my topic interests were deemed peripheral to the magazine’s or that my rapport with the staff just lacked the good chemistry it’d had during the Postrel years. I didn’t press for an explanation. From long years of freelancing, I’d learned that if someone is wise or foolish enough to not want your writing, there’s no point arguing about it.

Then, in 2008, Matt Welch, whom I didn’t know personally, was appointed Reason’s editor, and Gillespie moved to the online side. One of Welch’s early contributions was an essay that sniped at David Frum’s book Comeback for calling on Republicans to “cave on new spending and regulations … in exchange for tax cuts.” That description suggested a surprisingly poor grasp of Frum’s book, which I had reviewed for the New York Post, and both David and I had some fun pointing this out.

Such was my parting with Reason magazine. Be it noted that I am on friendly terms with several ex-girlfriends with whom I had messier breakups than the one I had with Reason. Notwithstanding the ideological differences outlined above, this ex-Reasonoid still finds much appeal in the magazine’s live-and-let-live ethos of free-market economics, social liberalism and cultural eclecticism. But how well is that ethos reflected in the “libertarian moment” the authors see arising, for which they present as evidence the political ascents of Ron Paul and Rand Paul and the Tea Party?

Consider this statement by Gillespie and Welch in The Declaration of Independents:

Those pushing for smaller government are not members of some sort of reactionary John Birch Society recoiling from a world that might pollute our precious bodily fluids. By all indications, Americans are more comfortable with ethnic, social, gender, cultural and religious differences than ever before.

That strikes me as whistling past the graveyard, or at least past the venue where Ron Paul was keynote speaker for the John Birch Society. Similarly, the authors’ desire to let you “live where you want [and] trade for what you want” jibes poorly with antipathy to immigration and trade pacts, let alone fears expressed by Ron Paul and Rand Paul that a “North American Union” will run a “NAFTA superhighway” through our country and impose a new currency, the “amero.” Perhaps we’re living in a “conspiracist moment” rather than a libertarian one.

Gillespie and Welch acknowledge Ron Paul’s “conspiracist belief in the nonexistent North American Union” and cite it, along with “his role in disseminating racist newsletters in the early 1990s” as two of “a thousand reasons” (I wish they’d given the full list) why “Ron Paul is in no way a viable candidate for anything other than his safe congressional seat.” But they treat these as mere personal quirks that should not be allowed to distract from Paul’s valuable message of smaller government.

I don’t think message and messenger can be separated that neatly. When Ron Paul rails against the Federal Reserve and its “cronies” on Wall Street, for instance, he is not just expressing a position on central banking (one with which I disagree); he is also stirring up resentments and stereotypes that have little to do with tolerance and comfort with differences.

Insofar as we are entering a “libertarian moment,” it seems to be one in which the nature of the libertarian idea is very much up for grabs. I hope The Declaration of Independents receives a wide audience, promoting the relatively benign version of libertarianism sketched out by Gillespie and Welch.

Originally published on June 18th, 2011.

Two FrumForum posts I wrote recently about climate politics — “How the GOP Should Explain Climate Change” and “Newt, Your Ad With Pelosi Wasn’t Dumb” — netted me an appearance on “The Green Front,” a program of the Progressive Radio Network. This was thanks to fellow FF contributor D.R. Tucker, erstwhile guest on the show, who sent my posts to the host, Betsy Rosenberg.

As my segment started, following one with two members of Canada’s Green Party, Rosenberg noted that the program was about to feature a Republican and so was not limited to members of some left-wing echo chamber. Ironically, I got cut off moments later, though the producer got me back on the air soon enough.

Some of Rosenberg’s questions, always presented quite civilly, were variations on the theme of what’s wrong with the Republican Party when it comes to climate science and policy. I offered no excuses for a GOP that I do think has gone badly astray in this area in recent years. Discussing how things came to this pass, I discussed the Tea Party, “Climategate” and links to fossil fuel industries and also how the Democrats, even with science on their side, have done a poor job of presenting and addressing the climate issue.

