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Ari Armstrong's 2018 Posts

Following are consolidated blog posts I wrote in 2018 through July 18, republished here on August 18, 2025. All contents copyright © by Ari Armstrong. I may not in every case still agree with my older positions. Paragraphs that begin "Comment" are notes by readers, unless marked otherwise. Because so many of the hyperlinks have since become "dead," I removed almost all of the hyperlinks and (usually) put the original url in parenthesis. Due to minor editing and formatting changes the material here may not exactly match how it originally appeared.

Major themes include identity politics, death, Frederick Douglass, Black Panther, gun laws, home renovation, Colorado candidate petitions, theocratic Republicans, and libertarianism.

Haidt on Identity Politics: The Problem Is Collectivism

January 3, 2018

A sort of identity politics is a major force tearing at the seams of America's liberal democratic order (broadly understood), argues Jonathan Haidt in his recent and important essay (originally a talk), "(https://www.city-journal.org/html/age-outrage-15608.html) The Age of Outrage." My aim here is to amplify and comment on his piece.

Haidt helpfully distinguish good from bad identity politics. Unfortunately, he is a little vague on what separates the two; he couches the difference as between bringing people together versus tearing them apart. That's a good start, but it leaves deeper causes obscured. Thankfully he offers good good illustrative examples, beginning with Martin Luther King:

The civil rights struggle was indeed identity politics, but it was an effort to fix a mistake, to make us better and stronger as a nation. Martin Luther King's rhetoric made it clear that this was a campaign to create conditions that would allow national reconciliation.

Haidt also points out that "intersectionality" originally was a sensible form of identity politics:

The term and concept were presented in a 1989 essay by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at UCLA, who made the very reasonable point that a black woman's experience in America is not captured by the summation of the black experience and the female experience. She analyzed a legal case in which black women were victims of discrimination at General Motors, even when the company could show that it hired plenty of blacks (in factory jobs dominated by men), and it hired plenty of women (in clerical jobs dominated by whites). So even though GM was found not guilty of discriminating against blacks or women, it ended up hiring hardly any black women. This is an excellent argument.

Incidentally, Bret Weinstein—a victim of a pathological form of identity politics at Evergreen State College—offered a similarly nuanced view on identity politics in his recent (https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/biology-and-culture) conversation with Sam Harris.

Haidt describes what has gone wrong with identity politics on many of today's university campuses:

Students memorize diagrams showing matrices of privilege and oppression. It's not just white privilege causing black oppression, and male privilege causing female oppression; its heterosexual vs. LGBTQ, able-bodied vs. disabled; young vs. old, attractive vs. unattractive, even fertile vs. infertile. Anything that a group has that is good or valued is seen as a kind of privilege, which causes a kind of oppression in those who don't have it. A funny thing happens when you take young human beings, whose minds evolved for tribal warfare and us/them thinking, and you fill those minds full of binary dimensions. You tell them that one side of each binary is good and the other is bad. You turn on their ancient tribal circuits, preparing them for battle. Many students find it thrilling; it floods them with a sense of meaning and purpose. . . .

[N]owadays, students who major in departments that prioritize social justice over the disinterested pursuit of truth are given just one lens—power—and told to apply it to all situations. Everything is about power. Every situation is to be analyzed in terms of the bad people acting to preserve their power and privilege over the good people. This is not an education. This is induction into a cult, a fundamentalist religion, a paranoid worldview that separates people from each other and sends them down the road to alienation, anxiety, and intellectual impotence.

See (https://www.city-journal.org/html/age-outrage-15608.html) Haidt's essay for more insights, including his advice on how to address the problem. Here my goal is to dig deeper into the problem.

What fundamentally divides good from bad identity politics is its stance on the individual. Benevolent identity politics ultimately is individualist—it advocates viewing people as individuals with their own thoughts and choices.  Pathological identity politics is collectivist—it treats people fundamentally as members of a group, which is why its adherents increasingly sound indistinguishable, except for a few adjectives, from members of the KKK.

This take gives rise to a couple of paradoxes.

First, is individualism compatible with Haidt's focus on bringing people together? Doesn't individualism separate people rather than unite them? No. When we see and treat individuals for who they are, rather than merely as indistinguishable members of various groups, we open the ground for individuals to interact with each other authentically and reasonably. We do not, for example, reject what someone has to say because of the color of the person's skin—regardless of what it is.

Second, can there be a truly individualist version of identity politics? Isn't the concept inherently built on collective features? No again. The individualist recognizes that, historically and to some degree today, many individuals have been horribly oppressed because of their group identity. The Jim Crow laws, for example, specifically targeted black people. Many of the drug laws have overtly racist origins, and they have been used in outright racist ways (as with sentencing disparities).

The individualist goal is to end oppression against individuals, including when individuals are oppressed because of characteristics they share with others. When black people, or women, or gays, or others are oppressed because of their skin color, genitalia, sexual preferences, or other comparable features they share with others, then the call to end such oppression must recognize its underlying nature. (On this point I (https://niskanencenter.org/blog/defense-liberty-cant-without-identity-politics/) agree with Jacob T. Levy.)

The individualist goal, though, is ultimately not to equalize power between groups, but rather to ensure justice for each individual. The (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm) goal is to achieve "a nation where [people] will not be judged by the color of their skin"—or by any other such feature—"but by the content of their character."

The collectivist view, by contrast, leads people to cast blame (or to make excuses) on the basis of skin color or comparable characteristics; to ignore real reductions in certain forms of oppression; to see devils everywhere beyond one's in-groups; to assume the worst of intentions of people in "enemy" groups; to cast a suspicious or even a hateful eye toward reason and science; to excuse or even to celebrate injustices toward members of the "wrong" classes; to continually look for the heretical—or worse, the "privileged"—within one's groups.

Collectivist identity politics in both leftist and conservative forms is on the rise in the United States, and the country desperately needs a reasonable alternative. Thankfully Haidt and a growing number of individuals in and out of the academy are offering one.

Michael Shermer Stares Down the Grim Reaper in Latest Book

January 12, 2018

As a long-time atheist, I've made my peace with my eventual death. More or less. I mean, I want to delay death as long as feasible, given a reasonable quality of life, but it isn't something that preoccupies my thoughts. Still, I found myself suppressing a strange sense of dread, at times, while reading Michael Shermer's new book,  Heavens on Earth (Henry Holt, 2018). Death sucks—there's no getting around that.

But how much of a role does fear of death play in people's lives? I was not familiar with "Terror Management Theory," which holds, relates Shermer, that "awareness of one's mortality focuses the mind to produce positive emotions (and creations) to avoid the terror that comes from confronting one's death" (14—numbers indicate pages). "Thus, we create and invent, build and construct, write and sing, perform and compete, to attenuate the terror of contemplating our own mortality," holds this theory (15).

Shermer is not convinced by this. After all (goes one of his replies), isn't it more plausible that terror of death would cause people to simply give up?

Still, I get the sense that the desire to leave a legacy, as Shermer describes (14), as a means to in some sense survive beyond one's death, plays a large role in most people's lives. I've often thought, as I do my work and raise my son, that it plays a role in mine.

Is Shermer offering but a comforting illusion that we're driven my something more fundamental than a terror of death? I think not. If all we have going for us is a desire not to die, then, paradoxically, we'd just as well get it over with and end the existential dread. The passion to live, to enjoy ourselves with loved ones, to achieve our goals, to build a better world (and to have sex, Shermer reminds us—17) is a positive striving, not just the negation of death. Anyway, much in Terror Management Theory is speculative and unsupported by evidence, Shermer notes.

Still, death is always there, more or less clearly in the background, and no doubt it contributes a certain urgency to our days. (Shermer is on board with this—see 21 and following.)

Shermer begins his book by pointing out how many people, especially in the United States, believe in life after death. He immediately points to the dark side of such belief—few of us can forget the images of the crumbling Twin Towers. He reminds us that the hijackers behind that atrocity believed they would enter "the gardens of paradise" as their reward (4).

Then Shermer discusses people's reactions to death, which are not typically rooted in terror. Instead, people approaching death—including people on death row—tend to express love for others.

One interesting observation of Shermer's first chapter ("A Lofty Thought") is that we cannot really think of ourselves as dead. Shermer quotes Freud: When we try to "imagine our own deaths . . . we find that we survive ourselves as spectators" (12). For once (https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/wizardry-of-sigmund-freud/) Freud is right.

In his second chapter ("What Dreams May Come"), Shermer discusses how people reach a belief in immortality. Young children, it turns out, have a hard time understanding death, and as a consequence they often imagine that the dead "really" are alive in some sense and that they might come back to life (37). We seem primed to believe in life after death; "belief in a psychological or spiritual afterlife is natural and intuitive" (38). And of course religions often reinforce such belief (39).

Here is a fascinating finding: One study finds that children taught about the facts of death are less likely "to express a fear of dying" (39). This suggests a point that I often have contemplated: Religion largely arises as a coping mechanism for death, and yet it often seems to reduce people's ability to cope. Why? I suspect it's because the certainty of death is easier to handle than the ephemeral (and conditional) promises of an afterlife.

In "Heavens Above," his third chapter, Shermer reviews major religious beliefs about the afterlife. He points out that the shadowy world of the dead in early Jewish thought is nothing like the Heaven and Hell that we are familiar with today. The idea of Heaven evolved from a projected earthly utopia, where people's bodies regenerated, to something supernatural, and from something open to a select few to something potentially open to all. And Hell has obvious benefits as a motivational stick.

Moving to philosophy, what should we make of Descartes's dualism and the fact that people seem to presume that dualism is true? Paul Bloom thinks people are "natural-born dualists," Shermer reviews (71). What is the evidence for that? Consider one of Bloom's experiments, in which researchers told children a tale about a human brain transplanted into a pig. The kids thought "the animal will still act like a pig, with the same personality and memories of a pig, only smarter" (72). Only a dualistic view, with the assumption that the mind and the brain are separable, seems to explains that. (Not having read the original study, though, I wonder if the story was leading in any way.)

Shermer goes on to discuss Deepak Chopra's so-called "mind-monism"; I confess that Shermer has a much greater tolerance for entertaining Chopra's nonsense than I do. (Chopra serves as Shermer's foil, although the two are friendly.)

As a side note, Shermer reviews some of the evidence showing the physiological and psychological benefits of meditation, which Chopra also endorses (79—81). This is something I'd never taken seriously, but, given the demonstrated benefits, it's something I intend to explore. As Shermer points out (as does Sam Harris and others), one can enjoy the benefits of meditation without believing metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.

Shermer's chapters on alleged "Evidence for the Afterlife" again offer a skeptical view (of course). I enjoyed Shermer's accounts of how, on different occasions, he imagined he was abducted by aliens, hallucinated (he says not what), and felt like he'd left his body, due to "extreme fatigue" while bicycling, a sensory deprivation tank, and a specialized electromagnetic field generator (107). Obviously the mind can play tricks.

I was shocked to read that at least one credentialed "scientist" at a real (and tax funded) university published findings in the current century "proving" that psychics can talk to the dead (111). Had that clown never heard of James Randi?

As I was reading Shermer's Chapter 7 ("Soul Stuff"), it occurred to me that it's a good thing that California (Shermer's home state) has legalized marijuana, because this is some trippy stuff. Shermer even offers a thought experiment of walking in on himself having sex with his wife (126—127). Shermer raises some excellent questions about what it means to be a person, and he even begins to offer a few answers.

As for the possibility of duplicating a person's mind, this seems impossible. Shermer notes, "There are around 85 billion neurons in a human brain, each with about a thousand synaptic links, for a total of 100 trillion connections" (127). And, as Shermer continues, our neurons and synaptic links reflect only part of the complexity of the brain.

Shermer is a little confusing regarding the problem of personal identity. If it were possible to duplicate a person's mind and body in the far future, he wonders, then when the new person gained consciousness would that really be "similar to the way I wake up each morning?" Shermer answers himself, "I don't think so" (129). But why not?

