Cromwell

The good news is that there was no useless War of 1812. The bad news is that there was no Louisiana Purchase, either; Napoleon was hardly going to sell large parts of North America to his British adversaries. In fact, it is virtually certain that the French would have opened up a new front against the British in America. How would that have ended?

It is unlikely that Americans would have been drafted for service in Europe, but it is easy to imagine a scenario in which French forces based in New Orleans would have been fighting Americans for control of the Mississippi. In other words, there probably would have been a Battle of New Orleans; it just would have been against the French, not the British.

In the end, superior American and British resources in North America would have prevailed, and the area included in the Louisiana Purchase would have become a new British colony. It would have been a difficult battle, however.

As I’ve noted many times before, the Fed cannot stop wealthy people from using their pandemic savings to buy overpriced goods and services. It also has no influence over supply chain problems or federal spending. As a result, inflation is coming down, but not as fast as the Fed would like. Is there any prospect of that changing in the near future?

To answer that, consider three areas in which the Fed, on its face, has considerable influence on pricing decisions: housing; credit card purchases; and auto prices. Here is what is actually happening:

1. HOUSING: Efforts to increase supply are being restrained by increased credit costs. In addition, would-be sellers are being discouraged from putting homes on the market for fear of paying the higher interest rates on a new, bigger house. Many houses are still being purchased with cash. Finally, the demand for housing can be satisfied by either purchases or rentals, but on the whole, it is inelastic. As a result, home prices are not falling with the speed desired by the Fed.
2. CREDIT CARDS: Rates on unpaid balances have always been outrageous. Do you think consumers really notice when they go even higher?
3. AUTO PRICES: The car manufacturers have moved to a pricing model in which they make large profits selling fewer cars for higher prices. In other words, greedflation controls here, not interest rates.

The bottom line is that the Fed can’t really do anything significant to bring down inflation except by destroying consumer confidence by rattling the stock and bond markets. Is that really worth it to get, say, from four to two percent? I would say no.

American colonial boundaries were established as the result of interactions between the government and courtiers in London, which is a reason not to accept reactionary arguments about states’ rights today. The new American government created a clear process to convert property outside the existing state boundaries into new states. Would the British government have done the same, if the Revolution had failed?

No. The British government would have continued to try and enforce the Proclamation of 1763, which did not envision a need for any new political entities. Those efforts would have failed, so at some point, given the condition of American communications and transportation facilities, it would have become obvious even in London that property west of the Appalachians needed its own governments. The boundaries of the new colonies, however, would probably have been thrashed out in the same manner as before–on an ad hoc basis, with the interests of powerful courtiers predominating. As a result, the map of British America would have looked a lot different than it does today.

“I know plenty of people on the left call me an Uncle Tom. That really pisses me off, because it isn’t true. I felt the sting of racism every day growing up. I know what it’s like to come from nothing, and to deal with the sneers and the patronizing looks from white people who thought they were better than me. If you’ve had that experience–and you probably have–I understand it, and I feel for you.

But you need to know who your real enemies are. It’s not the racist cop who hassles you in your neighborhood, or the Nazi on TV, or Donald Trump. They’re relatively easy to deal with. The real enemies are the white liberal elites who tell you you’re a victim–that you’ll always be a victim–and that you can’t stand on your own two feet. They say they want to give you a hand. What they really want is to use you, and to keep you down.

My advice to you is simple: don’t ask for help from smug white liberals, and don’t accept any if offered. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re a victim. Be a man! Work hard, and be better than they are. Be successful on your own terms. Be a rugged individual, not just a tiny part of a perpetually downtrodden group crying for government protection. That’s the road to true independence. That’s the path to true equality.

You may think that it’s unfair that you have to start the race from behind. So what? Life is unfair. Good looking people make more money than ugly people. Tall people are more successful than short people. Sick people have tougher lives than healthy people. Left-handed people have more trouble getting through life than right-handed people. That’s just the way it is. You have to play the cards you’ve been dealt.