We talked about my preferred policy approach, of coupling a carbon tax with tax cuts elsewhere. The speech I wrote for a notional GOP politician in my how-to-explain-it post, I explained, was aimed at setting not only a policy framework but also a tone that could resonate with conservative voters. We discussed why Newt Gingrich now says his ad with Pelosi was a mistake (hint: it’s not because he has reassessed the substance of the issue and determined he was wrong about the science).

Some five years ago, I noted, global warming seemed to be gaining acceptance in conservative circles as a real problem that government should address. The terms of debate changed rapidly thereafter, which suggests things could change quickly again. Speculating about politics in coming decades, I sketched out a scenario of a bitter divide between a right wing eager to do something about climate change — through high-tech “planetary engineering” — and a left wing hostile to such tampering with nature.

The show is available here.

The GOP nomination race has proven to be a hostile environment for concerns about, or even an acceptance of the reality of, anthropogenic global warming.

Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have made statements that they don’t know what’s causing climate change, in contradiction of earlier statements indicating that they did know. Jon Huntsman now has expressed doubts about the validity and clarity of the science involved. The other candidates have been broadly dismissive of the issue.

Interestingly, Republican voters may not share such positions. A recent poll found widespread belief that global warming is happening, with 72 percent of Republicans (and 92 percent of Democrats) agreeing on that point. This makes me wonder whether there is an approach a GOP candidate could take that would both appeal to the primary electorate and lead to meaningful action to address the issue.

Such an approach should also enable the candidate to demonstrate a contrast with how President Obama and the Democrats have tackled, or failed to tackle, climate change.

I have drafted a speech that may help some current or future GOP candidate achieve all of the above. Any candidate who wishes to use the following material is more than welcome:

My fellow Republicans,

I am a conservative and I believe that facing up to reality is essential to conservatism. Today I outline how I will lead our nation in addressing a difficult and complex — but very real — problem. That problem is climate change, and specifically the global warming that is being caused by humanity’s use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

There is ample evidence that global warming is happening and that human activities are the key factor causing it. Scientists overwhelmingly agree the temperature rise is real. Moreover, they have examined possible factors ranging from volcanoes, to the sun’s fluctuations to cosmic rays that bombard the Earth from space. There is a strong scientific consensus that fossil fuels are the main cause — as pumping carbon into our atmosphere creates a greenhouse effect that traps the sun’s energy and heats the Earth.

Science never gives us absolute certainty, but the real uncertainties here are about the future. We do not know how fast temperatures will rise over decades, or the full effects this will have on our world. We do know that the risks are great — for example, large sections of American farmland becoming unusable, coastal cities flooding, 100-plus-degree heat waves, massive wildfires and other extreme events becoming common.

We must address those risks but not by weighing our economy down with taxes and regulations. On the contrary, a dynamic free-market economy is crucial to limiting the risks and managing the effects that do occur. My plan does not involve picking winners among energy companies and technologies with subsidized loans. Nor is it a cap-and-trade scheme that includes handing out credits to the politically connected. And for that matter, I note that President Obama never actually managed to bring a climate-change plan to a vote in Congress.

My plan is straightforward and honest. We will raise taxes on carbon emissions across the board, while cutting taxes on payrolls and incomes. That means more money in people’s pockets, and more incentives for industry to develop cleaner and safer energy supplies.

We will phase in these tax changes, to avoid any sudden economic shocks, and to give an ever-stronger basis for improving our energy supply. The goal is not to make fossil fuels go away altogether — that’s impossible — but to reduce their environmental impact while expanding American production of cleaner energy technologies.

This will bring greater energy security for America, including less reliance on imported oil from unfriendly parts of the world. It also means less of the air pollution, strip mining and oil spills that threaten our environment even aside from global warming.

Note that we are not waiting for other nations to act before we act. We will continue to press foreign countries to reduce their own carbon emissions, but we will move forward with an American plan that not only cuts back the large U.S. share of global emissions, but also ensures that our nation will be a leader in tomorrow’s energy industries.