If the duplication were truly perfect, the new person would simply assume the perspective of the old. Of course if the duplication were not perfect—and how could it be?—then the new person might have the experience of remembering to be someone else before, and now living as someone new. So I think the identity problem boils down to the duplication problem. (Of course it is impossible to duplicate long-dead people, as Shermer recognizes—bizarrely, some people think this is eventually possible—but that's a different problem from duplicating a living person's mind.)

Chapter 8 is a delightful romp through the personalities, science, and implausible aspirations of those seeking immortality through science. Of course I'd heard of Ray Kurzweil, but I was unfamiliar with most of what Shermer presents about "the cryonicists, extropians, transhumanists, Omega Point theorists, singularitarians, and mind uploaders" (131, emphasis omitted). Shermer does think it's realistic to perhaps double the human lifespan with advancing medicine (137).

One company, 21st Century Medicine of California, truly has made remarkable progress in preserving an animal's brain (see 145—151). The problem is that the brains are preserved in such a way that they can almost certainly never be brought back to life. So what do you do with the brains, even assuming the process can be successfully used with human brains? Somehow digitize them and then manufacture a new brain with the same contents? Run their contents as conscious computer simulations? Good luck with that! I think Shermer is right: Whatever resulted, assuming yours was the brain so preserved, would no longer be you.

Here's my read on this. Beyond the modest goal of incrementally increasing human lifespans, the quest for immortality through science offers pie in the sky. To my mind, the real problem is that we might blow ourselves back to the Dark Ages or get wiped out by a cosmic disaster. Good luck living forever amidst the Zombie Apocalypse.

What we really can accomplish with existing technology Robert Zubrin has convinced me) is to colonize Mars (and beyond). That is, we can get the human race into multiple baskets and ensure that it won't die out altogether. My existential fear is not that I'll die—I've accepted that—but that the entire human race will die. How about we address that problem? (Shermer discusses this possibility later in his book; see 235—237).

In Part III (chapters nine and ten), Shermer takes a sometimes humorous, often ominous look at utopian movements. He examines extensive evidence showing that people tend to be pessimistic rather than optimistic—even though, objectively, we are living in the best period on net for human well-being—and they tend to think that things are getting worse. If things are in decline, then at some point things must have been better, perfect even. And surely there is a way to reverse the decline and reach a new golden age to mirror the glorious beginning age.

Shermer reviews the literature and manifestations of various utopian movements, including the Unabomber's anti-technology screed (198—199) and the mass-slaughter resulting from Communism. But far and away the best developed section here is Shermer's terrifying review of the rise of racist ideologies in the 1800s, leading today to the so-called alt-right. The general idea is that society has fallen from a state of "racial purity" and can only be restored by reestablishing the same. The alt-right is explicitly hostile to the classical liberal ideals of free markets and individual liberty, Shermer notes (212). The book is worth buying, reading, and giving to friends if only for this section.

Finally, in his last section, Shermer seeks to make sense of mortality for realists who find hope neither in a supernatural afterlife nor in some technological salvation.

Shermer first addresses the question of why we die in the first place. Surprisingly (to me), not all animals seem to age; a few sorts of creatures can live hundreds of years (225). But people do die, and Shermer explores the scientific theories that seek to explain why.

In his closing chapter, Shermer discusses how people can find meaning in an indifferent universe. He offers a generally inspiring discussion that I leave the reader to discover. He missteps, to my mind, mainly in relating the "purpose" of a living thing—"to survive, reproduce, and flourish"—to the "purpose" of inanimate things such as stars and rivers (245); this blows the concept beyond sense. Yet I love this pithy summary of the basis of meaning: "Purpose is in our nature" (245).

In his book, Shermer seeks to convince us that we can neither live forever nor achieve a utopian heaven on earth. Yet the very existence of the book demonstrates that a person can achieve a sort of immortality and eke out a patch of heaven—partly through his works.

Frederick Douglass and the Meaning of Individualism

February 14, 2018

In our polarized and angry age, most people can at least agree on the brilliance and historical importance of Frederick Douglass. Most of us have more in common than blaring headlines typically indicate, and that is worth remembering.

What first struck me when reading Yale historian David W. (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/opinion/right-coopts-frederick-douglass.html) Blight's New York Times critique of Timothy Sandefur's reflections in Douglass is how irascibly Blight often agrees with Sandefur.

The headline (which may or may not be Blight's) sets an adversarial tone: "How the Right Co-Opts Frederick Douglass." Yet Blight echoes many of Sandefur's themes: Douglass "believed in self-reliance," "loved the Declaration of Independence" and the "natural-rights tradition" and the Bill of Rights, "forged a livelihood with his voice and pen," and preached "self-reliance for his fellow blacks."

Sandefur, Blight writes, "argues that Douglass's essential legacy lies in his advocacy of liberty, individualism and private property and free enterprise." So. . . what's the problem?

Blight thinks the problem is Sandefur's insistence that Douglass is an individualist. But the real problem is that Blight misunderstands individualism. But Blight is not the only one at fault here; many conservatives and libertarians also misunderstand individualism, at least partly, and their errors make Blight's criticisms superficially plausible.

Let's begin by straightening out some of the terms. Blight treats the right, conservatism, and libertarianism as if they were of a piece. They are not. The terms right-wing and conservative are so ambiguous that they can mean contradictory things Reclaiming Liberalism, which, incidentally Sandefur compliments).

Conservatives who want to deport peaceable immigrants, restrict legal immigration, ramp up the drug war, impose tariffs, and ban all abortion have essentially nothing in common with libertarians who hold the exact opposite beliefs on all those issues and on many others.

The term libertarian can mean anything from the advocacy of a welfare state to anti-state anarchism—the ambiguity of the term is a major reason why I do not identify as a libertarian (although I once did). Unfortunately, Blight is no more careful elsewhere.

Douglass, Blight writes, "strongly believed in self-reliance but demanded an interventionist government to free slaves, defeat the Confederacy and protect black citizens from terror and discrimination."

Here Blight pits self-reliance against a government that actively protects people's rights. But these things are complementary, not antagonistic. No one who advocates self-reliance means by that term that no one (including police) should help someone being mugged on the street. Blight does not quote Sandefur or anyone else to the effect that self-reliance means there can be no organized rights protection—because no serious person actually holds that view.

Douglass, Blight claims, "fundamentally was not a self-made man," because "without many people, especially women (his grandmother, two wives, a daughter and countless abolitionist women who supported his career) as well as male mentors, both white and black, he would not have survived and become Douglass." Blight continues: "In private, he easily admitted his reliance on friends and associates, and he believed in a theory of . . . collective liberation by God and by events."

But, again, no sensible person actually believes that a "self-made" person makes himself in every respect, as a God who declares himself into being, fully formed. One need not be dropped on a solitary island on one's day of birth to become "self-made" in the relevant sense. Of course any successful person is first nurtured by others and benefits by some luck.

What it means to be self-made is to improve one's self in the areas open to choice. Some people had all of the advantages that Douglass had in his life—and many other advantages besides (such as not being born into slavery)—and did essentially nothing with their lives. Douglass was self-made in the sense that he made the mental and physical effort required to make a good career and life for himself.

Blight next writes: "The radical abolitionist who risked all to use words and politics to free an entire people from slavery was, to Mr. Sandefur, only 'a radical for individualism' and never concerned with 'the interests of the collective.'"

Here Blight misunderstands Sandefur's meaning. Sandefur denies "collective" interests that somehow transcend the interests of individuals; he does not deny that individuals can have interests in common (such as an interest in escaping slavery). An individualist in Sandefur's sense is someone who thinks that individuals should have their rights protected, not that they shouldn't.

Blight: "Douglass believed that freedom was safe only within the state and under law." But rights-protecting government is an aspect of individualism properly conceived, not opposed to it.

Blight: Douglass "never employed that 'let alone' dictum without also demanding 'fair play,' and security against terror and discrimination." Again, no sensible person claims that people should not be protected against the terror of violence, which is why Blight does not quote anyone he's supposedly criticizing.

Blight: "Douglass, the greatest American abolitionist, also happened to be a Republican in a century when that party stood for using government to free people." It is unclear what Blight's point here is, but, again, I'd point out that "using government to free people" is part and parcel of the individualist project. Obviously I agree with Blight that modern Republicans have in many ways forsaken their heritage, but what does this have to do with his thesis? Blight's suggestion that individualism equals conservatism equal libertarianism equals the right equals the Republican Party is nonsense.

Here is how Blight closes:

[Douglass] wrote: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them." . . . Douglass's understanding of power could never confine him to advocacy of individualism alone.

Here again Blight totally misrepresents what individualism means. It does not mean that individuals cannot throw off oppressive power or collaborate to do so; it means that individuals should seek to throw off oppressive power and collaborate to do so. We can debate what sorts of "power" count as oppressive (obviously slavery is a paradigmatic case of oppression), but that doesn't change the basic point. Or perhaps Blight would care to point to a single person who means by individualism what Blight claims.

Apparently people who visit Yale these days need to take care, lest the raging straw men overtake them, as they have overtaken Blight.

But, as silly as Blight's op-ed is, hopefully some good will come of it, if it encourages people to learn more about Douglass and his views.

All One Tribe: Black Panther's Message of Openness

February 16, 2018

I recommend Black Panther and I found it enormously interesting. Readers may want to delay continuing with my notes on the film until they've seen it, as there is some value to viewing it with no preconceptions or knowledge of the story. If you do go, stay until the very end, by the way, past all the credits.

The Black Panther Party "was based on ideas such as black nationalism and a staunch belief in the necessity of violence and armed self-defence in order to obtain freedom from white oppression," (http://www.historyinanhour.com/2012/06/15/malcolm-x-black-panthers/) Jason Mitchell summarizes.

Black Panther the film is based on roughly the opposite premise, that the advanced African nation of Wakanda of the film's mythology should engage the world not through arms but through peaceful intellectual and cultural exchange. Black Panther is closer to Martin Luther King, Jr., in spirit than it is to (early) Malcolm X. "We are all one tribe," Wakanda's King T'Challa says. In what I hope was an intentional rebuke of Trump, T'Challa exhorts the peoples of the earth to "build bridges, not barriers."

To me the greatest aspect of the film is its vision of a technological, industrial, and wealthy Africa. So many human lives and so much human potential have been destroyed in that continent due to tribal warfare—sometimes genocidal in scope—wide-scale political oppression and corruption, and, yes, past oppression by the "colonizers" (as the film mentions).

Various regions of Africa have made a great deal of progress, but most of the continent has barely begun to reach its potential. The three economic powerhouses of Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, and South Africa, have nominal per capita gross domestic products of around $2,400, $4,500, and $6,300, respectively (says Wikipedia).

A fully liberated Africa, where the rule of just law consistently protected individuals and their rights, would make Wakanda look like a quaint backwater.

The film is amazingly produced, with outstanding performances and gorgeous cinematography.

The film does have some serious problems. Most importantly, its political-economy is ridiculous.

We're supposed to believe that a small insular nation with zero trade can become a technological and economic powerhouse, but no actual nation has ever achieved that. Wealth comes from specialization, trade, stable legal institutions that protect property rights, and a cultural environment that promotes technological progress and entrepreneurship.

Where is the Wakanda Institue of Technology and the Wakanda School of Engineering? Wakanda has amazing skyscrapers, hovering trains, mighty flying ships, and marvels of all kinds—and only one scientist visible in the entire film, T'Challa's sister Shuri, who reveals nothing about how she developed her knowledge and skills. What we do see in Wakanda are many people who are excellent at fighting. Well, that's great and all, but the capacity to stylishly kick ass does not an economic powerhouse create.

In Wakanda, wealth literally falls from the sky, like manna from heaven, in the form of a giant asteroid made of magic metal, vibranium. The idea that natural resources by themselves lead to technological advancement obviously is silly. What is the pathway by which Wakandans developed the capacity to mine vibranium and convert it into technological marvels? The film is silent on such matters.

Another oddity: One Wakandan tribe lives in the desolate, rocky mountains, and its members are vegetarian. But where does their food come from? The tribe apparently does not trade with anyone and does not seem to have a thriving greenhouse industry. Does vibranium turn stones into asparagus, too?