Martin did it. Malcolm did it. I did it. Even Barack Obama, totally misguided as he was, did it in his way. So can you. You don’t have to be a slave. Your life is in your own hands, not the government’s. Make the most of it.”

Based on his concurring opinion in the affirmative action case, I think this fairly depicts what he would say. When you think about it, he sounds like an existentialist: Jean-Paul Sartre for the 21st century. Are you convinced?

The British government was deeply in debt after the Seven Years War, so the last thing it needed was to spend a lot of taxpayer money protecting land-hungry colonists from Indians. Hence, the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited pioneers–even those who paid good money to buy land from Indians–from receiving good title to property west of the Appalachian Mountains.

The Proclamation was a political disaster. It was unenforceable, and it turned the colonists in the frontier areas against the British government. That was one of the decisive factors in the Revolution; since the government didn’t have enough troops to occupy these areas, it had no hope of controlling them without the help of Tories.

If the British had succeeded in crushing the rebellion, would the problem have gone away? Not at all! The demand for Indian land was insatiable. That meant the British government had two unappetizing choices: either spend money it didn’t have to protect the colonists; or leave them to their own devices, which would have led to the creation of militias and, in the long run, military and political entities that were outside the control of the government.

It was the land of no good options. The Revolution resolved the problem for them. Everybody won except the Indians.

We are usually told that the American Revolution was a fight for “freedom.” “Freedom,” however, is an ambiguous term, particularly in American history. Who would be free, and what would they be free to do?

“Freedom” can mean the legal ability to endanger and oppress others. That’s a battle that is still raging today.

As a slaveowner, Jefferson exposed himself to a charge of supreme hypocrisy for all eternity when he proclaimed that it was self-evident that all men were created equal. At first glance, equality does not appear to be essential to his overall argument for American independence. Why did he say it?

At the time, Americans were second class subjects of the British crown; after all, what was the point for the mother country in having colonies if you couldn’t exploit them? I think the equality argument was primarily intended to address that issue. In a sense, that is what the Revolution was all about; if you accepted the notion that there was such a thing as an “American” (given the ethnic and religious composition of the colonial population relative to the mother country and the very different nature of the land, there was), he was surely entitled to the same rights of self-determination as anyone in Great Britain.

In other words, it was an argument against imperialism. Happy Independence Day!

What was the point in having colonies? The Navigation Acts made that clear; the American colonies were supposed to provide a guaranteed supply of critical raw materials to the mother country, and to buy British manufactured goods. In short, the colonies existed to serve Great Britain; the colonists were second class citizens, both politically and economically. If the Revolution had failed, would that have changed?

There would have been plenty of smuggling, to be sure; the British didn’t have the resources to stop it. But there would have been no tariff, and far less manufacturing. As noted in my previous post, progress towards the single American market would have been much slower. Finally, American exports with the rest of the world would have been limited, which would have damaged American merchants. You can, therefore, attribute much of America’s economic growth to the success of the Revolution.

Biden now resembles FDR in one respect–his policy initiatives are being frustrated by a right-wing Supreme Court. The Court’s enthusiasm for the major questions doctrine pretty well guarantees that this trend will continue. What will Biden do about it?

Supreme Court reform will not be a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign, because he will be portraying himself as the true institutional conservative in the race, while the GOP nominee will be a dangerous right-wing extremist. For progressives, however, the issue will not go away, because the combination of the filibuster and major questions makes it impossible for them to implement their policy objectives through either legislation or administrative action. Look for Supreme Court reform to be a major topic of discussion from Democratic presidential candidates between 2024 and 2028.

The British government regulated the actions of the thirteen colonies as thirteen separate legal and political entities. There were no legal ties connecting them. Given the size of British America and the primitive nature of transportation and communication facilities, the absence of a single market was not particularly important at the time of the Revolution. But what would have happened with the invention of the steamboat and the locomotive? Would the British government have done anything to expedite the movement of goods and services across colonial boundaries?

There is no reason to think so. The American single market was a product of success in the Revolution and some wise judicial interpretations of the Constitution. We take it for granted today, but there was nothing inevitable about it.