The global warming issue is too serious to leave to foreign nations to lead the way, and it won’t be solved by saddling the U.S. economy with undue burdens and government micromanagement. The conservative approach I have sketched out here is the right one for our economy, our environment and our national security.

Newt Gingrich recently described his 2008 appearance in a 30-second ad with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “the dumbest single thing I’ve done.” Many conservatives share a negative view of it. Ron Paul, for instance, cites the ad as an example of Newt’s “serial hypocrisy.”

Curious, I took a look at the ad, eager to assess its dumbness. Here’s the full transcript:

Pelosi: Hi, I’m Nancy Pelosi, lifelong Democrat and speaker of the House.

Gingrich: And I’m Newt Gingrich, lifelong Republican and I used to be speaker.

Pelosi: We don’t always see eye to eye, do we, Newt?

Gingrich: No, but we do agree, our country must take action to address climate change.

Pelosi: We need cleaner forms of energy and we need them fast.

Gingrich: If enough of us demand action from our leaders, we can spark the innovation we need.

Pelosi: Go to wecansolveit.org. Together we can do this.

Now, I think it’s fair to say I’m not a Gingrich supporter. In fact, a brief but heated post I wrote about Gingrich and the so-called Ground Zero Mosque last year ended up being one of the most widely read items ever on my blog Quicksilber, thanks to a citation by David Frum.

Still, I now rise in defense of Newt Gingrich on the matter of his climate-change ad with Nancy Pelosi.

What exactly is so dumb about it? Surely it’s not the substance of his statements. Look at the substantive parts again:

Our country must take action to address climate change.

And,

If enough of us demand action from our leaders, we can spark the innovation we need.

What’s so objectionable? Is it the notion that climate change is occurring? There is a vast body of evidence that it is, in the form of a long-term rise in average global temperatures. There is also ample evidence that this change is due primarily to anthropogenic carbon emissions.

But let’s say that one is, perversely, in denial about such facts. Well, there’s still a lot to like in what Gingrich has said here. Note that he never says what measures he wants to see taken, other than that it involves “innovation” and it’s implied that he agrees with Pelosi that we need “cleaner forms of energy.”

“Cleaner energy” would be a worthwhile and important cause even if there were no anthropogenic global warming. Coal produces pollution that kills thousands of Americans each year; coal mining also results in environmental despoliation such as cutting off the tops of mountains.

Oil also produces significant air pollution, as well as other environmental damage through spills. Plus, oil presents vast geopolitical hazards, though the location of its sources and supply lines in various volatile and unfriendly parts of the world.

“Innovation” in energy technology would be a good idea even if there were no anthropogenic global warming. Developing cleaner and safer energy sources should be a national priority in any event. The fact that there is anthropogenic global warming means that innovating cleaner energy should be a very high priority.

The only thing dumb about Gingrich’s 2008 ad was that he failed to anticipate that appearing with Pelosi and having even a vague point of agreement with her about energy, or indeed about anything, would be anathema to Republican primary voters in 2012. Other than that, what Gingrich said was smart.

Previously at FrumForum, I wrote about two early American political leaders: DeWitt Clinton, New York governor and mayor and key figure in the nation-building achievement of getting the Erie Canal built; and George Clinton, governor turned vice president, whose efforts to limit federal power culminated in an independent (and erroneous, in my view) decision to terminate America’s first central bank.

Now, I take quill to parchment again, this time regarding James Clinton (1736-1812), a Revolutionary War general who was DeWitt’s father and George’s brother.

Though less remembered today than the other two, James struck important blows for American independence. For me, these figures are of interest for family history as well as national history. James and DeWitt are direct ancestors of my wife, and our son is named DeWitt after his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

Veterans Day, which honors veterans living and dead, would be a suitable time to remember James Clinton. Although he had some involvement in politics, he was primarily a military man. One historian described him a few decades after his death as “a plain blunt soldier, born upon the frontiers, and who spent no inconsiderable portion of a long life amid the toils and perils of border wars.”

James was born in Little Britain, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley. This was then a frontier area, and the family homestead was fortified against Indian attacks. James took an early liking to the profession of arms, and by 1757 was an ensign in the New York militia.