Even worse, the Wakandans, who have figured out how to develop miraculous technology, with weapons literally powerful enough to destabilize the entire planet, have nevertheless not figured out how to move beyond hereditary monarchy challengeable by hand-to-hand combat. That would be comparable to handing off the U.S. nuclear missile codes to whoever happens to be the most brutal killer. Of course T'Challa does not kill his opponents but lets them yield, but the point is that whoever is sufficiently good or lucky in battle can kill the aspiring king and take over. Black Panther thus features an odd and unstable blend of ancient tribal barbarism and modern Enlightenment-oriented technology.

Regarding Wakanda's closed nature, (http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/12/black-panther-wakanda-trumpian-fever-dream/) Ellie Bufkin plausibly writes that Wakanda seems "an awful lot like a Trumpian fantasy land . . . where a walled-in nation is thriving, self-reliant, and completely unaccommodating of outsiders." The nation is more than ethnically homogeneous; Wakandans literally are branded as such, and with one exception [update: two exceptions] (that we know of) no one without the brand is allowed in. Just imagine if such a scheme were proposed in the context of white nationalism. Wakandans explicitly discuss their refusal to let in any refugees, lest the newcomers change Wakandan culture. This indeed is straight from Trump's playbook.

But Bufkin misses the vital fact that that the theme of the film is that Wakanda needs to open up and engage with the world. No, Wakanda still won't let in refugees (or at least we're not told that it will), but it will seek to aid oppressed people elsewhere in the world. Even at the outset of the film, Wakanda sends some agents into the world beyond to help the oppressed.

Obviously the film touches on race. Wakandans twice threaten, jokingly, to kill the supportive American CIA agent, who happens to be white, once for daring to touch the king and again for speaking out of turn. Imagine the reverse, a film in which white characters took affront to a black man touching a white leader or speaking out of turn, and perhaps you'll see the tension. But I don't want to make too much of this, because overall the film shows T'Challa and his associates and the CIA agent working together, and the Wakandans do save the agent's life, after all. So maybe the film is self-consciously acknowledging anger over race and then trying to move past it.

Black Panther does something very interesting with the villains. At first we get the idea that the villain is a South African arms dealer named Klaue (brilliantly played by Andy Serkis). But, it turns out, Klaue himself is being used by the real villain, Wakandan wayward son Killmonger.

I don't think it's a stretch to think this is symbolic. The main problem for the film's heroes is not the white oppressor but the hardened black idealist who wants to turn to force of arms. Indeed, Killmonger, a horribly tragic figure, is seen as having been corrupted partly as a soldier participating in the violence of U.S. military interventionism. The heroes are those who strive to move beyond oppression and violence. So the film is about perfecting the self and then extending the hand of friendship to others.

Again, I see this as fully within the tradition of MLK, who (https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/i-have-dream-address-delivered-march-washington-jobs-and-freedom) dreamed that "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers." Bridges, not barriers. (Of course this is consistent with rooting out remaining forms of racial oppression.)

I close by pointing out that Black Panther is an enormously complex film, and people will disagree about aspects of it. I hope the film becomes a way to start meaningful conversations. If you think I'm totally wrong about some aspect of the film, perhaps we can discuss why.

It is astonishing that the most culturally meaningful film of the day is based on a comic book. Kudos to Marvel for taking the superhero genre beyond what I ever would have imagined possible.

Image of Chadwick Boseman (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chadwick_Boseman_(28017828304).jpg) by Gage Skidmore

Reflections on American Gun Laws

February 20, 2018

Some people who believe that changes in American gun laws would save lives seem to think that somehow it will help to demonize the millions of peaceable (and voting) Americans who own guns or who are members of the National Rifle Association. This is despite the fact that many gun owners favor certain changes to gun laws and that many have good reasons to oppose certain changes.

Is the goal to gin up partisan rage for the 2018 elections or to actually achieve the most sensible set of laws? Demonizing people might further the first goal but it distracts from the second. It also worsens the polarization threatening to rip the country apart. Do we want a reasoned discussion or just another screaming match?

The horrific mass murders in Las Vegas, Texas, Florida, and elsewhere weigh on all of our minds. So, yes, if it might be possible to tighten up certain gun laws in a way that keeps people safer while protecting people's moral and constitutional right to own guns for self-defense, then we should think seriously about such proposals.

Before I get into current gun laws and possible changes to them, I want to briefly review some reasons why the gun debate so often goes badly off the rails.

First, do some people assert the right to own a gun as a matter of dogma? Yes, obviously. For example, when someone cheers on the government for deporting a peaceable, productive person who has lived in the country for decades, who is married to a U.S. citizen, and who has children who are U.S. citizens, that person's claims about "God-given rights" ring hollow.

But just because some people offer poor reasons for owning a gun does not mean that there aren't good reasons. Do we want to spend our time fighting over straw men or do we want to have a real conversation?

Next I want to point out some of the important issues often excluded from discussions about guns. In no particular order:

1. Defensive Gun Use: Obviously mass murders get an enormous amount of media attention, and understandably so. (I do wish media would stop splashing the faces and names of perpetrators continually across every screen and newspaper in the world, as that gives such murderers the infamy they seek.) But we should remember that (https://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/tough-targets-when-criminals-face-armed-resistance-citizens) people really do use guns defensively to protect themselves from violent criminals.

Media give such defensive gun uses hardly any attention, precisely because the intended victims often survive unharmed. Many cases of defensive gun use are not reported at all; literally no one knows about them except the thwarted criminal, the gun owner, and perhaps a police officer who files a report.

A related issue is that it is impossible to tell exactly how many lives are saved from defensive gun use, because in most cases we cannot know how a situation would have gone otherwise.

By the way, if at this point to denigrate defensive gun use you invoke a statistic regarding the low number of criminals killed when guns are used defensively, (http://ariarmstrong.com/2015/10/michael-shermers-bogus-claims-about-defensive-gun-use/) I will point out that successful defensive gun use hardly ever results in a dead perpetrator.

2. Deterrence: Gun ownership helps deter certain sorts of crimes, particularly home invasions. Obviously a home that is never invaded because of the deterrence effect of gun ownership does not make the news.

3. Substitution of weapons: Criminals can and often do substitute other weapons, especially when a criminal is physically stronger than the intended victim (as is often the case with muggings and domestic violence). So focusing only on gun-related violence does not tell the whole story.

If we could magically push a button and make every gun in America disappear overnight, the next day (once the news got out) the amount of non-gun-related violence would skyrocket and remain radically higher than it is now. Although the rhetoric surrounding guns often suggests otherwise, a case of non-gun-related violence is not somehow less reprehensible than a case of gun-related violence, other things equal. Perhaps the amount and severity of crime would on net be less, but clearly it will not do to ignore the substitution effect.

Let's not forget that the 9/11 attacks, which killed 2,996 people, were carried out by hijackers with boxcutters.

4. The black market: Criminals by definition do not obey the law. There already is a thriving black market in guns, and this market will continue regardless of what politicians do. (We should bear in mind that gang violence is responsible for a large portion of American gun violence, and criminal gangs do not obey gun laws.) Granted, laws can affect the nature and scope of the black market, just as they affect the nature and scope of the black market in drugs. We should be aware that a) some people wil get around any gun law, even total prohibition, and b) the black market in guns is itself a source of violence, just as the black market in drugs fuels gang violence.

5. Failures of laws: Laws are by their nature imperfectly enforced. We know that the police (https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/us/florida-shooter-cruz-records-police-calls-to-home-invs/index.html) "repeatedly" investigated the Florida perpetrator and that (https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/nikolas-cruz-fbi-warned/index.html) the FBI failed to follow through on his publicly published threats to shoot up a school. We know that in at least two cases a perpetrator of a mass murder was able to buy a gun because the relevant (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-shooting-exposes-gaps-gun-background-checks-n820066) background-check database was not updated with the information that would have blocked access. So we cannot assume perfect enforcement of a given law.

6. Costs of enforcement: Every minute that a law enforcement officer spends making a peaceable gun owner jump through bureaucratic hoops is a minute that the officer does not spend investigating and preventing violent crimes. Apparently FBI agents just didn't have the time to pursue the threats of the Florida perpetrator. Gun laws do not enforce themselves.

7. Individual rights: Violence has causes other than gun availability, yet, largely for reasons of partisan politics, guns typically dominate the discussion. I don't know exactly what is the ratio of peaceable gun owners to criminal gun users, but the ratio is very large. The millions of peaceable American gun owners count. They have rights, and they do not deserve to be disarmed, subjected to senseless bureaucratic controls, or put in legal jeopardy for inadvertent and trivial violations.

The ideal is to get guns away from those in the tiny fraction of the population who use them for violence while leaving alone everyone else. Yet, judging from some of the rhetoric I'm hearing, some people seem to want to disarm peaceable people just from spite.

The upshot is that if you ignore defensive gun use and the deterrent effect of gun ownership for certain crimes, if you ignore the ability of many criminals to switch to other weapons, if you ignore the black market in guns, if you assume perfect or zero-cost enforcement of gun laws, if you treat gun availability as the only contributor to violent crime, or if you presume that the millions of peaceable American gun owners don't matter, then I will assume that you are acting in bad faith and uninterested in having an honest discussion about guns and gun laws.

What follows is for those interested in having a serious conversation.

"Assault" Weapons

Before turning to some changes to gun laws that I think might be a good idea, I want to mention a proposal that is a terrible idea—the so-called "assault" weapons ban (which means a ban on licensed sales, not on ownership).

The term "assault weapon" most sensibly refers to a fully automatic gun. The difference between a semi-automatic "assault" gun and any other semi-automatic is largely cosmetic. The insidious purpose of creating a legal category of "assault" semi-automatics is to establish the basis for the eventual ban of all semi-automatics, because there is no functional difference in basic operation. The proposed "assault" weapons ban (which has already been tried) is a bad-faith measure that cynically depends for support on raw emotions and on widespread ignorance of firearms.

Now, if we want to talk about caps on magazine capacity, then that applies to all semi-automatic guns. I don't support caps on magazine capacity because normal-capacity magazines are useful for self-defense and because limits on them have little or no impact on the capacity of criminals to hurt people. But I acknowledge that caps on magazines, although inherently arbitrary (the roundness of the number ten is the only point in its favor), at least is a coherent proposal. If I actually thought that restricting magazine capacity (at the stage of new sales) would measurably reduce violent crime, I'd reconsider my position. Realistically it won't do that.

What legal changes might actually make a difference? Here I offer some tentative remarks. (I reserve the right to change my mind in light of new evidence and arguments.)

Universal Background Checks

Yes, I get it: All licensed dealers already must comply with the background check system. But, to my mind, the entire federal licensure program of gun dealers is peculiar and artificial.

As (http://ariarmstrong.com/2013/02/how-to-have-gun-background-checks-without-registration/) I discussed some years ago, it is possible to have a universal background check system that, unlike the existing system, does not effectively register gun owners with the federal government. Yes, I know; there's no official central database of gun owners. Still, licensed dealers are required to keep the paperwork, and federal agents may access that paperwork whenever they want. At any time Congress could authorize the incorporation of all that data into a central database of gun owners. (Here is where you call me paranoid and I refer you to past cases of gun confiscation and to the endless stream of articles published in the U.S. calling for gun confiscation.)

The basic idea of my proposal is that any citizen would be able to access the background-check database, and anyone who sold a gun to a person in the database by failing to check it would be subject to criminal and civil sanctions. Yes, there are a lot of complications here, but I think they could be worked out satisfactorily.

Incidentally, if we moved to the sort of system I outline, we could do away with the federal system of licensed dealership, but that's tangential to my proposal.

What of the problem of government wrongly denying people their ability to buy a gun, say, because they have a name similar to someone in the database? One possible way to partly remedy that problem is to require government to promptly issue a certificate to anyone having such problems confirming identity.

But there's no getting around the fact that any background check system will have problems of incomplete data, inaccurate data, straw purchases, and confusion of identities. There is no omnipotent background check angel behind the curtain.