The Supreme Court is going to hear a case involving the right of a domestic abuser to own a gun during the next term. Since the party in question is unsympathetic, there is speculation that the Court plans to retreat a bit from last year’s decision to rely solely on analogies to gun regulations as they existed in the 18th and 19th centuries. My guess is that the speculation is correct, which would be welcome.

Two things are for certain. First, there were no analogous gun owning restrictions in previous centuries that control the new case, because there was little regulation of domestic violence. Second, Justice Thomas is not going to back down. He believes in his ridiculous approach, and he won’t depart from it regardless of the facts.

I don’t believe the Second Amendment is a personal right. If it is, however, it should be subject to the same kind of limitations as the First Amendment. Since a variety of kinds of speech that represent a danger to the public are not protected by the First Amendment, the same considerations should be applied to gun ownership.

Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in the 1830s. As a result, the 1619 Project crowd thinks American independence was actually a step back in the fight for racial justice. If America had remained British, they say, slavery would have ended before 1865. Are they right?

No, because the cost of compensation for slave owners relative to British GDP was very high even without dealing with millions of American slaves. In addition, the British economy was heavily dependent on cheap American cotton, which was, of course, produced by slaves. The politics of the emancipation issue would consequently have been dramatically different if American slavery had been on the table. It is highly likely that Parliament would have decided that it was way too expensive for the British taxpayer.

In short, instead of moving American emancipation forward, a failed American Revolution probably would have delayed emancipation elsewhere.

Barrett’s concurring opinion in the student loan case is essentially an olive branch to the left on the much-reviled “major questions” doctrine. She acknowledges that a plausible understanding of it presents serious problems for jurists who claim to be textualists, but argues that, in practice, it means nothing more than the need to provide “context” for challenged provisions of administrative law. Should we take her seriously?

Yes and no. Yes, it is possible that her concurring opinion is an accurate description of her method of interpreting statutory provisions. If so, the problem–at least as to her–largely goes away, since nobody in the field objects to considering “context.” No, because she isn’t speaking for the rest of the majority, and her description of the doctrine is completely at odds with the case law, including the student loan case. Were that not the case, the doctrine would not require a name, and if it did have one, it certainly wouldn’t be “major questions.”

Is this perhaps a warning to her conservative colleagues that she may jump ship if they push “major questions” too far? We’ll see.

What do Dobbs, the web designer case, the student loan case, and the affirmative action case have in common? In each case, a critical part of the coalition that makes up the Democratic Party (women, LGBTQ, young people, and black people) was given rights by the government, and in each case, the Court took them away at the behest of a right-wing plaintiff.

Coincidence? Hardly.

The outcome of the web designer case was never in doubt; the question was whether the Court would push the envelope in favor of future large Christian carve-outs in dicta. It didn’t; it stuck to the facts (the stipulation about the nature of the business in particular) and didn’t speculate about future cases. As a result, there is nothing in this decision that should get you whipped up. As to the future, we’ll just have to wait and see.

The student loan case is a different story. It was an unprincipled, partisan decision–and remember, I don’t support the program.

The majority opinion contains three parts. In the first, the Chief Justice finds that Missouri had standing, even though the record makes it perfectly clear that the state would suffer no concrete harm as a result of the loan forgiveness program. In the second, he digs hard to find a definition of “waiver” that is inconsistent with common usage. In the third, he makes reference to the vague, odious “major questions” doctrine and finds the program was inadequately authorized by Congress. Every one of the three parts of the decision is seriously flawed. In reality, what the Court is saying, and has said for the last few years, is that Democrats have no right to use the administrative system to make important policy changes that the GOP dislikes even if the literal language of the authorizing statute permits them. Will the Court use the same doctrine against a Republican administration in the future? Don’t hold your breath.

It is important that the impassioned dissent in this case was written by the usually diplomatic Justice Kagan. She is warning the majority that it is pushing too hard on partisan administrative law cases and losing its legitimacy in the process. Is Roberts listening? Only when it suits him.