In the French and Indian War, James, along with his father Col. Charles Clinton and his brother George, lieutenant, participated in Gen. John Bradstreet’s successful 1758 march into Canada to take Fort Frontenac (now in Kingston, Ontario). James and George were instrumental in capturing a French ship. In 1759, James was promoted to captain, and he was commanding 200 men as the war ended in 1763.

James took up farming in the Hudson Valley, and married Mary DeWitt, with whom he would have four sons. He stayed active in the militia, rising in peacetime to lieutenant colonel. As tensions rose between Britain and its American colonies, the family took up the patriotic cause. Charles Clinton passed away in 1773 after a deathbed exhortation to his sons to defend American liberties.

In 1775, as war commenced, James Clinton became a colonel in the third regiment of New York troops, part of the incipient Continental Army. Serving under Gen. Richard Montgomery, he participated in an unsuccessful invasion of Canada aimed at gaining Quebec province for the revolutionary side. After taking Montreal, the American forces were beaten at Quebec City and retreated from the province.

James was promoted to brigadier general in 1776. George also held a generalship, and in 1777 became New York’s first post-colonial governor. British forces now were converging on upstate New York, the conquest of which would cut off New England from other rebel territory. The brothers took up a defense in the Hudson Highlands at the closely clustered Fort Clinton and Fort Montgomery. Nearby, an iron chain was stretched across the Hudson to impede British warships.

The British attacked on the morning of October 6, 1777, under the command of Sir Henry Clinton, who is thought to be a distant relative. The Americans were badly outnumbered, with some 600 troops manning the forts against an invading force that may have numbered 3,000. There was hand-to-hand fighting as the Americans repelled waves of attacks. By nightfall the forts had been overrun.

James and George both escaped with their retreating troops. James had taken a bayonet wound high on his leg, and was fortunate that the blade had been deflected somewhat by a book in his pocket.

The British victory was a limited one. Further upstate, British Gen. John Burgoyne’s army had become encircled by American troops at Saratoga. Sir Henry Clinton’s forces were unable to move northward from the Hudson Highlands fast enough to come to Burgoyne’s aid before he had been defeated.

For most of 1778, James Clinton was at West Point, where the Continental Army was constructing fortifications. James was involved in the choice of that site over others, and in placing another iron chain, this one remembered as The Great Chain, across the Hudson to block enemy ships.

The war soon took on a new front to the west. Loyalist forces were joining forces with members of the Iroquois Nations that had opted to join the British side. Following two massacres at settlements, Gen. George Washington decided to send an attacking force into Indian country. This would be led, in coordinated invasions, by Major Gen. John Sullivan and Brigadier Gen. James Clinton.

In early summer 1779, Clinton led a force of some 2,000 to Otsego Lake in upstate New York, source of the Susquehanna River. In early August, after damming the lake they broke the dam so the expedition could move partly by boat on the flooded river. (The event is now commemorated by a Memorial Day canoe race.)

Clinton’s and Sullivan’s forces converged near the Pennsylvania border and on August 29 fought the Battle of Newtown. This was a decisive victory for the Americans. Some 3,200 Continental Army soldiers overwhelmed a force of about 1,000 Iroquois, 250 loyalist militia and 15 British regulars.

As the enemy fled, the Americans cut a swath of destruction across Iroquois country, burning longhouses and crops. This scorched-earth campaign, specified by Gen. Washington’s orders, greatly reduced the threat on the western frontier for the remainder of the war.

In 1780, Clinton was back along the Hudson River, first at West Point, then in Albany. He was appointed to command the Continental Army’s northern forces after the discovery of Benedict Arnold’s treason.

In 1781, Clinton was sent to join Gen. Washington, and was present at the siege of British Gen. Charles Cornwallis’ army at Yorktown, Va. In John Trumbull’s painting “Surrender of Lord Cornwallis,” located in the Capitol rotunda, Clinton is at the center of the row of officers on horseback behind Washington.