Gun-Violence Restraining Orders

David French has gotten a lot of attention for his proposal for "(https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/gun-control-republicans-consider-grvo/) gun violence restraining orders":

[B]efore the deadly act itself, there is no clear path to denying [someone who gives off warning signals] access to guns. Though people can report their concerns to authorities, sometimes those authorities fail or have limited tools to deal with the emerging danger. What if, however, there was an evidence-based process for temporarily denying a troubled person access to guns? What if this process empowered family members and others close to a potential shooter, allowing them to "do something" after they "see something" and "say something"? I've written that the best line of defense against mass shootings is an empowered, vigilant citizenry. There is a method that has the potential to empower citizens even more, when it's carefully and properly implemented. It's called a gun-violence restraining order, or GVRO.

Is there a potential that such a thing could be abused? Of course. But, thinking about it, it doesn't seem like the only relevant legal standard for restricting someone's access to guns should be the criminal one of "beyond a reasonable doubt." Surely police may sometimes act on a lesser standard of evidence. By comparison, police can arrest someone on probable cause. Offhand, it seems reasonable to me that a person can be denied access to guns if there is something like a "preponderance of evidence" that the person has, through deed or action, made a tangible threat to harm others.

When someone says they're going to shoot up a school or otherwise hurt people, I think we should take the threat seriously.

(https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/20/are-gun-violence-restraining-orders-cons) Jacob Sullum worries that the proposal gives "short shrift to due process and the Second Amendment." And he writes, "there is much potential for abuse by malicious or mistaken petitioners, abetted by judges who will be inclined to err on the side of what they believe to be caution by revoking the Second Amendment rights of possibly dangerous people."

These are definitely concerns worth worrying about. But, if there are clear standards regarding a tangible threat and good due process provisions built in, I don't see why the problems that Sullum discusses can't be substantially overcome. If law enforcement can never act if there is a potential for abuse, then we just have to throw out the entire criminal justice system, because it is rife with abuse. Of course we can build in better or worse safeguards.

In my view it's an idea worth considering, though by no means a slam-dunk for the reasons Sullum discusses.

Consider a scenario. Someone posts on social media, "I hate all Jews [or black people or white people or whatever] and I plan to buy a gun and shoot a bunch of those people." Are we saying that there is literally nothing police can do about this except try to monitor the person? So the police have to watch the person walk into a gun store and buy a gun, and the police can do nothing else? If the police do not have the resources to monitor the person or the monitoring is interrupted, the person easily could attempt the crime he said he'd perpetrate.

Of course, the proposal for the restraining order is toothless unless it is folded into the background check system. So whatever a person concludes about the background check system should be applied here too.

Age Limits

My general stance is that, once a person has the responsibilities of adulthood, the person ought not be denied the rights of adulthood.

At the same time, the age of 18 is fairly arbitrary. Reports I've read indicate that the male brain does not fully mature until the mid-twenties.

So long as people are required to register for the draft at age 18, I will oppose any gun restrictions for people older than that. Of course, if we abolished draft registration, which is the right thing to do anyway, then we could talk about creating more of a transition period to adulthood, perhaps with judicially reviewed early admittance.

Offhand, I can't think of strong reasons not to set the usual purchase age for semi-automatic rifles at 21.

If we talk about handguns, we have to consider the case of the 18-year-old woman, living independently, who might want to buy a semi-auto handgun to protect herself from her violent ex-boyfriend. Hence, I think (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/in-many-u-s-states-18-is-old-enough-to-buy-a-semiautomatic/) existing law gets things pretty much backwards.

We should realize that raising the age limit probably would have no measurable effect on crime. But it's not unreasonable to think that it might prevent some young fool with hate in his heart from easily getting a rapid-fire rifle.

Here's the problem: Any bill along these lines almost certainly will be a cynical ploy to restrict access to guns beyond what is reasonable. Such is the case with Dianne Feinstein's proposal.

Here is the Huffington Post's (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/feinstein-raising-assault-rife-purchase-age-to-21_us_5a87cb9ee4b004fc31924670) headline: "Dianne Feinstein Wants To Raise Minimum Age For Assault Weapon Purchases To 21." The headline is a lie. Feinstein does not merely want to raise the age for buying "assault" guns (i.e., semi-automatic guns that Feinstein deems scary-looking) or even just semi-automatic guns. She wants to raise the age for "all firearms." She says, "If you can't buy a handgun or a bottle of beer, you shouldn't be able to buy an AR-15" (by which she means any gun).

Consider this scenario. An 18-year-old man joins the military, gets married and has a child, gets his foot blown off in combat while serving in Afghanistan, then returns home on medical leave at age 20. According to Feinstein, this soldier, who has extensive experience with military-grade weapons, should not be allowed to purchase a bolt-action .30-06 to hunt deer or even a single-shot twenty-two to hunt rabbits—and never mind a revolver to protect his family. Also, he should not be able to buy a six-pack of beer or a bottle of wine to enjoy with his wife. That's ridiculous. No honest person thinks that preventing such sales is going to keep anyone safer (at least relative to preventing such sales for a random person over 21).

If you're old enough to die for your country, you're old enough to buy a gun or a beer. If you're not old enough to buy a gun or a beer, then you have no business fighting in the military. One possibility is to set the usual age for all those things at 21, but then let a judge sign off for early adulthood status as early as 18 (or maybe even 17).

Regarding such proposals as Feinstein's, let's not pretend that obviously idiotic and hypocritical standards are somehow sensible.

February 22 Update: (https://twitter.com/JeffFlake/status/966366712001122308) Jeff Flake says a bill he's "working on" with Feinstein would pertain to "non-military buyers."

Let School Officials Carry

Look, contrary to what I've read in irresponsible social media posts, no one is suggesting that teachers and other school administrators be forced to carry a gun. But if a teacher or administrator wants to carry a gun and wants to get appropriate training, why prevent it?

Indeed, why prevent anyone with a concealed carry permit, which requires extensive background checks, from carrying a gun onto campus? If people are worried about inadequate training, we could create a "concealed carry plus" category that lets people carry in more places after getting more training.

It is just a raw fact that many mass murders occur in so-called "gun free zones" where guns are forbidden either by law or by proprietor directive. Apparently this is a real head-scratcher, but criminals seem to ignore the restrictions of "gun free zones." Obviously would-be criminals are less likely to attempt a crime if they think they will be unsuccessful in carrying it off, and the real possibility of facing armed resistance makes a criminal "success" less likely.

Scale Controls by Capacity

Contrary to widespread belief, fully-automatic guns are not illegal in the United States. Some of my friends own them, and I've shot one. They are, however, regulated extraordinarily tightly, and due to the sales ban for new guns they are extremely expensive. I actually think that full-autos are dramatically over-regulated.

At the same time, it makes no sense to draw a sharper line between full-autos (and a few other types of guns we needn't discuss here) and everything else than between a semi-automatic rifle and a single-shot twenty-two. In terms of capacity, the semi-auto is a lot closer to the full-auto than the single-shot twenty-two is to the semi-auto. (Full-autos often have a selector switch such that they can function as semi-autos.) In this respect, America's gun laws make no sense.

Okay, there is one rationale for treating full-autos differently: firing on full-auto mode is useful mainly for laying cover fire, not for firing discriminately at individual targets. But then we also have to consider that full-autos can be set to fire three-round bursts, and a semi-auto can be fired into crowds (as we have unfortunately seen). So I still think it's true that the dividing lines are largely arbitrary. Just consider: Would a soldier going into battle be indifferent between trading his full-auto for a semi-auto and trading it for a single-shot twenty-two?

Arguably it would make a lot more sense to restrict access to items according to their capacity to facilitate the killing of a lot of people in the wrong hands. If we follow this line, then on one side of the spectrum is the single-shot twenty-two rifle, which is pretty good for plinking cans or hunting rabbits, and on the other side is the full-auto. (Potentially far more dangerous than guns are explosives and such, but we needn't get into that here.)

Imagine two scenarios. In the first scenario, a father buys his 14-year-old daughter (or his 18-year-old daughter) a single-shot twenty-two rifle for her birthday. Let's assume the father keeps the gun locked up and oversees his daughter's use of the gun. Does anyone seriously have a problem with that? (Let me help you out: If you have a problem with it, you're just being irrational.)

In the second scenario, a father buys his young daughter a fully-automatic (or even a semi-automatic) rifle and lets her use it unsupervised and without any training. Does anyone seriously think that's a good idea?

So, yes, I'm open to the idea that a single-shot twenty-two should be regulated hardly at all whereas a semi-automatic rifle should be restricted somewhat more tightly, perhaps with higher age restrictions. At the same time, I think that new full-autos should again become available on the civilian market, albeit with relatively tight restrictions. (One reason to consider this is to increase military readiness.)

February 23 Update: As I've mentioned elsewhere, I also think it makes sense to treat bump stocks the same as full-autos. However, this should be done by Congressional action, not bureaucratic fiat.

Here is the main problem with this idea of scaling restrictions based on capacity: Those intent on total gun bans would seize on this proposal to try to regulate everything other than single-shots (and perhaps revolvers) out of existence or nearly so.

If gun owners could reasonably believe that people who say they only want "reasonable, common-sense gun-safety laws, for the children" didn't actually often want to eventually ban practically all guns for normal people and send in the (heavily armed) jack-booted thugs to collect them, it would be a lot easier to have these kinds of conversations.

As it is, the chant on the streets is "no more guns." When I hear people chant "no more guns" and demonize peaceable gun owners, I think that perhaps they mean what they say. And that makes me hesitant to put forward proposals that I reasonably believe cynical and dogmatic politicians and activists will twist for ideological satisfaction, partisan gain, and Bloomberg cash.

Yet I also know that there are a lot of good and well-meaning people out there, on both sides of the gun debate, who actually do want to have a real conversation about ways to curb violence while respecting people's rights. I've put my ideas on the table; what are yours?

How to Renovate Your Home's Exterior without Going Crazy

April 8, 2018

My family's home looks beautiful and functions great with new vinyl-encased windows, prefinished Hardie Board fiber cement siding, and a new asphalt shingle roof. Getting to the finish line was brutal, and the entire process, from initial research to completed project, took a serious time commitment over the span of about a year. I hope that these notes might help other homeowners navigate the process a little more smoothly than I managed.

Please note that I have never worked in the construction trades (except I've done some painting), and I have no professional expertise in the area. What follows are my personal reflections about the renovation process as a homeowner. My comments are not intended as advice; people looking to renovate their houses should do their own research and consult appropriate professionals. Yet perhaps my notes will give people some ideas to consider and some starting points for further investigation.

The Scope of the Project

When we purchased our 1977 house about a decade ago, the house was in rough shape. The purchase was in the aftermath of the mortgage meltdown, and the bank that held the previous owner's mortgage took a substantial loss on the deal. (By the way, (https://www.epa.gov/lead/protect-your-family-exposures-lead#older) 1977 is the cut-off year for when you need lead testing; thankfully we tested and did not have any.)

Much of the siding had no paint on it and was buckling and cracking badly. The windows were old, leaky aluminum-frames, some with broken panes. But with a few replacement boards and some caulk and paint, I kept the siding sealed up well enough through the intervening years.

But in the back, which gets little sun (and so dries out more slowly), the siding started failing beyond my capacity to easily fix. So we wanted to replace the siding at least on the back wall. We could have done that for a fraction of what we ended up spending.

We sided the entire house, plus put in new windows and got a new roof. Why? We could swing the work financially, and the idea of doing the project once the right way appealed to us. We had other reasons. You can't wrap the corners well if you side a single wall. We also wanted to cut a new window opening, which obviously is pretty disruptive to the existing siding. And had we done the back wall with Hardie Board, the siding would not have matched the rest of the house, which would have been esthetically odd. There is a real and non-trivial psychic benefit to living in a beautiful and well-functioning house.

As for the roof, it was old, double-laid (which is no longer permissible by code), and poorly ventilated. So we decided to do the entire exterior, be done with it, and enjoy living in the renovated house.

The Bidding Process

The professional networks within the building trades are confusing and fluid. But basically the options are to hire a general contractor to oversee all aspects of the job or hire multiple contractors to handle different parts of the job.

We got a solid bid from someone willing to work the job as a general contractor, but it was considerably higher than the collection of bids we ultimately went with. We actually got better-quality materials for less money.

Amazingly (to me), representatives from two different companies came out to bid the job, took careful notes about the project—and then never got back with me again.

We ended up hiring three different companies: One to fix our side stairs and door, someone to install windows and siding, and one to install the roof. It turns out there are a lot of companies that do windows and siding and a lot that do roofs, but not a lot that do both.

Both of the main companies we used are listed with the major regional referrals, but I found the roofer through someone I know that used to work as a handyman and now works as a property inspector. He gave us the contact for the roofer, and the roofer gave us the contact for the sider. I was happy (enough) with their bids, so that's the direction we went.

Both the roofer and the sider used subcontractors for the intallation work. The funny thing is that I might have hired any of several major companies and still ended up with the same subcontractors.

I probably could have saved a non-trivial amount of money had I figured out how to hire the subcontractors directly and cut out the middle parties. Roughly ten percent of the money for the job went just to sales commissions, and another fraction (unknown to me) went to pay out the company's hierarchy of support.

But I'm not sure that I could have found good subcontractors on my own, and I'm not sure I would have wanted to. The subcontractors get something by associating with bigger companies: Someone else makes the sale, collects the money, and works with the homeowner. The subcontractors "just" show up to do the physical work. And I got the larger companies' reputations and support. If you hire a small crew that does bad work or that disappears halfway into the job, you have little or no recourse. So hiring a large company that subcontracts the work is not a bad way to go, I think.

One professional we spoke with recommended that we hire a larger company that hires its own installation personnel rather than subcontracts the work. But such an arrangement seems to be rare, I suspect because the larger companies prefer to deal with less bureaucratic hassle regarding employees.

So we could have spent a lot more on the work, and we could have spent less. But for the money we spent I feel like we got good service and support.

Windows

The new window that we had put in is my favorite feature of the house. It is the only window with a great view, and it lets me see my entire back yard. It's around 40 by 80 inches and offers a nice panorama. It has a slider on each side.

The rest of the windows are double-sliders (meaning that each can open from either side). They're great, but frankly I wish I would have ordered single-sliders. The single-sliders seem a little more secure, they're easier to close and lock, and the screen goes on only one side rather than over the entire opening. But there are a couple of windows that I would have wanted to open from left-to-right (from the inside), so if you get single-sliders make sure to evaluate which side you want to open.

We just got nice, standard vinyl windows that our rep recommended. They're much quieter than our old windows and pleasantly draft-free.

I made sure to order "new construction" grade windows with the "fins" attached. The fins screw directly to the framing.

I also made sure to install trim boards around each window, then side up to the trim (and caulk). With the old windows the siding went right up to the window frames. To me, the advantage of trimming the windows is that they can be removed and replaced more easily if necessary. Plus you probably get a better seal.

Be prepared for noise, dust, and wind during window installation. Also, the installation crew managed to cut through an electrical line in the wall. And we got some cracking of the interior paint around some of the windows—be sure to work out ahead of time whose responsibility it is to fix such damage. But other than that the installation went well as far as I could tell.

Siding

I am so glad we went with Hardie Board fiber cement siding with paint already applied. The planks show up on a pallet with plastic wrapping over each plank. The product looks beautiful and it lasts well. It is, however, a hassle to install. But I think vinyl siding looks bad and wears poorly, and wood-based products are more prone to water damage. In my opinion, if you're going to put up the money for new siding, put on the good stuff.

We had a big problem early in the installation process, and that is the point when having hired a larger company with a reputation at stake was very helpful. The crew installing the siding was not complying with the Hardie Board specs, plus our side-door was leaking water. (We got three major storms during the installation process.) I documented and described the problems carefully and, after a sleepless night on my part, the company sent out reps to resolve the problems.

The main company set me up with someone to reinstall the side-door (correctly this time) and took remedial measures to get the house wrap and siding up to specs. We ended up tearing off product from a partly completed wall and redoing it. I was very relieved that both the main company and the subcontractor took my concerns seriously and acted promptly to resolve the outstanding issues. I think the finished product is much better than it would have been had I not voiced my concerns.

I strongly recommend that homeowners who have Hardie Board installed become familiar with the Hardie installation sheets and explicitly discuss their details with the installers. Take pictures throughout the process, and emphasize that if the work is not done to specs you will insist that it be redone.

Hardie publishes installation guides for its (http://www.jameshardie.com/d2w/installation/hardiewrap-us-en.pdf) house wrap, (http://www.jameshardie.com/d2w/installation/hardietrim-nt3-hz5-us-en.pdf) trim, and (https://www.jameshardie.com/d2w/installation/hardieplank-hz5-us-en.pdf) siding.

Here are a few things to look for. The wrap needs to be in good shape, overlapped properly, and sealed with tape. To avoid scuffing or chipping the siding paint, installers need to handle the product carefully. Hardie explicitly says to keep the product covered and dry. Hardie specifies how to install the flashing above horizontal boards (as above windows)—note the quarter-inch gap requirement. All cut edges need to be painted or caulked. And there needs to be flashing behind the product where ends meet mid-wall.

Make sure you end up with a tube of caulk and a container of paint for each color. If you find an unpainted edge later or ding your siding with a ladder or something, you want to have the touch-up supplies. (Just be aware that the product will slowly fade in the sun, so if you use touch-up paint years down the road it will probably look blotchy.)

I spent about a day's work (over two days) fixing the trim and seal around the garage door to my satisfaction and touching up unpainted and uncaulked edges, scuff marks, and exposed nail heads. Is that work the installation crew should have done? Yes. But I decided that I was going to make sure the installers got the fundamentals right and handle details myself if necessary. At a certain point, doing some of that detail work myself was easier than nagging the installers to do it.

I also did some prep work that most homeowners probably do not do—I removed some of the fencing next to the house and put down some weed guard to keep the mud at bay.

By the way, if you redo your fencing, which we did prior to the siding work, make sure that the installers put the relevant posts a foot or so away from the siding, so you can remove the fencing next to the house. If we had had a fence post right next to the old siding, we would not have been able to properly install the new product (unless we removed the fence posts), because the walls ended up a little thicker.

My advice is to figure out ahead of time your level of tolerance for doing prep and touch-up work. If you want start-to-finish meticulous attention to detail, accept that up front and make sure you hire someone willing to accommodate. And be prepared to pay a premium.

Our electrical box is attached to the back of the house. I was relatively happy with how the installers handled that, but they did not z-flash the bottom trim board, as I think they should have. I ended up putting in some extra caulking around the box. If you have to worry about siding around an electrical box, I recommend that you discuss a plan with the installers first.

Roofing

Our big dilemma was whether to do the roof before the siding or after. There are two reasons I'm glad we decided to do roofing last.

First, the peak boards were 2x6 inch boards, and the Hardie Board replacement product is only an inch thick. So, unless we had removed the peak boards first and put up temporary materials, the drip edge would not have integrated with the new product. And the old fascia (under the gutters) was a little narrower than an inch, so that might have been a problem too.

Second, the siding installers used scaffolding that bolted into the roof, and I would have been more than a little irritated had they bolted through my brand-new roof. Of course, you could just insist ahead of time that installers use a different sort of scaffolding.

But for those two issues, it would have been better to do the roof first.

What I envisioned was the old roof coming off in nice big sections. What actually happened is that much of the old roofing and tar paper pulverized, caught in the wind, and left tar smudges all over my beautiful new windows and siding.

In retrospect, I wish I would have blue-taped plastic over all the windows prior to the roof installation. That would have prevented the tar smudges and the collection of black dust in the frames.

As for the siding, it is simply unavoidable not to end up with some tar smudges when removing an old roof and tar paper.

I do not believe it is possible to remove tar smudges from Hardie Board without damaging the paint. The roof installers tried to wipe some the tar off and just made matters worse. But there is a very easy solution: Just wipe the area with a dry rag, then put touch-up paint over the tar smudge. This worked fine, and I got everything touched up in a couple of hours. Again, this is the sort of thing the roofing installers probably should have done, but frankly they did not know how to handle the problem.

We went with GAF Timberline asphalt shingles, as our rep recommended. I think asphalt is the best option for the money. I looked at several other roofing options before going with standard asphalt, including plastic shingles and coated metal. The other products are dramatically more expensive, and I was not convinced that they would hold up to major hail much better than asphalt. (My sense is that manufacturers of plastic shingles could make them a lot stronger by making them solid rather than molding the underside as a mesh.)

We had vents installed in the roof itself at the ridge and partway up the roof, as the roofing rep recommended. The idea is that cooler air enters evenly along the bottom of the roof and flows out the top, keeping the attic and shingles much cooler. This sort of venting supercedes turtle venting.

Amazingly, crews installed the roof and the gutters in a single day.

The Upshot

For about a day I was seriously worried that the project was going sideways and I'd have to spend a lot more money and maybe even get an attorney involved. Thankfully my fears proved unfounded. Instead, the main siding company we hired listened to my (justified) concerns and put things right. Yes, I ended up having to do some of the touch-up work myself, but that didn't much bother me.

The house looks beautiful, and as far as I can tell everything functions as it should. It is a huge relief to get that stressful and time-consuming project behind me. Now we can turn our attention to some interior and landscaping projects that we can do ourselves.

And the Great Exterior Renovation Adventure of 2017—18 will fade into memory.

How to Fix Colorado's Candidate Petition Mess

April 13, 2018

The process by which Colorado candidates petition onto the ballot is a mess. What's the right solution? I'll consider several alternatives, but first let's consider a few aspects of the problem.

As the Colorado Secretary of State's office (http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Candidates/files/HowToRunForOffice.pdf) points out, to get on the primary ballot in Colorado, major-party candidates must either go through the caucus and assembly process organized by the parties or else submit 1,500 signatures per congressional district, currently 10,500 total.

As the Denver Post (https://www.denverpost.com/2018/04/13/colorado-elections-ballot-petitions-change/) reviews, candidates often hire people to gather signatures, and in several cases signature gatherers have committed fraud. As Secretary of State Wayne Williams told the Post, "the paid-for-signature method . . . incentives wrongdoing," but the courts have thrown out prohibitions of paid gatherers.

This election cycle, Republican candidate for governor Walker Stapleton originally decided to go the petition route to the primary ballot, but, after some fraudulent entries were discovered among the signatures, Stapleton withdrew his petitions and jumped to the assembly route. Stapleton's major competitor, Cynthia Coffman, (https://coloradopolitics.com/colorados-coffman-protests-stapletons-assembly-appearance/) complained that Stapleton missed the deadline to go through assembly, but the party's lawyers denied that. (Disclosure: I am a delegate at the April 14 Republican assembly, and at this point I tentatively favor Coffman over Stapleton, in part because I think Walker's petition fiasco will weaken him in the general.)

To me, the biggest problem is not the potential for fraud but the sheer waste of wealth involved in collecting all those signatures. My guess is that it takes on average around ten minutes to gather a signature (and perhaps far longer, depending on circumstances). The work is miserable. So candidates either must find volunteers to do the work of gathering signatures or else hire a firm to do it.

Moreover, the Secretary of State's office must undergo the work of validating all those signatures. I don't know how much that costs, but as reporter Brian Eason (https://twitter.com/MagellanStrat/status/984175546660630528) points out, a legislative committee recently approved an additional $300,000 for verification expenses.

We'd be just as well off if we paid people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them back up. Actually, having them dig holes would probably be better overall, because at least they'd get a workout. The sheer waste galls me.

So what can be done? Here I outline several possible approaches, staring with the keeping the status quo.

1. Put the Burden on Candidates.

As Coffman (https://twitter.com/ariarmstrong/status/984232947891879936) suggested during a recent conference call, we can just decide to blame the candidates who end up with fraudulent signatures. The Post mentions other candidates who vet petitioners more carefully.

We could decide that all the time spent on gathering signatures is worth it, especially because the associated costs serve as a disincentive for major-party candidates to skip the assembly process.

2. Reduce the signature requirement.

As the Post mentions, Pollster David Flaherty (https://twitter.com/MagellanStrat/status/984172970703638528) suggests:

Time to change the rules my Colorado friends. Lower the number of valid voter signatures for a statewide candidate to 1,000 and put Kennedy [a signature-gathering firm] and the rest of these yahoos out of business. Who cares if we have 50 candidates on the ballot.