The following year, the Continental Congress promoted a number of Army officers, and James was passed over. This likely had to do with politics, as George being governor of New York was in the thick of tensions among the states. Irritated, James asked Gen. Washington to be allowed to step back from active duty, which was granted as the war was winding down anyway.

James would get his promotion to major general by war’s end in 1783, and he was present with Washington when the British evacuated New York City as well as at Washington’s farewell dinner (hosted by Gov. Clinton).

After the war, James served in the New York convention that ratified the Constitution. He voted nay as did his brother, both thinking the document gave too much power to the federal government. James also served on a commission that defined the border between New York and Pennsylvania; this included some respectful interactions with the Iroquois chiefs who had been his wartime enemies.

James died at home in upstate New York on Sept. 22, 1812. His brother George had died earlier that year while serving as vice president. His son DeWitt was running for president against the incumbent, James Madison, and would have won if Pennsylvania had gone the other way.

Author’s note: I thank David Clinton Carter, uncle by marriage and family history maven, for extensive materials and discussions about James Clinton and other family ancestors.

Paul’s plan would zero out Commerce immediately, which means NOAA would also go away. (Interestingly, though, Paul’s line-item presentation of his plan is not detailed enough to include any mention of NOAA.) That raises some questions:

What will happen to the weather satellites under Paul’s plan?

Will they be privatized?

Does Paul have a plan ready for their privatization, including such matters as who will own them and how their services will be paid for?

Did Paul and his staff give any thought to weather satellites before proposing the elimination of Commerce?

Now, if Paul has not thought any of this through, it should be noted that this places him in a longstanding libertarian tradition of demanding the Commerce Department’s termination without seeming to know or care about NOAA and weather satellites.

Back in 1997, in his book What It Means to Be a Libertarian, Charles Murray called for eliminating Commerce’s functions, with just one exception: “Restrictions on the export of military technology.” He didn’t mention weather satellites.

In 2009, Reason editor Matt Welch lamented “that the Department of Commerce still exists.” Looking at the department’s website, he could find no evidence of anything valuable, and noted that the site included such “marginalia” as a page on “Today’s Weather.” That prompted me to wonder on my blog whether Welch knew where the weather data widely used by the public actually come from.

Now, Reason senior editor Jacob Sullum celebrates Paul’s plan for its specificity and for forcing critics to come up with their own specific plans. Regarding Commerce, Sullum asks:

Aside from carrying out the decennial “enumeration” mandated by Article I, Section 2, does the Commerce Department do anything that is constitutionally authorized, let alone essential?

Regarding the constitutionality question, Senator and astronaut Harrison Schmitt has made an interesting case for the constitutionality of federal involvement in various science and technology activities, including monitoring weather. However, if there is a genuine problem with constitutionality, I for one recommend amending the Constitution to allow such activities, posthaste.

As for essential, I think weather satellites are essential. Also essential, if libertarians want to be taken seriously, is that they demonstrate some specific knowledge about the agencies they want to abolish.

Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and writer about energy, has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal stating “Five Truths About Climate Change.” Some of his assertions are to the effect that there’s not that much that can be done to restrain carbon emissions. That’s a debatable stance, and I will address it. Then I will go on to his fifth “truth,” which has to do with the science of climate change.

But let’s take things in order. Bryce’s first assertion is:

1) The carbon taxers/limiters have lost.

Despite the high-profile warnings of Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Bryce points out, there has been scant action taken by governments in the past decade, while carbon emissions have soared. That’s true enough, but it doesn’t mean actions shouldn’t have been taken. Also, it says little about what may be politically feasible in the future. Maybe some creative future president will conduct a grand bargain that implements a carbon tax while abolishing the payroll tax, for instance.

Bryce’s next point, in its totality:

2) Regardless of whether it’s getting hotter or colder — or both — we are going to need to produce a lot more energy in order to remain productive and comfortable.

The first part of that sentence strikes me as deliberately vague. Sure, it’s getting colder or both hotter and colder, depending on where and when exactly you’re looking. Global warming is a broad and long-term trend of increasing temperatures, which has been confirmed by multiple data sets. But more about the science later. I take no issue with the statement that “we are going to need to produce a lot more energy in order to remain productive and comfortable.”

Moving on:

3) The carbon-dioxide issue is not about the United States anymore.

Bryce makes a valid point that China’s carbon emissions have grown dramatically, lately overtaking America’s, though it’s worth adding that U.S. emissions are still much higher on a per capita basis. But that only underscores the importance of developing cleaner energy sources and more energy-efficient technologies. Besides environmental considerations, it would be better for the U.S. economy if such innovations were developed largely in the U.S., rather than China or elsewhere.

4) We have to get better — and we are — at turning energy into useful power.

Agreed, though Bryce seems to think this is happening purely as an autonomous market process rather than having anything to do with regulations such as energy-efficiency standards. (He even mentions more efficient light bulbs without noting the political contretemps over their efficiency standards.)

Finally, we get to Bryce’s fifth point.

5) The science is not settled, not by a long shot. Last month, scientists at CERN, the prestigious high-energy physics lab in Switzerland, reported that neutrinos might — repeat, might — travel faster than the speed of light. If serious scientists can question Einstein’s theory of relativity, then there must be room for debate about the workings and complexities of the Earth’s atmosphere.

This attempt to stuff climate science into a black hole is a non sequitur. That’s not just because the neutrino finding, even if confirmed, has nothing to do with the data or theories of climate science. It’s also because the analogy Bryce is making — if relativity could be wrong, so could global warming — presents a misleading picture of the respective scientific theories and how science works.

For one thing, relativity did not fully overthrow the Newtonian physics that had been used for hundreds of years before Einstein. Rather, what Einstein showed was that new laws were required when dealing with objects that are traveling at extremely high speeds or that have great mass. Relativity is primarily a theory of the exotic, though it also had technological ramifications that brought some exotic effects into everyday life — for example, in the way nuclear power plants convert mass into energy.

If the neutrino finding is confirmed, this will mean physics has to be modified again. Based on historical experience, one can expect relativity would be subsumed into some larger theoretical picture (much as Newtonian physics was) rather than just thrown away. Certainly the finding will not mean that all data having to do with relativity — for example, the fact that nuclear power plants work — get overturned.

Similarly, no plausible change in climate science will wipe away all the data that show the Earth has been warming, or that the warming shows distinct patterns indicative of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. If some new theory were to replace the current one, it would have to explain why the greenhouse effect — the basics of which have been known since the mid-19th century — is not operating, despite the increase in atmospheric carbon. It would require some entirely new mechanism to be introduced into everyday physics and chemistry. By contrast, the (possible) neutrino finding would be small potatoes.

The “Occupy Wall Street” protestors’ “NYC General Assembly” has issued a manifesto of indictments of corporate America, on matters including war, pollution, cruelty to animals, housing foreclosures and much more. Fundamentally, the protestors display an antipathy to the very idea of corporations.

That is evident for one thing in the blanket nature of their complaints, for instance:

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

And so on. Note it is all being done by “they” as opposed to by “some” or specified companies. I could compose a similarly sweeping list of positive corporate actions, such as “They have developed medical products that have saved millions of lives.” But the protests are less about specific grievances than free-floating anti-corporate rage.

Thus the manifesto denounces a supposed inherent lack of accountability in corporations, stating:

…that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth…

And furthermore:

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

These assertions suffer from a lack of cogency. Start with the business about corporations “extracting” wealth from people without consent. Such “extraction” far better describes taxation — which by necessity even democratic governments do without individual consent — than it does the voluntary decisions by consumers to hand over money for products. As for extracting wealth from the Earth, besides being necessary for civilization’s survival, that is something done by state-owned oil companies and other government entities around the world, as well as by private-sector corporations.

Then there is the complaint about the doctrine of a corporation as “legal person.” That complaint is motivated partly by desire to slap restrictions on corporate political ads and donations (regardless of legal persons’ free speech rights) and more broadly by a dislike of the idea that “corporations are people,” as Mitt Romney said in a supposed gaffe recently. In fact, corporations are of course organizations of people, but the deeper point is that legal personhood enables a degree of accountability that would not be possible otherwise.