This strikes me as an excellent idea. The 1,000 signature mark is not entirely arbitrary; minor-party and unaffiliated candidates can already petition onto the ballot with that number of signatures.

But we should consider the costs. Such a low petition requirement would incentivize more candidates to go the petition route rather than through their party assemblies.

Also, with more candidates on the ballot, someone could win with a smaller fraction of the vote. Of course, this problem would be solved if we implemented (http://ariarmstrong.com/2011/01/atwood-pitches-approval-voting/) approval voting, meaning that voters can select as many candidates as they want, thereby solving the problem of a candidate with low support winning in a divided field.

3. Abolish state-run primaries.

This is my favored approach (although not politically popular at present). As (http://ariarmstrong.com/2016/06/an-open-letter-to-the-colorado-elections-study-group/) I've argued, the state of Colorado has no proper business involving itself in how political parties select candidates or forcing people to pay the associated costs. If parties want to run primaries to select their candidates, let them organize and finance them.

In my view, the state should not even mention party affiliation on the ballot. Let the parties advertise their candidates. Why should the state make it easy for people to lazily vote a party line?

If the state does list party affiliation, at least it should not discriminate between "major" parties and other organizations; any group should be able to register as a "party" on equal footing and endorse candidates.

The state should set the exact same access rules for the general ballot for every candidate. If parties want to run only one candidate per office, let the parties decide how to select that candidate.

Here's a hypothetical example of how my proposal could work. The state could set a petition requirement for statewide office of, say, 2,000 signatures. Parties could hold their assemblies after the deadline for turning in petitions. Then parties could select among those candidates who qualified by petition, and the rest of the candidates could voluntarily withdraw. (Alternately, a party could select a candidate in advance on the assumption that the winner would be able to collect sufficient signatures.)

What if there were two Republican candidates on the ballot, and the loser at assembly refused to withdraw? We should leave that to the parties. To my mind a good remedy for that would be to kick the person out of the party for, say, a decade. Plus, obviously the party could actively support only the winner.

(Also, I think we should implement approval voting for all offices for the general election.)

It is necessary that the state organize general elections. It is neither necessary nor proper for the state to run primary elections, which benefit political parties at the expense of taxpayers.

Image of Walker Stapleton by (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Stapleton#/media/File:Walker_Stapleton.JPG) Jeffrey Beall

Theocratic Republicans Dominate Colorado Assembly

April 16, 2018

Colorado voters remain caught in the vicegrip of theocratic Republicans and hard-left Democrats who often select candidates far from the values of mainstream Colorado. Here I focus on the Republican side of the problem as revealed at the April 14 state assembly, which I attended as a delegate.

Anti-Abortion Zealots Sink Coffman

Cynthia Coffman, elected Colorado's attorney general in 2014, had an excellent chance to win the the governor's race this year in the general election. But, unlike most Colorado Republican leaders, she does not want to outlaw absolutely all abortion, and that fact, more than any other, sank her candidacy at assembly. This is true even though Coffman's views are mainstream; in 2014 Colorado voters (https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Definition_of_%22Personhood%22_Initiative,_Amendment_67_(2014)) rejected the anti-abortion "(http://www.seculargovernment.us/docs/a67.shtml) Personhood" initiative by a margin of two-to-one.

An outfit called Real Colorado Conservatives (https://www.copolitics.co/2018/04/11/more-on-the-copolitics-independent-spenders-in-the-cogov-contest/) was formed specifically to destroy Coffman's candidacy, and it succeeded.

On April 11, I received the following voice message from the organization:

This is a pro-life alert. Don't be fooled, conservatives. Cynthia Coffman is radically pro-abortion, and she doesn't deny it. She admits to being pro-choice in the press, in speeches, and has even called the GOP platform on conservative issues "backwards." Even worse, as Attorney General, Cynthia Coffman refused to prosecute radical abortion group Planned Parenthood after they were exposed in sale of trafficking of aborted children's body parts. It's disgusting and wrong. But liberal Cynthia Coffman did nothing. Cynthia Coffman has been masquerading as a Republican for too long. Colorado conservatives can't stand for a fake Republican like Cynthia Coffman. This Saturday at the Colorado assembly, don't be fooled. Cynthia Coffman doesn't share your values. She's radically pro-abortion and proud of it.

The same outfit also published a web site and distributed flyers at the assembly with a similar message.

Coffman is not "radically pro-abortion." With her positions on abortion she'd be bounced out of any Democratic Party position. In a recent (https://twitter.com/ariarmstrong/status/984230155420745728) conference call, Coffman said she'd defund Planned Parenthood, she opposes late-term abortion, and she advocates parental approval for abortion. She said she's personally against abortion and favors adoption over abortion. But no, Coffman does not want to outlaw all abortion from the moment of conception, as advocates of "Personhood" measures do.

Meanwhile, every other candidate who mentioned the issue on stage pledged complete opposition to abortion—although no candidate mentioned details, probably because the vast majority of Colorado voters oppose the total abortion bans that most Republican candidates implicitly endorse.

Justin Everett, who handily won the nomination for treasurer, even had Kristi Burton Brown—a key organizer of the "Personhood" drive—nominate him for the position. Everett, who referred to himself as a "Christian soldier," swore he was totally "pro-life" (i.e., in favor of banning abortion), even though he acknowledged that the issue is irrelevant to the position of treasurer. (Even though I had told Everett that I planned to vote for him, I switched my vote after Everett's gratuitous flaunting of theocratic values. I continue to think of him as a talented politician, and I think he'd do a good job as treasurer, which after all involves handling the state's finances and not regulating women's reproduction.)

According to Real Colorado Conservatives and their allies, there is no longer room in the Republican Party of Colorado for (http://ariarmstrong.com/2008/09/republican-majority-for-choice/) people like former Senator Hank Brown, former Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, and others who do not think government should outlaw all abortion and treat women who get an abortion as criminals.

Religious Liberty and Other Issues

Real Colorado Conservatives also claimed that Coffman is "pro-amnesty" and "anti-religious liberty." I don't know Coffman's position on amnesty—it's irrelevant to the position of governor (Coffman opposes "sanctuary" policies)—but the group has a point on the second matter.

In a (https://coag.gov/press-room/press-releases/12-05-17) media release about the infamous Masterpiece Cake Shop case, which involves a Colorado baker who declined to make a cake for a gay wedding, Coffman argued "it would be a mistake in deciding this case to create new exceptions to anti-discrimination laws that have never been applied to any other group of people."

I'm (https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2014/06/right-bake-cake/) on the record as supporting the rights of business owners to decline such service. Yet I recognize that Coffman's view has some plausible arguments behind it. I agree that there should not be a specifically religious exemption in such matters; I think that all business owners should have the same freedoms. In my view Coffman takes the wrong position here, and that definitely hurt her with many delegates. (In his speech, candidate for governor Barry Farah blasted Coffman on this issue, and, notably, Farah got more than twice as many votes as Coffman.) Yet I voted for Coffman despite my disagreement with her on this issue because overall I thought she was far and away the best (least-bad) and most electable candidate running.

Coffman's Missteps

How is it that Colorado Republicans placed on the primary ballot someone with a case of (https://www.cpr.org/news/story/alleged-petition-fraud-walker-stapleton-campaign) petition fraud in his recent past and of (http://www.5280.com/2010/11/treasurer-elect-walker-stapletons-dui-records-continue-to-raise-questions/) drunk driving in his distant past, along with someone with an incident of (http://www.coloradopols.com/diary/103382/domestic-violence-alcohol-and-running-for-governor) domestic violence in his past, over a well-qualified and eminently electable woman with a distinguished career as an attorney and elected official?

Ideology is the main reason, but Coffman also performed poorly at assembly. In her first speech, which was was supposed to be about her work as Attorney General, Coffman lambasted Walker Stapleton over the matters of petition fraud and drunk driving. This attack was heavy handed and out of place, and it cost her.

In her main presentation, Coffman started with an overlong and boring slideshow with music playing in the background. By that time, delegates had been sitting in the assembly room for many hours, and to me this video was painful to watch. People responded well to the introduction by Mitchell Zuckoff (author of 13 Hours), but Coffman's speech was so-so. At one point her tongue slipped and she referred to the "Republican" governors of Colorado's recent past—she meant Democratic—and this seemed to reinforce the view that Coffman is confused about which party she represents. (Stapleton's presentation was competent but not a lot better.)

Another problem is that Coffman seemed to run from the relevant controversies rather than address them head-on. How hard would it have been for her to forthrightly state her position: "I want to defund Planned Parenthood and restrict late-term abortions, but I do not want generally want to turn women who get an abortion into criminals"?

All day I got the feeling that Coffman was not connecting with delegates, and in the end it was obvious that she had not connected.

Still, given the ideological tenor of the convention and the nasty attacks leveled against Coffman, I think that even if Coffman had given the performance of a lifetime at the assembly she still would have lost.

I was surprised that Coffman did not get second slot on the ballot and instead got only 5 percent of the vote, but given that she did it is clear that the ideological attacks against her worked.

A Sexist Attack

Did sexism rather than ideology bring down Coffman? Douglas Bruce, author of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (as he will never let anyone forget), circulated a nasty flyer stating, among other things, that Coffman "admitted she has never given birth to any children." The flyer continues, "She [Coffman] did not mention why she and Rep. Mike Coffman divorced, nor her loyalty to AG John Suthers." (Coffman worked for Suthers in the AG's office, which successfully prosecuted Bruce for tax fraud.)

We should note that, (https://twitter.com/lynn_bartels/status/985222927716007936) according to Lynn Bartels, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Wayne Williams, Bruce was "mad that he was told to stop passing these out" at the assembly (I don't know the details).

An aside: the Bruce flyer is yet another reminder not to attach any given political cause to a particular person. Enemies of TABOR never tire of pointing out that Bruce was a main figure behind it. (My support for TABOR does not hinge on my opinion of Bruce.)

As far as I could tell, the flyer had no effect at the assembly. Still, it is worth considering that such a flyer almost certainly never would have been introduced at a Democratic function, and, if it had been, it would have generated a rather stronger reaction.

Theocratic Tendencies

I continue to think, then, that Coffman lost mainly because of her lack of religious dogmatism regarding abortion and other matters, not because of her lackluster performance or the sexist attacks against her.

Do I overstate the point when say that the core of today's Republican Party has theocratic tendencies?

Prominent Republican leaders endorse the "Personhood" movement, which would criminalize all abortion from the moment of conception, even in cases of rape; ban some popular forms of birth control because they might interfere with the implantation of an embryo; and ban common fertility treatments because they result in unused embryos. The explicit motivation for passing and enforcing such far-reaching and authoritarian laws is religious faith. The imposition of faith-based law is the essence of theocracy.

Regarding "religious liberty" as involving Masterpiece Cake Shop, the position of leading Republicans is that business owners should be exempt from certain laws that apply to everyone else, specifically because they are religious. The position is that, if a business owner disapproves of gay marriage because (say) the Bible regards homosexuality is an abomination, then the business owner should not be forced to obey the anti-discrimination laws that everyone else must obey. In other words, these Republicans call for unequal treatment under the law based on religious conviction. How should we describe the practice of giving religious people special treatment under the law, if not as theocratic?

(The justification of my position is much different: Although I condemn all forms of bigotry as morally wrong, I think business owners have a right to run their business as they see fit, regardless of their ideological views.)

Not a single speaker at the assembly expressed support for same-sex marriage, even though such is now the law of the land. Numerous speakers expressed their opposition to same-sex marriage, again for explicitly religious reasons. (I will note that the Log Cabin Republicans had a lonely table at the assembly, so not all Republicans are anti-gay.)

Faith-based law, in the form of abortion bans, religious-based discrimination, and opposition to same-sex marriage, was arguably the animating force of the convention. The number of candidates who went out of their way to swear fealty to Jesus Christ was remarkable. Faith-based issues are what seemed to most consistently get the crowd excited.

True, Republicans also talked a great deal about defending the Second Amendment, cutting regulations, defending TABOR, protecting carbon-based energy, expanding choice in education, and so on, and no doubt some Republicans attended mostly because of such issues. But religiously based government seemed to be the most prominent theme.

Imagine the response of the crowd had someone taken the stage and said something like the following:

One of the great strengths of our political system always has been our tendency to keep religious issues in the background. By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars. . . .

The religious factions that are growing in our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their positions 100 percent. . . . The uncompromising position of these groups is a divisive element that could tear apart the very spirit of our representative system, if they gain sufficient strength. . . .

I am warning them today: I will fight [religious groups] every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." . . .

The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. . . .

We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now.

To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic.

Those are the (https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/16/us/excerpts-from-goldwater-remarks.html) words of Barry Goldwater. Any speaker who might have dared to repeat these words at the 2018 Colorado Republican assembly would have been booed from the stage.

How to Save the Republican Party from the Authoritarians

April 20, 2018

The Republican Party has gotten so bad—so inimical to liberty—that advocates of liberty should join the party and actively seek to capture it from the authoritarians who have overrun it.

That may sound like a crazy strategy. (http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/the-gops-never-trumpers-are-really-just-never-democrats.html) Jonathan Chait is shocked that never-Trumpers do not abandon "the Republican Party because it is authoritarian and toxically anti-intellectual." Some of my most liberty-loving friends have quit the GOP in the hope that Democrats rout the GOP in the midterms to undermine Trump. But taking over the GOP is the only viable strategy at the level of electoral politics for steering the country back toward liberty. Hear me out.

1. Major-party activism is the only viable means to influence electoral politics.

With a tiny number of exceptions, every politician of consequence at the state and federal level is either a Democrat or a Republican. The rules of our elections heavily favor a two-party system, and I see no serious movement at present to create a new party that might push out the GOP. As I've suggested, a viable new party would at a minimum require crossover support of several high-level elected officials—they'd have to switch parties—plus many millions of dollars of funding. At present, if activists wish to substantially influence electoral politics, they must engage with the existing major parties.

Party activists have a major influence on who is elected to state government and to Congress. Whereas most voters choose between the major-party candidates selected for them (or else spend their vote on a meaningless protest), party activists decide who gets on the general-election ballot.

Consider the recent Colorado Republican assembly, which (http://ariarmstrong.com/2018/04/theocratic-republicans-dominate-colorado-assembly/) I attended as a delegate. The assembly was under-attended: Of a possible 4,201 delegates, only 2,951 were seated, even after adding alternates. These few delegates—a tiny fraction of Colorado's 3,219,953 total (http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VoterRegNumbers/VoterRegNumbers.html) active voters—decided the person who will probably become the GOP's candidate for governor (and eliminated the person whom I think would have been a less-bad general-election candidate, Cynthia Coffman).

Given Coffman's loss and new laws in Colorado that let the unaffiliated vote in primary elections, GOP candidates outside the party's theocracy-leaning activist core probably will petition onto the primary ballot in future elections. But who helps to gather signatures, raise funds, organize events, and generate publicity for candidates who petition onto the ballot? Again, party activists have enormous influence on electoral outcomes.

Even a dozen dedicated activists could get a Republican candidate of their choice onto the primary ballot for Colorado governor or for any legislative, state-wide, or Congressional office. Such activists would be at a disadvantage if they could not tie in to existing Republican funding and activist networks. But success breeds success, and these dozen activists would have radically better chances electing a candidate than, say, dozens or hundreds of activists working within a minor party.

A couple of caveats: First, some people have good reason to avoid electoral politics, whether because they lead a busy professional life (by which they might choose to help finance worthy causes), they have overriding commitments to family, or they engage in other important causes. So here I address those people with an interest in engaging in electoral-level politics and those who avoid such engagement for bad reasons. Second, some people, either because they live in Democrat-dominated regions or because they care most about certain issues, might instead reasonably join the Democratic party and try to make some headway there.

By and large my thesis stands: People who care about liberty and who wish to have real influence on electoral politics should join the GOP and actively seek to place better Republican candidates on the ballot.

2. The Democratic Party is also authoritarian.

Why, some will ask, shouldn't people disgruntled with the Republican Party join the Democratic Party instead? As noted, for a few people in special circumstances that might make sense. But overall I do not think it's a sensible strategy for advancing liberty.

I acknowledge that the GOP veers in a dangerously authoritarian direction. Typical Republican leaders want to ban all abortion and impose other faith-based laws. They seek to restrict legal immigration and subject illegal immigrants (and (http://reason.com/archives/2017/11/12/how-immigration-crackdowns-scr) everyone around them), including immigrants who have long lived peaceably in the United States, to harsh militarized police actions. They endorsed the surveillance state. And they either excuse or actively support Donald Trump in imposing higher taxes on imported goods (thereby risking international trade wars), running up the national debt, bombing other countries without Congressional authorization, attacking private businesses, attacking the news media, praising murderous dictators, allying with miscreants such as Manafort and Bannon and Cohen, lying continuously, and so on.

But the Democrats are hardly in a position to throw stones. Right now mainstream Democratic positions (at least among activist members) include the following:

• Crack down on charter schools and other forms of school choice even within the public school system. The Democratic Party is almost entirely under the sway of the teacher's unions. Democrats at their Colorado assembly even (https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2018/04/14/colorado-democrats-overwhelming-reject-democrats-for-education-reform-at-state-assembly/) booed a charter school teacher (among others) for daring to defend a group called Democrats for Education Reform—the assembly voted that the group can no longer use "Democrats" in its name.
• Outlaw certain guns owned by millions of Americans, the confiscation of which could happen only by door-to-door searches conducted by heavily-armed police agents. Such actions would make today's police-state tactics employed against illegal immigrants look like child's play. Incidentally, such a policy also would almost certainly spark a civil war of some magnitude.
• Abolish fossil fuels within a few decades through some combination of tax and regulatory policies, no matter the economic damage.
• Impose universally government-funded (and thereby government-controlled) health care.

Today's leading "Progressive" Democrats have reacted to Trump by lurching so hard to the left that they risk alienating even more voters than Trump has managed—and that's saying something.

Do the Democrats now stand for free speech, legal marijuana, and criminal justice reform? On these issues Republicans have made serious inroads, such that it is now easy to find high-ranking elected Republicans with better (more pro-liberty) views on such matters than many prominent Democrats. So what issues do the Democrats have left for advocates of liberty, exactly? I suppose the Democrats still have gay marriage, but that is now the law of the land, and the continued squeals of some Republicans (when they're in the right company) will not change that. From where I sit, it appears the Democratic Party can appeal mainly to those who love more taxes, more regulations, and more identity politics.

If you are among those who believe they can seriously advance liberty via the Democratic Party, I wish you well. Report back when you find that your strategy is a success, if you can, and then I will reconsider my position.

3. Republicans make the Republican Party.

Conservatives and libertarians often warn against the fallacy of (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)) reifying the state, treating it as some sort of superentity with a will of its own and with values of its own, a force above and beyond the individual human beings who compose and direct it.

It will not do to reify the Republican Party, either. The values and direction of the Republican Party are determined by those Republicans who are active in it. Change the Republicans, change the party.

What I advocate precisely is to change the balance of pro-liberty Republicans by encouraging more pro-liberty activists to join the Republican Party.

Do you hate Trump? Do you hate the authoritarian direction of today's Republican Party? That is not a reason to leave the party—unless you have a viable alternative, and if you are honest with yourself you know that you do not. Is a reason to join the party, if you are not now registered to vote as a Republican, or to expand your efforts to sway the party's direction, if you are now an inactive member.

And let us remember that, after all, the Republican Party was founded as the anti-slavery party, a worthy ideological base.

Do not leave the GOP in protest; change the GOP until your protests are no longer necessary.

4. Be in the party, not of the party.

Worse than the inactive cynic is the party loyalist, the sort of person who will vote for and cheer on any Republican, regardless of context.

The Christians have a saying, be in the world, not of it. The idea is that you can engage with the world without falling into the temptations of the world. I advocate a similar approach with respect to the GOP.

I do not call on people to be party loyalists. I call on people to be principled pro-liberty reformers within a party. I do not call on people to vote for and defend Republican candidates no matter what; I call on people to vote for and defend Republican candidates who deserve to be elected and defended. I a call on activists to help get the best possible candidates on the general ballot, so that if a candidate is a lesser of evils at least the magnitude of evil becomes less severe from election to election.

How does one remain principled while pursuing the Art of the Possible? This is a difficult question and a matter more of art than science. Here I offer only the general principle: Compromise, if you must, in the direction of liberty. The fact that a candidate is not perfect, with respect to your principles, does not imply that the candidate is not substantially better than some alternative.

Judging political tactics given the complexities of the relevant issues is no easy task, but the sensible alternative is not to throw one's hands in the air and give up. The answer is to do the best we can, given the realities of the political context in which we live. That we cannot answer every political question perfectly does not mean that we can sensibly answer no practical political questions.

Take an analogy to health. I do not know for sure which practices of diet and exercise will optimize my health, but I do not use my partial ignorance as a rationalization to ignore the question, nor do I put my health in the hands of quacks. Right now (to extend the analogy) the Republican Party snorts cocaine for breakfast and gorges donuts and soda for lunch. That the optimal path forward may be obscure does not imply that no paths are obviously better than others.

* * *

I am genuinely afraid for the future of our nation and for my son's future in America. Yes, I think It can happen here. I even think it will happen, eventually, if we do not change course.

I have laid out the basic case for fighting to reform the Republican Party from within to shift the outcomes of elections toward liberty. (I've (http://ariarmstrong.com/2016/05/why-liberty-advocates-should-join-the-republican-party-not-abandon-it-despite-trump/) made this case before.) No, the effort will not be easy. No, electoral politics is not the only (or even the most important) front in the battle for our nation's future. But, insofar as advocates of liberty seek to affect the outcomes of elections, in most cases they can most effectively do that as a Republican reformer.

If anyone has a viable alternative—not a non-strategy based on ego-stroking self-delusion—I remain open to argument. Cynicism and excuses will not suffice.

We need action with a realistic chance of success.

Why Libertarians Should Abandon the Libertarian Party

April 22, 2018

In (http://ariarmstrong.com/2018/04/how-to-save-the-republican-party-from-the-authoritarians/) urging liberty advocates to actively join the Republican Party to advance better candidates, do I ignore the elephant haters in the room, the Libertarians? Is the Libertarian Party (LP) a viable path for pro-liberty activism?

On the contrary: The LP impedes progress toward liberty by wasting resources, muddying the ideological waters (as I'll explain), and leaving electoral outcomes more fully under the control of authoritarians. Members of the LP should abandon that party and either join the GOP, if they wish to engage in electoral politics, or else devote their energies to other causes.

I make these points as a former activist within the LP. I served on the Colorado LP's board of directors, produced the state LP's newsletter, organized the 2002 state convention, ran as a Libertarian candidate, and edited and promoted the work of then-Libertarian sheriff Bill Masters (who later became a Democrat). My criticisms of the LP grow largely out of my experiences in it.

Evaluating the Libertarian Party

Let us begin with an obvious question: Has the Libertarian Party fulfilled its intended purpose or even moved substantially in that direction?

The Libertarian Party was created in 1971 in protest of the anti-liberty policies of Richard Nixon, as David Nolan, a founder of the party, (http://www.freecolorado.com/colib/0111nolan.html) told me in a 2001 interview. Nolan said that the founders of the LP hoped it would "become a major party" by 1984 or 1988, one that would control the "balance of power, . . . able to strongly influence the political debate, and act as a swing vote." Toward that goal, in 1972 the LP ran philosopher John Hospers for president.

In its nearly half-century of existence, has the Libertarian Party accomplished the goals of its founders? Obviously not. As Nolan understated the point, his goals for the party "didn't quite happen."

In 2016, in which the major parties ran two historically unpopular candidates for president, the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson—as a former (Republican) governor the most credible candidate the party has ever fielded—captured just over (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=2016&off=0&elect=0&f=0) 3 percent of the vote. Did Johnson hold the "balance of power"? No. He did become infamous for not knowing what Aleppo is.