Let’s say a company dumped some toxic waste a few decades ago. The executives of that company may no longer be the same people, the shareholders may have entirely turned over; the people working there or holding stock may have had nothing to do with the waste dumping back then. It doesn’t matter — the corporation can still be held responsible, forced to do cleanup, pay damages and so on.

The opening of the Occupy Wall Street manifesto says that “the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members.” Quite right. As it happens, a great advance enabling humans to cooperate and achieve things they could not individually is the organizational form known as the corporation.

The gold market meltdown — with prices plunging in recent weeks from over $1,900 an ounce to under $1,600 — is a reminder that the precious metal is a volatile, speculative commodity. It also signals a bear market in credibility for the many right-leaning cable-news and talk-radio hosts who have touted gold relentlessly in recent years as a hedge against economic calamity.

“If you’ve been watching for any length of time, and you still haven’t looked into buying gold, what’s wrong with you?” Glenn Beck said in a video on his website in 2009. “I think you’re nuts.” His TV show, meanwhile, featured frequent calls to buy gold, interspersed with commercials for gold retailers.

Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Andrew Napolitano, G. Gordon Liddy and other high-profile hosts also joined the gold bandwagon, pressing audiences to invest in gold collectible coins and other such products rather than trust their wealth to paper money. Liddy took to crumpling currency in his gold commercials.

Lately, as gold has fallen and the dollar has risen amid economic turmoil, some of the metal’s vulnerabilities as an asset have come to the fore. One is that gold prices can be vulnerable to declines in other asset classes, as gold-holding institutions and individuals may need to sell it to cover their losses in stocks or other markets. Another is that gold, often purchased as a hedge against inflation (a role it performs unevenly), can be caught in the downdraft of economic stagnation that threatens to keep inflation low or spur deflation.

A further source of volatility for gold is that — though the metal is often presented as a means of independence from untrustworthy governments and central banks — those official institutions hold enormous quantities of gold and can affect the market through actions or perceptions. Wikileaks recently released a U.S. Embassy cable suggesting that China is increasing its gold reserves to promote alternatives to the dollar as international reserve currency. Whether or not that is true, it raises the question of whether gold might fall further without support from Chinese purchases.

Often, advocates of gold as an investment have also been enthusiasts of putting the dollar back on a gold standard. Such a policy regime would have numerous problems, including instabilities in gold supply and demand, and maintaining the credibility of the gold standard in the face of a global market constantly testing the commitment of policymakers to maintaining the standard. One good consequence of gold’s current market turmoil is that it makes a gold standard restoration even more implausible.

Conservatives nowadays routinely worry about the dollar’s strength and stability. The dollar, however, refuses to cooperate. Instead, it lately has been rising in foreign-exchange markets, as it typically does in times of international economic and financial stress.

The dollar serves as a safe haven. Investors tend to transfer funds into dollar-denominated assets, such as U.S. Treasuries, at moments when financial markets around the world are being buffeted. This occurs even if the U.S. economy is not in good shape. As long as the dollar and dollar-denominated assets are seen as relatively safe, the dollar will tend to strengthen in times of trouble.

That’s what been happening in the last few days. It’s also what happened in 2008 and 2009 as the mortgage-fueled financial crisis spilled over. The euro, meanwhile, is now floundering amid Europe’s financial and fiscal crisis. And the Chinese yuan lately has displayed considerable downside risks, as well.

This resilience of the dollar in tough times is bad enough for the hard-money and gold-bug types who currently dominate conservative discourse on monetary policy. What’s particularly embarrassing for them, though, is that gold now is showing marked signs of weakness — as if perhaps the precious metal is subject to a dangerous propensity for bubbles and busts that should make investors beware.

In coming decades, the dollar increasingly may share its reserve currency status with other currencies, provided other currencies develop the safe-haven status the dollar now enjoys. But it’s time for conservatives to cash out on their overblown alarmism about the buck.