In Colorado, no Libertarian has ever won a state legislative, statewide, or congressional race—or even come close. Far from playing a major role in state politics, the LP's successes have been limited mainly to a few local races—which could as easily have been won without the party trappings.

Has the Libertarian Party influenced the major parties in the direction of liberty? Quite the opposite. Today, the Republican Party is if anything more authoritarian than it was in the days of Nixon, and the Democratic Party hardly is better than it was.

The main effect of the Libertarian Party, other than to occasionally (http://ariarmstrong.com/2014/11/libertarians-nearly-cost-colorado-republicans-the-state-senate/) throw a race from a Republican to a Democrat, has been to divert liberty-oriented activists away from the major parties, where they otherwise would have served as a check on those parties' authoritarian impulses, toward electorally pointless minor-party work. The major parties have gotten worse—more authoritarian—not better, because of the Libertarian Party.

Yes, we now have gay marriage, legal marijuana, and widespread concealed gun carry, and the activist work of Libertarians contributed to those successes. But, for the most part, those are not the successes of Libertarians, but of the gay-rights movement (active mostly in the Democratic Party), nonpartisan activists such as Mason Tvert who shepherded marijuana measures through the petitioning process, and pro-gun Republicans, respectively.

Insofar as LP members facilitated those successes, they probably could have had an even greater impact if they had been active outside the resource-draining party. Insofar as Libertarians have achieved anything of consequence, for the most part it is despite the fact that they were part of the Libertarian Party, not because of it.

Ah, but the Libertarian Party is growing, and "people are quickly abandoning the two-party system," the (https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/lpcolorado/pages/28/attachments/original/1521560063/180319PR.pdf?1521560063) state LP declares. Sure, from February 2013 to February 2018, LP (http://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/VoterRegNumbers/VoterRegNumbers.html) active voter registrations increased from 18,714 (0.7 percent of the total) to 36,911 (1.1 percent of a larger total). So any Trump boost was worth less than a percent of total active voter registrations.

Often the Libertarian Party is literally a joke. Try searching the internet for "blue libertarian." Or consider this (https://www.greeleytribune.com/news/local/candidates-square-off-in-colorado-gubernatorial-debate-at-university-of-northern-colorado/) news account about a recent debate featuring gubernatorial candidates in Colorado:

Republican candidates wanted to relax regulations to make housing more affordable and keep oil and gas development going strong. The Libertarian candidate wanted beavers. . . . To be fair, [Scott] Helker didn't just want beavers. He wanted to deploy those beavers, to "get them ready" to solve Colorado's water shortage. Some in the audience chuckled. Helker said they should do their research or remain ignorant.

No doubt the reporter was having a little fun and not presenting Helker's best remarks. (I Tweeted (https://twitter.com/ariarmstrong/status/985947122120839168) Helker's fuller remarks on the matter.) Still.

By any objective standard, the Libertarian Party has been a massive failure with no prospects of substantial success on the horizon.

Explaining the Failure of the LP

Why has the Libertarian Party failed, a few minor exceptions aside? I think four main factors are at play.

1. American election rules heavily favor two-party politics.

Libertarians can argue until they are blue in the face (unless they already are) that voting Libertarian is not "wasting your vote"; they will not change the fact that the winner-take-all system heavily favors the two major parties.

Often someone who votes for a minor party thereby increases the chance of his second-place candidate losing to his least-favored candidate. Often someone who votes for a Green candidate otherwise would vote for the Democrat, and someone who votes for a Libertarian otherwise would vote for the Republican. Yet if someone's rank of candidates is Libertarian, Republican, and Democrat, by voting Libertarian the person thereby increase the chance of the Democrat winning.

On most issues there really are two basic directions we can move from the status quo. We can increase or decrease spending, raise or lower taxes, further restrict gun ownership or further liberate it, protect or rescind gay marriage, expand or restrict regulations, expand or restrict access to abortion. So on a given issue a minor party is likely to be closer to one of the major parties than to the other. For example, Libertarians in Colorado agree with most Republicans that the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights is a good idea, whereas Greens usually agree with Democrats that it is a bad idea.

The oddity about Libertarians (from the perspective of the mainstream) is that they tend to agree with Democrats on some issues (abortion, the drug war) and with Republicans on other issues (taxes, guns, business regulations). But, practically speaking, most Libertarians are more closely aligned with the Republicans than with the Democrats. This is especially true now that marijuana is legalized in Colorado and even major Republican figures support it or at least do not buck it. And abortion is largely off the table in Colorado.

(http://ariarmstrong.com/2011/01/atwood-pitches-approval-voting/) Approval voting, which I endorse, could change electoral dynamics considerably by allowing people to vote for candidates from a major and minor party at once (among other possible combinations). But, despite Frank Atwood's tireless advocacy, I do not see a realistic possibility for approval voting into the foreseeable future, mainly because the major parties, which pass all the laws, have no incentive to implement it. That said, if Libertarians really want to advance their party, they should probably forget running candidates and focus on getting signatures to place approval voting on the ballot. But I'll be surprised if they do that.

As things stand, interest in the Libertarian Party is inherently and severely limited because winner-takes-all voting strongly favors the two-party system.

2. The Libertarian Party rewards ego-stroking and delusion.

During my time with the Libertarian Party, one fellow mortgaged his house to run for Congress. Of course he lost just as badly as every other Libertarian who runs for Congress.

In 2002 a candidate ran for U.S. Senate under the delusion that he could actually win the race. The fellow turned out to be a little crazy; rather than going to Congress, he ended up going to prison for threatening judges.

People often run for office on the Libertarian ticket simply because they want to run and stand no chance with the major parties. How fun! You can respond to media inquiries and even be invited to debates, just by registering to vote Libertarian, attending the right meeting, and throwing your name into the hat.

Obviously the major parties also attract plenty of deluded and egotistical activists. Politics is a never-ending soap opera, regardless of party. The difference is that the major parties also attract serious candidates who stand a real chance of winning major elected offices.

I have met many level-headed Libertarian candidates, too. But because of its minor-party status, the LP elevates a disproportionate number of eccentric or outright kooky people to prominent positions, and this reinforces the status of the LP as a fringe party.

3. The LP promotes a radical agenda.

There are two main types of Libertarian candidates: real libertarians and Republican-lites. Running a Republican-lite candidate is pointless, as voters might as well just vote for the actual Republican, who has a chance of winning. The problem with running real libertarians is that hardly any voters agree with the more radical libertarian positions.

Take a quick guess as to how many voters want to legalize cocaine. Now take a quick guess as to how many voters want to abolish government-run schools. Now look for the overlap of those two groups. There roughly is the base for the Libertarian platform.

An irony is that, although the voter base of the LP is tiny, it is substantially larger than it otherwise would be simply because no one ever seriously expects the Libertarian to win. So the LP is a safe protest vote.

But if a Libertarian ever got any real traction, the candidate would be buried in ads to the effect that people's kids would be snorting cocaine behind their shuttered schools.

To the degree that Libertarians promote sensible but unpopular policies, they would be better off promoting those policies on the educational front, not through out-of-touch electoral politics.

4. The LP is corrupted by bad ideology.

I agree with many Libertarian policy aims. But the Libertarian Party, influenced as it was by the likes of anarchist and (https://niskanencenter.org/blog/libertarian-origins-libertarian-influence-ruling-american-right/) David Duke defender "Mr. Libertarian" Murray Rothbard, often tends to be more anti-government than genuinely pro-liberty.

The anti-government undercurrents of the LP ooze to the surface with some regularity. A certain brand of Libertarian heartily denounces Abraham Lincoln and laments the "War of Northern Aggression." A surprising number of Libertarians ally with racist alt-Righters because they too want to tear down the existing system. The previously mentioned Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate wrote favorably of "summary street trials" in which various sorts of "traitors" would be executed. Two-time Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne was an explicit anarchist (and a very amiable fellow). (There are better and worse variants of libertarian anarchism; the academics Bryan Caplan and Michael Huemer represent the best sort.)

The better Libertarians, the majority, are straight-up Constitutional republicans. But they will never be able to fully shake the anti-government ideological roots of libertarianism.

The Republican Party, by contrast, is in its ideological foundations the anti-slavery party—a good place to start. Today the two major parties are big tents housing loosely grouped coalitions. In participating in the Republican Party, I am not saddled by the worst ideological elements of the party in the way that Libertarians are saddled with anti-government elements of libertarianism.

The Libertarian Party is by its declaration an avowedly ideological party, so the ideology is fundamentally important. And the libertarian ideology has a dark side that is difficult for Libertarians to escape.

Joining the GOP

How can I join a party that has so often sold liberty advocates down the river? How can I sanction the authoritarian tendencies of today's Republican Party? These are the sorts of questions that Libertarians would typically ask (and the sorts of questions that once drove me to the LP).

Libertarians often mistakenly treat party affiliation as defining their views or personality. The attitude seems to be, "I don't want to be a Republican because I reject what today's Republican Party stands for." Such an attitude is silly. The point of participating in a major party is not to define yourself by the party; it is to change the party for the better by defeating those party members you disagree with.

Think of it this way: If you were confident that the GOP would consistently implement your preferred policies, there would be no reason to spend any time trying to change it. It is only to the degree that you think the GOP is or could be on the wrong track that you have a reason to work to reform it.

The Republican Party is a means to electoral influence for the sake of implementing better policies, and, to me, that's all it is. I participate in the GOP precisely because I disapprove of its direction and want to help change it. If I thought that a better party had a real chance of pushing out the Republican Party, I'd join in a heartbeat. But no such party exists.

For reasons I explained in my (http://ariarmstrong.com/2018/04/how-to-save-the-republican-party-from-the-authoritarians/) previous article, liberty activists actually have the ability to advance decent (or at least better) candidates through the Republican Party, especially now that state law allows the unaffiliated to vote in primaries. Practically speaking, the new rules offer a way around the theocratic activists who now dominate the caucus and assembly process. (I (http://ariarmstrong.com/2018/04/how-to-fix-colorados-candidate-petition-mess/) opposed that law, but I cannot change it, and many Republicans openly embraced it.)

Of course, my argument hinges on people wanting to actually achieve electoral victories and not just play at politics. The purpose of a political party is to win elections. The Libertarian Party is incapable of doing that in any meaningful way.

I suggest that people looking for a social club join a social club, that people looking to advocate the ideas of liberty join an educational group, and that people looking to affect electoral politics join a major party in which that is possible.

There is simply no value worth having that the Libertarian Party, as a political party, provides. In 1971 it was reasonable to think that a new liberty-oriented party might succeed. In 2018 it is no longer reasonable to think that the Libertarian Party can accomplish what it was intended to accomplish. It is time to try a different approach.

Photo of Ari Armstrong, Harry Browne, and Pamela Lanier Wolfe

Notes on Colorado Freedom Report Archives

July 18, 2018

I founded the Colorado Freedom Report, originally at co-freedom.com before moving to freecolorado.com, in 1998. Following standard magazine practices, I postdated my initial articles, initially posted in November or December of 1998, for January 1999.

Up through 2007, I hand-coded my pages using simple templates developed with the help of an early edition of HTML for Dummies. From 2008 through 2010, I continued to post to the Colorado Freedom Report (alternately called Free Colorado) via Google's Blogger interface, plus I left up the old html files as archives. Later I ported that Blogger content to AriArmstrong.com.

In June, 2018, I relaunched the Colorado Freedom Report at freecolorado.com as a WordPress site. At that time I just deleted all the old html content. But I saved the files, of course, with the intention of eventually converting them into WordPress files. I decided to put the archival material at AriArmstrong.com.

Because I originally dated articles by month (and sometimes posted them prior to the dated month), dates of some of the ported articles correspond only approximately to original publication dates.

I do not always agree with my older views. For example, when I first launched the Colorado Freedom Report, I considered myself a libertarian, and I soon became active in the Libertarian Party of Colorado. I do not usually call myself a libertarian anymore because of the ambiguity and baggage of that term. I'm still something like "fiscally conservative and socially liberal."

In March, 2022, I launched (https://coloradopickaxe.substack.com/) Colorado Pickaxe on Substack to write about Colorado politics and culture.

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